...I'll keep doing my part to see that people use the correct terminology. For instance, when my parents asked me about the recent wave of hacker attacks, I quickly pointed out the difference between hacker and cracker. And so forth. Maybe I won't make a big impact, but *some* people will be able to acknowledge the difference.
That, and they won't get confused when I say that I'm trying to find a quick bologna/cheese/bacon sandwich hack....
In fact, the reason I learned how to play guitar was Metallica's "The Four Horsemen" and "Seek And Destroy". I would spend hours upon hours a day practising and honing the art of the Metal Riff. I even went so far as to buy a cassette deck with a quick pause and backtrack so I could hear and reconstruct riffs and phrases in their music. Things got better for them until they released their "Black Album", and then I realised that they were getting weak.
As far as a Metallica boycott goes, I haven't bothered buying any of their new albums, and I doubt I'll ever repurchase any of their old albums. This assault on their fans just confirms my suspicion that they weren't in it for money, but a shitload of money (to paraphrase Spaceballs). Yes, I think that artists should get compensation for their art, but whining that your music is being used as a commodity is baseless. It already was a commodity.
Oh yeah. I was getting a bit bored with q2 and the BSD text-mode games that came with SuSE. (not to say that Christminster and Nethack are bad, but...). I don't know the history of the Tome, being new to Linux, but I'm very happy to see something like this. The main thing my roommates dislike about Linux is the lack of games, and I'm really hoping this will turn them away from the dark side. (Well, that, and they don't like the fact that they won't see their GPFs again...:)
I don't know if I could find a use for this at home, or even at work. At least, not until it's affordable. How *many* mp3s do I need, anyhow? The normal 20gb SCSI drive is just about all I'll need ever, that is, until Linux gets so bloated that it requires a minimum ~1gb install (read: SuSE...).
OTOH, imagine the storage space! One could conceivably store every American novel ever written, all the Beatles songs (including outtakes and bootlegs), all Pink Floyd songs and bootlegs, and still have room to slap a Win2K partition on there, and have room for q3a. And then you might have to worry about lowering that swap file down to, say, ~20gb.
When I was living in Moline, IL, there was a section of wetlands near the Rock River that was "protected". Around 1988 (I'm not too sure about that), a man wanted to build a dirt-track auto racing area in that protected wetland. Naturally, the city's government denied him, saying that the wetland was protected. Then, in 1991, Wal-Mart comes around, and all of a sudden, those wetlands are open. Wal-Mart put up thier superstore and had a couple other stores there, too. (Kohl's (I think), Lowe's and a couple of smaller-name stores.)
When the flood of '93 hit, Wal-Mart was just fine, because they put up retaining walls and the such around their place, but the homes around there and further down the river were TSOL. I'm not saying that having the wetlands there would have nullified the flood (it was, as you remember, one *hell* of a flood), but it sure would have eased the flood effects in the area somewhat.
Wal-Mart, even though they may appear to be a benign, for-the-normal-people store, are actually just like any other megacorporation. Greedy, arrogant, uncaring leeches. That, and they have *loads* of money to spend on lobbying. I've written my letter to Sam Walton, I just hope others do the same.
How about removing the anonymity? Give the accused students a chance to confront their accusors ("I don't talk to you, drekhead, because I don't *like* you! That's why I seem distant!"). Surely the anonymity allows for major abuse by malicious students (which were, in my high school, almost invariably the rich, popular athletes and those whose parents were societal elites.)
Ok, an artist releases an album. A track or two become "popular", and get airplay on MTV and pop radio (not college radio...). People follow the leader and totally dig this artist. CDs are bought in droves. Some people decide to rip mp3s off of this CD and distribute them on Usenet, IRC, Napster, ad nauseum. This artist, feeling her/his oats off of good CD sales and excellent radio play, decides to tour. People at the tour stops buy shirts, CDs, etc. And she/he is *losing* money due to mp3s? Give me a fscking break. I grok that the artists worried about Napster, et al, are just worried that they won't become mega-millionaires like U2 or Rolling Stones. Screw them.
Uh, it's a *loan*, which means that I'm paying this back at 6.8%. Your taxes go towards *grants*, of which I got $1000 worth, just enough to pay about 50% of my school bill. The remainder of my Stafford Loan is for my use, mostly to pay bills, keep up on rent, and the such. I also have 2 part time jobs that I use for bills and rent, so I thought it would be a Good Thing(TM) to invest in Linux. Sneer at more money coming into the open source arena.
BTW, I'm 25 and have been paying taxes for 10 years now. I think it's just groovey that I can use my *loan* for stock purchases.
