It's been raised as speculation in my group of aquaintances that while the recent DoS attacks have been malicious and impressive, a better target for a truly effective DoS would be one or more credit card verification servers, since the effect would be much more far reaching (in that it would upset on line commerce across the world, rather than for any one site).
The question is, how reasonable is this fear? I would hope that credit instituions would run tighter ships, but I would also have expected companies whose assets all depend on their presence on line to be well defended as well.
Whoa, there. Zero Point Energy is a fallacy based on a very shaky understanding of simple physics. All energy is a state variable, which means that it is an arbitrary measure on a necessarily relative system. The zero point is the lowest energy state in evidence. To "tap" it would require finding a lower state, and then you aren't really do anything special.
Frankly, I'm not surprised to find ZPE in a discussion of Tesla though. Both claim much more than they actually deliver.
I do in fact agree that what's been done is wrong, and does merit punishment. But lynching is lynching, regardless of the motive. You are denying someone their day in court, their recourse to law, which has been a foundation not only of democracy but any modern civilization (excepting despotism and totalitarian regimes) since the end of the Dark Ages.
Sometimes, you deny someone that recourse because your "charge" is frivolous, bigoted, inherently evil. Being black in a white neighborhood, cohabitation with someone not of your race, Judaeism, excessive foreign-ness. Other times, you blind yourself to another person's right to judgement because you won't be satisfied with the eventual ruling. Well, tough. I'm glad to live in a place where I feel safe from my neighbors jackbooting my front door open and passing judgement on me.
As far a damages to companies goes, they're making huge amounts through a very narrow conduit. They should be aware of the risk that the conduit might be closed. (To be clear, this shouldn't be interpreted as "they brought this on themselves," just that web-only businesses are in a very risky economic sector, and would be fools not to understand that.) Certainly they should have legal recourse against people who vandalize their property, but vigilantism is the stuff of Detective Comics. It doesn't have a place in modern society.
Cor! I've got an idea. Saw it on th' telly. We could dress up in white sheets wif pointy hats and burn a penguin on their lawn. Maybe lash 'em to a telephone pole wif chains, an do unspeakable things to their mum.
Right. Lynching. Great idea. And hardly amusing, IMO. Yes, it is vigilante, yes, it is almost certainly injustice. Regardless of the cause, it stinks of evil. Protect yourself, insure that the perprator can be prosecuted, not persecuted.
we don't have many enemies, either! maybe it's because we do not prance around on the world stage, shoving our bland, cookie-cutter corporate, amoral culture on everyone. as long as America doesn't get a fucking clue, they will continue in this cycle of the military-industrial complex that will eventually lead to their own destruction.
Unfortunately, the military-industrial cycle has served the US quite well for their entire (brief) history, and will probably continue to do so as long as it continues.
Furthermore, the point that sparked this little tirade was that sufficient force of arms is requisite for restraining a violent conquerer, not defense against enemies. Anyone who wants what's yours can be an enemy.
Imagine for instance, the duration of Canadian resistance if the US mounted a modern day invasion. A great deal of the clout the US wields is based on opposing exactly that kind of activity, so this eventuality is unlikely for the moment. But, were it willing, the US could almost certainly annex most of the American continents by force of arms. Where exactly does peace and harmony fit into this picture?
Borders, I think, tend to lead to evil. The abstraction from what's essential, which in this case is the abstraction from my cultural identity to lines on a map that indicate "my" turf, my culture. Much like supply and demand is an abstraction of worth.
Or, take illegal drugs. The Anarchists Cookbook contains the recipe for making LSD. It sells in any well-stocked Barnes&Nobles. Certianly not illegal. I can buy the book, read the recipie, distribute if I want, and that's all protected by free speech. Only if I actually cooked up a batch of acid in a lab would I be in violation of the law.
Or pick locksmithing files, or phone phreaking howtos, or explosives howtos. All describe actions that would be illegal, but the description itself is protected free speech.
This is Nyarly's moment of civil responsibility.
While I agree that these documents should be publically available, regardless of their accuracy, and I do agree that deCSS is similar in spirit (and in fact, would go so far as saying that actual piracy of copywritten material is the crime) I must urge all of/., especially the younger viewers, not to implement anything they read in an on line drug/bomb/nuke HOWTO. Without fail there are errors or omissions which could be fatal to an uninformed tinkerer. By all means, use them as a jumping off point for further research, but be sure you know exactly what you'll be doing before you sit down at the bench, if you do so at all.
