Funny you should mention Alton Brown, as much as I love him, at first I thought this would be the last article I'd expect to hear about him in. But then I thought about it, and you're quite right. He has done for "food science" what Sagan did for astronomy, and what Bill Nye did for basic science with kids. He shows that it's not all just magic... there is science behind it. And not just any science, but fun, TASTY science.
Yes, I think you're quite right. Alton Brown is definitely one of my science heros.
No matter how many times I read that title, it continues to look like Ted Rape, and I don't want to know what life-lessons you've learned from inappropriately touching plush bears.
Do you think that $500 will be the only reward to the company? Or, do you think that maybe the company that finally takes them up on the offer and recovers the filename will reap greater rewards as a direct result?
Right now on Slashdot, we've got nerds and computer experts referring to this challenge as proof that it isn't possible. Sure, Slashdot isn't the absolute epitome of computer expertise, but dammit, we've got some smart guys here. Now, if company XYZ were to take this challenge and complete it as requested, then not only would they get their measly $500, but they would also (I'm sure) get a nice frontpage article on Slashdot along the lines of "XYZ Victorious in Great Zero Challenge!"... and there would be a nice memorable flamewar about how long we've been able to do this. And next time a nerd needs their zeroed-out hard-drive recovering, they are going to Google "Great Zero Challenge" and then click the XYZ link in the article.
This is not only a chance to win $500, but it's a chance to be "those guys that finally confirmed the zeroed-out recovery myth".
Seems that everyone has their own story. 4 pages of posts so far! Guess I'll throw in my two-pennorth
It was 2003, and I was taking a basic IT course in which Linux surprisingly made an appearance. Back in the late 90s I had heard of this mythical creature called Linux (which I had only read about, and thus pronounced it Lie-nucks), and how amazing it was that you could customize anything you wanted. Unfortunately, I never had a computer to try it on back then, so when I finally had a computer, and an install CD, I was on my way.
I'll never forget the trepidation with which I put the CD in that drive. The calm confidence as I found that a lot of my GUI knowledge in Windows transitioned very well, and that my programming experience treated me well on the command line. Before long, I had a working file and print server through Samba.
That server has gone through a lot of iterations over the years. But, even after moving residence 4 times with the server, it has still maintained a 99.8% uptime from that very day. It now runs an apache web server, my personal email server, a proxy so I can browse the web from work, and a few other things.
Also, I've run Linux as a desktop on and off for a number of years. First was Gentoo, then Fedora, then Ubuntu, now I'm onto Kubuntu, and I'll probably stay here. Kubuntu 9.04 is everything an OS should be.
Just out of curiosity, can regular old outsiders book time on it, and is there an approval process for what task you wish to run on it?
I'll bet it could process the hell out of some rainbow tables.
To further illustrate my point, imagine in front of you, there is a line of 10 people. You are told that one, some, or all of them may have a gun and want to kill you. You are handed a rifle.
You have no idea who, if anyone, wants to kill you. Can you justify killing 10 people because 9 of them want to kill you? How about 5 of them wanting to kill you. Or 3? How about one? Can you rightfully kill 10 people because one of them wanted to kill you?
I understand the desire of self-preservation, but when the price for self-preservation is an innocent life... it need not be glorified.
What part of my description of the soldiers is untrue?
I think I need to explain a little. I am not against the soldiers here. Fuck, if I was in their situation, I probably would have done the exact same thing. I can completely understand being driven mad, being in a foreign city and constantly being the target of insurgents. Give me a rifle and a helmet, and hell, throw some WP in there too, and I'd probably be the first into that building. But the thing is, no matter what, my actions would be wrong if I were to kill innocents just because I was confused and scared.
I blame those who put the soldiers in that situation in the first place. I blame those who gave the orders.
I have a number of friends in the military, a couple who have served in Iraq. I know what war out there is like. I know that most of the soldiers don't go out there to kill and maim, but to defend their country. They are put in a bad... no, terrible situation and have to deal with it as best they can. I am not against the soldiers, and nor am I "insurgency friendly", but their actions, while understandable, are still wrong.
Urban fighting ensued, and the insurgents ultimately lost.
As did hundreds, if not a thousand, innocent bystanders.
Fallujah wasn't a "pitched battle". It was a massacre. Sure, there were insurgents there, and they were out to cause harm. But throwing phosphorous grenades all around, burning civilians alive, obliterating the occupants of whole buildings... out of line.
