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A guy over at Kuro5hin wrote in "Marijuana, Mountain Dew and My MCSE":

I never intended to administer Microsoft SQL Server for a living. I quite literally fell into the field. One minute I was an unskilled high school dropout lifting boxes in a warehouse, and the next, I was a highly paid DBA. I have my MCSE to thank for this, and I have fate to thank for my MCSE.

A guy over at Kuro5hin wrote in "Marijuana, Mountain Dew and My MCSE":

I never intended to administer Microsoft SQL Server for a living. I quite literally fell into the field. One minute I was an unskilled high school dropout lifting boxes in a warehouse, and the next, I was a highly paid DBA. I have my MCSE to thank for this, and I have fate to thank for my MCSE.

Microsoft is not "above the law". How foolish. They're nothing more than one of our great success stories, a hugely visible embodiment of the American Dream.

Corporations making money is not good for everyone, corporations making money is good for the corporations and their shareholders. This kind of "trickle down" economics is a lie perpetrated by the wealthy to justify them getting more wealthy while the poor get poorer. And it is the power of corporations which make the US the Corporate controlled laughing stock its political system has become. Not the American dream, but quite possibly the American nightmare.

Tying a web-browser to their operating system may make a better product for their users, but it is also leveraging a monopoly to extinguish competition in a different area, and that is illegal under US antitrust laws. They broke the law.

Every day I see a new reason to wave goodbye to /. and say hello to Kuro5hin.

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He went to the wrong site. He should try Kuro5hin, which has a superior moderation system and new stories once in a blue moon. Which I believe is a healthy thing for great discussion. When everybody can moderate, there isn't so much bad moderation either.

- Steeltoe

Hundreds of Slashdot readers were dissolusioned today when Slashdot posted it's 1000th troll, entitled "Ballmer Calls Linux 'A Cancer'". The more gullable breed of Slashbot fed the troll by posting the same old rhetoric: "MS sucks, Linux rools dude". More sensible users flocked like lemmings to kuro5hin where an intelligent discussion or five is taking place right now.

Man I'm getting cynical. I need to spend less time here.

... you read this in that other site.

Traitor.

PS: I don't read "the other site". A friend told me about it, honest.

PS to PS: I hope the people of the other site reading this site realize how childish they look when they refer to this site as that other site. As far as we are concerned you can go back to that site and leave this site in peace.

Now smile please.

Zero tolerance, then, isn't really a preventative measure. It's a knee-jerk reaction to an outraged public that schools aren't doing enough to "protect" our children. It's a highly visible - if ineffective - policy that schools can point to and say "Look, we're doing our best!" Everyone knows it's idiotic and doesn't do anything positive or productive, but it makes them feel better to be able to see something.

But they aren't any more secure. Little boys have always played war, or cowboys and indians, or knights in shining armor. Quake III doesn't encourage hooliganism anymore than cap guns or toy swords.

Until society stops looking for the quick fix and instead tries to hunt down its inherent problems and reform them, things will continue as they are.

I remember reading your article. You mainly talk about dual licences, and that sort of thing. That's not quite the same. I'd need to see more details. However, I think you are on the right track. I wonder how it would really play out. Does anyone have any reasonable examples of this?

That's quite right, and without a descent moderation system like on K5, the expression "the more the merrier" doesn't necessary hold true. So even though the growth of Usenet has been underwhelming, that might actually be a good thing and not death-cramps.

- Steeltoe

What a troll! As has already been pointed out by numerous others, Google is claiming a non-exclusive license to your usenet posts. It doesn't own them. I'd only add that it's irritating in the extreme (a) to see this coming from /., which of all organizations should know a lot more about Licensing than this stupid story indicates; and (b) to see this crap slung at Google, the company which freely provides the best search engine on the web, and which is no doubt the first choice of basically everyone reading this story. Time for me to go back to K5.

Look what he says about Slackware 7.1:

"At the release of 7.1, not only does Slackware include XFree86 4.0, but also KDE 2.0 (beta), Kernel 2.4 (test), and Perl 5.6. While none of the other options will cause much of a problem (as they are in the unstable tree), Perl 5.6 causes some big problems. Still, this is just one problem, and unless you actually run Perl, this won't affect you."

