Slashback: Diebold, Cluster, Radiation

Slashback tonight brings you word on the less-spectacular-than-advertised solar storm earlier in the week, Mandrake's response (a good one) to the problems their new release had with LG brand CD drives, more Diebold madness, and more, including a lengthy rebuttal to Slashdot's review of Eclipse in Action. Read on for the details, and check your costume in the mirror before leaving the house.

Copies files in under 17 minutes, I bet. Eug writes "The latest supercomputer list (Oct. 26) has Apple/VT's G5 Power Mac cluster at 9555 Gflops/s, which puts it into third place overall. This list is hosted here. This new score is interesting for a number of reasons, besides placing them in third place:

1. It is now ahead of the 1.5 GHz Itanium 2 cluster, which is composed of 1936 CPUs and which achieves 8633 Gflops/s.
2. On a per CPU basis, the G5 2.0 is also ahead of the Itanium 2. The G5 2.0 scores 4.52 Gflops/s per CPU, while the Itanium 2 1.5 scores 4.46 Gflops/s per CPU.
3. If one extrapolates from the score of NetworX's Xeon 2.4 cluster (2304 CPUs at 7623 Tflops/s), a G5 2.0 would be as fast as a Xeon 3.28 GHz.
4. Efficiency of the G5 clusters is now at 57%, which is considerably higher than the IBM POWER4 clusters in the top twenty. (The G5 is a derivative of the POWER4.)
5. Virginia Tech's cluster is now in shouting distance of 10 Teraflops/s, and there are still a few weeks left to optimize the system. (They've gained over 2 Teraflops/s in the last 2 weeks.
6. They have utilized only 2112 CPUs (1056 dual Power Macs), despite having supposedly purchased 2200."

eGovOS 3 cancelled due to EC funding withdrawal jaruz writes "Due to the unexpected withdrawal of EC funding for the eGovOS conference from the University of Maastricht's MERIT's FLOSSPOLS EC contract, the conference is now cancelled."

I prefer conspiracy theories, myself. MyNameIsFred writes "Slashdot recently discussed White House Website Limits Iraq-Related Crawling. It turns out The Dead Parrot Society got an explanation for their behavior. They used the unprecedented approach of asking someone at the White House. White House spokesman Jimmy Orr stated the blocking of search engines is not an attempt to ensure future revisions will remain undetected. Rather, he explained, they "have an Iraq section [of the website] with a different template than the main site." Thus, for example, a press release on a meeting between President Bush and Special Envoy Bremer is available in the Iraq template (blocked from being indexed by search engines) or the normal White House template (available for indexing by search engines). The attempt, Mr. Orr said, was that when people search, they should not get multiple copies of the same information. It was also reported that the White House recently asked the The Internet Archive to do a thorough scan of everything on its website."

My dad can beat up your burst of solar radiation. Earth survives solar storm. kurth writes "A major solar flare unleashed Tuesday punished Earth's protective magnetic field early Wednesday, but the planet and its high-tech communication systems appear to have weathered the worst of the storm."

eggfellow writes "here's an article in the WashPost about the geomagnetic storm that pounded Earth (with little disruption) [Tuesday]. What I want to know is why the predicted pounding-time was 12 hours later than actual. Can't these scientist do their math?"

Sounds like a nice feature. News.OSDir.com is reporting that Mandrake is re-releasing it's 9.2 ISOs and CDs after the unfortunate LG CD drive incident earlier this week. "The problem was that the kernel would send a FLUSH_CACHE command to the LG CD-ROM drive which would make the drive inoperable by overwriting its firmware....A new kernel (2.4.22-21mdk) has been released that fixes this problem in the kernel, although the CD-ROM devices are still not up to specification. New CDs and ISOs will be available shortly to correct these problems; they will come with the new kernel."

Maybe they should stick with safes and such. The work of the Swarthmore rebels is paying dividends, (they now have 17 mirrors of the Diebold memos set up). Meanwhile Scoop is reporting how one of the memos deals with an incident in which a single memory card from a precinct of just 600 voters managed to subtract 16022 votes from Al Gore in Florida, nearly lead to his concession of presidency. You can read more about this in Bev Harris's "Black Bov Voting" Chapter11 (PDF) also available here & here."

More on the Diebold front: cananian writes "Two students at MIT (I'm one of them) received cease-and-desist letters from Diebold today for mirroring Diebold's incriminating internal memos, which reveal (among other things) -16,000 votes being credited to Gore in Florida in the 2000 presidential election, how the vote could have been rigged by changing the audit logs or creating a manager card, etc. Students at Amherst also received cease-and-desist letters today. Diebold claims we are infringing its copyrights, but there is good precedent for the legality of the publication. The EFF has in is support: "Wendy Seltzer, an attorney for the Electronic Frontier Foundation [...] encouraged them to defy the Diebold cease-and-desist letters.""

... because making text cross-platform is Unamerican. David H. Rothman writes "Convert Lit, the program that lets you crack Microsoft Reader to make backups as part of Fair Use, has moved to a Polish host to escape the tyrannies of the new EU-style DMCAism in the United Kingdom and elsewhere. Meanwhile, in the wake of a new Copyright Office ruling on the DMCA, lawyer Robin Gross at IP Justice warns not to think that the DMCA peril has passed."

But how do you really feel? In reaction to our ealier review of Eclipse in Action, wobbet writes "I've started using Eclipse at work and consistently feel that there is more sophistication and power hiding underneath the obvious and wanted a book that would help me find and fine tune the goodies under the covers. I read a previous review of this book on Slashdot that prompted my purchase. If that review had not been as positive I probably would not have been so disappointed and moved to post my own review.

When I read a technical book I ask myself how well it stays on topic, how thoroughly it addresses the topic and whether it meets my expectations. In this instance I find that the book stays on topic about half of the time and that it is thorough about half of the time. Unfortunately that half of the time I really didn't care about and thereofre my expectations were unmet. To be honest - after reading the book and then re-reading the back cover I should have not even purchased the book because the objectives set forth on the back cover would have warned me that this book was not what I was looking for.

I found the first half of the book to be simply horrible. A supposed introduction to actually using Eclipse this section concentrates more on the "Agile" toolset that all competent, well-informed Java developers that care about the quality of their code, products and development process should already be using. Well, that's what all the books say anyway.

If I wanted a book on Agile tools for Java developers I would purchase Java Tools For Extreme Programming . Is it a great book? No, but it is honest about what it is - a survey of tools. Despite what Mr. Chappell says about Eclipse In Action, I did not find the authors' "...TDD evangelism, skillfully disguised as Eclipse usage instruction. ." Instead I found the first half of the book to be TDD Evangelism thinly disguised as poor Eclipse usage instructions. I did not learn a single thing about USING Eclipse that I hadn't already figured out from randomly selecting menu items over the past two months.

The second half of the book seemed to be a decent introduction to the development of Eclipse plug-ins. If I cared I probably would have found it interesting in its discussion of the API, the perspectives, views and even editors. Those of you that do care may find the second half of the book to be worth skipping the first half of the book."

Comments

Sweet acceleration!

[Anonymous Coward]

The latest supercomputer list (Oct. 26) has Apple/VT's G5 Power Mac cluster at 9555 Gflops/s, which puts it into third place overall.

It won't be stuck at third long; if the cluster speed is increasing by 9555 Gflops every second, then in a few seconds it should be in first!

Yes, hearing the phrase "knots per hour" turns me into an ass too.

Re:Sweet acceleration!

[renehollan]

Yes, hearing the phrase "knots per hour" turns me into an ass too.

So, hearing "knots per hour squared" turns you into a jerk? (For the physics impaired: jerk is the third derivative of motion with respect to time, so units of velocity per time squared are units of jerk.)

Knots per hour sounds like a perfectly good unit of acceleration to me (and probably appropriate for vessels like supertankers).

Re:Sweet acceleration!

[Peter Cooper]

I'm a physics dummy. What use do these 'jerk' units have in the field?

Re:Sweet acceleration!

[cookd]

Regarding knots, mips, flops, and a lot of other things: yes, you are correct. Technically, these units already include the "per (unit of time)". However, it is an easy rule to forget, due to the fact that the units in question break standard usage rules in the first place. While two wrongs don't make a right (but three lefts do), two wrongs seem reduce the shame of the second wrong.

In the case of knots, the same unit (knot) is used for distance and speed. You tell me how that isn't screwball to begin with. Even though knots is a valid measure of distance, the convention is to use "knots" instead of "knots per hour" since it is also used for speed. So those who make the mistake either don't know this irregularity of usage, or have a conflict between the regular use of units (follow "distance" with "per (unit of time)" to turn it into speed) and the convention for usage of the word "knot".

Mips and flops -- they are plural. Removing the "s" technically leaves you with "millions of instructions per" but we're more accustomed to situations where removing the "s" makes the plural into a singular. So it is easy to forget, since the trailing "s" doesn't mean what it usually means in English usage.

Re:Sweet acceleration!

[yerricde]

if the cluster speed is increasing by 9555 Gflops every second

Give the OP a break. Some claim that "Gflops" can be decomposed either as Giga FLoating-point OPerationS, or as Giga FLoating-point OPerations per Second. It seems to be what the OO types call an "overloaded" name.

Re:Sweet acceleration!

[renehollan]

hat use do these 'jerk' units have in the field?

Well, I'm more of a computer nerd than a physics junky (though I can handle the Special and General theories of Relativity fairly well), but let me try to contemplate a possible use.

Accelerating objects experience a force against the direction of the acceleration vector. I can imagine transverse structural members in an assembly (read: "rocket ship") having limits to how fast lateral (from their reference frame) force changes can be accomodated. Thus, they'd have "jerk" limits.

Perhaps some mechanical engineering types might have a better answer. All I know is that the third derivative of motion w.r.t. time is called "jerk".

Re:Sweet acceleration!

[renehollan]

I should have googled before I speculated. A Google search on "acceleration jerk" yields this

So, my speculation about aerospace ties were correct.

Re:Sweet acceleration!

[Anonymous Coward]

No, it's what compiler writers call am ambiguous grammar.

Kids. They think the world began when C++ was invented.

Re:Sweet acceleration!

[arodland]

My calculus textbook told me "Jerk is what spills your soda." It's true on so many levels. :)

Re:Sweet acceleration!

[Artifakt]

Medically, some forms of injury, such as spinal cord damage and that percent of ballistic injuries where the bullet lodges in bone rather than passing entirely through the victim seem to be more accurately related to Jerk than to other measurements or derivations, such as G's acceleration or projectile KE. It may also apply to 'whiplash' injuries and just possibly how varying high accelerations cause nausea.

Re:Sweet acceleration!

[FeriteCore]

Usage probably varies with locale and time, but where I come from using knot as a unit of distance earns the same sort of look as "knots per hour" for velocity.

We just tend to say mile and assume you know which one we are talking about this time.

Re:Sweet acceleration!

[Anonymous Coward]

make that 'mechanical engineering-impaired' - physics does not use names for derivatives higher than 2. comes from the need of keeping the equations somehow in check.

Re:Sweet acceleration!

[Anonymous Coward]

We use a 'jerk' parameter in industrial controls to provide a smooth speed reference to a large machine. Typically, when an operator puts the machine into run mode, the reference switches from zero speed to full run speed, and a RAMP function is used to gradually increase the output from zero to full reference. Specifying a maximum jerk rate (= rate of change of acceleration) makes this profile look like an 'S' curve.

Re:Sweet acceleration!

[paxil]

Accelerating objects experience a force against the direction of the acceleration vector. I can imagine transverse structural members in an assembly (read: "rocket ship") having limits to how fast lateral (from their reference frame) force changes can be accomodated. Thus, they'd have "jerk" limits.

Um, actually they do not. You are correct that your hypothetical rocket could be torn apart, but it doesn't have anything to do with a force "against the direction of acceleration." There is no such force. I think you got confused because you are thinking in terms of the non-inertial reference frame of the rocket.

A slinky with a string tied to one end can serve as a model for your hypothetical rocket. Jerk the string hard enough and you can break the slinky, but there is no force pulling any part of the slinky in the other direction.

What is really going on is that you have an object which is not perfectly rigid so it temporarily stores some of the energy you have provided with your jerk. It takes a while for the momentum (speed * mass) to "flow" from one end of the slinky to the other. If the energy density from storing this "flow" is too large, well, then you have breakage.

Keep in mind that momentum is conserved, just like energy. Of course, some of the energy you applied with your string can become heat energy rather than kinetic energy, but the momentum has nowhere else to go.

Now, if this reminds you a bit of basic electronics, you are on the right track: in both case you have some conserved "stuff" (charge in one case, momentum in the other) and a "potential" (voltage on one case, force in the other) which can move your "stuff" around, subject to certain rules.

It is no coincidence that the same equations which work for electronics work for this mechanical stuff.

Give yourself extra-credit if you can reason out which circuit element is analgous to the slinky. is it a resistor, capacitor, or inductor?

You get an "A" if you can explain how a see-saw is equivilant to an electrical transformer.

A+ if you can describe how the see-saw/transformer are two coupled transducers, and describe the flowing "stuff" and "potential" in each case, and which domains the transducers operate in.

Hey, it's for nerds, right?

Oh, IANAL.

Re:Sweet acceleration!

[Anonymous Coward]

Medically, some forms of injury, such as spinal cord damage and that percent of ballistic injuries where the bullet lodges in bone rather than passing entirely through the victim seem to be more accurately related to Jerk than to other measurements or derivations, such as G's acceleration or projectile KE. It may also apply to 'whiplash' injuries and just possibly how varying high accelerations cause nausea.


Not in my experience. Of course, I only see the live ones, I don't know anything about the ones who are already dead when EMS gets there.

I have seen plenty of young men with spinal cord injury secondary to a gun shot wound (GSW). In every case it was pretty straight forward: bullet or bone fragments entered the thecal space and did
direct damage to the cord. Game over. next stop rehab hospital and life in a wheelchair.

Seen quite a few too where the bullet ended up embeded in a vertebrae, with no compromise of the canal. I tell these folk "you are one lucky mother fucker!"

The hospital I am most familliar with sees about 1000 penetrating traumas a year, most of those are GSWs.

at least in this urban setting, "jerk" and "G's" are almost never a factor with penetrating trauma.
We also do not routinely see "cavitaion" effects, as most people shot in the city are shot with handguns. about two thirds of the time there is no exit wound.

I have seen folk die from a GSW to the knee, and seen others walk away two days after a point-blank shot to the chest. The common factor is that if the missle hits important structures, you are in deep shit. There are really only two ways to die from a gun: you either bleed out, or die from infection .

Now motion sicknes is pretty well understood.

Re:Sweet acceleration!

[jerde]

You get an "A" if you can explain how a see-saw is equivilant to an electrical transformer

Here's an attempt:

Consider a see-saw with one side twice as long as the other, measured from the fulcrum. The load on the short end of the see-saw is twice as massive as the load on the long end, and the see-saw balances. Motion of either load causes the other to move, such that the lighter mass moves twice as far as the heavy one.

The analogy, I believe, is that the mass of the loads would be the electric pressure, or voltage. The distance moved would be the amount of electric current, or amperage. The long side of the see-saw has half as many transformer windings as the other side, and thus a large current of small voltage on that side induces a smaller current of a larger voltage on the other side.

Or maybe that analogy sucks, and it would make more sense intuitively if you used mass=current, height=voltage? Then the long side would be the more-windings side.

But the basic idea is right, yes?

I am not familiar, though, with "coupled transducers" and domains... can you explain?

- Peter

Re:Sweet acceleration!

[Anonymous Coward]

Hmm... when I was taking UG Physics classes it was mentioned as being "impulse" or "shock", but "jerk" is just as descriptive, I suppose. i.e., the "rate of accelleration" (i.e., how much accelleration is changing per unit time).

3rd-derivative motion isn't talked about much in undergrad physics classes...

But it does apply definitely for vibration analysis, vehicle safety engineering, etc...

Re:Sweet acceleration!

[nomel]

say, maybe something falling from space (or going into space). Jerk is the derivative of acceleration, so, the rate of change of accereration. As you increase the distance between two massive bodies, the gravitational force gets reduced, so, the acceleration that one causes the other would decrease. So, if your trying to launch a spaceship, or keep a satellite up or something, I'm sure it comes in handy :)

g = G*M1*M2/R

Re:Sweet acceleration!

[nomel]

(covering my arse)
launch a spaceship into orbit btw :)

Re:Sweet acceleration!

[mpoulton]

"Hmm... when I was taking UG Physics classes it was mentioned as being "impulse" or "shock""

"Shock" maybe, but "impulse" is a completely different, well-defined physics term -- force*time. If it can't be expressed in newton-seconds, no physics professor (or even high school teacher) should ever be caught calling it impulse. Jerk is also well-defined as both acceleration/time and force/time -- it's in the texts, it just doesn't get used much by physicists. Mechanical engineers use the force/time version of jerk quite a bit -- rate of loading is very important in most mechanical systems.

Re:Sweet acceleration!

[paxil]

Consider a see-saw with one side twice as long as the other, measured from the fulcrum. The load on the short end of the see-saw is twice as massive as the load on the long end, and the see-saw balances. Motion of either load causes the other to move, such that the lighter mass moves twice as far as the heavy one.

The analogy, I believe, is that the mass of the loads would be the electric pressure, or voltage. The distance moved would be the amount of electric current, or amperage. The long side of the see-saw has half as many transformer windings as the other side, and thus a large current of small voltage on that side induces a smaller current of a larger voltage on the other side.

You are on the right track, but not quite there yet. see below.

Or maybe that analogy sucks, and it would make more sense intuitively if you used mass=current, height=voltage? Then the long side would be the more-windings side.

