If you want to try something really scary, you can detect this 50Hz signal of electromagnetic _RADIATION_ almost everywhere. It's a really strong signal and the scary thing is that it's at almost the same frequency as your _HEART_!
Or you could try testing a 7MHz SSB radio in a University Lab, and discover that there is a veritable shitload of EM Radiation floating around the room full of computers.
Or you could accept that this is bullshit.
There are a few BBC articles on this (strangely they came out in a strange order). One pretty says there are no fears about wireless, the other, a few hours later says wireless is possibly really bad. The second one also misrepresents the opinion expressed by a doctor/scientist (can't remember which) in the first article, when he says that children shouldn't use laptops on their laps (for extended periods of time). Without the qualifying "because the heat could be damaging to sensitive body areas". This is probably a legitimate concern, but he was quoted to give the suggestion that wifi might make your nuts shrink. Ludicrous...
I agree with the parent on this. At least it's not vapourware.
Always the same debate with new technologies, especially storage - too expensive, something else is better etc. etc. Goes all the way back to floppy disks vs. ethernet. The first hard drives were around 20Mb, and cost a lot more than the 15 or so floppies they replaced.
What would be great is if someone knowledgeable had a look at the technology and made an educated guess as to whether it will be cheap in mass production. I'm pretty sure the first CDR disks weren't cheap. Tapes still aren't that cheap given their simplicity and speed. A far more useful analysis would be whether this technology could be made cheap when mass produced. If it can then it is a contender, if not then it's a waste of time.
I remember a story (probably an urban legend) of the secretary asked to make copies at the end of each day. This was back in the era of the 5.25" floppy. When everything went wrong, the boss calmly asks said secretary to get the backups. She returns a few minutes later with several reams of paper, each with a floppy disk photocopied onto it...
I suppose that's another case were testing the ability to restore may have provided some insight...
Doesn't this provide some kind of system restore as well? Assuming your entire system is on this FS, then any changes made, no matter how complex could be rolled back? Attempted to install some driver and broke everything? Just revert to the state before you made the changes...
Of course, that means it's probably patented by Microsoft...
Is there a limit to this? I mean Hitler, Stalin, Saddam and many others could each be described as 'a bit of a git'. But it's a damn shame they're dead right? World would be a much better place if they were still around.
And as far as respect for life goes, you mention yourself, they go after people with no respect for the dead. They will ruin people who do not have the means to defend themselves. I think it's a perfectly reasonable response to give him some grief. In fact we should probably go for his family. Eye for an eye.
Lets work out the total cost of their preposterous claims, including the unjust claims to families and associated legal, emotional and social costs. The cost to the taxpayer of clogging countless courts, businesses (all those letters), wasting time at all levels of government, costing fortunes in enforcing ridiculous laws, the cost to other countries that the US government feels fit to apply its laws to or face economic sanctions. The damage the actions of organisations like the MPAA and RIAA have done not just to the US legal system, but to citizens of the whole world is beyond comprehension. And so, in the same fashion as the ridiculous formula they use to persecute people, let's take that entire cost and go after this bastard's family.
I reckon people saying a few nasty things on the Internet is a lot more respect than the man can reasonably expect.
ingest - to eat something,
in jest - as a joke.
Hence 'in gest' possibly as some kind of pun, regarding eating something. My question was not what in jest (or ingest) meant, but more whether in gest was a misspelling, or a pun. I'm going to assume the former. Thanks for your help though...
Surely two things should happen: Someone somewhere should write a highly capable graphics library, capable of supporting the vast majority of requirements for 3D games. Maybe several depending on application. Licenses should be a reasonable price (with the intention of nearly everyone using it). Secondly, games manufacturers, since they do not have to worry as much about the graphics coding anymore, will be able to focus on making, y'know, good games?
I was expecting this to happen with the cell. Someone provides a library or a few highly extensible game engines (look at how the Quake engines have been used), and licenses them, with source, as a high performance building block for games. Could even have a form of open source model, requiring producers to return any performance enhancing modifications to the engine back to the community, and allowing them to keep their own game code secret (don't ask how this could be done, I don't know). It would encourage a rapid development pace whilst allowing games to be judged on their playability as opposed to technical superiority.
