This is a little more blatant (and scary), but fundamentally similar. The problem (or, I should say, one of the many problems) with this sort of technology is that it can quickly go from "protect the kids" to "stalk the spouse" (as my link should make clear). Or worse: I suspect this could become quite popular among the pimp population, just to name an obvious example. (Of course, the pimps might need a non-panty version--like this new watch.) In fact, at the risk of Godwinning the discussion, I'll point out that this is ever so much more effective than yellow Star-of-David armbands!
But obviously all that's ok as long as we remember that we have to "think of the children"! Any amount of potential evil can be justified as long as you shout that mantra over and over.
(On the other hand, I suspect that trying to put a technology like this back in the bottle is probably futile, but it might not be a bad idea to start thinking about how we're going to deal with some of the more unpleasant consequences, rather than pretending that it's all hunky-dory because the label says "think of the children".)
XENIX was a SCO system. Yes, MS had a hand in its initial development, but it was supported and maintained by SCO for most of its existence.
And, of course, what happened to SCO means that there's pretty much zero chance of a revival. (Boy do I not miss fourteen-character filenames; almost as bad as DOS).
I'm not a Constitutional scholar or historian, but that seems like a pretty bizarre interpretation of those particular words. General welfare sounds more like it describes the general welfare of the country, and not just its mere existence. If they meant merely the continued existence, I would have thought they would have said "continued existence", or words to that effect. Remember, the this-is-just-a-mutual-defense-pact-of-individual-States approach had already been tried with the Articles of Confederation, and the US Constitution was a reaction to the perceived failure of that approach, which, to me, casts a lot of doubt on some of the more extreme Libertarian modern interpretations of that document. The problem is that a lot of people seem to see what they want to see in the Constitution, and I'm afraid you and I may both be among that number. Bottom line, though: there's a big difference between yelling "the Constitution doesn't allow anything like X!" (as extremists on both the left and right are wont to do) and saying, "I think that X is stretching the interpretation of the Constitution beyond what was intended, but I can see how you might disagree," which is what a reasonable person might say.
show me in the Constitution where the Gov can force me to have to pay for something that I don't want.
Um, how about section 8: "The Congress shall have power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States."
Of course, I realize that this goes against the received right-wing dogma that government's only legal powers are to bomb furriners, build a giant wall along the Mexican border, and to imprison "darkies" and non-christians and those who speak funny or have a University education, but the simple fact of the matter is that the Gov has a lot of leeway to act for the general benefit of its citizens. Reasonable people can (and do) disagree about how much leeway that single phrase provides, but only kooks and ignorant yokels (and paid mouthpieces of kooks) try to argue that the leeway doesn't exist. (Much like how only kooks and ignorant yokels on the other side try to argue that the second amendment isn't intended to provide the right to armed revolt).
Seriously, this is silly, because TFA is talking about re-imaging laptops before/after. That would imply malware/spyware being surreptitiously installed, but that won't change the weight directly.
Re-imaging the laptop if a hardware keylogger has been installed wouldn't have any effect either (but could possibly be detected by weighing).
So you're saying that weighing is silly because it won't protect against software keyloggers (would need to re-image), and re-imaging is silly because it won't protect against hardware keyloggers (would need to weigh to do that). Your conclusion is then that one should do neither (rather than the very obvious both)? Really?
Yeah, I don't wear a belt because suspenders are fully adequate, and I don't wear suspenders because a belt is good enough. Yet for some reason, my pants keep falling down.:)
You go on to point out that there are other attacks which can't be prevented or detected by weighing or re-imaging, which is a very valid point, but does that really mean one shouldn't bother doing anything at all? If you can't have perfection, just give up and kill yourself? If someone with the power and sway of the Chinese (or US) government really wants to get you, chances are they probably can, but if they're just looking for targets of opportunity that may prove useful, making yourself less of a target is probably a very good idea!
If you're going to consistently play faux-Latin, you might claim that your boxen have viri, but I can't think of any reason for ever typing "virii". That's like talking about octopii or hippopotamii.