You are getting closer here. One of the most important points is that the "stuff" which is "flowing" must be conserved (in the physics sense). Think of electronics here: current is a "flow" of charge, and charge is conserved. Think about it for a minute and you will see how this conservation of charge leeds directly to the nodal equations for current in a circuit. Whatever you pick to "flow" in the see-saw example must be conserved if you want to use the same equations.
For example, using a hydraulic analogy, mass is conserved, so the sum of flows into a junction of pipes must equal zero. In the hydraulic example, mass=charge, mass flow=current.

Also, whatever is providing the force to drive your "stuff" must meet the definition of a "potential." I don't want to go into that now, but their is a fairly rigorous definition of what a "potential" is and voltage meets that definition. Whatever you pick as providing the force to drive your "stuff" in the see-saw analogy must meet be a "potential" if you want to use the same equations.

But the basic idea is right, yes?

Yes, getting there.

I am not familiar, though, with "coupled transducers" and domains... can you explain?

Sure, I will start.
First, think of a "transducer."
Probably the one most people are familliar with is a loudspeaker. You put electrical energy in one side of the speaker and and acoustic (kinetic) energy comes out the other end. What is really going on? You have a "flow" of one sort of "stuff" (charge) going in one end, and a "flow" of some other conserved "stuff" coming out the other end. In the process you have converted energy from one "domain" to another (electrical to kinetic). I don't want to give too much away here. Now, one can run the loudspeaker in reverse and convert kinetic energy into electrical energy (think microphone). this is a general property of "transducers." Two loudspeakers pointed at each other are an example of coupled transducers. You can put electricity into one speaker and get it out of the other, maybe not very efficiently, but one can imagine tweaking the number of windings, etc, and having something which behaves like a very inefficient trasformer.

This transformer built out of speakers is actually very similar to one built the conventional way: they are both examples of "coupled transducers," only the "domain" in the middle is differant.

More apropos to the see-saw analogy, one may think of a wrench as a trasducer. Think about what goes on when you tighten a bolt with a wrench. Think about having a second wrench on the other side of the bolt. Think about what is conserved and what is "flowing."

Multiple copies?

[wrinkledshirt]

The attempt, Mr. Orr said, was that when people search, they should not get multiple copies of the same information.

Or, more likely, not get multiple answers to the same questions.

Like, for instance, "Why did the U.S. attack Iraq?"

Re:Multiple copies?

[Anonymous Coward]

On Slashdot, we will multiple instances of the same posts.

I guess what I'm trying to say is SHUT THE FUCK UP! WE HAVE HEARD THIS SHIT ALREADY!

Re:Multiple copies?

[Anonymous Coward]

Or, more likely, not get multiple answers to the same questions.

Like, for instance, "Why did the U.S. attack Iraq?"

Is there only one answer?

Re:Multiple copies?

[Anonymous Coward]

That should have been

On Slashdot, we will see multiple instances of the same posts.

Sorry about that.

Re:Multiple copies?

[lordDogma]

Amen! Put those America-hating, dope-smoking, Saddam-apologizing, pimple-faced, paranoid libbies where they belong!

Re:Multiple copies?

[Anonymous Coward]

LOL, are you serious? when did saddam do any terrorism against my country?

Re:Multiple copies?

[Anonymous Coward]

or, Theft Of Oil

Re:Multiple copies?

[Anonymous Coward]

That's the point. He didn't, but he was going to. It's like when you start killing people on the street because you think they might have a knife and might stab you. Preventitive action my friend. Gotta stay safe.

Re:Multiple copies?

[h4x0r-3l337]

In power?

Re:Multiple copies?

[Anonymous Coward]

Or, more likely, not get multiple answers to the same questions.

Like, for instance, "Why did the U.S. attack Iraq?"

Yeah, because it's clearly impossible for an action to be motivated by more than one reason.

Re:Multiple copies?

[caseydk]

Uh... there have always been the "noindex" rules on all of the Whitehouse's pages.

It has been this way since I thought to check it (Summer 2000)... and it probably started much sooner than that. I think the point of it is to NOT archive speeches, press releases, etc anywhere but the places that they go out to and/or Presidential Libraries.

Re:Multiple copies?

[Anonymous Coward]

good, one. lets attack everyone else then. seriously stop watching fox news, saddam was never a threat, even the CIA and MI6 have stated this.

I was trying to write a paper for school

[painfall]

But then the sun shot this big solar flare and my computer was like BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP!

The sun ate my paper.

It was like, a bummer.

Re:I was trying to write a paper for school

[crazysim]

Like I say, Never Trust EMachines to anything!

Re:I was trying to write a paper for school

[SheldonYoung]

I wanted to shoot a solar flare into the Sun after it started going BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP after I cat(1)'d my paper to the console. All those CTRL-Gs in the file made the machine completely unresponsive and beep incesently. After 15 minutes I just couldn't take it any more.

Annoyed as hell and not wanting to take down the machine the hard way I did what every network admin fears a user will do; I found a screw driver. With pleasure and resourcefulness I opened the case and cut the wires to the speaker. That'll fix it I though! Except it didn't.

I learned something that day. Sun machines beep using a buzzer in the keyboard.

Re:I was trying to write a paper for school

[ces]

My Sun workstation rarely eats papers, my Windows box on the other hand ...

LG stuff

[Espectr0]

Can anyone tell me why is the FLUSH_CACHE command being sent anyway? This is a mandrake-only issue.

I can not even think what would have happened if windows xp did this thing.

Re:LG stuff

[Anonymous Coward]

Can anyone tell me why is the FLUSH_CACHE command being sent anyway? This is a mandrake-only issue. I can not even think what would have happened if windows xp did this thing.

You'd be doing people a favor, LD drives stink!

Re:LG stuff

[bconway]

This is most definitely not a Mandrake-only issue. I managed to torch a crappy LG drive on a non-Mandrake system using the same (or similar) BitKeeper pull that they used in their kernel. It's too bad it made it into the final release, though.

Re:LG stuff

[SiliconBateman]

Yes. It is because LG are non-ATAPI compliant for some drives and use the (rare) FLUSH_CACHE command to update firmware. Purely a LG problem but embarassing for LG not to spot it.

Re:LG stuff

[Akai]

I believe the code was part of detection routine to see if the drives supported writing (packet based writing specifically).

If the drive doesn't it should either say so or return an error state (unsure what the spec is) but it should dump it's firmware.

It sounds like LG was either lazy and reused what they thought were unused ATAPI commands for flash upgrades, or released buggy code.

Re:LG stuff

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, apparently LG DID spot it, just neglected to mention it - otherwise why would some LG-released firmware upgrades prior to Mandrake users noticing the problem actually fix the issue? Pretty suspicious if you ask me...

Re:LG stuff

[Knights who say 'INT]

Mandrake should make clear what component of their distro causes the LG problem, so one can check other Linux distros (sp. relatively unknown ones) before permanently damaging one's hardware.

Now, really. Big Fusses are made over the smallest security issues in Windows - it's just sad that something serious as this is hushed down.

Re:LG stuff

[bhtooefr]

Since ATAPI dates back VERY far, I doubt that FLUSH_CACHE would even be recognized by an old CD-ROM (WHAT CD-R drive?). Error out with it saying unused command, probably.

Re:LG stuff

[Anonymous Coward]

Mandrake should make clear what component of their distro causes the LG problem

No component of Mandrake's distro causes the LG problem. LG's broken firmware causes the problem.

Now, really. Big Fusses are made over the smallest security issues in Windows

This is not a security issue.

- it's just sad that something serious as this is hushed down.

It isn't "hushed", we're discussing it. While it is unsatisfying to the MS fanboys of the world, the fact is that the LG CDROM drives are defective because they are not ATAPI compliant. Even so, Mandrake is =still= providing a workaround for this defect.

The only thing that is correct in your post is the observation that it is a serious problem. LG drive owners deserve an answer and a refund from the manufacturer.

Re:LG stuff

[Knights who say 'INT]

People use sub-par nonstandard tienda-de-descuentos el-cheapo xing-ling put-together-with-nose-bugger hardware. Period. Hardware is expensive for those of us not living in alice's-wonderland-with-7%-GDP-growth-in-one-semes ter.
Americans often lose all notion of how much poorer the rest of the world is.

You either put up with that and write safe software for sub-par nonstandard tienda-de-descuentos hardware, or you create clear specifications of what kind of system you must have for Linux to even work.

(By the way, am I the only one annoyed by the fact that even the modern-est Linux distros only support 10% of the ethernet cards supported by Win95?)

There were industry-wide Multimedia PC specs for a while - MPC1, MPC2, MPC3. That kind of standardisation makes life easier for the computer buyer. Perhaps someone should come up with Linux Hardware Specifications (in two or three levels, low-end, desktop and high-end). That way, anyone could go to their local tienda-de-descuentos el-cheapo xing-ling computer assembler and ask for a Linux Computer, level two.

That said, just imagine what Slashdot'd be saying if this problem happened with a M$ release.

Re:LG stuff

[Anonymous Coward]

This is NOT a Mandrake only issue.

Over a month ago, installations of Gentoo and America's Army both caused the exact same problem; as far as I know, no exact cause was found (I'll research Bugzilla to see if it was closed).

I'll bet dollars against a stale doughnut that this is the root cause.

Re:LG stuff

[Anonymous Coward]

Ok, I'll bite, just to keep people from getting confused. The problem is LG, whose firmware doesn't at all work according to standard. The flush cache command is in the atapi standard, but it is optional. i.e. you can either have firmware supporting the flush command, or you can have your firmware return an error, or do nothing, when the command is issued. You most certainly can't do what LG did, and use the flush cache command as a signal to fry the firmware. LG has been acting plain stupid here, and their behaviour deterred me from ever buying any of their hardware again. Linux hardware specifications are completely unneccesary as long as manufacturers manage to stick with established standards.

Re:LG stuff

[Knights who say 'INT]

Does _any_ version of Windows cause this?

Let me guess. No.

Re:LG stuff

[AKnightCowboy]

(By the way, am I the only one annoyed by the fact that even the modern-est Linux distros only support 10% of the ethernet cards supported by Win95?)

3com 3c905c, check.
Intel EtherExpress Pro, check
El Cheapo Realtek cards, check

A NIC is seriously one of the cheapest pieces of hardware for a computer these days. I got a Realtek card for free from Microcenter after a $10 mail in rebate. It works great with Linux. Why is this such a huge issue to you? Don't buy crappy unknown network cards and you're fine.

Re:LG stuff

[geekoid]

UM, there is a standard, LG violated it.

oh, I haven't seen a network card that wouldn't work in linux for at least 3 years. Now, I don't go around testing network cards, But I have installed some pretty cheap ones.

and 90% would be a closer number.

But, You got an unsupported network card you want to use, fine, write a driver. Organize a website to get developers to write an Open Source one.
or, pay someone to write one for you.
If its just you, you probably don't want to pay, since it would be more expensive then getting a 10 dollar network card.

see, freedom.

Re:LG stuff

[_Sprocket_]

Does _any_ version of Windows cause this?

Wait for the first Windows worm that pushes this command on to the IDE bus. You don't need a CDROM drive to propagate. Destroying hardware in this case would do nothing to slow down the spread of such a malicious worm.

Re:LG stuff

[Un pobre guey]

$5 Netgear cards, check.

Re:LG stuff

[Knights who say 'INT]

You know, it's funny.

Organize a website to get developers to write an Open Source one.

Let me get something straight here. People. Are. Just. Not. Gonna. Bother . I have more of an interest in trying out Linux than most of the desktop users out there. I dual booted into Red Hat 5 for a long while, basically because I liked messing around in it - and Quake ran great - and always ended up deleting the partition to free HD space, always in scarcity.

I'm running enough open source software by now that it'd be painless to switch to Linux. It's a bit more powerful and configureable, and I'd be somewhat happier running Linux. But I really have a life besides my computer, and I'm not gonna bother hacking up a driver or starting a whole community around it.

And I'm not gonna bother deciphering meant-for-engineers technical docs to see if my CD-ROM drive has some quirky use for some dandy non-mandatory ATAPI instruction. If random distros of Linux (and it's not just Mandrake, read up the comments) are frying random popular cd-rom drives, I'm just not gonna bother.

I got my NIC for free when I joined my broadband provider, and I'm just not gonna bother searching hardware stores to see if they have some Linux-compatible NIC. It either runs on what I have, or I ignore it.

And most users are even less interested in Linux than I have. I happen to have a particular taste for computers and programming and geek culture. Most economists - high-level professionals who've gone through heavy scientific and mathematical training - care even less.

Cluetrain arriving: people just don't organize their lives around Linux.

Sheeesh, some people...

Re:LG stuff

[_Sprocket_]

You either put up with that and write safe software for sub-par nonstandard tienda-de-descuentos hardware, or you create clear specifications of what kind of system you must have for Linux to even work.

Or when you put out a piece of hardware and claim its a Widget that meets a certain spec - it should meet that spec. If you can't trust a manufactorer to do so, its a good bet that one should avoid them.

I'm all for making use of cheap hardware when needed. Heck - sometimes that's part of the fun. Part of the challenge of doing so is finding out what cheap hardware delivers and what is one step away from a scam. Thank the Internet for providing a medium where like-minded people can share notes.

(By the way, am I the only one annoyed by the fact that even the modern-est Linux distros only support 10% of the ethernet cards supported by Win95?)

Welcome to the wonders of commodity hardware. Just because you get a component in-hand, doesn't mean you get the drivers you need. That goes for Windows as well as Linux. Pissed off that you didn't get your driver? Do your homework next time or bitch at the manufactorer.

For me - I tend to grab inexpensive (outright cheap) NICs based on Realtek's chipsets. Work fine. In fact, I just built a box with a RTL-8139/8139C/8139C+ based NIC.

There were industry-wide Multimedia PC specs for a while - MPC1, MPC2, MPC3.

...

That way, anyone could go to their local tienda-de-descuentos el-cheapo xing-ling computer assembler and ask for a Linux Computer, level two.

Where are these standards now? What you're talking about is a pre-built box running Linux. I agree - for most people, that's the only way they'll be able to get in to Linux. Heck... its the only way they get in to Windows. You likely have a better chance to get a box built to run Linux from your local whitbox screwdriver shop than your favorite local consumer electronics outfit pushing big-name kit.

That said, just imagine what Slashdot'd be saying if this problem happened with a M$ release.

Sure. You'll get some trolling and FUD going with Linux zealots ingoring the issue for a chance to bash Microsoft. Just like you've got Windows zealots doing now.

Re:LG stuff

[_Sprocket_]

And I'm not gonna bother deciphering meant-for-engineers technical docs to see if my CD-ROM drive has some quirky use for some dandy non-mandatory ATAPI instruction. If random distros of Linux (and it's not just Mandrake, read up the comments) are frying random popular cd-rom drives, I'm just not gonna bother.

Let's make it simple then. "LG drives are defective". Pretty simple.

I got my NIC for free when I joined my broadband provider, and I'm just not gonna bother searching hardware stores to see if they have some Linux-compatible NIC. It either runs on what I have, or I ignore it.

My new MB includes two network interfaces. Getting the brand-new chipsets working on my Linux workstation would require either patching my current kernel, running the newest unstable branch, or trying to figure out why the suplied proprietary kernel wouldn't work (btw - I dual booted too until I erased Windows to make space). I didn't want to take the time so I blew $9 US on a NIC that works fine and will be reused later on once I migrate to a kernel that suports it.

And most users are even less interested in Linux than I have. I happen to have a particular taste for computers and programming and geek culture. Most economists - high-level professionals who've gone through heavy scientific and mathematical training - care even less.

These people buy pre-built machines. If they want it running Linux, they'll likely buy one with it pre-built and pre-installed.

Cluetrain arriving: people just don't organize their lives around Linux.

Apparently you don't have the right ticket. Here's a hint: "people" don't organize their lives around any OS - Windows included.

Re:LG stuff

[Anonymous Coward]

Really? How about LG drives, you cock-smoking teabagger?

Re:LG stuff

[monkeyfinger]

what's a teabagger? That's an insult I haven't heard yet.

Re:LG stuff

[gregfortune]

8 different $2 cards out of a beat up box at an army surplus store, check.

Seriously, someone found an ethernet card that Linux *doesn't* support?

Re:LG stuff

[Anonymous Coward]

What a surprise, a slashdotter doesn't get a sexual reference. Teabagging - the act of sucking on balls, "dunking the bag" so to speak.

Re:LG stuff

[pseudochaotic]

Hushed down? It was on the front page of Slashdot, multiple times.

Re:LG stuff

[Anonymous Coward]

"Welcome to Dell. If you need to RMA 350 CDRs, press 1."

Re:LG stuff

[Dahan]

I believe the code was part of detection routine to see if the drives supported writing (packet based writing specifically).

No, take a look at the source code (this is Linux we're talking about here; source is easy to get :)--look for the callers of pkt_flush_cache() in drivers/block/pktcdvd.c and you'll see that FLUSH CACHE is issued to flush all pending writes when the CD device is closed. Unfortunately, it's being called even if the drive doesn't support writing.

I'm curious why people think it was used to detect whether a drive supported writing or not; I've seen that same speculation from a few other people. Perhaps leonbrooks's highly-scored post is the source of this misinformation? (And I still don't see why he continues to think that something needs to be done to enable packet writing on a read-only CD-ROM drive... Oh well, I guess for him, Mandrake can do no wrong).

Re:LG stuff

[Anonymous Coward]

That said, just imagine what Slashdot'd be saying if this problem happened with a M$ release.

I'd lay a small wager we find out within the week.

Re:LG stuff

[monkeyfinger]

thanks.

Re:LG stuff

[frost22]

Seriously, someone found an ethernet card that Linux *doesn't* support?

Intel EtherExpress Pro Intelligent Server Adapter. (that are those with an i960 on board)

That was a major hurdle in a project where we tried to convert a bunch of Windows servers to Linux. I still have a box full of these standing around jusrt in case a windows guy needs one. And they were f** expensive, too.

