When I was there a few months ago, AMEX was still running IE6 as their browser of choice. There was a separate program that hooked up to the databases, though.
Yes, USA. Economics was actually split into two courses, AP Microeconomics and AP Macroeconomics. My Computer Electronics classes were in college. And also, yes, a public school. SPASH, in Stevens Point, WI.
Not all good things there, the security guy managed to push in more cameras than they had at the county jail. There is no hyperbole or exaggeration in that statement, just sad truth. After the principal I had left, I've heard from my brother and his friends that things declined sharply. I don't know how it is now, but I assume it isn't good. From the website, I see that my Economics teacher is still there, so there's still some hope.
Your co-worker may have been mistaken as to where that photo came from. A UAV could take that picture, but you couldn't get a picture like that from orbit even if you turned Hubble around.
I don't recall that statement about catching one of the Oklahoma City bombers by watching him run away, but I could see the radio station being misinformed (either deliberately or accidentally). Not to tar them all with the same brush, but Slashdot remembers a radio station continuing actions that were ultimately lethal even after being warned by someone in the know. It's not hard to imagine a radio station getting something wrong.
This was the first hijacking in our nations history that resulted in the deaths of everyone aboard. In the past, hijackings involved the plane being diverted. Instead of going to Houston, we're going to Mexico. Instead of going to Florida, we're visiting the Bahamas. There was never any risk to letting the hijackers have their way, as opposed to being possibly stabbed or shot for trying to interfere.
Now, everything has changed. Airplane passengers see every hijacker as a potential suicide bomber. It is now considered more dangerous to allow a hijacking to occur than it is to fight back. One of those four planes learned about the paradigm shift, and changed their thinking in mid-flight. That's why it didn't make it. It will take no less than 50 years before enough people have forgotten the lessons of the past to allow anyone to hijack a plane in the U.S. ever again.
Why can't a free society just stockpile information in case it might be needed? I don't see a problem until they start with a person, then find out what he's guilty of. This person's uncle had suspicious behavior, so they dug up everything they had on him. They went to him with everything they had dug up, and asked him to explain the suspicious parts. This is perfectly acceptable in a free society. Problems would be if they found that he might be guilty, so he vanished until they were done with him. Or if one of the DoHS guys was his neighbor, and didn't like him for whatever reason, so he went on a witch hunt in the hopes of getting the uncle sent away and replaced with a better neighbor. What actually happened is acceptable.
Great thing about R&D, sometimes you find things that are even better (more potent) than what you're looking for. People looking for pesticides have found nerve gas, why shouldn't people designing reactors find that some particular design just happens to output mostly weaponizable material?
As opposed to you? You've come to the decision that the box is bad, despite the fact that it works, because it isn't a part of your Utopian view of all software available for free. With this set of biases in place, you have decided that anything that isn't the box must be better by dint of being outside the box.
First, you said that everyone gets a vote as to what software gets worked on. Who is everyone? U.S. citizens? After all, they're the taxpayers putting in the money. Or does everyone include all the people who might possibly use the software? All of Earth gets to decide what part of it is spending money on?
Now, you seem to think that giving everyone a vote means the best possible things will be worked on. Now, when I hear anyone talking about the 'wisdom of the mob,' I immediately think of lemmings. Given the popularity of the term 'sheeple' at/., most of us feel the same way. If that's too abstract, here's a better example. American Idol. America's Got Talent. Dancing With the Stars. These are the things the mob has decided should continue. Science will starve while entertainment seizes yet more money.
Here's how the box works. If I need a piece of code, I have three options. One, I write it myself. Two, I see if someone has released it, or something like it, into the wild. Three, I pay someone for it. If I'm a coder, and I enjoy being able to pay the rent, I look for number three. A preponderance of free software actually hurts my ability to eat. The saving grace of free software for me is that most corporate lawyers try to avoid it like the plague, based on all sorts of liability issues. Your idea helps users, but at the cost of developers. Developers that haven't been approved for work in this government think tank, that is.
