I'm afraid not, no. That's not how quantum entanglement works. Even though you can get instantaneous action at a distance, there's still no way to transmit information faster than light. Basically, all entanglement tells you is that when you measure thingy A, then whatever answer you get, instantly you know thingy B is in the same state.
Okay, two questions...
1: (not FTL, but I'm curious)
Suppose you have a particle that has a 50% chance of changing state after time T. Actually, suppose you have two such particles, identical, entangled. (I may be talking out of my ass here- I don't know if particles can degrade like atoms do or if entanglement can work at the scale of a whole atom. IANAP.)
One particle goes on a near-lightspeed journey and comes back. The other particle doesn't. Time dialation applies. The age of the travelling particle is less than T, while the age of the particle that stayed home is greater than T.
So when you measure one of the entangled particles, is the probability that the particles have changed state higher or lower than 50%? Does it matter which one you measure? Is it even possible to send only one of the particles on a two-way trip without breaking the entanglement?
2:
Suppose you want to send one bit of information to Alpha Centauri. You need it to get there FTL. Fortunately, the Grays have a space station roughly half-way between Alpha Centauri and Earth - but slightly closer to Earth - that regularly sends out a pair of entangled particles, one to Earth and the other to Alpha Centauri, at the speed of light (or as close to it as possible).
One of these entangled particles reaches Earth. You measure either it's momentum or it's position, depending on whether you want to send a 0 bit or a 1 bit. Shortly thereafter, the other entangled particle reaches Alpha Centauri, where they attempt to measure it's position.
According to the uncertainty principle, the more you know about a particle's momentum the less you know about it's position, and vice versa. If you've measured one entangled particle's position, the good folks at Alpha Centauri should have no trouble also measuring it's position, right? On the other hand, if you've measured it's momentum, the other guys shouldn't be able to measure their particle's position, right? If it is possible for the folks at Alpha Centauri to determine whether or not the measurement was successful then they have received a bit of information from you that traveled at just under twice the speed of light. I suppose it is not possible for the folks on Alpha Centauri to determine whether or not the measurement was successful? Would they just get a measurement and be unable to determine it's accuracy?
A complete, state of the art home PC for under $600. (Commodore 64, graet little machine.) Gee, we're having a hard time getting that NOW, 20 years later, even with inflation.
With the C64 it was common convention to prefix hexadecimal numbers with a $ instead of the now more common "0x". So $600 was decimal 1536. A location which, if you (POKE|ST[AXY])'ed it, you could make a character appear at a certain place on the text screen. That's because $0400-$07E7 (inclusive) was by default used to store the 40x25 text screen. The colour information was stored elsewhere though, at $D800-$DBE7. After the screen memory was a few bytes related to the eight graphic sprites (but you had to poke at the video chip registers in the $D000 range to actually make the sprites appear). And right after that came $0800, which was the start of BASIC program memory space, which extended all the way up to $A000 (which was the start of the BASIC interpreter ROM unless you fiddled with $0001 to unmask the RAM that was there). That's 38912 bytes, which when you exclude the zero byte at $0800 gives you the "38911" in the "38911 BASIC BYTES FREE." message that appeared when you turned the computer on.
Just a little arcane knowledge I thought I would share.
A ping is more analagous to knocking on doors. Port scanning is more like checking to see if the
doors and windows are locked.
Checking to see if doors and windows are locked normally requires an attempt to open them. That is often used as an analogy for portscans, but I really don't like it- Trying to open windows and doors is an attempt to gain access, but portscanning is purely informational.
A portscan is more like looking at a building, seeing where the doors and windows are, and maybe reading the make and model from the doors, windows, and locks. The "trying windows and doors to see if they're unlocked" analogy would be better applied to running actual exploits against a machine.
What I want to see is someone producing LED clusters which target specific frequencies needed by plants, without wasting energy on the unused light spectra. And even then I'll want to see solid experimental data backing up its effectiveness.
Am I crazy, or does that have implications for long-term space flight?