Which is false. Slack 7.1 uses 2.2.17, XF 3.3.6, KDE 1.1.2. Anly the Perl part is close to accurate. But Perl 5.6 works creat at running Kuro5hin, so you have to wender. If at least two distro parts were way off base, who's to say they're all not wrong in same way (which I naturally would not know since I'm reading the article to familiarize myself with them!).

(Note: yeah, some of the stuff he mentioned is in contrib, but they are not reallf useable packages -- LinuxMafia has better packages.)

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If I have a copy of your copyrighted work, you would need to have an EULA to protect against any usage of its functionality.

Not if you're using it to provide a service to which the public can connect, such as running a server daemon. The courts would probably interpret that as "public performance" of Apache, mod_perl or PHP, MySQL, and whatever nuke/slash/scoop/everything/other weblog engine you're using.

You guys need a system

'K.

where if X percent

Five?

of your readers submit the same story

K5.

you automatically run it

You would love Kuro5hin, where stories are moderated much as comments are on Slashdot.

I already got this story on the other site.

This post is only meant to be read by authorized readers

Authorized readers includes but is not limited to people rating this post up

UnAuthorized readers includes but is not limited to people rating down

Author of post is not liable for any spelling mistakes, or idiot comments made in this post

That would be because of an recently discovered Slashdot feature ironicly called a "lameness filter"

This post will self-destruct in 10 secs.

I saw this on the other site yesterday.

Actually, evidence has been shown exactly to the contrary. I remember reading about a statistical study (lots of good thinks there too, I think) that studied thousands of cultures around the world, and it found a direct connection between the suppression of sexuality (I think in adults, and in children) and increased violence. Yes, unsurprisingly, in cultures that are repressed sexually, violence is more common. This doesn't bloody suprise me, how about you?

cheers, joshua

Terradot

with Gnutella you can claim you just accidentally downloaded it (I searched for Adobe and downloaded the resulting list, how was I to know Photoshop6 was in there) and Gnutella automatically shares files that you've downloaded.

And you can't say you "accidentally downloaded" something off Freenet??? In either case, I don't think the feds will care.

Furthermore, you must realize that your orginal post suggested an idea (requesting files by their hash in order to verify the contents of the file) that has been in Freenet for a long time, and then you flamed Freenet for being behind in development. Um, yeah.

Look, Freenet and Gnutella are about equal in how well developed their respective ideas are, Gnutella just got a click-and-drool GUI longer, so it gives the appearance of being better developed. In truth, both are very beta code.

BTW--Are you the same guy I've been having this long, drawn out flame war with on K5? Or do you two just happen to use the same bunk arguments? Or maybe its a VAST GNUTELLA CONSPERICY :)

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long distance power transmission as dc sucks. that is the main advantage of ac.

This sounds familliar. I encourage you to take a look at my comment to sig11 on K5. He said the exact same thing and it's dead wrong.

Aw hell I'll just copy and paste the whole thing here. It's my comment, anyway. :-)

Here is a link to an HVDC chapter in a power electronics course at the University of Missouri. In short: HVDC economically cheaper than HVAC when it comes to long distance transmission and, as a direct quote from that introductory page claims: With an HVDC system, the power flow can be controlled rapidly and accurately as to both the power level and the direction. This possibility is often usedin order to improve the performance and efficiency of the connected AC networks.

Now as I'd said in my first post and is backed up by the tutorial in the link above: DC transmission does not suffer reactive losses. Over large distances these losses can and do build up to become a large factor in your loss calculations. Also, unlike alternating current, DC will flow through the entire conductor instead of along the outer surface.

Now while I have not investigated the actual depth that 60Hz AC penetrates aluminum wire I do know that it is small enough that the high tension lines are specially made to take advantage of this. High tension cable has a steel core and then an aluminum outer layer to minimize the transmission losses and maximize cable strength. I'm not sure what they use for DC links but I imagine they will use solid aluminum wire and space the towers closer together. I'm not sure on this.

Furthermore, your claim that Tesla proved DC to be inferior at long distance transmission in the 19th century is only partially true. AC is more efficient for conversion and short-haul transmission: it's ability to be almost perfectly stepped up and down is wonderful and the AC motor is almost a 100% (98% efficient motors are sold every day) efficient electrical to rotating mechanical convertor. However as this link shows, Tesla also did recognize that DC was more efficient for long distance power transmission.