There's another question. Who gets to partake of these funds? People who work on the projects? Do they get paid before or after? How much do they get paid? Is it meritocratic, where the most contributions get the most money? Who decides what the most contributions are? Optimizing code by cutting out all the crap will result in a negative line count, so we can't use that as the metric. What about testers? They don't actually change the code, they just say what's good and bad. Adding functionality increases runtime, while optimizing decreases it. There's no good way to measure the worth of any individual on this kind of thing. So it turns into a welfare program for the people who can latch on to a project without having to actually do anything. Or can the project manager allocate funds as he sees fit? I'm sure there's no chance for embezzling there. Can foreign coders partake of the monies? If so, won't that eventually result in the outsourcing of programming being directly financed by the U.S. government? There's a lot of logistics involved in your plan, and you haven't given any kind of specifics.
I personally do reverse engineering. Lots of closed software that other people want to interface with is good for me. My bias is clear. But I acknowledge it, unlike your post that suggests that people like me should stay out of the way so that people like you can decide what's best for all of us, all the while spouting the virtues of freedom.
If some private organization wants to earmark some of its money for supporting open source, I'm fine with that. That's basically what Google's Summer of Code is, as far as I can tell. It looks good for PR, it lets them get a leg up on the competition when it comes to hiring the bright minds of tomorrow, and it puts stuff into the open. Everyone wins, other than people who were going to be paid for similar code. I just don't want the public to be forced to spend money to support things the vast majority of them will never use.
Oh, I did not say that there were no phones that have GPS. Learn to read, people. Really? I seem to remember seeing you say this:
This is complete bullshit! There are no GPS chips in cellphones today. Perhaps you meant that they are not standard for many models. Insulting everyone else's reading comprehension for not reading your mind is a bit over the line, though.
Re:I'm not sure what this is doing on /.
on
Hardening Linux
·
· Score: 1
I'm right there with you. Between/. and bash.org, I learned sudo, sed, grep, wget, and to never click a link without checking its target first.
I agree. The only thing that can easily be done to interfere with an airplane is a bomb. If you care about nothing other than making planes drop out of the sky, that's really easy to do. Why not airmail a bomb rigged to a pressure sensor? Cargo bays are generally not kept pressurized unless there's live cargo. Label it as a laptop, and the mess of electronics on an x-ray will pass.
Here's the only scenario I can think of where hijacking a plane might work: The hijackers send a note forward with a stewardess stating that there are armed men on board who would like to go to a different destination. They never display weapons to the passengers, and they never try to replace any members of the crew. The plane stays in the direct control of the pilot at all times. Clearly, the plane is not going to be running into anything, and I'd put better than 50% odds on this sort of hijacking actually being successful.
As far as taking off your shoes go, I'm reminded of an act a comedian whom I can't remember had. "Some guy tried to hide a bomb in his shoes when he got on a plane, so now everyone has to take off their shoes at the airport. I ask you, where are the bra bombers?"
I believe that the airport was Minneapolis. I do not recall all of the details, but the core of the story is accurate, that he did take a live bullet, one that was easily capable of punching a hole through the skin of an aircraft, through a set of metal detectors at the airport, by way of the buckles on his suspenders also triggering the wand.
What the hell are you going to do once you've gotten a knife onto a plane? You can't hijack planes anymore. Gone are the days of wondering where you're going to go instead, because the answer might be "The ground." A knife will not be enough. Hell, the gun probably wouldn't be enough, but if you got a few terrorists with guns on the plane, it might be.
Yes. Glass knives are obvious, but they are also useless in this situation. Coming up with an idea is easy, coming up with a useful idea is something else altogether.
Being a monopoly isn't illegal. Sustaining that monopoly through anticompetitive practices is. After all, anytime someone is innovative and markets it, they have a monopoly. They are the only people who make widget x. It's not until they start trying to keep everyone else from making widget x knockoffs that they're breaking the law. Also, if widget y gains a large enough share of the market, widget x is now free to be as anticompetitive as they want.
I actually enjoyed the Hunchback. In the end, he strikes a blow against his oppressive master, but he still doesn't get the girl, he's still ugly, and he's still up in the tower. A life lesson if I ever saw one.
The knife is because he read Snow Crash. On the other hand, it wouldn't be a difficult task to turn a cheap Airsoft handgun (made of plastic, shoots little plastic BBs) into a cheap plastic.22 handgun. Don't think for a second that it's impossible to get bullets past checkpoints.
