In about 20 minutes you guys are going to be breaking out singing "All we are saying...is give Lee-nooks a chance".
It's sickening. Stop. This is not that big a deal. All they said is that they want the laptops to be able to run Linux, not necessarily that they are going to run it. Before getting all excited, RTFA®(read the fucking article):
"NASA specified a flash BIOS for updates and a plug-and-play operating system such as Microsoft Windows 9x, Windows NT or Windows 2000; SunSoft Solaris 2.7 or later versions; or Linux and other Unix variants."
If the majority of people want an decrease in NASA funding, fine. If the majority of people want a tax cut instead of debt reduction, fine. If the majority of people want a 3 million dollar technology budget for their school district rather than a 4 million dollar one, fine. If the majority of Puerto Ricans want to become a state, fine.
If the majority of people want to restrict the free speech of others....not fine.
This is not a pure democracy in the United States. Even if we didn't have elected officials, we still have this wonderful thing called a constitution. There is an amendment to that constitution that states tat people have the freedom of speech.
The founding fathers knew the danger of tyranny of the majority, and the Constitution is as much to protect the people from the government as it is to protect the minority from the majority.
No matter how many people want to install this software, it is still unconstitutional, period. Case closed.
I think I'm gonna get a "The Moral Majority is Neither" bumper sticker.
But what if VA starts doing some really, really bad?
Say VA gets in an etoys.com like scandal. Do they let Slashdot cause them serious harm by posting highly critical stories, and letting Katz do his things, all mobilizing thousands of readers to turn against VA?
I doubt it. We won't really know what Slashdot's editorial freedom is until VA hits some hard times.
You guys love to talk about how information wants to be free. I'd suggest a site, or many sites, are started, where people pay for these images and then post them free for others.
Especially those $10 ones. Think of it, you could have a huge archive of pics from all around the world. I think it'd be sweet. So who's gonna do it?
Also, what's the legality involved here? If you pay for the image, do you have the right to distribute it to others?
Why? Becuase there are, IIRC, 1 billion web pages, and it would not be possible to go through every single one. In addition, the web isn't static, pages that have already been white-flagged might later put up material that is inappropriate, and new pages are created by the second. BTW, Apple has about 50,000 pages "white-flagged", a tiny number.
In any case, I'm OK with software for school libraries, but I really think it limits what the students can do. In our school, there is none of that, but there is always a teacher or librarian within eyesight, so it's not like anyone is going to be looking at porn. And if someone wants to read a page with the word "fuck" in it, I say let them.
But public libraries are a different matter, and there's gotta be some way that people can look at what they want to look at. Now maybe a separate "adult" room would be OK, but it would have to be on a case-by-case basis. Anyway, I doubt most libraries would have the funds to do that.
What people must understand though, is that not everything on earth has to be sanitized so that 6 year olds can see it. There are programs on network TV that 6 year olds should be watching, but it's the parent's job to make sure they aren't.
Re:Space Station: It's just Contractor Welfare
on
NASA Gets Smart
·
· Score: 1
That whole story just really, really pisses me off.
This pork-barrel spending crap has got to stop. It's not just NASA, it's everything. It wastes an unimaginable amount of money.
In terms of space, I think the best hope now would just be that private companies and non-profit groups promoting space exploration finally get somewhere - like Mars, for instance.
Now I should preface this by saying that MacOS Rumors is not a very reliable source, but this rumor just make sense.
Back in 1997, Apple introduced G3 machines. The initial machines ran at 233 and 266 MHz. Now back then, Pentium IIs were also up to 266MHz, and Mac fanatics had a valid claim in saying that the G3 beat the PII.
However, a lot has changed since then. Or rather, it hasn't. That's the problem. G3s are now up to 500MHz(but only in the form of an upgrade, not from Apple), and G4s are maxing out at 450MHz.
But Intel an AMD have been pushing the x86 farther than anyone imagined. And Apple?
Well it's probably not really Apple's fault, but Motorola and IBM have really dropped the ball with the G4. In fact, an article that recently appeared in AppleInsider reports conditions to be far worse than anyone imagined. If things truly are that bad, Apple is smart to move.
