Slashdot Mirror
Slashback: Cheats, Entries, Loki
From the email I've gotten on it, it seems like a whole passel of schools have at least a homegrown solution to CS cheats.
Perhaps the cute dog will end up changing Sony's stance? CodeMonkey555 writes "Here is a story that chronicles Sony's little foray into the DMCA with a hacker who added software for the Aibo robot."
It's nice to see that publications like SciAm are following the results and consequences of the DMCA.
Care to help edit an online software reference? SteveMallett writes "We at Open Source Directory (OSD) have opened the directory to volunteer editors now that we've given app authors and maintainer's a good chance to start and/or maintain their own listings.
Those interested may wish to visit our volunteer page which outlines what we're looking for. Don't worry. We're not that picky. The outline includes guidelines and tips for being a volunteer. Unlike dmoz, which has volunteer editors, we _will_ delete unupdated or neglected editor work in accordance to our Social Contract.
We hope that editors will help fill in the missing apps, take over those listings that they can do a better job of or have become neglected, and find those diamonds in the rough."
See our earlier post about the project if you're not sure what this is about.
Yes, someone has to read all those emails. kcurtis writes "Boston.com's tech site has this AP article about the large response to the Court's request for comment on the MS case's proposed settlement."
Now all they need is a trowel with an emblazoned smiley. enigma48 writes "Looks like the C'T article a little while ago about Smoothwall prompted some changes after all. Juergen Schmidt even gets a little credit. Shadow passwords are now in, but it looks like the ppp secrets file is still open (they describe it as being a "non-vulnerability"). A-patchin' I will go, a-patchin' I will go..."
So you don't have to stop playing your games ... Scott Draeker of Loki has some encouraging words for those who thought the announced (upcoming) closure of Loki would mean the loss of Loki's code and community. Draeker sent word of this a few days ago, but here are more details.
He writes:
"We have prepared tarballs of the public CVS, FAQs, mailing list archives, demos and Loki_Update which will be available for people to host. That's exactly what's going on with icculus.org.The official repository will be hosted by the SEUL group at MIT. Once that site is set up we'll point the loki domains that direction. They'll also be adding some Loki projects to public CVS which were never completed."
I work as a consultant for several fortune 500 companies, and I think I can shed a little light on the climate of the open source community at the moment. I believe that part of the reason that open source based startups are failing left and right is not an issue of marketing as it's commonly believed but more of an issue of the underlying technology.
I know that that's a strong statement to make, but I have evidence to back it up! At one of the major corps(5000+ employees) that I consult for, we wanted to integrate Linux into our server pool. The allure of not having to pay any restrictive licensing fees was too great to ignore. I reccomended the installation of several boxes running the new 2.4.9 kernel, and my hopes were high that it would perform up to snuff with the Windows 2k boxes which were(and still are!) doing an AMAZING job at their respective tasks of serving HTTP requests, DNS, and fileserving.
I consider myself to be very technically inclined having programmed in VB for the last 8 years doing kernel level programming. I don't believe in C programming because contrary to popular belief, VB can go just as low level as C and the newest VB compiler generates code that's every bit as fast. I took it upon myself to configure the system from scratch and even used an optimised version of gcc 3.1 to increase the execution speed of the binaries. I integrated the 3 machines I had configured into the server pool, and I'd have to say the results were less than impressive... We all know that linux isn't even close to being ready for the desktop, but I had heard that it was supposed to perform decently as a "server" based operating system. The 3 machines all went into swap immediately, and it was obvious that they weren't going to be able to handle the load in this "enterprise" environment. After running for less than 24 hours, 2 of them had experienced kernel panics caused by Bind and Apache crashing! Granted, Apache is a volunteer based project written by weekend hackers in their spare time while Microsft's IIS has an actual professional full fledged development team devoted to it. Not to mention the fact that the Linux kernel itself lacks any support for any type of journaled filesystem, memory protection, SMP support, etc, but I thought that since Linux is based on such "old" technology that it would run with some level of stability. After several days of this type of behaviour, we decided to reinstall windows 2k on the boxes to make sure it wasn't a hardware problem that was causing things to go wrong. The machines instantly shaped up and were seamlessly reintegrated into the server pool with just one Win2K machine doing more work than all 3 of the Linux boxes.
Needless to say, I won't be reccomending Linux/FSF to anymore of my clients. I'm dissappointed that they won't be able to leverege the free cost of Linux to their advantage, but in this case I suppose the old adage stands true that, "you get what you pay for." I would have also liked to have access to the source code of the applications that we're running on our mission critical systems; however, from the looks of it, the Microsoft "shared source" program seems to offer all of the same freedoms as the GPL.
As things stand now, I can understand using Linux in academia to compile simple "Hello World" style programs and learn C programming, but I'm afraid that for anything more than a hobby OS, Windows 98/NT/2K are your only choices.
thank you.
Trolls? Have you forgotten about Katherine Thurber? Is she still into
that kinky clown fisting? HTTP://WWW.CLOWNSE.CX
... you know he is. Fucking traitor.
It seems that CmdrTaco and co. are the "benevolent dictators" and don't seem to mind that people are peeved that they are the hidden hand behind the moderation system.
It seems ubsurd to me that just because the aibo has encrytion protecting the binaries, it is illigal to reverse engineer it.
I guess this is old news...
FP you fockers!
Timothy is fucking gay, and so is religion!
Slashdot. A Review. Strange really. Slashdot has become a bastion of "free speech" and anti-government sentiment. Constant rants about invasion of privacy, Echelon and the FBI's Magic Lantern. Microsoft is evil . Linux is great. Students, University Life and more fucking student stuff . How to waste money on useless gadgets. Fuckwitted "Ask Slashdot" questions that could be answered in about 10 seconds by using a search engine. More fucking Linux advocacy. Anime (especially the non-dubbed or subbed varieties that only Japanese speakers could ever fully appreciate). Another fucking kernel release . Pointless "science" features which would be better relayed by Elijah Wood on crack. Arguments over different software licenses that slide into meaningless handbag fights with excuses more queer than Julian Clary. A bit more pro-Linux crap from some "We've just graduated" hooray-Henrys. A "discussion" of wireless technology that deteriorates into Microsoft bashing for no reason whatsoever. And then.... THIS.
A wonderful little story posted by CmdrTaco. Yes, let's all run a keylogger on our systems to count how many keys we have pressed. Yes, that's right. Slashdot has only recently run this article . Hey, that was almost as good as the article on the hoax XBox Emulator where readers were being asked to download and try the emulator binaries with no regard for trojan/virus possibilities - Could the editors not be bothered to check it themselves? (And the ironic part is, not only did the package not come with source code or fall under the GPL, but it was for an M$ (tee hee!) operating system). Truly outstanding journalistic integrity. Then there's freedom of speech. The bread and butter of Slashdot. The "Papal Beacon" to call to arms all the brothers and sisters of slashdot with one ring to bind them all. A bit of flag waving, hands on hearts and everybody recite the amendments. Yes. DMCA... disclosure of security bugs in kernel... Government censorship... And then THIS . Talk about pot calling kettle. What fucking hypocrites. That particular post was spot on yet it was moderated to oblivion by what could have only been the editors. Yeah, freedom of speech indeed. Well done chaps. Yeah, I don't have to come here, nor do I have to read the posts. I don't have to get involved in moderation arguments or anything else like that. Oh, and please, somebody reply with that classic piece of shit Benjamin Franklin quote . I fucking love that one. Especially after someone posts a comment about how fucking paranoid you all are about CCTV and Echelon. To save you all the effort of typing flames, please find them here in an easy to copy n' paste list:
- "You suck! Slashdot is the best thing on earth!"
- "If you don't like it, don't come here!"
- "Fuck you!"
- "Urgh, this is so a troll!"
- "I am a student and I use Linux. I was offended by this."
- "Go back to the UK you poncy Brit!"
