Slashdot sez: "The article goes too much into glorifying one person's success with spam, while failing to underscore the potential problems he has caused for others."
The article sez: "Once merely an annoyance, junk e-mail is quickly reaching epidemic proportions in cyberspace. Billions of such messages regularly crisscross the Internet, pitching everything from herbal remedies to X-rated websites.
The growing flood of e-mail advertising has crashed Internet servers, clogged connections and cost business untold hours of wasted employee time. It has also forced millions of bleary-eyed Internet users to undertake the seemingly endless chore of clearing the electronic clutter from their in-box.
Attempts to stop the surge have met with little success. Meanwhile, with each new message, spam comes closer to threatening e-mail's future as an effective conduit for personal and business communication."
Business is a way to encorage development in society and technology, it is not a goal in itself.
Actually, business is nothing more than an institution that feeds everyone in the developed world their proverbial "mother's milk." Your description of business is better suited to a communist society than a capitalist one.
I got an m100 about a year ago to replace my IIIe whose screen had cracked in a fall. The most attractive things to me about the m100 over other handhelds at that time: 1. Very inexpensive. $100 after a rebate. 2. Smaller than my old IIIe. 3. New version of Palm OS with native IR HotSync capability (for my laptop. With the IIIe, I had to use HackMaster to reroute data from the serial port to the IR port, and had to install some Serial IR drivers in W2K, but it worked fine.) 4. Nifty date/time button (up) that can be pushed when the cover is down.
However, almost immediately I began having problems with the device losing memory. I would sync it one morning and by the time I got back from classes to have lunch, it would not turn on at all, and after resetting it, the memory was cleared. I tried all sorts of things to fix it: 1. Left it on my desk instead of taking it with me (maybe the shaking-about it got in my pocket was shorting something). Same problem. 2. Putting my keys in another pocket. Perhaps they were shorting the contacts for the HotSync port on the bottom of the device (although that would be pretty bad design on Palm's part). No luck. 3. New batteries. After a while, I noticed that this problem also caused the batteries to show a very low level after resetting, which recovered somewhat after a few minutes... so maybe it was being left on somehow.
This problem was never resolved. It still does this sporadically, so I am reduced to entering all data on the PC and HotSyncing very regularly and not trusting the device to store important information.
Now, the physical buttons have lost their sensitivity. I have to press the buttons VERY hard for them to contact.
The screen flip-cover is also very cheap, especially compared to the IIIe's. It is flimsy (sways side to side) and it's made of plastic that's too flexible.
I suppose you could say that I got what I paid for. However, I'm an optimist, so I see it this way: I'm glad I didn't pay more than I did for the screwed-up little handheld; I'm not buying from Palm again.
I'm a sophomore CpE at Virginia Tech and I was recently given quite the scare by my OOP (CS dept.) professor when I told him that I had inadvertently neglected to include an "honor pledge" in my first two programming projects. This honor pledge looks like:
// PLEDGE // On my honor: // // - I have not discussed the C++ language code in my program with // anyone other than my instructor or the teaching assistants // assigned to this course. // // - I have not used C++ language code obtained from another student, // or any other unauthorized source, either modified or unmodified. // // - If any C++ language code or documentation used in my program // was obtained from another source, such as a text book or course // notes, that has been clearly noted with a proper citation in // the comments of my program. // // - I have not designed this program in such a way as to defeat or // interfere with the normal operation of the Curator System.
(the "Curator System" is the automated online submission/grading system)
The reason I got a big scare is because the policy that I had overlooked stated "Failure to include this pledge in a submission is a violation of the Honor Code." There are many problems with such a policy. The first: at Virginia Tech, the signing of honor pledges is meaningless under our honor system because every student is required to sign a general-purpose pledge that applies to everything at VT before they take a single class. That is, it's redundant to sign or agree to further agreements pertaining to the honor code. The other problem is the guilty-until-proven-innocent nature of the statement. As if a student would cheat, and then say, "hmmm, since I cheated, I guess I won't be needing this honor pledge up here in my comment header... no siiree." Give me a break. Further, the CS dept. here is very anal, requiring students to sign a page-long course agreement form stating that we have read, are familar with, and have agreed to pages and pages of policy for the course, the CS department, and the Curator System. Also, one of the professors teaching OOP is exceedingly disrespectful towards students, and is the closest real-life comparison I have to Saturday Night Live's "Nick Burns, Your Company's Computer Guy," with a true superiority complex.