WARNING! This post contains sarcasm. If you are using prescribed medication, please consult your doctor before reading.
Thanks for the advice, but screw the hype. This, to me, is a good way to contribute money, while at the same time making loan officers of banks think that me and my friends are capable of affording a 25 year loan for a Geek House.
I got my Stafford loan yesterday, and since the IPO price is still within the "tolerable" range, I'm still going to nab 100 shares with an investor friend of mine. I'll just stick it in the folder with the 30 RHAT shares and the 40 LNUX shares I bought. Hell, to me it's not about the investment gains, but more about supporting stuff I see as a Good Thing(TM).
Screw all the infighting about "well, you made money off of OSS, so you aren't a/true/ supporter of open source."
Is such an entity permitted to value it's own self-preservation?
Ooh. That's a toughie. I don't know when human-created sentience will occur, but these are exactly the thorny questions that have to be answered. I, for one, would abhor a sentience that would not be allowed to be self-determined. As scary as it may seem, it's just not the type of thing that I want to see. Slavery of any sort (even robotic slavery) is just plain Wrong.
Tech sure as hell *can* be progressive for the human race, however. Unfortunately, many people want to advance tech without putting in the time necessary to maintain vigilance against abuse of said progressions. For instance, I can see bionics being abused very easily, especially by governments, but even by private sector corporations. Why pay a secretary all that money to type when you can just have him/her implanted with recording and playback cyberware? Where does her/his life go once she/he is implanted?
OTOH, cyberware and bionics is a Good Thing(TM) in that it can assist the blind and deaf and can help those with birth defects (such as malformed feet) to become more self-reliant.
What we *must* do is keep check on private and government interests. We have to hold them from abusing these progressions and trashing basic humanity.
At least, I'm not suprised. Symantec has lots of money and lawyers, and they are the average petulant company, pissed that someone isn't playing exactly by their rules.
Some of you may recall that Solid Oak Software has threatened Peacefire in the past. Hell, Solid Oak has even mail-bombed detractors and has recompiled their CYBERSitter software to generate a fake error message if it finds peacefire.org in your browser cache on install. Don't be suprised if Symantec does equally vile things to their consumers. After all, censorship is vile business. Certainly, there is no reason for this attack on Peacefire other than to "get even" for questioning their "moral" authority.
The only thing we can hope for is that this will result in a win for Peacefire. Otherwise, get ready for Big Brother in full effect...
Normally the console market has been able to avoid the "release buggy stuff and patch it" mentality that Netscape started.
When I worked for a software company in the QA dept., we were actually told that if a level 1 bug doesn't seriously effect output or usability we were to put a note of it on the send, but consider it a "feature". Fortunately, I got out of that fscked up company.
However, it's not a big suprise that Sony ran into this problem. They were in an *enormous* push to release PSX2 in Japan. It boggles me that they could have missed something of this magnitude. Could it have been a management push to "ignore semi-major errors"?
However, I am definitely for more experimentation and research in bionics. The scary part is Pentagon involvement. Or any military institute, for that matter. I would not be at all suprised to see further research in bionics declared "secret" by the State Dept., simply so they can get direct military applications from any future advancements, and deny information to the "Red Menace". Let's all hope that it doesn't happen this way.
In the mean time, sign me up for Wired Reflexes (L2), Datajack and Skillwires (L1)...
Has anyone else noticed that when someone posts "I'll probably be moderated down for this", "There goes my karma", or "-1, flamebait", they are almost certain to be moderated UP?
Quite honestly, I expected some moderator, in response to my BFG Bait, to moderate me -1 Troll just for kicks. I mean, it's not that killer of a comment...
Some friends of free software have argued that UCITA would benefit our community, by making non-free software intolerably restrictive, and thus driving users to us. Realistically speaking, this is unlikely, because it assumes that proprietary software developers will act against their own interests. They may be greedy and ruthless, but they are not stupid.
This is *exactly* what my English 110 prof is talking about when she brings up "pursuasive writing". I didn't need to be pursuaded to be against the UCITA, but lines like the above quoted sure help get the wankers off the fence. Go Richard!
Slashdot Mirror
...I'll keep doing my part to see that people use the correct terminology. For instance, when my parents asked me about the recent wave of hacker attacks, I quickly pointed out the difference between hacker and cracker. And so forth. Maybe I won't make a big impact, but *some* people will be able to acknowledge the difference.
That, and they won't get confused when I say that I'm trying to find a quick bologna/cheese/bacon sandwich hack....
In fact, the reason I learned how to play guitar was Metallica's "The Four Horsemen" and "Seek And Destroy". I would spend hours upon hours a day practising and honing the art of the Metal Riff. I even went so far as to buy a cassette deck with a quick pause and backtrack so I could hear and reconstruct riffs and phrases in their music. Things got better for them until they released their "Black Album", and then I realised that they were getting weak.