I dunno, the keyboard on this one looks really crappy compared to the G1, which is what I have, and even with the G1 and ConnectBot, vi can be a bit awkward. If ssh support is really important, I would probably look at the HTC android phones or the N900 before this, but my opinion is mostly based on photographic evidence, so if anyone has hands-on evidence that contradicts my speculation, you should probably believe them over me.
Gmail, Google calendar, and GTalk are (of course) well-supported on Android. Dunno about VOIP (I barely use the phone features as it is).
Ssssh! You're going to spoil it! Just imagine a world where the intersection of the gullible and slashdot readers is easily identifiable by their blue color! That would be too cool!:)
There is no "continent of America". There are two continents, North America and South America, which are collectively referred to as "The Americas". "Americans" can refer to inhabitants of The Americas, but it is most commonly used to refer to citizens of the United States of America, which is, itself, pretty much the only entity ever referred to as "America" with no qualifiers.
But my post would have been funnier with the Solaris syntax.
Actually, it was charmingly ironic. Sun may have been a legend in its day, and Solaris may still have some nice features to counterbalance its many awful ones, but your average nerd still thinks that Linux is Unix at this point.
Which is the purpose of trademark law -- to protect the customer by allowing them to distinguish with whom they're doing business.
Except that Trademarks are basically limited to words, phrases, and specific images. A general overall look or style is frequently not trademarkable, in which case it can be protected by...get ready for it...a design patent!
(Classic example, the classic Coca Cola bottle, although that ended up being trademarked as well.)
On the other hand, a design patent on "bare-bones, undecorated", which this is dangerously close to being, seems a bit disingenuous to me, so I'm not exactly happy with this development. But it's still a completely different issue than what many are painting it to be.
Speaking as someone who started with SLS (the predecessor to Slackware), and had been using Unix for several years before that, and who now mainly uses Debian, Ubuntu and Red Hat, I have to say, no, I don't like Slackware. Don't hate it either, but life's too short to mess around with that crap.
On the other hand, I understand it just fine. I can build my own debs and rpms as well as tarballs, and, in fact, I frequently do. It's more work up front (and requires a much deeper understanding of the system than even just a simple Slack system), but I find it more-than pays off in the long run.
That said, I'm all in favor of people using what they want, and I think it's cool that Slackware is still going after all these years. I just wish that so many of its fans didn't display such a pathetic combination of ignorance and misplaced arrogance.
native code applications exist on the pre. the only thing that has to be created via html/javascript is the outer ui of the app.
Believe it or not, many thousands of Linux applications already have a UI, and very close to zero of them have their UI implemented in html/javascript. If the Pre can't use that existing UI, and thus those thousands of existing applications, then it's hardly a full distro.
I suppose that if someone were to write a full Xserver in html/javascript, then it could be argued that the Pre, at that point, could easily become a full distro, but until that happens (and I'm not holding my breath), the argument that the Pre is basically as crippled as Android seems fairly sound.
The fact that I can run a more-or-less unmodified Apache or Sendmail on my Pre is not a feature I find particularly useful or compelling, although I suppose it is, technically, an "advantage" of the Pre over Android.:)
That was the first thing I wanted to ask, but I'm also confused about the worm-with-arms part. I suppose that if it's going to tear off parts of its body to distract pursuers, a part that it doesn't have would be the least painful and easiest to regenerate--but surely also the least effective?
I freely admit that I didn't RTFA, but with a summary this bad, I can't tell if I'm even interested in R-ing TFA, so it's a tough call.:)
I guess you've never used an MS keyboard or mouse?
You mean an MS-branded keyboard or mouse? Yeah, they're pretty decent for the most part, though nothing I can't live without (Logitech still makes the best mice, IMO). Doesn't have much to do with MS in any case. It's not like your keyboard or mouse has a CPU or a bios.