Give him a break. They probably haven't yet discovered this innovative method of swinging wherever he comes from. (Maybe they just swing forwards and backwards in Taiwan.)
Anyone else out there think pumping large numbers of mutant insects into the environment might be a bad idea?
No, I don't. In entomological circles, this is known as autocidal insect pest control. It is considered very environmentally-sound because it is targeted at only the pest species; there isn't any "collateral damage." It is also more effective and safer than other modern insect pest control methods such as chemicals, which while safe, are ineffective in the long run as insects adapt to resist the pesticide.
What worries me more is not the immediate methodology, but the potential long-term effects on the food chain. Dipteran maggots are players in decomposition processes, and the flies themselves could be a major source of food for certain species of bird. However, considering the human diseases that the tsetse flies vector, and their annoying effect on livestock (yes, this is actually an issue; a goat with flies all over its head won't produce as much milk due to stress), it's a good thing (Martha Stewart might agree).
When a country has found itself being spied on like this, it is far less likely that they will lash out at the perpetrating nation. Rather, they will be upset with their own people who allowed the lapse in security. That countries will attempt to spy on others is a given nowadays; it's not an act of war or an aggressive thing. I can just imagine China's leadership: "Oh, those sly Americans are still up to their clever tricks. Now who's the dead man who fucked up and let it happen?"
Virginia Tech has a project within the ongoing Virtual Corporation class called PERTS that sounds just like this and has probably been around as long as this project in the UK (http://www.perts.ece.vt.edu). Does anyone know if there's a connection between the two?
"Yeah, that'll work"? What do you mean by that, CmdrTaco? Is it sarcasm? Are you saying that laws drafted to enforce software security are bound to failure because software security is inherently difficult and all-to-easy to overlook? In that case, shouldn't Microsoft be cut a little slack for their recent security shortcomings by this standard? Oh, my bad. Microsoft == bad. I forgot I was reading/.
A very similar story was on/. about a year ago. You know, the pepople in charge of posting stories to/. should know the site's history as well or better than the average reader (me).
It's extremely unfair for Timothy to challenge Blacksburg's claim to "Most Wired Town." First of all, the "Town" part of that title is important. How many other towns with less than 50,000 residents, 40 minutes away from the nearest large city (Roanoke in the case of Blacksburg), have above-average availability of DSL and cable modems? Blacksburg does. How many comparable towns have ethernet lines in every bedroom of all the major apartment complexes as a standard utility? Blacksburg does. How many towns, college towns included, have been on the cutting edge of Internet technology and accessibility since the beginning? Blacksburg has. It started with the Blacksburg Electronic Villiage (BEV), a joint venture between the Town and Virginia Tech, and even giving the recent shortcomings of BEV, the whole community deserves a lot more credit than its getting. Blacksburg is a self-sustained island of technology-minded and cosmopolitan residents in the southwestern-Virginia sea of rednecks and racist Confederate wannabes. It has been a model for technology proliferation, and it will continue to be one.
He said "Construx." Construx are similar to Connex in that they have clips rather than the Lego-like pegs. However, as cool as Construx are, they are very weak. They are prone to breaking because the beam cross sections are squares with one edge missing. It's also difficult to make anything with Construx that involves anything other than right-angles.