Another thing he guessed wrongly about is the interest of people who grow up with computers in hacking. Maybe I'll be proved wrong, but I haven't been yet. People who grow up with computers don't gain any magical insight or understanding of them.
Other parts of the article touched on that: It's because of the GUI dragging things down to the caveman level.
Outside of North America, Linux use is considerably higher. Using Linux and other *nix OSes tends to encourage understanding, because the nuts-and-bolts are more visible.
Reading between the lines, the interviewee seems to be suggesting that the nations that are currently the most high-tech could eventually lose that edge because of their dependance on expensive (>$0) point-and-drool software, and that the Linux-loving people in the second-world countries will produce free software to drive out the evil MicroSoft corporation, and all will live happily ever after under some post-industrial economic model. Or something.
Maybe the web has peaked, or maybe not- My first thought was at the web peaked years ago, but I can't really think of any specific time, which maybe suggests that it hasn't peaked yet after all.
The Internet definately has not peaked.
Just look at P2P. Napster use is huge, even though it's a very single-use system. And there is lots more development that can be done with P2P. I think we've just seen the beginning there.
And who knows what will be the next thing after P2P?
People assume the Internet == WWW. Even people who know better make that mistake once in a while, if only briefly. But we do know better, right?
Why would M$ steal GPL-ed code when they could incorporate pieces of one of the BSDs with very few consequences thanks to the new BSD licence?
They have. I remember looking at the FTP binary in Windows 95 (B or earlier) and seeing BSD copyright strings. Lots of the networking utilities (ftp, ping, netstat, route...) function very similarly to the Unix versions, right down to the command line options. Imagine my suprise the first time I accidentally typed a netstat command at a C: prompt and it actually worked.:) I think the TCP/IP stack is even BSD-derived (if true, I don't think it's a secret).
Not once have I seen the obligatory "This product includes software developed by the University of California, Berkeley and its contributors." message in any Microsoft OS-related advertising, even before the advertising clause was withdrawn. Of course it's a moot point now.
Expect Linux stuff to be included in MS OSes. They couldn't call themselves "innovative" if they stole from the same schmuck every time, could they?:P
Re:Even sterile GMOs can cross-pollinate successfu
on
Golden Rice
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· Score: 2
So genetically modifying a species with unknown results is OK if you use several hundred year old technology (selective cross breeding and breeding with mutant strains) but genetically modifying a species with unknown results is not OK if you use a newer technology. Interesting. Why?
Because we have several hundred years' experience with the several hundred year old technology. That technology and its consequences are relatively well-understood (for example, we now know not to cross-breed american honey bees with african ones:). We know a lot less about GMOs.
There's no problem with defining time_t to be 64 bits on a 32-bit architecture.
Some software assumes time_t is int. If that were not the case, we could simply define time_t as unsigned int on 32-bit systems (provided systems don't use dates from before 1970) and continue along for an extra seven decades.
If we just make ints 64 bits we won't need to clean up such brokenness. Of course there is still 64-bit uncleanness (stuff that assumes sizeof(int) == 4), but that will have to be fixed regardless.
As an example: Why did Id Software release a Linux version of Q3A after the Windows version had been out for quite some time? A majority of their targeted user base were Windows users.
IIRC, the early test versions were actually released for Linux first.
The full release for both OSs was actually released at the same time (Mac might've been out at the same time too, I don't recall). However, there were problems actually getting the Linux version because it comes in a fancy tin box and the availability of that box was not so good.
Also, there were problems in that many of the retail outlets simply didn't stock the Linux version. As you said, "A majority of their targeted user base were Windows users". Id software, however, seems to be very interested in Linux.
Okay, I'm no CPU architecture expert, so take this with salt...
Some things really do need to churn more bits to be efficient. I know a bit about crypto, and 64-bit processors help a lot there. Bigint ops, as used with RSA and the various ECC flavours, should faster on 64-bit CPUs. Rijndael will be faster with 64 bits, IIRC. The new SHA-384/512 hash algorithm is clearly designed for 64-bit processors and is inefficient in 32 bits. The machines we have now may be fine for GPG and SSH, but how many SSL-encrypted micropayments per second are you going to want your server to handle?
