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.
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
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.
Is everyone seeing triple or is it just me?
Its just you. Now shut the fuck up.
- Timothy
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?
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.
..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 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
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
"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...
I have no doubt that you could find 300 experts in any of the issues at debate in the presidential election and get them to sign an open letter stating that one of the candidates is right or wrong, and find just as many for the opposing side.
Is it really that hard for people to see this? It's not that difficult to find 300 professors in the same field that will sign something supporting one candidate over the other, (or attacking the policies of the other).
In short, I would take this open letter with a grain of salt and nothing more.
What?
"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.
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make install -not war
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.
(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
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
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make install -not war
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
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.
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.
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.