Slashdot Mirror
Slashback: Moon Footage, KillerNic, ZFS Leopard
Direct answers to Slashdot KillerNIC questions. Emptynest writes "A bit over a week ago, Slashdot linked a story on GDHardware.com and it was filled with a bunch of 'hard questions from the Slashdot Community" regarding Bigfoot Network's pending 'killer' Network card that promises to reduce in-game lag. It looks as if Bigfoot isn't backing down and has hand-picked several of the questions from the Slashdot Community and answered them in a new article."
Recap of stolen laptop identity theft. Kn10 writes to tell us Technibble has a brief recap of some of the major laptop thefts resulting in personal information being leaked from major organizations. From the article: "According to the FBI, laptop theft is the second most common computer crime and less than 2 percent of those stolen laptops are ever recovered. Four in five (81%) of US firms have had at least one laptop stolen containing sensitive information according to a recent study."
A victory for on PayPal user. Not-So-Anonymous Coward writes "According to his site, 'silic0nsilence', who was featured in the Summer 2006 issue of 2600, has won his long battle with PayPal Fraud. On August 15th, 2006 in Small Claims court, he was awarded $671.12 after almost a year-long war with PayPal and a user. He also successfully won a small claims suit against PayPal to commence in his case with the user."
Missing moon footage surfaces. denis-The-menace writes "Film producer and rock video director Peter Clifton was sitting watching television when he saw NASA was searching for original Apollo 11 footage. He had forgotten that in 1979 he ordered footage from The Smithsonian for use in The Dark Side of The Moon demo film. He had all but forgotten a pristine 16-millimeter film of the moon landing was part of his vast personal film catalogue"
Dell laptops unwelcome on Quatas flights. Thomas Henden writes "The Australian airline company Quantas, according to the Sydney Morning Herald, banned the in-flight use of Dell laptops on battery power. The security personnel even went so far as taping over the contacts in the batteries according to an agreement between Dell and Qantas. However the security is now somewhat relaxed — all you need to do now, is to get in touch with the personal aboard, and tell you want to use your Dell laptop, and then you will be 'advised individually.'"
More ZFS new from the Leopard front. nezmar writes "From the AppleInsider forum comes an interesting discovery about Sun's ZFS and Apple. A user who has the Leopard developer preview searched the system with Spotlight and found a mention of ZFS. He says: 'There is no file system bundle for it, nor is there a mount utility or any other one (no fsck, now newfs, etc.). There is, however, a changed vnode.h.' Looks like the story back in May might have some truth after all."
You have to go to here and click on the link. Otherwise you get a WMD parody.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
So from their response, It's clear that not only does their marketing department design and develop their products, but they also perform most traditional functions, such as put together fluff non-answers for web "interviews".
The theory of relativity doesn't work right in Arkansas.
You should see the logo for Westnet Broadband in Australia.
The theory of relativity doesn't work right in Arkansas.
But the "network stack" is a bit more complex than you seem to be implying. I'm sure that most people here are familiar with the old OSI model:
Application
Presentation
Session
Transport
Network
Data Link
Physical
Now, explain how those "hardware interrupts" substitute for the processing that needs to happen.
I'm not saying that the Windows TCP/IP stack could not stand some optimization. I'm sure that it could.
I just don't see how claiming "hardware interrupts" are the solution is an answer if you don't explain how those "hardware interrupts" handle the processing and where/when they are called.
Near as I can tell, his victory is a small claims court win against the buyer who claimed a fraudulent chargeback. Not only is paypal not a direct part of that victory, it's a pretty small victory, since he still has to collect payment, and that is much harder than merely showing up in small claims court with your opponent missing. He still intends to pay off NCO and paypal, so they won't lose much at all from his "victory".
Infuriate left and right
I took a Qantas flight yesterday and can confirm they are not allowing Dell computers to be used on their planes. They didn't actually ask people indidivually if they had a Dell, but part of the pre-takeoff announcement was "Dell laptop computers must not be used at any time on this aircraft".
It is an acronym . . . not a word.
Laser, radar, scuba. . .
KFG
Slashdot Burying Stories About Slashdot Media Owned
From what I remember, wasn't an entire COLLECTION of apollo footage missing? I'm glad they found at least one reel, but what about the others?
So I read some of the KillerNIC stuff because it was news to me. I wound up on http://www.endlagnow.org/ELN/TakeAction_TopTips.as px and found it hilarious. Let's see some of their first two tips for reducing lag.
1. CONNECT DIRECTLY TO THE NET
2. TURN OFF YOUR ANTI-VIRUS SOFTWARE
Yeah I'm gonna get right on that.
Keep the Classic Slashdot.
of "Captain Carrot" giving spelling corrections.
What next, Nobby giving advice on hygiene? Rincewind talking about the virtues of a famous last stand?
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
CLIFTON: Oh, I'm glad you're here, so we can get this all straightened out. Would you like a cup of tea?
BOOKMAN: You got any orange drink?
CLIFTON: Orange drink?
BOOKMAN: Yeah. Orange drink.