The Zune is an awesome piece of hardware as well
I'm sure both the other Zune users will agree with you.:)
Just a quick note: being more reliable than the iPod doesn't necessarily make you the best, or even "awesome". I'm not a fan of the iPod, but there are plenty of other options available. Frankly, neither the Zune nor the iPod have ever made my short list when comparison-shopping.
Well, that's why I use flashblock (not adblock). Of course, the sites I hang out on are generally more likely to have ads targeted to my general interests (my t-shirt collection would be much smaller, for one), so I don't really want to block all ads, but flash ads are, I agree, too annoying to accept.
Maybe in a hundred years we'll know enough about the formation of stars, planets, and life to say with 95% certainty that there are between 2 and 20 civilizations currently alive in the galaxy.
Actually, those aren't the really problematic elements of Drake's equation. It's the ones about the probability of intelligent life evolving and the average lifespan of technical civilizations that mean that we cannot know the correct values to plug into Drake's equations until we either discover evidence of intelligent alien life (which will tend to make the whole question somewhat irrelevant) or thoroughly explore a statistically significant fraction of nearby stellar systems (so far we've only begun to explore one) for evidence of extinct civilizations, and even that latter could be subject to sample bias unless we also check some other regions of the galaxy to make sure the local arm isn't anomalous.
Until we do all that, answers ranging from 1 to hundreds of millions will remain equally plausible solutions to the equation. Nevertheless, the equation is, of course, still dead-on. It's just utterly useless for the purposes to which people try to apply it.
There's never been any war with a hundred year gap between the issuing of an order and the carrying out of that order.
There's never been any war with a hundred year gap between the declaration of war and the first joining of hostilities.
There's never been any war where troops have been sent out, and only arrived at the battle after the other side has had a hundred years to prepare (and develop better weapons).
The rant above assumes I have any interest in visiting sysadminday.com, but we'll gloss over that for the moment.:)
Sysadmins setup the web server to host www.sysadminday.com
A web server that was created by developers.
Sysadmins setup the networks that allow you to view www.sysadminday.com
If you mean the physical infrastructure, then no; otherwise, yes, using the software created by developers for that purpose.
Sysadmins protect your networks to make sure you're really viewing www.sysadminday.com
ITYM "try to protect", and again, using software created by developers.
Sysadmins make backups of www.sysadminday.com
By running scripts and applications created by developers (and hardware provided by...another kind of developers).
Sysadmins ensure there is no viruses on the www.sysadminday.com
ITYM "try to ensure", and again, using software created by developers, assuming that the sysadmins or their bosses were foolish enough to select virus-prone software in the first place. (Otherwise, they try to ensure it by selecting or installing systems which aren't virus-prone, the solution used by my company.)
Sysadmins wakeup at 2am to reboot the servers and ensure www.sysadminday.com is up
That one I'll give you, although if it still has problems after rebooting, who do the admins call? That's right--the developers.
Sysadmins would will gladly help you navigate to www.sysadminday.com
Using software created by developers.
Sysadmins really just want a friend, but if that's not possible they are satisfied with you going to www.sysadminday.com
In my experience, I have to say I think you're overgeneralizing, but some admins are friendly enough. Others follow the advice of the BOFH, though... (I'm tempted to inject something here about "some of my best friends are...", but I'll resist the urge.):)
Sysadmins would also be very happy if you post a link to www.sysadminday.com on other sites
Except for the ones that have enough sense not to support link-spamming.:)
So, as near as I can figure it, sysadmins should be worshipping the ground I walk on. Yet that doesn't seem to be happening. Oh well, maybe I'll take one out for a beer later in any case.
Slashdot Mirror
This is a little more blatant (and scary), but fundamentally similar. The problem (or, I should say, one of the many problems) with this sort of technology is that it can quickly go from "protect the kids" to "stalk the spouse" (as my link should make clear). Or worse: I suspect this could become quite popular among the pimp population, just to name an obvious example. (Of course, the pimps might need a non-panty version--like this new watch.) In fact, at the risk of Godwinning the discussion, I'll point out that this is ever so much more effective than yellow Star-of-David armbands!
