Does anybody remember Chi-Chi's Diablo sauce? This was the green salsa that you had to ask for. They had mild, hot, then diablo. You could order any dish you wanted "diablo style" and they would smother it in diablo sauce. I used to order a soft taco Diablo, and it was so hot it was like the Guatamalan insanity peppers from the Simpson's. I'm not kidding, the stuff actually seemed to have some kind of drug effect to the point where I would get all flushed.
This was back when Chi-Chi's was cool and I was too young to get heartburn. The last time I went back there the menu looked like something from Denny's. I probably wouldn't order those dishes now, but it's a shame to think that you can't get that stuff anymore.
LGM Media Files -- We Already Have Them.
on
Anticryptography
·
· Score: 2
What they describe as "LGM Media Files" is really no different than having a website pop up and tell you that it requires Flash 4.
However the article was, in general, quite thought provoking. I've often thought it would be cool to take a favorite piece of code and encode it "for the ages" on a very sturdy medium. Aluminum or copper plates come to mind. What wouuld be a durable, yet cost effective metal for this?
This also reminds me of music in the Bible. We have the lyrics, but it has been said that the tunes, even if we had them, would be indecipherable. Since music is just a timebased sequence of tones, I should think it would be even easier to encode music using anticryptography than it would be anything else. Then we could have aluminum plates with Metallica songs on them for people to decode 10,000 years from now. Lars could go around smashing them with a big hammer. Now that's heavy metal.
Re:A Clean Alternative
on
Solar Sails
·
· Score: 3
Sailing was the most environmentally healthy way mankind ever developed to traverse large distances
I beg to differ about sailing being environmentally clean.
The forests of North Carolina were decimated for masts and pitch to build English ships back in colonial times. The interior environment aboard ship was notoriously bad. The name "horse latitudes" comes from the fact that when ships were becalmed, they had to kill horses and dump them into the ocean. Not a pretty site.
True, oil tankers occasionally befoul beaches. OTOH, the US has more forest today than it did in the 1800s, and that's because we rely on oil and steel, not canvas and trees.
Any use of X-rays as a weapon would already be coverd by existing assault and battery, endangerment, or other laws.
Of course that won't stop the legislators from passing stupid laws. Case in point is the "anti terrorism" laws passed after the OK city bombing. Last time I checked, it was already illegal to blow up a building and kill people.
Thankfully, in some states, such as here in Arizona, the government is getting involved and funding network rollouts in the rural areas.
Sigh... they never learn. 10 years from now these "rural areas" will be just another part of the suburban sprawl. Then it will be interesting to see what kind of "solutions" the government comes up with for that problem, using tax payer dollars.
I've said it before, and I'll say it again. The only people who have any business living in the country are farmers and hermits. If you want to preserve the environment, the best thing you can do is move to a city. If you want to preserve greenspace, don't donate your money to same "cause". Instead, find some business partners and fund the development of affordable hi-rise condominiums in urban areas. Do everything you can to attract families back to the inner city.
(circa 1960) One of my girlfriends has a computer in her office. I don't see why anybody should care about them.
-- Computers are very slow.
-- There's a limited number of things you can do with them.
-- Basic economics tells you that they are no threat to the typewriter industry.
-- Reports stored on magnetic tape don't have the durability of printed documents.
Technology is always improving. Seriously folks, Just imagine this: "Mom, can you fab me another Pokemon action figure?". Give it 10 or 20 years at the most.
All products will become commoditized. The only way companies will be able to set themselves apart is with superior marketing. That's right--in the long term, Open Source plays into the hands of the marketroids. If you're in high school, forget about studying technology. All your technical abilities won't be worth squat. Study advertising instead. You'll have more fun, the courses will be easier, and then when you get out of school you'll be able to push around the few techies that are actually still employed.
Windows has been my platform of choice precicely because of the smooth edges on the fonts.
This is really strange. My Windows desktop looks better at 800*600 than that PNG (and I am viewing the PNG with something that handles PNGs very well). My fonts are not antialiased. I never even knew Windows (98) supported that. The antialiased fonts just look blurry to me. It's actually kind of distracting and I wouldn't want it. I've been watching this whole "let's get antialiased fonts" thing with detached amusement. Am I the only one that feels this way?
...is that all of Covad's customers found this great new thing called DSLster. <SARCASM>What I can't figure out is why Slashdot is calling them slackers. Aren't they heroes for sticking it to Covad? I'm confused.</SARCASM>
This reminds me of an idea I had a long time ago to make C++ more like English. I created one text document to describe the basics, and then moved on to more practical things. Here is that text document:
E++ -- what would it look like? Could it be parsed into C++ Here is what I think it might look like:
the header file:
define "Krunk" as something that has these members:
an integer called m_Int,
a long called m_Long,
and a character called m_Char.