Especially, I'd like to warn against the Anarchist's Cookbook, which is full of a number of terrible recipes. The chemists I know have all warned against the drug section (psychidellics being among the list of poisons-labeled-mind-alterants). The.mil friends of mind advise against the fighting and explosives sections.
Although, that reminds me. If you must read books on wrecking havoc, the US Military has published a number of books on the subject, typically written at the level of a US high-school graduate, and with an eye towards not blowing the self up.
It kind of shocks me that/. doesn't include John Brunner in their list of masters. This is the author of the Shockwave Rider, wherein he predicted the Internet, and designed a game more difficult to code an opponent for than Go, and significantly moreso than Chess.
Brunner is gone too, but his social predictive power, as well as his social conscience (lacking in much sci-fi) has always astounded me. The Times of Time is one the most beautiful works of science fiction I've every read. And he was fairly prolific, and is now difficult to find, so reading him all isn't trivial.
As far as current masters, I'm all for touting Ian McDonald. Excellent prose, offhand use of high scifi concept, incredible characters. Evolution's Shore is definitely his best yet, and highly recommended. But Terminal Cafe might be more/.s speed, dealing with nano-tech as it does.
MacOS X is another matter, unless Apple release an x86 version of it. Or, more amusingly, a Crusoe version of it. Just because x86 will go to Crusoe doesn't mean you have to still code for the x86. And Apple has no incentive do so. Perhaps the underlying VLIW engines on the two chips aren't so specialized to serve as targets for translation from x86 that SPARC-to-native or PowerPC-to-native compilers could be written, but I wouldn't hold my breath waiting for those translators - I'd punt on MacOS X and get x86 This is my point though. If all it will do is be a Crusoe and fake an x86, that isn't very exciting. If the morphing is such that the ability to write a compiler to Machine X -> the ability to write a Morph from Machine X to Crusoe, that's incredibly exciting. Why buy any other processor? Apart from cost.
For instance, Java to Crusoe is then reasonable. And, if it's all the whiz-bang it sounds like, then it could probably optimize the safeguard redundancy away and make Java a realistic application development platform.
To summarize: Low power is nice, but the G4 does a gigaflop on 4 watts. Code morphing is where the Crusoe is at. Or if it isn't it should be, or else it's a downhill run to a non-event. Linux or not.
So, because John Katz's online experience has been different from yours, he's a "big dumb-head"? You have lost respect for John because he encountered different situations online and he decides to write about it? I'd hoped that by including the phrase "big dumb-head" I might indicate that I was not completely serious. Honestly, does a real character attack include such a whimsical phrase? As my defender mentioned, Katz may have a point, but he argues the general from the specific. I'm not saying that my observations are better than Katz's, only that his aren't any better than mine, and he's trying to pass his as gospel.
Ahh, I always wonder why people end reasonably well argued posts with pointless little insults like that. An attempt to sting the other person in replying perhaps? Not really. I'm flattered though, both by your reply and by its content.
Mainly, the sting (half-assed as it was) was primary a rhetorical device to settle any ambiguity of tone. Primarily to indicate that I am quite vehement about free speech. ( The ACLU is one of the most misunderstood and important organizations around.) And secondarily the weak paradox of the statement amused myself.
I might have guessed. The Motorola description was incredibly encouraging.
It gets tiresome maintaining cynical skepticism all the time. Every once in a while it does me good to get a little starry eyed. And what better than incredibly good power storage. And I'm more than willing to buy that with the 3-5 year priviso.
So, thanks for the bringdown. I guess. Back to the mundane world...
The Internet is in most respects genderless. I have no idea whether any of the posters on Slashdot are female, or if they are white or black or Asian. How can I discriminate when I don't have anything at all to go upon?
Yeah, unless you identify yourself. Then it's possible to face discrimination. Then why identify yourself? Because it's who you are. Why hide it?
This is somewhat OT, but the thought has been percolating for a while, and I wanted to voice it. I've realized that I tend to imprint almost every poster with the image of a twenty-something caucasian male. And there isn't much, apart from frequent posting, that an author can do to eliminate the sort of Generica White image I slap on everybody.