(Yes, I know, there's "experimental" support for this thing floating around at SuSE. No, back when we tested that, it didn't work)

Re:LG stuff

[You're All Wrong]

"""
I can not even think what would have happened if windows xp did this thing
"""

What do you mean?

The _error_ is in LG's drives. Mandrake doesn't _do_ anything (out of ATAPI spec), it's LG that interprets a valid ATAPI command as some kind of "self destruct".

So XP couldn't _do_ this thing, as the _doing_ is in the LG firmware.

YAW.

Fox News Didn't Consider Suing the Simpsons

[Pave Low]

Here's a follow up on this non-story.

Matt Groening says he was only joking about Fox News suing the Simpsons.

So it was a story that was completely made up by one person, and all the lefty blogs were up in arms over it.

Where are the slashdotters complaining that Fox News was thin-skinned, censoring or plain evil now? Hopefully you would think they'd be man enough to apologize and admit they were wrong.

Re:Fox News Didn't Consider Suing the Simpsons

[Anonymous Coward]

Where are the slashdotters complaining that Fox News was thin-skinned, censoring or plain evil now? Hopefully you would think they'd be man enough to apologize and admit they were wrong.

Oh that's right, they are fair and balanced!

Re:Fox News Didn't Consider Suing the Simpsons

[Anonymous Coward]

i, for one, welcome our new fox news lawsuit overlords.

Re:Fox News Didn't Consider Suing the Simpsons

[Anonymous Coward]

Because Fox made it clear to them that they didn't appreciate the bad press?

Re:Fox News Didn't Consider Suing the Simpsons

[MBCook]

Where are the slashdotters complaining that Fox News was thin-skinned, censoring or plain evil now? Hopefully you would think they'd be man enough to apologize and admit they were wrong.

You MUST be new here if you think this "apology" concept of yours might happen. In fact, since so few /.ers probably know that term, here is the dictionary definition of that word.

Re:Fox News Didn't Consider Suing the Simpsons

[DAldredge]

Well, Fox News DID sue over the use of the words "Fair and Balanced"...

Re:Fox News Didn't Consider Suing the Simpsons

[Soong]

Where are the slashdotters complaining that Fox News was thin-skinned, censoring or plain evil now? Hopefully you would think they'd be man enough to apologize and admit they were wrong.

No, we still think Faux News is slanted, biased, spinning out of control, disgustingly sensationalist, and generally full of lies.

Re:Fox News Didn't Consider Suing the Simpsons

[kaltkalt]

If you read the article, it's not that clear that the entire thing was Matt Groening making a joke.

Fox News, however, denies reports that they ever threatened to sue. "We were all scratching our heads and thought it was hysterical," [Fox News] spokesman Rob Zimmerman told us yesterday. "It's not the first time we've been spoofed, you know."

Maybe not, but Groening told Gross during the interview that ". . . Now Fox has a new rule that we can't do those little fake news crawls on the bottom of the screen in a cartoon because it might confuse the viewers into thinking it's real news."

Nonetheless "The Simpsons" (the show, not the characters) issued an apology yesterday: "Matt was being satirical and certainly there was never any issue between the show and Fox News. We regret any confusion."

Matt G. never quite came out and said he made the whole story up. it sounds like fox told him to say there was no issue since they decided not to sue.

Fox: We won't sue, but you gotta come out and say there was never any dispute between us.

MG: Oh, fine, whatever.

So Matt says "I was being satirical." Whatever that means. I don't take it to mean that fox news never got pissed/threatened to sue over that episode of the simpsons.

Re:Fox News Didn't Consider Suing the Simpsons

[Anonymous Coward]

I am dtorry-CHB

Re:Fox News Didn't Consider Suing the Simpsons

[_xeno_]

Actually, Matt Groening has a very "straight" approach to telling jokes. If you listen to the audio commentary, you can hear him telling jokes in a very "normal" manor. He'll say absolutely rediculous things with a completely straight face, and if it weren't insane and on an audio commentary, you might not realize he was joking.

I can entirely believe that Groening would say, with a completely straight face: "Fox fought against it and said that they would sue the show. ... And we called their bluff because we didn't think that Rupert Murdoch would pay for Fox to sue itself." I could imagine him saying that in such a fasion that people not looking for the satire would take it seriously.

You can see this in the Simpsons and Futurama too - there are a lot of visual gags that are just there, with nothing calling attention to them. If you were stupid enough to assume the animation was "real" you might miss that they're actually a joke. I can completely believe that Matt Groening was relating a story about being yelled at for mocking Fox News, and that people thought he was serious.

What I imagine really happened is that some humorless executive somewhere flagged the ticker as potentially "harmful" or something and created a big stink, and that Groening's story is based on that. Afterwards, there may or may not have been a policy against faking tickers, to satisfy this executive who is certain that it's confusing people. But who knows, I'm just guessing. But it seems that is most likely what happened.

Re:Fox News Didn't Consider Suing the Simpsons

[1010011010]

So, it's like CNN, but not as bad as local news.

Re:Fox News Didn't Consider Suing the Simpsons

[Anonymous Coward]

That's fine. But I fail to see how CNN or the NY Times are any different. Faux slanted biased spinning out of control disgustingly sensationalist full of lies news. They're all guilty, whether they are left OR right leaning.

Re:Fox News Didn't Consider Suing the Simpsons

[Anonymous Coward]

Can't you left/right drones take your petty little name calling elsewhere? Neither side apologizes when they're wrong and I'm getting sick of hearing you sheep feign righteous indignation whenever the other side makes a mistake, as if you never make mistakes and have only ever been right, just, and true.

Right? Left? None of this matters. What matters is: YOU'RE WRONG.

Re:Fox News Didn't Consider Suing the Simpsons

[cgranade]

I'll put it this way: whether or not this story was made up, what matters is that, a) we were gullible enough to believe it, and that b) it makes sense for that to have happened, considering Faux's prior lawsuits, ala Al Franken.

Re:Fox News Didn't Consider Suing the Simpsons

[linzeal]

I wanted to thank you for exposing me to the WAB book. As a future educator it has brought up some intresting and telling conversations with other Teacher Assistants.

Re:Fox News Didn't Consider Suing the Simpsons

[docbob]

As opposed to CNN or MSNBC "which are slanted, biased, spinning out of control, disgustingly sensationalist, and generally full of lies." You get it from the right or the left.

Re:Fox News Didn't Consider Suing the Simpsons

[Anonymous Coward]

I for one apologize to and welcome or fox news overlords.

Re:Fox News Didn't Consider Suing the Simpsons

[Cornelius Chesterfie]

"Matt Groening says he was only joking about Fox News suing the Simpsons. So it was a story that was completely made up by one person, and all the lefty blogs were up in arms over it. Where are the slashdotters complaining that Fox News was thin-skinned, censoring or plain evil now?"

Nice try. Too bad for you I RTFA you linked. NOWHERE does Groening go back on his words. The closest thing to that is the Fox News suit denying it (ya, no shit).

So lemme get this straight:
Step 1: Be a rightwing jerk.
Step 2: Read a Slashdot story that exposes THE main pillar of the rightwing media as the morons that they are.
Step 3: Get annoyed.
Step 4: Link to article that doesn't invalidate the step 2 story in any way, with a hint of triumph in your tone.
Step 5: ???
Step 6: You win the argument. Hooray!

Re:Fox News Didn't Consider Suing the Simpsons

[Anonymous Coward]

CNN and MSNBC are left?
*scratches head*

Re:Fox News Didn't Consider Suing the Simpsons

[pipingguy]

I can completely believe that Matt Groening was relating a story about being yelled at for mocking Fox News, and that people thought he was serious.

And given The Simpsons' history of ridiculing (note to illiterate slashdotters: there is only one "e" in the word, "ridicule") the FOX network I can't see how anyone would take seriously anything that MG says. Maybe he and The Simpsons should be forced to implement a laugh track to placate the humourless.

Re:Fox News Didn't Consider Suing the Simpsons

[Pave Low]

Wow, are you really that dense or just blinded by hatred?

From the article: "Matt was being satirical and certainly there was never any issue between the show and Fox News. We regret any confusion."

Step 1: Be a rightwing jerk.

How am I being a jerk by pointing out the truth?

Step 2: Read a Slashdot story that exposes THE main pillar of the rightwing media as the morons that they are.

Yes, we should take all slashdot stories as almighty truth without any question.

Step 3: Get annoyed.

You're right, I do get annoyed by idiotic slashbots like yourself

Step 4: Link to article that doesn't invalidate the step 2 story in any way, with a hint of triumph in your tone.

It did invalidate it, when someone says they're being satirical and "there was never any issue", how do you still make an issue out of it? BTW, the original story was pretty flimsy anyways. One man says Fox News was considering suing. So this rightwing media is a moron for NOT doing something?

Step 6: You win the argument. Hooray!

Yes, if the truth is winning the argument, then I did. I'm sorry you just can't accept it, and cling on to some fantasy just to reinforce your own biases.

Re:Fox News Didn't Consider Suing the Simpsons

[Linux_ho]

Here's a follow up on this non-story.

Matt Groening says he was only joking about Fox News suing the Simpsons.

So it was a story that was completely made up by one person, and all the lefty blogs were up in arms over it.

Where are the slashdotters complaining that Fox News was thin-skinned, censoring or plain evil now? Hopefully you would think they'd be man enough to apologize and admit they were wrong.

Well, like most Simpsons jokes, just because Mr. Groening was joking doesn't mean his point wasn't right on target. Fox IS thin-skinned. They have used the legal system in an attempt to silence their critics at least TWICE in the past year. Both times, the judge shut down the suits for their meritlessness. They sued political satirist Al Franken. They sued AgitProperties, the makers of Faux News T-shirts.

You would think a news organization would know better than to try to use the legal system to shut up their critics. In both cases, they only managed to generate PR for the people they sued and boost the sales of Mr. Franken's book and the Faux News T-shirts. I don't care for Franken's style, myself. I don't think he's funny or even interesting. But I did buy a Faux News T-shirt the day I heard about the lawsuit.

And the fact is, Fox IS biased. Take a peek at what Fox News employee Charles Reina had to say last Wednesday about how Fox upper management pushes the conservative agenda in the Fox newsroom.

Re:Fox News Didn't Consider Suing the Simpsons

[sdcharle]

I thought it sounded fake. Word is Fox execs realized from the get-go that suing Al Franken was a stupid idea, but went along with it to appease O'Reilly's swollen ego, because he was having one of those childish fits of his. Had the Simpsons attacked O'Reilly directly I would have believed the story, though...

Re:Fox News Didn't Consider Suing the Simpsons

[OneEyedApe]

And that is why i read Slashdot and Fark, instead of watching the major news networks.

Re:Fox News Didn't Consider Suing the Simpsons

[Pentagram]

Where are the slashdotters complaining that Fox News was thin-skinned, censoring or plain evil now?

Right here! Fox News is thin-skinned, censoring and plain evil.

Hopefully you would think they'd be man enough to apologize and admit they were wrong.

Why the hell would anyone need to apologise for accepting a report that was presented as true, and quoted straight from the horse's mouth? And that holds true even if it had been falsified, which it hasn't. You fuckwit.

Re:Fox News Didn't Consider Suing the Simpsons

[Anonymous Coward]

please quit this career track now. i want the children to grow up thinking.

Re:Fox News Didn't Consider Suing the Simpsons

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, the article says that the FOX lawyers say they never threatened to sue. The "simpsons show" apologized. They didn't get mat groening to recant however . . . probably because he was eggagerating a bit, but given fox's fondness for lawsuits, being reasonably accurate.

If you're going to accuse the /. crowd of not getting their facts straight, get the straight yourself!

Re:Fox News Didn't Consider Suing the Simpsons

[Anonymous Coward]

yeah, the way to foster critical thinking is to ensure that students are never exposed to ideas that YOU personally don't believe.

or was you post a clever joke?

Re:Fox News Didn't Consider Suing the Simpsons

[mi]

It is a conspiracy! A vast right wing conspiracy! -mi

Oh well

[Anonymous Coward]

Mandrake is re-releasing it's 9.2 ISOs and CDs after the unfortunate LG CD drive incident earlier this week...

Too late, from now on it's WinXP Pro on all boxes in this house. Talking about a free operating system, free as in having to go to CompUSA and buy 4 new CD-RW drives.

Re:Oh well

[Ceadda]

Wow, 4 new CD-RW drives... that musta cost a whole.. um... (/me opens up a Best Buy weekly sale flier) Wow.. 22$.. your out a whole pile of money. Darn? 52x CD-RW drives have been on sale for $9.99, and then, $5.49. Instant rebate in store. Sometimes paid as a cash card to be used later. But still, nothing to whine about. Sheesh. And this is in Wisconsin for gods sake! The A-hole of technological society!

Re:Oh well

[Anonymous Coward]

You're changing OSs because of faulty hardware?

Re:Oh well

[Anonymous Coward]

How does the old saying go?

Fool me once ... shame on you...
Fool me twice ... shame on me...
.
.
.
Fool me FOUR times.....I suck bad......

Re:Oh well

[IWannaBeAnAC]

? The problem was buggy firmware by LG, surely LG would fix it for free? Why buy new drives?

Re:Oh well

[Anonymous Coward]

Hey Queernuts

I just checked the Best Buy website and I didn't find any CD-RWs for less than 50 bucks.

Jesus doesn't love you.

Re:Oh well

[Nutcase]

"How does the old saying go?

Well, let's ask the President of the United States.

"There's an old saying in Tennessee - I know it's in Texas, probably in Tennessee - that says, fool me once, shame on - shame on you. Fool me - you can't get fooled again." [video available here]

Thanks Mr. President!

Re:Oh well

[Anonymous Coward]

Wait a second, didn't this problem only affect CD-ROM drives? I have an LG CD-RW drive and this problem did not affect me. As I seem to recall the only drives that were on the list as being able to be killed were CD-ROM... not any other type, DVD-ROM, CD/DVD-RW, etc. I realize that this article says that it does not affect "some" CD-RW drives, but I don't know of any RW drives that dies as a result of this. Anyone care to comment/ And on a side note how in the hell do you fuck up all 4 of your CD-RW drives in the same exact manner? And how much will 4 copies of XP pro cost you in comparison to 4 nice new fast CR-RW drives? That is assuming you're serious about this and not trolling. Personally I think that anyone who could kill 4 drives in the same way must be half-retarded. 2 or even 3 I could see... but 4?

Re:Oh well

[jfern]

Does that mean that he only gets to steal one Presidential election? The US deserves to have only one stolen Presidential election every 124 years.

Re:Oh well

[Anonymous Coward]

Ah I love that quote. I wonder if he'll ever learn how to pronounce "nuclear" properly?

Re:Oh well

[Anonymous Coward]

No shit. Typical fucking Slashbot assclown. "Har har...lunix is teh 0wnz. Window$ is teh sux0r!!" They have a gift--they don't worry about having facts to backup the horseshit they pull out of their asses.

Re:Oh well

[Anonymous Coward]

You stupid assfuck. If the liberal media had its way and dicklicker Algore had won, you'd have Bin Laden's nuts on your chin right now and Arafat's cock in your ass. As it stands, you'll just have to settle for the two anonymous raghead cocks that currently occupy those orifices.

Re:Oh well

[Anonymous Coward]

The same day you learn to be heterosexual. The same day Algore can admit that rather than inventing the internet, he actually in fact invented jack shit.

Re:Oh well

[JonoPlop]

Actual transcript:

'Installing Mandrake...'
"Oh, fuck, it broke my LG CD drive! Let me try installing it on my second computer, also with an LG drive..."

'Installing Mandrake...'
"Damn, this one's screwed too! Let me just confirm by installing it on my third computer with another LG CD drive."

'Installing Mandrake...'
"God damn! I'm so pissed off now, I'm just going to go fuck up my other computer too. I'll show those Linux penguins... Microsoft all the way!!"

('Installing Mandrake...' --- "God damn!")

By the way, if you're wondering where I got this from, I just typed more than 16 characters in your XP box's "Password" field and stole it off there.

Re:Oh well

[Anonymous Coward]

Typical rabid-right wing bullshit. You cannot defend your side so you attack people and issues that have nothing to do with the subject. Who said anything about being me being a Democrat? Your kind of shit is actually a sort of meta-trolling, it makes "Republicans" look so ignorant and irrational as to weaken their cause and make their opponents even more intensely anti-right-wing.

Perhaps that is the true objective? Because your shit sure as hell doesn't make any kind of defense of your issues or beliefs. Keep up your senseless attacks, it just increases my resolve. Oh yeah, you're a fag... and shit.

Re:Oh well

[Anonymous Coward]

Awww...poor thing! Hit a nerve, did I, Nancy?

Re:Oh well

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah dude I think he's going to cry. Way to use your rapier-like wit and superior debating skills to really stick it to those liberal queers!

Re:Oh well

[Ceadda]

CHECK THE SALES FLIER YA FRICKEN MORON. I also said the sale was in "Wisconsin" So maybe ITS NOT IN YOUR STATE, DUH.

Re:Oh well

[Anonymous Coward]

It seems Mr Gore invented exactly what he said he invented.

Link here...
http://www.snopes.com/quotes/internet.htm

Re:Oh well

[Anonymous Coward]

If Mr Gore's had become president, we would never have been so arrogant to get into this mess.

Re:Oh well

[Anonymous Coward]

mmmk thanks bye. Seriously, if after the first 2 CD RW drives where you installed mandrake you didn't notice something was amiss (and didn't check /. in the meantime), then you need to be hit with a cluestick.

Re:Oh well

[Anonymous Coward]

You're lying. LG CD-RW drives are not affected. Only older LG CD-ROM drives.

Re:Oh well

[Anonymous Coward]

Karl, is that you?

Re:Oh well

[AntiOrganic]

hay guys whats goin on in this thread

Re:Oh well

[Anonymous Coward]

Do not think your sarcasm has gone unnoticed.