Address space. 32 bits can address at most 4 gigs. I realize address space can be increased independantly of the rest of the processor (IIRC there is already a way to handle >4GB), but when dealing with pointers I think it is better to have them able to fit in a CPU register. Otherwise you eventually end up having to make differentiations a la "near" and "far" (I think).
Each MOV accomplishes twice as much.
Force people to upgrade their "obsolete" 32-bit systems. If people don't spend their money the economy will collapse, right?
I'm hoping someone'll do a price/performance comparason of the assorted 64 bit chips on the market that will run Linux. I'm also hoping it'll push 64 bit processor prices down a bit.
I'm not a very demanding fellow. I just want 64-bit systems to be everywhere before 32-bit time_t overflows in 2039.
Personally, I think it's gonna be tight. We've been hearing about 64-bit for a long time now and yet most of us are still stuck with 32-bit.
And I really hope MS moves their OS from 32->64 in less time than it took them to go 16->32. Wasn't the 80386 released some time around 1987? Past experience suggests that the "fully 64-bit" Windows 2015 will still run some 32-bit code under the hood.
I guess this means the P4 will have DeCSS in microcode.;)
Re:Deliberately spoiling
on
eLection '04
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· Score: 2
1- It seems a dumb-ass form of protest since the assumption seems to be that spoiled ballots are the result of idiots who shouldn't be allowed to ote anyway.
It's better than sitting at home and being counted as just another citizen who doesn't give a damn. A large number of spoiled ballots would at least get some attention. Lots of them would raise the question of whether votes were being counted properly (during the Quebec referrendum it was alleged that, in some "Non"-leaning regions, the vote counters were told to find any excuse they could to discard a ballot as spoiled). It could force a recount, which if done deliberately would be a real "fuck you" to the system.
2- Under my scheme, you could protest by marking all the races as 'Abstain'.
AFAICS currently the only way to "abstain" is to stay at home. If you dislike all of the candidates, your only options are to vote for someone you don't want to vote for (implicit acceptance of the system), stay at home (abstaining by apathy), or you could spoil your ballot in protest.
Re:If our county can afford to do it right...
on
eLection '04
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· Score: 2
You get a sheet of names (in large print) with an oval right next to the name which you darken with a marker. But more importantly, as I found out from the guy right in front of me, if you mismark your ballot (say by marking 2 presidential slates) the machine will not accept the ballot. The election official voided his ballot and gave him a new one.
I thought that deliberately spoiling a ballot was a recognized form of protest. You can't do that where you live?
I really don't like the idea of feeding a ballot to a machine. Consider: Shadowy figure (one of many, depending on how busy your polling station is) takes note of your name when you confirm that you are on the voter's list and receive your ballot. You go into your private and secure polling booth, write down your secret X, then feed your ballot into a machine. The machine then, by design or by accidental tempest-style emissions, sends a signal to the shadowy figure who then marks down on his list who you voted for.
The last time I voted (I don't recall if it was federal (Canada) or provincial (B.C.)) the process involved a piece of paper, a pen to mark an X, and a cardboard box to put it in to. A cardboard box is generally simple to understand- you don't need to reverse-engineer a bunch of computer chips to verify that it isn't doing anything nefarious.
This concern about shadowy figures marking down your vote may seem like paranoia, but it really isn't. Many governments of the world have been known to try very hard to identify who is voting for whom. Generally, the harder they try, the less you should want them to succeed. Any change in the system that makes the task possible/easier should be viewed with deep suspicion, IMHO.
Things got physical on a number of occasions, and each time the "jocks" lost, but also, as it was explained and the situation was complete self defence the teachers dealt more harshly.
Consider yourself fortunate. You saw some measure of justice. Most geeks never do, which is where half of the bitterness comes from.
Now as I look back and hear about the people I went to school with, some have grown and are quite likeable, whereas others have gone completely the other way and have gone to jail, or O.D.'ed, or even worse blame the rest of the world for their problems and their situation in life. And this is what I see happening here on slashdot. A whole lot of people who complain about how crap it was to be bullied and that morons the "jocks" are, when it seems that you just have not grown out of being the victim.