Frankly, it doesn't matter the forum I'm reading. On/. Generica White might seem like the Prototype Geek, but it really doesn't fit so well on rec.arts.metalworking, or lurking in hobo forums, where, if nothing else, the posters make clear that they are much older than my prototype.
But the comment, "I'm an elderly black woman" fades very quickly in reading, so unless a poster over a long series of posts make several relevatory comments, i.e. tells stories about husbands or discrimination in the 1940s, every fades to Generica White.
And maybe theat comments on some interior racism of my own: I know I don't discount the comments of those people who have developed unique images for themselves, but it seems odd that I'd resolve details without data. To put it another way, it seems odd that I would have such a rigorous set of factory defaults in that image.
Where am I going with this? Well, I'm wondering if other/.rs also do this is any way. And how their Generica Poster image relates to their own cultural identity. I know mine has different color eyes, short hair, and isn't nearly as good looking as I am:)
As far as airlines go, I don't think that's an issue.
My God, these dam nthings are 1" x 1" x.1" End of thumb sized. And that runs a laptop for 20 hours? I'm having a holy living fsck (man walks on fscking moon) moment here. Compare that to the hand sized brick that gives me 4 hours. Now consider stacking the little bastards.
Okay, and yes, put Crusoe in there. Runs at a watt operating. Ocassionally it might remind me to recharge/replace the battery. Because I'm not good at remembering things less frequent than weekly...if I use the Crusoe as a web server.
Wearables start to look feasible. Even mainstream. Ubiquitous even.
I hate it when what looks like a very general purpose technology gets reduced to what's most profitable. Because very often something will be advertised as less than it might be, and never gets to be what it could be.
To wit: the Crusoe chip is x86 compatible. Goody. Don't run windows, couldn't care less about clock-speed obsessed, power hungry Intel/AMD chip designs. But code-morphing makes it sound as if I could throw Solaris on the little bastard. Or OS X. Or BeOS. Hell, I might even boot to a Guru Message.:)
I mean: that what it sounds like. Is that possible? Is it reasonable to expect? If so, I need new shorts.
If not, ho hum, another Intel knockoff. Nice power consumption, and some over-time optimization, but nothing spectacular. Which would really start to stunt my inner geek child.
Verbal abuse is the attack of a parent on their child. The speech is protected, the behavior is not.
Child porn is the abuse and exploitation of an entity who (presumably) is incompetant to defend their rights. But I can say what I like about it.
Hate speech is also protected. And it should be. Hate crimes are punished more severely than their more 'conventional' equivalents.
And so is any drivel anyone posts anywhere. Yes, you can hurt someone with speech, and that is the only instance where it should not and is not protected in the US. Slander, libel, commercial misrepresentation, and rabble rousing are about the limits.
And before you attack anyone's right to speak, buy a clue.
If anything, my experience online has been exactly the opposite of what Katz describes. Flamewars quickly contain themselves, due mainly to better thread-handling capabilities; flamers get discretely ignored, and polite commentary, or even disagreement, develops into decent discussion, and involves the community to which it is sent.
A flamer opens himself to incredible scrutiny. It is appropropriate to nitpick about gramar in a flame, or minor factual detail, or even level of language skill in a way that no one (except a flamer) would point out in a more constrained message. Between this and the tendancy for flames to be ignored, there are restraining social conventions on flames and over-agressiveness.
On the other hand, there is not as much a control over intentional (or otherwise) posting of poorly considered and extremely controversial commentary, typically targeting the demographic of the community to which it is posted, usually known as a troll. Much like this article.
Until now, I had some respect for Katz as a columnist. Not always deeply incisive, but usually willing to take a stand. But this pair of articles just seems to be designed as a troll if nothing else. Why not come out and suggest that the Slashdot moderation system promotes a selection of techno-savvy jerks?
Fascinating stuff from Dr. Lederman. A lot of modern physics is terribly fascinating. I do wish he'd been able to discuss superstrings in more detail.
But I'm incredibly enthused with his mentioning of Faraday. Not Tesla. Faraday. Because Faraday was an incredible scientist. Rigid, thorough, insightful.
As much as any of us may love or cherish our kids, children aren't very well understood by adults, and the result has been peculiar treatment of them for centuries.
