All buttons? Have you seen the standadrd controllers for the N64, and Dreamcast, both have an analogue stick. The Dualshock for the PSX has two. The Dualshock 2 for the PS2 goes the whole hog, and has analogue buttons.
Yeah, but dual shock for PSX came out waaay late in its life. The best games were already made and didn't work with dual shock.
Game consoles are still missing non stick/button controls as stock controls. A paddle/wheel? Light guns? (Nintendo seemed to quit doing this after NES) Driving games suck without a wheel. Hell, even today's game systems can't do a decent tempest or even an ancient breakout or pong game because of a lack of proper control. There should be a hole at the center of the directional pad that you can insert the optional paddle wheel into. But all these extra controls NEED TO COME WITH THE CONSOLE because few developpers will code for a optional controller that they knew few people have.
Communication. Everyone's got ICQ, AIM, or IRC. You're not cool unless you talk to your friends on the Internet.
What you're really talking about here is "hangout places". Malls and arcades were the place in my day. Now it's on the net. No real change here.
School. If you know how to browse, you know how to cheat on research reports. All of your friends do it, so you want to learn how.
Cliffs Notes anyone? Monarch notes? Encyclopaedias? The three forbidden reference sources for any school report. Again, nothing's really changed.
Peer Pressure. You don't want to be the only person in your circle of friends who doesn't know how to use computers. And you want to keep up with the latest trends. Your friend emails you about some new site or program, you get it. If you want something to talk about the next day, you learn as much as you can. You might try other similar programs and learn about them.
Peer pressure. Yah. That's a new one. One's tastes and knowledge of music or video games or sports got you judged as much as "PC skilz" does now. Still nothing new here.
Jobs. Don't kid yourself. Kids are smarter than they seem. They know a good job when they see one. Gee, I can sit in front of a computer screen for 8 hours a day and get paid four times what the mechanic does, or the gardener, or my parents!
Same thing not so long ago with digital "electronics" (I'm talking discrete logic stuff here, not true 'computers'.) And before that it was the transistor. And before that the vacuum tube. Each new gen made the former look less skilled. Once again, nothing new here.
Dumb movies. Hackers probably inspired more than a few wanna-be's to learn about computers. Of course, if they got far enough in their studies, they probably found out that what's real is more exciting than the movies.
War games anyone? Or dumber... Wierd Science? Short Circuit? Bond Movies? Mission Impossible? Star Trek (TOS)? There's no shortage of hokey tech movies/TV in the past. Still no big difference.
Overall nothing has really changed. Kids seem smarted today because they use tech that didn't exist in the past. Kids grow up to make more money today because of inflation. Hey a 2 Bedroom home in the L.A. sold for $22,000. Today, the same home costs $180,000. A new (and big, mind you) car in 1950 for under $2000? Oh yeah. As we all know, the biggest increases in salary come when you *change* jobs and *not* through merit raises and promotions. So yeah, the kid's new job pays more than mom or dad's job of 20 years. Things are more tha same than ever, IMHO.
I've always considered my self a tech geek. Yet, I have no idea how to play most video games coming out for recent consoles anymore. Very few of them are intuitive (except the classic re-releases of old games). If you don't know the background or read the manual, you're helpless. That and it seems like there's more time when movies are playing than when you actually get to do anything. And watching kids, winning just seems to mean slamming the button faster[*]. No skill. And it's now a given that one can never possibly gain the skill to win a game on a single play anymore. It simply *can't* *be* *done* (tm). Games where better when they didn't have a "continue" option (actually cooked up to suck more quarters in arcades), because that meant one actually had to, god forbid, learn something.
[*] I think the transition from game play that required skill to mindless game play happened first with the nintendo NES. Before the NES, standard joysticks had the stick on the RIGHT side and the button on the LEFT side. Since most people are right handed, this seemed to imply that player movement and skill were of paramount importance in games. Since the NES, the button(s) have been switched to the RIGHT side, implying that slamming buttons has become more important... with "autofire" controllers representing the ultimate in game de-evolution. Though, "game shark" cheater carts and their ilk sink this even lower. The next generation of game systems will probably get rid of the stick completely. Oh wait, they already did. They're game "pads" now. That's really just 4 more buttons in a cross shape so I guess it *is* all buttons now. *sigh*
Football and programming are not mutually exclusive.
