The stars have guided thousands of years human spirituality and philosophy, what happens when we loose that?
We won't. Not all of us, anyway. As the human race inevitably moves into space, there will be little more than reinforced glass (or some other similarly transparent barrier) between us and the vast and glorious cosmos, without even so much as an atmosphere in the way. In space, you can see the stars (and various other awe-inspiring sights, such as Earth from orbit) a hell of a lot better than our collective ancestors ever imagined.
I would consider most urbanites as severely mentally ill, with our odd paranoia about darkness. We must ALWAYS cloak ourselves in light and noise to protect us from ourselves and our enviroment. What are we REALLY afraid of?
I cloak myself in light because it enables me to perceive potential danger. You won't get attacked by any burglar when you can see them coming from 20 feet away. I do not cloak myself in noise; I simply enjoy it -- music because of the emotions it produces; sound effects in games because they sound Badass (TM); audio feedback from applications because it enables me to perceive various information in ways that are less efficient / reliable when perceived visually.
OT but related, ever go someplace nice and notice that they HAVE TO pipe noise into it, ALWAYS.
Yes, and it usually annoys me, and although I'll admit that's mostly because of the low quality of the music they're running, it also seems inappropriate in many settings: dental appointments are bad enough without having to listen to Celine Dion whining like some dying animal strapped to a microphone in the process.
Turn off all the lights, or light generating things (monitor, case mods, TV, whatnot), turn off all the sound, fans, whatnot, and look and listen. Odds are, if you live in a city or even a small town it will be noisy and bright.
This is obvious without flipping a single switch. There's plenty of ambient noise to be heard and ambient light to be seen when one pays attention. Urbanites like myself simply ignore these most of the time. This technique is surprisingly effective.
Though my sleep cycle is unstable, I do not believe this to be the result of uninteresting noise or marginally detectable light penetrating my bedroom. Again, these stimuli are straightforward to ignore, and because I have lived in urban environments for my entire life, my brain is well versed in the sorts of sensory input it may safely disregard, even when asleep. Rather, my sleep cycle is unstable because I am inclined to being awake at night, as I always have been. Though being awake at night and asleep in the day is hard on me in various ways (resulting in e.g. somewhat reduced energy levels), I am reasonably well adapted to this, as well -- for instance, I get good quality sleep, even if it is during the day (though my curtain must be closed, as full daylight in my room will still interfere with my sleep).
I do not believe my geekiness is the cause of my inclination to nocturnal life, as this inclination predates my geekiness; however, my geekiness aids and is aided by this nocturnal life: despite abundant light pollution at night, it is still much easier to focus during the time when most everyone else is asleep.
This seems like a good place to give feedback to their claims.
The tiled + scaled down windows command (F9) is pretty cool. I think this can be applied to the age-old concept of virtual desktops (which I use extensively) in an interesting way. When looking at one virtual desktop, hit a key to zoom out to a display of some or all of your virtual desktops on a single screen, each one scaled down and arranged neatly in a grid. Then you can pick another virtual desktop and zoom back in, or maybe even work in one with the others still in view (like the split view functions of many editors, such as Emacs).
The fade non-app windows into the background command (F10) looks pretty useless. That's what virtual desktops are for. I don't think Apple has yet caught onto this one. Maybe it's too complex for average users to handle, in their estimation.
The hide all windows command (F11) is a cheap rip-off. It's been in Microsoft Windows since Windows 95! (That also has an undo minimize all command, so you can get back your previous display.) Again, this command is of highly questionable utility in the face of virtual desktops, where you just switch to an empty / new virtual desktop if you need a clear screen.
Since I mention window-arrangement features of Windows, I should also mention that an apparently little-known product called Norton Navigator gave virtual desktops to Windows users. LiteStep did the same.
Finally, I feel the need to mention that, in my experience, I have seen many virtual desktop systems, but the need to use a mouse to switch between them is often cumbersome. I presently use KDE, where I have bound combinations of the meta key and various other keys to do virtual desktop and window manipulation commands. The simplest of these is M-1, M-2, and so on, which quickly switch virtual desktops. More complex commands include M-s 1, M-s 2, etc, to send the focused window to the given virtual desktop. This configuration has proven to be extremely effective, even when my hand is on the mouse -- I can quickly switch desktops with my left hand on the keyboard, while my right hand is on the mouse and ready to make whatever mouse movements are needed as soon as the selected virtual desktop is displayed. This allows for a great deal of agility in the use of virtual desktops, and is a configuration I highly recommend to others.
Seems to me that the parsimonious explanation is that the Administration seized a convenient excuse because the real reason wouldn't fly before the public.
