Slashdot Mirror
Slashback: Behaviorism, Attrition, Elimination
Its maddening combination of color and shape drive one completely in -- No, wrong cube. Savage Henry Matisse writes: "There's a really super article analyzing the psychology behind Jobs' most recent flight of fancy, posted here. The thrust of it is that, rather than being a replay of the NeXT FUBAR or another instance of being too-far-ahead-of-his-time, the CUBE is really a very sly piece of manuevering meant to shoehorn Macs into the corporate compu-hierarchy from the top down. Very insightful-- an analysis kinda along the same lines as Neal Stephenson's In the Beginning was the Command Line" And for those who prefer the practical to the theoretical, RevAaron writes: "Many of us have been wondering about some of the details of Apple's newly released Power Macintosh G4 Cube, including whether or not it has an AGP slot or just a chip soldered onto the board. Listen to the story from the lead designer of the cube here at MacSlash."
Well technically, they'd still block excess light from your eyes ... FroBugg writes "Handspring has just released an OS upgrade for all their Visor handhelds, which is supposed to fix the DRAM problem that caused crashes and data corruption. Go get it here." This is the same RAM Problem Palm devices have as reported a few weeks ago, at which point no fix was out for Visors.
The end of a (very brief era): dubious_1 writes "The free internet service provider http://www.freewwweb.com has ceased operation. The service provided by freewwweb used ppp and pap authentication for its dialup making it available to users of any operating system. Users of freewwweb agreed to set their web browsers home page to a page used by freewwweb, to allow them to support the service through ad revenue. According to the web page you are redirected to when accessing the previous freewwweb.com site, the service lost by the demise of freewwweb is now being filled by Juno however, this service is only available for users of MS Windows 9x and nt. Unlike freewwweb, Juno uses a proprietary front end to authenticate users on their service. The web site specifically says that this client program is not available for either Linux or MacOS."
One recurrent Ask Slashdot question is about this very issue -- Where are free ISPs for Linux users? I wonder if there are any good answers now that freewwweb has snuffed it. Surely if billions of dollars are there to be made with free-for-the-viewing television programming, there's no reason that ad-supported ISPs should be uncommon. Can you say "target market"?
Credit where credit is due. We mentioned a fraudulent site established to mimic the look of online personal credit-card site PayPal. Jawed Karim writes, "You incorrectly mention that your credit card can get stolen by becoming a victim to the fake PayPal site. This is not true. The credit card is not exposed when you log into your PayPal account. Just wanted to make this clear. (The same correction has been made to the MSNBC article, at the bottom of it)"
Well, isn't the danger that customers lulled into thinking they were on the right site would be also lulled into giving their information away? Someone sure wants to steal credit card information with this site, but yes, it's more of a social engineering trick than an automated number grabber.
Yes sir, we know that the damn cat is still in the box. Swede2048 writes: "Lots of people think that SETI is a hopeless adventure, and mostly a waste of time and processing cycles. [including many who read yesterday about the "SETI-on-a-board product" ;) -- t] For those who haven't read it yet, last month's Scientific American had a great article describing the results SETI has already provided. By NOT finding e.t.life in the searched sky, SETI has placed some restrictions on what kinds of e.t life can exist."
The latter is caused when war breaks out when rebels try to overthrow their corrupt governments. Another cause is infantile border disputes, such as the one currently going on in Eritrea and Ethiopia. What ends up happening either way is people become refugees for long periods of time while their fields and homes are destroyed. They have to rely on UN handouts because they are poor and there are shortages. Also the incredible amount of wealth spent on armaments and soldiers is lost, spent on war when it is needed for infrastructure.
The former cause is from whacked out weather. Things have been strange since El Nino and the entire world's weather patterns have been affected. Whether or not pollution is the cause is not known. Hopefully this is a short term phenomenon but no one knows for sure.
You are absolutely right that world hunger (especially in Africa) has mostly political and economic causes, but "to help the people overthrow their government" is crazy. The anarchist in me likes it, by the realist doesn't.
We see the recent elections in Zimbabwe. The people are poor and hungry and the economy is going from bad to worse, but the ruling Xanu PF held their freeist and fairest election in the nation's short history a month ago. Other countries are in similar conditions, with emerging democracy and strong opposition parties. These certainly should not be overthrown.
Certainly some other places might end up better if their dictators were deposed or overthrown by rebels. But in doing so you open up a huge can of chaos! Right now the Congo is being ripped apart by five or so different nations all fighting its "civil war." What's going on there is like Africa's version of the Thirty Years War (1518-1548). The reality there is utterly depressing.
What Africa needs is a growing middle class and an African Union. Union could start cooperation and bring peace among African nations, and the middle class could bring the economic leadership needed.
I got your free ISP for Linux right here: http://www.WorldShare.net.
On their front page, they state,
They seem like nice folks, but I've had no dealings with them. Anyone out there had any problems?
It shows no such thing.
Doing SETI is completely orthogonal to helping starving Somalians. Show me a way to use spare CPU cycles to feed the third world. Show me a way to use food to find extraterrestrials. I'm waiting....
The world isn't black-and-white -- just because I'm doing one thing doesn't mean I'm not doing something else also. There are lots of different things people can do with their resources and time, without them interfering or affecting each other at all.
Helping SETI@home doesn't mean I'd "rather find out if there's life in another planet" than help my fellow man, it just means that's the best choice I've found for that particular resource, extra CPU cycles. It doesn't say anything else at all about my character or lack thereof.
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I mean, the odds are just insurmountable, and how would it help us if we discovered that there's life somewhere in the universe that's too far for us to go, or for them to come?
First off, SETI is about much more than finding E.T. Analysis of radio telescope data is advancing the field of cosmology in countless ways. The 'little green men' part of is just the sexy PR that attracts users. And who knows, maybe we really will discover intelligent life some day. It may be unlikely, but we won't know if we never look.
And insisting in doing SETI is inhuman. I mean, enough of the people in *our* planet are starving; yet all these self-described geeks would rather find out if there's life in another planet than see if there's still life in Somalia.
Contributing to SETI at home does not bar one from helping society in other ways. By your logic, my roommate should never plug in his electric guitar. Is it really selfish of him to engage in such a frivolous, self gratifying behavior like making music when that energy could help starving people? I mean, what *real* benefit does entertainment or art of any kind have in contrast to the worlds many problems?
Give me a break! I believe in being a good citizen and all, but there needs to SOME room in the world for frivolity and advancement of knowledge for its own sake. Besides, in my experience, many systems that are running SETI@Home and such are boxes that need to stay up 24x7 anyway. Those cycles would go to waste otherwise.
It shows that they don't have any *real* concern for life, in this planet or other-- just playing with their tech toys.
You are painting with a rather broad brush there. That assumption is so unfounded I won't even argue the point. Let me ask you a question instead. Are you using alternative power sources like solar or wind? If so, good for you. If not, why not? After all, you express such concern for the consumption of those scarce resources. My lab uses a combination of solar panels and a small wind generator. On good days I put more power back onto the grid than I use. Rather than attacking SETI, why not put your energy (no pun intended) into promoting that sort of activity.
'nuff said.
Thad
P.S. Good trolling... bonus points for not being too 'over the top'. :)
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