Btw, what the heck am I supposed to do if I don't already have hot chicks to accompany me? Should I hire some, thereby "priming the pump" and finding non-paid girls for next time, by basically springboarding off the paid ones?
A cheaper solution is to bring a hot dude with you and pretend he is your date. Women will think you must be hot stuff, say to one another "Damn! All the best guys are gay". Once the women have a few drinks, one will pluck up the courage to try to "save" you from your alternative sexuality.
Read Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion by Robert Cialdini. One of the chapters in this excellent book concerns a topic called "social proof". That chapter provides a lot of insight into this issue.
I know of a server in a local restaurant. He often takes a "power nap" just after the lunch-time rush is over. Having conserved some energy, he wakes up refreshed and is can get back into high-power mode for the evening meals.
The MX Revolution is a piece of junk. I absolutely hate it.
How do you feel about the BlueTrack Screen of Death?
The real singleton web sites
on
Web Singletons?
·
· Score: 1
Which are the true web singletons[...]?"
I thought the obvious answer would involve use of "singleton" as part of a domain name. However, it seems that idea is not unique:
www.singleton.com
www.singleton.org
www.singleton.net
www.singleton.<other-top-level-domains>
The ".com" website is for a company of lawyers who specialize in dispute resolution. Some of the other websites enable you to buy email addresses of the form "yourname@singleton.<tld>".
What are you smoking? How would you possibly store data in these things that is readable by a computer?
Apparently you are not familiar with the stories of ignorant/stupid users who contact technical support. Back in the days when 5.25 inch floppies were commonly used, one story was about a user who contacted technical support to complain that his computer couldn't read important data on a floppy disk. The person in technical support asked if the user had made any copies of the disk. He user said yes, so he was told to post the copy of the disk to technical support. A few days later the person in technical support received a photocopy of the disk.
My "predictions" were just an updated version of that old story, using a 3D printer instead of a photocopier.
When these 3D printers come down in price I predict the following events will happen:
More and more people will use 3D printers to make backup copies of their disk drives because it is cheaper and faster than backing up to tape.
Occasionally, somebody will post to slashdot asking for advice: "Should I backup by disk drive to DVDs or via a 3D printer. I heard DVDs can degrade after just a few years. How long does it take a 3D printed model to degrade? I'd like to know if my data will last longer in a 3D model than on a DVD."
People asking that question on slashdot will receive the assurance that "3D models are incrediably resilient so once you backup your disk drive to a 3D model, the data will not degrade any further."
The GP was right, this is definitely akin to open source. It may not be open source, but that's not what he said.
I'll rephrase my comment to make it less ambiguous. The license used is not open source and neither is it akin to open source. Perhaps you think the restriction on commercial use is a minor issue but it is a very major issue for some people.
Aside from licensing, there is another reason why what Stanford is doing is not like open source: the lecture materials are provided in PDF format rather than in an editable (that is, "source") format. For example, when I did a quick browse of one of the courses, I didn't find, say, PowerPoint files for the slides. Instead, what I found was a video of the lecturer standing in from of projected slides and a PDF transcript of what was said during the lecture. I'm not knocking the utility of the video and PDF transcript, but neither allow me to edit the original slides so I can adapt them to my own needs.
If you want to compare this to software, it is akin to a free-as-in-beer pre-compiled application that is distributed without its source code. To refer to such a thing as akin to open source is incorrect.
I would think that most \.ers would be cheering this since its akin to open source
I'm cheering it, but it's not akin to open source. The open source definition explicitly states several conditions that must be satisfied for something to be called "open source". In this case, the license forbids commercial use of the material, so it's not open source.
Members of the general public were polled on what type of animals they thought should be used for the next "can it survive the vacuum and radiation of space" experiments. Some of the most common answers were:
Politicians and lawyers were voted by almost everyone.
Microsoft executives were voted by Linux fanboys.
Dapper Drake, Edgy Eft, Feisty Fawn, Gutsy Gibbon and Hardy Heron were voted by Microsoft fanboys.
Interestingly, the RIAA was also a popular choice, but it was rejected on the basis that a multi-celled organism without a heart might not be alive. Some members of the public suggested it should be subjected to the "will it blend?" test to make sure.
It's because of lack of regular maintenance. You need to unplug your network cable, spray a bit of WD-40 on the connectors and then plug it back in. Repeat this every two weeks. Also, do it whenever you replace a network interface card.