Dipshit Moderators

[Anonymous Coward]

Kill that moderator's mod points. Informative is a goatse link, eh? Fucking dipshit.

Performance acceleration, indeed

[momerath2003]

Virginia Tech's cluster is now in shouting distance of 10 Teraflops/s, and there are still a few weeks left to optimize the system. (They've gained over 2 Teraflops/s in the last 2 weeks)

Teraflops per second eh? A teraflop is a trillion floating point operations per second, so a teraflop per second would be an increase of calculation speed (of 1 teraflop) for each second that goes by.

Incredible! I want one of those trillion floating point operations per second squared machines in my computer!

Oh, and if I want to go on, I could say that if "they've gained over 2 Teraflops/s in the last 2 weeks," then their acceleration is increasing at a linear rate, so their floating point performance is increasing exponentially!

(Sorry, I don't like ATM machines and PR relations and PIN numbers; I couldn't help but post) ;-)

Re:Performance acceleration, indeed

[cms108]

Wonder if it's powered by NT Technology...

Re:Performance acceleration, indeed

[42.5]

And maybe it uses dynamic DLLs like in XP.

Re:Performance acceleration, indeed

[Anonymous Coward]

Guess you don't like the term 'Linux fag' either, huh?

Re:Performance acceleration, indeed

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, I use a Mac.

Re:Performance acceleration, indeed

[fo0bar]

(Sorry, I don't like ATM machines and PR relations and PIN numbers; I couldn't help but post) ;-)

PR relations eh? PR stands for "public relations", so "PR relations" would be an increase of public relations (of 1 public) for each relation that goes by.

Incredible! I want one of those public relations squared in my company!

Re:Performance acceleration, indeed

[Lars T.]

Gee, if you get all nitpicky like that, at least get it right: A teraflops is a trillion floating point operations per second.

Re:Performance acceleration, indeed

[ionpro]

Um, dude, that was the joke. ATM Machine == Automated Teller Machine Machine. PIN Number == Personal Identification Number Number.

I know that the whole 'reading' thing must be hard for you, but please, try it next time...

Re:Performance acceleration, indeed

[Anonymous Coward]

so "PR relations" would be an increase of public relations (of 1 public) for each relation that goes by.

Yep, and an ATM machine is a device that makes or dispenses Automated Telling Machines

Re:Performance acceleration, indeed

[Theatetus]

"dynamic" DLL's? Is that like the "mips per second" earlier?

Re:Performance acceleration, indeed

[momerath2003]

The "s" is silent. Or the written equivalent of silent, at least. :-)

Re:Performance acceleration, indeed

[fo0bar]

Yes, I know. I was just playing along with the original post; I could have just as easily picked ATM or PIN to go with.

And as it seems to be the custom in your culture to end each correspondence with an insult, I should do the same to avoid offending you. I fucked your sister and your shoes are ugly.

Love,
fo0bar

Re:Performance acceleration, indeed

[Anonymous Coward]

(Sorry, I don't like ATM machines and PR relations and PIN numbers; I couldn't help but post) ;-)

You know, there's a name for this: RAS Syndrome. (RAS == Redundant Acronym Syndrome) They're technically a form of pleonasms.

Re:Performance acceleration, indeed

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not plural you dork...

Re:Performance acceleration, indeed

[dq5 studios]

>> And as it seems to be the custom in your culture to end each correspondence with an insult, I should do the same to avoid offending you. I fucked your sister and your shoes are ugly.


That was hilarious. I'm going to have to steal that bit from you now.

Re:Performance acceleration, indeed

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm surprised more people didn't catch on to this.
Outgrabed him good, you did.

Re:Performance acceleration, indeed

[Ancil]

..their acceleration is increasing at a linear rate, so their floating point performance is increasing exponentially!

Sorry to be pedantic, but that would make their performance increase at a quadratic rate. To increase at an exponential rate, the rate of that increase would also have to be exponential, not linear. d/dt exp(t) = exp(t), remember?

Re:Performance acceleration, indeed

[Anonymous Coward]

Kind of like a 'bazooka launcher' then?

Re:Performance acceleration, indeed

[dvd_tude]

Erm, I dunno about that.

Seems to me that "FLOP" by itself stands for "Floating Point OPeration". Several generations of computer people understand "FLOP" this way, and a MFLOP was a simply million of those (would you like fries with that?), that is, a quantity, not a rate. In the early-mid 80's we spoke of how many FLOPS it would take to do a graphics task, such as a homogeneous 3-d coordinate transform.

I know that Webopedia and suchlike have MFLOP as "mega floating-point operations per second", but that just doesn't make sense: where's the "S" in MFLOP to mean "second"? It ain't there. Hmm....

What's going on here? Maybe there's been a tendency in the casual press to try to coerce "MFLOP(s)" to be a rate like "MIPS" for symmetry's sake. That seems to be where Webopedia went with it. But, it just doesn't work right (that dang "S" is missing yet they tease 'second' out of "MFLOP".) From where I sit, a good and useful close-to-the-machine acronym - FLOP - got sullied by sloppy copywriters and marketing types into a fluff term like MIPS (apologies in advance to Tom, Ray, and Craig - you know who you are.) Tsk, tsk...

So I think the submitter took the high ground and went with decades of historical usage of the acronym FLOP. In that context it was entirely correct to say "TFLOPs/sec"

Suddenly I feel old... recalling when 20 MFLOPs/s was enough to take a company public...

- dvd_tude

Re:Performance acceleration, indeed

[SlightOverdose]

I have an ATM Machine that uses Dynamic DLL's. It's currently running at about 350 degrees kelvin and uses 500 watts per second at a processing power of half a Teraflop per second. It's currently sitting in my boat travelling at 5 knots per second displacing around 1000 cubic litres. I once ran into a peir and experienced a deceleration of 200 jerks per second squared.

*ducks*

Re:Performance acceleration, indeed

[momerath2003]

Right, right. x^2 vs. k^x. Mea culpa.

Re:Performance acceleration, indeed

[Anonymous Coward]

um, yes. That was the joke.

Re:Performance acceleration, indeed

[Lars T.]

Yet another ignorant Yankee asshole tries to speak English... ho hum.

liebold [ly]?

[loraksus]

/\ Appropriate name no doubt
Well, I guess we shouldn't have been surprised. Given the ethics that run through big companies these days, trying to cover their ass after doing something stupid / malicious is a pretty obvious thing to do.

Shit, Ken Lay is still free, and not one of you angry Americans have tried to shoot his ass after he pissed away your retirement and the money for your children's education. Quite frankly, I'm dissapointed, I was kind of hoping for at least one mentally unstable dude with a rifle to go off.

On a side note, I think it is really interesting how quiet this has been. You'd expect the dems to be raising hell in the house and the news media about this, but it just isn't happening. I've seen a bit of news on this, but more on folks proclaiming how bad other countries are in terms of election fraud.
Accident? Malicious intent? Lets just say that Brazil created a better system, and they have death squads roaming the streets.

Re:liebold [ly]?

[realdpk]

Not only are the Democrats quiet about this lately, but big-name organizations such as the ACLU are actually promoting electronic voting. People need to stop sending the ACLU checks and start sending them copies of the Diebold memos. Every ACLU member should be ashamed, IMO.

Re:liebold [ly]?

[zulux]

You'd expect the dems to be raising hell in the house and the news media about this, but it just isn't happening.

The Democrats are't raising a stink because the're up to their eyeballs in the whole affair as well. Democrat politicians are just as mutch a part of the goold-ol'-boy network as the Republicans, and 9 times out of 10, most companies give equally to both parties.

Witness the broad suppor the Sonny Bono Copyright Extension Act got from both parites when Disney flung it's mouse-piss tainted money around.

It's in both parties interest to keep quite about crap like this - otherwise some third party 'crackpot' may just have a chance to get in office.

Re:liebold [ly]?

[HBI]

This is fairly typical Slashdot. Someone just advocated killing a private citizen in the US without due process and it gets modded up to 5, Interesting.

When they come to shoot you, remember this moment.

Re:liebold [ly]?

[Trioge]

What we need to do is get more public consciousness of this stuff. Namely, we need to mainstream media reporting.

I for one am calling major media outlets right now. If even 10 of us did it, it would have a great effect on their programming (or so I've heard). Imagine if we had the entire Slashdot readership voicing opinions at them!

FoxNews - 888-369-4762

ABCNews - 818-460-7477

CBS News - 212-975-4321

I'll continue this list later... currently it's incomplete. Sorry. Duty Calls

Re:liebold [ly]?

[/dev/trash]

Stop blaming poor investment choices on Enron.

Re:liebold [ly]?

[Anonymous Coward]

FoxNews will respond by suing themselves. ABC news will decide that a Diebold story isn't family oriented enough. And no one watches CBS news, anyways.

Re:liebold [ly]?

[Anonymous Coward]

He advocated nothing. He expressed dissapointment that he had heard no news of whackos doing something nutty, something that is almost an American tradition. Did you see that footage that was on today of the guy getting shot at point-blank while hiding behind a frickin tree? Crazy Americans. Anywho this "private citizen" is a bastard. If he likes being an American so much maybe he should have incorporated his corporation in this country instead of all the shady dealings he concocted. And where is the due process for those who have been ruined by Enron? Will we ever see any actions taken? It's disgusting that it was allowed to happen and that nothing is being done. Oh well, just a few more years until Bush can pardon him so he never has to face the music. Fuck Lay, and fuck his wife. Going on TV and crying about how they only had a few mansions left. How terrible. She should be forced into prostitution to pay for her husband's crimes. Fuck em.

Re:liebold [ly]?

[Anonymous Coward]

Go pull the trigger yourself then.

Or you'd just rather let someone else continue to "handle things" for ya?

Re:liebold [ly]?

[loraksus]

I don't think that was an advocation, I'm just surprised. Given three groups of people - folks who were really upset, folks who owned guns and folks who might be a wee bit unstable - I'm surprised that there wasn't one person who decided to take out the CEO just because his name was mentioned on TV the most. /shrug.

Re:liebold [ly]?

[HBI]

Did it ever occur to you that perhaps Mr. Lay was chosen as a sacrificial goat by the elites? There was something like 6 trillion dollars that winked out of existence during the recent stock market crash. A small fraction of that was Enron equities. Where did that money go? Well, it never existed in the first place, people were just convinced that the value actually existed. Sounds a lot like Enron, doesn't it? It wasn't just them, though. The obvious cases of corporate malfeasance pale in comparison to the simple duplicity of those who foisted obviously stupid business ideas onto the market. Check out Fucked Company for a nice list of those.

Who convinced the American public? Well, perhaps the same elites who are protecting themselves from your wrath by offering Mr. Lay as the goat. They soaked the American public for about 5 years of those trillions of dollars. Nearly everyone who had no clue about the financial markets but thought they did, suffered.

Do you feel the need to slake your blood lust for vengeance on Mr. Lay? Well, you aren't alone. Some ACs in this thread alone are professing eagerness to do so. I find it mildly amusing how easily you and they are manipulated into blaming this man, when there are so many deserving candidates of that wrath. How about the government regulators whose job it was to assure this didn't happen? Auditors? Dot bomb CEOs? How about the stockbrokers? Politicians who were all too willing to let the bubble enlarge, but hide now from the results of their tacit endorsement of this giant bilk of the American public - where are they on the vengeance list?

No, the target is Ken Lay. Perhaps the true size of the crime or its complexity are too much for you. If so, I am saddened. I assume the people here are college educated or soon will be. At least in theory they should be near the top of the intelligence scale. One would assume they would be more difficult to manipulate than this. You will make very useful tools of the elites in the years to come.

Re:liebold [ly]?

[benzapp]

Auditors?

I agree with your general sentiment, but I thought it would be benficial to mention Arthur Andersen, what was once the premier auditor in this country.

Chicago suffered greatly because that company disappeared. An entire subculture was erased. I think it is for the better, but it was bad.

Lincoln Park rents definitely declined because of it...

Re:liebold [ly]?

[Anonymous Coward]

"Do you feel the need to slake your blood lust for vengeance on Mr. Lay? Well, you aren't alone. Some ACs in this thread alone are professing eagerness to do so."

Where are these multiple ACs who are professing eagerness to slake their blood lusts for vengeance on Mr. Lay? I see one AC who says "fuck him" and wants to see his wife be forced into prostitution. Hardly advocating his death.

I imagine that most of those who realize the truth behind the Enron disaster are also angry as fuck at the rest of the power structure that allowed such things to happen. If you could step down from your high horse a minute maybe you could explain your mistaken position that all of us who profess anger towards Enron are tools of the elite.

We start with those that the public can reach consensus on, then we peel the rest of the onion skin back and let the tears begin to flow.

I'm sorry that you feel the need to lecture us on our terribly ignorant Enron bashing... us folks never hate nobody but them.

Re:liebold [ly]?

[Anonymous Coward]

I like that line of thinking.

Stop blaming poor dating choices of the accused rapist. If she didn't put herself into that dangerous situation, this never would have happened.

Stop blaming poor investment choices on so-called fraudsters. The investors are the ones to blame.

Stop blaming lax security and accountant practices on the Priest. The worshipers should have kept better track of the coffer money.

etc, etc.

I think you're on to something there, /dev/trash!

Re:liebold [ly]?

[Anonymous Coward]

What makes you think that whacking Ken Lay would be indicative of mental instability? :-)

Re:liebold [ly]?

[loraksus]

I'm surprised that there wasn't one person who decided to take out the CEO just because his name was -----------> mentioned on TV the most.
I'd put sparkles around that and make it glow if I could. Jack O lanterns would even be seasonal.
Alas. . .

I'm afraid that you are viewing this from more of a serious standpoint than mine - which can more or less summarized as "Whoa, fucking cool, some nutcase walked up to Ken Lay and emptied a clip of .45 hollowpoints with a mac 10 into his ass on the courthouse steps and fox news is showing him bleed out TV tonight. . ."

Personally, I couldn't care less about Kennny Boy. I didn't lose my retirement nor the savings for my kids to go to college. Hell, I even made money on the market and I'm not even American. But as far as I know, whatever channel broadcasting Ken "picking up some weight" (and one network probably would, over and over and over again) would have quite a ratings jump.

Morbid? Disturbing? Well, of course. But you know there would be folks who would get satisfaction (as short lived as it may be) from watching this on TV - and I'm surprised that one of those folks wasn't disturbed enough (or felt that they had nothing to lose) that they would grab their gun and actually do it.
Morbid mathematics really; x number of employees who lost their life savings, y number of employees with guns, etc. It is halloween after all, what better day to discuss morbid things?

Oh. Yeah. Just because someone is a scapegoat doesn't mean they are without blame.

Re:liebold [ly]?

[loraksus]

well, it would help. I don't mean "completely fucking kill you then wear your torso as a hat" nuts, but really folks who got pushed a bit too far by this situation. ;)

Re:liebold [ly]?

[Qrlx]

It's hard to picture Kenneth Lay as a victim when he hasn't been sent to prison or dispossesed of any of his ill-gotten gains.

What exactly is the nature of his sacrifice? I don't see one. He may have been served up for sacrifice by "the elites" but the bloodletting has yet to occur. The man is not in jail, and probably never will be. I don't buy your hypothesis for a minute.

Re:liebold [ly]?

[dcw3]

You've got alot of gall talking about ethics and then advocating death squads, as do those of you who moderated this "Interesting"!

Re:liebold [ly]?

[Anonymous Coward]

no +1 karma modifier eh? /tear.

You might try taking an reading class.

Re:liebold [ly]?

[frost22]

I don't cvare what kind of sheep or goat you consider Mr Lay to be.

He and his gang commited one of the largest thieveries the US ever saw, he ruined thousands of decent people.

He and his gang (i.e all to Enron execs, including the whole board over the whole time this went on) should get long prison sentences.

Instead 2 or 3 people (mostly Fastow) are sacrificed and the rest goes free and is even permitted to keep their belongings, instead of beeing forced to compensate the victims with all they own.

The whole Enron affair is a travesty of justice.

Re:liebold [ly]?

[HBI]

What about all the rest of the slimeballs?

Don't worry, they'll rape a few tens of millions more people, and get away with it that time too.

Glad your sense of justice is so finely tempered. We get the government we deserve.

Re:liebold [ly]?

[ces]

Shit, Ken Lay is still free, and not one of you angry Americans have tried to shoot his ass after he pissed away your retirement and the money for your children's education. Quite frankly, I'm dissapointed, I was kind of hoping for at least one mentally unstable dude with a rifle to go off.

I wish more people would realize that the legal system takes time. Most of these accounting fraud cases are incredibly complex. You have to have something solid before you can indight people especially senior corprate officers. Generally you have to be able to prove they not only knew about the problems but actually had a hand in creating them.

The DOJ has already gone after some of these folks and the state AG's are now getting into the act. The OK AG has charged many of the senior corprate officers of Enron. The NY AG Elliot Spitzer has been going after the investment banks and brokerage houses.

Re:liebold [ly]?

[Anonymous Coward]

Most of these accounting fraud cases are incredibly complex. You have to have something solid before you can indight people especially senior corprate officers.

Finally somebody has hit exactly my most-aggravated nerve in many of these events. Who the hell made senior corporate officers or high ranking officials or secret-handshake wielding technocrats so much better than the mere citizens of the country, that they mustn't be disturbed unless we really, really, honest-to-goodness know for sure that we think we can prosecute them - all of that as opposed to, "well the TV remote kinda looked like a forged check so, we tossed him in jail?"

The underpinnings of the US were once described, among other ideals, to include the concept that "all men are created equal." Over time most of us have come to accept that this phrase includes more than just the white land-owning males that was quite likely in the authors' minds at the time, however between the time of that authorship and our more recent broadened understanding, we seem to have also accepted the concept of elite untouchables who may only be disturbed with the approval of their own brethren.

Harumph.

Re:liebold [ly]?