I hate football AND basketball. Too tense. Too commercialized. Too many rules. Rigidly timed games. Too much stats. Anything deviating from the stats is called an "upset". I always wonder why people watch if they have such a strong pre-determination of what they're about to see.
Baseball is far more relaxing and enjoyable to watch. A little more random. No clock to worry about. No scary buzzers. Far less cheating. No stress. Which is exactly what I need after racking my brain staring at severely inbred (inheritance wise) C++ code.
Aren't there any baseball fans anymore?
Now imagine: Insurance sez random kids cost extra!
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Frankenstein Time
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· Score: 2
Here's the problem.
Way down the line when we have many genetically engineered walking among us, the health care providers are going to charge more to insure natural (i.e., random) people because they will statictically cost more. Employers will ask that you submit your genome like they do now with your salary history. And while they can today *require* neither one, you *know* what happens to resumes that don't include. Your genome will become the guide to determine your place in society.
Truck drivers better have the enhanced vision gene. Engineers better have the enhanced memory and logic genes. Teachers better not have the pedophile gene. The legal department says we just can't afford to do otherwise.
The poor who cannot afford genetically manipulated kids will see their kids discriminated against. A whole new caste system will result out of liability reasons.
So long as "all men are created equal", the gov't/marketplace/society/etc. must treat us as such. Creating the unequals will create distincts "levels" of people which society will then stratify.
Nonetheless, if 99% of nations ban genetic manipulation, 1% will allow it. The righ will travel there to procreate their perfect kids.
We will have the problem to deal with someday. It's already too late.
The way mos EULAs are written you're left to wonder if you're really allowed to use the software at all. What right of mine preempt all EULA jargon? Archival copies (which is allowed and predates the DMCA legislation, the latter not having declared null and void the former, IIRC). So the question is what exactly can I do with stuff I buy?
Do I own a loaf of bread?
Seriously. Do I own a load of bread that I buy? Can I examine it under a microscope? Can I run chemical tests on it? Can I run it through a spectrometer? A gas chromatograph? Can I reverse engineer the recipe and make exact copies of it? Can I sell the copies for profit and not pay anything to the original break maker? Is this legal? Is this illegal? Did I have to sign a license? Click one? Will anyone stand up and tell me that "clicks" are as legally binging as a signature? Legally binding at all? By clicking here you agree to pay me $10,000,000 or as much of that as you can and the debt must be inherited to spouses or offspring if you die until it's paid off at 500% annual intrest. Hey, you clicked it! It's a license/contract/agreement/whatever. You're bound. Yah sure. God the software lawyers are not just stupid but really lame assed stupid.
If Ben Franklin just proposed idea of a "library":
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Copyrant
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· Score: 3
Just think if the lending library did not yet exist; if the only way to read books was to go and buy them.
Now suppose that Benjamin Franklin was alive today and just now proposed the idea that large buildings be constructed with taxpayer dollars and more of those tax dollars be used to purchase books and magazines (copyrighted material) so that the public can come anytime and read these materials freely.
The print publishers would FLY INTO A RAGE and call Franklin every dirty name they could think of from "thief" to "crook" to, yes, even "pirate" who is "opposed to people profitting from their hard work" and "taking the food out of baby's mouths bacause writers won't be able to support their families anymore".
Of course, today, Franklin would have proposed that libraries included software, video, and audio, and indeed, all copyrighted works. Indeed many public libraries today do lend VHS and CDs.
And it wasn't just for the purpose of education and betterment of the public. Most books were an entertainment medium in the 18th century as much as movies are today. So don't isolate Franklin's idea as having only altruistic motives.
And who would say that closing all libraries would be a GOOD idea? Very few I'll wager. Why should it be any different when it comes to CDs/movies/software than it is with books/mags?
And oh yes, despite the existance of libraries, (gasp!) people still make money and can even (choke!) earn a living as writers and publishers. Well imagine that. Free access to copyrighted books and magazines didn't kill the industry after all. In fact, it expanded it. Just like VHS rentals resulted in Hollywood making more money today from home video sales than it ever did or ever will from theatrical ticket sales.
Ever rent a movie, video game, book, or magazine. Then you too are as much a pirate and thief an yo label others to be.
