So I was wondering.. Why was it again that they are security "extensions" and not committed directly into FreeBSD? Wouldn't it be wise to develop FreeBSD itself instead of leaving it to the dogs?
Ah. I see. TrustedBSD claims to have its fingers into too many pieces of code to justify integrating into core FreeBSD. Does no one use CVS branching and merging? Lame!
What the heck are you talking about?! Did you even study how many times the Church actually put someone to death rather than burning them in effigy and imprisoning them for a while?
Most of the recordsw were destroyed and of those that did survive, only a very, very rare number of people were actually put to death for crimes of witchcraft or as a result of the much-maligned inquisitions.
Get your facts straight and stop believing the rhetoric you're spoon-fed in highschool.
That's not Machiavellian. Machiavelli wrote about a fictional Prince who kept going on about "the ends justify the means" except he was referring to his brutal and ruthless methods of controlling a fictional populace.
I see no way to link that sort of Philosophy with the trap that these Professors set for the DMCA proponents. In fact, if you recall, the SDMI initiaitve specifically stated it was "never their intention" to sue the professors over the paper. They smelled it coming. Eat it RIAA! Reap the rewards of your cowardice. *snicker*
"If the database in question were the Manhattan phone book, the search for a single phone number could take a conventional computer several million searches, while a light-based device could pinpoint the number in just one."
The operations it takes to search through a million-entry sorted database isn't a million. It's proportional to log2(n). Think about it. Divide it in half. Is the current entry bigger or smaller? Bigger->Divide the bottom half in half and repeat. Smaller->Divide the top half in half and repeat.
So how many times can you divide a phone book in half before you're guaranteed to find your answer? log2(n).
Don't you guys understand English? Look, just because the document contains the words "Why don't we provide this level of security to all our customers?" doesn't mean the guy is actually wondering why they don't provide that level of security!
It's a rhetorical question describing what the previous paragraph MIGHT CONVEY based on its previous language. The writer wants to get away from that to make it more generic.
Good lord poster! What's your reading level? Grade 3? (Is that timothy's comments or spatula's?)
The Chinese couldn't care less about an apology. They're stalling so they can examine the spy plane and observe the crew's discussions with the diplomats. What an opportunity to check out what the U.S. has been flying around their country for years!
Just this morning it was reported that the Chinese look like they're dismantling the plane and going over the technology. Eventually they'll say something like, "In the interests of Sino-American relations, and the families of your crewmen, we are returning them safely to the U.S." But they'll keep the plane!
Posturing? You think that's all it's about? You mook!
What the heck Yukon did you live in? The majoity of the time in winter in Yukon is overcast, cloudy, totally useless for watching n. lights. I lived there for fourteen (14!) years, and about 8-10 winters, and there was only a single year that the northern lights were out more than a few times the whole winter. Course, that one year they were the most spectacular lights I've seen, heard about, read about, etc. Red, greens, blues, yellows, shooting from one end of the sky to the other literally in less than a second.
Like a Lovecraftian novel--there are ancient, colossal forces we have no effect on. We are as insignificant as an infinitesmal speck of dust on the figurative heel of some extra-dimensional god.. (yea, too long in the cold..)
Bet you ten bucks that's what's happening tonight up there.:) And those kind of lights are notoriously difficult to photograph because of the low-light conditions.
Re:Scientifically inaccurate, but still entertaini
on
Review: 'Titan A.E.'
·
· Score: 1
Hey dude--space is not cold, there's nothing to conduct heat away from the body except as heat radiation. Think wet cloth vs inert air.
And the human body can survive deep space--what it can't survive is the lack of air. Scientific American and various alt.sci FAQ estimate that the human body could survive a bout with deep space for about 30 seconds or so. Sure your eyes would leak blood and your ears would pop like a s.o.b. from the explosive decompression, but you could do it just fine.
Laser blasters are perfectly reasonable.. I've seen backpack-mounted lasers capable of burning a hole through plywood at fifty paces. Who says similar weapons won't be built from better power packs in future? All we need is a decent coolant system and a bigger crystal core, right?
sudog
Why Jon Katz is a goof and Titan A.E. is good..
on
Review: 'Titan A.E.'