The Hellmouth series really has been a coup for Slashdot. The one thing geeks share in common more deeply than a love of technology is the feeling of being ostracized. The hellmouth series has given us all a place to share our pain. And more importantly, to wallow in self-pity. Everybody who has self-pity has a perverse desire to wallow in it for some reason. I don't know why, even though I'm just as big an offender as anyone. But regardless of the reason why I'm sure it has generated a lot of banner views for/. You can bet this isn't the last time we'll see the hellmouth posts here.
What really bugs me is the way we are unable to see our former oppressors as fellow human beings. I find the "laughing all the way to the bank" attitudes in many of these posts to be truely shallow (and I hope to join in RSN:/ ). Shallow in exactly the way we have accused others of being. The elitist "geeks are better than jocks" undertone that permeates the whole discussion is the worst of all, no matter how true it might be.
The way the formerly oppressed take on the views of their oppressors makes me wonder if the former oppressors were oppressed in the same way. That is, oppression is a recursive function. Maybe by their parents, maybe by the older kids when they were younger... I don't know. But they are human beings, and I can't believe that all of the cruelty that we have seen is truely intentional, just as we geeks don't really intend to be shallow and elitist.
Truth is, Microsoft has every right to do such an audit. Even MS is painfully aware how much their software is pirated every day, and especially larger companies or organizations are prone to buy, say, a 1000-station license when they really have over 5000 stations. Microsoft is a business, they are out to make money, and if something is denying them legitimately of their money, then power to them for enforcing their own licenses!
So can the FSF go to MS and say "Show us your source code so that we can audit it and determine whether or not you're using GPL software in violation of our licensing agreement"?
FSF may not be out to make money, but that's entirely beside the point. The GPL is just as valid and legally binding as any MS license, and if anyone is violating the GPL, then power to the FSF for enforcing that license.
I had a meeting with The Dean of Student Affairs later and told him that I thought it was pretty crappy that they accused me basically because they knew I was a geek. He told me "thats what I get for being on the edge of technology".
Any sufficiently advanced technology looks like magic. In effect, we are modern-day "witches". Fortunately curcumstances today are such that we aren't burned at the stake right away - people tolerate us because we make their stuff work. When their stuff stops working they go back to piling up the tinder.
I was getting errors trying to connect through @Home, so I set up a script to ping and log the DSN and Gateway servers.
I did something similar. I set mine up to ping the primary nameserver. I ran this command from a loop, 100 times: `ping -c 100 -i 10 the.server.address | tail -2 >> pinglog.txt`. Result? Most of the runs had low packet loss (0-3 %) but the two highest were 14% and 16%. Both times were between 6 and 7 PM on seperate days. That's pretty high considering it's only two hops away. Rogers@home here in BC, Canada.
I would love to switch ADSL. After two months on the waiting list I got an email (from Telus, the local telephone monopoly) that there are ports available in limited supply. I've been trying to call the number they gave me several times a day ever since. Every time I get the message "We are currently experiencing high call volume. Please hang up and try your call again later." That's right, not "please hold", but "please hang up". Just out of curiosity I tried selecting the "I am already an ADSL subscriber" option from the voice menu. I got the same "please hang up" message, only in a different voice. Given this, I'm not so sure ADSL is such a wise choice here given the current service environment.:(
I'm glad I at least have cable access. Where I was living before (a small town) 33.6 was the best we could get.
So I dunno. It has been said: "Electrons are timid little things, and notional; you have to show them who is in charge." I don't know enough to offer any rational explaination of it; for all I can tell the grooves the bits travel in had to get re-worn... Ya know, like a well banked curve on a back road: when they change the pavement the ruts soon drift to a new spot depending on the new max speed for the curve.
I don't know either, but the reason I've heard for burn-in is that "the dopants need to stabilize". Whatever that means.
Slashdot Mirror
Okay, two questions...