Lastly I refer you to this document from Siemens. (the txt version from google which also includes my search terms for this whole post is here.) It talks about the advances being made to move towards medium voltage (1200V-13kV) DC transmission since the advantages of DC power transmission for high voltage systems are so well proven.

Now that that's out of the way: you've emailled me on more than one occasion asking about information on electronics and electricity in general and where to learn more. I find it mildly amusing that you jump up claiming to have enough knowledge to scream at the top of your lungs that what you know is 100% true and proven and that what I had suggested was totally and wholly false. I didn't reply to bitchslap you but I do wonder why you did try to do it to me?

I wrote this Kuro5hin story on the new publication requirements two months ago, when they were first implemented.

Yes, please correct it, flesh out your points in a bit more depth, and resubmit it to the queue...oh, wait. I forgot this is Slashdot and not k5.

Sorry, my mistake. The differences seem to be slowly eroding away.

... is available on here on K5

I got your redesign right here!
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Of course, I'm biased, but I think it's interesting. I wanted to post it to A) give some meaning to 18 months of personal hell, and B) allow for the discussion and study of failure. I spent a little time pursuing an MBA, and nobody ever studied failure.

Those immune to failure, feel free to criticize the story, my business and my struggles with it.

Of course, I'm biased, but I think it's interesting. I wanted to post it to A) give some meaning to 18 months of personal hell, and B) allow for the discussion and study of failure. I spent a little time pursuing an MBA, and nobody ever studied failure.

Those immune to failure, feel free to criticize the story, my business and my struggles with it.

Regarding what incentive the big companies have to negotiate with us regarding their patents, if they were not interested in negotiating with us, we'd have reason to re-evaluate our participation with them, wouldn't we?

What exactly does this mean? Contrary to what most people who read slashdot and K5 believe, there is no Open Source community in any cohesive sense of the word. I doubt that Linux kernel developers are going to stop accepting kernel patches from IBM because they refused to give up all their IP when Bruce Perens said so, neither do I see the Apache Software Foundation kicking off the IBM members.

Secondly due to the nature of the GPL and other Open Source licenses, these companies can continue to reap the benefits of Open Source software even without the gestures they've made to the community. Quite frankly, companies like IBM, HP, Apple and Sun have been under no obligation to support Open Source in the ways that they have already. Taking this for granted and assuming that we can demand more seems to me to be the height of folly. This slashdot post though sarcastic should bring home the point that I am trying to get across.

In talking about whether or not a company can make money with Free Software, we should remain aware that most companies are deploying Free Software in a cost-center (like IS support at a business or systems programming at a hardware vendor), and if they save money in that cost-center by distributing the work load over multiple companies rather than duplicating effort in each of them, it's as good as making the money elsewhere. It's that cost-savings that is funding most of the Linux jobs today, not profit.

Exactly, and the kind of companies that see IS/IT as a cost center and Open Source products as a way to bring down costs are typically not the kind of companies that will jeopardize future profits to help the Open Source cause. Most of these companies would jump on a cheaper closed source solution in a heartbeat and do not feel indebtedness to the Open Source cause to the level to which you suggest.

Regarding what incentive the big companies have to negotiate with us regarding their patents, if they were not interested in negotiating with us, we'd have reason to re-evaluate our participation with them, wouldn't we?

What exactly does this mean? Contrary to what most people who read slashdot and K5 believe, there is no Open Source community in any cohesive sense of the word. I doubt that Linux kernel developers are going to stop accepting kernel patches from IBM because they refused to give up all their IP when Bruce Perens said so, neither do I see the Apache Software Foundation kicking off the IBM members.

Secondly due to the nature of the GPL and other Open Source licenses, these companies can continue to reap the benefits of Open Source software even without the gestures they've made to the community. Quite frankly, companies like IBM, HP, Apple and Sun have been under no obligation to support Open Source in the ways that they have already. Taking this for granted and assuming that we can demand more seems to me to be the height of folly. This slashdot post though sarcastic should bring home the point that I am trying to get across.

In talking about whether or not a company can make money with Free Software, we should remain aware that most companies are deploying Free Software in a cost-center (like IS support at a business or systems programming at a hardware vendor), and if they save money in that cost-center by distributing the work load over multiple companies rather than duplicating effort in each of them, it's as good as making the money elsewhere. It's that cost-savings that is funding most of the Linux jobs today, not profit.