Humanitarian intervention wouldn't fly before the public because the American public is so complacent, impulsive, and apathetic that they don't honestly give a rat's flying ass about anyone else.
depleted uranium weapons used by the US killed more people then saddam did.
The actual danger posed by depleted uranium rounds is very much subject to debate. Anyway, the US is using explosive-tipped tungsten rounds now, if I recall correctly. These are more expensive than depleted uranium, but they also don't have the not-fully-understood ecological impact of depleted uranium, which is probably why they were chosen.
When is the US army going to invade and free them by kicking out the israeli army?
#include <disclaimers/ianai.h>/* I Am Not An Israeli */ #include <disclaimers/ianar.h>/* I Am Not A Republican */
The Palestinians sit by and happily tolerate terrorist groups like Hamas in their midst, and then yell when the Israeli military tries to protect its citizens. Maybe if they stopped being filthy hypocrites and served up justice to these filthy terrorist scum bags, Israel wouldn't try to do it for them.
Were it not for your blatantly selective amnesia, you would recall that Israel made a gesture of good faith by removing its army from Palestinian territory (IIRC). Their reward for this action? A suicide bomber (from Hamas, IIRC) killing a bunch of innocent Israeli civilians. That's Palestinian good faith for you.
The Palestinians do not desire peace or freedom. They desire the complete annihilation of the country of Israel and every last one of its citizens, and they are willing to suffer their own complete annihilation in the process if that's what it takes.
They do not deserve US intervention. What they deserve is a few tactical nukes dropped on them, Hiroshima style. Then there won't be enough of the bastards left alive to carry out more suicide attacks.
No. As you may have noticed, Iraq was full of illegally imported weapons and assorted military gear from France/Russia/Germany/whatnot, in direct violation of the UN sanctions.
and weapons inspectors?
Good job they did finding those mobile chemical labs and those long-range missiles that were fired at Kuwait City. Oh wait...
People keep yelling that no WMDs were found in Iraq. I have three problems with this.
Those mobile chemical labs are not WMDs, but they are a smoking gun.
Saddam Hussein's regime used chemical weapons against the Kurds. As I recall, entire villages were wiped out. Unless I am mistaken, those qualify as WMDs.
Those long-range missiles they fired at Kuwait City are not necessarily WMDs, but they are still illegal and very dangerous. Imagine if Saddam suddenly fired a few of those missiles tipped with the aforementioned chemicals at Kuwait City? Without our Patriot Missiles covering their asses they'd all be dead and Kuwait would be a wholly owned and operated subsidiary of Baath, Inc.
Crap. This post is in need of revision. I didn't read enough before posting it; sorry.
Sun's JVM always does bytecode verification, which stops access to private members that way, but as with.NET, the reflection API will let you access private members if you have access (i.e., no sandbox, or there is but the SecurityManager lets you do it anyway).
So this.NET behavior is really no different from Java.
Actually, to my knowledge, Sun's JVM always does bytecode verification, even for local code. Since the verification step will (correctly) reject code that tries to access private members, you don't have this hole. And since verification is very fast and happens at class load time (so no checking of access permissions is necessary at run time), this is not a performance hit.
Five seconds. Put it in a microwave on high for that length. Pretty fireworks, as a bonus.
If you insist on destroying it with O2, place it in a chamber with pure O2 under sufficient pressure to crush the disc.
Really, challenging people on how fast they can destroy something is pretty dumb. Humanity has always been really good at destroying things. An atomic bomb, for example, can destroy a city in seconds, but to create one in that time period is unfathomable.
More importantly, open source developers are scratching their own itches (you have read your ESR, haven't you?). What motivation do they have to put backdoors into their works of art?
In the short term. In the long term, a lack of integrity gets you screwed. From your account I doubt anyone at your company trusts this guy anymore. It may be possible to even get the guy jailed for what he did, let alone fired (once you've audited everything).
Customers are
WAY too trusting of vendors.
The thing about computer security is that a lot of it is based on trust: trust of vendors, trust of sysadmins, even trust of janitors. The pointy-haireds in most companies clearly do not understand this, and they get bitten repeatedly because of their ignorance. Employees capable of damaging your company (as in this backdoor) must not be motivated to do so. To do this, they must be treated with respect, and be strongly rewarded for company loyalty. Most companies instead treat their engineers like condoms: they use them up, then throw them away after they've made the company a few billion in profit.
If your employees feel safe at your company, they aren't going to risk their jobs by putting backdoors into the code they have write access to, and they aren't going to have any reason to do so anyway. Isn't that better for the company than risking massive damage every time things get hard?