As I understand the UK data protection act, one can request (well demand...) disclosure of any information that a company has stored about you. You can also demand that any information that is not relevant or required by them be deleted.
Seems like surveillance Britain is ahead in this area...
I read all three years ago, and read them again recently. I remember it seeming like a bit of a slog for a while in the second book, but it does get a lot more interesting. When I re-read it the soap opera parts seemed more important because they gave foundation to the characters' motivations and actions. I'd certainly recommend sticking it out, there's a lot of really good stuff in there.
The reason for this in the UK is that there are very few traffic cops, they have been replaced by speed cameras. After all, they are an easy way to make money even if the speeding isn't dangerous (go on, tell me doing over 70mph on a motorway at 4 in the morning when there is _no_one_ else around is worse than doing a nice legal 70mph a few feet from the next guys bumper (which is pretty unlikely to get you a ticket)).
The best way to improve our roads would be to have a lot more traffic police who actually pull people over for infractions like tailgating, texting, using phones, doing makeup and all the other idiot things that have nearly killed me on the road. As long as you obey the speed limits you could quite likely get away with driving dangerously for a lifetime - I've seen quite a few people on my travels who seem to have achieved just that.
As far as I know most modern engines are pretty much entirely computer controlled. The added complexity is the few lines of code that detect the ethanol tank is empty and switch to a different set of performance characteristics (lower boost, different fuelling and timing etc.) Given that a lot of cars will modify their performance based on driving style (K-series Rover engines I know for a fact do) - drive hard and the engine will respond quicker, drive conservatively and it will favour economy and that the difference between engines of similar capacities and differing performance is quite often determined electronically, it seems that the electronics are in charge of these decisions, so there is little complexity to be added. The simplest solution is to make an empty ethanol tank a failure that drops the engine into the limp-home mode (usually restricted to about 30 Mph) until it is refilled.
So were 5.25", 3.5" floppies, zip disks, cd-rw, dvd-rw etc. If the cost is right and the benefits are great enough it will be adopted. If they package it in similar formats to that flash currently uses (eg. usb sticks, sd cards) for portable storage, and stick a SATA interface on it for internal (or even bulk external) storage, it will be adopted without most people noticing it's something new.
Another side effect of this is that people don't seem to want to give stuff away any more. I'm not sure if its WEEE, but there's some bit of legislation about waste disposal that means my University will not give away old computers and parts. I'd like to see them given away to students (particularly those for whom a reasonably good computer is hard to afford), or maybe given to local schools etc. Or even reused in different departments - most of the uni computing facilities are nowhere near as good as the lab machines the CS department chucked out a couple of years ago. But instead they are taken away and their disassembly and destruction catalogued - in the name of preserving the environment!
I can see that there is an obvious scam potential - dump all of your old computer stock on some unsuspecting school, and leave them with the problem of disposal - but it seems like a waste of useful resources. Maybe they should take them away on slow moving open backed lorries or something...
I agree with the parent in that the reason for problems is the equal importance of each potential editor. In order to become a reliable source of information I think a model similar to that used by a lot of open-source software projects can be used, whereby a topic (or group of topics depending on size) is overseen by a maintainer - someone who is an expert in the field, or a group of knowledgeable persons. This would allow for articles where the majority of the work is contributed by one author to be maintained primarily by that author, and articles with greater controversy to be maintained by a committee.
The trick to making it work would be to ensure that the committee members are relatively unbiased towards their topic, and that they will accept and reject comments based on the quality of their supporting arguments, research and references. They would also frame them responsibly within a topic - presenting arguments or opinions as such, and not simply stated as fact.
Similarly to the Slashdot moderation system, the actions and opinions of committee members would be meta-moderated by the community. It would be important that for controversial cases (if not all cases) a statement with the reasons for a decision made by each committee member is presented, and based on that community members can vote on whether they feel the approach taken by each members is appropriate and correct. Possibly this would be undertaken by a select group of respected policy makers in order to ensure an objective decision is made.
