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Thank you for playing today's game of "Being teased by a Troll"

You've been a wonderful sport, demonstrating the ability to use logic against a troll, a rare skill on slashdot.org

You did lose some points for some of the name calling, the "Full deck" comment and generally losing your temper.

Your final score was 9.2 out of a possible 10.

Congratulations, it's our highest score yet!

The grand prize is a chance to get a free iPod or iTunes gift certificate. Just go to this address and follow the directions, and you too, might receive an iPod.

• Microsoft makes a reliable version of Windows.
• The Ender's Game movie is released... and it doesn't suck.
• I get my free iPod.
• People stop their constant bitching about politics and decide to make the world a better place.
• A colony gets started on the moon/humans land on Mars.
• Spam as we know it no longer exists.
• Global Wi-Fi coverage (or at least national)

When will I be able to get them for free?

When will I be able to get one for free?

It would be nice to make those Ipod's pay for themselves, heck I can start a Slave Ipod Mill!!!

You're not the first to have this idea... Where do you think they get all the free ipods from?

I never said it didn't. That doesn't stop some people from arguing the position... persuasively enough to convince our congresscritters to tailor the law thusly. Regardless of whether both types are wrong, I'd also agree (as the marketroids claim) there is a difference between bothering someone you doubt will be interested but hasn't said "no" yet, and bothering someone who already has said or is trying to say "no" -- but you've got your fingers in your ears to keep from hearing them say it. The marketroids may say it's the difference between right and wrong, I say it's the difference between nuisances and assholes, but there is a difference.

If it is unsolicited and sent in bulk it is spam.

Not everyone agrees that everything thus described is Spam. Furthermore, the absense of definitions for "bulk" and "unsolicited" in that would make any legal beagle's ears perk up... along with those of most marketroids, too. Anything that meets the criteria I gave will be agreed as being spam by anyone who recognizes the existance of the category. There may be other things that are Spam, but their inclusion is not universally undebated.

Religious spam is more worrying in someways, because the irrational nature of the people sending it - just ask the senders what my boss did "who would Jesus spam?".

Inadequately helpful against biblical scholars.

Et dixit eis euntes in mundum universum praedicate evangelium omni creaturae.
He said to them, "Go into all the world and preach the good news to all creation." --Mark 16:15

More important from the perspective of making Spam illegal, religous speech-- in whatever form-- is given a higher degree of protection under US Law than ordinary speech, due to having a double whammy of first amendment protection. Since having any Spam be constitutionally protected weakens attempts to ban it (short of constitutional amendment), sensible people adjust the definition of Spam accordingly.

There are responsible mass-mailers out there. I've told my spam filter to let through the Circuit City email circulars, because I find their ads relevant to my job. (Not that I buy from there often....) Similarly, I let Omaha Steaks send me junk mail, even though I never have bought anything from them... but it's nice to dream I could afford to regularly do a hunk of my grocery shopping with them.

The responsible mailers want everyone to hear from them, but are happy to go away if you tell them to. Target doesn't want to bother people 90 miles from their closest store, because they might loose a customer before they even get a store near them... and the bulk of business is still firmly brick-and-mortar anchored. If we could drive out the scum who are just looking for short-term sucker business, rather than long term regular customers, the problem would be reasonably solvable with POP-server or Client-based blacklists, selection depending on the relative affordability of server processor power versus client side bandwidth. Alas, there's still too many suckers out there, and double that number trying to take 'em.

Yeah, like that's a hard thing to do.

The average fan could eat alphabet soup and excrete a better movie script.

I'm so damn close to getting a free ipod [freeipods.com], which I'll fill entierly with CC licensed podcasts and rips of CDS I own.

won't be again exposed to strange strains of viruses that their immune system can't handle.

Hold on here.

In Nevada, the licensed, legal hookers are, by law, tested regularly and use a love glove.

You're LESS likely to be exposed to strange viruses going to Comdex and taking a cab to the Bunny Ranch that you are going for a local "woman of negotiable virtue"

I'm so damn close to getting a free ipod [freeipods.com], which I'll fill entierly with CC licensed podcasts and rips of CDS I own.