True story: My grandfather used to take a walk every morning down to his local shooting range. He'd pick up trash, and sometimes brass for loading his own cartridges. On this particular morning, he happened to find a.243 cartridge that was live, someone must have accidentally dropped it. He put it in his pocket, and went on his way. Later that day, his daughter (my aunt) was flying out to England, and from there to India. He took her to the airport, and went through the security checkpoint to walk her to the gate. He set off the metal detector, and they had him go through the process of emptying out his pockets of all the change, keys, etc. He reached in, and found that he still had that live rifle cartridge in there. He noticed that neither of the security people were paying attention, and he pulled out the cartridge and dropped it in his shirt pocket. When he went through again, he beeped, and got wanded. His shirt pocket beeped, and so did the other one. Being as those pockets were behind the metal buckles on his suspenders, they let him through.
An old man managed to beat airport security without even trying in the days immediately following 9/11. It has never entered my head that terrorists couldn't do the same.
Which is why this group is against web pornography. Any kid with an internet connection can click OK and absolve the website of any blame for showing porn to minors. Not that kids never got their hands on Playboy in the past, but it is easier for people to find what they want now, whatever it is that they want.
Also, you're looking at this the wrong way. From the bible thumper perspective, a vast amount of porn depicts acts that could in no way bring new life into this world. They want people having lots of kids, that's why they come out so strongly against birth control. The people who listen to them are likely to raise the lots of kids they have according to those same morals. This is a multigenerational plan to eventually rule the world through controlling everyone. Why else would we have seen communism as a plague on mankind? It actively worked against religion.
And I was a cesarean section. No headfirst through the vagina for me.
Agreed. I've only had a few police interactions, all when I was younger and dumber.
1. I was speeding. I had been driving while thinking about something else, and keeping my speed by staying a certain distance away from the guy in front of me. He turned, and I was going about 45 in a 30 zone to maintain that kind of visual cue. I was apologetic and polite, and accepted the ticket with the full understanding that I deserved it. Anyone dumb enough to drive past the police station at 150% of the posted speed deserves what they get.
2. I was pulled over, ostensibly for speeding (40 in 35). While it wasn't actually stated, the real reason was likely to make sure it was my car (technically belonged to my mother). After that was cleared up, I didn't even get a warning.
3. Tyrod (sp?) broke while I was turning at an intersection. The police helped route traffic around my car until the tow truck got there. No hassle.
4. After finishing a closing shift, the crew was hanging around together outside for a bit, some of them smoked, etc. Police car driving by stopped to check that there was a good reason for the 8 of us to be hanging out outside of a closed business at 3 in the morning. No trouble.
Crime is best prevented by the fear of getting caught and punished. Not really. Jail time and such has almost no effect on changing criminal behaviour.
It depends on the punishment. I don't have any real numbers, but I'm betting on a low rate of drug use in Singapore. In a similar fashion, I'd expect a low rate of theft in places where that's punishable by mutilation.
In even the stupidest of criminals, there's a weighing of the potential costs of committing a crime. In the same way that people will waste money on the long odds of winning the lottery, people will avoid actions that end with death if there isn't some extraneous situation. People don't play Russian Roulette, even when there are far more than 5 empty chambers for each bullet.
Yes. My Economics teacher in high school. He taught us about life, and in the various stories and lessons we somehow acquired an incredible knowledge of economics, though not one of us could tell you when it had happened. He told us about when he used to work in a factory. His job involved stuffing massive amounts of bundled cardboard into the pulper so that it could be chewed up and used for whatever it got used for. He hadn't been there long before he tried stuffing cardboard into the machine's gaping maw too quickly, and the whole thing jammed. His supervisor explained that he had to go up onto the roof to unplug it, and from that day forth, the machine ended up jammed just about every day that it was nice out. Somehow in this story, we learned that intelligence is one of the things that makes workers more productive, most of the time. He did that for everything, there was always a story, and at the end of the year, not one of us got below a 4 on the AP tests for Macro- and Microeconomics.
Every other teacher I ever had up till college just taught their subject. Even there, it was only in the final year that I had another good teacher, this one for Computer Electronics. Every Friday when he came to class, he asked us: "What do you guys want to learn about?" SCSI, file encoding and compression, search engines, robotics, anything that was even remotely related to the class. He encouraged thinking, instead of just learning.