Oh, and don't forget to moderate me down!! Go on! You know you want to!They allready have those dolls that "go tinkle". How long until Sony develops "'Lil McScoopScoop".
"Teaches kids to clean up after their pets without really cleaning up!"
I can just see that massivechinned and lipped ron of ronco pimping it now.
Excuse me while I cry myself to sleep.
cherish my balls as though they were the St. Louis Rams.
Hey Gabe! It's your apartment-mate Mark again. I'm glad you bought all that Mtn. Dew - I've been having a good time 'at' drinking it [wesley willis reference]. Anyway, I'll talk to you in 5 minutes.
-Mark
Despite his alliance with the towelheads, it is obvious that John Walker is nothing more than a jew, working together with the sand nigger terrorists in an attempt to destroy America. Do not be fooled, the jew and the dune coon are working together. Their hatred for each other is but a facade.
I will not be posting tommorrow. I am undergoing surgery for my kidney disorder. If I go to 'The Big Toilet in the Sky' as it were, I have left instructions to leave my username and password for this account somewhere on the net to be found. Take care and if I bite it, good luck with the Turd Report account!
Michael Loves Me!
Or does the Loki email imply the release of Loki game source code? And how much of it?
This is probably wishful thinking, of course it is, but the impact it would have on the Linux gaming world would be awesome. Heh, Loki would do more for Linux gaming dead that it ever did alive...
Ohh well, it's only karma..
Can you hack an AIBO to make it hump people's legs, or micturate on their shoes?
We would have taken a lot longer to develop: Rockets Jet Engines Delta wing planes Algebra and so on...
CDE open sourced! https://sourceforge.net/projects/cdesktopenv/
It seems interesting to me that the DMCA allows no condition of fair use when it comes to breaking encryption on purchases - at least, this is how the article presents it.
Notice that Aibopet never actually uses the code within the Aibo to make a profit. Someone could argue, technically, that he uses it to make a name for himself, but he hardly even does that. I think it's interesting that Sony would choose to pursue legal action on the basis that the code was cracked, not that something illegal was done with the code.
This is something like purchasing a refrigerator, dismantling it, using the fan to cool yourself, and using the shelves inside to hold books. Sure, it wasn't the intended use of the product, but who's the seller to determine the intended use and then legally enforce that use? Encryption was brought about for a variety of reasons, but one of the reasons wasn't to make sure that a product was used in a specific way - rather, it's primary ability is to keep other people from making a profit on someone else's ideas.
As long as Aibopet isn;t doing that, I don't really understand Sony's original position on the issue.
i thought slashback was a way to point out the comings and goings that slashdot discussed in the last few days.
this thread would seem to qualify for slashback in every way. i don't know if you forgot to include it on purpose or not, but i thought it would be helpful for anyone not aware.
I don't quite understand. Is Loki putting the full version of all their games in CVS, or just the demos?
ahh... good, the last post on "CS anti-cheating" spawned way too many posts about Counter-Strike...
I wonder if a projection exists in the corporate organs of Sony that demonstrates how much loss of revenue and market share Sony Consumer Electronics Division stands to loose in the next five years thanks to the aggressive lobbying, litigation and posturing of the Sony media and content creation divisions.
It just seems to me that the money in consumer electronics is going to go to companies like Phillips and other (smaller) manufacturers that help consumers exploit and enjoy content any damn way they want.
Sony makes some marvelous and high quality components and gadgets, but revenue will go to the companies that offer devices that accommodate the way consumers want to use them, rather then devices that will accommodate the way a company wants to use consumers.
Trying to have a market created and tamed through legislation and ill conceived laws damn well should torpedo your empire.
http://desynch.dhs.org/static/pics/reminder.jpg
Well gee, you figured it out, did you? Also, YHBT. YHL. HAND.
Why does sony even care? I mean, maybe they're hoping for a long history of upgrades in the future that they can charge end users for, but in the end, if there is other software available for AIBO, people will still have to buy the product to use them. And if more poeple are buying AIBO's so they can use the hack than those who are purchasing it for the original intent, WHO CARES!
Sony still gets their money from it.
-Restil
Play with my webcams and lights here
Imagine a whole army of renegade AIBOs released upon Sony's corporate headquarters, indiscriminantly humping and micturating all over everything in they're path.
My cock is really hard. I need relief. Any boys under 12 around?
Love,
Jon Katz
If the illegality is in breaking the encryption, could some secure 3rd party break the encryption and send me the results. Posetion of cracked data is not an offence, is it? Maybe some Ukranian crack-boy could make a living cracking the encryption on popular items and then selling the results back into the US. What is anybody going to do if I release some code for something, based on publicly available specs. (Even if those specs are the result of some work done elsewhere that couldn't be done here.) Isn't that how PC cloning got started with Clean Room reverse engineering?
With yonder spoken goatse.cx links, i present a WET PUSSY for ya'll's enjoyment.
HAVE A NICE DAY.
"Meanwhile, back in America, some owners delight in replacing Aibo's soothing beeps with the voice of Cartman, the potty-mouthed South Park character. "
I can see it now.
Me: Fetch fido
dog: AAaaaah my ass is on fire!!
-THIS SPACE FOR RENT!
You are the one millionth slashdot.org post and you have to choose a prize behind one of three secret doors!!
Ok Anonymous Coward, what do you choose and please tell the audience what you think is behind the door you have chosen?
Just wanna say we all hope you make it through ok. Slashdot would never be the same without you.
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
http://archie-bunker-licks-squirrel-rectums.com
It's just "computer class cheating."
Read on below for the details! Jon Masters was one of the many to write in after recent articles about automated cheat-detection employed in undergraduate CS classes to catch plagiarists. "Hi, cheat detection is hardly new.
This isn't even consistent. It's either "cheat-detection" or "cheat detection." I would advise the latter.
For example The University Of Nottingham have developed an automated marking/plagarism detection system as part of their CourseMaster software.
Insert a comma after "example." It should be "the University of Nottingham has."
Personally I don't agree with automated assessment in general, however plagarism detection can be useful."
Insert commas after "Personally" and "however." Change "can" to "would."
From the email I've gotten on it, it seems like a whole passel of schools have at least a homegrown solution to CS cheats.
That's either "e-mail" or "Email."
[...] SteveMallett writes "We at Open Source Directory (OSD) have opened the directory to volunteer editors now that we've given app authors and maintainer's a good chance to start and/or maintain their own listings.
That should be "maintainers." Don't use the horrible formation "and/or." The word "or" is sufficiently ambiguous.
Unlike dmoz, which has volunteer editors, we _will_ delete unupdated or neglected editor work in accordance to our Social Contract.
Capitalize "DMOZ." The word "unupdated," is, IMNSHO, a monstrosity. How about "out of date?"
We hope that editors will help fill in the missing apps, take over those listings that they can do a better job of or have become neglected, and find those diamonds in the rough."
At this point, the language has become so bad that it is impossible to understand what is being said.
Yes, someone has to read all those emails.
It's a personal decision now on whether "e-mail" is in plural form without the suffix "s," but it simply cannot be written as "emails." If you add the "s," it's either "e-mails" or "Emails."
kcurtis writes "Boston.com's tech site has this AP article about the large response to the Court's request for comment on the MS case's proposed settlement."
As journalists, you need to be more careful in your use of the word "court." Either say "the court request," or "the United States District Court's request." (I'm not sure which court we are talking about here, so I guessed.) Regarding style, you should make it clearer who proposed the settlement.
[...]Shadow passwords are now in, but it looks like the ppp secrets file is still open (they describe it as being a "non-vulnerability").
Capitalize "PPP." Turn the words in parentheses into a different sentence.
[...] Once that site is set up we'll point the loki domains that direction. They'll also be adding some Loki projects to public CVS which were never completed."
Be consistent. Always capitalize "Loki."