[ces]

Finally somebody has hit exactly my most-aggravated nerve in many of these events. Who the hell made senior corporate officers or high ranking officials or secret-handshake wielding technocrats so much better than the mere citizens of the country, that they mustn't be disturbed unless we really, really, honest-to-goodness know for sure that we think we can prosecute them - all of that as opposed to, "well the TV remote kinda looked like a forged check so, we tossed him in jail?"

Couple of things here. First of all prosecutors like to win so when you are going after someone who can afford a decent lawyer you want to make sure all of the i's are dotted and t's crossed. Yes, unfortunately poor slobs relying on a public defender don't get the same consideration but such is the way of the world. Second senior corprate officers are hard to nail with anything solid because oftentimes the underlings are the ones who did all the dirty work and all the evidence points to them rather than say the CEO.

New 9.2 ISOs

[bconway]

The question that most Mandrake to-be users are asking: Will the new 9.2 ISOs that are being released include the other 300MB of updates so far, or just the new kernel RPMS? Anyone know?

Re:New 9.2 ISOs

[Brandybuck]

They might have just made a whole new release and bumped the version number. As it stands now, distributing diffs between 9.2 and a future 9.3 would be extremely difficult. At least bump the revision to 9.2.1 or something. You would think they would know how to do releases by now.

Re:New 9.2 ISOs

[Anonymous Coward]

Why was this moderated as Flamebait twice?

Re:New 9.2 ISOs

[Anonymous Coward]

Because his link points to FreeBSD, so obviously he's trolling against Mandrake and Linux in general.... or something like that, who knows?

Re:New 9.2 ISOs

[Vargasan]

Someone is playing follow the leader?

Re:New 9.2 ISOs

[catenos]

Because his link points to FreeBSD, so obviously he's trolling against Mandrake and Linux in general.... or something like that, who knows?

Obviously? Obviously? Just because he outs himself as BSD fan, this makes im trolling as soon as he speaks about another OS?

Forget about the FreeBSD link for a moment and you will realize that he asked a valid question that a majority of Mandrake users (and "wanna-be"s) are wondering about. And if you don't have to believe me on this: simply read the Mandrake-specific forums or mailing lists, where this question is all over the place.

Re:New 9.2 ISOs

[bconway]

The URL in my Slashdot profile is subjecting me to Flamebait moderations? Wow.

Re: New 9.2 ISOs

[catenos]

They might have just made a whole new release and bumped the version number. As it stands now, distributing diffs between 9.2 and a future 9.3 would be extremely difficult. At least bump the revision to 9.2.1 or something. You would think they would know how to do releases by now.

And one would think that you know not to blindly believe anything in a ./ story but to read the article, by now.

The only mention of a new 9.2. is in the ./ story. The article speaks only of

A new kernel (2.4.22-21mdk) has been released that fixes this problem in the kernel, although the CD-ROM devices are still not up to specification. New CDs and ISOs will be available shortly to correct these problems; they will come with the new kernel.

No mention whether they keep the label 9.2 or not. And news.osdir.com probably doesn't have any more insight, anyhow, because that paragraph is simply a direct letter by letter copy of the one in the official Mandrake errata.

AFAICS, there was no statement about the label in any official place (mandrakeclub, mandrake.com, the mailing lists, ...). I don't imply to say that they won't keep the 9.2 label. I just say that there is no way to know yet, what they will see as most practical way to handle the situation.

California court rejects touchscreen voting law

[dada21]

Check it! That's socialism for you... The government knows best!

Re:California court rejects touchscreen voting law

[Unordained]

Uhm, I probably shouldn't encourage you by replying, but would you mind taking a second to think about this?

Socialism is about having the government redistribute money from taxes to a bit of everyone for services they could theoretically provide to themselves. (Yes, you could, I suppose, get your own militia and do without the military, but that's less likely than paying for your own healthcare.)

Any government, by its very nature, is going to make decisions like the one you're unhappy with. That's why we have voting -- so we can make it clear that a lot of us aren't happy, but don't get our way. Really -- look at our last presidential elections. Half of us were happy with the result, half unhappy. That's not great. Is it the fault of socialism? No.

If you don't like decisions like this one, you probably shouldn't like any form of government at all. Anarchy is interesting, and you probably wouldn't even care about voting machines. Anarchy, however, is likely to lead to small groups of people forming their own governments, eventually leading back to bigger governments, for the sake of security, simplicity, and ... well, their parents did it too, right? Can a lack of government enforce the no-government rule? Better get those torches ready, you're gonna need 'em.

As a reminder, there is no government. There are people, serving other people, elected to best represent (as they can) the wishes of the majority. A court said 'no' to a lawsuit presented by one member of the population -- that means that, most likely, the rest of the population disagreed with him. Darn. That's not socialism, that's a process that occurs even in anarchism: people can beat you up if they disagree with you, and there's nothing you can do about it. ...

Now that I look at your other posts, I see you sometimes are against most any form of government. Good. Now be consistent about it -- don't blame socialism, or anything else, when it's just the fault of the basic governmental process.

Re:California court rejects touchscreen voting law

[Anonymous Coward]

"Half of us were happy with the result, half unhappy. That's not great. Is it the fault of socialism? No."

Everyone should be unhappy with the result, regardless of which person won. The vote was rigged, or at least there was massive gross incompetence involved.

Unfortunately, getting that message out conflicts with the whole "get out and vote" campaign. How can you tell people to vote when you're also telling them that their votes won't count anyways?

I'm wondering when the revolution will begin.

Re:California court rejects touchscreen voting law

[Unordained]

it won't. revolutions are terrorism nowadays, didn't you get the memo? any armed action -not- planned by world leaders is obviously wrong and in need of extermination. don't hold your breath, we're gonna keep ourselves under our own oppression.

we do it to ourselves.

Re:California court rejects touchscreen voting law

[Anonymous Coward]

Friend,

Don't waste your time pointing out the landscape to the blind. Don't waste your breath shouting words of warning to the deaf.

They don't get it, they don't want to get it. You challenge their reality and are simply wrong by virtue of the fact that you don't say what they want to hear. That's where we're at.

Now remember, we don't do it to ourselves, conservatives/liberals do it to us, because we, conservative/liberals always do right and they, conservative/liberals are wrong.

Don't blame me, I voted for myself.

Re:California court rejects touchscreen voting law

[Unordained]

... and I'm not your friend.

Re:California court rejects touchscreen voting law

[fferreres]

The government should best! because the mayority voted them. Socialism is not the goverment knowing best, but doing more bussiness that are normaly left to private parties.

Re:California court rejects touchscreen voting law

[camperslo]

If the courts won't fix the system, perhaps California's voter initiative process can. How hard would it be to get a proposition on the ballot requiring a system with a full PAPER audit trail? Something like this in California might help to raise awareness enough to generate action in other states or at the federal level.

(Something like this needed, among other things: Paper printout generated when voter makes choices, top of which is to be reviewed and confirmed by voter before hitting "submit", which marks the bottom of the paper form "submitted")

Of course one must hope that the vote on such a proposition isn't tampered with...

- - - - - - - -
No Arnold, the machines weren't supposed to be props

Re:California court rejects touchscreen voting law

[ealar dlanvuli]

In this case, the judicial system is supposed to step in. Rigged elections are the downfall of democracy, and they tend to be hard to fight.

-16000 Votes

[powera]

In a small Volusia County precinct, there were -16000 votes for Gore where he would have only gotten about 300 until the error was corrected. Maybe that was just a random bit flop in the first position in a 16-bit number storage system, 300+16384=-16084 for signed ints.

Re:-16000 Votes

[Anonymous Coward]

...and a bunch of corresponding random flips in the checksum.

Re:-16000 Votes

[Anonymous Coward]

Under what circumstances could a system used to count votes require signed numbers?

Re:-16000 Votes

[Bystander]

Except the article also goes on to say that the votes were redistributed to George Bush and various other candidates in a way which did not change the total number of votes cast. What would be the probability of this being the result of random bit flipping?

Re:-16000 Votes

[canajin56]

Just to be pedantic:
300 = 0000 0001 0010 1100.
-16084 = 1100 0001 0010 1100.

So that is TWO bits flipped. But in either case, the actual number was 16,022, not 16084.

-16022 = 1100 0001 0110 1010
362 = 0000 0001 0110 1010

So this can still work out as a reason if Gore had 362 going in, and the first TWO bits flipped accidently.

On the other hand, they looked at the card, and it wasn't corrupt. They fixed the problem simply by re-uploading it.

The logs indicate there were TWO uploads (Before the fix). The first contained the valid numbers. The SECOND subtracted the 16K votes. They have no idea where this mysterious second card is, or how it got uploaded. The bitflipping thing is what it was dismissed as when it happened: A corrupt card that they caught and fixed. But the memos show that it was not.

Re:-16000 Votes

[Lehk228]

Why the hell are they using signed integers in a voting system anyways.... a good programmer would not use a +/- data type on a value that can only be positive, and if i was designing a system where accurate data was as important as voting i would make a class that replicated the total in 3 or 5 locations to ensure that a rare random bit flipping would be caught and notify the admin so multiple changes would alert people that there was something seriously wrong

Re:-16000 Votes

[Lehk228]

something like (ignore syntax, im a bit rough on c++.... its been a while

class importantValue()
{
private:
int a=0 b=0 c=0 d=0 e=0;
public:
void addOne();
int getTotal();
};
void importantValue::addOne()
{
a++;
b++;
c++;
d++;
e++;
}
void importantValue::getTotal()
{
if((a+b+c+d+e)/5!=a)
{
cerr^^"Warning, Internal data corruption detected"^^endl^^"values"^^a^^' '^^b^^' '^^c^^' '^^d^^' '^^e^^endl^^"do not match"
stop;
}
return a;
}

Now i know this doesnt even come close to everything needed (i would rather also have a struct which stored the 5 copies throughout the system and only merged them when it was time to do the totals... also note the use of ^^ because of the fact that html formatting won't allow me to put the [less than] character in

Re:-16000 Votes

[t_allardyce]

negative numbers is a feature not a bug - otherwise how would the republicans be able to subtract votes from other people??

Re:-16000 Votes

[87C751]

300+16384=-16084 for signed ints.

OK, who let a VB programmer post?

Important Safety Tip: in the real world, only short ints are 16 bits.

Re:-16000 Votes

[efflux]

by using an int data type, you can still suffer from roll-over. Make that an unsigned int, and you *may* begin to understand what the parent poster was getting at.

Solar Flares and downtime...

[SharpFang]

Whose local ISP BOFHs besides mine used the recent solar flares as excuse for downtime?

Re:Solar Flares and downtime...

[Anonymous Coward]

giza pyramids working over time fine tuning earth's magnetic field. thanks.

Re:Solar Flares and downtime...

[Anonymous Coward]

*raises hand*

Re:Solar Flares and downtime...

[DDumitru]

I had a couple of telephone calls that ***really*** had fallouts yesterday morning. Land line and everything.

There is a "non zero" chance that they were telling the truth. On the other hand it is far more likely that they just did not want to take the tech support call.

2004 Elections

[aSiTiC]

Considering how charged the 2004 elections are likely to be (not to mention the extent to which foreigners will be watching to see if Bush is around another 4 years) I hope the Diebold memos will gain some national exposure. Otherwise if this matter is swept aside and ends up causing major discrepancies during the election we could be looking at some pretty serious consequences. I wouldn't even put civil war out of the picture....

Re:2004 Elections

[feronti]

I don't know... I'd put civil war out of the picture myself... Americans are too lazy to liberate themselves anymore.

Re:2004 Elections

[Anonymous Coward]

Considering how charged the 2004 elections are likely to be ..

That's quite a prediction. Any specific date for when .. oh! .. elections. I thought this was a solar flare thread.

Re:2004 Elections

[efflux]

It's *not* a matter of American, or laziness. People don't revolt until they have *nothing more to lose*. Look at how much the Russians put up with throughout 19th and early 20th century before they revolted.

Re:Awesome pix of the radiation flares

[SiliconBateman]

The BBC has some nice pics from amateurs: (in plain text to reassure those sceptics):

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/shared/spl/hi/pop_ups/03 /s ci_nat_polar_light_display/html/1.stm

That Troll Groening

[satanami69]

Dear Slashdot,

YhbT, YhL, HanD.

WARNING, GOATSE LINK

[Anonymous Coward]

it's disguised.

When 52X-CD-RW's are only...

[Ceadda]

$9.99 at one store, and $5.49 at the other... is it really that much of a pain to just go get a different one? That's actually up to standards? I bought one of these 2 weeks back for $9.99. Now they're back up to $19.99. They paid the 10$ diffence in store, no mail in. The 5.49 was someplace else, dun remember where. Cash card for, 30$ I think... to cover the price difference.

Re:Awesome pix of the radiation flares

[Daniel Dvorkin]

Now, those are what I call some HOT AMATEUR PICTURES! ;)

You mean HOLE-o-WEEN

[FatSean]

That is the funniest thing I've seen all day!

only 2112 CPUs!

[azlondon]

Damn Rush fans get everywhere.

Re:only 2112 CPUs!

[Anonymous Coward]

And the meek shall inherit the Earth!

Re:only 2112 CPUs!

[Anonymous Coward]

In soviet Russia, todays Tom Sawyer get high on you!

Re:only 2112 CPUs!

[Sabalon]

Gives new meaning to the line "Our great computers fill the hallowed halls."

Less spectacular than advertised?

[DGolden]

Well, it was the first time I ever saw the Aurora Borealis over Dublin city, I can tell you that! Pretty bloody amazing if you ask me...

Re:Less spectacular than advertised?

[borgboy]

We saw it here in Dublin too, but my Dublin is in Ohio....

unprecedented

[KMAPSRULE]

hey used the unprecedented approach of asking someone

I was going to try and be funny but Im to tired to be witty

Re:unprecedented

[Anonymous Coward]

I was going to try and be funny but Im to tired to be witty

Gee, thanks for posting, fucktard. You're also too tired to use proper grammar, apparently.

Diebold

[headkase]

Wouldn't an open-source voting system software be a great OSS contribution to nations? If it was flexible enough it could be used say both in Great Britain and the USA with only loading a different locale file...
Anyone know about anything like this already being developed open source?

Re:Diebold

[Anonymous Coward]

Apparently there was one but they eventually came to the conclusion that it was impossible (not just "really, really hard"). Read Black Box Voting or many, many ./ posts to understand the reasoning.

Re:Diebold

[Anonymous Coward]

Sure, as long as NASA contractors are not doing the US-to-Metric conversion coding...

Re:Diebold

[Anonymous Coward]

There really is no reason why a voting system has to be open source to be good, the system just has to be open to auditing.

Electronic voting machines should PRINT OUT your final vote, on PAPER, where you can see that the system accepted the proper input.

Then, come audit-time, they could always run those sheets of paper through a high-speed scanner (like those scantron tests in HS), or just look at them by hand, if they needed a recount.

All-electronic voting is ridiculous - there might be good profit to be made in the field, so all you have to do is standardize on the outputted form and let many companies compete on the voting machine.

Re:Diebold

[phossie]

how about generating the electronic results by immediately scanning the physical output? in otherr words,

1. voter votes votingly
2. voting machine produces physical documentation
3. voting machine reads physical documentation, verifying its readability on the spot - maybe the voter can see this happen, approve the result?
4. if it works, it works, if it doesn't try again
5. vote result is transmmitted / stored

any voting system should conform to ACID, yes? yes? isn't this obvious? can we work out a way to do that?

i personally dislike instant results, i think they influence the election. i'd prefer there to be no influential results reported until after the election is entirely completed. this way people won't give up and not bother voting for who they prefer.

Re:Will Wheaton, actor, dead at 35.

[Anonymous Coward]

I thought he died in a car accident?

Its not just Mandrake

[1337 Apple Zealot]

I fried my external LG-CDROM connected to my G5 (running Debian, also happened with Yellow Dog)

damn thats fast

[saiha]

"If one extrapolates from the score of NetworX's Xeon 2.4 cluster (2304 CPUs at 7623 Tflops/s), a G5 2.0 would be as fast as a Xeon 3.28 GHz." I want to know where I can get one of these Xeon2.4s that run at 3.3 Tflops each.

Bullshit.

[Anonymous Coward]

He was saved by paramedics and is now in rehab with Lush Rimbaugh. He also signed a contract with VH1 this week.

Mandrake 9.2 Disaster Edition

[Anonymous Coward]

Considering what a fiasco that Mandrake 9.2 has turned out to be, are Mandrake going to put the 350 MB of updates that came out the first week on these "director's cut" CD's or what?

Re:Mandrake 9.2 Disaster Edition

[Anonymous Coward]

Parent post tagged as M$ astroturfing

Oh goodie...

[Anonymous Coward]

Now the rest of the world gets to watch you guys liberate yourselves!

Re:Happy Halloween

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't click on the parent, it's goatse.cx.

Re:Will Wheaton, actor, dead at 35.

[Anonymous Coward]

I call dibs on his Slashdot nick.

Schwab

Slashdot for Bush?

[Idou]

I submitted a story on how Howard Dean's blog showed that a webpage from May on the white house website had been changed to say "major combat" was over in Iraq, instead of "combat" was over (perhaps to hide Bush's blatant underestimate of the situation at the time). The date was kept the same. This seem significant to the discussion, but instead /. posted the above justification instead.

With the death count now HIGHER than it was during the "combat" period (or, since history has changed, do I have to say "major combat"?), I wonder how the slashdot editors feel about themselves, helping the administration modify history?

Re: Units of Jerk

[Alien54]

What use do these 'jerk' units have in the field?

They measure how hard someone is jerking your chain.

Eclipse in Action

[linuxislandsucks]

to be fair Eclise in action is not a book targeted at developers who want to extend and get into the power under the hood..even says that in the intro an d forward..

To be fair to the reviewr he shoudl have read the intro andofreward online bnefore orderign and choosen the book:

The Java Developer's Guide to Eclipse published by Addison wesley and the Authores are the wizards from OTI where Eclipse happen to come from..