·
· Score: 1
Your review of Titan A.E. sucks dude, and you completely missed all the possibility that is behind the story. The Titan was able to convert the energy of the Drej's into useful form--so we are given to realize the idea that perhaps humanity meant to use the Drej's as a source of power to colonize the Universe after all.
I mean, humans are humans, right? They're still betraying each other in their final hour. So what is preventing us from using the Titan to exploit another race? Maybe that was the whole point all along?
The Drej's kill the insect bartender who's begging for his life. How unchildish and cool is that? Miserable little insect anyway.
The Drej's are making deals with humanity--this means they are desperate! If they were so omnipotent, why are they trying to get us to turn on each other? That means they're afraid--of their own extinction.
The animation was also spectacular in many scenes. If you knew anything about raytracing or rendering in general, you'd know that much of what lies in the Ice Belt was extremely expensive to do, CPU-wise, and would appreciate it much more.
You're like my managers. I design a program that is a triumph of logic and organization, and all they can see is that the output isn't formatted in a way that can be easily inserted into their pet Microsoft Access databases. I write a masterpiece that the programmers who currently maintain it are still marvelling at, and my managers assume I was screwing around for four weeks because I missed a tiny (and easily fixed) detail in the requirements manual, even though the requirements were nearly impossible and required reverse-engineering three other commercial products using tools like SoftIce..
Look beneath the surface of Titan A.E. and you can see tens of subplots going on, political intrigue, lies, deceit, the struggle of human nature against itself, and the fact that the Drej's *aren't evil at all*, just *realistic* about humanity. The Drej's don't have any emotion or compassion--they are exterminating humanity because it's obvious that there's a Them-Or-Us conflict going on.
Your review is as callous as it is thoughtless, dude--I for one happen to leave my brain turned on when I see a movie, you should too.
I've read through some of the comments, and I have to tell you, these people are following the critic crowd, listening to the popular press telling them what to think about the world they live in.
No matter the volumes Jon Katz writes about how sheepish people are getting in their refusal to think for themselves, they keep coming back with their hollow "aye's" and useless agreement, but doing nothing to examine themselves or their environments. They do nothing to accept the possibility that possibly they're one of the sheep themselves but don't know it.
I went to see Battlefield Earth, and I initially read the book.
There were bad parts. There were plot holes that didn't make much sense to anyone who was seeing the film for the first time. But the movie itself was good. Not excellent. But good. It was worth the matinee price I paid to see it on the big screen with my girlfriend.
There were many things about the movie I liked--certainly the shallow stuff like that long female Psychlo tongue, the bluffs and counter-bluffs, the aerial acrobatics.
But there was meaning in there too, for people who were looking for it. There were many examples. For instance, the suggestion of extinction of the one race that tried to subserve themselves to the psychlos. Doesn't this imply that world-war-II-like appeasement was less useful than "futile" resistance?
The obvious character differences between John Travolta's character and the rest of the Psychlos was interesting--how is it that their star pupil is also the most cruel and conniving? Surely there's room for the viewer's imagination to fill in some blanks here?
The learning machine and how the mistake of overconfidence Terl shows, by allowing the man-animal to learn advanced concepts, leads to the "superior race"'s downfall.
Indeed, it even suggests the apparent futility of rebellion in the cinematography itself--the dark, brooding hallways, the devastated earth structures and buildings, the overgrown amusement parks. The entire era of corporatism, the height of our greatest civilzation in recorded, popular history, was as nothing to these psychlos. It was almost as if they bribed our government officials and promised immense wealth to our selfish so-called upper class elite to take over the planet. Yet individualism and the greatness a human spirit can achieve could do wonders.
There was just too much story to put into a single two hours of film! So, like many (admittedly greater) films released, it doesn't try to explain everything, it doesn't try to imply specific, unbreakable rules of context.
Instead, it allows the viewer to fill in the blanks with stories of their own devising! Like a good entertainment experience, it allows viewer participation in the movie by forcing him to think--"Why is that there?" "What is that creature who is always apologising?" "Why did they ignore the warning signs?" "What the hell just happened there?"