But obviously all that's ok as long as we remember that we have to "think of the children"! Any amount of potential evil can be justified as long as you shout that mantra over and over.
(On the other hand, I suspect that trying to put a technology like this back in the bottle is probably futile, but it might not be a bad idea to start thinking about how we're going to deal with some of the more unpleasant consequences, rather than pretending that it's all hunky-dory because the label says "think of the children".)
Your phone doesn't necessarily mean you either, but wiretaps with a warrant have been legal for years.
Sowhatcherpoint?
XENIX was a SCO system. Yes, MS had a hand in its initial development, but it was supported and maintained by SCO for most of its existence.
And, of course, what happened to SCO means that there's pretty much zero chance of a revival. (Boy do I not miss fourteen-character filenames; almost as bad as DOS).
I'm not a Constitutional scholar or historian, but that seems like a pretty bizarre interpretation of those particular words. General welfare sounds more like it describes the general welfare of the country, and not just its mere existence. If they meant merely the continued existence, I would have thought they would have said "continued existence", or words to that effect. Remember, the this-is-just-a-mutual-defense-pact-of-individual-States approach had already been tried with the Articles of Confederation, and the US Constitution was a reaction to the perceived failure of that approach, which, to me, casts a lot of doubt on some of the more extreme Libertarian modern interpretations of that document. The problem is that a lot of people seem to see what they want to see in the Constitution, and I'm afraid you and I may both be among that number. Bottom line, though: there's a big difference between yelling "the Constitution doesn't allow anything like X!" (as extremists on both the left and right are wont to do) and saying, "I think that X is stretching the interpretation of the Constitution beyond what was intended, but I can see how you might disagree," which is what a reasonable person might say.
show me in the Constitution where the Gov can force me to have to pay for something that I don't want.
Um, how about section 8: "The Congress shall have power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States."
Of course, I realize that this goes against the received right-wing dogma that government's only legal powers are to bomb furriners, build a giant wall along the Mexican border, and to imprison "darkies" and non-christians and those who speak funny or have a University education, but the simple fact of the matter is that the Gov has a lot of leeway to act for the general benefit of its citizens. Reasonable people can (and do) disagree about how much leeway that single phrase provides, but only kooks and ignorant yokels (and paid mouthpieces of kooks) try to argue that the leeway doesn't exist. (Much like how only kooks and ignorant yokels on the other side try to argue that the second amendment isn't intended to provide the right to armed revolt).
Seriously, this is silly, because TFA is talking about re-imaging laptops before/after. That would imply malware/spyware being surreptitiously installed, but that won't change the weight directly.
Re-imaging the laptop if a hardware keylogger has been installed wouldn't have any effect either (but could possibly be detected by weighing).
So you're saying that weighing is silly because it won't protect against software keyloggers (would need to re-image), and re-imaging is silly because it won't protect against hardware keyloggers (would need to weigh to do that). Your conclusion is then that one should do neither (rather than the very obvious both)? Really?
Yeah, I don't wear a belt because suspenders are fully adequate, and I don't wear suspenders because a belt is good enough. Yet for some reason, my pants keep falling down. :)
You go on to point out that there are other attacks which can't be prevented or detected by weighing or re-imaging, which is a very valid point, but does that really mean one shouldn't bother doing anything at all? If you can't have perfection, just give up and kill yourself? If someone with the power and sway of the Chinese (or US) government really wants to get you, chances are they probably can, but if they're just looking for targets of opportunity that may prove useful, making yourself less of a target is probably a very good idea!
If you're going to consistently play faux-Latin, you might claim that your boxen have viri, but I can't think of any reason for ever typing "virii". That's like talking about octopii or hippopotamii.
I dunno, the keyboard on this one looks really crappy compared to the G1, which is what I have, and even with the G1 and ConnectBot, vi can be a bit awkward. If ssh support is really important, I would probably look at the HTC android phones or the N900 before this, but my opinion is mostly based on photographic evidence, so if anyone has hands-on evidence that contradicts my speculation, you should probably believe them over me.