Here's to a better Slashdot. The Slashdot editors would do well to purchase a copy of Garner's "Modern American Usage." It's a fine reference book.
BTW, my caustic comments are all addressed to Slashdot's editors, and not to submitters. It's Slashdot's responsibility to use good language.
I am not a lawyer. Do not take my words as legal advice. If you need legal advice, consult an attorney.
Why are there zero African-Americans employed at Slashdot?
I want to use my voice commands to stear the aibo over my anus and tell it:
ME: Aibo, push in
ME: Aibo, pull out
ME: Aibo, repeat previous two commands in series for one-hundred cycles
...I can feel and see it now...
Even if Loki donates all the code to the community. The community cannot port games. Since the game publisher needs a company to license the code under some contract.
..
I hope another company picks up everything from Loki. Does all the contract/licensing stuff, but unlike Loki try and make use of volunteer work from the community to save money. I am willing to provide few hours of my time, for getting games on Linux and I sure hope there will be others.
I am aware of the issues of volunteer work vs full time employees. The contarct/licensing issues of closed source games. Maybe its all just wishfull thinking. Sigh
I'm just kidding, dude. Slashdot has no black employees yet because there is yet a black person to join. Also, friends tend to stick together and maybe they the slashdot editors don't know anyone in CS or IT. The only black people Jon Katz knows are the ones on the corner selling him crack...kidding. please forgive me. Either I am to say it or a real KKK faggot was to say it.
-me likes people calling me fat and ugly when the people calling me of which are fatter and uglier than I.
The Linux operating system was born in 1991 and was created by one man, a
Finnish student coincidentally named Linux Torvalds. Since these humble
beginnings, a multi-million dollar
industry has sprung up to exploit the commercial potential of Linux, but
until recently Linux has eluded mainstream acceptance. However, due to the
recent economic downturn together with uncertainty over changes to Microsoft's pricing policy, Linux is
now being touted as a serious contender to Microsoft Windows. While there
are many other alternatives to Windows, including BSD which is based on SUN's (Stanford University Network - correction by bc) server-grade Solaris operating system,
none have commanded the same level of media attention as Linux.
Linux Mandrake is just the
latest in a long line of quirkily christened versions of Linux. Previous
versions of Linux have been named Red Hat, Slack Ware,
Storm and Coral. In stark contrast to the mundane names such
as 98, ME or NT preferred by Microsoft, the crazy
names of each Linux release hint at its renegade nature.
My foray into the world of Linux began by downloading a "CD image" from
the Linux web site. But don't worry, this isn't software piracy, it's
perfectly legal! Linux is shareware, meaning that it can be freely
redistributed without fear of a visit by the Business Software Alliance. The free
availability of Linux is a major reason for its popularity among
cash-strapped students and self-styled anti-capitalist hackers.
Before installing new software, it is always advisable to read the
documentation. Unfortunately, an unpleasant surprise was in store for me
in the "required configuration" section of the manual.
I was shocked to learn that Linux Mandrake only runs on Pentium
processors, meaning that my hopes of testing the water with my old Gateway 486 were dashed. Furthermore, a
whopping 32 megabytes of memory are required to run Linux! Although the advocates of Linux self-righteously
boast the efficiency of their chosen operating system and deride the
"bloatware" produced by Microsoft, it appears that their claims are
blatantly incorrect. Although my humble 486 will happily run Windows 95,
it seems that Linux requires far more powerful, and more expensive,
computer hardware. Is this really the sign of a lean, mean operating system?
Of course not.
Sadly, not even being able to install Linux is just the first of my many
complaints. A brief perusal of the
features of Linux Mandrake reveals that Linux is sorely lacking many
crucial productivity applications. For example, why isn't the industry
standard web browser, Internet Explorer, included with Linux? Despite the
best efforts of the experts at the Internet
Engineering Task Force to encourage adoption of the Internet Explorer
standard, the creators of Linux seem to think that they know better. By
refusing to adhere to recognised standards, Linux is simply undermining
its own credibility.
Similarly, almost all of the world's most popular and widely used software
is completely incompatible with Linux! It may surprise you to learn that
your copy of Microsoft Office, Outlook Express, or Lotus Notes will not
work under Linux. Those who wish to use their computer for recreational
purposes are also out of luck, for almost all of the most popular games
are unavailable for Linux. Although a wide range of software is freely
available for Linux, these pitiful offerings are mostly unfinished, unreliable and do not
bear comparison to their commercial counterparts.
Computer security is also an area that seems to have been overlooked by
the developers of Linux. In these times when hacking and viruses are
commonplace, it defies belief to learn that no anti-virus software is available for
Linux. To add insult to injury, there is no Linux version of the popular
ZoneAlarm firewall. By using Linux,
you are issuing an open invitation to the hordes of ne'er-do-wells on the
Internet.
The shortcomings of Linux are obvious. Without even installing Linux
Mandrake, I have exposed several fundamental flaws. Surely it is not too
much to expect that, after ten years of development, the creators of Linux
would have addressed these problems? The real question that the
prospective Linux user must ask himself is, "Why bother?" After all,
Microsoft Windows comes free with most PCs and there simply isn't a need
to replace it, particularly not with a product of inferior quality.
Although it is always tempting to support the underdog, Windows XP will
be the deserved victor in the battle ahead. I recommend that those
Adequacy readers who are hoping to upgrade their operating system
patiently wait for the release of Windows XP, rather than foolishly
wasting their time, effort and money on Linux.
Twitter.com/TrentonHyatt
The Boston article is ambiguous as to whether the complete comments that the public sent in will be available online.
I, for one, believe that reading those comments would be a very instructive exercise.
It seems reasonable to expect that comments solicited online should be published online and not just printed onto thin paper in 3-point type and filed in boxes in the storage room of a courthouse somewhere.
If you're a zombie and you know it, bite your friend!
God! Oh my God! Oh my fucking, holy God! My God, Slashdot, you really did it this time. You really, truly did it. The entire day without covering ANYTHING remotely useful or interesting. Monkey.NET goes closed source?! Some Open Source clown doesn't like Outlook Express!? Mandyke Lunix release a new version of their gayware!?!?!?! Some fucking game company bought the UN or something!?!?!?
MY GOD, MALDA!!! WHAT A COMPLETE AND TOTAL, UTTER PILE OF OVERFLOWING SLOP!!! SLOP! SLOP! TOTAL, COMPLETE, UNADULTERATED SLOP!!!
http://entertainment.yahoo.com/entnews/wwn/2002011 6/101119320009.html
Rename this site to slopdot.org! It's a total and complete pile of dog slop!! It's overflowing with slop! Damned fucking piece of sloppy shit!! Fuckingslopdot.org! Stupid fucking gays slopping their spooge all over each other and all over the frontpage! SLOP! SLOP!!! Fucking idiots.
Useless.
"Microsoft and its critics both worked to ensure their views were reflected in the comments. Americans for Technology Leadership, made up of Microsoft and several others friendly to the software giant, offered letter writers extra chances to win a handheld computer."
Elsewhere, it mentions other free computers given out, but says that they always do that at meetings...
you did WHAT with gcc 3.1?!?!?!?
no. no no no no no!
you use the STABLE gcc and compile WITHOUT the unstable binary optimizations and you'll have a *far* more stable server environment that will STILL outperform win2k.
ALSO, your allegation about a lack of smp support is flat wrong, as well as the lack of journaled filesystem support; although reiserfs may (i don't remember) not have been in the kernel at that time, it certainly was stable, and if you're smart enough to go jerking around with gcc as you say you did (i'm just gonna assume for the sake of this argument that you did that part correctly) then you certainly should have been smart enough to go to freshmeat to get the reiserfs stuff.
and, btw: i could load any of a number of beta software programs onto a win2k box and have it crashing left and right in short order, without nearly as useful error information at that.
(note to moderators: at least READ the parent post before you mod me down. christ save the linux community from idiots like this.)