Yes, because you know for a fact that the same people who defend downloading the latest Madonna MP3 are the same ones up in arms over this.

The slashdot community is so small and uniform that there couldn't possibly be any people who the GPL should be upheld, yet admit MP3 trading is illegal if the song wasn't released under a P2P friendly license by the artists.

Everyone knows that the opinion that gets the most posts in a given story is the option of all slashdot readers. It's not like the people who feel strongly about the GPL issue are reading and posting in the GPL related stories and the P2P zealots are reading and posting in the P2P related stories.

Everyone reads and posts in all the stories, so everyone on slashdot must be and advocate of P2P yet want the GLP enforced by capital punishment.

I'm so damn close to getting a free ipod, which I'll fill entierly with CC licensed podcasts and rips of CDS I own.

Why does Sony seem to have a higher level of complaints than all the other LCD makers? Was it a rushed process resulting in dropped quality or do they have the same quality as others and the media is just picking up on their problems?
BTW, requisite PA comic on the topic
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Aren't you supposed to pay for ads on this site...

Yeah, this is shameful, shameful behaviour.

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2) High Energy Density Small and light, the new battery offers a high level of storage efficiency. The prototype battery is only 3.8mm thick, 62mm high and 35mm deep and has a capacity of 600mAh.
Given the recharge times that is an amazing amount of energy for PDAs, cameras and the like. However, if you're going to scale up that system for cars, you are going to have a hellishly dangerous amount of current flowing in order to get a charge in a minute (or time similar to a gas station) so they better figure out some good safety systems if they want to go to market with this for pure electic cars rather than the hybrids they're planning for in 2006. However, they might not need the one minute charge if they use the charge at home system the some electric car designs. You could charge to full in an hour or get enough of a charge at the supermarket or other store to make short hops without a problem.

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These aren't processors. They're more like modems. They convert the optical signal into electrons and let a normal electronic CMOS CPU proccess the data. The article is about the fact that this modulator can be done on the same chip as the processor and is ten times as fast as the next best thing.

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I think you meant to say electricty is light. This is somewhat right but not exactly. Light /is/ made up of electromagnetic fields and the electric force between charges /is/ transmitted by photons, but they are two seperate ideas. Modern quantum physics has electricity sent via virtual photons while normal light is sent by real photons. Real photons involve both an electric field and a magnetic field perpendicular to each other and perpendicular to the direction of the wave propogation. The reason fiber optics transmissions are "faster" is because we can send multiple signals on different wavelengths over the same line without them interfering with each other two much. We can't do this with normal electric signals because high frequency electric signals start acting strangly since metal wires can no longer be though as resistors but now have to be modeled as inductors too.

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The article isn't about pure photonic processors that working completely on light. These would be used in fiber optic routers where switching between light and electric signals is a waste. Data is already transmitted via light but the modulators used are seperate from the computing logic parts. In this new system, the computing system is still using classic transistors but the optical parts are integrated onto the IC. This is still a far step from pure photonic computers where the "transistors" or logic gates are done purely via light.

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when he was part of the Challenger investigation team. Hopefully, this means that the chance of another accident is improbable given NASA's desire to phase out the Shuttle and replace it with something more 21st century. Hopefully the winds won't change and the Shuttle will be replaced with something better before the next accident. NASA should really start pushing for more private groups to do this rather than just handing out paltry prizes. Or maybe the Chinese will end up giving NASA the drive it needs to get a working space program. China's economy isn't on the rocks like the USSR during the space race so they would actually be able to compete with us.

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If he had just stopped after he gained a couple million and spam wasn't as big of a deal, he could have retired and lived in peace for the rest of his life. Yet he got greedy and kept trying to make more money even as people kept getting more fed up with spam. Excessive greed has takes down even the best of criminals.

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The article concentrates on hackers liking the features that Apple adds to the modern Mac, but how many of the programmers and power users jumping ship from Wintel (or WAMD) machines are doing this because of BSD? The main reason I got my Mac Mini was because it is smaller than the Linux server I use right now so it's easier to deal with. I might eventually use it as a Mac client machine rather than as a server once I figure out how to set up my media system, but right now it's just another *nix box to me. Apple really did the right thing by loading OSX with a ton of developer tools and allowing the community to do much of their work for them.