With this participation, suspension of disbelief is easier, distraction by somewhat poorly done giant-vs-human effects is lessened, and the good points about the movie can reach through the sludge and make the viewer think. All good sci-fi does this.
I must admit, I'm biased for having read the novel before seeing the movie. Therefore, perhaps in my mind the plot holes were easily explained by the background I came to the movie theatre with.
It's true that a planet as powerful as the Psychlos should have had checks in place to keep the radioactive material from destroying their homeworld (in the book they did.) It's true that the man-animals should never have learned how to fly harrier jets in just a few days (in the book they didn't).
But what about the rest of it? What about the indomitable will of those few individuals who think noble thoughts? What about the self-doubts of heros? What about the refusal of the truly great spirit to accept defeat and give up?
Like the hacker spirit of today, the outcasts who find their way through the muck and sludge of the modern day world to excel in the eyes of their friends and lovers (the only ones who truly matter,) and like the willpower of the truly good souls who fight for the right and not the might, this movie contains a sense of hope and promise for throwing off the shackles of the greedy corporate interest. This movie helps anthropomorphise our wish for a cleaner, freer time when we won't have to look up at a camera in our midst and wonder why we're being watched.
I found it an enjoyable movie.. I could go on.. but I don't know how much space I've got left.
Also, let me qualify this. I dislike Scientology for what it's done to people like my aunt-in-law. I dislike the power they wield, and I dislike the manner in which they wield it. I dislike dianetics and their sham pseudo-science. And I completely abhore the way cults shut down the centres of reason in their members.
But the readers here on Slashdot are cult members too. Follow the norm! Conform to the views of the almighty Jon Katz and his brethren! Hate Scientology without knowing any facts--allow others to filter information and digest it for you! Keep yourself from finding goodness in the midst of evil!
Bah. Keep spewing forth your little parroted views, your predigested and cliched material, your lack of forethought and logic. I prefer to think for myself, thank you very much. And I liked this film!
Why the hell did you put it on slashdot?
on
Linus Interview
·
· Score: 1
Now the stream's going to be constantly saturated for the entire program. Thanks guys. Way to use your head. Jesus.. why not make a COPY of the stream, and mirror it somewhere for later downloading?
Here's what I'm wondering. First of all, is this system free for the public, GPL? Or is it an attempt by SGI and a turn-coat VA Linux systems (whose fortunes are built on *AHEM* free software) to commercialize and cash-in on the gamer market? If it's not free (and I doubt it is, gauging by the press release) then I'll be damned to the darkest pits of hell if I ever bother myself about it again.
Unfortunately the binaries are useless as they are--the source is unavailable and a subtle difference in the DVD encoding algorithms that, say, doesn't break the hardware decryption but DOES break DeCSS would render DeCSS useless without the original source code.. What we NEED is the DeCSS SOURCE CODE. Post the Source, Luke!
I was not impressed to see L0pht embrace any form of commercial philosophy. While it is true I live in a fairly isolated section of the world, I and the community I live within have the general impression that you are no longer available to the public. It appears as though you have sequestered yourselves away in your building(s) and sent Mudge out to maintain good PR. What I mean is, aside from the odd security release and product update, you guys seem to have disappeared from the face of the earth. What are you up to? Are you still truly pursuing the tenet that is listed prominently on your BBS? "Freedom, freedom, blah" -lhi, psalm blah verse blah?
Do you see yourselves as this inaccessible except to people willing to fork over large dollars, or am I just living on the moon?
Much as it is possible to completely take a BSD-type product and commercialize it, the bsd licence ensures that the original authors will get their due credit ad infinitum. I very much prefer the fact that there is true freedom, without the loss of fame or proper credit when developing a product that turns into an international or even national success. I suppose it's mostly political, but the BSD licence is far less restrictive than the GPL. Sadly, it's just not chic to program for the sake of programming, for the love of the algorithm, instead of an ideal. When will we realize that programmers are not gods, and are probably less qualified to decide what ideology the rest of the world should follow than their peers? (He who lives in basement has no idea what is good for his neighbours.)
