Slashdot Mirror
Slashback: Pong, Economics, Stability
That was fast. jsin writes "Microsoft has provided a patch for the ASP.NET exploit mentioned [on October 7th] on Slashdot, among other outlets. From the article: "To aid customers in protecting their ASP.NET applications, an HTTP module has been developed that implements canonicalization best practices. By applying this module to your web server, all ASP.NET applications on the server are protected against canoncalization problems known to Microsoft as of the publication date.""
Warring academics , never pretty. DAldredge writes with news of another side to the economic debate in academia over the plans of this year's two leading presidential candidates, pointing to this "statement Wednesday by 368 economists, including six Nobel laureates: Gary Becker, James Buchanan, Milton Friedman, Robert Lucas, Robert Mundell, and -- the winner of this year's Nobel Prize in Economics -- Edward C. Prescott. The economists warned that Sen. Kerry's policies 'would, over time, inhibit capital formation, depress productivity growth, and make the United States less competitive internationally. The end result would be lower U.S. employment and real wage growth.'"
The steel cage match with the members of the Harvard Business School opposed to Bush's economic policies has yet to be announced.
Hey Pal, would you please Pay? Daemon writes "eBay made an official announcement stating that they are stabilizing their Paypal services after a few days of problems: 'Most members are now able to log in to the PayPal site to access account information, use shipping functions, use PayPal debit cards, and pay for items online with no difficulty.'
Again, it seems there are still problems on the horizon (or hidden under?) since they say: 'Should you encounter any errors when attempting to log in or use different PayPal functions, please try again.' The full announcement can be viewed on their System Status Announcement Board."
Do please try this at home. adelayde writes "Here we have an article on a wireless IP link between Europe and Africa. It documents the full details about the 802.11b link between the two continents, traversing the Gibraltar Strait, as part of the Transacciones / Fadaiat project and with it placed within the geo-political context of immigration and freedom of movement. The announcement was originally posted to Slashdot in June 2004."
What I want to see is a mechanical Ping-Pong! yathosho writes "German magazine Spiegel Online has posted an interview with art-student Niklas Roy, creator of Pongmechanik, an electromechanical conversion of the classical game Pong."
(We mentioned this amazing looking device last month.)
I can't help but wonder how many eBay transactions have ended in negative feedback for both sellers and buyers, how many transactions have simply been lost in the digital void, and what kind of responsibility (if any!) PayPal will take. I know I have had several PayPal payments recently that I'm not sure whether they have been sent, or if they've just been swallowed by the system, and would certainly like some sort of information from PayPal's side. I did receive one just a couple of hours ago, though, which seems to indicate that the PayPal system does indeed function somewhat normally now.
Since when did /. start using M$ servers??
Yes, there are women on Slashdot. Deal with it.
The real question is which is the dupe now? Where do I post my cynical remarks?
I for one would like to welcome our full page slashback overlords.
I think I speak for all of us when I say thank you for bringing back slashback.
Im dreaming ofa big bndwdth, That can resist the
It's called 'increased corporate effeciency'.
Free Software: Like love, it grows best when given away.
topic
In Soviet russia, only old Koreans profit from pictures of Natalie Portman stored on Beowulf Clusters.
Well, after todays performance, it still doesn't seem ready :)
or is this story posted twice, with one of them leaading to an error page. I think the old editors got them a bug here.. something to keep them busy.
The lunatic is in my head
My bad, must have been a rendering hiccup or something. I totally saw two copies of Slashback on the front page.
If anyone missed the few minutes when the dupe was running rampant, then you probably won't know what the next 100 or so comments are referring to. So here's a screenshot.
Cyde Weys Musings - Scrutinizing the inscrutable
Can you please not post dupe stories so fast. Normally for dupes I like to have a quick scan of the original to pilfer some highly moderated comments as part of my on going karma whoring policy. Obviously this is process is made much more difficult by you posting the dupes in such quick succession.
Please allow at least a day between dupes co I hate having to make up my own posts.
Do not try to read the dupe, thats impossible. Instead, only try to realize the truth
What truth?
There is no dupe
shouldn't the link be to the actual letter; rather than an analysis by a former assistant of VP Cheney?