Clearly children are not short adults. They shouldn't be made to work 12 hours a day, or put into prositution rings. But neither are white women light skinned, penisless black men, if you take my meaning. There is truth in the other posts in this thread, but neither quite hits the nail on the head.
I think that children are still mistreated on the whole in the US. Nowhere near as badly as they were, nor as they are elsewhere.
Kids do learn, and need to do so. Intercession in the learning process is the error, in my opinion. Some of the most balanced people I know were never told "you can't learn that." Certainly "Don't do that" because it hurts someone else, or that it isn't socially acceptable. But not that they couldn't think about any topic.
Granted the recent article about Apple producing a PalmOS device and speculation about folding Rosetta into it to provide handwriting recognition (again, finally) I thought this article was interesting.
Partially, I was skeptical about Apple actually using their excellent handwriting technology with their Palm device, but if Xerox is in the midst of a potentially expensive suit with 3Com over Grafitti, Apple may be much more prone to use a different character entry system.
And, perversely, I think a querilous suit might then result in an excellent result. Real handwriting recognition gives you at least another 3/4" at the bottom of the screen. And you can get people to enter their own info into your address book.
Frankly though, it'll take more than Caldera wanted ($1.6 x 10^9) to really hurt Microsoft. Frankly, our favorite software monopolist can lay eggs on pretty much all of their competitors beyond the dreams of their avarice. And MS considers it significant, maybe, but cheap. They bought Apple off of the UI suits for the same published amount.
Face it, Caldera got a tenth of what they were asking, and is probably still trying to decide what to do with the cash. Maybe the DoJ can stare a Microsoft legal borg in the face and take his balls, but any other private concern is going to have to satisfied with a short and curly.
I wold consider defeting Hitler and Nazi Germany a very good and Moral cause.
Leaving aside petty references to spelling, I agree with this statement. However, no one ever went to war to save the Jews from the Germans (in WWII, at least.) Maybe there was rhetoric in that vein, but no European nation stood up for Judeaism, only to defend against German invasion.
And while the States like to claim they came in and saved everyone's bacon, much like WWI, the US stood out until the race was nearly run. It took an attack on our shores to get the US military to fight back, and even then it was for traditional diplomatic reasons of defense of allies, etc. not to protect and rescue the victims of German eugenics. Case in point: hundreds of thousands of Jews (and other "undesirables") died after WWII was over and the Nazis had abandoned their camps - because the Allies didn't do anything about them until it became a publicity issue.
Finally, I'd like to make sure that any/.Rs visiting the US capitol avoid the National Holocaust Museum, especially if prone to depression or any empathic tendancies whatsoever.
I'm unsatisfied with other replies to this posting, and wanted to put in my two cents with stepping on toes. Sue me for discontinuity.
Until now, the Schrödinger equations have been beyond the abilities of physicist to solve for anything but very simple situations. The exceptions have been where they've played tricks on the math and got solutions for more complicated, but very specific, situations.
This article is more descriptive of a more general approach to the problem, which could concievably make the Schödinger equations not just predictive, but also actually useful.
So, the real importance is that QM can now be used much more generally as a predictive tool, which has a number of incredible applications, mostly in high-energy chemistry. Watch for advances in materials, especially in displays, lights, and, I'd wager, explosives.
The mentions of etching silicon and flourescent tube is more to make the ideas more real, AFAICT. Other posts about the feel of pool and whatnot miss the point. Which is the the unfortunate consequence of the "real life" examples that get added to pop sci articles.
What is the status of sofistication in censorware at the moment?
Last I'd heard, all the usual consumer software was accessing a database of blocked sites or relying on Meta tags. This seems like two really half-assed approaches to the problem. We do have a right not to hear, and, IMO, parents have the responsibilty to exercise that right for their kids. But the NetNanny database, or whatever could easily blackhole legitimate sites, and certainly doesn't include every potentially objectionable byte on the Web. By a far cry. And meta tags, while sometimes used, are commonly ignored, especially by non-US sites. Are there any tangible breakthroughs to providing a decent control of content on the web?
I am sick and tired of people pronouncing Linux as Linnux... It isn't Linnus Torvalds, is it?
Infinite. Finite. Linux. Linus. Besides, I've always taken it as a point of lone users as compared to social users. A lone user pronounces it Lin-ucks. A social user will say Line-ucks. Because, in English, it looks like Lin-ucks. Sounds better that way, too. Only counter reinforcement produces Line-ucks. Until the OS says its name I won't feel differently. Since it's primarily text based anyway.