I am very happywith this book as it meets my needs to poke under the hood and extend Eclipse..

Re: g5 supercomputer

[Black Parrot]

> A warning to anyone considering buying a Mac - they make you turn gay.

Great - maybe you can get a date now.

Mandrake 9.2 has been a real PITA for me...

[Malor]

I didn't lose any drives to it or anything, but after install, the updates listed are like 200MB, which is a ridiculous amount of patching, IMO.

Further, those patches misfired badly on both of the machines I installed it on, completely hosing the menus and the icons in the KDE taskbar. I was able to recover the menus by just running menudrake, but I had to add a specific new button to the taskbar to run it, since there was no way to run a shell off the start menu anymore. There's no way a normal desktop user is going to know how to do this; I'm an old hand and I still had to think for a minute to figure out how to fix it. And I had to fix all my buttons by hand, which sucked.

Now, to be fair, it may be my fault. I mount my /var partition as noexec and my /tmp partition as nosuid, so it's possible that this could have bugged the installers. (I'm not sure whether I adjusted that before or after I patched.) I might be unfairly blaming Mandrake when I'm not running a stock system. So, consider this a warning: there's at LEAST a problem with noexec /var or nosuid /tmp, so don't do that. (or remount before running patches.)

Re:Mandrake 9.2 has been a real PITA for me...

[slide-rule]

I simiarly got bit by the mandrakeupdate bug that screws the user menus... both with a KDE install and a Gnome install. (Separately.) A solution that seems to work is to have root run "updatemenus -v" (if desperate, use the old ctrl-alt-F1 to get a text login or something) ... but it was annoying to have to dig around google and/or IRC to find someone to tell me that, given the user menu's are so fully depopulated as to be useless at that point.

Also, seems that an installation of 9.2 (the first one, anyway ;) doesn't correctly configure an ATI Rage 128 (pro?) card. Yeah, I still have one in a system. Of course, the card works okay with the right config. I managed to muck about with XF86Config-4 until X had no valid Screen's... at which point mandrake was nice enough to detect a problem and prompted for root to run through a curses-based (?) X configuration utility ... that got it working just fine, and the problem detection was a nice touch. (Oddly, the vid card works fine in the installer "test" as well, so something must get hosed when it writes the config file out of the installer.)

Additionally, I admit I might've goofed this somehow, but my CD writer didn't work immediately after the install either. (cdrecord -scanbus turned up "/dev/pg* not found" errors. common hit on google.) For those new to Mandrake with a different system -- who don't let it write it's own copy of GRUB somewhere (like I did) -- note that the hdc=ide-scsi kernel boot parameter needs passing, as the modules seem to be (?) compiled directly into the kernel. (At least, follow the CD-Writing HOWTO for this case.) Also, it didn't seem to make a /dev/cdrom->/dev/scd0 link, so the CD player might get confused lacking this.

So I've had quite a bit of annoyance for this, my first, mandrake installation, but I have managed to get everything working.

Re:Mandrake 9.2 has been a real PITA for me...

[Malor]

I don't seem to have anything called "updatemenus" installed on my system, and urpmi knows nothing about it either. Are you sure you got that command right?

Re:Mandrake 9.2 has been a real PITA for me...

[slide-rule]

(Did I drop a hyphen?) Try "update-menus". Use "-v" for verbose output. Provided by menu-2.1.5-123mdk.
My system(s) seem to have this w/out me knowing I needed to install it. Hopefully you'll have it as well.

Dont waste your time!

[Anonymous Coward]

Page Not Found.
This might be because you typed the web address incorrectly. Please check the address and spelling ensuring that it does not contain capital letters or spaces.

It is possible that the page you were looking for may have been moved, updated or deleted.

Please click the back button to try another link.

Or
Visit the BBC News Home Page.
Visit the BBC Sport Home Page.
Explore our full list of sites and services.

Re:Dont waste your time!

[SiliconBateman]

i posted it in plain text (as i said). remove the slash-code placed space fucktard.

Re:Dont waste your time!

[Anonymous Coward]

remove the space, moron

Will Wheaton, interviews with VH1.

[Alien54]

Re:Will Wheaton, actor, dead at 35.
I thought he died in a car accident?

Actually, he's interviewing for a job on VH1

How quickly they forget.

[Anonymous Coward]

It was like, a bummer.


The correct quote is:

"It was like ... ... ... a bummer"

MOD PARENT DOWN!

[Anonymous Coward]

1337 Apple Zealot is a fucking TROLL! He claims he runs Debian Gnu/Linux on his G5, and is posting a lot of bull faeces about it. Look at his posting history to see what I mean. Also look at his journal where is claims he ported Debian to the Apple ][ (lol).

Re:MOD PARENT DOWN!

[MsGeek]

He claims he runs Debian Gnu/Linux on his G5, and is posting a lot of bull faeces about it.

Ummm...just so you know...there really is a PowerPC port of Debian GNU/Linux. It's not as up-to-date as the bleeding edge Yellow Dog, but DebianPPC and Debian68K support more Macs than Yellow Dog does.

However, it is probably true that Debian hasn't made it to the Apple ][ yet. Not even NetBSD has taken that challenge on. So you are prolly right about 1337 Apple Zealot being a troll.

But he did say major combat...

[MyNameIsFred]

See for example, CNN article dated May 1, 2003. A major point at the time of Bush's carrier speech was that "major combat" was over.

In the speech, Bush will declare that major combat is over in Iraq, but stop short of a formal declaration of victory, according to White House aides.

There are many valid criticisms of the Bush administration, for example, the administration's poor post-war planning. However, there is no need to invent things, in particular, claim he didn't use the caveat "end of major combat" Or are you suggesting that the Bush administration changed the CNN website also?

Re:But he did say major combat...

[Qrlx]

The point is, it's disingenuous to go "back in time" and massage the way news was reported, when it was first reported.

With print media, there's a hard copy; "no takebacks." Not so with electronic publishing. Furthermore, it may be illegal under the DMCA or copyright law (you never can tell these days) for third parties to keep an archive of what was originally posted. So, how can you trust the electronic media, if it's subject to constant and unannounced revision?

This isn't the first time this has happened. About two weeks after 9/11, the New York Times replaced a column (published right before the attack, I think maybe even on 9/11) linking Osama bin Laden to threats against America with a "puff piece" about the challenges ahead. I googled for that story but I couldn't find it... orignially it was posted on BuzzFlash or maybe Drudge years ago.

Hahahaha

[Woy]

That is the funniest shit i've read in a while. The irony and the truthfulness are staggering.

Eu-style DMCA?!

[uradu]

> has moved to a Polish host to escape the tyrannies of the
> new EU-style DMCAism in the United Kingdom and elsewhere

Because, as everyone knows, the EU has pioneered the DMCA. Don't be such a stereotypical EU-hating Brit and look at the real source of the DMCA, how about it?

Not making anything up . . .

[Idou]

http://www.differentstrings.info/archives/002813.h tml

But I might as well be, 'cause it doesn't seem like anyone here at slashdot cares . . .

Perfect example of 1984 . . .

Re: Units of Jerk

[gakido]

Not really, they measurethe rate of acceleration of the chain.

http://www.google.ca/search?q=velocity+acceleratio n+jerk

Re:g5 supercomputer

[spicedhamhawg]

If it's so steely, why is it dangling?

Just in case you are as lazy as the average /.'er

[Idou]

From the site:

"Yes, he DID say "major combat operations" in his speech. The problem, though, is that on the official websites, the headlines regarding the speech all spoke of "Combat operations" as having ended - NOT "major combat operation." That was how the government was presenting the transcripts of the speech and other articles referring to it - at least up until someone questioned Bush about his having said that "combat operations" had ended, and then, suddenly, someone decided they needed to go back through and add the word "Major" to all of the articles. In at least some cases, the articles were copies of press releases that had been sent out after the speech - and when they were sent out, they went out with the "combat operations" headline. Now, however, they want to make it LOOK like they sent out the press releases with a headline reading "major combat operation," which isn't the case at all."

I guess speeches have to be cautious, but webpages can say exactly what you want to say 'cause later you can easily change things and make everyone THINK that is what was posted that way all along.

Anyway, I conclude that is the REAL reason for the robot.txt file, but /.'ers are too dense to figure that out . . . (or, at least the editors think so).

and?

[/dev/trash]

has moved to a Polish host to escape the tyrannies of the new EU-style DMCAism has moved to a Polish host to escape the tyrannies of the new EU-style DMCAism

What happens when Poland joins the EU in 6 months?

I'm just a Karma whore...

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm just a karma whore....

Re:"Kids"

[Anonymous Coward]

Kids. They think the world began when C++ was invented.

"C with Classes", Bjarne Stroustrup's first draft of C++, was invented in 1983. So you are almost literally correct when referring to some of the late high school or early college "kids" who read Slashdot.

liebold not going to be a problem but WAS a proble

[sbwoodside]

and that's what I took away from the insightful Scoop piece. I never knew that Liebold's systems actually caused a serious amount of the screwups on election night 2000. CBS news says conclusively that if it weren't for the liebold machine's errors, they would never have called for Bush in the first place!

simon

Any version that dares

[geekoid]

to send the FLUSH_CACHE command.

regardless, this command should be perfectly safe to send, and LG is being irresposible in the implementation.

Solar shockwave arrival time

[Anonymous Coward]

Here's some info about the solar flare arrival times being passed around in amateur radio circles. It explains the difficulty of estimating the time of arrival.

The shock wave from yesterdays X17 flare struck the earth at 0625 UTC 29 Oct 2003, or a little after midnight Mountain time. All I could see from Socorro, NM was a slight red glow to the northeast for about 30 minutes. I am at 32 deg. N, 107 deg. W. I would expect better displays were seen in the northern states, such as from Wyoming to Washington. Still, it is *very* unusual to see auroral displays this far south, and the dull red glow is typically what we see.

This was considered to be the second strongest shock wave to hit the earth in recorded times. However, the magnetic field remained north pointing (+Bz), minimizing the activity of the auroral display and geomagnetic storm.

That is not to say we did not get a geomagnetic storm. While most of us were sleeping, the Earth experienced a very strong SEVERE geomagnetic storm. K=9 (on the K 1-9 scale) and the estimated A-index reached 400.

We are still being bombarded with particles from this event and auroral activity is persisting over Asia right now. It is unlikely this will persist to produce auroras for North America by the time night falls for us tonight.

Science agencies are still trying to figure out the strength of the shock wave. All of the proton and particle sensors on the ACE, LASCO and SOHO satellites were blown into full saturation and some failed. Whether or not this is a permanent failure of these sensors remains to be seen. It is hoped the sensor elements were just highly charged by the arriving wave front of electrons. As soon as the charge bleeds off, hopefully the sensors can be restored to normal.

NOAA received some skepticism regarding their estimate of how fast this shock wave was traveling, predicting the 0600-0700 UTC arrival time based on their speed estimate of 2200 km/sec., or about 5 million MPH. We know that when a shock wave leaves the sun, it will experience some slowing as it travels through the interplanetary space. But there is just no data to estimate how much slowing such a fast shock wave will experience. From what we experienced, it seems NOAA had it "right on." Kudos to SEC/NOAA.

Driving into work this morning, the local radio news was STILL predicting the arrival of the CME, I guess still based on the original press releases that predicted it's arrival for later today.

HOW IS THE SHOCKWAVE MEASURED? We have gobs of earth-based and space-based instruments for observing the sun at various wavelengths. Observing the CME and escaping shock wave is the most difficult.

As the shock wave leaves the sun's surface at the footprint of a solar flare, it can not be seen because the brightness of the sun, at optical and radio frequencies, is brighter than the escaping plasma. As it gets away from the sun, it can finally be seen. The images you have seen from the SOHO satellite showing the expanding full halo CME, for example, shows this escaping shock wave. While it makes for pretty pictures, there are very few good measurements that can be made from these images. While the speed can be closely estimated, the particle density remains unknown, for example.

These halo CME images are NOT the shock wave itself. What these images show are the escaping particles that get caught up in the magnetic field lines of the flare. Strong magnetic field lines leave the sun at the site of the flare and return near it. When the shock wave leaves the sun, some of the particles get caught in these magnetic field lines, flowing along them to "paint" the outline of the magnetic fields. This is neat, but the shock wave itself is long gone. That's what the halo is all about ... the toroidal pattern of the magnetic field lines of the flare event.

As the shock wave leaves the sun's surface, it "punches" through the magnetic field lines of both the sun's magnetic field and the magnetic field of

Re:Solar shockwave arrival time

[EvanED]

I've also read that some of the instruments that can measure some relevant information were hiding from the storm's power.

It's also a good thing to note that spacew.com predicted a 3am arrival time, just a little off, from the very start.

Re:Mandrake 9.2 MODERATORS: PUNISH HIM

[Anonymous Coward]

Surely you're lying, because I've learned here on Slashdot that the only products that cause problems like that are the ones out out by Microsoft (or rather, "M$"). Open source software *never* fails like that. Never. Unpossible!

Therefore, I call bullshit on your post. Anything that is based on Linux must be perfect. You're just an M$ apologist troll. And you must hate Mandrake. Why? Is it because they're french? Hmmmmm? Is it because you can't get laid? Hmmmmmm?? C'mon, come clean. You're just lying, aren't you?? Typical M$ zealot. If you're having problems with open source software it's because u r st00pid and havent RTFMed, not becuase the softwares is teh bad. k?

So please get with the program. Open source software *does not* fail. It does not have bugs. Hell, certainly it DOES NOT nuke hardware. It is 100% certified and absolutely secure. It's perfect. Always remember that. And always remember that M$ is teh sux and Bill Gates is the antichrist and... and... OMFG I CANT STOP THINKIN ab0UT W1ND0Z3!!!1!! HAHAHAH!!! LOLOLOLOLOLOLOL!!!!

Now, prepare to be modded down by the pool of intelligent and discerning moderators that sacrifice so much of their precious time to make this the BEST website in teh net!!!1! OMFG!!!!

Later.

Really?

[wirelessbuzzers]

Can you link me to those stores? I haven't seen such a drive for less than $40.

Re:Really?

[Ceadda]

Pricescan.com has them for $14, no rebates needed... otherwise... um ... lets see, this weeks sale says.. ..ah, one for 19.. one for 15... Have to walk into a Best Buy store for those, cant order them online... Can view the store fliers online though if that helps. Guess the 9.99 ended with last weeks :( Soon as I remember the name of the other store I'll post it. :( Gotta peek throught this pile of newspapers to find the ad again.

Re:Really?

[wirelessbuzzers]

Thanks. I've been considering building a mini-fileserver, and a cheap CD ROM drive would be handy.

Re:Really?

[Anonymous Coward]

slickdeals.net
techbargains.com

Eclipse in Action

[Un pobre guey]

I read the review, bought the book, and very happily and quickly put eclipse to use. It is now my Java IDE, although I find I still prefer TextPad for lengthy editing sessions.

I found the first half of the book to be simply horrible. A supposed introduction to actually using Eclipse this section concentrates more on the "Agile" toolset that all competent, well-informed Java developers that care about the quality of their code, products and development process should already be using. Well, that's what all the books say anyway.

There are a few things about this remark that are at very least unrealistic. Not everyone uses agile methodology. Agile developers are hardly the only people who are "competent, well-informed Java developers that care about the quality of their code, products and development process." The first half of the book does not focus on agile methodology. The use of the word "horrible" is frivolous and without merit.

If you read and work through the first six chapters, you will

• Quickly and easily set up eclipse on your favorite platforms
• In a couple days be competent enough to move your day to day work to eclipse with few or no hassles
• Set up CVS on windows or linux
• Point all of your eclipse installations to the CVS repositories you created, and use CVS as your repository via eclipse menu commands
• Integrate ant, log4j, and junit with eclipse

Before eclipse, I was a Textpad/Cygwin Command Line developer, having abandonded JBuilder over a year ago. Eclipse is easy, versatile, and doesn't get in your way. Eclipse in Action is your fastest and easiest ticket to getting up to speed with it. My coworkers just dropped $1700 a pop for their JBuilder upgrades. I spent less than $100 on Eclipse in Action and Eclipse Modeling Framework .

Damn Volusia county

[jfern]

They were the epicenter of a Presidential election where more people went to the polls intending to vote for the Democrat than the Republican. The Democrat won the popular vote, but lost the election because he officially lost Florida. He only needed one more state to win. The dispute went on for over a month, and involved the Supreme Court.

Oh, I'm talking about 1876, BTW.

You shoud shop at MY store...

[Anonymous Coward]

I'll sell you 4 copies of XP pro for only $399 each , and I have some great CD-rom drives for only $99 each...

I wish I had more morons, I mean, Customers, Like you.

Re:liebold not going to be a problem but WAS a pro

[jfern]

Isn't it weird how every single time that Diebold's machines screw up it's in favor of the Republican (Gore in Volusia county, test run in Texas, actual election in Texas, 18181 margin of victories of Republicans, suspicious Georgia 2002 election, and so on).

You'd think that their CEO had pledged Ohio's electors to Bush, or something.

Electric != touch screen

[autopr0n]

All Voting in this country is "electronic", including punch card systems. The touch screen voting systems are bad, because they are so easy to tamper with. The best solution (IMO) is the scantron style, where you fill in the oval with a pen (Obviously you don't want to use a #2 pencile for voting, here in IA you use a felt tip pen).

That way, if there's a question, you can go back and look at each balot.

Re:Electric != touch screen

[volkris]

Oh god no.

The problem is knowing when to question the votes. Even if you put in scantrons you would have no way of knowing when there is a question.

My experience with optical scanners like the scantrons is that their reliability is nearly as bad as the alternatives.

Seriously: all electronic voting is the best choice. There is no complaint against all electronic voting that can't be solved with some relatively simple engineering.