I don't think I've seen a game based on Vietnam, but this is damn close, and it's disgusting. Wholesale murder with complete disregard.
Our soldiers go out there to protect innocent lives. Unfortunately, they don't seem to give a shit about other nations' innocents, only American innocents. If there were American citizens dotted throughout the buildings in Fallujah, you can be damn sure they'd be a lot more careful. "Oh, but they don't know who is an insurgent and who isn't, so they have to be careful and shoot everybody that could be, including children." Again, sounds just the same as Vietnam, and it's no less disgusting today.
Murder is murder. It doesn't matter if you are scared that someone could be an insurgent. If they are innocent, and you killed them, it's still cold-blooded murder. And that's what this game is based on. Sure, they'll probably make every enemy NPC into an insurgent, just so they don't have to deal with the cold, hard fact that a good number of the people killed were civilians.
I've seen the raw footage. I've seen the bodies burned. I've seen children's corpses mangled, the buildings crumbling. All because 19 terrorists flew a couple of planes into a building full of innocents. In Fallujah, the body count was about two thirds of the final body count of 9/11. Can we go home now? Can we stop the killing? Can we let it be and not seek to further glorify the actions of the American military, which is going to haunt the soldiers for the rest of their lives?
I think he was fired for this in the last paragraph of the review: "But obviously someone who had access to a print uploaded the film onto this website. This begs several questions about security".
No sir, it doesn't beg any questions. Do journalists take any English classes at all these days?
Also, I think if he wouldn't have rambled on (here's a screenshot of the article) in one of the paragraphs about how easy it was to watch all sorts of movies online, and how he was planning on watching another pirated movie afterwards, he might not have been fired.
Making a stupid decision is one thing, but acting stupidly while going through with said decision is... well... stupid.
Stop it. Just, stop it. That is a patently untrue myth, and by posting stuff like that you are only serving to propagate it even further.
Go take a look at some fMRI and PET scans, then come back and apologize.
*takes a chill pill*
Sorry, hit a nerve. Mindlessly repeated soundbytes like that are the bane of all that is true and valid.
Define "enemy of the US". Being that the United States prides itself on democracy, to me it would seem that those that work in the shadows against the democracy we hold so dear could be construed as "enemies". Treason or not, they deliberately worked against the American citizenry.
Yes, democracy here is a joke at the best of times, but it doesn't mean we should roll over and allow people to do this kind of stuff without severe punishment. We should certainly make an example of these people. Death penalty, probably not. Lock them away for life.
Good luck on your expedition Maxime. Other than for research, I'll never understand why people do these things... but I'll also never stop being pleasantly amazed at the power of human tenacity, ingenuity, and bravery.
I worked the night shift at the NOC for a couple of years. Mostly just monitoring client's networks and dispatching technicians as needed etc.
On night at about 2am, I received a call from one of our field technicians. Quite distraught, he told me his computer was broken and he had a high-profile job in the morning and needed it replaced ASAP. He explained that when he tried to type in his username to login, it was showing garbage on the screen, "all sorts of weird numbers and symbols". He regaled me with the story of how he had taken the laptop apart, checked the contacts on the keyboard ribbon cable, found his keyboard chipset model, and Googled the problem, eventually finding it to be a common issue known as a "K9 Keyboard Chipset error". This guy had done his homework.
Having no way of getting his laptop replaced so quickly by myself, I was forced to call the desktop support manager (who was the epitome of a BOFH). He groggily answered, and the technician told him the issue.
"Do me a favor," said the BOFH.
"OK?" the technician responded.
"Hold down the shift key, and press the Num Lock key. Then login."
"ITS WORKING!"
"Gentlemen, we will discuss this on Monday," growled the BOFH, before slamming the phone down. Those words are to this day etched in my mind. I don't blame him for being angry, but in my defense, the tech *did* sound like he'd already tried everything. From then on, I became known as NumLock PantsDown. I'll tell Slashdot about the "PantsDown" portion another time.
Throw this in your.bashrc:
alias s="screen -RAad"
. This makes multiple screen session management really easy. When I want to IRC, I just type "s irc". When I'm checking out how my torrent is going, "s tor". The beauty is, you don't have to do anything different for a new session. If you forget which sessions you have going, just type "s" and you'll be provided with a list of existing screen sessions.
First they came for the pedophiles, and I did not speak out -
because I was not a pedophile.
Then they came for the anal stretchers, and I did not speak out -
because I was not Goatse.