Krunk also has these functions:
a protected function called Yell that takes 3 arguments:
a character, a long, and a float.
Yell returns nothing.
a public function called Shout that takes 1 argument:
a float.
Shout returns a long.
the source file:
The Krunk interface is in krunk.h
When you tell a Krunk to Yell, it does nothing.
When you tell a Krunk to Shout it says 2.
Create a Krunk called Blah.
Tell Blah to Yell.
Tell the Screen to Print what Blah Shouts when you give it 3.
if this is the end, then do this:
on sunny days:
take a drive.
on rainy days:
take the bus.
otherwise, do nothing.
LOL!!! The Jungle mentioned in a comment on a floppy drive. I hope your hyperbole is intentional, because it's truly entertaining.
If it isn't, well... you're a sad case and all I have to say is... this is a floppy drive we're talking about. Comparing it to the tragedy played out in Sinclair's novel is just... well... LOL!!! funny.
Even if 2 out of 3 bits are for EC, that's still 10MB. Also, I wonder what people are doing to these floppies. Of course they are going to get corrupted if you toss them around and leave them sitting on top of the monitor (come on, admit it people, you know you do it). I haven't had serious problems with floppies kept in a cool, dry place away from magnetism.
I have to admit though, I don't trust important data to floppies. The irreplaceable stuff is backed up 3 ways: 1. On a second HD. 2. On CDR and 3. (some of it) on a remote server, which in turn has its own nightly tape backup.
I live on the US East Coast so I don't see this system failing unless I have a fire that melts my CDs and my HDs followed by a California disaster that takes out the data center and its tapes.
Hmmm... maybe I should get another remote backup in the Midwest.:)
I can't stand those little cards. They are almost as bad as coupons. Both do nothing more than make the market less efficient for consumers. I used to shop at Safeway regularly, and another thing I noticed is that the "savings" come mostly on name-brand products that are junk food or heavily laced with additives. They practicly never "save" you anything on healthy staples like rice or bananas.
There may be hope though. Coupons seem to have peaked now, and I actually recall one chain advertising that they had simply lowered the prices so that "you don't have to pay for somebody elses double coupons". Unfortunately, the cards seem to have sprung up in their place. I eagerly await the day Safeway launches an ad campaign saying "No coupons, no cards, no hassles--just low prices and prompt service".
Are there any aspiring young Sam Walton types reading this? I hope so.
RE presents a unique opportunity: A facility for determining a natural expiration on copyright.
The duration of copyright is arbitrary. Some have suggested that the duration of copyright for software be shortened, but it would still be arbitrary.
Unlike music, literature, and other copyrighted works, software has a distinquishing property. It is possible to create a program that works exactly as the original without copying the original.
Thus, the time that it takes to reverse engineer a piece of software establishes a natural duration for the copyright on the original. This is not to say that we should revoke copyright on the original once a RE has occured. It simply says that RE renders the copyright on the original somewhat moot. If the RE product is distributed gratis, the money value of the original copyright is eliminated.
To a certain extent, this is already the way things are. So, if RE is legal (so long as it doesn't involve actual reuse of copyrighted code) I have no problem with it. Under such circumstances, the Free Software community takes on the job of establishing the natural duration of copyright in a free market.
Of course now I will probably hear from some people who don't believe in a natural right to IP; but I do, and so do a lot of other people. It is unlikely we will ever agree on that issue, but perhaps we can agree to RE as a standard for limiting copyright.
Another firm files for class action against VA Lin
Wouldn't it be easier to post a list of law firms that haven't filed a CA against LNUX?:) Slashdot did post a story about the first one, but since then there have been at least a dozen "me too" filings. Yahoo! stock message boards are a better way to keep track of it for those who care.
Slashdot Mirror
Mars is going to get broadband before I do.
Does anybody remember Chi-Chi's Diablo sauce? This was the green salsa that you had to ask for. They had mild, hot, then diablo. You could order any dish you wanted "diablo style" and they would smother it in diablo sauce. I used to order a soft taco Diablo, and it was so hot it was like the Guatamalan insanity peppers from the Simpson's. I'm not kidding, the stuff actually seemed to have some kind of drug effect to the point where I would get all flushed.
This was back when Chi-Chi's was cool and I was too young to get heartburn. The last time I went back there the menu looked like something from Denny's. I probably wouldn't order those dishes now, but it's a shame to think that you can't get that stuff anymore.
What they describe as "LGM Media Files" is really no different than having a website pop up and tell you that it requires Flash 4.
