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Slashback: Antennae, Play, Book Larnin'
Out of warranty since day two -- More-than-ordinary Airport investigator Constantin von Wentzel, fearing that "readers will learn about the vagaries of Apple RAM instead of how to fix base stations," writes: "Cliff posted a article by Peter Deweese detailing how his Apple Airport failed. Unfortunately, these failures are next to certain since the power supply inside the Base Station will fry two components by two different means. One is heat, the other the switching power supply. Apple Base Station owners are well aware of the heat issue (the underside can get hot enough to bubble off the sticker)and the two capacitors inside the base station are rated for 1,000 hours @ 105 deg C - about 50 days. The other mode of failure is the power supply itself which switches at a high frequency and subjects the capacitors to high current loads. I investigated my ABS when it failed, and discovered two fried capacitors. It is true that the ABS will run as a DHCP router, etc. when the power supply has failed as long as the WaveLAN card has been removed. The question is how long. I put together a online guide to repair Apple Base Stations as well as how to retrofit external antennas. Both can be found at [this URL]."
Of course, I still like playing Earthball. In reference to the recent quest for non-zero sum games, stuq writes: " 35-40 years ago Buckminster Fuller created the 'World Game' -- the mother of all non-zero sum games. World Game is now under the excellent stewardship of Medard Gable and his World Game Institute.
The original game was played on a version of Fuller's Dymaxion map of the earth that covered an entire gym floor. They now have a satellite imagery version of the map!
There are 100 players, each representing 1% of humanity. Players are assigned
positions on the map in proportion to actual population density (which is
an eye opener -- half of India had to stand in the ocean). Everyone is apportioned:
energy, food, tech credits, etc. in a way that represents the actual distribution
of those rescoures. Additional players around the edge of the map represent
NGO's, Mother Nature, the world press, etc.
The goal is to make the world work for everyone. Utter chaos ensues
and the game play is totally exhilarating. The World Game Institute has taken
the large version of the game to players around the world including many
world leaders.
There is a
net version of the game. Looks like these people haven't been clued in to open source, but I'd bet
they would be interested."
Letters -- they're made out of letters! billn writes: "Long and short, member of a StarCraft clan was dealt a search warrant and is under investigation for 'tampering.' This is not a free speech suppression case. It's not a hate case. The followup is posted here. I did a lot of the research work myself, including a couple phone interviews. I'd just like to say, to all the people who flew off the handle without checking the facts first (including those of you who called Kent State to rant), LEARN TO READ.
For those who care, we'll be following the story to closure."
This after the recent story Cops Bust Starcraft Clan.
Have you got a license for this thing, sir? Olivier Lejade, CEO and co-founder of Nevrax wrote to say that he's posted a response to the recent mention of Nevrax's GPL-client/GPL-server game platform. More information is always good to have, thanks Olivier.
Personally, when I read the phrase "Kent State Starcraft" I assumed that somebody with rather poor taste created a mod that replaced the existing sides with National Guardsmen and students...
s/socialism/capitalism/ for this post to make any sense.
Are all men born with the same inherent rights to food, shelter, clothing and as comfortable an existence as possible? Yes.
No. This is the fundamental difference between capitalists and socialists. I don't believe that anything requiring an affirmative act by another person can be a right. When I assert that I have the right to life, that means you shouldn't be able to kill me but leaves you otherwise free to conduct yourself. When you assert that you have the right to food, shelter, and clothing, these must be provided by the labor of others, so you am asserting that you should be able to command others to do your bidding. What were you saying about not being more important than anyone else?
Your 'real world' dogma is a defense to justify your own greed
Capitalists believe in accumulating wealth through the voluntary exchange of goods and services(*). Socialists believe in forcibly taking the fruits of other people's labor because they believe they need it more. I'm having a hard time figuring out how "greed" applies to the first and not the second.
(*)Note that this does not include entities such as the RIAA, who prefer to accumulate wealth by bribing lawmakers to pass anti-consumer laws.
How to solve most of our problems: 1.Lots of nuclear plants. 2.Cure aging.
And you're correct, but only if you stop the analysis there. In reality, A will quickly notice that anytime he has earned more than his "fair share" of wealth, it is confiscated and given to those who have less. Why then should he continue to produce wealth? Why wouldn't he just sit back and get his share of the money confiscated from E (until E figures the game out and stops working too)? I suppose your answer could be "if he thinks like that then he's an evil selfish bastard", and while that may or may not be true, it doesn't solve the problem.
Of course both the original example and my reply are overly simplified, but the point is that analysis of wealth redistribution has to take into account the longer term effects of the redistribution policies themselves.
How to solve most of our problems: 1.Lots of nuclear plants. 2.Cure aging.
Well, had you used this Google search you might have found a number of pages that mention it however briefly, like this one. Some of them even have pictures.
And the brethren went away edified.
99% of the web site hacks on WinNT are becuase some administrator (or desktop-support-person-forced-to-run-the-server) gave anonymous users write access to the website through Frontpage extensions. It's the equivalent of giving 'nobody' write/put permissions on your Apache site. Univeristy departments are probably the worst at this too, so it's no suprise that someone who's "idea of shutting down his computer is kicking it until the light goes off" could upload some webpages.
ÕÕ
Strangely enough, none of his comments were moderated above a score of 1.