The issue here, I suspect, is reliability. The display can't crap out in the middle of a firefight or imminent 9/11 style attack. CRT monitors won't crap out, so they're used.
One thing large register sets are especially good for, however, is emulation: the PowerPC's 32-odd general-purpose register set is a big part of why Virtual PC is so much faster than Bochs.
Existing 680x0 code (both applications and device drivers) run on Power Macintosh systems without modification via a Motorola 68LC040 emulator. The performance of these unmodified applications is equivalent to a fast 68040-based Macintosh, e.g. a fast Macintosh Quadra.
The conclusion is that the PowerPC (even early ones used in the original PowerMacs) was so much faster than the 68K that the latter could be emulated without any trouble.
I was going to comment on that myself. Linus never seems to have harsh words about anything -- not BitMovers (of BitKeeper fame), not Microsoft, not anything.
This will surely go down in the Linux history books.
Insects need only a small fraction of the oxygen of mammals, far less water, and can survive even a hard vaccuum and fairly high levels of background radiation.
In the long run, the low gravity and lack of tectonic activity will also be problems. These are major contributors to its current lifeless state.
Although the low gravity does not lend itself to a nice, thick atmosphere, the human body rather likes low gravity. It's almost as if it was designed for 0-G...
As for tectonic activity, since when were earthquakes beneficial to life?
Slashdot Mirror
We won't. Not all of us, anyway. As the human race inevitably moves into space, there will be little more than reinforced glass (or some other similarly transparent barrier) between us and the vast and glorious cosmos, without even so much as an atmosphere in the way. In space, you can see the stars (and various other awe-inspiring sights, such as Earth from orbit) a hell of a lot better than our collective ancestors ever imagined.
I cloak myself in light because it enables me to perceive potential danger. You won't get attacked by any burglar when you can see them coming from 20 feet away. I do not cloak myself in noise; I simply enjoy it -- music because of the emotions it produces; sound effects in games because they sound Badass (TM); audio feedback from applications because it enables me to perceive various information in ways that are less efficient / reliable when perceived visually.
Yes, and it usually annoys me, and although I'll admit that's mostly because of the low quality of the music they're running, it also seems inappropriate in many settings: dental appointments are bad enough without having to listen to Celine Dion whining like some dying animal strapped to a microphone in the process.
This is obvious without flipping a single switch. There's plenty of ambient noise to be heard and ambient light to be seen when one pays attention. Urbanites like myself simply ignore these most of the time. This technique is surprisingly effective.
Though my sleep cycle is unstable, I do not believe this to be the result of uninteresting noise or marginally detectable light penetrating my bedroom. Again, these stimuli are straightforward to ignore, and because I have lived in urban environments for my entire life, my brain is well versed in the sorts of sensory input it may safely disregard, even when asleep. Rather, my sleep cycle is unstable because I am inclined to being awake at night, as I always have been. Though being awake at night and asleep in the day is hard on me in various ways (resulting in e.g. somewhat reduced energy levels), I am reasonably well adapted to this, as well -- for instance, I get good quality sleep, even if it is during the day (though my curtain must be closed, as full daylight in my room will still interfere with my sleep).
I do not believe my geekiness is the cause of my inclination to nocturnal life, as this inclination predates my geekiness; however, my geekiness aids and is aided by this nocturnal life: despite abundant light pollution at night, it is still much easier to focus during the time when most everyone else is asleep.
Such is geekdom.
Since I mention window-arrangement features of Windows, I should also mention that an apparently little-known product called Norton Navigator gave virtual desktops to Windows users. LiteStep did the same.
Finally, I feel the need to mention that, in my experience, I have seen many virtual desktop systems, but the need to use a mouse to switch between them is often cumbersome. I presently use KDE, where I have bound combinations of the meta key and various other keys to do virtual desktop and window manipulation commands. The simplest of these is M-1, M-2, and so on, which quickly switch virtual desktops. More complex commands include M-s 1, M-s 2, etc, to send the focused window to the given virtual desktop. This configuration has proven to be extremely effective, even when my hand is on the mouse -- I can quickly switch desktops with my left hand on the keyboard, while my right hand is on the mouse and ready to make whatever mouse movements are needed as soon as the selected virtual desktop is displayed. This allows for a great deal of agility in the use of virtual desktops, and is a configuration I highly recommend to others.
FYI: In Konqueror, it's shift+wheel for zooming. Wheel down to zoom in, wheel up to zoom out. Not very smooth, but it works.
And really fucking bad for W and his oil cronies.