Let he who is without sin...
Naysayers still think MS is just being picked on?
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Copyrant
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· Score: 2
Continued. Bone-headed. Actions. By. Microsoft.
From telling the DOJ that "removing Explorer would disable Windows" (because their demo of deleting all DLLs/EXEs used by explorer, including shared libraries and stuff like GDI.EXE and KERNEL32.EXE) to the Halloween papers "LDK 1.2 contains JFC which we're going to be pissing on at every opportunity" to the telling of PC vendors, "if you sell any other OS on any line of machines, we will cancel your Windows license all together", I'm surprised that Microsoft has room for that many feet in their mouth. Even after the endless accusations and the start of close scrutiny by the DOJ and state courts, MS continues... continues... continues... to demonstrate utter comtempt for the consumer and the law.
Truly MS deserves to be broken up. Mote than AT&T. More than Standard Oil. NO ONE can say MS wasn't "given a chance to set things right" or two chances or 10 chances. They've dug their own grave so deep and so dark that not even light can escape it.
I had some X-10 units in my house. Then one day I got this Isobar, power filter/surge protector strip. Suddenly the X-10 units started to act flakey; sometimes working, sometimes not. It seems that any kind of AC noise filter will work on both sides of the line, filtering the power to the equipment and filtering "noise" on the rest of the house wiring, including desired line noise, like X-10 signals and not ethernet signals. Also won't EVERY transformer operated devide suppress some high frequency noise from the line. How many wall warts are in your house?
Apologies for all that white space.
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Essential Anime
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· Score: 1
Slashdot seems to be inserting an extra blank line after the BR tags, instead of just doing a CRLF.
General suggestions (long list)
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Essential Anime
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· Score: 4
Here's some suggestions (all safe stuff. No porn. Note: IMO, some nudity != porn)
Light hearted cute girl anime:
Devil Hunter Yohko.
Dirty Pair Flash.
Battle Athletes
Battle Athletes Victory (longer better series)
You're Under Arrest.
Romance anime:
Oh My Goddess!
My Dear Marie.
Episodes 5 and 6 of Here is Greenwood.
Sailor Moon (very long, awful in dub version)
Pure cheesecake:)
Cutey Honey
Aika
Megami Paradise
Not so light cute girl anime:
Sol Bianca
Dirty Pair (not flash)
Anime with female heroines over age 30 (rare in anime):
Phantom Quest Corp (very ghostbusters like)
City Hunter.
Princess Mononoke
Sci-Fi without so many battling robots.
Ghost in the Shell.
Armitage III (avoid the one with Kiefer Sutherland/Elizabeth Berkeley)
Macross Plus (ok, I know, but the robots are immaterial to the real story).
Slash and Gore anime:
Mermaid Forest.
Vampire Hunter D.
Really silly anime:
Episodes 1 through 4 of Here is Greenwood
Slayers
Roujin Z (why too much spending on healthcare is bad).
BASIC is good not because it's BASIC, but because it's an interpreted language. No compiling. No linking. No static libraries. No run time libraries.
Instant.
Gratification.
Code stuff. "RUN". See stuff happening. Change stuff. "RUN". See new stuff happening.
Unfortunately there aren't many other good (for kids) interpreted languages out there today. There's VB (not really BASIC and possesses few of the above qualities that made BASIC great). Anyone do LOGO anymore? (ooo! Turtle graphics!) There's the various scripting/batch files of DOS, the *nix shells, but these are text only and lack ***simple*** sound/graphics commands and ***SIMPLE*** ways to read input devices (keyboard, joysticks, mice, etc.) that kids will HAVE FUN[*] with. I really miss the SET() and RESET() block graphics of TRS-80 BASIC. and the commodore 128 BASIC's 'SOUND' statement. HyperCard for the Mac wan't bad for the older kid (16+ year old) programmer looking for new ideas, but I think that's dead now too. What creative tools does the SW industry give kids? Dress barbie or Choreograph the Spice Girls. Blargh.
[*] Fun is really the key. Writing a pong game in BASIC for the C64 was fun because even at age 11, it was doable for me. If programming isn't fun, kids aren't gonna want to do it.