CLIFTON: No, I don't drink orange drink.
BOOKMAN: Yeah, you don't drink orange drink? How about instant orange drink?
CLIFTON: No, I don't...
BOOKMAN: You don't have any instant Tang?
CLIFTON: Well, I don't normally--
BOOKMAN: Who doesn't have instant Tang?
CLIFTON: I don't.
BOOKMAN: You buy a jar of Tang, you put it in the cupboard, you forget about it. Then later on when you need it, it's there. It lasts forever. It's freeze-dried. Freeze-dried orange drink.
CLIFTON: Really? I'll have to remember that.
BOOKMAN: You took the moon landing movie out in 1979.
CLIFTON: Yes, and I returned it in 1979.
BOOKMAN: Yeah, '79. That was my first year on the job. Bad year for libraries. Bad year for America. Hippies burning library cards, the Betamax decision letting everybody steal movies. I don't judge a man by the length of his hair or the kind of music he listens to. Rock was never my bag. But you put on a pair of shoes when you walk into the NASA Film Library, fella.
CLIFTON: Look, Mr. Bookman. I--I returned that movie. I remember it very specifically.
BOOKMAN: You're a Rock cinematographer, you entertain people, make them have fun.
CLIFTON: I try.
BOOKMAN: You think this is all big fun, don't you?
CLIFTON: No, I don't.
BOOKMAN: I saw your name in the credits once; I remembered your name--from my list. I looked it up. Sure enough, it checked out. You think because you're a celebrity that somehow the law doesn't apply to you, that you're above the law?
CLIFTON: Certainly not.
BOOKMAN: Well, let me tell you something, music fun boy. Y'know that little stamp, the one that says "NASA Film Library"? Well that may not mean anything to you, but that means a lot to me. One whole hell of a lot. Sure, go ahead, laugh if you want to. I've seen your type before: Flashy, making the scene, flaunting convention. Yeah, I know what you're thinking. What's this guy making such a big stink about old moon movies for? Well, let me give you a hint, junior. Maybe we can live without libraries, people like you and me. Maybe. Sure, we're too old to change the world, but what about that kid renting a movie, right now, in a branch at the local library and finding X rated porn taped over the middle of The Dark Crystal and Finding Nemo? Doesn't HE deserve better? Look. If you think this is about overdue fines and missing movies, you'd better think again. This is about that kid's right to borrow a movie without getting his mind warped! Or: maybe that turns you on, Clifton; maybe that's how y'get your kicks. You and your good-time buddies. Well I got a flash for ya, joy-boy: Party time is over. Y'got seven days, Clifton. That is one week!
Liberals call everyone Nazis yet they are the closest thing to it.
I don't know about *high quality*, but you can access a WEALTH of moon landing information, including radio transmission transcripts, astronaut commentary, mission logs, photos, and tons of video from the Apollo Lunar Surface Journal.
"Tell me doctor, with all of your defenses, are there any provisions for an attack by killer bees?"
NASA imagery is normally copyright-free, as government documents produced at government expense.
Some matierials produced by NASA may have copyrights. (For instance: movies with copyrighted music in the background which was licensed for NASA's use and needs an additional license if it gets cloned elsewhere).
More a NASA web site.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
I especially like this part of one of their answers:
WTF? The ping program does use the network stack; how else would it talk with the network? ICMP is still a protocol that needs to be encapsulated with a header and traverse down through your stack to the wire...
The only people that will be using this card are losers that have more money than brains, and cheaters. Yes, that's right, once again, cheating is the REAL killer app for the KillerNIC. You see, after playing a lot of PvP on Guild Wars I realized one thing about lag: Game designers intentionally account for player lag and compensate for it in interesting ways. Guild Wars PvP becomes a very serious game about skill interruption. An enemy spell caster could be casting a spell that will take 1 second to cast and obliterate you when it lands. You have a skill that will interrupt their spell if you click the button fast enough, during that 1 second time period. Well, the server has to accomodate dialup users and those users that are on laggy connections, so there are times when I've casted a spell, had the progress bar go all the way to completion, and then half a second later, the spell is interrupted (after it was done casting on my end). This is because the person on the other end actually interrupted the spell in time according to their game client, but because of network lag (they're on a slow connection), the interrupt didn't get to the server for a while. The server still honored their interrupt, and eventually my spell failed. By increasing their lag, the server has to give them "extra time", which means their reaction time doesn't need to be as good to win. People will write custom FNapps or whatever they're called to do this.
I can foresee cheaters intentionally increasing in game lag just to trigger this kind of a cheating mechanism. If you could add 100-200 ms of latency to your line, you could actually gain an advantage in games like this. I'm thinking WoW PvP is probably the same, although I'm not sure if skill interruption is a big part of that or not. If I remember correctly, WoW has a lot of insta-cast spells.
"When the president does it, that means it's not illegal." - Richard M. Nixon
It isn't too surprising that there aren't zfs-specific commands for mount, newfs, fsck, etc., given that all that work is done by the zfs, zpool, and other commands under Solaris.