Something I've often thought about in regards to Isreal is just how much in common it has with the United States. Both think they are holier (and perhaps are) than every country around them, both have very well-trained militaries (which wouldn't mean much for Israel if they didn't have the arms provided by the US), both suffer from internal racial/religious conflict (gentrification in the US, genocide in Israel), etc. (We could go even farther to say that both were established by racial/religious unwanteds. The US was founded by Puritans, anabaptists, Irish, along with all the others. Israel was founded by survivors of the Holocaust in a bid to reclaim the ancient homeland of the Jewish tribes.) I'll even sometimes jocularly refer to Israel as a Mini-US.
That said, here we have an Israel that has tested and deployed an ABM "shield" in a country so geographically small that, if the opportunity arose, it could be overrun by tanks from neighboring countries to the east in less time than it takes to watch an episode of your favorite cartoon.
Israel is in a far worse situation than the US and they've created a missle shield BECAUSE THEY NEED ONE. They have a history of attacks from all sides. The Iraqis bombed them from afar with conventionally-equipped Scuds and just as easily with nukes (if Saddam had them at the time). The US, on the other hand, has not fought a war on its own soil against a foreign foe since its War of Independence (called the Revolutionary War by some) (I'm excluding the Spanish-American War, here, as only certain battles were fought on land that was only transiently US).
In closing, we don't have any especially strong enemies. Nothing at all like the Cold War. We are living in Pax Americana today. Bush's attempts to bolster our military against certain possible future enemies is counterproductive to the pursuit of peace and foolish, as is his style. Besides that, fabricating an enemy to satiate your followers is such an old, easy, and undoubtedly follysome idea that Bush should be laughed at for even employing it.
"Well, I'm posting this because apparently everyone and their brother has decided to submit it. But, well, yeah. It's a compression codec. That crap shouldn't be patentable in the first place. Of course, in the US you can patent math."
CmdrTaco, this is yet another link in your chain of imbecilic statements on Slashdot. VA Linux should promptly fire you for your lack of common sense.
First of all, why the hell aren't codecs patentable? The most certainly are, considering the amount of R&D that goes into them. Complex mathematical transforms, highly efficient software code, and clever use of "compressable" aspects of the media stream go into every new compression codec that's made. Microsoft stole this technology from AT&T, like they steal dozens of other things from the businesses around them (life, liberty, and happiness to name a few), and they deserve to lose horribly in a settlement or in court.
CmdrTaco, go home.
(Also: CmdrTaco seems to have a sort of "post-and-forget" and "forget-and-post" MO going here. The former relates to the fact that he almost never reads and contributes the reply posts on the articles he starts. The latter relates to the fact that he forgets all simple judgement as in the realm of reality right before he decides to make some brainless comment about the issue at hand.)
Slashdot Mirror
Slashdot sez: "The article goes too much into glorifying one person's success with spam, while failing to underscore the potential problems he has caused for others."
The article sez: "Once merely an annoyance, junk e-mail is quickly reaching epidemic proportions in cyberspace. Billions of such messages regularly crisscross the Internet, pitching everything from herbal remedies to X-rated websites.
The growing flood of e-mail advertising has crashed Internet servers, clogged connections and cost business untold hours of wasted employee time. It has also forced millions of bleary-eyed Internet users to undertake the seemingly endless chore of clearing the electronic clutter from their in-box.
Attempts to stop the surge have met with little success. Meanwhile, with each new message, spam comes closer to threatening e-mail's future as an effective conduit for personal and business communication."
Did you READ the article?
Business is a way to encorage development in society and technology, it is not a goal in itself.
Actually, business is nothing more than an institution that feeds everyone in the developed world their proverbial "mother's milk." Your description of business is better suited to a communist society than a capitalist one.
I got an m100 about a year ago to replace my IIIe whose screen had cracked in a fall. The most attractive things to me about the m100 over other handhelds at that time:
1. Very inexpensive. $100 after a rebate.
2. Smaller than my old IIIe.
3. New version of Palm OS with native IR HotSync capability (for my laptop. With the IIIe, I had to use HackMaster to reroute data from the serial port to the IR port, and had to install some Serial IR drivers in W2K, but it worked fine.)