So, how long till the damn links are fixed?
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
So M$ are offering substantial *prizes* for people who write in to support their cause in this public comment period? How can this possibly be legal? Isn't it akin to bribing a witness or something?
Is there a lawyer in the house?
Here's to a better Slashdot. The Slashdot editors would do well to purchase a copy of Garner's "Modern American Usage." It's a fine reference book.
Book titles are underlined, not put into quotation marks.
"Personally I don't agree with automated assessment in general, however plagarism detection can be useful."
Insert commas after "Personally" and "however." Change "can" to "would."
What you advise becomes a run-on sentence. A semicolon should go after "general." Also, there's nothing wrong with "can be useful." 'would be useful" has a different meaning.
Imagine a BeoWOLF Cluster of THESE!!!
Rob "CmdrTaco" Malda sat back in his chair gently massaging his cock late on a Friday night. He was leafing through the latest issue of the Leisure Times porn catalog, contemplating which video he was going to buy next. The jerk-off factor of each video decreased after a few weeks, so he had to constantly update his collection.
Malda often spent late night hours at his Slashdot office like this. The rest of the Slashdot crew always thought he was working late on improving Slashdot; he was notoriously slow in finishing the next Slashcode revision. Or doing work on the latest Slashdot story submission. The Slashdot crew thought correctly that Malda had no personal life.
"Hmmm, should I get 'Killer Cumshots' or 'Ass Eating Insanity'? Or maybe I...Ooohhh..." moaned Malda when he turned the page to the all-boys section; his cock throbbed with lust. "OK, how about 'Uncut Hunks' and 'Babes with Balls', you little freak," he said to his cock as he started to pump it a little harder. He reached for the lube in his bottom drawer, slathering his hand and cock with the slippery stuff. He closely examined each small picture on the page. He especially liked the really muscular young guy in 'Boot Camp Boys'. Oh, to run his hands up and down that smooth, muscular stomach as he knelt in front of him, pulling that huge cock into his mouth...
Malda arched his back and groaned as he came, shooting cum all over his desk and keyboard. He slumped back down into the chair as his breathing slowed to normal. "I'm definitely going to order 'Uncut Hunks' and 'Boot Camp Boys'."
For more visit here and here
but its demise forces developers to make their own Linux binaries if Linux binaries are to exist. This would (hopefully) make more developers port the code themselves, and keep the Linux gaming industry alive (unless another company like Loki starts up, in fact this may be better in the short run as then all of the porting knowledge would be concentrated in this company and allow them to make better ports)
"It's even worse if you're locked into a proprietary operating system." -http://www.wehavethewayout.com/scale.asp?rew=0
I hope the open source directory takes off and actually takes in editors. I applied to DMOZ for a not too large category and got an instant rejection saying new editors should apply for a smaller category. Ok, I reapplied on for a much smaller category. That was about 2 months ago. (Both categories needed an editor, BADLY). Still haven't heard back. I begin to wonder if DMOZ is even using editors anymore.
Jon Katz is not the dumb fuck everyone makes him out to be -- really! so stop buttfux0ring him!
... the Columbine shooting."
... shared references, and makes statements which people find embarrassingly naive. [It's] like you were discussing the finer points of characterization in Romeo and Juliet in the bar and Katz would come over and say 'Don't you think their suicides were so tragic?'" writes poster Eddie Edwards in an e-mail.
... I don't think they were faking it," he says. "There are just many, many thousands of really bright and creative kids who are suffering quite acutely and whose problems are not being addressed."
... If you do this full-time, it's a very valuable thing, but you become a social worker."
... have really gone underground; they've learned not to talk about their disaffection," he adds.
By his own account, you wouldn't know that Katz is, in fact, a lightning rod. The media critic and author of numerous works, including Geeks: How Two Lost Boys Rode the Internet Out of Idaho, is often flamed by readers who call for his ouster every time one of his stories appears on Slashdot, the site he calls home. Katz gets accused of everything from self-aggrandizement to Faith-Popcorn-style trend mongering to -- worst of all -- not being a real geek.
He's maligned and even dissed by members of his own constituency who fail to recognize him for what he is: a leader of one of the important social movements of the Internet Age.
Or was. Katz has more or less stepped down from his role as lead scribe of the "anti-bullying movement" -- a loose coalition of students, parents, commentators and educators who argue that to write off school harassment as "kids being kids" is to ignore a very real threat to students' physical and mental health.
Now, the one-time crusader for the geek underclass has decided to concentrate on writing more general technology articles and media commentary. And the efforts of Peter Yarrow from Peter, Paul and Mary aside, no one's really picked up where he left off.
Katz cites burnout as one of the reasons for his recent decision to branch out beyond tales of grief. "I was actually close to getting obsessed about it," he says during a phone interview. "A bunch of my friends said, 'You've got to stop doing it, or you're just going to become -- I mean, your whole life's work is just basically being a transmitter of all this misery.'"
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>>> All this misery. An electronic river of pain. That's how Katz variously refers to the torrent of messages that he says crashed three of his computers and hasn't completely subsided yet: messages from kids ostracized by their peers; teenagers alienated from both fellow students and authorities; thirty-somethings who still haven't forgotten the pain of being different. All of them reached out to Katz because he had the temerity to suggest in a 1999 article entitled "Why Kids Kill" that there was something wrong with schools that treated disaffected geeks as potential killers in the wake of Columbine.
"As a writer, I've never in my life touched a deeper chord," he says of the article, and the many-part Slashdot series, "Voices from the Hellmouth," that was based on the e-mail messages "Why Kids Kill" provoked. For almost two years, Katz wrote of geeks beaten up, threatened, and sexually harassed by their peers. And ignored, disciplined, and sent into counseling by school administrators.
"Why Kids Kill" may not have been the most likely starting point for a revolution. Published on Slashdot, it was more of a media think piece than a report from the front lines. In it, Katz takes journalists to task for concentrating on computer games and the Internet as possible causes for Columbine.
"It was the final break between me and the media," Katz says now. "I never got over the coverage of
Despite having worked for venerable old-media outlets like The New York Times and Rolling Stone, as well as Wired, Katz more or less left print journalism for the in-your-face world of Slashdot, which bills itself as, simply, "News for Nerds. Stuff that matters." Stories are posted and immediately analyzed and dissected by users. Katz describes it as "the best job I've ever had in my life."
When asked why he doesn't try to spread the geek-movement word with a well-placed op-ed in The New York Times, or maybe a longer piece in The New Yorker, Katz dismisses the idea. "People like me tend to be attacked, trivialized, marginalized," he says. "To write a token op-ed piece is not going to change anything."
And how have Slashdotters repaid him for joining their ranks, both as a chronicler of their stories and as a technology columnist? Katz seems generally happy with the feedback he gets. "I get probably two to five hundred e-mail messages per column, and of those, I probably get one or two flames a week," he says.
But read the comments posted on Slashdot after any Katz story, and you can see the hostility he inspires in some of the Slashdot faithful. Consider some of the attacks that followed "Is Open Source the New Jerusalem?" which, perhaps a bit ambitiously, compares the open source movement to god's kingdom on earth. "[D]oes anyone give a crap what katz thinks? Does he post this article to boost his own ego?" "I'm beginning to wonder if JK is the ubertroll. I mean, I used to be able [to] handle the highfalutin pop psych, but this is just silly." "[O]h wise Jon Katz, why don't you define revolution for us?"
Of course, Katz has already defined, catalyzed and guided a revolution: the geek revolution, for lack of a better term. And it's geeks themselves who view him with the most suspicion.
After exchanging e-mails with some of the Slashdotters who flame Katz, it's evident that their complaints are as varied as Katz's articles. They grumble about long, windy, unpolished pieces that don't fit into Slashdot's paragraph-link weblog format, and a style that sometimes glosses over key distinctions.