In addition, doing the port should be far easier than it would have been with the old MacOS(Apple tried this once, it was called Star Trek IIRC). In fact, in it's earlier developer releases, there was an Intel version of Rhapsody(now called MacOS X Server, and really the predecessor to OS X). But that version was Steved(pissing off some developers and users).
So, if Apple is in fact doing this, it is a very smart move. MacOS X looks great, but no one but the most fervent Mac addicts would buy a 500MHz G4 8 months from now.
But there could be problems, the main one being that Apple would be forced to compete with other PC manufacturers, who, regardless of what Apple says, have far better price/performance ratios than Apple. I'm a Mac user, and I know if I could run the MacOS on it, my next machine would not be a G4.
Unlike Microsoft, Apple makes most of it's money off of hardware sales, and though they are trying to diversify(Quicktime, Final Cut Pro, the upcoming AppleWorks 6, etc.), their revenue from hardware is about 95% of the total IIRC.
Of course, opening up the kick-ass MacOS interface to all PC users could mean enormous hardware sales, but that is speculation.
I guess in conclusion, Mac users would love this, Apple stock holders probably wouldn't.
City of Los Angeles High School Math Proficiency Exam
Name:_____________________
Gang:_____________________
1. Duane has an AK47 with a 30 round clip. If he misses 6 out of 10 shots and shoots 13 times at each drive by shooting, how many drive by shootings can he attempt before he has to reload?
2. If Joe has 2 ounces of cocaine and he sells an 8 ball to Jackson for $320 and 2 grams to Billy for $85 per gram, what is the street value of the balance of the cocaine if he doesn't cut it?
3. Rufus is pimping for 3 girls. If the price is $65 for each trick, how many tricks will each girl have to turn so Rufus can pay for his $800 per day crack habit?
4. Jerome wants to cut his 1/2 pound of Heroin to make 20% more profit. How many ounces of cut will he need?
5. Willie gets $200 for stealing a BMW, $50 for a Chevy and $100 for a 4x4. If he has stolen 2 BMW's and 3 4x4's, how many Chevy's will he have to steal to make $800?
6. Richard is in prison for 6 years for murder. He got $10,000 for the hit. If his common law wife is spending $100 per month, how much money will he have left when he gets out of prison and how many years will he get for killing the bitch that spent his money?
7. If the average spray paint can covers 22 square feet and the average letter is 3 square feet, how many letters can a tagger spray with 3 cans of paint?
8. Peter knocked up 6 girls in his gang. There are 27 girls in the gang. What percentage of the girls in the gang has Hector knocked up?
I would pay good money to see an ad where those idiots sing their idiot songs like happy little conformists and then someone comes in and mows them all down with a fucking BFG 10k.
Anyone who watches those ads and thinks those people are cool is not a member of the human race as far as I'm concerned.
Every time I see one of those ads I see where the unabomber was coming from. Or, as Chris Rock would say "I'm not sayin he shoulda killed her.... but I understand."
In a surprise move, Harvard has moved to ban all use of the "world wide web", claiming that "all these tags are wasting bandwidth that could otherwise go toward IRC chatting".
No, someone who thinks they can is realistic, someone who thinks they *should* is a Nazi.
Preventing people from expressing opinions that you don't like is one of the worst attacks against a free society. Sure, we all know racists are redneck fuck-faces who by their very existnance tarnish the human race... but that doesn't give us the right to stop them from spewing their hateful lies.
The idea that any ideas, no matter how stupid or hateful or distasteful should be censored is just plain wrong. We as a free society cannot allow the government(and especially not the UN, who we have absolutely no power over) to restrict people's freedom of speech.
There is no discussion, no debate over this, it is a simple fact: we must protect everyone's right to freedom of speech. Without that freedom, we have nothing.
Censorship is wrong no matter how awful the material to be censored is.
a good GUI ought to work well w/o reading man pages.
well it depends what you mean by that. the MacOS is of course functional and I doubt most Mac users know about a lot of those shortcuts. all I'm saying is that you shouldn't bitch about some feature not being there if you can find it in 30 seconds in the help system
you can't use a TV, VCR, microwave or car fully without reading the manual, I don't think it's excessive to think that people can use a built in help system to find how to do little specialized things on a computer
I can't believe this guy didn't know to hold option to close windows behind you. That for me is one of the most important time saving features, but it gives the user the flexibility to leave open the windows he wants open also.