Then they came for the girls who like to share cups of feces, and I did not speak out -
because I was not a girl with a friend with a cup.
Then they came for me - and there was no one left to speak for me.
Slashdot Mirror
You have obviously never listened to Pink Floyd after smoking marijuana.
[quote]I think their goal is unrealistic[/quote] You misspelled "retarded".
My kingdom for a mod point
Yes, I think you're quite right. Alton Brown is definitely one of my science heros.
No matter how many times I read that title, it continues to look like Ted Rape, and I don't want to know what life-lessons you've learned from inappropriately touching plush bears.
nt
Hmmm.... k. Seems there's an Asian-American in the armor of OpenSSH
Right now on Slashdot, we've got nerds and computer experts referring to this challenge as proof that it isn't possible. Sure, Slashdot isn't the absolute epitome of computer expertise, but dammit, we've got some smart guys here. Now, if company XYZ were to take this challenge and complete it as requested, then not only would they get their measly $500, but they would also (I'm sure) get a nice frontpage article on Slashdot along the lines of "XYZ Victorious in Great Zero Challenge!"... and there would be a nice memorable flamewar about how long we've been able to do this. And next time a nerd needs their zeroed-out hard-drive recovering, they are going to Google "Great Zero Challenge" and then click the XYZ link in the article. This is not only a chance to win $500, but it's a chance to be "those guys that finally confirmed the zeroed-out recovery myth".
Alton Brown, is that you?
Seems that everyone has their own story. 4 pages of posts so far! Guess I'll throw in my two-pennorth It was 2003, and I was taking a basic IT course in which Linux surprisingly made an appearance. Back in the late 90s I had heard of this mythical creature called Linux (which I had only read about, and thus pronounced it Lie-nucks), and how amazing it was that you could customize anything you wanted. Unfortunately, I never had a computer to try it on back then, so when I finally had a computer, and an install CD, I was on my way. I'll never forget the trepidation with which I put the CD in that drive. The calm confidence as I found that a lot of my GUI knowledge in Windows transitioned very well, and that my programming experience treated me well on the command line. Before long, I had a working file and print server through Samba. That server has gone through a lot of iterations over the years. But, even after moving residence 4 times with the server, it has still maintained a 99.8% uptime from that very day. It now runs an apache web server, my personal email server, a proxy so I can browse the web from work, and a few other things. Also, I've run Linux as a desktop on and off for a number of years. First was Gentoo, then Fedora, then Ubuntu, now I'm onto Kubuntu, and I'll probably stay here. Kubuntu 9.04 is everything an OS should be.
Just out of curiosity, can regular old outsiders book time on it, and is there an approval process for what task you wish to run on it? I'll bet it could process the hell out of some rainbow tables.
I understand the desire of self-preservation, but when the price for self-preservation is an innocent life... it need not be glorified.
I think I need to explain a little. I am not against the soldiers here. Fuck, if I was in their situation, I probably would have done the exact same thing. I can completely understand being driven mad, being in a foreign city and constantly being the target of insurgents. Give me a rifle and a helmet, and hell, throw some WP in there too, and I'd probably be the first into that building. But the thing is, no matter what, my actions would be wrong if I were to kill innocents just because I was confused and scared.
I blame those who put the soldiers in that situation in the first place. I blame those who gave the orders.
I have a number of friends in the military, a couple who have served in Iraq. I know what war out there is like. I know that most of the soldiers don't go out there to kill and maim, but to defend their country. They are put in a bad... no, terrible situation and have to deal with it as best they can. I am not against the soldiers, and nor am I "insurgency friendly", but their actions, while understandable, are still wrong.
I'd think the feeling of being burned to the bone is much the same whether it's by thermal or chemical reaction.
"It's not against the rules because it works a little differently than the illegal stuff". Go fuck yourself.
Urban fighting ensued, and the insurgents ultimately lost.
As did hundreds, if not a thousand, innocent bystanders.
Fallujah wasn't a "pitched battle". It was a massacre. Sure, there were insurgents there, and they were out to cause harm. But throwing phosphorous grenades all around, burning civilians alive, obliterating the occupants of whole buildings... out of line.
I don't think I've seen a game based on Vietnam, but this is damn close, and it's disgusting. Wholesale murder with complete disregard.