Slashdot Mirror
So I was wondering.. Why was it again that they are security "extensions" and not committed directly into FreeBSD? Wouldn't it be wise to develop FreeBSD itself instead of leaving it to the dogs?
Ah. I see. TrustedBSD claims to have its fingers into too many pieces of code to justify integrating into core FreeBSD. Does no one use CVS branching and merging? Lame!
What the heck are you talking about?! Did you even study how many times the Church actually put someone to death rather than burning them in effigy and imprisoning them for a while?
Most of the recordsw were destroyed and of those that did survive, only a very, very rare number of people were actually put to death for crimes of witchcraft or as a result of the much-maligned inquisitions.
Get your facts straight and stop believing the rhetoric you're spoon-fed in highschool.
That's not Machiavellian. Machiavelli wrote about a fictional Prince who kept going on about "the ends justify the means" except he was referring to his brutal and ruthless methods of controlling a fictional populace.
I see no way to link that sort of Philosophy with the trap that these Professors set for the DMCA proponents. In fact, if you recall, the SDMI initiaitve specifically stated it was "never their intention" to sue the professors over the paper. They smelled it coming. Eat it RIAA! Reap the rewards of your cowardice. *snicker*
You have to know what day doomsday is before the algorithm even works! Didn't you even read the article you mook?
"Microsoft, it's time for you to join us."
Talk about embrace and extend! Ha ha ha, eat it Microsoft, eat it!!
"If the database in question were the Manhattan phone book, the search for a single phone number could take a conventional computer several million searches, while a light-based device could pinpoint the number in just one."
The operations it takes to search through a million-entry sorted database isn't a million. It's proportional to log2(n). Think about it. Divide it in half. Is the current entry bigger or smaller? Bigger->Divide the bottom half in half and repeat. Smaller->Divide the top half in half and repeat.
So how many times can you divide a phone book in half before you're guaranteed to find your answer? log2(n).
Don't you guys understand English? Look, just because the document contains the words "Why don't we provide this level of security to all our customers?" doesn't mean the guy is actually wondering why they don't provide that level of security!
It's a rhetorical question describing what the previous paragraph MIGHT CONVEY based on its previous language. The writer wants to get away from that to make it more generic.
Good lord poster! What's your reading level? Grade 3? (Is that timothy's comments or spatula's?)
The Chinese couldn't care less about an apology. They're stalling so they can examine the spy plane and observe the crew's discussions with the diplomats. What an opportunity to check out what the U.S. has been flying around their country for years!
Just this morning it was reported that the Chinese look like they're dismantling the plane and going over the technology.
Eventually they'll say something like, "In the interests of Sino-American relations, and the families of your crewmen, we are returning them safely to the U.S." But they'll keep the plane!
Posturing? You think that's all it's about? You mook!
What the heck Yukon did you live in? The majoity of the time in winter in Yukon is overcast, cloudy, totally useless for watching n. lights. I lived there for fourteen (14!) years, and about 8-10 winters, and there was only a single year that the northern lights were out more than a few times the whole winter. Course, that one year they were the most spectacular lights I've seen, heard about, read about, etc. Red, greens, blues, yellows, shooting from one end of the sky to the other literally in less than a second.
:) And those kind of lights are notoriously difficult to photograph because of the low-light conditions.
Like a Lovecraftian novel--there are ancient, colossal forces we have no effect on. We are as insignificant as an infinitesmal speck of dust on the figurative heel of some extra-dimensional god.. (yea, too long in the cold..)
Bet you ten bucks that's what's happening tonight up there.
Hey dude--space is not cold, there's nothing to conduct heat away from the body except as heat radiation. Think wet cloth vs inert air.
And the human body can survive deep space--what it can't survive is the lack of air. Scientific American and various alt.sci FAQ estimate that the human body could survive a bout with deep space for about 30 seconds or so. Sure your eyes would leak blood and your ears would pop like a s.o.b. from the explosive decompression, but you could do it just fine.