History has shown repeatedly that the proper action toward unjust laws is to disregard them and go about daily life as if the unjust laws weren't there. By the people flouting the law en masse, it's futility is eventually realized and the law is repealed. "But it's the law! If you want to change it, do it the right way!" some will say. They are wrong. Ignore it, and know too that it is RIGHT and PROPER to ignore it. Some examples:
(1) Prohibition. When alcohol was banned, people still produced, transported, and consumed it. "But it was the law!" The amendment was withdrawn by a subsequent amendment. Work through proper channels? Write your representatives? Convince legislators through proper means? Didn't happen. And the people were REWARDED for their disregard of an unjust law.
(2) Segregation laws. Blacks must yield their seat on busses to whites. Rosa Parks refused. "But it was the law!" Should she have complied? I think not. Her refusal spawned the great civil rights movement. Work through proper channels? Write your representatives? Convince legislators through proper means? Didn't happen. And the people were REWARDED for their disregard of an unjust law.
(3) The 55 MPH speed limit. The Federal Gov't, which is not supposed to be involved in making local state law (10th amendment) effectively extorted states into mandating 55MPH by refusing them federal highway dollars if they refused to comply and legislate 55. The law was widely ignored by the public. "But it's the law!" The threat was finally ruled UNCONSTITUTIONAL and highway funds were ordered maintained regardless of local state speed limits. The result? Most states hiked local speed limits imediately. (And BTW, no increase in traffic fatalities appeared unkile what the naysayers predicted). Work through proper channels? Write your representatives? Convince legislators through proper means? Didn't happen. And the people were REWARDED for their disregard of an unjust law.
Am I making my point here?
Right now it's the internet turning IP law on its ear, just as the press removed literacy from the sole realm of high society. IP law cannot survive in a world of instantaneous global communication with each and every one of us granted equal power to publish anything. The dinosaurs will roar loudly, but they're already sinking into the tar pit.
Will the fall of IP law hurt a lot of people? Certainly. Recorded music put a lot of musicians out of business. Automatic pinsetters put a lot of people out of work. Computers and robots put a lot of factory workers out of work. Refrigeration put the ice deliverers out or work. The automobile hurt sales of horses. Airplanes depressed the commuter ship industry. The film camera hurt portrait artists. Cellular phones hurt the operators of coin operated phones. Something must be hurt or killed so that something new can live and grow. The fall of IP law will usher in a new wave of "information brokers" and "knowledge dealers". Knowledge will cease being for the wealthy or the "authoirized" and will become an omnipotent commodity upon which a new and better society will be built upon.
Go to [local city/county agency] and apply for a background check. They do the check and give you a certificate with your name, SSN, maybe even your photo (so other ID by you is not needed when you use the certificate later), or whatever on it that says you're a clean, upstanding citizen.
It's good for 48 hours or so. Show it to buy 1 or many guns. The seller verfies the cert and your ID (visually only, no logging of info). Or don't use the cert at all and let it expire.
This way, background checks get performed. But no one has to collect information from you to write down or relay to local agencies about how many and what type of guns you bought, if any.
This achieves the purpose of backgrounds checks, thus "stopping criminals" as much as the current system does, right? I'll say it again because this is what the left keeps harping. My plan as described above WILL DO THE BACKGROUND CHECKS AND STOP CRIMINALS FROM BUYING GUNS JUST AS MUCH AS THE CURRENT SYSTEM (which democrats support) DOES!
Will politicians on the left accept this? No. Background checks aren't what they really want. That's just a ruse to dupe the public into supporting the mandates. What they really want to know is exactly who owns what, right down to the serial number so that when the bans come later (like they have so many times before), they can show up at your door and demand [banned make/model of the day].
Did you really think only criminals were being targeted?
I got tired of my ISP expiring the "legacy UNIX shell accounts" and having to change my email address and get everyone to update. My address is my identity. So I got my own domain name and host it on my own hardware. Now even if I move or switch ISPs. I just update my domain's DNS server addresses and keep my address. If NSI thinks they can yank domains for "any reason, at *their* sole discretion" then I want to transfer to another registrar. But there's no FAQ or info on how to do this. The registrars don't seem to like each other and without cooperation, domain transfers are impossible.
Hush little surfer, don't say a word, and never mind that noise you heard, It's just the lawyers beneath your bed, You use napster so you'll soon be DEAD!!!!!