And who cares. A quick google search turned up a poll conducted by The Economist, where academics gave just the opposite opinion: low marks for Bush and high marks for Kerry.
Who cares about dupes? Who HASN'T made a mistake in their life?!
That's some pretty heavy artillery. Becker, Buchanan, Mundel, Friedman, Prescott ... if those guys agree on something, there's probably fire behind the smoke.
It's no surprise to hear that from Friedman, but some of the others on that list aren't so consistantly against government involvement in the economy. Here is the statement itself, with a list of the folks who signed it. There are a few names I recognize, but the noticable thing is these guys are from all over.
Quote of the letter itself, since it's likely to get /.ed.:
See what I've been reading.
Slashbacks of Slashbacks. Imagine a BeoWulf cluster of Slashbacks.
God spoke to me:
www.geocities.com/James_Sager_PA/love3.html
God spoke to me
They're currently planning on having a conquerent release with Duke Nukem Forever.
You are in a maze of twisty little relative jumps, all alike.
Yeah well I saw three copies. But being an adult, I figured it was a mistake and would be corrected in due time, so I resisted a childish urge to post yet another lame comment about dupes. I just reloaded the front page and sure enough, it was fixed.
So Kerry's economic plan is bad. Big news, so's his foreign policy plan.
The question is: are his plans better than Bush's. I'd rather vote for a candidate who will cause problems we CAN solve later than for a candidate who'll cause problems so bad we may NEVER be able to solve them!
Statements of absolute worth are useless in discussing policy. You must always compare it to the policy it's REPLACING.
Nice screenshot, but get some real bandwidth you 56k'er!
Is everyone seeing triple or is it just me?
Its just you. Now shut the fuck up.
- Timothy
Those fonts are UGLY. You must be running Linsux.
that you could probably also find just as many economists willing to sign something in favor of Kerry's policies, and that several of them would be high profile influential people in the field.
Nothing to see here, move along.
What?
Those fonts are UGLY!!! You must be running Linsux??
Yeah, I'm a jerk. Let me go kill myself now.
Read their EULA. I'm expecting them to do their best to avoid any fiscal responsibility unless there's a massive user uprising. Nothing special about PayPal... it's just a side effect of being a corporation.
Free Software: Like love, it grows best when given away.
DDoS time! yea!
..but I can't vote for Bush after the Iraq war. I'd rather live in poverty than give Bush another term.
Though when it comes to health care I'm almost ready to hand it over to some big socialist system because the private system sure isn't working for the average Joe (malpractice suits, big powerful drug companies that are more interested in expensive *treatments* rather than *cures*, and more interested in money-makers like Viagra, and more interested in paying money for TV ads than research and development.. if a person is sick, they'll need medicine, why on earth *advertise*, it's not like people choose on their own.. yada yada)
It's not like Bush is going to take government out of our lives, he'll just put it in a different place.
We're all screwed, that's all it comes down to. If it wasn't for the war I would just stay home on election day. Or maybe vote for the Libertarian guy. Same difference either way.
The commision to re-elect the President
Help fight continental drift.
The documentary on the website was very informative and interesting. He doesn't use any ICs or computer chips.. It's all relay switches! _very_ cool.. There is also a bit of toungue in cheek in the documentary making it very interesting.
in girum imus nocte et consumimur igni
Bones, can you fix it?
Damn it, Jim, I'm a doctor not a perl programmer.
Hey, Microsoft provided the source for the patch, along with the binary? Perhaps this heralds a new age of full-disclosure and openness, with Linux and Windows users walking hand-in-hand towards a freer, safer new world?
No, probably not.
using namespace slashdot;
troll::post();
What we have now in the U.S. is NOT a private health-care system. It's a facist - meaning state-run under the guise of nominal private ownership - system. Basically, it's Socialist, but everyone pretends that the entities are still privately owned. Put another way, the entities can do whatever they want, as long as it's what the government tells them.
The current state of the health care industry is the inevitable result of our movement toward Socialism. Saying we need to Socialize the industry is exactly the same idea as curing someone's headache by shooting them between the eyes.
One man's religion is another man's belly-laugh. - LL
How can the parent get modded insightful for a post so lacking in facts, yet completely filled with speculation (as well as some wishful thinking, I bet)? Stupid moderators.