4. Nifty date/time button (up) that can be pushed when the cover is down.
However, almost immediately I began having problems with the device losing memory. I would sync it one morning and by the time I got back from classes to have lunch, it would not turn on at all, and after resetting it, the memory was cleared. I tried all sorts of things to fix it:
1. Left it on my desk instead of taking it with me (maybe the shaking-about it got in my pocket was shorting something). Same problem.
2. Putting my keys in another pocket. Perhaps they were shorting the contacts for the HotSync port on the bottom of the device (although that would be pretty bad design on Palm's part). No luck.
3. New batteries. After a while, I noticed that this problem also caused the batteries to show a very low level after resetting, which recovered somewhat after a few minutes... so maybe it was being left on somehow.
This problem was never resolved. It still does this sporadically, so I am reduced to entering all data on the PC and HotSyncing very regularly and not trusting the device to store important information.
Now, the physical buttons have lost their sensitivity. I have to press the buttons VERY hard for them to contact.
The screen flip-cover is also very cheap, especially compared to the IIIe's. It is flimsy (sways side to side) and it's made of plastic that's too flexible.
I suppose you could say that I got what I paid for. However, I'm an optimist, so I see it this way: I'm glad I didn't pay more than I did for the screwed-up little handheld; I'm not buying from Palm again.
"aboard a Cosmos 1 rocket." No, the name of the mission and the solar sail craft itself is "Cosmos 1," not the rocket.
Is this really as obvious as I think it is?
I'm a sophomore CpE at Virginia Tech and I was recently given quite the scare by my OOP (CS dept.) professor when I told him that I had inadvertently neglected to include an "honor pledge" in my first two programming projects. This honor pledge looks like:
// PLEDGE
// On my honor:
//
// - I have not discussed the C++ language code in my program with
// anyone other than my instructor or the teaching assistants
// assigned to this course.
//
// - I have not used C++ language code obtained from another student,
// or any other unauthorized source, either modified or unmodified.
//
// - If any C++ language code or documentation used in my program
// was obtained from another source, such as a text book or course
// notes, that has been clearly noted with a proper citation in
// the comments of my program.
//
// - I have not designed this program in such a way as to defeat or
// interfere with the normal operation of the Curator System.
(the "Curator System" is the automated online submission/grading system)
The reason I got a big scare is because the policy that I had overlooked stated "Failure to include this pledge in a submission is a violation of the Honor Code." There are many problems with such a policy. The first: at Virginia Tech, the signing of honor pledges is meaningless under our honor system because every student is required to sign a general-purpose pledge that applies to everything at VT before they take a single class. That is, it's redundant to sign or agree to further agreements pertaining to the honor code. The other problem is the guilty-until-proven-innocent nature of the statement. As if a student would cheat, and then say, "hmmm, since I cheated, I guess I won't be needing this honor pledge up here in my comment header... no siiree." Give me a break. Further, the CS dept. here is very anal, requiring students to sign a page-long course agreement form stating that we have read, are familar with, and have agreed to pages and pages of policy for the course, the CS department, and the Curator System. Also, one of the professors teaching OOP is exceedingly disrespectful towards students, and is the closest real-life comparison I have to Saturday Night Live's "Nick Burns, Your Company's Computer Guy," with a true superiority complex.
http://slashdot.org/~rho/journal/5872
Give him a break. They probably haven't yet discovered this innovative method of swinging wherever he comes from. (Maybe they just swing forwards and backwards in Taiwan.)
Jesus, man. Chill out. Stop being so paranoid.
No, I don't. In entomological circles, this is known as autocidal insect pest control. It is considered very environmentally-sound because it is targeted at only the pest species; there isn't any "collateral damage." It is also more effective and safer than other modern insect pest control methods such as chemicals, which while safe, are ineffective in the long run as insects adapt to resist the pesticide.
What worries me more is not the immediate methodology, but the potential long-term effects on the food chain. Dipteran maggots are players in decomposition processes, and the flies themselves could be a major source of food for certain species of bird. However, considering the human diseases that the tsetse flies vector, and their annoying effect on livestock (yes, this is actually an issue; a goat with flies all over its head won't produce as much milk due to stress), it's a good thing (Martha Stewart might agree).