I/O Error G-17: Aborting Installation
Any non-zero-sum game will eventually evolve into a zero-sum game. I say this as a veteran of countless muds and cooperative games of starcraft. My rationale is that in any universe containing finite "resources" and no limits on the player's actions, players will eventually consume enough of the resources (be they vespian gas or +1 daggers) such that things will eventually result in either competition to take resources quicker or fighting to take resources that have already been claimed.
Every game Ive played that didnt take drastic measures to prevent players from competing with one another always had players competing with one another. Any game that did an effective job of preventing this competition was quickly abandoned as boring.
Games that completely prevent competition between players arent games anymore... theyre called *drum roll* chat rooms! Or mucks or whatever.
Anyway, competition is fun, right? What better reason to get up in the morning?
However, I don't see the bubbling in the label that was in that link.
I did intend to mount the antenna on the wall at one point, but never did it. The wall bracket is still on, though, and it serves to elevate the base station off of the shelf that it's on, which is probably good for ventilation.
Moral of the story: Put that bracket on, even if you're not intending to mount it. Not only could it make your unit run cooler, but it gives it that kind of floating-UFO action.
The best example of a non-zero sum game is life itself. Most left wing theory is built upon the presumption that life is a zero sum game (when people start talking about "redistribution of wealth" you know they are a bit nuts). People often mistakenly assume that someone's gain is necessarily someone else's loss.
"moo" - cow 3, 1906
Yea, I know that whole 1970s thing was the National Guard getting just a tisch trigger happy. But the Kent State UPD just bought freaking M16s
Supposedly, they're being modified to semi-automatic. Still, what the hell does a UPD need M16s for? If it's that bad, call in the city police or sherrifs for help. Or even the National Guard if you have a riot on your hands.... oh wait... that happened already. My bad.
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Am I the only one who thinks Microsoft is a misnomer? Perhaps Macrosoft would be a better fit?
Is there something wrong with the idea of competition and having someone win and others lose? After all many of the challenges people face in their lives will be zero-sum ones - either you win or you lose, and not everyone can come out ahead. Finding a partner is not a positive-sum game for instance, and that's about the most important thing there is.
There does seem to be certain people that seem to think that competition is bad, and that it is somehow "unfair" to those that aren't as good. Peronally, I think it's unfair to cosset these people and make them believe that things are going to be easy when they hit the outside world.
At least losing in school will prepare them for losing outside of it. Harsh, yes, but better sooner rather than later.
Still, the game sounds interesting and I may have to have a go. Hopefully managing the world's resources won't turn out to be a zero sum game, even though America seems to think it is, and if they don't actively try and scupper all attempts to curb our excesses we will somehow "lose".
Oohkay. So, there's no real evidence that a crime has been committed (maybe someone logged onto the server, fired up IE, and the pages ended up in the cache), but the judge is quick to hand out a search warrant and the police have the right to hold the kid's computer for up to a year.
So, if I were to find a beer can in a dorm trash can, would the judge grant a search warrant to confiscate the dorm fridge of every resident (despite the fact that some residents might be overage, or that a visitor might have desposited it, or whatever)? After all, a crime might have been committed.
In my opinion, this case was never important for any free speech implications: It's the unreasonable search and seizure you should be concerned with. Even in a case where it the police don't know a crime has even been committed, they can easily obtain a warrant to suspect a suspect's civil liberties.
If the government tries to regulate guns, special interests swing into action. If the government tries to stop someone from saying anything, Slashdot goes nuts. Why isn't this just as bad, if not worse?
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Every year during my review, I just pray the words "slashdot.org" aren't mentioned.
Had the airport been intact Apple would have presumably replaced it (it's not cost-effective to repair them) free of charge under the one year warranty.
Unfortunately due to (reportedly) poor electrical design the device's lifetime appears to be only slightly greater then one year. How convenient for Apple. I'd always suspected this of my kitchen appliances but generally Apple's equipment (except for their old 9" monitors & Mac SE power supplies) has been notably high quality.
Electrical/design defects aside the Apple Airports really are a fabulous bit of engineering. For a few hundred bucks they act as a really nifty DHCP/NAT server. One doesn't even need a Mac to configure these suckers as their OS manufacturer has a Java one out. Surreally enough the AirPorts are x86-based, which is strange considering the strength of PPC in embedded devices.
In somewhat related new the Orinoco/WaveLAN 802.11 cards have now dropped in price to ~US$150 for Silver, ~US$170 for Gold (128 bit encryption.) Furthermore reports are out that the next generation of these devices will shrink down to two or so discrete chips meaning even smaller/more efficient devices.
Now if only more manufacturers would start embedding antennas in their devices.
I don't read ACs: If a post isn't worth so much as a nom de plume to its author then I wont bother either.
Well, I'm glad to see that the police did at least go in for some reason that wasn't just 'we don't like the page'. It's really sad though, that it's gotten to the point that many of us feel that we have to be that paranoid with regard to laws and law enforcement, and that it seems that much of law enforcement is very behind as far as technical knowledge goes. I'm still wondering why it wasn't handled internally though. At my university, if a student is suspected of breaking the rules of the school with regard to the network, his physical feed is unplugged from the other end. (Ironically, they aren't usually smart enough to cut access by IP, so the student simply has to find another outlet, but oh bloody well.) The thing is that they don't usually need to call the police in, and I'm not aware of any instances where that was necessary.
"Titanic was 3hr and 17min long. They could have lost 3hr and 17min from that."
IBM had PL/1, with syntax worse than JOSS,
And everywhere the language went, it was a total loss...