"The steel cage match with the members of the Harvard Business School opposed to Bush's economic policies has yet to be announced."
You know, they could both be right. Neither group seems to say X is better than Y, just that X sucks.
Justification to vote third-party if I ever saw it...
"The economists warned that Sen. Kerry's policies 'would, over time, inhibit capital formation, depress productivity growth, and make the United States less competitive internationally. The end result would be lower U.S. employment and real wage growth."
I thought that was obvious, and I've never even taken an economics course.
Well, that's better...
When I first wrote the above, I was getting three copies of this story on the front page. Don't know why...
The comment is far less funy now that the error is gone...
8-)
Innocent people shouldn't be forced to pay for inferior software development.
--"Code Complete" Microsoft Press
"The end result would be lower U.S. employment and real wage growth."
Gee, that sounds like what we have had under Bush, with no signs of letup (except for Halliburton). Bush was blessed with the shortest, shallowest "recession" in history, ending in November 2001 *after 9/11/2001*. The economy that Clinton managed into unprecedented wealth generation was also benefited from the Clinton/Rubin/Reich "soft landing", despite the enthusaistic pessimism of the Milton Friedman school of economic bandits signing this attack on Kerry. Bush got a ripe economy for robbing, and a mediagenic excuse for his failure.
There is more than one economy in America. Most of us have been stuck in the longest "recovery" malaise in our memory, possibly ever - it's not over yet. Some lucky few, many of them rich enough to employ economists like Friedman and his Chicago ilk, have feasted on record corporate profits that keep the contrived Wall Street Dow Jones Industrial Average barely stable to avoid discrediting the entire system. The economists signing this propaganda know on which side their bread is buttered. And they know Kerry represents real changes in the management of their corporate welfare system. So they're manufacturing FUD as fast as they can: their only saleable product.
--
make install -not war
news of another side to the economic debate in academia over the plans of this year's two leading presidential candidates
Truth is that the economic policies of both candidates are estimated to add to the deficit. From the Cleveland Plain Dealer, October 14:
The Bush campaign points to a study by a conservative think tank, which concludes that Kerry's plan would add as much as $ 2.5 trillion to the deficit. But Bush's wish list is pricey too: at least $ 1.5 trillion to create private Social Security accounts and $ 1 trillion to make all his tax cuts permanent, according to estimates by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office and other analysts.
Higher deficits lead to higher interest rates, since the government borrows from the same sources as everyone to pay interest on the debt. Higher interest rates lead to less expansion in business. Less expansion leads to less new jobs. Neither one of these candidates will do anything to lower the deficit and, thus, neither one is going to promote business expansion or more new jobs in the US.
First is the saying that if you ask all the economists to lay down on the ground and point towards north you would find a pile of people pointing in all different directions.
The second (more serious) statement is regarding the Hawley-Smoot Act which is Wiki'd to say:
This was, to remind everyone, at the beginning of the Great Depression. Protectionism did not help. I don't think we're repeating the same mistake, but pay attention...
Small potatoes make the steak look bigger.
Glad I'm not the only one to notice that.
-bZj
.sig
(note: I'm not a native german speaker, but this is probably better than the fish would do.)
"Table tennis from the computer Stone-age"
A Berlin art student has reverse-engineered the classic videogame 'Pong' as an electro-mechanical device. He spent hundreds of hours assembling the monstrosity, that realistically pings and pongs via two wood blocks. In an interview with Spiegel Online the builder, Niklas Roy, explains was motivated him to do it.
Spiegel Online: How did you come up with the idea to build such a curious toy?
Roy: I wanted to react against what's happening these days in the games and film special effects industries. There virtual realities are made which copy the real world. My goal was to turn the tables and transport a virtual world into reality.
Spiegel Online: How much work is inside this big box?
Roy: A whole lot. From the idea to the finished machine took about a year. In total the project took about 900 hours of work.
Spiegel Online: Why of all things did you pick this Ping-Pong game?
Roy: Because it's a symbol. It's one of the first computergames, and definitely the first commercially successful one. And it's a virtual world that's calculated by a computer in real time. Although it's an imitation tennis game, it's nevertheless immediately recognizable as a video game. At the same time it's simplicity was well suited to my purposes.