As far as a Metallica boycott goes, I haven't bothered buying any of their new albums, and I doubt I'll ever repurchase any of their old albums. This assault on their fans just confirms my suspicion that they weren't in it for money, but a shitload of money (to paraphrase Spaceballs). Yes, I think that artists should get compensation for their art, but whining that your music is being used as a commodity is baseless. It already was a commodity.
Oh yeah. I was getting a bit bored with q2 and the BSD text-mode games that came with SuSE. (not to say that Christminster and Nethack are bad, but...). I don't know the history of the Tome, being new to Linux, but I'm very happy to see something like this. The main thing my roommates dislike about Linux is the lack of games, and I'm really hoping this will turn them away from the dark side. (Well, that, and they don't like the fact that they won't see their GPFs again... :)
Isn't this the same thing as lyrics.ch?
I don't know if I could find a use for this at home, or even at work. At least, not until it's affordable. How *many* mp3s do I need, anyhow? The normal 20gb SCSI drive is just about all I'll need ever, that is, until Linux gets so bloated that it requires a minimum ~1gb install (read: SuSE...).
OTOH, imagine the storage space! One could conceivably store every American novel ever written, all the Beatles songs (including outtakes and bootlegs), all Pink Floyd songs and bootlegs, and still have room to slap a Win2K partition on there, and have room for q3a. And then you might have to worry about lowering that swap file down to, say, ~20gb.
I still can't decide whether I want one or not...
When I was living in Moline, IL, there was a section of wetlands near the Rock River that was "protected". Around 1988 (I'm not too sure about that), a man wanted to build a dirt-track auto racing area in that protected wetland. Naturally, the city's government denied him, saying that the wetland was protected. Then, in 1991, Wal-Mart comes around, and all of a sudden, those wetlands are open. Wal-Mart put up thier superstore and had a couple other stores there, too. (Kohl's (I think), Lowe's and a couple of smaller-name stores.)
When the flood of '93 hit, Wal-Mart was just fine, because they put up retaining walls and the such around their place, but the homes around there and further down the river were TSOL. I'm not saying that having the wetlands there would have nullified the flood (it was, as you remember, one *hell* of a flood), but it sure would have eased the flood effects in the area somewhat.
Wal-Mart, even though they may appear to be a benign, for-the-normal-people store, are actually just like any other megacorporation. Greedy, arrogant, uncaring leeches. That, and they have *loads* of money to spend on lobbying. I've written my letter to Sam Walton, I just hope others do the same.
How about removing the anonymity? Give the accused students a chance to confront their accusors ("I don't talk to you, drekhead, because I don't *like* you! That's why I seem distant!"). Surely the anonymity allows for major abuse by malicious students (which were, in my high school, almost invariably the rich, popular athletes and those whose parents were societal elites.)
How about Pong Kombat?! You can even do fatalities and cool stuff like that.
Ok, an artist releases an album. A track or two become "popular", and get airplay on MTV and pop radio (not college radio...). People follow the leader and totally dig this artist. CDs are bought in droves. Some people decide to rip mp3s off of this CD and distribute them on Usenet, IRC, Napster, ad nauseum. This artist, feeling her/his oats off of good CD sales and excellent radio play, decides to tour. People at the tour stops buy shirts, CDs, etc. And she/he is *losing* money due to mp3s? Give me a fscking break. I grok that the artists worried about Napster, et al, are just worried that they won't become mega-millionaires like U2 or Rolling Stones. Screw them.
how many mp3s per second on Napster is this?
Uh, it's a *loan*, which means that I'm paying this back at 6.8%. Your taxes go towards *grants*, of which I got $1000 worth, just enough to pay about 50% of my school bill. The remainder of my Stafford Loan is for my use, mostly to pay bills, keep up on rent, and the such. I also have 2 part time jobs that I use for bills and rent, so I thought it would be a Good Thing(TM) to invest in Linux. Sneer at more money coming into the open source arena.
BTW, I'm 25 and have been paying taxes for 10 years now. I think it's just groovey that I can use my *loan* for stock purchases.
WARNING! This post contains sarcasm. If you are using prescribed medication, please consult your doctor before reading.
hehehehe. That was pretty good.
Thanks for the advice, but screw the hype. This, to me, is a good way to contribute money, while at the same time making loan officers of banks think that me and my friends are capable of affording a 25 year loan for a Geek House.