Laser blasters are perfectly reasonable.. I've seen backpack-mounted lasers capable of burning a hole through plywood at fifty paces. Who says similar weapons won't be built from better power packs in future? All we need is a decent coolant system and a bigger crystal core, right?
sudog
Your review of Titan A.E. sucks dude, and you completely missed all the possibility that is behind the story. The Titan was able to convert the energy of the Drej's into useful form--so we are given to realize the idea that perhaps humanity meant to use the Drej's as a source of power to colonize the Universe after all.
I mean, humans are humans, right? They're still betraying each other in their final hour. So what is preventing us from using the Titan to exploit another race? Maybe that was the whole point all along?
The Drej's kill the insect bartender who's begging for his life. How unchildish and cool is that? Miserable little insect anyway.
The Drej's are making deals with humanity--this means they are desperate! If they were so omnipotent, why are they trying to get us to turn on each other? That means they're afraid--of their own extinction.
The animation was also spectacular in many scenes. If you knew anything about raytracing or rendering in general, you'd know that much of what lies in the Ice Belt was extremely expensive to do, CPU-wise, and would appreciate it much more.
You're like my managers. I design a program that is a triumph of logic and organization, and all they can see is that the output isn't formatted in a way that can be easily inserted into their pet Microsoft Access databases. I write a masterpiece that the programmers who currently maintain it are still marvelling at, and my managers assume I was screwing around for four weeks because I missed a tiny (and easily fixed) detail in the requirements manual, even though the requirements were nearly impossible and required reverse-engineering three other commercial products using tools like SoftIce..
Look beneath the surface of Titan A.E. and you can see tens of subplots going on, political intrigue, lies, deceit, the struggle of human nature against itself, and the fact that the Drej's *aren't evil at all*, just *realistic* about humanity. The Drej's don't have any emotion or compassion--they are exterminating humanity because it's obvious that there's a Them-Or-Us conflict going on.
Your review is as callous as it is thoughtless, dude--I for one happen to leave my brain turned on when I see a movie, you should too.
sudog
I've read through some of the comments, and I have to tell you, these people are following the critic crowd, listening to the popular press telling them what to think about the world they live in.
No matter the volumes Jon Katz writes about how sheepish people are getting in their refusal to think for themselves, they keep coming back with their hollow "aye's" and useless agreement, but doing nothing to examine themselves or their environments. They do nothing to accept the possibility that possibly they're one of the sheep themselves but don't know it.
I went to see Battlefield Earth, and I initially read the book.
There were bad parts. There were plot holes that didn't make much sense to anyone who was seeing the film for the first time. But the movie itself was good. Not excellent. But good. It was worth the matinee price I paid to see it on the big screen with my girlfriend.
There were many things about the movie I liked--certainly the shallow stuff like that long female Psychlo tongue, the bluffs and counter-bluffs, the aerial acrobatics.
But there was meaning in there too, for people who were looking for it. There were many examples. For instance, the suggestion of extinction of the one race that tried to subserve themselves to the psychlos. Doesn't this imply that world-war-II-like appeasement was less useful than "futile" resistance?
The obvious character differences between John Travolta's character and the rest of the Psychlos was interesting--how is it that their star pupil is also the most cruel and conniving? Surely there's room for the viewer's imagination to fill in some blanks here?
The learning machine and how the mistake of overconfidence Terl shows, by allowing the man-animal to learn advanced concepts, leads to the "superior race"'s downfall.
Indeed, it even suggests the apparent futility of rebellion in the cinematography itself--the dark, brooding hallways, the devastated earth structures and buildings, the overgrown amusement parks. The entire era of corporatism, the height of our greatest civilzation in recorded, popular history, was as nothing to these psychlos. It was almost as if they bribed our government officials and promised immense wealth to our selfish so-called upper class elite to take over the planet. Yet individualism and the greatness a human spirit can achieve could do wonders.
There was just too much story to put into a single two hours of film! So, like many (admittedly greater) films released, it doesn't try to explain everything, it doesn't try to imply specific, unbreakable rules of context.
Instead, it allows the viewer to fill in the blanks with stories of their own devising! Like a good entertainment experience, it allows viewer participation in the movie by forcing him to think--"Why is that there?" "What is that creature who is always apologising?" "Why did they ignore the warning signs?" "What the hell just happened there?"