Our soldiers go out there to protect innocent lives. Unfortunately, they don't seem to give a shit about other nations' innocents, only American innocents. If there were American citizens dotted throughout the buildings in Fallujah, you can be damn sure they'd be a lot more careful. "Oh, but they don't know who is an insurgent and who isn't, so they have to be careful and shoot everybody that could be, including children." Again, sounds just the same as Vietnam, and it's no less disgusting today.
Murder is murder. It doesn't matter if you are scared that someone could be an insurgent. If they are innocent, and you killed them, it's still cold-blooded murder. And that's what this game is based on. Sure, they'll probably make every enemy NPC into an insurgent, just so they don't have to deal with the cold, hard fact that a good number of the people killed were civilians.
I've seen the raw footage. I've seen the bodies burned. I've seen children's corpses mangled, the buildings crumbling. All because 19 terrorists flew a couple of planes into a building full of innocents. In Fallujah, the body count was about two thirds of the final body count of 9/11. Can we go home now? Can we stop the killing? Can we let it be and not seek to further glorify the actions of the American military, which is going to haunt the soldiers for the rest of their lives?
With a heavy heart,
FMZ
Since people died, they should also be charged with homocide.
Come on, man. Just because Italians are always well groomed and impeccably dressed, doesn't mean they are all gay.
I think he was fired for this in the last paragraph of the review: "But obviously someone who had access to a print uploaded the film onto this website. This begs several questions about security". No sir, it doesn't beg any questions. Do journalists take any English classes at all these days? Also, I think if he wouldn't have rambled on (here's a screenshot of the article) in one of the paragraphs about how easy it was to watch all sorts of movies online, and how he was planning on watching another pirated movie afterwards, he might not have been fired. Making a stupid decision is one thing, but acting stupidly while going through with said decision is... well... stupid.
JUST ACHIEVEMENT WHORING...
Stop it. Just, stop it. That is a patently untrue myth, and by posting stuff like that you are only serving to propagate it even further. Go take a look at some fMRI and PET scans, then come back and apologize. *takes a chill pill* Sorry, hit a nerve. Mindlessly repeated soundbytes like that are the bane of all that is true and valid.
Define "enemy of the US". Being that the United States prides itself on democracy, to me it would seem that those that work in the shadows against the democracy we hold so dear could be construed as "enemies". Treason or not, they deliberately worked against the American citizenry. Yes, democracy here is a joke at the best of times, but it doesn't mean we should roll over and allow people to do this kind of stuff without severe punishment. We should certainly make an example of these people. Death penalty, probably not. Lock them away for life.
Good luck on your expedition Maxime. Other than for research, I'll never understand why people do these things... but I'll also never stop being pleasantly amazed at the power of human tenacity, ingenuity, and bravery.
Wishing you a safe return.
On night at about 2am, I received a call from one of our field technicians. Quite distraught, he told me his computer was broken and he had a high-profile job in the morning and needed it replaced ASAP. He explained that when he tried to type in his username to login, it was showing garbage on the screen, "all sorts of weird numbers and symbols". He regaled me with the story of how he had taken the laptop apart, checked the contacts on the keyboard ribbon cable, found his keyboard chipset model, and Googled the problem, eventually finding it to be a common issue known as a "K9 Keyboard Chipset error". This guy had done his homework.
Having no way of getting his laptop replaced so quickly by myself, I was forced to call the desktop support manager (who was the epitome of a BOFH). He groggily answered, and the technician told him the issue.
"Do me a favor," said the BOFH.
"OK?" the technician responded.
"Hold down the shift key, and press the Num Lock key. Then login."
"ITS WORKING!"
"Gentlemen, we will discuss this on Monday," growled the BOFH, before slamming the phone down. Those words are to this day etched in my mind. I don't blame him for being angry, but in my defense, the tech *did* sound like he'd already tried everything. From then on, I became known as NumLock PantsDown. I'll tell Slashdot about the "PantsDown" portion another time.
Throw this in your .bashrc:
alias s="screen -RAad"
. This makes multiple screen session management really easy. When I want to IRC, I just type "s irc". When I'm checking out how my torrent is going, "s tor". The beauty is, you don't have to do anything different for a new session. If you forget which sessions you have going, just type "s" and you'll be provided with a list of existing screen sessions.
Only on Slashdot could this be modded "Informative". I lol'd
First they came for the pedophiles, and I did not speak out - because I was not a pedophile. Then they came for the anal stretchers, and I did not speak out - because I was not Goatse. Then they came for the girls who like to share cups of feces, and I did not speak out - because I was not a girl with a friend with a cup. Then they came for me - and there was no one left to speak for me.