In the cases where a single maintainer is responsible then the editing decisions should be made by that person. Clearly a complaints and resolution system is required so that lazy, biased or ineffective maintainers can be replaced, and where sufficient controversy exists, an article is upgraded to requiring the committee based approach to maintenance.
The idea is to allow user's additions a fair chance of being added to the encyclopedia, whilst reducing the amount of unwanted additions and edits. Of fundamental importance is ensuring that the moderation system itself is open, allowing a clear decision making process that can be scrutinised for unfairness. Primarily that a proposed addition put forth by a user, supported by references,research, expertise etc. is given priority over the opinions of a committee moderator if the committee moderator cannot provide suitable reasons (again, research etc.) that refutes the addition. The meta-moderation system would be in place to highlight bad decisions if they are made, and possibly to suggest resolution (perhaps the committee-moderator has to stand down, or perhaps both arguments should be presented in the article to provide completeness). A system of voting in new committee members (perhaps for expressed expertise or substantial contribution) to a topic would be required. Again this should probably be performed by a meta-moderation group that will objectively decide whether that person should be included at the top of the decision making process for an article.
This in itself would provide a fairly comprehensive system, hopefully filtering out the unwanted information from that which should be included. By putting someone's name (or a group's) to an article, there is an element of integrity that the persons themselves will wish to maintain - courting controversy through bias and unjust decision making will reduce the influence of that person on the article, and in the community as a whole, a form of self-moderation in that in order to contribute at a top level, the contribution must be seen as appropriate by the community.
I also feel that the first initial hurdle (of getting an article past a maintainer) would reduce a significant amount of the damage done to articles.
Simply allowing everyone to edit where they feel is not a viable model for long term success - a more comprehensive approach that pays more attention to the relevant facts and research behind an article is needed.
Aren't rpms signed? Hence you can be confident that the program that you are installing (with the required elevated priveleges) has been checked to be OK? Isn't this the system that microsoft have (with signing downloads and stuff)?
The main reasons I am confident with everything I install on my linux machine is that they either come from the signed Ubuntu repositories, or they are a reputable open source software - if I was so inclined I could check the code for malware (not that likely) or, as I usually do, I rely on the fact that the stuff that I am so interested in having the latest of that I am willing to download and build from source is popular enough that the inclusion of some kind of malware in the code is unlikely to go unnoticed - in fact I reckon it's fairly likely to end up reported on slashdot...
I haven't checked, if I remember you can dpkg install a deb without needing signing, so there is a possibility there, but then the solution _is_ fairly simple for the end user: If you want to trust your software, install it through apt.
I seem to recall similar research that showed people wearing their hoods up are more likely to be killed crossing the road because they have less peripheral vision.
This does sound ridiculous. I walk around all the time with my iRiver. Thing is, when there's a lot of traffic around it's not noise that tells you a cars there, there's too much of that anyway. The thing that gives them away is seeing them - they're often painted in pretty colours, and have lights on them and all sorts of giveaways. Listening to music is not an excuse for not looking. How do deaf people cross the road?
Talk about nanny state ridiculousness. Maybe they should force you to take a test proving that you're not too tired to concentrate before crossing the road. What about drunkenness?
If you can't be bothered to look out for yourself then you should probably learn the hard way. Instead of assuming you have some fscking right to just walk across the road, why not look. Assume that the car coming is going to turn at the junction you're about to cross (saved me plenty of times - wtf do people have those orange lights for if they never turn them on!), assume that the person is doing 60 not 30, and maybe you should wait for them to go past instead of guessing you have just enough time to get past them. Keep looking when you cross the road. People get hit by ambulances because they are going faster, where I'm from they're also bright colours, have sirens, and big flashing lights. How did you miss it?
A huge number of things can kill you. You are squishy. Take care of yourself or have your squishyness tested. It's got nothing to do with Ipods or hoodies or anything else. It's to do with whether you have the slightest sense of self preservation or not. It's only because of bullshit wrapping people up in cotton wool that you end up with this sort of problem.