Spiegel Online: Did you buy (new) all the parts from which you built it?
Roy: Yes, everything but the telephone relays. Those are from an Internet auction. I got them from an auction of a 50s telephone system. The parts together cost about 2500 Euros.
Spiegel Online: Where is the game now?
Roy: At the moment at my house. But it was exhibited at the 'Garage' festival in Stralsund this summer. Pongmechanick will probably be shown at the 'Viper' art festival in Basel and definitely at the hacker congress of the Chaos Computer Club in December in Berlin.
Spiegel Online: Was were the greatest technical challenges?
Roy: Without a doubt the mechanical parts. The whole thing consists of two parts: the relay controls and the mechanical display with collision detection. The mechanical part was the most complicated because it's naturally the most error-prone.
Spiegel Online: You tried several approaches for the mechanics before it worked...
Roy: In the beginning I wanted to set the moving parts on coasters and move them on carts. DC motors would've pulled the carts back and forth with strings. But it didn't work like I'd imagined. So I used chains instead of strings, and they move gliders instead of carts. The gliders simply slide along rails.
Spiegel Online: You hear it when the ball hits the flipper. How was that solved technically?
Roy: The original Pong had just two sounds: one high and one low beep. I wanted a one-to-one translation as much as possible. So I bought two wood blocks from a percussion store, one high and one low sounding. These are hit by electromagnets that came from door bells.
Spiegel Online: Where did your affinity for computer games and tinkering with relays come from?
Roy: Wenn you're 30 years old, like I am, then Pong is almost certainly the first video game that you played. And as a child I always tinkered a lot. I built an alarm system for my room and experimented with electricity. I always had a knack for it.
Spiegel Online: Do you believe that mechanical games in general have a future?
Roy: I can imagine that (note: I'm not a native speaker, but this is probably better than the fish would do.)
"Table tennis from the computer Stone-age"
A Berlin art student has reverse-engineered the classic videogame 'Pong' as an electro-mechanical device. He spent hundreds of hours assembling the monstrosity, that realistically pings and pongs via two wood blocks. In an interview with Spiegel Online the builder, Niklas Roy, explains was motivated hi
Really, I am going along those lines... but I've been having an insanely hard time finding a candidate in the third parties. I've looked through everything and most are tad too "radical" for me. Case in point, the Constitutional Party. I'm a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Later-day Saints (Mormons) and even I think these guys are radical nut-job religious fanatics. Then there's the Green party which I'm outrageously against. Liberterian Party is the closest thing I've found to even remotely liking, and even then they're a bit too much for me.... does anyone have any suggestions on good third-party candidates and reference links?
I'll be the first one to congratulate MS for promptly releasing the ASP.NET fix. I'll also congratulate them for admiting that: "Microsoft is working on a security update for this reported vulnerability". So, Its not a patch, nevertheless, it is a working temporary solution.
If we criticize them for their flaws, we should praise them when they assume responsibility. Its only fair to be fair.
Cheers,
Adolfo
"That was fast."
Don't they test this crap before they kick it out the door in Redmond? They've lowered expectations of their shabby, expensive (especially TCO) products so low that some of us are glad when a serious compromise takes Microsoft only weeks after public disclosure/pressure forces them to spend the time and money to debug. Can't they spend some of their tens of billions of dollars in profit on some of the unemployed
--
make install -not war
Offtopic?
So you see it isn't just potential presidents who make promises. The main difference is that whereas Kerry might not keep his promises, Bush has definitely broken his.
The moral is to always throw out the incumbent. Once incumbents realize that there is no point in campaigning for a second term, some of the chicanery to buy votes might just be replaced by honest corruption.
Infuriate left and right
except the ASP.NET thing, of course.
Once the Pakistanis oust Musharrif and the mullahs take over, nature will take it's course.
Weather report _ excessively high temperatures of 10,000 degrees Centigrade and winds of 1200 kph in major cities across the Indian sub-continent will drive people outdoors to watch the fireworks.
Stock Market report - the Indian stock market will first plummet and later vaporize as IT oursourcing firms such as Tata Industries become shadows against stone walls.