Choosing to go with scantrons or the like simply replaces a potentially flawed system with an absolutely flawed one.

Re:Electric != touch screen

[Anonymous Coward]

"There is no complaint against all electronic voting that can't be solved with some relatively simple engineering."

Actually, I have one: If a programming error is discovered after the election which destroys vote data, it is irreparable. I suppose this is also true of non-electronic systems, but an electronic system failure of this sort has the potential to fail this way across multiple regions, whereas physical vote data loss is likely to be isolated.

Electronic systems do not allow true recounts of any sort.

It is impossible to detect tampering in an electronic system, especially tampering by the manufacturer.

Re:Electric != touch screen

[Qrlx]

Paper ballots are the way to go. But if we did that, we might not know the outcome of the elections right away, making them a less "newsworthy" event.

Re:Electric != touch screen

[Anonymous Coward]

There is no complaint against all electronic voting that can't be solved with some relatively simple engineering.

Try these...

The system does not have the transparency of a pencil-and-paper/hand count system. Any voter in Canada can, if they wish, watch their ballot box from the moment their ballot goes in until the counting is complete.

Electronic voting systems are much more expensive than pencil-and-paper/hand count systems.

Re:Electric != touch screen

[Haeleth]

> Paper ballots are the way to go. But if we did that, we might not know the outcome of the elections right away...

This is true - countries using paper ballots with human counters sometimes don't know the outcome of the election until the next day!

Re:Electric != touch screen

[volkris]

The system does not have the transparency of a pencil-and-paper/hand count system. Any voter in Canada can, if they wish, watch their ballot box from the moment their ballot goes in until the counting is complete.

Engineering...

Electronic voting systems are much more expensive than pencil-and-paper/hand count systems.

Not when using systems with similar accuracy.

Re:Electric != touch screen

[volkris]

This is true - countries using paper ballots with human counters sometimes don't know the outcome of the election until the next day!

Try never, as in we will never know who actually won the most popular votes in the 2000 presidental election because the margin of error of paper ballots is above the margin by which the candidates differed in the official count.

Re:Electric != touch screen

[volkris]

ALL of this can be solved by engineering.

Voters can verify that their votes were properly recorded after it is guaranteed to be stored in a sufficient number of redundant recording systems so as to make the chances of disaster lower than that with paper systems.

We can guarantee the validity of the recorded votes, which we absolutely cannot do with paper ballots.

At this point you can recount the votes until your heart's content using whatever combination of vote counting systems you wish, which again is much more than you can say for paper ballots (which quickly deteriorate with each additional counting).

And then of course it is possible to detect tampering, and who says there would be a "the" manufacturer?

Re:Electric != touch screen

[Qrlx]

No, we will never know who won Florida, and thus the election. Al Gore got about 500,000 more votes that George W. Bush, about half a percentage point.

In Florida the difference was something like 500 votes out of 6,000,000, much much closer than the overall results.

Re:Electric != touch screen

[Qrlx]

uh, al gore got 500,000 more in the national contest, out of about 100 million votes cast. guess i shoulda previewed.

Distance?

[A nonymous Coward]

I have NEVER heard knots used as a measure of distance, always as speed. One knot is one nautical mile per hour. If you can sho wme some reference, I woudl appreciate it.

My dictionary says that knot is indeed a measure of distance, except not in nautical usage. I have never heard the non-nautical usage as distance, not even by landlubbers, who quite commonly says knots per hour.

Re:Distance?

[Anonymous Coward]

http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=knot

2. Abbr. kn. or kt. A unit of speed, one nautical mile per hour, approximately 1.85 kilometers (1.15 statute miles) per hour.

3. A distance of one nautical mile.

you'll yell alright

[Anonymous Coward]

when I pound my 18 inches of black meat up your white-boy rectum.

Unamerican??? What?

[DeVilla]

Not to stick up for DMCA, but didn't it say they were fleeing the EU? When the US is wrong it's wrong, but why doesn't anyone ever regonize when the EU or Oz or any other nation makes a gaff? We even gripe more about the US than China.

In a barely related comment, did anyone notice that one of the sites about the Diebold mess was a .NZ site pretty much dedicated to bashed US conservatives? Does that mean US politicians are now more interesting than the Royals? (Common on, you know which Royals I mean.)

MOD PARENT UP

[Anonymous Coward]

+5, Absolutely fucking hilarious

You got that backwards

[A nonymous Coward]

Someone brought suit to stop the touchscreen voting law, and the appeals court threw out the suit. The court did NOT reject the touchscreen voting law.

A federal appeals court has struck down a lawsuit filed by a California Libertarian that sought to ban electronic voting machines on the grounds that they are susceptible to fraud and software bugs.

MOD PARENT DOWN

[Anonymous Coward]

malefactor.org is a known homosexual site.

Re:liebold not going to be a problem but WAS a pro

[Billly Gates]

Not weird at all. Speaking of Ohio electors, go read my link above. Diebold executives made it clear to Ohio republicans that they will do everything possible to make sure bush wins in 2004!

Re:Happy Halloween

[Anonymous Coward]

Official Goatse merchandise? Oh God no.

Re:Just in case you are as lazy as the average /.'

[Anonymous Coward]

This kind of bizarre complaint does not help your cause.

Re:Just in case you are as lazy as the average /.'

[Idou]

Nothing bizarre about it. Pretty straight forward and simple: the white house site is editting past webpages without posting updated dates. A robot.txt file was created to prevent mass archiving of these documents, so the editting wouldn't be as obvious.

However, I can't imagine an AC, who can't even figure out how to login, to be able to comprehend that . . .

Re:Unamerican??? What?

[I Be Hatin']

Not to stick up for DMCA, but didn't it say they were fleeing the EU? When the US is wrong it's wrong, but why doesn't anyone ever regonize when the EU or Oz or any other nation makes a gaff?

You're kidding, right? From what I've heard from the Eurosnobs here and at K5, it's because Europe is a utopia, with all of the benefits of living in the US, and none of the problems. You see, the DMCA laws that are sweeping the EU aren't their fault, it's the US' fault.

This is why we gripe about the US

[donscarletti]

Not to stick up for DMCA, but didn't it say they were fleeing the EU? When the US is wrong it's wrong, but why doesn't anyone ever regonize when the EU or Oz or any other nation makes a gaff? We even gripe more about the US than China.

George W. Bush and Hu Jintao both came to Australia a few weeks ago, and both offered a free trade agreement. The Chineese one was a simple "We'll buy your stuff if you sell it to us" agreement, the American one however was "We'll buy your stuff, if you change your laws to the way we want them". This includes DMCA like laws and increased copyright time.

China was made famous by their invasion of Tibet and their treatment of Taiwan (although to be fair, Taiwan did split from China to begin with). Yet most of the time China treats other countries sovereignty and their right to make up their own laws with far more respect than Uncle Sam.

I am asuming that you are from America so this might come as a shock to you, but apart from South Korea and small pockets of teenagers in eastern Canada, almost everyone outside the US hates the US. This is why you have heard so much bitching over the interent, because 5.9 Billion people are pissed off.

The US goes around invading countries and then refusing to pay for their restoration to even pre-war standards (let alone pre-embargo), instead trying to dump the bill on the UN. The US goes around changing people's laws with threat of ecconomic or military action. The US uses the CIA to play around with people's religeons by using fake Imams to preach Islam that suits the US foreign policy. The US frequently gets involved in other people's civil wars such as Vietnam. The US arms such nutcases as Saddam Husain and Osama Bin Laden in attempts to settle petty disputes with countries such as Iran and Russia.

In a barely related comment, did anyone notice that one of the sites about the Diebold mess was a .NZ site pretty much dedicated to bashed US conservatives? Does that mean US politicians are now more interesting than the Royals? (Common on, you know which Royals I mean.)

Queen Elizabeth although the head of the British armed forces including the British Nuclear arsonal has very little power. Therefore the only thing interesting about her is to be able to laugh at her and her family when her granson smokes pot or her son commits adultary or her late daughter in law's butler publishes embarassing and possibly false information. The american conservatives do the same amount of things that are stupid, its just when they do, people die. Learning about republican stupidity when you are outside the US is all part of the movement towards reality TV, because when you hear that George W does something stupid, you get up the next morning and find your city bombed.

Re:This is why we gripe about the US

[SpaceLifeForm]

I am asuming that you are from America so this might come as a shock to you, but apart from South Korea and small pockets of teenagers in eastern Canada, almost everyone outside the US hates the US. This is why you have heard so much bitching over the interent, because 5.9 Billion people are pissed off.

FYI, there are many USians that are pissed off too.

Re:This is why we gripe about the US

[donscarletti]

Sorry if I gave the impression that I thought that all americans supported current US foreign policy. I know there are many Americans who think George W is a stupid moron who is going to distroy the planet, but I didn't want to mention you guys lest I alert the authorities to your existance and you be denounced as the "fift column of evil" or something similarly inane.

Re:This is why we gripe about the US

[vrt3]

I am asuming that you are from America so this might come as a shock to you, but apart from South Korea and small pockets of teenagers in eastern Canada, almost everyone outside the US hates the US. This is why you have heard so much bitching over the interent, because 5.9 Billion people are pissed off.

Very few people in Europe hate the US. Even in Germany, France and Belgium very few hate the US, and we certainly don't hate people living there. We *do* think past and current US foreign policy stinks though.

Re:This is why we gripe about the US

[love2hateMS]

"The US goes around invading countries and then refusing to pay for their restoration to even pre-war standards (let alone pre-embargo), instead trying to dump the bill on the UN. The US goes around changing people's laws with threat of ecconomic or military action. The US uses the CIA to play around with people's religeons by using fake Imams to preach Islam that suits the US foreign policy. The US frequently gets involved in other people's civil wars such as Vietnam. The US arms such nutcases as Saddam Husain and Osama Bin Laden in attempts to settle petty disputes with countries such as Iran and Russia."

I am getting so very tired of this nonsense. France and Germany have invaded far more countries than the U.S. ever has. Who was it that built Iraq's nuclear reactor in the 80's? FRANCE. Who was it that knowingly laundered all of Saddam Hussein's money, the money he got violating the U.N. embargo in the 90's? FRANCE. Who built all his bomb shelters and REPEATEDLY sold him military weapons in violation of the U.N. embargo? FRANCE and GERMANY. Liars liars liars. Do you think Iraq would have left Kuwait without being forced? Yeah, sure they would. Get off your moral high-horse and look inside your own corrupt countries before you attack mine. We'll see how YOUR country reacts when 3,000 people are killed by terrorists funded by a foreign government. The French would probably apologize and surrender to the terrorists. "Oh we are SO sorry. Please forgive us for being a free democracy. Would you like to take over our country? Here, have some of the Jews we missed when we were letting the Nazis burn them." LIARS.

Stop lying about it. France and Germany kept Saddam Hussein in power, and the U.N. helped by ignoring the problem. Slashdot has turned into a U.S.-bashing, left-wing nut site. The left-wingers in Europe will do anything, let any atrocity go unchallenged, let any terrorist bomb women and children, just to uphold their pacifist stupidity. Monsters exist in the real world, and no matter how much you wish otherwise, you can't ignore them and hope they will "see the light."

What happened to the Winston Churchill's of Europe? Classic liberals like JFK believed foreign policy and military strength should be used to defend human rights, stop terrorism and end oppression. Are there any John F. Kennedy's left on the Left? I weep for your children.

Liars.

Re:This is why we gripe about the US

[arkhan_jg]

France and Germany have imvaded far more countries than the U.S. ever has. ...

The French would probably apologize and surrender to the terrorists.
...

The left-wingers in Europe will do anything, let any atrocity go unchallenged, let any terrorist bomb women and children, just to uphold their pacifist stupidity.

So are continental europeans warmongering mass invaders, or despicable pacifists not willing to stand up to anyone? Make up your mind.

Do you think Iraq would have left Kuwait without being forced?
You do realise there was a massive international coalition (hint, that included France and Germany) in the first Gulf War? That non-US forces made up 24% of the troops? That Germany and Japan ponied up $16 billion of the $61 billion cost? That it was backed by UN resolution?

That when the CIA encouraged the kurds to attack saddam, on the understanding that the US would help them, the US left them to be butchered?

Fast forward to Gulf War 2. No UN resolution. Virtually no allies. Off the top of my head, only the UK and Australia sent combat troops.
Massive, MASSIVE anti-war protests throughout Europe, including the UK.

Have it crossed your mind that people didn't want to invade Iraq because they
a) thought it was wrong to invade without a good reason
b) felt that containment, i.e. sanctions, were sufficient to keep Saddam in check
c) didn't accept the 'evidence' about WMD, which have still to turn up
d) thought the tieing together of 9/11 and Saddam
was rediculous

Monsters exist in the real world, and no matter how much you wish otherwise, you can't ignore them and hope they will "see the light."

Yes. Indeed. Thats why we had sanctions, yes? No fly zones, yes? Inspections, yes?

It was the US that yanked the inspectors prematurely, that ignored the UN when it wouldn't do what the US wanted (hint, the US has applied far more vetos to security council resolutions than any other member), and is now trying to rebuild a country from scratch. Is Iraq better off than it was under Saddam? No. Might it be in the future? Maybe. Are there WMD in Iraq? No. Was the war illegal without a UN resolution? Yes. Has it massively increased resentment against the US and west in general, and greatly increased the risk of future terrorism from countries like Saudi Arabia? Yes.

Who was it that built Iraq's nuclear reactor in the 80's? FRANCE.
Which was wrong, why, exactly? Iraq and Saddam was an ally of the west against Iran in the 80's. The West sold him all sorts of things in the 80's, including the Americans selling him chemical weapons which he later used against the Kurds. If you want to blame the French for lack of foresight, that same claim can equally be laid at the Americans for arming him in the first place.

Who was it that knowingly laundered all of Saddam Hussein's money, the money he got violating the U.N. embargo in the 90's? FRANCE.
The only reference I can find to this is where France was being paid by Iraq in return for goods supplied under the 'oil for food' program - you know, the UN backed one allowed non-military supplies past the sanctions in exchange for money from selling oil? If you have other references, I suggest you post them, because it sounds like FUD to me.

Who built all his bomb shelters and REPEATEDLY sold him military weapons in violation of the U.N. embargo? FRANCE and GERMANY.

"WARSAW, Oct 3 (Reuters) - Polish troops in Iraq have found four French-built advanced anti-aircraft missiles which were built this year, a Polish Defence Ministry spokesman told Reuters on Friday.

France strongly denied having sold any such missiles to Iraq for nearly two decades, and said it was impossible that its newest missiles should turn up in Iraq.

"Polish troops discovered an ammunition depot on September 29 near the region of Hilla and there were four French-made

Re:This is why we gripe about the US

[Anonymous Coward]

"pacifist stupidity"

Yet further proof in my theory that humans are evolving into separate species. Hopefully natural selection gets rid of homo sapien malignus before they blow us all up...

Re:This is why we gripe about the US

[donscarletti]

It's funny, I never made a single value judgement about the reason for invasion of Iraq yet your entire reply seems to a rebuttal this comment I didn't make. The quote you are refering to was simply about the US government expecting the UN to pay for cleaning up for the war that they advised against. As for France and Germany, I never mentioned either of them. I agree with you about France's questionable stance towards it, although I assert that I cannot see anything wrong with Germany's behavior.

You state that France and Germany both invaded other countries. This is true, however German invaions were carried out by a reigeme that was distroyed by force then systematically tried condemned and executed then zelously denounced by govenment policy for fifty years. The Last large scale French invasion was carried out by Napolion two hundred years ago. You cannot hold Nazi indiscressions or Napolionic ambition against Germany of France any more than one can blame the Italians for sacking Jerusalem or invading Gaul. However at the same time Napoleon was attacking Russia, America was attacking Canada and Mexico while conducting the wholesale slaughter of natives, yet I don't hold that against America because it was two hundred years ago.

You later call me a lier, because of my non-existant statements refering to France and Germany. They could have been a responce to my comment about arming Saddam but surely one cannot deny this simply because France also participated. You then mention terrorists being a threat with a lot of rhetoric about women and children, bombs and the like which are frightning but wholly irrelevent in the context of Iraq. As far as I know no links between Iraq and Al Quida have been found, Saddam Hussain was a very secular leader in contrast to the religeous nutcases that lead the bordering countries. Saddam Hussain also had a repution as a cold hearted, ruthless destroyer of religeous extremists, many terrorists and terrorist supporters have been slaughtered in very nasty ways by him and his leftenants yet you consider leaving him in power would have threatened our women and children with terrorism more than distroying his regime and letting the country decay into a crazy theocracy like Iran or Afghanistan who have a grudge against western countries for invading them? If someone wanted to distroy a bastion of religeous extremism, human rights abuses and a haven for terrorism they would be attacking Saudi Arabia instead.

As for Winston Churchill, Winston Churchill stood against a huge foe, the Third Reich, an empire that had thousends of dedicated troops, superior tanks and aircraft, balistic missiles, a huge fleet of submarines and some of the best generals in the world. This army was bombing Churchill's country every night, building up and invasion force at his border, and taking over all of Europe, all with the Americans staying out of it because they didn't believe it conserned them until they themselves were attacked. If Winston Chirchill was alive to hear an American claming to carry on his legacy by invading a third world country with a pathetic military of antiquated machinary just because it has a highly doubtable link to a terrorist organisation that bombed the US once, he would laugh in your face.

As for myself. I am proud of my country's involvement in real wars where my country's or other country's liberty is at stake. If however you continue to associating trifling matters of superstition and parranoia with defending human rights, stopping terrorism, and ending oppression you make a mockery of those who actually fought and died to achieve these things. With people like you around, I fear for my children as well.

Re:This is why we gripe about the US

[You're All Wrong]

"What happened to the Winston Churchill's of Europe?"

Given that Churchill' policy of genocide killed more Kurds than Saddam Hussein's, I hope they're all swinging from lampposts.