I actually worked somewhere were my manager was an utter pita about all the health and safety rules. Always double checking and insisting and really winding everyone up by keep asking them if they'd isolated machines, padlocked the isolators, swallowed the keys etc. before working on them. Of course we all did, didn't need to be told - it's that self preservation thing. If I'm going to stick my arm into a remote controlled, 60 tonne an hour grain elevator, I'm damn sure going to make sure it's off, and no bastard can turn it back on again until I'm done. Simple. Of course health and safety nazi lost his job - when the boss found him with his arm inside an elevator, not even switched off at the isolator, let alone padlocked. It's one thing to preach the rules, another to have the sense to understand how they protect you, and therefore how to protect yourself (this guy had nothing like that ability).
Might be completely wrong, but isn't there some kind of stock market scam you could play with this. Take an open source company with an established name. Put it on the stock market, make some money from the sale and let it go bankrupt. noone owns the IP so there's no assets to sell off (e.g. nothing to lose for going bankrupt) and when it's all over you pick up the latest CVS and start again.
Probably massively over simplified, but there's gotta be something along those lines that you can do.
I'm gonna go a little bit further than some of the other guys here and call you a patronising bastard. I can understand people who have been introduced to computers as some new fangled gizmo finding it hard to change the habit of a lifetime, however children who use computers from a young age tend to be a lot more adept at doing so.
We used Ms Works 3( i think) on some godawful 386s at school, with WordArt being the most amazing use of computer technology we could get our hands on. From there on we went to office, and since then i've used every incarnation of office, openoffice, and a little bit of koffice and stuff like that. The difference between me and someone else is that I think 'I want this function, every word processor has this function, where is it? It's not usually a long time to find, and once you've found it once you'll find it again.
I think this is likely because I am used to this way of thinking, because I have, like many of us here, used a lot of different bits of software for a great number of similar purposes. This contrasts with people who are told that the bold function is under the format menu, press this, tick this, and learn it religiously. Of course they're screwed when something changes, it's a counter-intuitive way to learn. If you were told that five doors down is the shop that sells milk, and that's all you knew, you'd be fscked if they moved across the road. However if you know (like we all do) that a sign that says 'Shop' or similar is hung outside the building, it's fairly likely that you'll be able to buy stuff there. (Obviously a little more specific than shop, but it's the idea that counts). Kids will learn this way because they will see several versions of software in time, and hence they will be a lot more adaptable and useful in the workplace than someone who knows that Ctrl-B does X and needs serious retraining and psychiatric help before they are can understand it doing something else.
(Car analogy - ever got into one car and find the indicator is on the other side, or the reverse gear is in a different position? Does it make it impossible to drive? Do you need more lessons and another test, or, do you just get over it, and find you learn the new way pretty damn quickly)
As a final note, as far as word processing goes the knowing what I want to do analogy has finally been solved by starting to use latex. I'm not going to rehash an old debate, but suffice to say, it absolutely rocks for the sort of stuff I usually have to write.
It might not be the best place to add this, but bear in mind that people will call for bans on all kinds of stupid things in the UK at the drop of a hat... remember that bs about banning wireless in UK schools?
Why deal with the problem of the vast number of kids in this country that are complete little shits when you can simply ban videos of them appearing on the internet. It's not the teachers' fault, it seems to be a problem across society at the moment. Teachers are powerless to discipline students, parents can't be bothered to discipline their children, the police (who let's face it should have very little to do with the life of a child) can't do much to deal with kids who repeatedly break the law. This brings it to everyone's attention and therefore it must be banned so we can get back to worrying about posh and becks, or stopping toffs from chasing foxes.
The problem is far deeper than internet videos, idiots who want things banned instead of looking at the cause and to some extent the little shit who threw the brick. Who is responsible for this kid turning out like he has?
Slashdot Mirror
Crazy, how long can a simple joke go on for? The ability of a simple concept to adapt and continue is completely underrated.
(also, how does slashdot always get the capchas so spot on - drunker? well not now, maybe later though?)