1: (not FTL, but I'm curious)
Suppose you have a particle that has a 50% chance of changing state after time T. Actually, suppose you have two such particles, identical, entangled. (I may be talking out of my ass here- I don't know if particles can degrade like atoms do or if entanglement can work at the scale of a whole atom. IANAP.)
One particle goes on a near-lightspeed journey and comes back. The other particle doesn't. Time dialation applies. The age of the travelling particle is less than T, while the age of the particle that stayed home is greater than T.
So when you measure one of the entangled particles, is the probability that the particles have changed state higher or lower than 50%? Does it matter which one you measure? Is it even possible to send only one of the particles on a two-way trip without breaking the entanglement?
2:
Suppose you want to send one bit of information to Alpha Centauri. You need it to get there FTL. Fortunately, the Grays have a space station roughly half-way between Alpha Centauri and Earth - but slightly closer to Earth - that regularly sends out a pair of entangled particles, one to Earth and the other to Alpha Centauri, at the speed of light (or as close to it as possible).
One of these entangled particles reaches Earth. You measure either it's momentum or it's position, depending on whether you want to send a 0 bit or a 1 bit. Shortly thereafter, the other entangled particle reaches Alpha Centauri, where they attempt to measure it's position.
According to the uncertainty principle, the more you know about a particle's momentum the less you know about it's position, and vice versa. If you've measured one entangled particle's position, the good folks at Alpha Centauri should have no trouble also measuring it's position, right? On the other hand, if you've measured it's momentum, the other guys shouldn't be able to measure their particle's position, right? If it is possible for the folks at Alpha Centauri to determine whether or not the measurement was successful then they have received a bit of information from you that traveled at just under twice the speed of light. I suppose it is not possible for the folks on Alpha Centauri to determine whether or not the measurement was successful? Would they just get a measurement and be unable to determine it's accuracy?
My company has 3 CPOs! But I can't figure out how they are all able to fit into that one gold-coloured suit.
Actually, that looks a lot like the BSD ports system. Except with BSD ports all you do is something like this:
cd /usr/ports/category/program
make install
The fetch/extract/configure/build is all handled automatically.
With the C64 it was common convention to prefix hexadecimal numbers with a $ instead of the now more common "0x". So $600 was decimal 1536. A location which, if you (POKE|ST[AXY])'ed it, you could make a character appear at a certain place on the text screen. That's because $0400-$07E7 (inclusive) was by default used to store the 40x25 text screen. The colour information was stored elsewhere though, at $D800-$DBE7. After the screen memory was a few bytes related to the eight graphic sprites (but you had to poke at the video chip registers in the $D000 range to actually make the sprites appear). And right after that came $0800, which was the start of BASIC program memory space, which extended all the way up to $A000 (which was the start of the BASIC interpreter ROM unless you fiddled with $0001 to unmask the RAM that was there). That's 38912 bytes, which when you exclude the zero byte at $0800 gives you the "38911" in the "38911 BASIC BYTES FREE." message that appeared when you turned the computer on.
Just a little arcane knowledge I thought I would share.
Checking to see if doors and windows are locked normally requires an attempt to open them. That is often used as an analogy for portscans, but I really don't like it- Trying to open windows and doors is an attempt to gain access, but portscanning is purely informational.
A portscan is more like looking at a building, seeing where the doors and windows are, and maybe reading the make and model from the doors, windows, and locks. The "trying windows and doors to see if they're unlocked" analogy would be better applied to running actual exploits against a machine.
Am I crazy, or does that have implications for long-term space flight?
Other parts of the article touched on that: It's because of the GUI dragging things down to the caveman level.
Outside of North America, Linux use is considerably higher. Using Linux and other *nix OSes tends to encourage understanding, because the nuts-and-bolts are more visible.
Reading between the lines, the interviewee seems to be suggesting that the nations that are currently the most high-tech could eventually lose that edge because of their dependance on expensive (>$0) point-and-drool software, and that the Linux-loving people in the second-world countries will produce free software to drive out the evil MicroSoft corporation, and all will live happily ever after under some post-industrial economic model. Or something.