It is well known that unions stand up for members' rights when it comes to pay, overtime, working conditions, grievances, and so on. But the most important issue for members of an IT union is girlfriends. If a union could help members with that impenetrable issue then I think most people on slashdot would sign up immediately.
Failing that, using union dues to subsidize membership fees of porn websites would be acceptable.
There is a very interesting book called Willing Slaves: How the Overwork Culture Is Ruling Our Lives by Madeleine Bunting. The book is UK-centric, but I think many of the ideas in the book will apply to other countries.
The author of the book points out that although many occupations suffer from compulsory (and often unpaid) overtime, knowledge-based professions such as IT and teaching are much worse affected than other professions. It's been a few years since I read the book and my memory is a bit hazy on its content, but I do recall finding it to be a worthwhile and informative read. If you are frustrated with working conditions in the IT industry then I suggest you read it: it won't provide any solutions, but it will educate you about the symptoms and extent of problems.
I thought school was for learning things rather than getting a fancy piece of paper.
Some people believe that the main purpose of school is not to educate students but rather to socially condition (basically, brainwash) the next generation of workers to be materialistic consumers (to drive the economy) and subservient employees for large companies rather than be self-motivated entrepreneurs. An alternative to such a school system is home schooling. Two authors who have written extensively about the state school system and home schooling are John Taylor Gatto and John Holt. You can find their books listed on Amazon.
I was going to make a smart ass comment: "A few years ago manufacturers put computers (packaged as Internet browsers) into refrigerators; now they are doing it the other way around. I wonder what other household appliances will follow the trend?"
But then I thought about it and realized that there are already several other household appliances and gadgets in computers. CD players, DVD players, Televisions (TV tuner cards), radios (Internet radio), telephones (Skype and the Telecrapper 2000), cameras (webcams). Heck, you can even buy USB-powered lava lamps, pencil sharpeners, and a small hot plate to keep a cup of coffee warm.
I know some people will say the refrigeration technology is used to cool the CPU rather than being a general-purpose refrigerator in which you can store food and drink. However, it wouldn't surprise me if a combined computer-and-general-purpose refrigerator is manufactured at some point in the future and marketed at geeks. "When I've been coding for 4 hours straight and I need a drink, I just reach down and pull a can of Jolt from my computer's built-in refrigerator."
Prediction: American, paper-based computers will be printed on Letter paper, but European computers will use A4 paper, thus leading to worldwide incompatibilities.
artificial intelligence is always defined as whatever a machine cannot do yet.
I recall a similar sentiment when I was a graduate student doing research into distributed systems. A distributed system was one that did not work reliably yet. Once it worked reliably enough it was given a different name, such as "email", "ftp", "DNS", or "world wide web".
Each step in the process of completing this sophisticated camera brings scientists closer to detecting the invisible matter that cosmologists estimate makes up around 75% of our universe.
I thought that 75% had already been identified as the Microsoft tax.
I am not worried about the possibility of universities rejecting free textbooks on the basis that they haven't been peer reviewed. Will the universities reject such textbooks? Probably. But the reason I am not worried is that eventually there will be a critical mass of free/open-source text books plus free/open-source PowerPoint slides for lectures (and other miscellaneous supporting educational materials). When that happens, a growing number of people will start to avoid the traditional universities and instead opt either to self-educae with the aid of the free/open-source materials, or attend much cheaper (but non-accredited) places of education that make extensive use of free/open-source educational materials.
Put simply, I see free/open-source educational materials as being a "disruptive technology" (as discussed in The Innovator's Dilemma by Clayton M. Christensen) that will eventually challenge universities.
In case anyone here is interested, I have started to do some experiments in writing open-source teaching materials; see my website for some examples. There isn't a lot of materials there now, but I plan to write, and make available, a lot more material in the future.
I've benefited a lot from the GPL, but in the back of my mind I've always considered Richard Stallman as something of a crackpot.. A bit too odd..
But the more I think about it, the more he makes sense.
I learned a long time ago to stop thinking that RMS might be wrong. Instead, whenever I don't "get" his viewpoint, I just think to myself "I'm sure it will become clear to me sooner or later when some future events prove him right."