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All of the previous courts that have ruled on this case have sided with P2P. Probably because the P2P side has been making the argument that P2P is just the next version of VCRs, audio tapes, etc. Also the Constitution says that the purpose of copyright laws is to "promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts" and the P2P side has artists saying that the tech is good for them because it helps them get their stuff out. The RIAA's argument is pretty much "we're losing money" rather than "the arts are being destroyed" so they have a harder argument to pull off. There is also the strong evidence showing that many people who use P2P do buy the music later on. While this is still technically illegal, it ends up promoting the arts so this is probably a Good Thing in the eyes of the Founders.

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I just read Stephenson's Diamond Age and it had the concept of fully interactive media. Instead of just overlaying a face over a static movie, 'ractives didn't seperate actors and viewers. The idea was that the 'viewer' would buy a ractive and would pay a different amount depending on the type of ractive. They would also be able to have other viewers join them or they could pay professional actors to fill in the spot. The system was flexible enough to adapt to whatever the people did (and probably had a rating system to get rid of trolls) so it combined the basics of a script with something like a MMORPG. As AI come closer to the Turing test, this might also take off as you buy 3d/VRML/etc client and join RPGs that concentrate more on the role-playing rather than casting fireballs. However, I don't think this kind of thing will really take off until it becomes open enough that anyone can write their own ractives instead of just joining a centralized server an follow someone else's script.

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http://www.mirrordot.org/stories/7a619ff68b3628144 0ce8c14d21197d5/index.html IMO, the Wi-Fi model they have there looks more interesting than the wired one. Hopefully, they'll get picoTux to work on that and be able to make the antenna less clunky.

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Dictionary attacks and other brute force attacks still don't work too well on passphrases so those who use them can protect their drug money for a little while longer. It should also be noted that the DNA attack won't work unless the Secret Service has your private key file. The actual encryption can't be broken easily so they have to attack the weak encryption on the digital private key that's stored on your computer. If the key is stored in a manner that they can't get to it, then your data will still be safe. E.g. the key is stored on an IC in the computer that self destructs if it is tampered with like IBM's ultra-paranoid laptops. The IC would detect a brute force attack and destroy the key.

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Or maybe they game them movie theater tickets

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If the MLA would come up with a formal specification of the English language that was a recursively enumerable language it wouldn't be so fucking hard to parse the language. They could at least formalize things like order-of-operations regarding clauses and enumerated lists and give a better set of punctuation to work with. They should choose whether they want the language to be pure communications medium with a formal syntax or if they want it to be a completely flexible means of artistic expression full of nuances and hints that can only be understood by a sentient being who has studied the language in-depth for many years.


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If people read that linked slashdot story, they would see that self-replicating robots are not much closer than when von Neumann wrote about them. The LEGO Mindstorm evolution is pretty cool just because Mindstorms is being used as a platform for this and since the evolution system is doesn't require an outside computer.

However, the small population used (2 bots) and the seemingly weak fitness function make me think that this project won't go anywhere fast (pardon the pun) and is just a genetic dead end. Evolution is dependent on the Law of Very Large Numbers for anything significant to happen.

If you really want to see something cool along the lines of evolving moving robots, I suggest the GOLEM Project. The robots don't manufacture themselves, but the system is a lot closer to biological evolution than most.

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Even though he wasn't nominated for a Culture novel, I agree with the parent that his writing kicks ass. I suggest his essay, A Few Notes on the Culture, as quick intro about it. IMO, the best book is Excession but all of his Culture novels are amazing. They detail life in a post-scarcity ("money is a sign of poverty") civilization which is utopian by many standards. When many sci-fi books show AI as being human level sophonts (Star Wars, Asimov, etc) Banks has his AIs operating orders of magnitude above humans yet he still makes humans feel like an important part of the universe. Of all the science fiction I've read, the universe created by Banks is by far the coolest.