Maybe the web has peaked, or maybe not- My first thought was at the web peaked years ago, but I can't really think of any specific time, which maybe suggests that it hasn't peaked yet after all.
The Internet definately has not peaked.
Just look at P2P. Napster use is huge, even though it's a very single-use system. And there is lots more development that can be done with P2P. I think we've just seen the beginning there.
And who knows what will be the next thing after P2P?
People assume the Internet == WWW. Even people who know better make that mistake once in a while, if only briefly. But we do know better, right?
It's long been known that it is possible to implement a Turing machine in Life, because it is possible to implement AND and OR logic gates.
Wake me up when they program the Turing machine itself to run Life. :)
They have. I remember looking at the FTP binary in Windows 95 (B or earlier) and seeing BSD copyright strings. Lots of the networking utilities (ftp, ping, netstat, route...) function very similarly to the Unix versions, right down to the command line options. Imagine my suprise the first time I accidentally typed a netstat command at a C: prompt and it actually worked. :) I think the TCP/IP stack is even BSD-derived (if true, I don't think it's a secret).
Not once have I seen the obligatory "This product includes software developed by the University of California, Berkeley and its contributors." message in any Microsoft OS-related advertising, even before the advertising clause was withdrawn. Of course it's a moot point now.
Expect Linux stuff to be included in MS OSes. They couldn't call themselves "innovative" if they stole from the same schmuck every time, could they? :P
Because we have several hundred years' experience with the several hundred year old technology. That technology and its consequences are relatively well-understood (for example, we now know not to cross-breed american honey bees with african ones :). We know a lot less about GMOs.
Looks like they are now filtering pings (forgive them, they probably had no choice). Also, the web page times out when I try to access it.
Slashdotted.
Except FDIV was fixed long before the MMX was out. It looks like they got confused and thought there was only one bug when there were two.
Intel has made so many slipups it's hard to keep track. :)
Some software assumes time_t is int. If that were not the case, we could simply define time_t as unsigned int on 32-bit systems (provided systems don't use dates from before 1970) and continue along for an extra seven decades.
If we just make ints 64 bits we won't need to clean up such brokenness. Of course there is still 64-bit uncleanness (stuff that assumes sizeof(int) == 4), but that will have to be fixed regardless.
IIRC, the early test versions were actually released for Linux first.
The full release for both OSs was actually released at the same time (Mac might've been out at the same time too, I don't recall). However, there were problems actually getting the Linux version because it comes in a fancy tin box and the availability of that box was not so good.
Also, there were problems in that many of the retail outlets simply didn't stock the Linux version. As you said, "A majority of their targeted user base were Windows users". Id software, however, seems to be very interested in Linux.
Okay, I'm no CPU architecture expert, so take this with salt...
I'm not a very demanding fellow. I just want 64-bit systems to be everywhere before 32-bit time_t overflows in 2039.
Personally, I think it's gonna be tight. We've been hearing about 64-bit for a long time now and yet most of us are still stuck with 32-bit.
And I really hope MS moves their OS from 32->64 in less time than it took them to go 16->32. Wasn't the 80386 released some time around 1987? Past experience suggests that the "fully 64-bit" Windows 2015 will still run some 32-bit code under the hood.
I guess this means the P4 will have DeCSS in microcode. ;)
It's better than sitting at home and being counted as just another citizen who doesn't give a damn. A large number of spoiled ballots would at least get some attention. Lots of them would raise the question of whether votes were being counted properly (during the Quebec referrendum it was alleged that, in some "Non"-leaning regions, the vote counters were told to find any excuse they could to discard a ballot as spoiled). It could force a recount, which if done deliberately would be a real "fuck you" to the system.
AFAICS currently the only way to "abstain" is to stay at home. If you dislike all of the candidates, your only options are to vote for someone you don't want to vote for (implicit acceptance of the system), stay at home (abstaining by apathy), or you could spoil your ballot in protest.
I thought that deliberately spoiling a ballot was a recognized form of protest. You can't do that where you live?