"Katz comes blazing in without any understanding of
While Timothy Lee and Elijah Sarver both supported the "Hellmouth" series, Lee complains about "fluff pieces in which [Katz] makes broad, unsupported statements about the future, technology, the internet, etc." And Sarver writes, "[H]is writing style is not edited, which hurts him greatly."
But most of the flames his stories receive aren't just about the stories; they're about him. Katz is a big-name writer using his own name at a place where most of the monikers are more along the lines of "Hemos" and "CmdrTaco." He's writing about technology from the perspective of a journalist. Some of what makes Katz distrust big media might make Slashdot readers distrust Katz.
"They're an extraordinarily sensitive culture," he says. "Especially when an outsider writes about them, they often resent it quite a bit."
The "Hellmouth" series was generally well-received, but not everyone bought Katz's concerns. The Village Voice published a piece by Jane Dark, "Suffer the (White, Middle-Class) Children," that criticized the self-identification of geeks as an oppressed group, similar to racial and ethnic minorities that have been persecuted.
Katz, however, rejects the notion that the problems teenagers described were superficial and/or overblown. "I think one can easily differentiate between whining and misery
Most of the criticism, though, came from Slashdot readers themselves. "People got sick of it. There were people who said, 'What's it doing on a technology site?'" he recalls. The vein he tapped with "Hellmouth" poured out not only in the form of anguished, confessional, personal e-mails but also outward hostility.
"They don't want to be different and they don't want to be seen as being different and I'm sure there were people who were extremely uncomfortable reading this stuff," he says of the group the series was aimed at.
Writing more speculative pieces like the "New Jerusalem" article, he's likely to keep attracting flames, but unlikely to make anyone uncomfortable.
"I moved on to other subjects," he says. "I think [Hellmouth] was a one-time thing. I did not write about the shootings [in San Diego]
Katz did return in late March from his self-imposed hiatus to write the pointedly titled column "Are Kids Turning Your Kids Into Killers?" Katz says that he and other Slashdot staff weren't sure whether to run another piece about school shootings, but Attorney General John Ashcroft's criticism of computer games as part of an "ethic of violence" convinced them it was necessary.
"The truth is," Katz wrote, "many more kids kill themselves then [sic] others, often because of bullying, a subject about which Ashcroft had nothing to say. The question really is whether vicious kids and hostile school environments are turning kids into killers."
The article, which mentions Tempest Smith, a Michigan 12-year-old who committed suicide after suffering repeated taunting and harassment, is one of his briefest and most direct -- "The best columns on the subject are those that state the obvious," he says.
So is Katz back as the anti-bullying movement's voice? He says he doesn't want to become a preacher, but knows the subject is one he can't completely leave alone. "I don't think I'm ever going to escape it," he says. When asked if he sees the lot of alienated high school students improving any time soon, his answer is a flat "No."
While bullying will likely be recognized as a bonafide health issue, anti-bullying programs (which have been instituted in a small number of schools) won't be enough to correct the problem, says Katz. The answer, he says, involves a complete restructuring of the school system to accommodate the needs of different students and encourage individual creativity -- which is an unlikely scenario. "I don't think the country has any appetite for focusing on issues like this," Katz says.
And the reaction some of these kids got when expressing understanding of, if not solidarity with, ostracized school shooters, has taught many of them to keep their feelings to themselves. "Since then, a lot of these kids
Although the mainstream punditocracy is beginning to parrot some of Katz's views regarding the causes of school violence, the solutions offered seem far from perfect. A recent article in the Weekly Standard, for example, suggests that students who feel "trapped" should be allowed to drop out and work at McDonald's, which writer Jackson Toby says is "successful at training egocentric teenagers."
Since that attitude may be indicative of the national level of sympathy directed toward those considered outsiders, some geeks might resent Katz -- who's more likely to argue in favor of the bullies dropping out and working in fast food -- for not continuing to lead the revolution he started. But what's really important is that he started it in the first place.
Katz has almost singlehandedly introduced an awareness of bullying into the national dialogue. School harassment may have become just one more item on the laundry list of contributing factors ticked off by media types every time there's a school shooting -- a list that also includes guns, absent parents, and, Katz's perennial favorite, video games. Still, that's an enormous change from two years ago, when any mention of social ostracism in connection with Columbine was thought to imply support for the killers.
And that's why Slashdot readers should cut him a little slack. Yes, he's fond of long film reviews and sometimes repetitive "future of the Web" pieces. The connection between his work and the rest of the site, moreover, is sometimes tenuous. But Katz uncovered the harassment and civil liberties violations geeks face on a regular basis, and he provided an essential outlet and repository for the fears and anger of a lost generation within a generation. That alone is still worth a lot -- and might be reason for more optimism than Katz is willing to allow.
And so are you, danny@blast.net!
there is yet a black person to join
You, sir, are a fucking idiot.
Yes, this is right. After days and weeks pondering CmdrTaco's ass and Timothy's small penis, the project has been planned.
Starting with this post, the goal is to get as many replies as possible in order to get 1,000,000 total posts on Slashdot.
The winner gets to ship Jon Katz to Cuba. Is that a great prize or what?
- The BOFH Troll
(for those interested, the stunning ms roe subsequently left scotland in a huff)
Most owners treat their Aibo affectionately, as they would a real pet. When Aibos break down, we treat them at our 'clinic.'
I found Mercerism easier to swallow than a populace doting on their robotic pets, but I must now admit that PKD was right.
[Yes, I know that this wasn't the *main* thrust of the article -- it just continues to amaze me. Hack value, yes, but pet, no.]
As you can FUCKING see, your post is 2,917,440, COCKLOVER. That means there is almost 3 million posts on Slashdot SHIT FOR BRAINS, not 1 million, CHILD MOLESTER.
I hope this clears things up...JACKASS!
I hate these stickers after a really bad experience with a case power supply.
One day, my trusty case power supply just gave up on me. "Oh well," I thought, "Must have blown a fuse." (I was pulling some serious power through the poor thing.)
So with gleeful abandon I grabbed the nearest sharp, pointy tool and began to remove screws. I carefully grounded and opened up the power supply to change the fuse- Lo And Behold, the stupid thing was soldered in place!
I hope this short, true satire shows why I distrust any company handing me the black box syndrome. If you don't want me inquiring as to how it works, don't sell/rent/loan it to me; and don't think strange headed screws are a detterent- I just love a challenge >:-). Furthermore, never scream at me (even in legalese) about how I wasn't supposed to look inside- you aren't supposed to sell me junk. (There may be no legal constraint, but doing so is a good way to get boycotted. Just ask Microsoft, Universal Music, or Intel: they top my list.)
Do you like Japanese imports?
Ever since I was in Jr. High, I've been unable to get a girlfriend. All my friends either had girlfriends or horny sisters. I just figured I'd eventually meet the right girl in high school. Still, I had no luck. After high school, I went to college and, you guessed it, still no girlfriends. Well, I'ge given up on trying to find a girlfriend. I am now asking you to help me with my conversion over to gayness. Any assistance you could provide with information on becoming gay would be extremely helpful. Thanks!
Is that you Mr. Katz?
He will be missed
Show me That Smile (The Growing Pains Theme Song):
Show me that smile again.
Ooh show me that smile.
Don't waste another minute on your crying.
We're nowhere near the end.
We're nowhere near.
The best is ready to begin.
As long as we got each other
We got the world
Sitting right in our hands.
Baby rain or shine;
All the time.
We got each other
Sharing the laughter and love.
Alan Thicke's Journal
My Slashdot ads say "
Is there any possibility that another gaming house might buy the Loki ports? It is indeed a fantasy to expect that code to be open sourced but it would be a shame if it died entirely. Perhaps a publisher with a better business model can get some milage out of them.
and have it hump your poodle.
Does your purchase of a "product" confer "ownership" or "license"?
I'm completely serious. The basis of property and income taxes is that the land or your labor isn't yours, you're just renting it from the government.