Exactly, and the kind of companies that see IS/IT as a cost center and Open Source products as a way to bring down costs are typically not the kind of companies that will jeopardize future profits to help the Open Source cause. Most of these companies would jump on a cheaper closed source solution in a heartbeat and do not feel indebtedness to the Open Source cause to the level to which you suggest.

I mentioned in a K5 post here what I think of the RIAA.

The same ideas still stand.

The RIAA are a bunch of thieving jerks. They long had the excuse that they're the champions of the artists. Now, when online music distribution threatens to render their business model obsolete they show their true colors. They attempt to destroy this amazing new channel of music distribution rather than lose profits. They have declared that their profit is more important than the artists' profit. It's time they learned otherwise.

Keep copying the mp3's. And if you feel the artists deserve remuneration for their work, by all means mail them a check.

-Kasreyn

If a Slashdot reader can create a pithy and short explanation for how and why a computer program is expressive speech and/or what it expresses, it might be useful.

I wrote such a comment in a thread on Kuro5hin. The article was entitled Programming is not Art. Here was my response to that article in the same thread. If you can classify programming as artistic(as I believe it to be), then it certainly falls under the free expression category. Programming expresses ideas and thoughts in a dynamic sense, not statically like mathematics or paintings. That's what I find so great about it.

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"Goose... Geese... Moose... MOOSE!?!?!"

If a Slashdot reader can create a pithy and short explanation for how and why a computer program is expressive speech and/or what it expresses, it might be useful.

I wrote such a comment in a thread on Kuro5hin. The article was entitled Programming is not Art. Here was my response to that article in the same thread. If you can classify programming as artistic(as I believe it to be), then it certainly falls under the free expression category. Programming expresses ideas and thoughts in a dynamic sense, not statically like mathematics or paintings. That's what I find so great about it.

-----
"Goose... Geese... Moose... MOOSE!?!?!"

If a Slashdot reader can create a pithy and short explanation for how and why a computer program is expressive speech and/or what it expresses, it might be useful.

I wrote such a comment in a thread on Kuro5hin. The article was entitled Programming is not Art. Here was my response to that article in the same thread. If you can classify programming as artistic(as I believe it to be), then it certainly falls under the free expression category. Programming expresses ideas and thoughts in a dynamic sense, not statically like mathematics or paintings. That's what I find so great about it.

-----
"Goose... Geese... Moose... MOOSE!?!?!"

If a Slashdot reader can create a pithy and short explanation for how and why a computer program is expressive speech and/or what it expresses, it might be useful.

I wrote such a comment in a thread on Kuro5hin. The article was entitled Programming is not Art. Here was my response to that article in the same thread. If you can classify programming as artistic(as I believe it to be), then it certainly falls under the free expression category. Programming expresses ideas and thoughts in a dynamic sense, not statically like mathematics or paintings. That's what I find so great about it.

-----
"Goose... Geese... Moose... MOOSE!?!?!"

If a Slashdot reader can create a pithy and short explanation for how and why a computer program is expressive speech and/or what it expresses, it might be useful.

I wrote such a comment in a thread on Kuro5hin. The article was entitled Programming is not Art. Here was my response to that article in the same thread. If you can classify programming as artistic(as I believe it to be), then it certainly falls under the free expression category. Programming expresses ideas and thoughts in a dynamic sense, not statically like mathematics or paintings. That's what I find so great about it.

-----
"Goose... Geese... Moose... MOOSE!?!?!"

If a Slashdot reader can create a pithy and short explanation for how and why a computer program is expressive speech and/or what it expresses, it might be useful.

I wrote such a comment in a thread on Kuro5hin. The article was entitled Programming is not Art. Here was my response to that article in the same thread. If you can classify programming as artistic(as I believe it to be), then it certainly falls under the free expression category. Programming expresses ideas and thoughts in a dynamic sense, not statically like mathematics or paintings. That's what I find so great about it.

-----
"Goose... Geese... Moose... MOOSE!?!?!"

If you go back and read what Lucas has been saying, you'll realize that this Lucas guy wasn't 100% sure about the business terms for what he wanted to do, so he just called it a business where he'd be the one running it. (since he *would* be the one running it).