I really don't like the idea of feeding a ballot to a machine. Consider: Shadowy figure (one of many, depending on how busy your polling station is) takes note of your name when you confirm that you are on the voter's list and receive your ballot. You go into your private and secure polling booth, write down your secret X, then feed your ballot into a machine. The machine then, by design or by accidental tempest-style emissions, sends a signal to the shadowy figure who then marks down on his list who you voted for.
The last time I voted (I don't recall if it was federal (Canada) or provincial (B.C.)) the process involved a piece of paper, a pen to mark an X, and a cardboard box to put it in to. A cardboard box is generally simple to understand- you don't need to reverse-engineer a bunch of computer chips to verify that it isn't doing anything nefarious.
This concern about shadowy figures marking down your vote may seem like paranoia, but it really isn't. Many governments of the world have been known to try very hard to identify who is voting for whom. Generally, the harder they try, the less you should want them to succeed. Any change in the system that makes the task possible/easier should be viewed with deep suspicion, IMHO.
Consider yourself fortunate. You saw some measure of justice. Most geeks never do, which is where half of the bitterness comes from.
The Hellmouth series really has been a coup for Slashdot. The one thing geeks share in common more deeply than a love of technology is the feeling of being ostracized. The hellmouth series has given us all a place to share our pain. And more importantly, to wallow in self-pity. Everybody who has self-pity has a perverse desire to wallow in it for some reason. I don't know why, even though I'm just as big an offender as anyone. But regardless of the reason why I'm sure it has generated a lot of banner views for /. You can bet this isn't the last time we'll see the hellmouth posts here.
What really bugs me is the way we are unable to see our former oppressors as fellow human beings. I find the "laughing all the way to the bank" attitudes in many of these posts to be truely shallow (and I hope to join in RSN :/ ). Shallow in exactly the way we have accused others of being. The elitist "geeks are better than jocks" undertone that permeates the whole discussion is the worst of all, no matter how true it might be.
The way the formerly oppressed take on the views of their oppressors makes me wonder if the former oppressors were oppressed in the same way. That is, oppression is a recursive function. Maybe by their parents, maybe by the older kids when they were younger... I don't know. But they are human beings, and I can't believe that all of the cruelty that we have seen is truely intentional, just as we geeks don't really intend to be shallow and elitist.
We become what we hate, because we hate.
So can the FSF go to MS and say "Show us your source code so that we can audit it and determine whether or not you're using GPL software in violation of our licensing agreement"?
FSF may not be out to make money, but that's entirely beside the point. The GPL is just as valid and legally binding as any MS license, and if anyone is violating the GPL, then power to the FSF for enforcing that license.
Right?
Any sufficiently advanced technology looks like magic. In effect, we are modern-day "witches". Fortunately curcumstances today are such that we aren't burned at the stake right away - people tolerate us because we make their stuff work. When their stuff stops working they go back to piling up the tinder.
Be careful out there.
I did something similar. I set mine up to ping the primary nameserver. I ran this command from a loop, 100 times: `ping -c 100 -i 10 the.server.address | tail -2 >> pinglog.txt`. Result? Most of the runs had low packet loss (0-3 %) but the two highest were 14% and 16%. Both times were between 6 and 7 PM on seperate days. That's pretty high considering it's only two hops away. Rogers@home here in BC, Canada.
I would love to switch ADSL. After two months on the waiting list I got an email (from Telus, the local telephone monopoly) that there are ports available in limited supply. I've been trying to call the number they gave me several times a day ever since. Every time I get the message "We are currently experiencing high call volume. Please hang up and try your call again later." That's right, not "please hold", but "please hang up". Just out of curiosity I tried selecting the "I am already an ADSL subscriber" option from the voice menu. I got the same "please hang up" message, only in a different voice. Given this, I'm not so sure ADSL is such a wise choice here given the current service environment. :(
I'm glad I at least have cable access. Where I was living before (a small town) 33.6 was the best we could get.
I don't know either, but the reason I've heard for burn-in is that "the dopants need to stabilize". Whatever that means.