In addition, in the MacOS the command he didn't know is just that, the command key. Hold it and you can move or windowshade(minimize) background windows without switching to them.
Apple tells users shortcuts very clearly in it's help system, just go in there and search, you'd be surprised how many things you can do just by holding a button.
But anyway, he definitely raises some valid criticisms of OS X, and I definitely don't want to have a "Finder/Browser" type file navigation system. I also think Apple will be total idiots if they don't include a way to use something that is almost exactly like the current platinum look, or at least have a theme system that would let a third party do that. There are some bitter arguments going on in the MacOS community right now(www.maccentral.com/forum/) about the OS X interface, and no matter what Apple does it is going to piss off a whole ton of people.
Oh, BTW:
system folder: 5,138 files total on main HD partition: 29,957 files
come, let us read "The Communist Manifesto" and "The Jungle" together until we both go blind!
I am disgusted by the Slashdotters who pretend to be good socialists when you talk about this "Lee-nooks" thing, but then you see they are still capitalist swine when you try to discuss political socialism.
Come comrade, let us move to China, a land with true freedom!
Slashdot Mirror
In about 20 minutes you guys are going to be breaking out singing "All we are saying...is give Lee-nooks a chance".
It's sickening. Stop. This is not that big a deal. All they said is that they want the laptops to be able to run Linux, not necessarily that they are going to run it. Before getting all excited, RTFA®(read the fucking article):
"NASA specified a flash BIOS for updates and a plug-and-play operating system such as Microsoft Windows 9x, Windows NT or Windows 2000; SunSoft Solaris 2.7 or later versions; or Linux and other Unix variants."
"Rob has never told me what to write..."
"'Write what it means,' he tells me all the time."
OK, now I'm confused.
If the majority of people want an decrease in NASA funding, fine. If the majority of people want a tax cut instead of debt reduction, fine. If the majority of people want a 3 million dollar technology budget for their school district rather than a 4 million dollar one, fine. If the majority of Puerto Ricans want to become a state, fine.
If the majority of people want to restrict the free speech of others....not fine.
This is not a pure democracy in the United States. Even if we didn't have elected officials, we still have this wonderful thing called a constitution. There is an amendment to that constitution that states tat people have the freedom of speech.
The founding fathers knew the danger of tyranny of the majority, and the Constitution is as much to protect the people from the government as it is to protect the minority from the majority.
No matter how many people want to install this software, it is still unconstitutional, period. Case closed.
I think I'm gonna get a "The Moral Majority is Neither" bumper sticker.
But what if VA starts doing some really, really bad?
Say VA gets in an etoys.com like scandal. Do they let Slashdot cause them serious harm by posting highly critical stories, and letting Katz do his things, all mobilizing thousands of readers to turn against VA?
I doubt it. We won't really know what Slashdot's editorial freedom is until VA hits some hard times.
A Yahoo guy on CNN(I think it was their CEO) said that they were getting 1GB/sec in requests from the attack. Wow.
You guys love to talk about how information wants to be free. I'd suggest a site, or many sites, are started, where people pay for these images and then post them free for others.
Especially those $10 ones. Think of it, you could have a huge archive of pics from all around the world. I think it'd be sweet. So who's gonna do it?
Also, what's the legality involved here? If you pay for the image, do you have the right to distribute it to others?
Holy Shit. On the main site, click "Media Only", and then agree to the terms and what not and you can get access to some awesome pics:
Beijing
Cairo
Manhattan
Rome
Sanaa
San Francisco
Santorini
Sapporo
Taipei
Tokyo
Yeah, I agree to the terms. Uh-huh, I work for the Times.
How about "Joe Chamel"?
Why? Becuase there are, IIRC, 1 billion web pages, and it would not be possible to go through every single one. In addition, the web isn't static, pages that have already been white-flagged might later put up material that is inappropriate, and new pages are created by the second. BTW, Apple has about 50,000 pages "white-flagged", a tiny number.
In any case, I'm OK with software for school libraries, but I really think it limits what the students can do. In our school, there is none of that, but there is always a teacher or librarian within eyesight, so it's not like anyone is going to be looking at porn. And if someone wants to read a page with the word "fuck" in it, I say let them.