As with the Furbie example, the makers decided to treat "purchase" as "ownership". Sony, the RIAA, the DMCA, Microsoft, all consider "purchase" to be only a limited license to use the product.
Subject, of course, to change without notice by the license holder.
Bob-
The Ludwig von Mises Institute. The reasoning individuals economics
And why, Mr. Smarty Pants?
The Slashdot Story Submission System or Four-S (pronounced "force") is a closely guarded Slashdot secret. As much as Slashdot claims to be anti-patent, in their well-known hypocritical nature, they have a patent pending for their story submission system. It is this very system's precision and robustness that explains why slashdot is so popular yet other similar slashcode sites get less hits than the average AOL user's personal homepage.
Like the formula to Coca-Cola, KFC's secret recipe, and the chemical structure of SPAM, the workings of the Four-S system was the question keeping me awake at night. After weeks of saving my allowance, obtaining a fake ID and making a few trips to the seedier parts of town, I finally had everything I needed to discover the truth behind one of mankind's greatest mysteries.
Thanks to a life-size inflatable tux doll and a keg of mediocre quality lukewarm beer, I had little trouble coaxing the secrets of the Four-S system out of Rob Malda. Between mugs of beer and unspeakable acts against nature (and vinyl inflatable dolls), in his drunken slurred speech, he explained the most intimate details of the four-s system.
R.M.: Well... Hey, you're kinda cute. Wanna see a cool trick I can do with a taco?
Me: Umm, I think I know what you have in mind - it won't work. When I was mowing a lawn last summer, I had an unfortunate accident and was involuntarily castrated. How that would effect the outcome of your trick should be self explanatory.
R.M.: Damn, that sucks. Hey, since you've taken yourself out of the gene pool, did you win a Darwin award?
Me: Did you win a Queer of the Year award? All fags like you should be given a Darwin award for taking themselves out of the gene pool. One more comment about my lack of balls and I'm deflating Tux!
R.M.: No, not Tux! I'm SO sorry! How can I make it up to you?
Me: The Four-S system. Tell me about it.
R.M.: Never. I'll take it to my grave.
Me: Damnit Rob, tell me or I'll shove my withered scrotum in your face. It's so nasty BME, Stileproject AND Steakandchese refused to post the picture!
R.M.: You make a compelling case, but no.
ME: Damn you, I'm so mad I don't feel like typing A HREF= anymore! Now you're gonna pay!
At this point I pull down my pants.
R.M: OH LORD OF ALL THINGS HOLY!!! I'M BLIND! OH THE AGONY! FOR GREAT JUSTICE, PUT YOUR PANTS BACK ON!
ME: Not until you tell me about the Four-S!
R.M.: Okay you win, I'll talk, I'll talk. Just put your pants back on.
ME: I don't trust you. Tell me about the Four-S first!
R.M.: Sigh. Okay, the Four-S. Most people think the Four-S stands for "Slashdot Story Submission System", they're wrong - it's just the public codename. It really is an acronym for the four steps involved in story selection. Scratch paper, spin, semen, shredder - That's what the Four-S really means.
During the first step, the "scratch paper" stage, hardworking monks here at Slashdot HQ carefully transcribe each story submission on to a piece of environmentally friendly recycled paper. For the "spin" step, these pieces of paper are then placed in a Kenmore dryer (set to air dry only, heat caused us to lose a whole day's worth of submissions once when the paper burst into flames!) for 5 minutes for a good randomizing effect. Now ready for the "semen" stage, one of the Slashdot editing crew opens the dryer door and proceeds to masturbate into the dryer. Whichever lucky paper happens to catch the wad of jism will be posted to the main page of Slashdot and then placed in the shredder. The reason for shredding a successfully submitted story is simple, if it's shredded, we can be sure we won't see the dried semen on it and accidentally post it again. Since we can only masturbate so many times in one day, you can understand why we're only able to post so many stories in one day - and why so many are rejected. This is exactly why the Four-S system is so much more versatile than other story submission systems.
Me: Wow, that explains a lot. So how did you come up with the Four-S anyway?
R.M.: I was up late one night trying to write a script to randomly pick story submissions, but everyone at Slashdot HQ kept complaining it wasn't random enough. After debating for hours, my throat was becoming sore and I was starting to go hoarse. In frustration, I finally yelled, "Well how do you propose I make it more random, use the for..(cough)..se?" At that moment, the idea dawned on me.
Me: Why am I not surprised?
R.M.: Now that you have this information, you have entered a circle of trust. Promise me you won't tell a soul about what I have told you today!
Me: (With fingers crossed) Sure, I promise.
---
Lord of the Things: One Thing to Rule Them All!
Contact Rob CmdrTaco Malda at
malda@slashdot.org
He can help you out, I promise.
Also, try here and here
This will help as well
Now if it wasn't the Open Source Directory, I'd say it sounded like one of those "we-want-you-to-help-build-our-site-for-free-and-t hen-charge-you-for-looking-at-the-content-when-the -site-gets-big-enough" deals.
Some people say that the internet is all about money these days(or maybe the lack of) but I think that the spirit of helping each other still is there. You just have to pick our work and that one is not a bad choice.
Hi,
One of the reasons that I submitted the link to the software used at my University was to point out how routine this kind of thing has become.
The idea of automated cheat detection is fundamentally a good one, it helps to remove complete weeds from around us. However, at the same time we must remember that software is only as good as what you put in to it. False positives and other negative aspects quickly displace the usefulness of such applications in my mind - especially when you may find that the analysis of "similarity" between submissions is publically available for all to see.
The problem in my mind is when automated cheat detection develops in to other forms of automated assessment, which in my opinion are wrong. I do not believe that even the best current AI software is able to judge submissions in quite the same way as a human being, we should remember this.
In any case, I suggest that you guys take a look around at the information each organisation has on its assessment software - it's become quite an interest of mine of late.
--
Jon Masters
http://www.jonmasters.org/
http://www.jonmasters.org/
In my first year of university they had the bright idea of running some plagurism detection software against our classes submissions. I believe 127 people were accused of cheating by the CS department - including me.
... it's infeasible to hope that no two students will produce very similar results.
I was sent a letter telling me that I had been accused of conspiring wiht one other person and consequently my mark would be halved.
Naturally I was outraged and got on the phone to the head of department. He explained that my submission was unacceptably similar to one other person and either someone copied it or we had collorated - I hadn't collaborated, copied or let my work be copied.
I arranged to meet with the course organiser and they showed me both submissions. Mine had originally been given 34/35 and the other had been handed in 2 weeks late and even then given 0/35. The other submission looked virtually identical to mine but had oddities like capital I's as loop control variables (suspiciously as if it had been typed into M$ Word). My guess is that he'd picked my code up from the recycle bin in the lab and typed it in.
However faced with this, they still argued that I could have allowed this person to copy my code (even hinting that I might have accepted payment for it) and if I had any further evidence to prove my innocence then I should draw it to their attention.
My father and I responded that it wasn't right that I should have to prove my innocence since it's a basic human right to be presumed innocent until proven otherwise. We suggested we would seek legal council, and they were quick to write back reinstating my original mark.
What frustrated me further was that the other party involved (who was never identified to me) was punished equally - by having his mark of 0 halved!
Cheat detection systems are fine as a mechanism to prompt staff to possible problems but they certainly shouldn't be used as the judge and jury.
Given that CS typically has large class sizes - mine was over 300 at one point - and CS assignments are often quite short and often closely related to textbook examples
The other thing that's NEVER been made clear to me is the distinction between permitted collaboration and plagurism. Every university document is fairly vague about what's acceptable and what's not. And as one of my other professors put it - "In the real world before you embark on any assignment it's worth asking, searching, begging and borrowing as much of it as possible"
Without such a changelog, honest students are vulnerable to a situation where someone else gets their code by dumpster-diving for printouts -- then it's one person's word against the other as far as establishing who really wrote it.