I haven't read the novel in question, but if his Culture books are any indication of this novel's quality, it will be just as amazing and worthy of the Hugo.

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I was hoping that the BGs were inside shots of the CRTs or detailed views of LCD panels rather than illusions of the room which only work from one angle. However, I am reminded of the transparent skirts.

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This is a good time as any to mention Vinge's Singularity. The main topic is AI, but he also talks about IA or Intelligence Amplification. The DM in the article is a type of IA for communications systems between people. It would merge the useful parts of online communications such as active logging without the problematic impersonal problems that are sometimes caused. This gets extended further when people are connected 24/7 and they have the ability to treat the real world and the wired world much more similarly

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As with many console launches, I think a big problem here is the games. This happened with the DS too since their selection was limited (Mario DS and Metroid are the only two good ones from what I've heard) even though they have their GBA games to fall back on. Since the DS is less expensive, can also do movies, MP3s and ebooks using Movie Player Advance, people don't seem to want to spend the $100 extra for it. Both companies want to create a new industry around downloading content over WiFi and other non videogame things so they seem to be holding out on their initial releases. It might be better to wait six months and see which side has better stuff.

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Since the majority of viruses, spyware, and other crap are due to user inaction, this isn't really a fair metric about the overall security. However, it is good to compare against the Windows survival time which is measured in minutes. This does show that Apple has its default security setup as "paranoid with multiple tin foil hats) compared to Windows XP's default setup. A more interesting test would compare how hard it is to get spyware onto a user's computer via the default webbrowser since that seems to be the primary vector these days. However, this is problematic since it's heavily dependent on user stupidity.

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MP3s will last longer than games. A good rundown of the different times: http://psp.ign.com/articles/572/572563p1.html

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Because their law still prevents private copies. And since you can't crack the DRM without making a private copy using PyMusique, you end up violating the law. As soon as you make a copy of the downloaded file that doesn't have DRM, you've violated this law.

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Because certain corporations who will remain nameless pay them not to. The courts have shot down certain laws that are intrusive under the Substantive Due Proccess requirement because the government couldn't show that the laws helped people rather than hurt them. It's much harder for them to do this when the rights being violated are more subtle (fixed term copyrights vs unlimited extensions) so it's easier for the corporations to control copyright.

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"the circumvention of a TPM applied to copyright material will only be illegal if it is carried out with the objective of infringing copyright. Legitimate access, as authorized by the Copyright Act, will not be altered."

That sounds like it will allow the creation and sale of mod chips as long as they are used legally. Though, it doesn't allow private copying which means that cracking iTunes for personal use is still not legal.

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It's been known for a while that Apple is full of atheistic-Satan-worshiping-anarchy-loving-communis ts for a while now
Register Article:
The real operating system hiding under the newest version of the Macintosh operating system (MacOS X) is called... Darwin! That's right, new Macs are based on Darwinism! While they currently don't advertise this fact to consumers, it is well known among the computer elite, who are mostly Atheists and Pagans. Furthermore, the Darwin OS is released under an "Open Source" license, which is just another name for Communism. They try to hide all of this under a facade of shiny, "lickable" buttons, but the truth has finally come out: Apple Computers promote Godless Darwinism and Communism.

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NYTimes is just annoying enough, but it would be nice for Slashdot to not link to paid registration articles. However, the 5 pics from the image gallery were pretty sweet. Personally, I like this idea. Not so much as an iPod, but as a multiGB HD system that I could easily use with my PDA, cellphone, or camera via Bluetooth rather than the limited 1GB/$99 flash sticks with their own fucking readers that no one else uses. Thus a photo on my camera is automatically dumped to my iPod if it's in range via BT and then sent to my PC via WiFi when I get home.

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I think this is a case of a dinosaur making last ditch efforts to try to save themself from certain destruction. AFP wants to try to control the flow of news (from them to other newspapers) and defend the natural monopolies involved with physical media since it's hard for customers to compare items for free. Now that AFP isn't listed, customers will just see other sites and flock to them first. This is what happens when you apply the old methods of business to the new world.