If you want to try something really scary, you can detect this 50Hz signal of electromagnetic _RADIATION_ almost everywhere. It's a really strong signal and the scary thing is that it's at almost the same frequency as your _HEART_! Or you could try testing a 7MHz SSB radio in a University Lab, and discover that there is a veritable shitload of EM Radiation floating around the room full of computers. Or you could accept that this is bullshit. There are a few BBC articles on this (strangely they came out in a strange order). One pretty says there are no fears about wireless, the other, a few hours later says wireless is possibly really bad. The second one also misrepresents the opinion expressed by a doctor/scientist (can't remember which) in the first article, when he says that children shouldn't use laptops on their laps (for extended periods of time). Without the qualifying "because the heat could be damaging to sensitive body areas". This is probably a legitimate concern, but he was quoted to give the suggestion that wifi might make your nuts shrink. Ludicrous...
I agree with the parent on this. At least it's not vapourware.
Always the same debate with new technologies, especially storage - too expensive, something else is better etc. etc. Goes all the way back to floppy disks vs. ethernet. The first hard drives were around 20Mb, and cost a lot more than the 15 or so floppies they replaced.
What would be great is if someone knowledgeable had a look at the technology and made an educated guess as to whether it will be cheap in mass production. I'm pretty sure the first CDR disks weren't cheap. Tapes still aren't that cheap given their simplicity and speed. A far more useful analysis would be whether this technology could be made cheap when mass produced. If it can then it is a contender, if not then it's a waste of time.
True, but didn't they get upset with people making mp3 encoders? Something about copyright or patents if I remember...
I remember a story (probably an urban legend) of the secretary asked to make copies at the end of each day. This was back in the era of the 5.25" floppy. When everything went wrong, the boss calmly asks said secretary to get the backups. She returns a few minutes later with several reams of paper, each with a floppy disk photocopied onto it...
I suppose that's another case were testing the ability to restore may have provided some insight...
Doesn't this provide some kind of system restore as well? Assuming your entire system is on this FS, then any changes made, no matter how complex could be rolled back? Attempted to install some driver and broke everything? Just revert to the state before you made the changes... Of course, that means it's probably patented by Microsoft...
Is there a limit to this? I mean Hitler, Stalin, Saddam and many others could each be described as 'a bit of a git'. But it's a damn shame they're dead right? World would be a much better place if they were still around.
And as far as respect for life goes, you mention yourself, they go after people with no respect for the dead. They will ruin people who do not have the means to defend themselves. I think it's a perfectly reasonable response to give him some grief. In fact we should probably go for his family. Eye for an eye.
Lets work out the total cost of their preposterous claims, including the unjust claims to families and associated legal, emotional and social costs. The cost to the taxpayer of clogging countless courts, businesses (all those letters), wasting time at all levels of government, costing fortunes in enforcing ridiculous laws, the cost to other countries that the US government feels fit to apply its laws to or face economic sanctions. The damage the actions of organisations like the MPAA and RIAA have done not just to the US legal system, but to citizens of the whole world is beyond comprehension. And so, in the same fashion as the ridiculous formula they use to persecute people, let's take that entire cost and go after this bastard's family.
I reckon people saying a few nasty things on the Internet is a lot more respect than the man can reasonably expect.
ingest - to eat something, in jest - as a joke. Hence 'in gest' possibly as some kind of pun, regarding eating something. My question was not what in jest (or ingest) meant, but more whether in gest was a misspelling, or a pun. I'm going to assume the former. Thanks for your help though...
Is [In Gest] a kind of eating your words pun I don't get?
Surely two things should happen: Someone somewhere should write a highly capable graphics library, capable of supporting the vast majority of requirements for 3D games. Maybe several depending on application. Licenses should be a reasonable price (with the intention of nearly everyone using it). Secondly, games manufacturers, since they do not have to worry as much about the graphics coding anymore, will be able to focus on making, y'know, good games? I was expecting this to happen with the cell. Someone provides a library or a few highly extensible game engines (look at how the Quake engines have been used), and licenses them, with source, as a high performance building block for games. Could even have a form of open source model, requiring producers to return any performance enhancing modifications to the engine back to the community, and allowing them to keep their own game code secret (don't ask how this could be done, I don't know). It would encourage a rapid development pace whilst allowing games to be judged on their playability as opposed to technical superiority.