This solution also has the benefit of showing that the issue is plagiarism (not giving credit where credit is due), not code sharing. Code sharing is ok -- it's the programming equivalent of using a properly attributed quote in an English paper. After all, nobody expects students to rewrite glibc from scratch for use with their class project!
Find free books.
As an Aibo owner, having the ability to revert to the original state of the software that I bought, the "Aibo Life" that lets the machine "age", would be wonderful. Since the original images have been removed, now I have no option but to buy the $100 software again.
Bob-
The Ludwig von Mises Institute. The reasoning individuals economics
Is it me or do most of the above messages deal with one of the most oft'n discused threads here on /. ? That of intellectual property vs. real property.
The DMCA is just another step in that nazi march to making intellectual property equivalent to real property. Now, I'm a surveyor by trade and training, and deal with real property every day. Farmer Joe owning 640 acres does nothing to stifle either the American economy, or my creativity. (even if he decides to turn it into a automotive junk yard.) This DMCA thinge is stupid but simple. Yes - you can pick that Master Lock of yours all you want (but why? a little bit of social engineering (Hello, I'm Xxxx Xxxxxx, Principal of Xxxxxx middle school, we need the new combination index. . . ) can get you their serial# refrenced combo manual.) ((besides their dial padlocks are simple - gate 1+3 are multiples of 4 and gate 2 = gate 1or3 MOD2)) ANYWAY - back to the point - Yes - you can pick that Master Lock of yours all you want - but you can't pick that digital equivalent or you're going to jail.
Counter-intuitive? Yes. Real? Yes.
Fucking sucks to be you/me/us.
MIT holds an important part in the history of the Free Software Foundation, GNU/Linux distributions and the General Public License and Lessor General Public License. Despite this, Loki games intends to pass redistribution of binaries which violate the LGPL on the MIT and as such get MIT to violate it's own policies.
The Loki demos and updates contain executiables which are statcially linked to glibc, libSDL and OpenAL. Each of these libraries are covered by the LGPL. Unlike the GPL, this license does allow for both dynamic and static linking with close-source binaries. But unlike a BSD or X style license, there are still other requirements which must be followed. For example, a statically linked work which displays copyright banners must also display the copyright information for the statically linked libraries. Each update contains a statically linked executiable which displays either an about or title screen with copyright information. But for whatever reason Loki has decided to exempt itself from the reasonable request of displaying copyright notice. None of the statically link binaries will ever display the copyright notices for glibc, libSDL or OpenAL.
Then there is the primary reason for the LGPL, to ensure modification of the library is possible by allowing the modified library to be relinked with the programs that use it. Loki has choosen to only partically follow this. They do provide an execitable which is dynamically linked to glibc. But honoring this part of the LGPL for libSDL and OpenAL is something Loki again choose not to follow. There is no way to relink modifications to libSDL to HereticII including the updated one from the Loki ftp site. There is also no way to relink modification to OpenAL including the latest update.
So is all of this theoretical problems? Not really. Violating the LGPL has practical problems. For example, all joystick handling in HereticII is passed through libSDL. The Logictech WingMan Extreme Digital 3D has five axises of which HereticII only recognizes two (X and Y-axis). It would be desirable to be able to use the other axises such as the third axis which registers twisting the joystick clockwise or counter-clockwise to control strafe left and strafe right. The HereticII layer which uses the libSDL layer will support 15 joystick buttons where the Wingman Extreme normally has 7 and the libSDL layer is capable of recognizing all the joystick axises. So, if the additional axises are each translated as two additional buttons (one button which is on when the axis is negative and another button which is on when the axis is postive) then strafing using the twist axis would be possible.
As a proof of concept, I have written kernel code to present the axises as additional buttons and HereticII does then allow strafing left and right using the WingMan twist. But this code will never be released and will never be accepted into the kernel. It suffers from too many probelms. Such as it only effects USB joysticks, to generically support these "virtual" joystick buttons would also require changing the serial and game port joystick code to also "create" them. And in addition to having to modify three different locations in the kernel, the creations of virtual joystick buttons in kernel space ends up being messy. Finally, this type of modification bloats the kernel with code that really should be handled in user-space.
According the LGPL, Loki must allow that this type of modification be permitted in user-space by allowing a "virtual joystick button" version of libSDL to be relinked. I even have such a version of libSDL. But Loki has decided to lock the user into one specific implimentation of the libSDL thus locking the user from making joystick code modifications in user-space code. A modification lock-out that the LGPL says can't legally be redistributed but Loki and MIT appear to be willing to do so anyways.
Maybe it is Scott Draeker/Loki's inablity to read/follow licenses and contracts that contributed to them going out of business?
The article states that the Microsoft funded ATL was offering additional chances at the computers they were giving away for those that CC'd them on the letters they sent in. Does that not by itself illustrate how big of a problem we have with Microsoft? I would not be surprised if we find out that Microsoft had paid people to write letters directly -- that would be consistent with their behavior.
This message is encrypted with Quad ROT-13 to protect the author's copyright under the DMCA.
Unfortunately, the Courts have interpreted fair use not as a constitutional right, but as something allowed by law and granted by the Home Recording Act of 1982 (or something like that...someone help me out here?). Therefore, the DMCA can trample over fair use all it likes because it is just another law, not a right. And if we don't like it, we have to get the DMCA repealed by Congress, not the Court System. And that is very difficult seeing as corporations have so much money to lobby with, and we (relatively speaking) don't.
This is why if you want the DMCA overturned, we need campaign finance reform first. Then MAYBE our voices and votes will be able to stand up against corporate capital. But even then I think it rather unlikely. It makes me so damned mad to see so much power in the hands of the Corporations rather than the hands of individual voters. Something is definitely wrong with our system.
Does this mean that The People won a battle against the DMCA??
Placing students' work on a public CVS repository would make the situation worse. The professor would end up with most of the assignments turned in done in similar ways. All the assignments would have the hardest part done in a way similar to the first student to figure it out.
A lot of students will not go through the process of figuring out something for themselves unless they are forced to. The idea of education is to learn. I think students should be able to find general information on what they are looking for online, but if they can find the exact solution they will not figure it out themselves.
Normally I love the idea of open source, but in this case I think it is a bad idea. Now after the assignment is due and turned in, I think students have the right to post their assignments open source if they like (as long as it does not include any code provided by the instructor or others). Though, that forces the instructor to come up with a new assignment the next time the class is taught (if they realize).
This message is encrypted with Quad ROT-13 to protect the author's copyright under the DMCA.
it is NOT ILLEGAL TO TAKE THE TAG OFF YOUR MATTRESS. I forget the exact wording, but it's to prevent the tag from being taken off prior to purchase
True. However, if you take the tag off, you may not be able to resell it.
Will I retire or break 10K?
When I buy a toy, or any piece of sophisticated electronics, there is not> a licensing agreement i have to sign.
That is, unless software publishers and consumer electronics manufacturers decide to get in bed with credit card companies and print the EULA right on the charge slip.
Will I retire or break 10K?
Judging by their news page they are no longer clamouring for donations, instead they want donations to go to the FSF? I wonder if their IRC channel still has the same message on it ;)
Perhaps trying to recoup some PR...
no sig.
I've noticed that some times I have to scroll through some random text in order to press "next" during installs, but so far I've never had to read anything.
Is this the "agreement" you're talking about?
Bob-
The Ludwig von Mises Institute. The reasoning individuals economics
I'm reminded of a story involving Bill Gates and a certain law suit he filed years ago, in which he discussed how difficult it was for two programs to operate in the same way to achieve the same objective. The difference here, is the code is often Mickey Mouse
By "Mickey Mouse," do you imply that it's such valuable intellectual property that a publisher will buy senators to keep extending the term of the monopoly?
Will I retire or break 10K?