Yes but there's a keyword called 'native.' Not that I'm attacking your solution, but MS approach shouldn't be to pervert Java, it should be to provide clear COM interfaces within Java.
It still bugs me the way MS changed Berkeley sockets when they implimented them in Winx
Slashdot Mirror
The question is, how reasonable is this fear? I would hope that credit instituions would run tighter ships, but I would also have expected companies whose assets all depend on their presence on line to be well defended as well.
Frankly, I'm not surprised to find ZPE in a discussion of Tesla though. Both claim much more than they actually deliver.
Sometimes, you deny someone that recourse because your "charge" is frivolous, bigoted, inherently evil. Being black in a white neighborhood, cohabitation with someone not of your race, Judaeism, excessive foreign-ness. Other times, you blind yourself to another person's right to judgement because you won't be satisfied with the eventual ruling. Well, tough. I'm glad to live in a place where I feel safe from my neighbors jackbooting my front door open and passing judgement on me.
As far a damages to companies goes, they're making huge amounts through a very narrow conduit. They should be aware of the risk that the conduit might be closed. (To be clear, this shouldn't be interpreted as "they brought this on themselves," just that web-only businesses are in a very risky economic sector, and would be fools not to understand that.) Certainly they should have legal recourse against people who vandalize their property, but vigilantism is the stuff of Detective Comics. It doesn't have a place in modern society.
Right. Lynching. Great idea. And hardly amusing, IMO. Yes, it is vigilante, yes, it is almost certainly injustice. Regardless of the cause, it stinks of evil. Protect yourself, insure that the perprator can be prosecuted, not persecuted.
Unfortunately, the military-industrial cycle has served the US quite well for their entire (brief) history, and will probably continue to do so as long as it continues.
Furthermore, the point that sparked this little tirade was that sufficient force of arms is requisite for restraining a violent conquerer, not defense against enemies. Anyone who wants what's yours can be an enemy.
Imagine for instance, the duration of Canadian resistance if the US mounted a modern day invasion. A great deal of the clout the US wields is based on opposing exactly that kind of activity, so this eventuality is unlikely for the moment. But, were it willing, the US could almost certainly annex most of the American continents by force of arms. Where exactly does peace and harmony fit into this picture?
Borders, I think, tend to lead to evil. The abstraction from what's essential, which in this case is the abstraction from my cultural identity to lines on a map that indicate "my" turf, my culture. Much like supply and demand is an abstraction of worth.
Or pick locksmithing files, or phone phreaking howtos, or explosives howtos. All describe actions that would be illegal, but the description itself is protected free speech.
This is Nyarly's moment of civil responsibility.
While I agree that these documents should be publically available, regardless of their accuracy, and I do agree that deCSS is similar in spirit (and in fact, would go so far as saying that actual piracy of copywritten material is the crime) I must urge all of /., especially the younger viewers, not to implement anything they read in an on line drug/bomb/nuke HOWTO. Without fail there are errors or omissions which could be fatal to an uninformed tinkerer. By all means, use them as a jumping off point for further research, but be sure you know exactly what you'll be doing before you sit down at the bench, if you do so at all.
Especially, I'd like to warn against the Anarchist's Cookbook, which is full of a number of terrible recipes. The chemists I know have all warned against the drug section (psychidellics being among the list of poisons-labeled-mind-alterants). The .mil friends of mind advise against the fighting and explosives sections.
Although, that reminds me. If you must read books on wrecking havoc, the US Military has published a number of books on the subject, typically written at the level of a US high-school graduate, and with an eye towards not blowing the self up.
Brunner is gone too, but his social predictive power, as well as his social conscience (lacking in much sci-fi) has always astounded me. The Times of Time is one the most beautiful works of science fiction I've every read. And he was fairly prolific, and is now difficult to find, so reading him all isn't trivial.
As far as current masters, I'm all for touting Ian McDonald. Excellent prose, offhand use of high scifi concept, incredible characters. Evolution's Shore is definitely his best yet, and highly recommended. But Terminal Cafe might be more /.s speed, dealing with nano-tech as it does.
For instance, Java to Crusoe is then reasonable. And, if it's all the whiz-bang it sounds like, then it could probably optimize the safeguard redundancy away and make Java a realistic application development platform.