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Ah, after some more reading, the myth itself that he did it with a circular configuration which they showed to be impossible. I guess they didn't know about parabolic reflections in those days. However, since a parabola is defined as the set of points equidistant between a point (the focus of the death ray) and a line (the infinitely far light of the sun reflecting off an imaginary flat mirror) this means that all the tangents of a parabolic curve (the flat mirrors in this case) will always cause the light source to reflect at a single point. This is why well designed radio dishes and telescopes use parabolic reflectors to concentrate the light. Reflectors also don't have the problem of different frequencies reacting differently like normal lenses.

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Given that he was able to set a rag on fire, I'm guessing that the Mythbusters team did something incorrectly regarding the focusing of their mirrors. And your link says they used a circular configuration which is only good in limited cases since the light is focused in a line (which isn't really focus) rather than a point. This was parabolic setup which is why he was able to melt plastic and set a rose on fire.

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Since the second link is down: http://www.mirrordot.org/stories/dc606edf5dd2111cf fb4c2925123d784/index.html

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It's not (primarily) the web designers' fault that they use flashy designs. The people who get design contracts aren't the ones who use well-formed, W3C compliant XHTML that is functional even in text-based browsers. The people who get the contracts are the ones who have a 500KB Flash animation on every page and poorly coded Javascript rollovers because clients and PHBs see these things and go "Ooo! Shiny!"

The whole point of modern XHTML and CSS is so that web designers can seperate the function of the webpage (deliver content via XHTML) from the form (the particular layout using CSS) and let end users choose the CSS that they want. In theory this should have a minimal XHTML with just pure text and all the glitz should be added in via CSS. FF and similar browsers support switching between multiple stylesheets by defaul, but IE requires webdesigners to allow it via a Javascript widget. Thus, the designers just stick with the flash. Maybe IE7 will help change this if it doesn't suck as much as the previous versions or maybe not given the amount of glitz in Longhorn.

In an ideal world, one CSS would have the glitzy flash animation and postneoantimodernismdeco-that-will-win-art-contest s design for when I first visit the page and am sucked in by beauty. Another CSS would have a minimalist UI that allows me to find the information on that site as fast as possible. Then handheld users would just use this latter lowbandwith UI by default instead of the flash hog. The web designers can just show the PHBs both versions so it is their fault that modern websites suck. They're making websites with 5 year old technology and the users are suffering for that.

If you really want to see the power of proper XHTML+CSS, look at the CSS Zen Garden. The entire site uses a single XHTML file but each version of the main page has a different CSS file. If you didn't know this, you would think that each page was individually coded. And the site is still usable if you strip out the CSS and view just the plain XHTML file.

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Of those reasons, willful ignorance by the parents and stupid morality are the most evil in my opinion. Particularly when virginity pledges by themselves don't cut down STD infections because the people making the pledges have unprotected oral and anal sex to keep their virginity and they never bothered to learn about condems. News article on the topic

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The point of contention in this case isn't the actual censorship of pornsites but rather the sites that get blacklisted just because they give information about sex. I bet that Wikipedia would be blacklisted since it talks about sex and probably has some sexual images on there. The courts have ruled in the past that teens have a right to access medical information about sex including such "deviant" (remember that this is Utah, Morman capital of the world) topics as homosexuality. Some lists would also ban things like nudity in general including classical paintings and sculptures similar to what Ashcroft did.

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Groups such as the American Civil Liberties Union go further and warn the bill violates the US Constitution's First Amendment on free speech and the Commerce Clause. Six other states have had similar legislation ruled unconstitutional, resulting in huge legal bills for residents, Media Coalition director David Horowitz told the Salt Lake City Tribune.

You would think that they would learn not to mess with the free speech rights of adults and children here. The main objection to these kinds of bills is that the block access to sites giving medical or social information about topics like teen sexuality, pregnancy, and homosexuality. This is due to the fact that the blacklist is drawn up by a bunch of conservative idiots rather than people that know the difference between Debbie Does Dallas and Gray's Anatomy. The laws prevent teens who have a right to know this kind of information without the consent of their parents (the ACLU has defended teen medical rights before) which is stupid since most of the problems with teen sex are due to ignorance on the part of teens about sexuality. Since they are taught nothing but abstinence, those who do have sex don't use protection. And because of the lack of communication between parents and teens in this case, the teens won't tell their parents nor will they get medical help which just makes the situation worse. One of these days they'll figure out that teaching children proper morals and letting them deal with the dangers of the world regarding sex is better than just blindfolding them and threaten them with eternal damnation if they have sex before marriage.