Many people here have seen countless debates about "GPL versus non-GPL licenses". Last year an important milestone was reached when a big debate on/. was about "GPL 3 (RMS) versus GPL 2 (Linus)". In that debate, people who were criticizing GPL 3 were endorsing GPL 2. This suggested to me that many vocal opponents of RMS had switched from criticizing most of RMS's ideas to accepting RMS's older ideas (GPL 2) and were now criticizing only his newer (GPL 3) ideas. I found it quite hilarious to think that many of these people would claim they oppose RMS when, in fact, the debate showed they accept most of his ideas.
Slashdot Mirror
Btw, what the heck am I supposed to do if I don't already have hot chicks to accompany me? Should I hire some, thereby "priming the pump" and finding non-paid girls for next time, by basically springboarding off the paid ones?
A cheaper solution is to bring a hot dude with you and pretend he is your date. Women will think you must be hot stuff, say to one another "Damn! All the best guys are gay". Once the women have a few drinks, one will pluck up the courage to try to "save" you from your alternative sexuality.
Read Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion by Robert Cialdini. One of the chapters in this excellent book concerns a topic called "social proof". That chapter provides a lot of insight into this issue.
Interesting idea. Do you get much repeat business from customers?
I know of a server in a local restaurant. He often takes a "power nap" just after the lunch-time rush is over. Having conserved some energy, he wakes up refreshed and is can get back into high-power mode for the evening meals.
The MX Revolution is a piece of junk. I absolutely hate it.
How do you feel about the BlueTrack Screen of Death?
Which are the true web singletons[...]?"
I thought the obvious answer would involve use of "singleton" as part of a domain name. However, it seems that idea is not unique:
The ".com" website is for a company of lawyers who specialize in dispute resolution. Some of the other websites enable you to buy email addresses of the form "yourname@singleton.<tld>".
I can't believe the authors of this IPv6 stack are bragging "Mine is smaller than yours!" Whatever happened to macho pride?
What are you smoking? How would you possibly store data in these things that is readable by a computer?
Apparently you are not familiar with the stories of ignorant/stupid users who contact technical support. Back in the days when 5.25 inch floppies were commonly used, one story was about a user who contacted technical support to complain that his computer couldn't read important data on a floppy disk. The person in technical support asked if the user had made any copies of the disk. He user said yes, so he was told to post the copy of the disk to technical support. A few days later the person in technical support received a photocopy of the disk.
My "predictions" were just an updated version of that old story, using a 3D printer instead of a photocopier.
The open source baby killing project is not even in beta yet [...]
The Apache team have already added a new feature. After killing the baby, they take its scalp.
This is what I love about open-source software. When you have a bunch of committed developers, you end up with a killer application.
The GP was right, this is definitely akin to open source. It may not be open source, but that's not what he said.
I'll rephrase my comment to make it less ambiguous. The license used is not open source and neither is it akin to open source. Perhaps you think the restriction on commercial use is a minor issue but it is a very major issue for some people.
Aside from licensing, there is another reason why what Stanford is doing is not like open source: the lecture materials are provided in PDF format rather than in an editable (that is, "source") format. For example, when I did a quick browse of one of the courses, I didn't find, say, PowerPoint files for the slides. Instead, what I found was a video of the lecturer standing in from of projected slides and a PDF transcript of what was said during the lecture. I'm not knocking the utility of the video and PDF transcript, but neither allow me to edit the original slides so I can adapt them to my own needs.
If you want to compare this to software, it is akin to a free-as-in-beer pre-compiled application that is distributed without its source code. To refer to such a thing as akin to open source is incorrect.
I'm cheering it, but it's not akin to open source. The open source definition explicitly states several conditions that must be satisfied for something to be called "open source". In this case, the license forbids commercial use of the material, so it's not open source.
Interestingly, the RIAA was also a popular choice, but it was rejected on the basis that a multi-celled organism without a heart might not be alive. Some members of the public suggested it should be subjected to the "will it blend?" test to make sure.
Why Is the Internet So Infuriatingly Slow?
It's because of lack of regular maintenance. You need to unplug your network cable, spray a bit of WD-40 on the connectors and then plug it back in. Repeat this every two weeks. Also, do it whenever you replace a network interface card.
It is well known that unions stand up for members' rights when it comes to pay, overtime, working conditions, grievances, and so on. But the most important issue for members of an IT union is girlfriends. If a union could help members with that impenetrable issue then I think most people on slashdot would sign up immediately.
Failing that, using union dues to subsidize membership fees of porn websites would be acceptable.