However the article was, in general, quite thought provoking. I've often thought it would be cool to take a favorite piece of code and encode it "for the ages" on a very sturdy medium. Aluminum or copper plates come to mind. What wouuld be a durable, yet cost effective metal for this?
This also reminds me of music in the Bible. We have the lyrics, but it has been said that the tunes, even if we had them, would be indecipherable. Since music is just a timebased sequence of tones, I should think it would be even easier to encode music using anticryptography than it would be anything else. Then we could have aluminum plates with Metallica songs on them for people to decode 10,000 years from now. Lars could go around smashing them with a big hammer. Now that's heavy metal.
Sailing was the most environmentally healthy way mankind ever developed to traverse large distances
I beg to differ about sailing being environmentally clean.
The forests of North Carolina were decimated for masts and pitch to build English ships back in colonial times. The interior environment aboard ship was notoriously bad. The name "horse latitudes" comes from the fact that when ships were becalmed, they had to kill horses and dump them into the ocean. Not a pretty site.
True, oil tankers occasionally befoul beaches. OTOH, the US has more forest today than it did in the 1800s, and that's because we rely on oil and steel, not canvas and trees.
#universal_mind caused a segfault at 0x654gfde55487d8ec
brain dumped
#rm brain
#universal_mind -load next_victim.brain
#universal_mind caused a...
I Want To Start A P2V Company. Will some VC throw lots of money at me? Oh d#!@ it, I'm a year and a half too late.
Any use of X-rays as a weapon would already be coverd by existing assault and battery, endangerment, or other laws.
Of course that won't stop the legislators from passing stupid laws. Case in point is the "anti terrorism" laws passed after the OK city bombing. Last time I checked, it was already illegal to blow up a building and kill people.
Thankfully, in some states, such as here in Arizona, the government is getting involved and funding network rollouts in the rural areas.
Sigh... they never learn. 10 years from now these "rural areas" will be just another part of the suburban sprawl. Then it will be interesting to see what kind of "solutions" the government comes up with for that problem, using tax payer dollars.
I've said it before, and I'll say it again. The only people who have any business living in the country are farmers and hermits. If you want to preserve the environment, the best thing you can do is move to a city. If you want to preserve greenspace, don't donate your money to same "cause". Instead, find some business partners and fund the development of affordable hi-rise condominiums in urban areas. Do everything you can to attract families back to the inner city.
Finally! A Slashdot article on storage technology with a believable figure. 15GB is reasonable, and Maxtor is a real company.
Even more amazing, I can actually buy one of these. Even more more amazing, I might actually want to buy one of these.
Riot! I love it, but it's not half as good as my multivariate transaxial parser generator. It can recompile the kernel in 0.2 seconds on my 386.
You'r right, gzip isn't that good:
C:\WINDOWS\Desktop>bzip2 -k page.htm
C:\WINDOWS\Desktop>dir page*
Volume in drive C has no label
Volume Serial Number is
Directory of C:\WINDOWS\Desktop
PAGE_F~1 02-13-01 12:17a page_files
PAGE HTM 59,243 02-13-01 12:17a page.htm
PAGEHT~1 BZ2 8,098 02-13-01 12:20a page.htm.bz2
2 file(s) 67,341 bytes
1 dir(s) 3,892.71 MB free
C:\WINDOWS\Desktop>
That's a 7.32 ratio.
(circa 1960) One of my girlfriends has a computer in her office. I don't see why anybody should care about them.
-- Computers are very slow.
-- There's a limited number of things you can do with them.
-- Basic economics tells you that they are no threat to the typewriter industry.
-- Reports stored on magnetic tape don't have the durability of printed documents.
Technology is always improving. Seriously folks, Just imagine this: "Mom, can you fab me another Pokemon action figure?". Give it 10 or 20 years at the most.
All products will become commoditized. The only way companies will be able to set themselves apart is with superior marketing. That's right--in the long term, Open Source plays into the hands of the marketroids. If you're in high school, forget about studying technology. All your technical abilities won't be worth squat. Study advertising instead. You'll have more fun, the courses will be easier, and then when you get out of school you'll be able to push around the few techies that are actually still employed.
Windows has been my platform of choice precicely because of the smooth edges on the fonts.
This is really strange. My Windows desktop looks better at 800*600 than that PNG (and I am viewing the PNG with something that handles PNGs very well). My fonts are not antialiased. I never even knew Windows (98) supported that. The antialiased fonts just look blurry to me. It's actually kind of distracting and I wouldn't want it. I've been watching this whole "let's get antialiased fonts" thing with detached amusement. Am I the only one that feels this way?