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So, don't attack my analogy, tell me why it was OK for him to lie to Apple and say that he WOULD respect their DRM and then turn around and crack it

Maybe he didn't read the click-through agreement? Or maybe he just doesn't like the inability to play the music on his non-iPod mp3 player even though he legally acquired the music and considers this fair-use (like using a VCR to record a movie) as long as doesn't redistribute the music to random people? Or maybe he understands the entire futility of trying to create an audio DRM system when the audio analog hole is currently (and probably forever) unpluggable so he doesn't see anything wrong with a digital hack compared to hooking speaker output into his line-in and pressing record? Or he could just like the challenge of being a hacker in both meanings of the word. Unless he is distributing the cracked music to others, I see no moral crime here even if he is violating laws.

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It just wouldn't be the same without them. However, imdb doesn't show them as being part of the cast. Hopefully, this show will help cram some science into kids again, but who wants to take bets as to how long it will be before Creationists or other anti-science conservatives attack the show for claiming that Earth is 4 billion years old, we evolved from rodents, and that the Sun is the center of our solar system? I'm betting it will happen in the first season given the bad state of science today. Maybe this will even prevent the next generation from turing into a bunch of New Age hippies wearing crystal and Kabbalah threads.

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You need a $40 3rd party extension, but that's still cheaper than the PSP. And it has good reviews too. This was an SP product that happens to work on the DS due to backwards support. The good thing about this is that it isn't controlled by Sony like their fucking UMD that no one else can use. Anyone with a flash card reader can use the DS for movies. The downside is that it's another item to carry with you which is bad for those without big pockets or bags. Given that the old GBA roms are a known format, I'm guessing that there will be a lot more third party apps for the DS than with the PSP. Particularly when someone figures out how to get the DS to play games over WiFi without a physical disk. This is a known feature of the DS, but it's not a public spec yet.

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You need a $40 3rd party cartridge, but you can play divx movies, mp3s and read text on the GBA and DS off a flash card. It's an import called Movie Advance There is a good review on Lik Sang but that site seems to be having troubles so here is a Google cache. Another review is at PlanetGC. The good thing about this is that it isn't controlled by Sony like their fucking UMD that no one else can use. Anyone with a flash card reader can use the DS for movies. The downside is that it's another item to carry with you which is bad for those without big pockets or bags. Given that the old GBA roms are a known format, I'm guessing that there will be a lot more third party apps for the DS than with the PSP. Particularly when someone figures out how to get the DS to play games over WiFi without a physical disk. This is a known feature of the DS, but it's not a public spec yet.

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The ideal hope would be that the bandwith costs involved becomes cheaper at a rate equal to or greater than the bandwith usage. That is, the net cost remains constant or less than the influx of money from public and private sources. Given that bandwith usage by clients will rise as bandwith costs for them drop, this might be too optimistic, but economics is always a hard thing to predict when it is so technologically dependent. They could also try to get people like Google to back this project as part of their new library initative.

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Given the problems with getting children that are good enough actors, I'm guessing that there is no way to stay accurate to the book and pull off a good movie. If you stay accurate to the book, the bad acting will weaken it and American audiences (cause no moviehouse cares about anyone else for big movies) will freak out over the use of children. It might be better to wait for Final Fantasy level rendering to jump up a few steps and use that for the children. Then use adults who can play children for the voices. Assuming the rendering is good enough to not be distracting, there is still the question of whether moviehouses will think that Americans will like the plot and themes in the book. If that's the case it might be better to try to pitch it to a Japanese anime company rather than an American one. It would be similar to Now and Then, Here and There which was an anime about children being used for war with some similar themes.

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Wired article as proof