Slashdot Mirror
When I was there a few months ago, AMEX was still running IE6 as their browser of choice. There was a separate program that hooked up to the databases, though.
Yes, USA. Economics was actually split into two courses, AP Microeconomics and AP Macroeconomics. My Computer Electronics classes were in college. And also, yes, a public school. SPASH, in Stevens Point, WI.
Not all good things there, the security guy managed to push in more cameras than they had at the county jail. There is no hyperbole or exaggeration in that statement, just sad truth. After the principal I had left, I've heard from my brother and his friends that things declined sharply. I don't know how it is now, but I assume it isn't good. From the website, I see that my Economics teacher is still there, so there's still some hope.
Your co-worker may have been mistaken as to where that photo came from. A UAV could take that picture, but you couldn't get a picture like that from orbit even if you turned Hubble around.
I don't recall that statement about catching one of the Oklahoma City bombers by watching him run away, but I could see the radio station being misinformed (either deliberately or accidentally). Not to tar them all with the same brush, but Slashdot remembers a radio station continuing actions that were ultimately lethal even after being warned by someone in the know. It's not hard to imagine a radio station getting something wrong.
This was the first hijacking in our nations history that resulted in the deaths of everyone aboard. In the past, hijackings involved the plane being diverted. Instead of going to Houston, we're going to Mexico. Instead of going to Florida, we're visiting the Bahamas. There was never any risk to letting the hijackers have their way, as opposed to being possibly stabbed or shot for trying to interfere.
Now, everything has changed. Airplane passengers see every hijacker as a potential suicide bomber. It is now considered more dangerous to allow a hijacking to occur than it is to fight back. One of those four planes learned about the paradigm shift, and changed their thinking in mid-flight. That's why it didn't make it. It will take no less than 50 years before enough people have forgotten the lessons of the past to allow anyone to hijack a plane in the U.S. ever again.
Why can't a free society just stockpile information in case it might be needed? I don't see a problem until they start with a person, then find out what he's guilty of. This person's uncle had suspicious behavior, so they dug up everything they had on him. They went to him with everything they had dug up, and asked him to explain the suspicious parts. This is perfectly acceptable in a free society. Problems would be if they found that he might be guilty, so he vanished until they were done with him. Or if one of the DoHS guys was his neighbor, and didn't like him for whatever reason, so he went on a witch hunt in the hopes of getting the uncle sent away and replaced with a better neighbor. What actually happened is acceptable.
1060 W Addison Street, Chicago. ...
What? John Candy liked it.
Great thing about R&D, sometimes you find things that are even better (more potent) than what you're looking for. People looking for pesticides have found nerve gas, why shouldn't people designing reactors find that some particular design just happens to output mostly weaponizable material?
As opposed to you? You've come to the decision that the box is bad, despite the fact that it works, because it isn't a part of your Utopian view of all software available for free. With this set of biases in place, you have decided that anything that isn't the box must be better by dint of being outside the box.
/., most of us feel the same way. If that's too abstract, here's a better example. American Idol. America's Got Talent. Dancing With the Stars. These are the things the mob has decided should continue. Science will starve while entertainment seizes yet more money.
First, you said that everyone gets a vote as to what software gets worked on. Who is everyone? U.S. citizens? After all, they're the taxpayers putting in the money. Or does everyone include all the people who might possibly use the software? All of Earth gets to decide what part of it is spending money on?
Now, you seem to think that giving everyone a vote means the best possible things will be worked on. Now, when I hear anyone talking about the 'wisdom of the mob,' I immediately think of lemmings. Given the popularity of the term 'sheeple' at
Here's how the box works. If I need a piece of code, I have three options. One, I write it myself. Two, I see if someone has released it, or something like it, into the wild. Three, I pay someone for it. If I'm a coder, and I enjoy being able to pay the rent, I look for number three. A preponderance of free software actually hurts my ability to eat. The saving grace of free software for me is that most corporate lawyers try to avoid it like the plague, based on all sorts of liability issues. Your idea helps users, but at the cost of developers. Developers that haven't been approved for work in this government think tank, that is.