In our case, we're planning to use a standard and fair margin of 10 - 15%. Meaning, if the Cooperative buys something at around $34 each, it sells for $3.40 - $5.10 extra, in turn, going directly into expenses. Money after expenses is donated to the FSF and Debian

Personally I think all these conspiracy theories about Spindl3top are just as funny as the "Taco/Hemos controlling Microsoft through the minions of laced Taco Bell tacos, and subliminal messages in Toy Story 2, etc...", but it's too bad that some people think they're real.

In summary: Don't give money to anybody you don't trust. Personally, I don't ~trust~ Spindl3top yet, so I'm going to take their blackbird source files (can't get the link now, cuz the site is down) and buy/build the components it myself.

--Robert

If you go back and read what Lucas has been saying, you'll realize that this Lucas guy wasn't 100% sure about the business terms for what he wanted to do, so he just called it a business where he'd be the one running it. (since he *would* be the one running it).

In our case, we're planning to use a standard and fair margin of 10 - 15%. Meaning, if the Cooperative buys something at around $34 each, it sells for $3.40 - $5.10 extra, in turn, going directly into expenses. Money after expenses is donated to the FSF and Debian

Personally I think all these conspiracy theories about Spindl3top are just as funny as the "Taco/Hemos controlling Microsoft through the minions of laced Taco Bell tacos, and subliminal messages in Toy Story 2, etc...", but it's too bad that some people think they're real.

In summary: Don't give money to anybody you don't trust. Personally, I don't ~trust~ Spindl3top yet, so I'm going to take their blackbird source files (can't get the link now, cuz the site is down) and buy/build the components it myself.

--Robert

Yes, it's called Kuro5hin.

It's things like this that makes me wish I could moderate up and down main stories instead of just the comments on them. Someone should make a site like that.....

You forgot to engage in the requisite Mindless Link Propogation.

You might want to check on my article on why Proxy Servers are not useful against content regulation.

For more dark humor from the trenches (tip of the hat to that other place) have a gander at Idiot Watcher's technology section. As a burned-out, cerebrally friccassied tech worker whose seen his grey matter served up to himself flambe, though, I can say that a lot of them hit far too bloody close to home to be very funny. Less jaded geeks, though, should see a lot of humor in them!

---
Chief Technician, Helpdesk at the End of the World

This is kinda useless. Yes, they tell us that they are running 15 servers total all on 1Ghz PCs, but they do not tell you what kinda hits they take on it.

K5, for example, has been able to take several direct Slashdottings on 1 VA Fullon box. 1 box which does MySQL, Apache w/ Mod_perl, and plain image serving Apache. (DNS is handled by other boxen). We handle about 65,000 to 70,000 hits a day (on average, mod_perl only.. no images traffic) with that one dual processor box. Vs the two dedicated dual proc DB servers, 11 web servers, two load balancers, etc of Anandtech. And we're at 8 months uptime with our single server. Sounds a bit better than requiring a load balancer which has to remove downed NT servers from the pool..

I could theorize on how well their Cold Fusion/NT solution stacks up against my Slackware/Apache/mod_perl/MySQL solution IF they were so kind as to give info on hits. Without that, this is just another point-and-drool at some RAQmount stuff which performs a job somewhere, somehow.
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And what about partial specialisation of templates?

Thats not in, is it?

Oh, and FWIW, auto_ptr *is* part of the standard.

Thad

Bjarne Stroustrup recently had an interview with LinuxWorld where he outlined his plans for the future of C++. Here's an in article that analyzes and contemplates the ramifications of these changes.

Don't expect these changes anytime soon though. From recent ACCU meetings it seems that most of the C++ standard from 1997 still hasn't been implemented now let alone new libraries that are yet to be designed. The soonest I see any of Bjarne's ideas being usable by developers and standardized is 2005 if the rate of compiler and library development continues at the current rate.

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Bjarne Stroustrup recently had an interview with LinuxWorld where he outlined his plans for the future of C++. Here's an in article that analyzes and contemplates the ramifications of these changes.

Don't expect these changes anytime soon though. From recent ACCU meetings it seems that most of the C++ standard from 1997 still hasn't been implemented now let alone new libraries that are yet to be designed. The soonest I see any of Bjarne's ideas being usable by developers and standardized is 2005 if the rate of compiler and library development continues at the current rate.