There is a very interesting book called Willing Slaves: How the Overwork Culture Is Ruling Our Lives by Madeleine Bunting. The book is UK-centric, but I think many of the ideas in the book will apply to other countries.
The author of the book points out that although many occupations suffer from compulsory (and often unpaid) overtime, knowledge-based professions such as IT and teaching are much worse affected than other professions. It's been a few years since I read the book and my memory is a bit hazy on its content, but I do recall finding it to be a worthwhile and informative read. If you are frustrated with working conditions in the IT industry then I suggest you read it: it won't provide any solutions, but it will educate you about the symptoms and extent of problems.
If you smoke cigarettes while talking on a mobile phone then your risk of dying from mobile phone-induced cancer decrease significantly.
Some people believe that the main purpose of school is not to educate students but rather to socially condition (basically, brainwash) the next generation of workers to be materialistic consumers (to drive the economy) and subservient employees for large companies rather than be self-motivated entrepreneurs. An alternative to such a school system is home schooling. Two authors who have written extensively about the state school system and home schooling are John Taylor Gatto and John Holt. You can find their books listed on Amazon.
I was going to make a smart ass comment: "A few years ago manufacturers put computers (packaged as Internet browsers) into refrigerators; now they are doing it the other way around. I wonder what other household appliances will follow the trend?"
But then I thought about it and realized that there are already several other household appliances and gadgets in computers. CD players, DVD players, Televisions (TV tuner cards), radios (Internet radio), telephones (Skype and the Telecrapper 2000), cameras (webcams). Heck, you can even buy USB-powered lava lamps, pencil sharpeners, and a small hot plate to keep a cup of coffee warm.
I know some people will say the refrigeration technology is used to cool the CPU rather than being a general-purpose refrigerator in which you can store food and drink. However, it wouldn't surprise me if a combined computer-and-general-purpose refrigerator is manufactured at some point in the future and marketed at geeks. "When I've been coding for 4 hours straight and I need a drink, I just reach down and pull a can of Jolt from my computer's built-in refrigerator."
Prediction: American, paper-based computers will be printed on Letter paper, but European computers will use A4 paper, thus leading to worldwide incompatibilities.
That's stupid advice: it didn't even have a car analogy.
artificial intelligence is always defined as whatever a machine cannot do yet.
I recall a similar sentiment when I was a graduate student doing research into distributed systems. A distributed system was one that did not work reliably yet. Once it worked reliably enough it was given a different name, such as "email", "ftp", "DNS", or "world wide web".
Each step in the process of completing this sophisticated camera brings scientists closer to detecting the invisible matter that cosmologists estimate makes up around 75% of our universe.
I thought that 75% had already been identified as the Microsoft tax.
I am not worried about the possibility of universities rejecting free textbooks on the basis that they haven't been peer reviewed. Will the universities reject such textbooks? Probably. But the reason I am not worried is that eventually there will be a critical mass of free/open-source text books plus free/open-source PowerPoint slides for lectures (and other miscellaneous supporting educational materials). When that happens, a growing number of people will start to avoid the traditional universities and instead opt either to self-educae with the aid of the free/open-source materials, or attend much cheaper (but non-accredited) places of education that make extensive use of free/open-source educational materials.
Put simply, I see free/open-source educational materials as being a "disruptive technology" (as discussed in The Innovator's Dilemma by Clayton M. Christensen) that will eventually challenge universities.
In case anyone here is interested, I have started to do some experiments in writing open-source teaching materials; see my website for some examples. There isn't a lot of materials there now, but I plan to write, and make available, a lot more material in the future.
I learned a long time ago to stop thinking that RMS might be wrong. Instead, whenever I don't "get" his viewpoint, I just think to myself "I'm sure it will become clear to me sooner or later when some future events prove him right."
Many people here have seen countless debates about "GPL versus non-GPL licenses". Last year an important milestone was reached when a big debate on /. was about "GPL 3 (RMS) versus GPL 2 (Linus)". In that debate, people who were criticizing GPL 3 were endorsing GPL 2. This suggested to me that many vocal opponents of RMS had switched from criticizing most of RMS's ideas to accepting RMS's older ideas (GPL 2) and were now criticizing only his newer (GPL 3) ideas. I found it quite hilarious to think that many of these people would claim they oppose RMS when, in fact, the debate showed they accept most of his ideas.