But public libraries are a different matter, and there's gotta be some way that people can look at what they want to look at. Now maybe a separate "adult" room would be OK, but it would have to be on a case-by-case basis. Anyway, I doubt most libraries would have the funds to do that.
What people must understand though, is that not everything on earth has to be sanitized so that 6 year olds can see it. There are programs on network TV that 6 year olds should be watching, but it's the parent's job to make sure they aren't.
That whole story just really, really pisses me off.
This pork-barrel spending crap has got to stop. It's not just NASA, it's everything. It wastes an unimaginable amount of money.
In terms of space, I think the best hope now would just be that private companies and non-profit groups promoting space exploration finally get somewhere - like Mars, for instance.
http://www.salon.com/tech/log/2000/02/03/slashdot/ index.html
Sorry, I suck at HTML, here's the article:
r t1.shtml
http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/0002/g4-pa
Now I should preface this by saying that MacOS Rumors is not a very reliable source, but this rumor just make sense.
Back in 1997, Apple introduced G3 machines. The initial machines ran at 233 and 266 MHz. Now back then, Pentium IIs were also up to 266MHz, and Mac fanatics had a valid claim in saying that the G3 beat the PII.
However, a lot has changed since then. Or rather, it hasn't. That's the problem. G3s are now up to 500MHz(but only in the form of an upgrade, not from Apple), and G4s are maxing out at 450MHz.
But Intel an AMD have been pushing the x86 farther than anyone imagined. And Apple?
Well it's probably not really Apple's fault, but Motorola and IBM have really dropped the ball with the G4. In fact, an article that recently appeared in AppleInsider reports conditions to be far worse than anyone imagined. If things truly are that bad, Apple is smart to move.
In addition, doing the port should be far easier than it would have been with the old MacOS(Apple tried this once, it was called Star Trek IIRC). In fact, in it's earlier developer releases, there was an Intel version of Rhapsody(now called MacOS X Server, and really the predecessor to OS X). But that version was Steved(pissing off some developers and users).
So, if Apple is in fact doing this, it is a very smart move. MacOS X looks great, but no one but the most fervent Mac addicts would buy a 500MHz G4 8 months from now.
But there could be problems, the main one being that Apple would be forced to compete with other PC manufacturers, who, regardless of what Apple says, have far better price/performance ratios than Apple. I'm a Mac user, and I know if I could run the MacOS on it, my next machine would not be a G4.
Unlike Microsoft, Apple makes most of it's money off of hardware sales, and though they are trying to diversify(Quicktime, Final Cut Pro, the upcoming AppleWorks 6, etc.), their revenue from hardware is about 95% of the total IIRC.
Of course, opening up the kick-ass MacOS interface to all PC users could mean enormous hardware sales, but that is speculation.
I guess in conclusion, Mac users would love this, Apple stock holders probably wouldn't.
This one, however, unifies an awful lot of the properties of ball lightning under one theoretical umbrella
Great, a Grand Unified Theory of ball lightning, just what the world needs.
LOS ANGELES MATH TEST
City of Los Angeles High School Math Proficiency Exam
Name:_____________________
Gang:_____________________
1. Duane has an AK47 with a 30 round clip. If he misses 6 out of 10 shots and shoots 13 times at each drive by shooting, how many drive by shootings can he attempt before he has to reload?
2. If Joe has 2 ounces of cocaine and he sells an 8 ball to Jackson for $320 and 2 grams to Billy for $85 per gram, what is the street value of the balance of the cocaine if he doesn't cut it?
3. Rufus is pimping for 3 girls. If the price is $65 for each trick, how many tricks will each girl have to turn so Rufus can pay for his $800 per day crack habit?
4. Jerome wants to cut his 1/2 pound of Heroin to make 20% more profit. How many ounces of cut will he need?
5. Willie gets $200 for stealing a BMW, $50 for a Chevy and $100 for a 4x4. If he has stolen 2 BMW's and 3 4x4's, how many Chevy's will he have to steal to make $800?
6. Richard is in prison for 6 years for murder. He got $10,000 for the hit. If his common law wife is spending $100 per month, how much money will he have left when he gets out of prison and how many years will he get for killing the bitch that spent his money?