As I understand the UK data protection act, one can request (well demand...) disclosure of any information that a company has stored about you. You can also demand that any information that is not relevant or required by them be deleted. Seems like surveillance Britain is ahead in this area...
I read all three years ago, and read them again recently. I remember it seeming like a bit of a slog for a while in the second book, but it does get a lot more interesting. When I re-read it the soap opera parts seemed more important because they gave foundation to the characters' motivations and actions. I'd certainly recommend sticking it out, there's a lot of really good stuff in there.
The reason for this in the UK is that there are very few traffic cops, they have been replaced by speed cameras. After all, they are an easy way to make money even if the speeding isn't dangerous (go on, tell me doing over 70mph on a motorway at 4 in the morning when there is _no_one_ else around is worse than doing a nice legal 70mph a few feet from the next guys bumper (which is pretty unlikely to get you a ticket)).
The best way to improve our roads would be to have a lot more traffic police who actually pull people over for infractions like tailgating, texting, using phones, doing makeup and all the other idiot things that have nearly killed me on the road. As long as you obey the speed limits you could quite likely get away with driving dangerously for a lifetime - I've seen quite a few people on my travels who seem to have achieved just that.
As far as I know most modern engines are pretty much entirely computer controlled. The added complexity is the few lines of code that detect the ethanol tank is empty and switch to a different set of performance characteristics (lower boost, different fuelling and timing etc.) Given that a lot of cars will modify their performance based on driving style (K-series Rover engines I know for a fact do) - drive hard and the engine will respond quicker, drive conservatively and it will favour economy and that the difference between engines of similar capacities and differing performance is quite often determined electronically, it seems that the electronics are in charge of these decisions, so there is little complexity to be added. The simplest solution is to make an empty ethanol tank a failure that drops the engine into the limp-home mode (usually restricted to about 30 Mph) until it is refilled.
So were 5.25", 3.5" floppies, zip disks, cd-rw, dvd-rw etc. If the cost is right and the benefits are great enough it will be adopted. If they package it in similar formats to that flash currently uses (eg. usb sticks, sd cards) for portable storage, and stick a SATA interface on it for internal (or even bulk external) storage, it will be adopted without most people noticing it's something new.
Another side effect of this is that people don't seem to want to give stuff away any more. I'm not sure if its WEEE, but there's some bit of legislation about waste disposal that means my University will not give away old computers and parts. I'd like to see them given away to students (particularly those for whom a reasonably good computer is hard to afford), or maybe given to local schools etc. Or even reused in different departments - most of the uni computing facilities are nowhere near as good as the lab machines the CS department chucked out a couple of years ago. But instead they are taken away and their disassembly and destruction catalogued - in the name of preserving the environment!
I can see that there is an obvious scam potential - dump all of your old computer stock on some unsuspecting school, and leave them with the problem of disposal - but it seems like a waste of useful resources. Maybe they should take them away on slow moving open backed lorries or something...
I agree with the parent in that the reason for problems is the equal importance of each potential editor. In order to become a reliable source of information I think a model similar to that used by a lot of open-source software projects can be used, whereby a topic (or group of topics depending on size) is overseen by a maintainer - someone who is an expert in the field, or a group of knowledgeable persons. This would allow for articles where the majority of the work is contributed by one author to be maintained primarily by that author, and articles with greater controversy to be maintained by a committee.
The trick to making it work would be to ensure that the committee members are relatively unbiased towards their topic, and that they will accept and reject comments based on the quality of their supporting arguments, research and references. They would also frame them responsibly within a topic - presenting arguments or opinions as such, and not simply stated as fact.
Similarly to the Slashdot moderation system, the actions and opinions of committee members would be meta-moderated by the community. It would be important that for controversial cases (if not all cases) a statement with the reasons for a decision made by each committee member is presented, and based on that community members can vote on whether they feel the approach taken by each members is appropriate and correct. Possibly this would be undertaken by a select group of respected policy makers in order to ensure an objective decision is made.