There's another question. Who gets to partake of these funds? People who work on the projects? Do they get paid before or after? How much do they get paid? Is it meritocratic, where the most contributions get the most money? Who decides what the most contributions are? Optimizing code by cutting out all the crap will result in a negative line count, so we can't use that as the metric. What about testers? They don't actually change the code, they just say what's good and bad. Adding functionality increases runtime, while optimizing decreases it. There's no good way to measure the worth of any individual on this kind of thing. So it turns into a welfare program for the people who can latch on to a project without having to actually do anything. Or can the project manager allocate funds as he sees fit? I'm sure there's no chance for embezzling there. Can foreign coders partake of the monies? If so, won't that eventually result in the outsourcing of programming being directly financed by the U.S. government? There's a lot of logistics involved in your plan, and you haven't given any kind of specifics.
I personally do reverse engineering. Lots of closed software that other people want to interface with is good for me. My bias is clear. But I acknowledge it, unlike your post that suggests that people like me should stay out of the way so that people like you can decide what's best for all of us, all the while spouting the virtues of freedom.
If some private organization wants to earmark some of its money for supporting open source, I'm fine with that. That's basically what Google's Summer of Code is, as far as I can tell. It looks good for PR, it lets them get a leg up on the competition when it comes to hiring the bright minds of tomorrow, and it puts stuff into the open. Everyone wins, other than people who were going to be paid for similar code. I just don't want the public to be forced to spend money to support things the vast majority of them will never use.
What does Garage Games make other than Torque? I know that I haven't heard of them being huge in the game market.
I keep hearing about this 'free beer' on /., but when I ask my local bartenders, they just say it's the reason I don't get to run up a tab.
I'm right there with you. Between /. and bash.org, I learned sudo, sed, grep, wget, and to never click a link without checking its target first.
"Noah's ark is a problem."
"Really?"
"We'll have to call it early quantum state phenomenon. Only way to fit 5,000 species of mammal on the same boat."
I agree. The only thing that can easily be done to interfere with an airplane is a bomb. If you care about nothing other than making planes drop out of the sky, that's really easy to do. Why not airmail a bomb rigged to a pressure sensor? Cargo bays are generally not kept pressurized unless there's live cargo. Label it as a laptop, and the mess of electronics on an x-ray will pass.
Here's the only scenario I can think of where hijacking a plane might work: The hijackers send a note forward with a stewardess stating that there are armed men on board who would like to go to a different destination. They never display weapons to the passengers, and they never try to replace any members of the crew. The plane stays in the direct control of the pilot at all times. Clearly, the plane is not going to be running into anything, and I'd put better than 50% odds on this sort of hijacking actually being successful.
As far as taking off your shoes go, I'm reminded of an act a comedian whom I can't remember had. "Some guy tried to hide a bomb in his shoes when he got on a plane, so now everyone has to take off their shoes at the airport. I ask you, where are the bra bombers?"
I believe that the airport was Minneapolis. I do not recall all of the details, but the core of the story is accurate, that he did take a live bullet, one that was easily capable of punching a hole through the skin of an aircraft, through a set of metal detectors at the airport, by way of the buckles on his suspenders also triggering the wand.
What the hell are you going to do once you've gotten a knife onto a plane? You can't hijack planes anymore. Gone are the days of wondering where you're going to go instead, because the answer might be "The ground." A knife will not be enough. Hell, the gun probably wouldn't be enough, but if you got a few terrorists with guns on the plane, it might be.
Yes. Glass knives are obvious, but they are also useless in this situation. Coming up with an idea is easy, coming up with a useful idea is something else altogether.
Being a monopoly isn't illegal. Sustaining that monopoly through anticompetitive practices is. After all, anytime someone is innovative and markets it, they have a monopoly. They are the only people who make widget x. It's not until they start trying to keep everyone else from making widget x knockoffs that they're breaking the law. Also, if widget y gains a large enough share of the market, widget x is now free to be as anticompetitive as they want.
I actually enjoyed the Hunchback. In the end, he strikes a blow against his oppressive master, but he still doesn't get the girl, he's still ugly, and he's still up in the tower. A life lesson if I ever saw one.
The knife is because he read Snow Crash. On the other hand, it wouldn't be a difficult task to turn a cheap Airsoft handgun (made of plastic, shoots little plastic BBs) into a cheap plastic .22 handgun. Don't think for a second that it's impossible to get bullets past checkpoints.