With this participation, suspension of disbelief is easier, distraction by somewhat poorly done giant-vs-human effects is lessened, and the good points about the movie can reach through the sludge and make the viewer think. All good sci-fi does this.
I must admit, I'm biased for having read the novel before seeing the movie. Therefore, perhaps in my mind the plot holes were easily explained by the background I came to the movie theatre with.
It's true that a planet as powerful as the Psychlos should have had checks in place to keep the radioactive material from destroying their homeworld (in the book they did.) It's true that the man-animals should never have learned how to fly harrier jets in just a few days (in the book they didn't).
But what about the rest of it? What about the indomitable will of those few individuals who think noble thoughts? What about the self-doubts of heros? What about the refusal of the truly great spirit to accept defeat and give up?
Like the hacker spirit of today, the outcasts who find their way through the muck and sludge of the modern day world to excel in the eyes of their friends and lovers (the only ones who truly matter,) and like the willpower of the truly good souls who fight for the right and not the might, this movie contains a sense of hope and promise for throwing off the shackles of the greedy corporate interest. This movie helps anthropomorphise our wish for a cleaner, freer time when we won't have to look up at a camera in our midst and wonder why we're being watched.
I found it an enjoyable movie.. I could go on.. but I don't know how much space I've got left.
Also, let me qualify this. I dislike Scientology for what it's done to people like my aunt-in-law. I dislike the power they wield, and I dislike the manner in which they wield it. I dislike dianetics and their sham pseudo-science. And I completely abhore the way cults shut down the centres of reason in their members.
But the readers here on Slashdot are cult members too. Follow the norm! Conform to the views of the almighty Jon Katz and his brethren! Hate Scientology without knowing any facts--allow others to filter information and digest it for you! Keep yourself from finding goodness in the midst of evil!
Bah. Keep spewing forth your little parroted views, your predigested and cliched material, your lack of forethought and logic. I prefer to think for myself, thank you very much. And I liked this film!
Now the stream's going to be constantly saturated for the entire program. Thanks guys. Way to use your head. Jesus.. why not make a COPY of the stream, and mirror it somewhere for later downloading?
Here's what I'm wondering. First of all, is this system free for the public, GPL? Or is it an attempt by SGI and a turn-coat VA Linux systems (whose fortunes are built on *AHEM* free software) to commercialize and cash-in on the gamer market? If it's not free (and I doubt it is, gauging by the press release) then I'll be damned to the darkest pits of hell if I ever bother myself about it again.
Unfortunately the binaries are useless as they are--the source is unavailable and a subtle difference in the DVD encoding algorithms that, say, doesn't break the hardware decryption but DOES break DeCSS would render DeCSS useless without the original source code.. What we NEED is the DeCSS SOURCE CODE. Post the Source, Luke!
I was not impressed to see L0pht embrace any form of commercial philosophy. While it is true I live in a fairly isolated section of the world, I and the community I live within have the general impression that you are no longer available to the public. It appears as though you have sequestered yourselves away in your building(s) and sent Mudge out to maintain good PR. What I mean is, aside from the odd security release and product update, you guys seem to have disappeared from the face of the earth. What are you up to? Are you still truly pursuing the tenet that is listed prominently on your BBS? "Freedom, freedom, blah" -lhi, psalm blah verse blah?
Do you see yourselves as this inaccessible except to people willing to fork over large dollars, or am I just living on the moon?
Much as it is possible to completely take a BSD-type product and commercialize it, the bsd licence ensures that the original authors will get their due credit ad infinitum. I very much prefer the fact that there is true freedom, without the loss of fame or proper credit when developing a product that turns into an international or even national success. I suppose it's mostly political, but the BSD licence is far less restrictive than the GPL. Sadly, it's just not chic to program for the sake of programming, for the love of the algorithm, instead of an ideal. When will we realize that programmers are not gods, and are probably less qualified to decide what ideology the rest of the world should follow than their peers? (He who lives in basement has no idea what is good for his neighbours.)