I got my Stafford loan yesterday, and since the IPO price is still within the "tolerable" range, I'm still going to nab 100 shares with an investor friend of mine. I'll just stick it in the folder with the 30 RHAT shares and the 40 LNUX shares I bought. Hell, to me it's not about the investment gains, but more about supporting stuff I see as a Good Thing(TM).
/true/ supporter of open source."
Screw all the infighting about "well, you made money off of OSS, so you aren't a
Is such an entity permitted to value it's own self-preservation?
Ooh. That's a toughie. I don't know when human-created sentience will occur, but these are exactly the thorny questions that have to be answered. I, for one, would abhor a sentience that would not be allowed to be self-determined. As scary as it may seem, it's just not the type of thing that I want to see. Slavery of any sort (even robotic slavery) is just plain Wrong.
Where do we go from here?
Tech sure as hell *can* be progressive for the human race, however. Unfortunately, many people want to advance tech without putting in the time necessary to maintain vigilance against abuse of said progressions. For instance, I can see bionics being abused very easily, especially by governments, but even by private sector corporations. Why pay a secretary all that money to type when you can just have him/her implanted with recording and playback cyberware? Where does her/his life go once she/he is implanted?
OTOH, cyberware and bionics is a Good Thing(TM) in that it can assist the blind and deaf and can help those with birth defects (such as malformed feet) to become more self-reliant.
What we *must* do is keep check on private and government interests. We have to hold them from abusing these progressions and trashing basic humanity.
http://www.userfri endly.org/cartoons/archives/99oct/uf001180.gif
Can't help but get a giggle out of this cartoon...
Oops, I hit "submit" instead of "preview". (perhaps this will add a % point or two to my /. purity test?)
s f/product+feedback
;)
http:// service1.symantec.com/DISCUSS/SUPPORT/feedback2.n
Now, I'll hit the "preview button"...
Here's the closest I could come. No email, however. It's just a comment submission form. Perhaps a /. reader that works there will give us something? http://service1.symantec.com/DISCUSS/SUPPORT/feedb ack2.nsf/internet+services+feedback
At least, I'm not suprised. Symantec has lots of money and lawyers, and they are the average petulant company, pissed that someone isn't playing exactly by their rules.
Some of you may recall that Solid Oak Software has threatened Peacefire in the past. Hell, Solid Oak has even mail-bombed detractors and has recompiled their CYBERSitter software to generate a fake error message if it finds peacefire.org in your browser cache on install. Don't be suprised if Symantec does equally vile things to their consumers. After all, censorship is vile business. Certainly, there is no reason for this attack on Peacefire other than to "get even" for questioning their "moral" authority.
The only thing we can hope for is that this will result in a win for Peacefire. Otherwise, get ready for Big Brother in full effect...
Normally the console market has been able to avoid the "release buggy stuff and patch it" mentality that Netscape started.
When I worked for a software company in the QA dept., we were actually told that if a level 1 bug doesn't seriously effect output or usability we were to put a note of it on the send, but consider it a "feature". Fortunately, I got out of that fscked up company.
However, it's not a big suprise that Sony ran into this problem. They were in an *enormous* push to release PSX2 in Japan. It boggles me that they could have missed something of this magnitude. Could it have been a management push to "ignore semi-major errors"?
However, I am definitely for more experimentation and research in bionics. The scary part is Pentagon involvement. Or any military institute, for that matter. I would not be at all suprised to see further research in bionics declared "secret" by the State Dept., simply so they can get direct military applications from any future advancements, and deny information to the "Red Menace". Let's all hope that it doesn't happen this way.
In the mean time, sign me up for Wired Reflexes (L2), Datajack and Skillwires (L1)...
Has anyone else noticed that when someone posts "I'll probably be moderated down for this", "There goes my karma", or "-1, flamebait", they are almost certain to be moderated UP?
Quite honestly, I expected some moderator, in response to my BFG Bait, to moderate me -1 Troll just for kicks. I mean, it's not that killer of a comment...
Another one I just thought of: YAKW (Yet Another Karma Whore)
Perhaps now that 10000 has been reached, /. can celebrate by putting in a couple more moderation words, such as "surreal" or maybe "BFG Bait"...
(-1 here I come...)
From the article:
Some friends of free software have argued that UCITA would benefit our community, by making non-free software intolerably restrictive, and thus driving users to us. Realistically speaking, this is unlikely, because it assumes that proprietary software developers will act against their own interests. They may be greedy and ruthless, but they are not stupid.
This is *exactly* what my English 110 prof is talking about when she brings up "pursuasive writing". I didn't need to be pursuaded to be against the UCITA, but lines like the above quoted sure help get the wankers off the fence. Go Richard!
/me emails Skip Lockwood to see how he can help.