To summarize: Low power is nice, but the G4 does a gigaflop on 4 watts. Code morphing is where the Crusoe is at. Or if it isn't it should be, or else it's a downhill run to a non-event. Linux or not.
So, because John Katz's online experience has been different from yours, he's a "big dumb-head"? You have lost respect for John because he encountered different situations online and he decides to write about it? I'd hoped that by including the phrase "big dumb-head" I might indicate that I was not completely serious. Honestly, does a real character attack include such a whimsical phrase? As my defender mentioned, Katz may have a point, but he argues the general from the specific. I'm not saying that my observations are better than Katz's, only that his aren't any better than mine, and he's trying to pass his as gospel.
Mainly, the sting (half-assed as it was) was primary a rhetorical device to settle any ambiguity of tone. Primarily to indicate that I am quite vehement about free speech. ( The ACLU is one of the most misunderstood and important organizations around.) And secondarily the weak paradox of the statement amused myself.
It gets tiresome maintaining cynical skepticism all the time. Every once in a while it does me good to get a little starry eyed. And what better than incredibly good power storage. And I'm more than willing to buy that with the 3-5 year priviso.
So, thanks for the bringdown. I guess. Back to the mundane world...
Frankly, it doesn't matter the forum I'm reading. On /. Generica White might seem like the Prototype Geek, but it really doesn't fit so well on rec.arts.metalworking, or lurking in hobo forums, where, if nothing else, the posters make clear that they are much older than my prototype.
But the comment, "I'm an elderly black woman" fades very quickly in reading, so unless a poster over a long series of posts make several relevatory comments, i.e. tells stories about husbands or discrimination in the 1940s, every fades to Generica White.
And maybe theat comments on some interior racism of my own: I know I don't discount the comments of those people who have developed unique images for themselves, but it seems odd that I'd resolve details without data. To put it another way, it seems odd that I would have such a rigorous set of factory defaults in that image.
Where am I going with this? Well, I'm wondering if other /.rs also do this is any way. And how their Generica Poster image relates to their own cultural identity. I know mine has different color eyes, short hair, and isn't nearly as good looking as I am :)
My God, these dam nthings are 1" x 1" x .1" End of thumb sized. And that runs a laptop for 20 hours? I'm having a holy living fsck (man walks on fscking moon) moment here. Compare that to the hand sized brick that gives me 4 hours. Now consider stacking the little bastards.
Okay, and yes, put Crusoe in there. Runs at a watt operating. Ocassionally it might remind me to recharge/replace the battery. Because I'm not good at remembering things less frequent than weekly...if I use the Crusoe as a web server.
Wearables start to look feasible. Even mainstream. Ubiquitous even.
Pardon my vulgarity but...
Holy Living Fuck.
To wit: the Crusoe chip is x86 compatible. Goody. Don't run windows, couldn't care less about clock-speed obsessed, power hungry Intel/AMD chip designs. But code-morphing makes it sound as if I could throw Solaris on the little bastard. Or OS X. Or BeOS. Hell, I might even boot to a Guru Message. :)
I mean: that what it sounds like. Is that possible? Is it reasonable to expect? If so, I need new shorts.
If not, ho hum, another Intel knockoff. Nice power consumption, and some over-time optimization, but nothing spectacular. Which would really start to stunt my inner geek child.
Child porn is the abuse and exploitation of an entity who (presumably) is incompetant to defend their rights. But I can say what I like about it.
Hate speech is also protected. And it should be. Hate crimes are punished more severely than their more 'conventional' equivalents.
And so is any drivel anyone posts anywhere. Yes, you can hurt someone with speech, and that is the only instance where it should not and is not protected in the US. Slander, libel, commercial misrepresentation, and rabble rousing are about the limits.
And before you attack anyone's right to speak, buy a clue.
A flamer opens himself to incredible scrutiny. It is appropropriate to nitpick about gramar in a flame, or minor factual detail, or even level of language skill in a way that no one (except a flamer) would point out in a more constrained message. Between this and the tendancy for flames to be ignored, there are restraining social conventions on flames and over-agressiveness.
On the other hand, there is not as much a control over intentional (or otherwise) posting of poorly considered and extremely controversial commentary, typically targeting the demographic of the community to which it is posted, usually known as a troll. Much like this article.