Gmail, Google calendar, and GTalk are (of course) well-supported on Android. Dunno about VOIP (I barely use the phone features as it is).
Ssssh! You're going to spoil it! Just imagine a world where the intersection of the gullible and slashdot readers is easily identifiable by their blue color! That would be too cool! :)
There is no "continent of America". There are two continents, North America and South America, which are collectively referred to as "The Americas". "Americans" can refer to inhabitants of The Americas, but it is most commonly used to refer to citizens of the United States of America, which is, itself, pretty much the only entity ever referred to as "America" with no qualifiers.
But my post would have been funnier with the Solaris syntax.
Actually, it was charmingly ironic. Sun may have been a legend in its day, and Solaris may still have some nice features to counterbalance its many awful ones, but your average nerd still thinks that Linux is Unix at this point.
Which is the purpose of trademark law -- to protect the customer by allowing them to distinguish with whom they're doing business.
Except that Trademarks are basically limited to words, phrases, and specific images. A general overall look or style is frequently not trademarkable, in which case it can be protected by...get ready for it...a design patent!
(Classic example, the classic Coca Cola bottle, although that ended up being trademarked as well.)
On the other hand, a design patent on "bare-bones, undecorated", which this is dangerously close to being, seems a bit disingenuous to me, so I'm not exactly happy with this development. But it's still a completely different issue than what many are painting it to be.
It's the reason why young adults have more videogames than they can play
Young adults? I think I'm a little past the age where anyone would describe me as a "young adult", and I have more video games than I can play! :)
You know that "computer" is Old Norse for 'too lazy to carve your own stone tablets", right? :)
Just sign me: lazy-and-proud-of-it ex-Slackware user.
Does my heart good to see the old system's still going, though, even if I'd rather shove rusty paperclips under my fingernails than go back.
Speaking as someone who started with SLS (the predecessor to Slackware), and had been using Unix for several years before that, and who now mainly uses Debian, Ubuntu and Red Hat, I have to say, no, I don't like Slackware. Don't hate it either, but life's too short to mess around with that crap.
On the other hand, I understand it just fine. I can build my own debs and rpms as well as tarballs, and, in fact, I frequently do. It's more work up front (and requires a much deeper understanding of the system than even just a simple Slack system), but I find it more-than pays off in the long run.
That said, I'm all in favor of people using what they want, and I think it's cool that Slackware is still going after all these years. I just wish that so many of its fans didn't display such a pathetic combination of ignorance and misplaced arrogance.
native code applications exist on the pre. the only thing that has to be created via html/javascript is the outer ui of the app.
Believe it or not, many thousands of Linux applications already have a UI, and very close to zero of them have their UI implemented in html/javascript. If the Pre can't use that existing UI, and thus those thousands of existing applications, then it's hardly a full distro.
I suppose that if someone were to write a full Xserver in html/javascript, then it could be argued that the Pre, at that point, could easily become a full distro, but until that happens (and I'm not holding my breath), the argument that the Pre is basically as crippled as Android seems fairly sound.
The fact that I can run a more-or-less unmodified Apache or Sendmail on my Pre is not a feature I find particularly useful or compelling, although I suppose it is, technically, an "advantage" of the Pre over Android. :)
10 seems redundant with 7 (thermite burns at up to 2500C, according to Wikipedia), and I'm not sure why 5 and 10 get science points while 7 doesn't.
That was the first thing I wanted to ask, but I'm also confused about the worm-with-arms part. I suppose that if it's going to tear off parts of its body to distract pursuers, a part that it doesn't have would be the least painful and easiest to regenerate--but surely also the least effective?
I freely admit that I didn't RTFA, but with a summary this bad, I can't tell if I'm even interested in R-ing TFA, so it's a tough call. :)
That fails because of the trailing '$', which will never match because pi never terminates. :)
I guess you've never used an MS keyboard or mouse?