In the cases where a single maintainer is responsible then the editing decisions should be made by that person. Clearly a complaints and resolution system is required so that lazy, biased or ineffective maintainers can be replaced, and where sufficient controversy exists, an article is upgraded to requiring the committee based approach to maintenance.
The idea is to allow user's additions a fair chance of being added to the encyclopedia, whilst reducing the amount of unwanted additions and edits. Of fundamental importance is ensuring that the moderation system itself is open, allowing a clear decision making process that can be scrutinised for unfairness. Primarily that a proposed addition put forth by a user, supported by references,research, expertise etc. is given priority over the opinions of a committee moderator if the committee moderator cannot provide suitable reasons (again, research etc.) that refutes the addition. The meta-moderation system would be in place to highlight bad decisions if they are made, and possibly to suggest resolution (perhaps the committee-moderator has to stand down, or perhaps both arguments should be presented in the article to provide completeness). A system of voting in new committee members (perhaps for expressed expertise or substantial contribution) to a topic would be required. Again this should probably be performed by a meta-moderation group that will objectively decide whether that person should be included at the top of the decision making process for an article.
This in itself would provide a fairly comprehensive system, hopefully filtering out the unwanted information from that which should be included. By putting someone's name (or a group's) to an article, there is an element of integrity that the persons themselves will wish to maintain - courting controversy through bias and unjust decision making will reduce the influence of that person on the article, and in the community as a whole, a form of self-moderation in that in order to contribute at a top level, the contribution must be seen as appropriate by the community.
I also feel that the first initial hurdle (of getting an article past a maintainer) would reduce a significant amount of the damage done to articles.
Simply allowing everyone to edit where they feel is not a viable model for long term success - a more comprehensive approach that pays more attention to the relevant facts and research behind an article is needed.
Aren't rpms signed? Hence you can be confident that the program that you are installing (with the required elevated priveleges) has been checked to be OK? Isn't this the system that microsoft have (with signing downloads and stuff)?
The main reasons I am confident with everything I install on my linux machine is that they either come from the signed Ubuntu repositories, or they are a reputable open source software - if I was so inclined I could check the code for malware (not that likely) or, as I usually do, I rely on the fact that the stuff that I am so interested in having the latest of that I am willing to download and build from source is popular enough that the inclusion of some kind of malware in the code is unlikely to go unnoticed - in fact I reckon it's fairly likely to end up reported on slashdot...
I haven't checked, if I remember you can dpkg install a deb without needing signing, so there is a possibility there, but then the solution _is_ fairly simple for the end user: If you want to trust your software, install it through apt.
I seem to recall similar research that showed people wearing their hoods up are more likely to be killed crossing the road because they have less peripheral vision.
This does sound ridiculous. I walk around all the time with my iRiver. Thing is, when there's a lot of traffic around it's not noise that tells you a cars there, there's too much of that anyway. The thing that gives them away is seeing them - they're often painted in pretty colours, and have lights on them and all sorts of giveaways. Listening to music is not an excuse for not looking. How do deaf people cross the road?
Talk about nanny state ridiculousness. Maybe they should force you to take a test proving that you're not too tired to concentrate before crossing the road. What about drunkenness?
If you can't be bothered to look out for yourself then you should probably learn the hard way. Instead of assuming you have some fscking right to just walk across the road, why not look. Assume that the car coming is going to turn at the junction you're about to cross (saved me plenty of times - wtf do people have those orange lights for if they never turn them on!), assume that the person is doing 60 not 30, and maybe you should wait for them to go past instead of guessing you have just enough time to get past them. Keep looking when you cross the road. People get hit by ambulances because they are going faster, where I'm from they're also bright colours, have sirens, and big flashing lights. How did you miss it?
A huge number of things can kill you. You are squishy. Take care of yourself or have your squishyness tested. It's got nothing to do with Ipods or hoodies or anything else. It's to do with whether you have the slightest sense of self preservation or not. It's only because of bullshit wrapping people up in cotton wool that you end up with this sort of problem.