Exit your rights! Enter armed knights! Taaaaake the cops hand..... off to your arraignment ladd!
It's scary to see how much English has invaded other languages. English words appear often in languages such as Spanish (particularly in Chicano dialects), German, and even in far unrelated languages like Chinese and especially Japanese.
English is widely taught as part of required public schooling worldwide as a 2nd language if it's not already the local primary language. World documents like passports and such are printed ALWAYS in English, French, and then the local language if its not one of the two former, and the need for French is falling off.
The ASCII character set, promulgated by the internet tends to favor English usage by not supporting diacritical marks used in other roman-alphabet based languages (French, German [extra characters now officially deprecated by German gov't], Spanish, etc.) Non-roman writing based languages are very much hindered by 7-bit ASCII (Chinese, Japanese, Korean, The Cyrillic based languages, also Georgian, Hindi, the list is long).
And with global communications, languages have ceased diverging and evolving each in their own directions. Without global comm and fast worldwide travel, American English would have diverged from British English to become as different as Spanish and Portugese are today. These processes have halted and in fact have reversed and will eventually result in a nearly uniform version of English.
It's not really the internet that's causing this, but instantaneous global communications in general. Language has always been an evolutionary phenomenon; here we just get to watch it evolve faster. The idea of a new language popping up and being universally accepted is about as likely as everyone switching over to IPv6 on the same day.
Totally incorrect. The evolution has already slowed and reversed as I described above. A new language? Unlikely. One being adopted until nearly all understand it (like English) it'll happen. Not instantaneously but over time. English is already understood in more places on Earth today than just 75 years ago. Why? Satellite TV boradcasts, people traveling 10,000 miles regularly many times per year. Global business partnerships. If there's any evolving going it, it's everything evolving to merge together.
The odd man out? Space travel.
The difficulty of space travel and slow light speed communications will mean that the first settlements beyong the Earth will be isolated for long periods of time with only sparse contact with the Earth and cartainly no interactive contact (light time is neearly 1 hour just to get to Jupiter, and you though satellite delays were annoying!). This isolation may result is some new diverging and evolution of language again.
Until then look for one language growing at the expense of others and many languages to even die out. For good or bad, a common language has advantages and is necessary. It will happen.
ICANN should allow ***anything*** to be used as a top level domain.
However, it should still require registrations to be of the form DOMAIN.TLD, i.e., both parts domain and TLD extension are both needed to constitute a single registration application.
The TLDs themselves can be registered to no one, just like no one "owns" org or com or uk.
Of course the root servers will need some custom software to deal with this. I say, use the 1st letter of the TLD to decide what nameserver ([A-Z0-9].ROOT-SERVERS.NET) gets the request. This will accomplish load balancing and should be straightforward to implement.
The benefits of the system I described here include:
(1) An end to squatting by CorpInc on corpInc.{com|net|org|cc|...} because there would now be (for all practical purposes) and infinite number op possible combinations of CorpInc.* and *.CorpInc. Even microsoft can't affort to buy up microsoft.* and *.microsoft.
(2) An end to domain hoarders in general. With unlimited variations, no one domain name is all that important. Thus they lose their resaleable value.
(3) Space for similarly named companies to all happily coexist. apple.computers, apple.records, apple.farms, apple.employment, john.apple, the-big.apple, etc. No need to sue for limited domain name since they're no longer a limited resource.
Other possibility is to allow the full Unicide character set in domain names.
We [the ACLU] believe that the constitutional right to bear arms is primarily a collective one, intended mainly to protect the right of the states to maintain militias to assure their own freedom and security against the central government.
Note the phrase "the right of the states".
Now here's the 2nd amendment of the US constitution. It's very short. One sentence:
A well regulated Militia being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms shall not be infringed.
Note the phrase "the right of the people".
That's a whopping revisionist statement by the ACLU there. Still think their mission is to defend the rights of individuals. Think again.
-- The best weapon is the one provided to you by your opponent.
(1) According to the RIAA - because they didn't get any money from the sale of your computer,
Now this really *pisses* *me* *off*. RIAA thinks it it entitled to assess a fine *upon* *me* because *other* people are pirating. This leads me to one of two conclusions. (1) this fee is wrong, and should be banned or (2) Since I'm being punished along with the pirates, I may as well actually set out and pirate since I've already been judged guilty with sentence carried out. Since the crime has already been paid for, why not to pirate?