You mean an MS-branded keyboard or mouse? Yeah, they're pretty decent for the most part, though nothing I can't live without (Logitech still makes the best mice, IMO). Doesn't have much to do with MS in any case. It's not like your keyboard or mouse has a CPU or a bios.
The Zune is an awesome piece of hardware as well
I'm sure both the other Zune users will agree with you. :)
Just a quick note: being more reliable than the iPod doesn't necessarily make you the best, or even "awesome". I'm not a fan of the iPod, but there are plenty of other options available. Frankly, neither the Zune nor the iPod have ever made my short list when comparison-shopping.
Well, that's why I use flashblock (not adblock). Of course, the sites I hang out on are generally more likely to have ads targeted to my general interests (my t-shirt collection would be much smaller, for one), so I don't really want to block all ads, but flash ads are, I agree, too annoying to accept.
Maybe in a hundred years we'll know enough about the formation of stars, planets, and life to say with 95% certainty that there are between 2 and 20 civilizations currently alive in the galaxy.
Actually, those aren't the really problematic elements of Drake's equation. It's the ones about the probability of intelligent life evolving and the average lifespan of technical civilizations that mean that we cannot know the correct values to plug into Drake's equations until we either discover evidence of intelligent alien life (which will tend to make the whole question somewhat irrelevant) or thoroughly explore a statistically significant fraction of nearby stellar systems (so far we've only begun to explore one) for evidence of extinct civilizations, and even that latter could be subject to sample bias unless we also check some other regions of the galaxy to make sure the local arm isn't anomalous.
Until we do all that, answers ranging from 1 to hundreds of millions will remain equally plausible solutions to the equation. Nevertheless, the equation is, of course, still dead-on. It's just utterly useless for the purposes to which people try to apply it.
There's never been any war with a hundred year gap between the issuing of an order and the carrying out of that order.
There's never been any war with a hundred year gap between the declaration of war and the first joining of hostilities.
There's never been any war where troops have been sent out, and only arrived at the battle after the other side has had a hundred years to prepare (and develop better weapons).
The rant above assumes I have any interest in visiting sysadminday.com, but we'll gloss over that for the moment. :)
Sysadmins setup the web server to host www.sysadminday.com
A web server that was created by developers.
Sysadmins setup the networks that allow you to view www.sysadminday.com
If you mean the physical infrastructure, then no; otherwise, yes, using the software created by developers for that purpose.
Sysadmins protect your networks to make sure you're really viewing www.sysadminday.com
ITYM "try to protect", and again, using software created by developers.
Sysadmins make backups of www.sysadminday.com
By running scripts and applications created by developers (and hardware provided by...another kind of developers).
Sysadmins ensure there is no viruses on the www.sysadminday.com
ITYM "try to ensure", and again, using software created by developers, assuming that the sysadmins or their bosses were foolish enough to select virus-prone software in the first place. (Otherwise, they try to ensure it by selecting or installing systems which aren't virus-prone, the solution used by my company.)
Sysadmins wakeup at 2am to reboot the servers and ensure www.sysadminday.com is up
That one I'll give you, although if it still has problems after rebooting, who do the admins call? That's right--the developers.
Sysadmins would will gladly help you navigate to www.sysadminday.com
Using software created by developers.
Sysadmins really just want a friend, but if that's not possible they are satisfied with you going to www.sysadminday.com
In my experience, I have to say I think you're overgeneralizing, but some admins are friendly enough. Others follow the advice of the BOFH, though... :)
(I'm tempted to inject something here about "some of my best friends are...", but I'll resist the urge.)
Sysadmins would also be very happy if you post a link to www.sysadminday.com on other sites
Except for the ones that have enough sense not to support link-spamming. :)
So, as near as I can figure it, sysadmins should be worshipping the ground I walk on. Yet that doesn't seem to be happening. Oh well, maybe I'll take one out for a beer later in any case.
Fine--then you have a lot of nerve calling emacs bloated when you have X running! :p ;)