...is that all of Covad's customers found this great new thing called DSLster. <SARCASM>What I can't figure out is why Slashdot is calling them slackers. Aren't they heroes for sticking it to Covad? I'm confused.</SARCASM>
This reminds me of an idea I had a long time ago to make C++ more like English. I created one text document to describe the basics, and then moved on to more practical things. Here is that text document:
E++ -- what would it look like? Could it be parsed into C++ Here is what I think it might look like:
the header file:
define "Krunk" as something that has these members:
an integer called m_Int,
a long called m_Long,
and a character called m_Char.
Krunk also has these functions:
a protected function called Yell that takes 3 arguments:
a character, a long, and a float.
Yell returns nothing.
a public function called Shout that takes 1 argument:
a float.
Shout returns a long.
the source file:
The Krunk interface is in krunk.h
When you tell a Krunk to Yell, it does nothing.
When you tell a Krunk to Shout it says 2.
Create a Krunk called Blah.
Tell Blah to Yell.
Tell the Screen to Print what Blah Shouts when you give it 3.
if this is the end, then do this:
on sunny days:
take a drive.
on rainy days:
take the bus.
otherwise, do nothing.
(shudder) The thought of 10TB of AOL just went through my mind.
Why did you mod him down? duffbeer703 doesn't want the troll to die. It's German "Die Troll" for "The Troll". Right SideShowBob695?
(Please don't moderate this unless you are a Simpson's fan and get the joke.)
When Upton Sinclair wrote The Jungle
LOL!!! The Jungle mentioned in a comment on a floppy drive. I hope your hyperbole is intentional, because it's truly entertaining.
If it isn't, well... you're a sad case and all I have to say is... this is a floppy drive we're talking about. Comparing it to the tragedy played out in Sinclair's novel is just... well... LOL!!! funny.
Error Correction.
Even if 2 out of 3 bits are for EC, that's still 10MB. Also, I wonder what people are doing to these floppies. Of course they are going to get corrupted if you toss them around and leave them sitting on top of the monitor (come on, admit it people, you know you do it). I haven't had serious problems with floppies kept in a cool, dry place away from magnetism.
I have to admit though, I don't trust important data to floppies. The irreplaceable stuff is backed up 3 ways: 1. On a second HD. 2. On CDR and 3. (some of it) on a remote server, which in turn has its own nightly tape backup.
I live on the US East Coast so I don't see this system failing unless I have a fire that melts my CDs and my HDs followed by a California disaster that takes out the data center and its tapes.
Hmmm... maybe I should get another remote backup in the Midwest. :)
I can't stand those little cards. They are almost as bad as coupons. Both do nothing more than make the market less efficient for consumers. I used to shop at Safeway regularly, and another thing I noticed is that the "savings" come mostly on name-brand products that are junk food or heavily laced with additives. They practicly never "save" you anything on healthy staples like rice or bananas.
There may be hope though. Coupons seem to have peaked now, and I actually recall one chain advertising that they had simply lowered the prices so that "you don't have to pay for somebody elses double coupons". Unfortunately, the cards seem to have sprung up in their place. I eagerly await the day Safeway launches an ad campaign saying "No coupons, no cards, no hassles--just low prices and prompt service".
Are there any aspiring young Sam Walton types reading this? I hope so.
The first rule of Slashdot is nobody talks about Slashdot.
RE presents a unique opportunity: A facility for determining a natural expiration on copyright.
The duration of copyright is arbitrary. Some have suggested that the duration of copyright for software be shortened, but it would still be arbitrary.
Unlike music, literature, and other copyrighted works, software has a distinquishing property. It is possible to create a program that works exactly as the original without copying the original.
Thus, the time that it takes to reverse engineer a piece of software establishes a natural duration for the copyright on the original. This is not to say that we should revoke copyright on the original once a RE has occured. It simply says that RE renders the copyright on the original somewhat moot. If the RE product is distributed gratis, the money value of the original copyright is eliminated.
To a certain extent, this is already the way things are. So, if RE is legal (so long as it doesn't involve actual reuse of copyrighted code) I have no problem with it. Under such circumstances, the Free Software community takes on the job of establishing the natural duration of copyright in a free market.
Of course now I will probably hear from some people who don't believe in a natural right to IP; but I do, and so do a lot of other people. It is unlikely we will ever agree on that issue, but perhaps we can agree to RE as a standard for limiting copyright.
There is no need for a lawsuit. The threat of nuclear war and incurable man-made disease is enough.
Another firm files for class action against VA Lin
Wouldn't it be easier to post a list of law firms that haven't filed a CA against LNUX? :) Slashdot did post a story about the first one, but since then there have been at least a dozen "me too" filings. Yahoo! stock message boards are a better way to keep track of it for those who care.