.243 cartridge that was live, someone must have accidentally dropped it. He put it in his pocket, and went on his way. Later that day, his daughter (my aunt) was flying out to England, and from there to India. He took her to the airport, and went through the security checkpoint to walk her to the gate. He set off the metal detector, and they had him go through the process of emptying out his pockets of all the change, keys, etc. He reached in, and found that he still had that live rifle cartridge in there. He noticed that neither of the security people were paying attention, and he pulled out the cartridge and dropped it in his shirt pocket. When he went through again, he beeped, and got wanded. His shirt pocket beeped, and so did the other one. Being as those pockets were behind the metal buckles on his suspenders, they let him through.
True story: My grandfather used to take a walk every morning down to his local shooting range. He'd pick up trash, and sometimes brass for loading his own cartridges. On this particular morning, he happened to find a
An old man managed to beat airport security without even trying in the days immediately following 9/11. It has never entered my head that terrorists couldn't do the same.
Which is why this group is against web pornography. Any kid with an internet connection can click OK and absolve the website of any blame for showing porn to minors. Not that kids never got their hands on Playboy in the past, but it is easier for people to find what they want now, whatever it is that they want.
Also, you're looking at this the wrong way. From the bible thumper perspective, a vast amount of porn depicts acts that could in no way bring new life into this world. They want people having lots of kids, that's why they come out so strongly against birth control. The people who listen to them are likely to raise the lots of kids they have according to those same morals. This is a multigenerational plan to eventually rule the world through controlling everyone. Why else would we have seen communism as a plague on mankind? It actively worked against religion.
And I was a cesarean section. No headfirst through the vagina for me.
Batman did do it. And I got pissed off at his universal poison antidote.
Agreed. I've only had a few police interactions, all when I was younger and dumber.
1. I was speeding. I had been driving while thinking about something else, and keeping my speed by staying a certain distance away from the guy in front of me. He turned, and I was going about 45 in a 30 zone to maintain that kind of visual cue. I was apologetic and polite, and accepted the ticket with the full understanding that I deserved it. Anyone dumb enough to drive past the police station at 150% of the posted speed deserves what they get.
2. I was pulled over, ostensibly for speeding (40 in 35). While it wasn't actually stated, the real reason was likely to make sure it was my car (technically belonged to my mother). After that was cleared up, I didn't even get a warning.
3. Tyrod (sp?) broke while I was turning at an intersection. The police helped route traffic around my car until the tow truck got there. No hassle.
4. After finishing a closing shift, the crew was hanging around together outside for a bit, some of them smoked, etc. Police car driving by stopped to check that there was a good reason for the 8 of us to be hanging out outside of a closed business at 3 in the morning. No trouble.
It depends on the punishment. I don't have any real numbers, but I'm betting on a low rate of drug use in Singapore. In a similar fashion, I'd expect a low rate of theft in places where that's punishable by mutilation.
In even the stupidest of criminals, there's a weighing of the potential costs of committing a crime. In the same way that people will waste money on the long odds of winning the lottery, people will avoid actions that end with death if there isn't some extraneous situation. People don't play Russian Roulette, even when there are far more than 5 empty chambers for each bullet.
I have never been more happy to drive a white car.
Yes. My Economics teacher in high school. He taught us about life, and in the various stories and lessons we somehow acquired an incredible knowledge of economics, though not one of us could tell you when it had happened. He told us about when he used to work in a factory. His job involved stuffing massive amounts of bundled cardboard into the pulper so that it could be chewed up and used for whatever it got used for. He hadn't been there long before he tried stuffing cardboard into the machine's gaping maw too quickly, and the whole thing jammed. His supervisor explained that he had to go up onto the roof to unplug it, and from that day forth, the machine ended up jammed just about every day that it was nice out. Somehow in this story, we learned that intelligence is one of the things that makes workers more productive, most of the time. He did that for everything, there was always a story, and at the end of the year, not one of us got below a 4 on the AP tests for Macro- and Microeconomics.
Every other teacher I ever had up till college just taught their subject. Even there, it was only in the final year that I had another good teacher, this one for Computer Electronics. Every Friday when he came to class, he asked us: "What do you guys want to learn about?" SCSI, file encoding and compression, search engines, robotics, anything that was even remotely related to the class. He encouraged thinking, instead of just learning.