"My" community runs just fine by those who use a service paying for that use. There are also several different groups of people who get together to handle big projects, anyone not interested doesn't contribute. This makes for very efficient use of resources.
I make sure to only use a hospital that donates services to those who need it, but cannot afford it. Yes, it costs me more, but I feel it's worth while. Who knows when I'm going to need that service myself!
It's too bad that your community runs on coercion and force. I'm surprised that there are any people who are productive who haven't left for communities where their abilities are apreciated rather than punished. On the other hand, maybe your community doesn't let them leave.
Bob-
The Ludwig von Mises Institute. The reasoning individuals economics
Moderators smoking crack again?
How is this different to http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=26315&threshol d=-1&commentsort=0&mode=thread&cid=2850660? Reply to offtopic post should also be -1, offtopic!
Placing students' work on a public CVS repository would make the situation worse.
Can't say I agree with that entirely, though its uefulness would be very limited, that is true.
The idea of education is to learn.
Most education stopped being about learning the moment the corporations and other interests got in the way. Call me synical if you must, but think about it...
Normally I love the idea of open source, but in this case I think it is a bad idea. Now after the assignment is due and turned in, I think students have the right to post their assignments open source if they like (as long as it does not include any code provided by the instructor or others). Though, that forces the instructor to come up with a new assignment the next time the class is taught (if they realize).
Actually, I believe we were talking about Free Software, though for the purposes of this discussion I shall assume that it what you actually meant.
Students do have the fundamental right to freely publish their work, in my opinion. Unfortunately, having read through various rules and regulations, I would imagine at lot of these so called "far issue" issues are a moot point in reality. After all, the regulations where I study make it a heinous crime to even accidentally drop a single item of litter, or so my unqualified understanding of the rules would suggest. Anyway, if lecturers must create new assignments each time the course is presented, surely this not only ensures that material is not re-used beyond its lifetime but also that other students do not offer previous year's solutions to "new recruits"?
http://www.jonmasters.org/
"couldn't care less"
I now return you to your regularly scheduled nitpicking with a Buffy quote.
"I went online once, to one of those chatrooms, but everyone's spelling was so bad... it was really depressing" - Tara.
It doesn't mean much now, it's built for the future.
IMO, the real reason for cheat detection is not because of some moral reason to stop cheaters, but because of laziness.
What I'm getting at is really, how many professors actually look at the code to a program and not just run it to make sure it does what it's supposed to do? I had a CS teacher once tell everyone to make sure we output to a file so he could run the programs in batches and compare the outputs to what should be the output easily. Then he would run the source through a cheat detector and viola, he's done for the night.
I'm not saying professors are lazy, but programming is a rare example where this kind of detection could proove useful because often times it doesn't matter what the source of a program is, how poor or good it is, just that it does what you want it to do. This may seem like bad engineering, but its a real life fact in CS. English teachers are required to read the papers of their students -- thus they'll know a cheater off bat. But CS professors are not held to the same requirements, or let alone standards.
The problem with computer cheat detection is that there is, currently, no match for human cheat detection. You don't hear of a cheat detection system for English papers, why for CS?
The solution I think will be to have professors that actually go through the source code of each student. A particular case that I know of is a professor that would go through a project and comment on the source line by line, right along with your comments with things like "Good idea, great OOP use." or something like "You might try a linked list like this...". Not only was this invaluable assistance leading to better programmers, it was VERY easy to spot cheaters, because...he actually checked the source.
Why am I saying cheat detection is bad? Well, I'm certainly not a cheater. I know of several people who love CS -- not for actually liking programming, but for rushing through with assignments and turning them over to those who are helplessly lost for a quick profit. I don't like cheat detection because it not only can implicate those who don't cheat, but it allows professors to be lazy. If I was a suit at a university, I would bet on the professor I mentioned earlier who goes through source commenting than one who analyzes outputs and then runs the source through the latest cheatdetect.pl script.
"I'll just chip in a bit for RedHat: I actually have that installed on my university machine." - Linus, '95
For the exact purpose you mention (compliance with the terms of the LGPL license), Loki started to release both static patches (on which technical support was available), and dynamic patches - dynamically linked binaries against all the LGPL libraries like SDL, OpenAL, glibc, etc...
Of course those were unsupported because it's just goddamn impossible to try to support the zillions of possible combinations.
Call it a trade-off if you wish, but Loki was doing their best to comply with the GNU licenses, while still trying to make everybody's life easier on the support side of things...
Stéphane Peter
Codehost, Inc.
Come on ! What's the point in cheating at counterstrike ? To always win the game ? Auto-aim and immortality can be fun for 5 minutes, but afterwards it makes the game boring for the cheaters and unwinnable for the honnest (counter)terrorists.
Wasn't reverse engineering, or something very similar, the whole point of the GNU project? I thought they originally intended to build a Unix clone (hence "GNU's Not Unix") that could be distributed openly when the various Unix flavors that existed were all proprietary...
I wonder how they'd be treated if they tried to start that kind of project today. Would it be a DMCA violation to clone a system that was once open?
It occurred to me as I read the article how closely the events described therein mimicked the back history presented in 'BiCentenial Man'. Isn't this how robotic "life" is supposed to start, in adherence to an 'Asimovian' line of thought? Seemed eerily portentious to me. A sense of wonderment (I do not own an Aibo -yet-) and uneasiness... Anyone else get the same feelings from this?
There is simply too much glass..
You, sir, are a fucking idiot.
Timothy, Timothy, Timothy...
go back to your room. If you really want a black person that much, ask Cleo where to find one.
You are the fucking idiot...you fucking idiot.
Blymie,
Over and over again you say how your "community" depends on coersion to operate. Yet you also state you're happy about that. Since you're happy, there is no reason for coersion. The only reason for coersion is that someone is not happy with the situation and would not cooperate without being forced.
This is not a safe or stable community you live in. Anyone is able to be made a criminal by no action of their own, only the "vote" of their neighbors, or representitives they never wanted in the first place.
Since your community is based on initiating force against the people who live there, and you seem to believe this is a "good" thing, can you describe to me what argument it was that convinced you that initiating force against others was the right thing to do?
I'm also interested in why you want thieves to rob you. If you don't, then how do you reconsile defending your self while robbing others?
I can suggest some reading on the subject: Democracy, the God that Failed by Hans-Hermann Hoppe, for one.
Bob-
The Ludwig von Mises Institute. The reasoning individuals economics
You state, "What you MUST understand, is that there has to be SOME way to run the administration of communial costs."
I agree with you. Let those who use the service pay for it. As with my hospital example, I will gladly patronize those institutions that provide services to those who cannot afford it.
And those who you call thieves, who refuse to pay, are simply choosing not to use that service in the same way I don't buy a movie ticket for a movie I don't want to see.
That was easy, and no coersion used or needed.
Again, you have made no case for the benefit of using force against your neighbors, other than that projects that you approve of get funded more than you are willing to pay for them yourself. That's theft.
Bob-
The Ludwig von Mises Institute. The reasoning individuals economics
I have outlined how coersion hurts some people, which you agree with. I have also stated that a lack of coersion hurts fewer people, which you disagree with.
You believe that it is right to take care of "everyone", yet you state that your system of coersion does, in fact, hurt people. This is a contradiction. Your ends are so important to you that you use force against others to achieve them. That you admit that you fail to achieve the universally beneficial ends demonstrates the weakness of your claims.
I also believe it is right to take care of people, and I do it by not using coersion. There may very well be some individuals who "slip through the cracks", but since you state that your system hurts people also, I consider these to at least cancel each other out.
Which leaves coersion as the only difference. Your system depends on it, my community flourishes without it.
The beauty of not enforcing one answer on everyone is also that if you, or anyone, comes up with a "better way" to do something, you are free to implement it. If it's good, I'll use it to. No force required.
Bob-
The Ludwig von Mises Institute. The reasoning individuals economics