YAW.

Re:This is why we gripe about the US

[dbIII]

France and Germany kept Saddam Hussein in power

Actually I thought it was Rumsfeld who went in and agreed to sell Saddam a lot of weapons. It almost finished his career after Kuwait.

I suspect that what most people dislike is not the country, but the US approach to foreign policy. It's not even the US government that they hate, since the intelligence agencies get to set a lot of policy by their actions. A move back to a pre-WWII style US government (before the President was given emergency powers) and a intelligence community that is accountable to all three arms of government would make most people inside and outside the USA a lot happier. Actually giving Poindexter another job shows that those with the right connections can get away with treason - so America does not look as if it is following the American way to outsiders. If the judicary had anything to say about him selling weapons to a very hostile power at the time, he may well have been executed.

The comments on the likely french response to terrorism show complete ignorance of the actual french responses to terrorism - a lot more incidents have occurred in France than in the USA over recent decades. It's a bit strange thinking that if France is capable of blowing up a Greenpeace ship in a foreign country is going to be any more lenient with terrorist groups. France is hated because it replied to threats of what would happen if they didn't vote with the USA with loud insults. Personally, I don't like the foreign policy of France completely either (eg. killing a Greenpeace member in New Zealand), but they've changed their policy a lot since Vietnam.

No, I'm New Here

[New Here]

No, I'm New Here

Re:If MS destroyed cdrws...

[j_w_d]

You ought to keep in mind that the command ONLY clobbers the one brand of drive, LG. Other drives are built to spec. and aren't susceptible to that particular weirdness. The same result could be achieved with LG drives using Win* just as easily as with linux. The fault is a poor job with the drives, not the OS.

Re:Awesome pix of the radiation flares

[Anonymous Coward]

OH great!! Now my pr0n searches will bring me here instead of where I want to be! ;-) It's the only way I get away from slashdot!!

MOD PARENT INFORMATIVE

[momerath2003]

One of the better AC postings. Even though it, arguably like its parent, is completely off topic.

Good link nonetheless.

PR Relations

[Nf1nk]

PR relations is actually an office I saw at a news radio station. It was the guy who had to deal with other companies PR folks.

16-bit checksum?

[rthille]

WTF? The future of the free world at stake and they can't shell out for MD5?

(one of the referenced aritcles talks about the odds of a corrupt card verifying being approx. 1 in 60000)

who cares about expectation?

[mightybricklayer]

why do i sense dissapointment in some people regarding the solar flare? like more and more geeks, i don't use my land line. ever. i've got digital celluar which covers all of my phone needs, and only use the landline when a static IP is preferable :-)

Re:Just in case you are as lazy as the average /.'

[Anonymous Coward]

"However, I can't imagine an AC, who can't even figure out how to login, to be able to comprehend that . . ."

He's probably an AC because /. has a lot of liberals with agendas and modpoints.

Are you just stupid? If he *said* "major combat operations," then that's what he said. It is irrelevant how much of that a third party decided to quote.

I wonder...

[dracvl]

They have utilized only 2112 CPUs (1056 dual Power Macs), despite having supposedly purchased 2200.

I wonder what happened to the last 88 computers. Are there 88 employees in that department, perchance?

Re:I wonder...

[jareds]

According to the sentence you yourself quote, they are using all but 44 computers.

Jerk AND it gets better...

[arete]

Distance, and it's derivates: velocity, acceleration, jerk. To use a car example, a distance is how far you are, velocity is how fast you're going (changing distance). Acceleration is how fast you're changing velocity, and Jerk is how fast you're changing acceleration. So, for instance, while acceleration is roughly correlated to how far down you have the gas pedal, jerk would be correlated to HOW FAST you jam the pedal down.

To follow another poster - it IS how fast someone jerks your chain, assuming they start out holding your chain and then move to break, they'll have a significant jerk.

It gets better. The next ones are (wait for it): snap, crackle, and pop. I kid you not. Seems I learned something getting a BS in Mechanical Engineering.

Re:Jerk AND it gets better...

[neosake]

Lies, all lies!

Direction isn't relevant

[arete]

Like distance, it can be in 3 (or more!) axis. The direction relative to your direction of motion isn't related at all. (See also my post the sibling of yours) You could have a huge jerk in the direction you're going (when you start to fire rockets) you're not going (as you deploy a parachute) or sideways (as start to impact something, for instance)

Re:Direction isn't relevant

[Lars T.]

Let me get this straight - sooner or later we all go the direction of the biggest jerk?

It is not "we".

[Anonymous Coward]

Unless you are Paul Wolfowitz or Dick Cheney, we is the wrong pronoun. If they thought that they would make more money or advance their anger, they would certainly kill you as they have killed Iraqis. Wouldn't bother them at all.

They don't think of you as we, so you should be careful not to think of them as part of your social group.

A knot is...

[Anonymous Coward]

A nautical or geographical mile is 6080 ft (in the UK, 6080.27 in the US) which is 1 minute of angle of the earth from core to crust.

The international nautical or air mile is 6076.097

Src: Thorndike-Barnhart Comprehensive Desk Dictionary, 1951.

cheap CD-ROMs

[arete]

If you want a cheap used one, email me and I'll send you one, you can paypal me something.

Alternatively, Global computer has the C46039 for $15 (regular price I believe) www.globalcomputer.com Or you can call 630 848-4631 to speak to my most wonderful rep there.

Speaking as a US citizen...

[Anonymous Coward]

I wonder if we'll tell ourselves we're either with us or against us?

Re:Speaking as a US citizen...

[ealar dlanvuli]

Yes, that is exactly what the president would say on the eve of the first consession.

Re:Unamerican??? What?

[The Wicked Priest]

I see plenty of griping about the EU. Personally, I gripe most about the U.S. because that's where I live, so what happens here matters most to me, and it's also the country I have the best odds of affecting. Never mind that it has unrivaled influence over the rest of the world.

damn

[arete]

*sigh* Sometimes I'd give up all my capabilities being informative, or even interesting, and maybe even insightful just to sometimes be funny.

It's so much, well, funnier.

*plays a tiny violin*

Well, at least I'm not a redundant offtpoic flamebait troll. Actually, I'm not even sure how to do that. I guess if I somebody else was already an offtopic flamebait troll, and I repeated it, it could be redundant. But it wouldn't really be very good flamebait, or a very good troll. Another mystery for the ages.

Panther alone might boost the VT cluster.

[dbirchall]

I have a Power Mac G5 2x2.0GHz here, and this evening I compared XBench numbers on it under Jaguar (10.2.8 G5, build 6S90) and Panther (10.3 build 7B85). The overall score in XBench went from around 180 to around 210, a 16-17% increase in benchmark performance, but some of the subtests showed more significant changes.

The XBench CPU Test score went from 148.72 to 193.29. There was a slight decline in the "Floating Point Basic" category, but performance in "AltiVec Basic" and "vecLib FFT" improved by over 50% and "Floating Point Library" performance also improved by over 20%.

The XBench Thread Test score went from 185.93 to 209.27, with most of that accounted for by an 18% gain in the "Computation" subtest. The XBench Memory Test score went from 293.70 to 312.41, gaining primarily in the System (vs. Stream) memory subtests, particularly "Allocate" which went up almost 40%. (On my iBook G3-600, Panther improved "Allocate" scores 304%!)

So if my machine - roughly equivalent to a single node of VT's cluster (theirs have more RAM; mine has more disk) - can get a 30% boost on the CPU test, a 12%+ boost on the thread test, and a 6% boost on the memory test, it looks like the planned upgrade to Panther mentioned in a previous article might help it get past the 10-TeraFLOP mark.

(Hypothetically speaking, if VT's code for LINPACK made extensive use of the AltiVec and vecLib bits included in the OS, going to Panther could boost things up into the 12-14 TeraFLOP range. However, I believe they're probably using custom-written libraries built with optimizing compilers, so I don't think the difference will be that profound.)

Re:Panther alone might boost the VT cluster.

[Anonymous Coward]

That's all well and good, but it's even slower than Jaguar at copying 17 MB files. DO NOT, UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES, UPGRADE IF YOU NEED TO WORK WITH FILES THAT ARE EXACTLY 17 MB.

these lowercase ;etters have been added to get past the lameness filter, because slashdot editors are nazis who deserve to be executed or at least forced to use windows me for the rest of their lives.

Has no one noticed this? -16000 +$200,965

[jriskin]

Am I totally off base being suspecious of this?

Diebold gives $200,965 to the Republicans...

http://www.opensecrets.org/softmoney/softcomp1.asp ?txtName=Diebold

Personally I think this should automatically disqualify them for making any sort of voting systems, but I guess I don't really understand the system that well.

Re:Has no one noticed this? -16000 +$200,965

[t_allardyce]

No clearly you have no understanding of the American political system, ill bring you up to date:

Basically the various companies/corporations/associations all have interests in various aspects of the law. Now normally if they wanted to put their interests into reality and have the laws changed (for example a chemical company might want to dump waste in a certain area) then the heads of the company would have to be friends with the heads of the government and then a "special" law could be made. However in this modern world politicians sometimes demand a little more for their services, and seeing as bribery would be totally illegal, the "little more" is called a "campaign contribution" which basically means "you give us some money and we will do our best to look the other way"

Now you may think that this is totally outrageous and how can anyone live knowing this is going on? well don't worry, you see the American way is to just accept that the president is god and that it must probably be wrong because it sounds like a conspiracy theory and someone else must be dealing with it. Oh and don't feel ashamed about it because lots of countries have bent politicians, its ok.

There are specs - LG doesn't follow them

[buchanmilne]

Hardware is expensive for those of us not living in alice's-wonderland-with-7%-GDP-growth-in-one-semes ter.

And how is this relevant? If you have a drive affected by this, return it, and LG will replace it or give you a refund, since this is a hardware defect which they are responsible for. Many users have already.

You either put up with that and write safe software for sub-par nonstandard tienda-de-descuentos hardware,

And how do you know which standards-compliant methods will damage bad hardware? You have to test it. Why wasn't this bug (in a failry popular kernel patch) discovered before? Because it wasn't tested by a large enough group of people before, so it was difficult to isolate the problem. Now that we know what the problem is, it is easy to spot other occurences of the bug (Gentoo's America's Army CDs for instance).

or you create clear specifications of what kind of system you must have for Linux to even work.

There are specifications for the hardware, and LG is the only manufacturer not following them, which is why they are the only ones affected by this patch.

(By the way, am I the only one annoyed by the fact that even the modern-est Linux distros only support 10% of the ethernet cards supported by Win95?)

Are you talking about ancient plug-n-play network cards? Linux does support them, but they're such a mission to set up if you don't have the DOS utilities they shipped with to set the IRQ and base address (since you have to guess).

Maybe you would like to tell me why Windows 2003 doesn't support the PCI network cards I have in my linux box (which work fine with windows95->Windows 2000)?

Re:The lesson to be learned here

[arkhan_jg]

Uhh, I suspect he was referring to the EUCD, a piece of legislation very similar to the DMCA, already passed at the european level. It is now the responsibility of each european nation to implement the EUCD into local law. (they should have done so already, but in the UK at least, the patent office is still working on it)

If you want to know why the EUCD is bad, try http://www.eurorights.org/eudmca/WhyTheEUCDIsBad.h tml

Rigged

[t_allardyce]

The ultimate test will be 2004, if bush wins then for me thats 100% conclusive evidence that Diebold's machines are rigged because after the last 4 years no sane person (unless they owned a big corporation) would vote Bush. But ofcourse if he does win no-one will do anything about it, remember politicians dont listen to the people anymore.

silly putty?

[astro-g]

so this has something to do with the properties of silly putty, and why it can be snapped?

I can also imagine a truss that bends under load, being capable of taking a certain load, but if that load is applied to quickly, being unable to reconfigure to take the load properly.
If it can happen at the truss level, It should be feasable at the molecular level.
Correct?

The G5s...

[a20vertigo]

...anyone else think think they're making a secret hiddeny Rush reference (to the album 2112)? Or am I just being a commie, USian, Canadian wannabe... eh?

Exposing D(L)iebold.

[Anonymous Coward]

One way to help get this out would be to forward the linked documents and other information to reporters. Reporters at reputable news outlets with a reputation for investigative journalism.

Another way would be to try to get student media interested. This has been effective in the past. See some of the death penalties that have been overturned.

Re:The lesson to be learned here

[uradu]

> I suspect he was referring to the EUCD, a piece of legislation very similar to the DMCA

Few know what EUCD means, but everyone has heard about the DMCA. Why not mention that instead directly, without the round-about route of the EU, especially since it was there first? But I guess if one wants to knock the EU, one must find the bad things it does that are similar to the bad things the US do and knock those instead.

Re:Just in case you are as lazy as the average /.'

[Anonymous Coward]

Er, that was on the WHITE HOUSE website, and I have NO PROBLEM with corrections, as long as they are DATED.

There is a difference between making a mistake and correcting it transparently and making a mistake, implementing a means to prevent similar mistakes from being exposed (robot.txt), and then erasing the mistake, as if it never appeared . . .

This case might be a trivial error, but it creates a very bad precedent, and I would think the /. community could appreciate that.

And what does it matter that liberals hang-out at /.? Take a look at my last 4 posts (the first was originally "interesting").

It really does not matter what /.er's think when the editors want you to shut-up about something . . . (3 separate Troll ratings on a sub-thread that definitely wasn't getting any traffic, and usually once something is labeled TROLL, moderators do not bother looking any deeper into a particular thread. Not to mention these were modded well after the story was past prime-time as /.).

I just really hate cover-ups, no matter how innocent and well intended they might be. I can see /. siding with the white house on this, when the editors are guilty of far worse accountability issues.

Very sad that they do not believe in the power of their own system . . . makes you wonder if they can every find happiness.

Here's how it'll play.

[Anonymous Coward]

First, the vote will landslide to Bush.

Then, it will become evident that practically nobody voted for him, since he has destroyed the economy (people don't care about the warmongering, really, it's the high price of gas that pisses 'em off).

Then, he'll declare martial law in response to the "unrest". Reagan already paved the way for that move!

Then, the troops will move into the inner cities... better hope you are a white westerner, chatckula!

OT: on directions [was Re:Sweet acceleration!]

[mysticgoat]

While two wrongs don't make a right (but three lefts do)...

"So I turn left at the Tee intersection up ahead?"

"That's right."

"You mean left is wrong? I thought we were told to go left, left, left!"

"If you do that fast enough, that would be right. But it would be wrong."

"???!"

"Look, it's as simple as your dumb politics: left is right, and right is wrong. Okay?"

With apologies to Abbot & Costello and a baseball routine I'd like to hear again some day.

Derr... it's not the G5 vs. Itanium here, morons

[Anonymous Coward]

It's the friggin chipsets on the motherboards
and the communication chipsets between machines
that makes all the difference here.

5000 Yugo motors pulling a tiny balso wood
sled can run circles around

5000 Chevy 350's pulling Mt. Everest.

Now, if it turns out that Apple's motherboards
and inter-communication equipment are crap, then
it would indeed seem that the G5 is this really
really really really great CPU. But ya just
don't know... do ya!

Fuckin logic, morons. Where's yours?

guilty

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes! Drop some nukes over Paris and Bonn.
Right now!

Re:The lesson to be learned here

[arkhan_jg]

What the?? For a start, the quote is direct from the Teleread site - which is an american news site. They reported, correctly, Convert Lit has shut down it's old UK based site (lycos.co.uk), and moved to a polish one. Those are the facts.

Few know what EUCD means, but everyone has heard about the DMCA.

Very true. But the EUCD (European Union Copyright Directive) is very definitely european legislation. Thus calling it the 'EU-style DMCA' is a way of clueing people in that it is similar to the DMCA, but comes from the EU. Which it does. It's European legislation, applying to all member states. Many EU nations helped draft it, not least the UK (the patent office is very keen on it). It was passed at the european level.

Why not mention that instead that directly, without the round-about route of the EU
Because the DMCA has no legal power in the UK, or anywhere else in europe. It's American legislation, which only applies to the US. Thus, the DMCA has no force whatsoever that can be applied to a UK hosted website. It would be rediculous to say the DMCA had caused this directly, as that would be untrue.

It is the EUCD (which no-one has heard of, remember) which is causing Convert Lit to move from an EUCD signatory, the UK, to a non european, non-EUCD signatory, Poland.

As it happens, the EUCD is not yet implemented in the UK, but it is only a matter of time, as it is required under European Law.

But I guess if one wants to knock the EU, one must find the bad things it does that similar to the bad things the US do and knock those instead.

So we're agreed the EUCD is similar to the DMCA, both are bad, and that the EUCD is a piece of european legislation, passed by all branches of the EU, which applies to all member states, that is forcing a UK website to move outside the EU? Reported by an American site? Then quoted word for word by another American site, slashdot?

Please explain to me how you came to the conclusion that someone (you don't specify who) is a stereotypical EU-hating Brit?

Don't be such a stereotypical EU-hating Brit and look at the real source of the DMCA, how about it?

The DMCA is crap legislation, of course. The EUCD is equally crap legislation passed by the European Commission, Parliament and Council of Ministers. Convert Lit is one of the casualties of the legislation. But blaming the DMCA and the americans is pointless in this case, as the DMCA has NO LEGAL FORCE in the UK. it is the EUCD that is to blame, no more, no less. If it was a French or German website, it would be equally as affected.

Therefore, to call it a British anti-EU bias appears to be disingenuous at best, libel at worst.

Are you off base? Yes.

[porkchop_d_clown]

You can't restrict an individual's right to give to political parties; and companies are composed of individuals.

i960 on an ether port?

[Anonymous Coward]

Why would an ethernet card need an i960? Does this thing have it's own built in firewall or something?

Nope, it's about jerk exposure...

[arete]

Time is important to - we all tend to be most affected by the biggest jerk we're exposed to for the most amount of time.

And that direction might be positive or negative.