7. If the average spray paint can covers 22 square feet and the average letter is 3 square feet, how many letters can a tagger spray with 3 cans of paint?
8. Peter knocked up 6 girls in his gang. There are 27 girls in the gang. What percentage of the girls in the gang has Hector knocked up?
I would pay good money to see an ad where those idiots sing their idiot songs like happy little conformists and then someone comes in and mows them all down with a fucking BFG 10k.
Anyone who watches those ads and thinks those people are cool is not a member of the human race as far as I'm concerned.
Every time I see one of those ads I see where the unabomber was coming from. Or, as Chris Rock would say "I'm not sayin he shoulda killed her.... but I understand."
Natalie Portman!!!! Hot grits!!!! Linux sucks!!!! MS Rules!!!
First Post!!! Jon Katz you suck!!!
-------------
I just wasted 2 Karma points. What are you doing with your karma? crayz.
http://www.weeklystandard.com/magazine/mag_5_19_00 /krauthammer_cov_5_18_00.html
In a surprise move, Harvard has moved to ban all use of the "world wide web", claiming that "all these tags are wasting bandwidth that could otherwise go toward IRC chatting".
developing...
No, someone who thinks they can is realistic, someone who thinks they *should* is a Nazi.
Preventing people from expressing opinions that you don't like is one of the worst attacks against a free society. Sure, we all know racists are redneck fuck-faces who by their very existnance tarnish the human race... but that doesn't give us the right to stop them from spewing their hateful lies.
The idea that any ideas, no matter how stupid or hateful or distasteful should be censored is just plain wrong. We as a free society cannot allow the government(and especially not the UN, who we have absolutely no power over) to restrict people's freedom of speech.
There is no discussion, no debate over this, it is a simple fact: we must protect everyone's right to freedom of speech. Without that freedom, we have nothing.
Censorship is wrong no matter how awful the material to be censored is.
BTW, the book in my sig is highly recommended:
yeah, and then they release Final Cut Pro, iMovie and Quicktime 4, all of which have a different interface
a good GUI ought to work well w/o reading man pages.
well it depends what you mean by that. the MacOS is of course functional and I doubt most Mac users know about a lot of those shortcuts. all I'm saying is that you shouldn't bitch about some feature not being there if you can find it in 30 seconds in the help system
you can't use a TV, VCR, microwave or car fully without reading the manual, I don't think it's excessive to think that people can use a built in help system to find how to do little specialized things on a computer
"Before allowing people to query it, it would first subject them to a series of extremely bad jokes, then ask if they thought it was funny."
Anyone?
Sounds like "Mike" in "Moon is a Harsh Mistress" to me.
Oww, painful memory. I liked Mike. I just made myself sad. If Mike was really at AltaVista, I'd probably stop using Google and just go talk to him.
Then again, Google is pretty neat...
I can't believe this guy didn't know to hold option to close windows behind you. That for me is one of the most important time saving features, but it gives the user the flexibility to leave open the windows he wants open also.
In addition, in the MacOS the command he didn't know is just that, the command key. Hold it and you can move or windowshade(minimize) background windows without switching to them.
Apple tells users shortcuts very clearly in it's help system, just go in there and search, you'd be surprised how many things you can do just by holding a button.
But anyway, he definitely raises some valid criticisms of OS X, and I definitely don't want to have a "Finder/Browser" type file navigation system. I also think Apple will be total idiots if they don't include a way to use something that is almost exactly like the current platinum look, or at least have a theme system that would let a third party do that. There are some bitter arguments going on in the MacOS community right now(www.maccentral.com/forum/) about the OS X interface, and no matter what Apple does it is going to piss off a whole ton of people.
Oh, BTW:
system folder: 5,138 files
total on main HD partition: 29,957 files
Wow.
come, let us read "The Communist Manifesto" and "The Jungle" together until we both go blind!
I am disgusted by the Slashdotters who pretend to be good socialists when you talk about this "Lee-nooks" thing, but then you see they are still capitalist swine when you try to discuss political socialism.
Come comrade, let us move to China, a land with true freedom!
"I am looking for the nuclear wessel"