Wages for IT personnel in the Western world will rise above 1998 levels within 3 weeks.
Just remember:
The First Law of Economists: For every economist, there exists an equal and opposite economist.
The Second Law of Economists: They're both wrong.
how the hell did this get modded up?
There isnt a shread of intelligent thought anywhere in the post. Its just bashes microsoft, and not very creatively.
Sincerely
The commission of common fucking sense.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I mean, if you want it to be mechanical, why not actually play tennis? Or at least table-tennis?
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
I see in only black and white when the lights have dimmed before they go out entirely, and we're left chasing only shadows. There's only TWO WEEKS until the election, and under the tyranny of our duopoly, we have, in fact, only two choices as selfaware voters. One of Bush or Kerry is the next president of the US, and no rhetoric is going to change that. That is all we actually have to work with, like it or not. Where were you all year long, while the Democrats were choosing their candidate? Where were these economists? Where were you for the three, seven, eleven, twentythree years before that, while the duopoly became ever more entrenched, this year even excluding "third party" candidates?
Get off my back with your counterproductive whining. Kerry can get rid of Bush, and his lethal economics. And Kerry is more subject to the will of the people than is the Bush machine. That's how politics works: lots of incremental work that generates opportunities to make an actual change once in a while. We are not flapping our lips in some theoretical polysci vacuum. TWO WEEKS. To make the only choice possible for any opportunities for survival. After the election, crank up your whining machine to get Kerry's plans to serve your sensibilities, or go to work on creating those opportunities for other parties, or an alternative to that whole crooked 19th Century scam. Vote for Kerry and donate money to the party or organization most effective in generating the changes you want. But don't hassle me when we need to get rid of Bush as the enabler for any possiblity of progress at all. And don't jive me with your fantasyworld of somehow changing the system in the next TWO WEEKS.
--
make install -not war
Responding to your sig: The worst Democrat is better at jobs and growth than the best Republican.
Here's another possible sig: Government data shows Republicans are corrupt.
I've done some research and provided links to reviews of 3 movies and 35 books saying that the Bush administration is corrupt: Unprecedented Corruption: A guide to conflict of interest in the U.S. government.
On Monday on the Charlie Rose show, author Graydon Carter was talking about his book, What We've Lost. He said something like, "I thought I knew a tenth of extent of the corruption of the Bush administration, but I found that I knew a thousandth." That's my experience, too. I believe that I have a reasonable overview of the corruption, and I discover a new pocket of detail that shows that it is much worse than I thought.
The most shocking thing I've learned in trying to tell people about my research is that perhaps one U.S. citizen in twenty has any idea of the extent of the corruption.
This is as offtopic as your comment, but when I read your sig I was thinking "What? Vote Nazi?" That's a horrible name for a presidential candidate.
Lalala
Is everyone seeing triple or is it just me? Its just you. Now shut the fuck up. - Timothy
Is everyone seeing triple or is it just me?
Its just you. Now shut the fuck up.
- Timothy
statement Wednesday by 368 economists, including six Nobel laureates:
Well I do not doubt they have good economics: a swift kick of $50k into thier bank account will make most good economists see the value in saying anything.
I was unable to compile the story as it was missing a required library: Pinch of salt.
#hostfile 0.0.0.0 primidi.com 0.0.0.0 www.primidi.com 0.0.0.0 radio.weblogs.com
Six of the economists in the letter protesting the Kerry economic plan are listed as members of the "Hoover Institution". Reminds you of the good old days of President Hoover and the economic havoc wreaked by FDR's policies.
Great idea. Let us know if you need any help.
I've found that often people just don't want to know how corrupt the U.S. government has become. Instead of reading the links in the grandparent comment, and making a remark about the subject of corruption, you have changed the subject to talking about the manner of expression of my comment.
Even though the grandparent comment is supported by data from an official U.S. government web site, the comment is now marked "-1 Flamebait". That's willful denial of reality.
Seems like we've reached record un-employment and negative real wage growth under the Bush administration quite well, maybe a change would be good. Also I think the econimist consider only what's good for the large corp's which is not nescessarily what is good for the country as a whole. If the large corp's had there way every last American job would be sent over seas or given to an H1-B etc.
M