Until now, I had some respect for Katz as a columnist. Not always deeply incisive, but usually willing to take a stand. But this pair of articles just seems to be designed as a troll if nothing else. Why not come out and suggest that the Slashdot moderation system promotes a selection of techno-savvy jerks?
In short, John Katz is a big dumb-head.
Thank you.
But I'm incredibly enthused with his mentioning of Faraday. Not Tesla. Faraday. Because Faraday was an incredible scientist. Rigid, thorough, insightful.
That's my piece.
Clearly children are not short adults. They shouldn't be made to work 12 hours a day, or put into prositution rings. But neither are white women light skinned, penisless black men, if you take my meaning. There is truth in the other posts in this thread, but neither quite hits the nail on the head.
I think that children are still mistreated on the whole in the US. Nowhere near as badly as they were, nor as they are elsewhere.
Kids do learn, and need to do so. Intercession in the learning process is the error, in my opinion. Some of the most balanced people I know were never told "you can't learn that." Certainly "Don't do that" because it hurts someone else, or that it isn't socially acceptable. But not that they couldn't think about any topic.
Partially, I was skeptical about Apple actually using their excellent handwriting technology with their Palm device, but if Xerox is in the midst of a potentially expensive suit with 3Com over Grafitti, Apple may be much more prone to use a different character entry system.
And, perversely, I think a querilous suit might then result in an excellent result. Real handwriting recognition gives you at least another 3/4" at the bottom of the screen. And you can get people to enter their own info into your address book.
Face it, Caldera got a tenth of what they were asking, and is probably still trying to decide what to do with the cash. Maybe the DoJ can stare a Microsoft legal borg in the face and take his balls, but any other private concern is going to have to satisfied with a short and curly.
Leaving aside petty references to spelling, I agree with this statement. However, no one ever went to war to save the Jews from the Germans (in WWII, at least.) Maybe there was rhetoric in that vein, but no European nation stood up for Judeaism, only to defend against German invasion.
And while the States like to claim they came in and saved everyone's bacon, much like WWI, the US stood out until the race was nearly run. It took an attack on our shores to get the US military to fight back, and even then it was for traditional diplomatic reasons of defense of allies, etc. not to protect and rescue the victims of German eugenics. Case in point: hundreds of thousands of Jews (and other "undesirables") died after WWII was over and the Nazis had abandoned their camps - because the Allies didn't do anything about them until it became a publicity issue.
Finally, I'd like to make sure that any /.Rs visiting the US capitol avoid the National Holocaust Museum, especially if prone to depression or any empathic tendancies whatsoever.
Until now, the Schrödinger equations have been beyond the abilities of physicist to solve for anything but very simple situations. The exceptions have been where they've played tricks on the math and got solutions for more complicated, but very specific, situations.
This article is more descriptive of a more general approach to the problem, which could concievably make the Schödinger equations not just predictive, but also actually useful.
So, the real importance is that QM can now be used much more generally as a predictive tool, which has a number of incredible applications, mostly in high-energy chemistry. Watch for advances in materials, especially in displays, lights, and, I'd wager, explosives.
The mentions of etching silicon and flourescent tube is more to make the ideas more real, AFAICT. Other posts about the feel of pool and whatnot miss the point. Which is the the unfortunate consequence of the "real life" examples that get added to pop sci articles.
Last I'd heard, all the usual consumer software was accessing a database of blocked sites or relying on Meta tags. This seems like two really half-assed approaches to the problem. We do have a right not to hear, and, IMO, parents have the responsibilty to exercise that right for their kids. But the NetNanny database, or whatever could easily blackhole legitimate sites, and certainly doesn't include every potentially objectionable byte on the Web. By a far cry. And meta tags, while sometimes used, are commonly ignored, especially by non-US sites. Are there any tangible breakthroughs to providing a decent control of content on the web?
Infinite. Finite. Linux. Linus.
Besides, I've always taken it as a point of lone users as compared to social users. A lone user pronounces it Lin-ucks. A social user will say Line-ucks. Because, in English, it looks like Lin-ucks. Sounds better that way, too. Only counter reinforcement produces Line-ucks.
Until the OS says its name I won't feel differently. Since it's primarily text based anyway.
It still bugs me the way MS changed Berkeley sockets when they implimented them in Winx