Slashdot Mirror
Slashback: Games, Goats, Galileo
Make sure you slip this into the fine print of your consulting contracts. Adn writes "Newsbytes is reporting in a story that David McOwen, who was facing some pretty serious charges will be let go with a fine as against a much harsher fate. If utilizing so called "unused cycles" for the greater good is a crime (I know he was not charged for that per se... but bear with me here) then makes you consider uninstalling all those SETI@Home Screensavers doesnt it? Also a larger question...If the law (in these kinds of cases) operates on the 'intent' of the accused, what is the justification for even considering it a crime?"
Playing games builds your mind and your hand-eye coordination. Bill Kendrick writes: "The results are in for the SDL Game Contest held by No Starch Press, Linux Journal and Loki Games.
First place was awarded to LBreakout by Michael Speck. Second place went to Tower Toppler by Andreas Roever. My own game, Vectoroids just barely made third place over another asteroids-style game, Rock Dodgers by Paul Holt.
Congratulations! The full list of games is listed on No Starch's results page."
Guaranteed not to be your average Slashdot book review! Alex Chiu writes "Hello. This is alex chiu. I have written an online book at http://superiching.com Teaching people how to communicate with God using I-Ching. This online book is free for everyone to read. It's at least 5 times bigger than alexchiu.com. If interested, please release this news."
You may remember Alex from the interview we did with him a little while ago -- truly a unique individual.
Flying blind and a long way from home. Vertigo01 writes: "According to this article on CNN.com, galileo has encountered some technical problems on its flyby of Io and "for unknown reasons, went into safe mode" ... (sounds like my last Win98 install) ... flight engineers hope to restore normal operation for the duration of Galileo's life, but it looks like we won't get any more pictures of Io out of her."
Victoria's Secret probably won't put this on the box. FortKnox writes "Spider Silk is long known to be one of the strongest biological structure made (5 times stronger than steel by weight). Biologists have already genetically engineered goats to produce spider silk in their milk. Now, they have successfully extracted the protein and "spun" the silk. The next, and final step, is to mass produce the silk to be available commercially. Move over kevlar, here comes something better! I want to have the first biologically built house! I wonder how insulated spider silk is...."
Your guilt or innocence in matters like this isn't a function of the intent. Intent is relevant when you're sentenced. The appropriate thing to have happen is to be found guilty, and then be given a suspended sentence. After all, he did break the law.
I think the prosecution of McOwen went overboard. However, if you don't own machines, you shouldn't run software on them without permission. Increasing system load means the system spends less time in power saving modes. It does consume bandwith. Also, and I don't know if this was the case here, it can be damned annoying when not set up properly. When I was working to help administer the computers at a Math department at my college, the sysadmin for general computing stayed logged in and run Seti@home through scripts. Problem was, he didn't do a very good job, and sometimes two or more copies would run at once. They also seemed to take a perceptible amount of time to get off the CPU.
I want climbing ropes made out of spider silk! I think the smallest-diameter climbing rope is currently 9.5mm. Spider silk would be much lighter even at the same diameter; you could probably trust your life to a 3mm diameter (just guessing) spider silk rope, at dramatically lighter weight than is currently possible.
OTOH, can you imagine how freaky it would be to suspend your body weight from a rope so thin that you might not even be able to see the end of it?
Then make him use an OS he hates... The punishment is also this: He has been arrested, maybe loses his job over it, and working under the watchful eye of an officer of the law is not something I think he would enjoy. My point is this, instead of just locking people up, why not use whatever skills they may have to benefit the rest of society. In my opinion, if you break the law, you're going against society, so your punishment should benefit society. I do think punishment shouldn't be enjoyed, and so maybe he should be forced to work the help desk or something...
Shift happens. Fire it up.
As long as you restrict their diet. A goat that's been alowed to eat whatever it wants can have some pretty gnarly-tasting milk.
Under capitalism man exploits man. Under communism it's the other way around.