That's a tremendous waste of a computer. If that's all you're doing, you might as well use a network appliance for a firewall.
When a country has found itself being spied on like this, it is far less likely that they will lash out at the perpetrating nation. Rather, they will be upset with their own people who allowed the lapse in security. That countries will attempt to spy on others is a given nowadays; it's not an act of war or an aggressive thing. I can just imagine China's leadership: "Oh, those sly Americans are still up to their clever tricks. Now who's the dead man who fucked up and let it happen?"
Virginia Tech has a project within the ongoing Virtual Corporation class called PERTS that sounds just like this and has probably been around as long as this project in the UK (http://www.perts.ece.vt.edu). Does anyone know if there's a connection between the two?
"Yeah, that'll work"? What do you mean by that, CmdrTaco? Is it sarcasm? Are you saying that laws drafted to enforce software security are bound to failure because software security is inherently difficult and all-to-easy to overlook? In that case, shouldn't Microsoft be cut a little slack for their recent security shortcomings by this standard? Oh, my bad. Microsoft == bad. I forgot I was reading /.
"a real RTS"? What do you mean by that? Are you saying that TA wasn't an RTS?
A very similar story was on /. about a year ago. You know, the pepople in charge of posting stories to /. should know the site's history as well or better than the average reader (me).
Copy rotection? CmdrTaco, I've said it before and I'll say it again; you are such an idiot.
Precisely. Read "The Gutenberg Elegies : The Fate of Reading in an Electronic Age" by Sven Birkerts. Great book.
(Go Hokies!)
He said "Construx." Construx are similar to Connex in that they have clips rather than the Lego-like pegs. However, as cool as Construx are, they are very weak. They are prone to breaking because the beam cross sections are squares with one edge missing. It's also difficult to make anything with Construx that involves anything other than right-angles.
You must mean, "Massachusetts, Minneapolis, California."
That said, here we have an Israel that has tested and deployed an ABM "shield" in a country so geographically small that, if the opportunity arose, it could be overrun by tanks from neighboring countries to the east in less time than it takes to watch an episode of your favorite cartoon.
Israel is in a far worse situation than the US and they've created a missle shield BECAUSE THEY NEED ONE. They have a history of attacks from all sides. The Iraqis bombed them from afar with conventionally-equipped Scuds and just as easily with nukes (if Saddam had them at the time). The US, on the other hand, has not fought a war on its own soil against a foreign foe since its War of Independence (called the Revolutionary War by some) (I'm excluding the Spanish-American War, here, as only certain battles were fought on land that was only transiently US).
In closing, we don't have any especially strong enemies. Nothing at all like the Cold War. We are living in Pax Americana today. Bush's attempts to bolster our military against certain possible future enemies is counterproductive to the pursuit of peace and foolish, as is his style. Besides that, fabricating an enemy to satiate your followers is such an old, easy, and undoubtedly follysome idea that Bush should be laughed at for even employing it.
Ditto, minus the sarcasm.
CmdrTaco, this is yet another link in your chain of imbecilic statements on Slashdot. VA Linux should promptly fire you for your lack of common sense.
First of all, why the hell aren't codecs patentable? The most certainly are, considering the amount of R&D that goes into them. Complex mathematical transforms, highly efficient software code, and clever use of "compressable" aspects of the media stream go into every new compression codec that's made. Microsoft stole this technology from AT&T, like they steal dozens of other things from the businesses around them (life, liberty, and happiness to name a few), and they deserve to lose horribly in a settlement or in court.
CmdrTaco, go home.
(Also: CmdrTaco seems to have a sort of "post-and-forget" and "forget-and-post" MO going here. The former relates to the fact that he almost never reads and contributes the reply posts on the articles he starts. The latter relates to the fact that he forgets all simple judgement as in the realm of reality right before he decides to make some brainless comment about the issue at hand.)