I actually worked somewhere were my manager was an utter pita about all the health and safety rules. Always double checking and insisting and really winding everyone up by keep asking them if they'd isolated machines, padlocked the isolators, swallowed the keys etc. before working on them. Of course we all did, didn't need to be told - it's that self preservation thing. If I'm going to stick my arm into a remote controlled, 60 tonne an hour grain elevator, I'm damn sure going to make sure it's off, and no bastard can turn it back on again until I'm done. Simple. Of course health and safety nazi lost his job - when the boss found him with his arm inside an elevator, not even switched off at the isolator, let alone padlocked. It's one thing to preach the rules, another to have the sense to understand how they protect you, and therefore how to protect yourself (this guy had nothing like that ability).
Might be completely wrong, but isn't there some kind of stock market scam you could play with this. Take an open source company with an established name. Put it on the stock market, make some money from the sale and let it go bankrupt. noone owns the IP so there's no assets to sell off (e.g. nothing to lose for going bankrupt) and when it's all over you pick up the latest CVS and start again.
Probably massively over simplified, but there's gotta be something along those lines that you can do.
I'm gonna go a little bit further than some of the other guys here and call you a patronising bastard. I can understand people who have been introduced to computers as some new fangled gizmo finding it hard to change the habit of a lifetime, however children who use computers from a young age tend to be a lot more adept at doing so.
We used Ms Works 3( i think) on some godawful 386s at school, with WordArt being the most amazing use of computer technology we could get our hands on. From there on we went to office, and since then i've used every incarnation of office, openoffice, and a little bit of koffice and stuff like that. The difference between me and someone else is that I think 'I want this function, every word processor has this function, where is it? It's not usually a long time to find, and once you've found it once you'll find it again.
I think this is likely because I am used to this way of thinking, because I have, like many of us here, used a lot of different bits of software for a great number of similar purposes. This contrasts with people who are told that the bold function is under the format menu, press this, tick this, and learn it religiously. Of course they're screwed when something changes, it's a counter-intuitive way to learn. If you were told that five doors down is the shop that sells milk, and that's all you knew, you'd be fscked if they moved across the road. However if you know (like we all do) that a sign that says 'Shop' or similar is hung outside the building, it's fairly likely that you'll be able to buy stuff there. (Obviously a little more specific than shop, but it's the idea that counts). Kids will learn this way because they will see several versions of software in time, and hence they will be a lot more adaptable and useful in the workplace than someone who knows that Ctrl-B does X and needs serious retraining and psychiatric help before they are can understand it doing something else.
(Car analogy - ever got into one car and find the indicator is on the other side, or the reverse gear is in a different position? Does it make it impossible to drive? Do you need more lessons and another test, or, do you just get over it, and find you learn the new way pretty damn quickly)
As a final note, as far as word processing goes the knowing what I want to do analogy has finally been solved by starting to use latex. I'm not going to rehash an old debate, but suffice to say, it absolutely rocks for the sort of stuff I usually have to write.
It might not be the best place to add this, but bear in mind that people will call for bans on all kinds of stupid things in the UK at the drop of a hat... remember that bs about banning wireless in UK schools?
Why deal with the problem of the vast number of kids in this country that are complete little shits when you can simply ban videos of them appearing on the internet. It's not the teachers' fault, it seems to be a problem across society at the moment. Teachers are powerless to discipline students, parents can't be bothered to discipline their children, the police (who let's face it should have very little to do with the life of a child) can't do much to deal with kids who repeatedly break the law. This brings it to everyone's attention and therefore it must be banned so we can get back to worrying about posh and becks, or stopping toffs from chasing foxes.
The problem is far deeper than internet videos, idiots who want things banned instead of looking at the cause and to some extent the little shit who threw the brick. Who is responsible for this kid turning out like he has?
Most slashdotters get that all the time. Or does it mean with someone else?
This box contains a whole universe!
Dude, there's like a universe inside all of us!
Right on professor Freaksworth!
Get a job!
How many libraries of congress are there in a cheerio?