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There was a good article on Kuro5hin a while ago entitled Website profitability: an economic analysis which discussed how a website's popularity can crush it if its bandwidth costs exceed its revenue from banner ads. Basically the author tackles your suggestion to lighten up pages with some hard math. It also had a really good discussion.

The only danger is sending out the wrong message. Drugs kill, and anyone advocating their use is little better than a killer.

Yet another person who is venomously opposed to drugs without getting the facts. I don't know about LSD but I know for a fact that after decades of study the health risks of marijuana are still debatable and there are few if any documented fatalities related to marijuana abuse.

The same goes for MDMA which is the primary ingredient of Ecstacy which has practically no ill after effects either in the short term or in the long term. Ecstacy is one place where regulation can help because the major problem with it is that most sellers cut it with harmful drugs to either enhance its effects or to short change buyers. Pure MDMA is thus hard to find so the Ecstacy consumed by most of the raver culture is actually more harmful than it has to be.

On the other hand, alcohol and cigarettes which are legal are amongst the leading causes of death in the U.S. either directly (lung and liver related diseases) or indirectly (drunk driving and second hand smoke).

Anyway, the War On Drugs is an acknowledged failure. As large a percentage of the U.S. population uses drugs as those in countries where the usage of certain drugs is not as frowned upon. The only successful thing about the war on drugs is that it has enabled the government to pass laws abridging due process (various seizure laws) and circumvent the 4th Ammendment.

This response is paraphrased from an earlier response on kuro5hin.

PS: If you want to read insightful discussion on the War On Drugs, I suggest reading one of the following articles and a few of the comments posted, Why Drugs Should Be Illegal or More Cluelessness In The War On Drugs.

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The only danger is sending out the wrong message. Drugs kill, and anyone advocating their use is little better than a killer.

Yet another person who is venomously opposed to drugs without getting the facts. I don't know about LSD but I know for a fact that after decades of study the health risks of marijuana are still debatable and there are few if any documented fatalities related to marijuana abuse.

The same goes for MDMA which is the primary ingredient of Ecstacy which has practically no ill after effects either in the short term or in the long term. Ecstacy is one place where regulation can help because the major problem with it is that most sellers cut it with harmful drugs to either enhance its effects or to short change buyers. Pure MDMA is thus hard to find so the Ecstacy consumed by most of the raver culture is actually more harmful than it has to be.

On the other hand, alcohol and cigarettes which are legal are amongst the leading causes of death in the U.S. either directly (lung and liver related diseases) or indirectly (drunk driving and second hand smoke).

Anyway, the War On Drugs is an acknowledged failure. As large a percentage of the U.S. population uses drugs as those in countries where the usage of certain drugs is not as frowned upon. The only successful thing about the war on drugs is that it has enabled the government to pass laws abridging due process (various seizure laws) and circumvent the 4th Ammendment.

This response is paraphrased from an earlier response on kuro5hin.

PS: If you want to read insightful discussion on the War On Drugs, I suggest reading one of the following articles and a few of the comments posted, Why Drugs Should Be Illegal or More Cluelessness In The War On Drugs.

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Hello, just pointing out that the previous two comments (the essay, and the first comment) were originally posted on kuro5hin.org and are, unless posted by the original authors or with the original authors' permission, posted here illegally. I look forward to seeing the administrators removing the offending comments.

Oh wait, Big & Tough Slashdot doesn't remove copyright violations. My bad.

Photo.Net was Philip Greenspun's baby, and as far as I can tell, funded by him. What will happen to it now?

Will it:

• Continue as is?
• Close down?
• Start running Ads?
• Become a pay-site?
• Something else...

Thad

"What we're trying to do is educate the population about what is appropriate..."

What they don't realize is that they don't get to decide what is appropriate. It's us, the people, the society, the culture, that get to decide.

Just because they pushed a law through when no one was looking doesn't make them the 'appropriate' authorities.

"What we're trying to do is educate the population about what is appropriate..."

What they don't realize is that they don't get to decide what is appropriate. It's us, the people, the society, the culture, that get to decide.

Just because they pushed a law through when no one was looking doesn't make them the 'appropriate' authorities.