Tell that one to 2600. They lost the DeCSS case because of the DMCA, and the stated purpose of DeCSS was interoperability.
Grandparent is correct. You are naive. Thank you, drive through.
Humanitarian intervention wouldn't fly before the public because the American public is so complacent, impulsive, and apathetic that they don't honestly give a rat's flying ass about anyone else.
The actual danger posed by depleted uranium rounds is very much subject to debate. Anyway, the US is using explosive-tipped tungsten rounds now, if I recall correctly. These are more expensive than depleted uranium, but they also don't have the not-fully-understood ecological impact of depleted uranium, which is probably why they were chosen.
#include <disclaimers/ianai.h> /* I Am Not An Israeli */ /* I Am Not A Republican */
#include <disclaimers/ianar.h>
The Palestinians sit by and happily tolerate terrorist groups like Hamas in their midst, and then yell when the Israeli military tries to protect its citizens. Maybe if they stopped being filthy hypocrites and served up justice to these filthy terrorist scum bags, Israel wouldn't try to do it for them.
Were it not for your blatantly selective amnesia, you would recall that Israel made a gesture of good faith by removing its army from Palestinian territory (IIRC). Their reward for this action? A suicide bomber (from Hamas, IIRC) killing a bunch of innocent Israeli civilians. That's Palestinian good faith for you.
The Palestinians do not desire peace or freedom. They desire the complete annihilation of the country of Israel and every last one of its citizens, and they are willing to suffer their own complete annihilation in the process if that's what it takes.
They do not deserve US intervention. What they deserve is a few tactical nukes dropped on them, Hiroshima style. Then there won't be enough of the bastards left alive to carry out more suicide attacks.
No. As you may have noticed, Iraq was full of illegally imported weapons and assorted military gear from France/Russia/Germany/whatnot, in direct violation of the UN sanctions.
Good job they did finding those mobile chemical labs and those long-range missiles that were fired at Kuwait City. Oh wait...
People keep yelling that no WMDs were found in Iraq. I have three problems with this.
And your life, if you criticize them sufficiently. Much like the mafia.
Sun's JVM always does bytecode verification, which stops access to private members that way, but as with .NET, the reflection API will let you access private members if you have access (i.e., no sandbox, or there is but the SecurityManager lets you do it anyway).
So this .NET behavior is really no different from Java.
Actually, to my knowledge, Sun's JVM always does bytecode verification, even for local code. Since the verification step will (correctly) reject code that tries to access private members, you don't have this hole. And since verification is very fast and happens at class load time (so no checking of access permissions is necessary at run time), this is not a performance hit.
If you insist on destroying it with O2, place it in a chamber with pure O2 under sufficient pressure to crush the disc.
Really, challenging people on how fast they can destroy something is pretty dumb. Humanity has always been really good at destroying things. An atomic bomb, for example, can destroy a city in seconds, but to create one in that time period is unfathomable.
More importantly, open source developers are scratching their own itches (you have read your ESR, haven't you?). What motivation do they have to put backdoors into their works of art?
In the short term. In the long term, a lack of integrity gets you screwed. From your account I doubt anyone at your company trusts this guy anymore. It may be possible to even get the guy jailed for what he did, let alone fired (once you've audited everything).
The thing about computer security is that a lot of it is based on trust: trust of vendors, trust of sysadmins, even trust of janitors. The pointy-haireds in most companies clearly do not understand this, and they get bitten repeatedly because of their ignorance. Employees capable of damaging your company (as in this backdoor) must not be motivated to do so. To do this, they must be treated with respect, and be strongly rewarded for company loyalty. Most companies instead treat their engineers like condoms: they use them up, then throw them away after they've made the company a few billion in profit.
If your employees feel safe at your company, they aren't going to risk their jobs by putting backdoors into the code they have write access to, and they aren't going to have any reason to do so anyway. Isn't that better for the company than risking massive damage every time things get hard?
The issue here, I suspect, is reliability. The display can't crap out in the middle of a firefight or imminent 9/11 style attack. CRT monitors won't crap out, so they're used.
One thing large register sets are especially good for, however, is emulation: the PowerPC's 32-odd general-purpose register set is a big part of why Virtual PC is so much faster than Bochs.
This will surely go down in the Linux history books.
Which means MOL is going to break horribly. Great.
What about selling heroin? Is there an intelligent reason that you can see for taking that big a risk? If not, why do people do so anyway?
"Terraforming" is the act of changing a planet to resemble Earth, especially for the purpose of sustaining life from Earth.
(FreeSpace reference.)
As for tectonic activity, since when were earthquakes beneficial to life?