What's next? Do we tax a "murder fee" onto knife sales and give the monet to law enforcement, because x% of knives are used in murders every year?
(2) The movie companies feel that you should not be able to see a film before its released on the cinema in your country because that is stealing the claim to first showing from the cinemas. I might agree with this if region locks somehow automatically expired after a certain time. But fucking 50 year old movies are coming out today on DVD with region locks?! Kinda lays waste to the distribution argument, eh? Of course, many of the import DVDs I have will *never* see a local release, and even if they did, videos are often edited, extra features removed, audio dubbed over... the point being that IT ISN'T EVEN THE SAME PRODUCT ANYMORE. It's changed, so how can it can be seen as competing with the other region product anymore? And when I buy an import DVD, are not the original IP owners getting compensated? Isn't this what this whole protection scheme is supposed to really (3) You COULD use this to produce pirate videos.
This logic is so flawed, I'll leave its dubunking as an excercise for the reader.
Purity test. Bah! Being a/. geezer means I'm always right. I can blather on with the pointless stories about how I remember when there were no 'users' and everyone was anonymous, and when there was no Jon Katz, and no moderation, and when there was, I was in the 1st batch. With age comes wisdom and extreme cynicism, jadedness (is that a word) and outright paranoia (I think SETI@Home is actually Echelon@Home and people are actually scanning a chunk of net traffic for key words.) and discovering that you always make tpyos (and say the more important things inside the parens) rather than outside. Ooo! New article! Gotta go slamdunk some trolls!
All this does is increase the number names companies will HAVE to buy, to protect their trademarks.
Open the floodgates. Allow *anything* to be used as a TLD, HOWEVER.... and this is what's important: All domain registrations *must* still consist of two parts, domain+TLD. The TLD itself can be registered to no one nor belongs to anyone, thus insuring its availability to all.
This will accomplish the following:
(1) Campanies simply *cannot* "buy up" all the domains anymore as there will, for all practical purposes, be an infinite number of combinations for trademarkname.* as * can be now anything.
(2) Companies with similar or identical names, but doing different things now have plenty of elbow room to coexist (unlike now). Apple computers has apple.com. What is Apple Records to do? Why, apple.records, of course. A farmer could have apple.farms, the temp agency could have apple.employment, etc. since, emphasizing again, that the TLD itself (.apple) can't be registered to anyone, thus future companies and individuals can forever enjoy use and availibility of the.apple TLD. Even Mr. Joe Apple (joe.apple).
It'd be an end to squatting; an end to hoarding; an end to buying out of spite; an end to domain brokering. And how difficult would it be for servers to implement on a technical level? I see it as no worse than the.com subdomain is already being successfully handled (for now, inagine as *.com with the.com simply dropped).
Ok men, here's the deal. The FreeBSD guys will create a diversion by staging a protest near the main gate demanding a port of MS Office to their platform. Second, Slashdot's main page will have all links pointing to random locations within *.microsoft.com. The masive/. effect will keep the MS IT goons off balance, and distract corporate management. Third, every Best Buy store nationwide will be simultaneously littered with flyers caiming "Free copies of Windows 2000 to the first 100,000 callers to 1-800-MICROSOFT". This will saturate all communications lines into the complex.
Now while MS is busy, the Linux team will enter the compound, crash the WinCE running microsoft's security alarms and door locks by setting the date back to 12-31-99 and letting the clock roll over again, or by installing Explorer 5.0 or better yet, AOL Titanium. We will then move to the freezer section where the penguin is being held, free him, and get out before the crashed windows machines catch fire and fill the building with smoke. Stallman, (yes sir!) if there's time, you will go to the legal dept's office and replace the MS EULA with a copy of the GPL. And Young (yes sir!) you swap out the Win2K master CD on the assembly line with a Red Hat 6.3 distro cd.
Ok, break!
LATE BREAKING NEWS! POSSIBLE MEMORY APPLICATION!
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Moldable Magnets
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· Score: 3
Scientists at a top research facility have theorized on a possible application of the use of this magnetic material as a random access stroage medium in computers. Tiny doughnut-shaped rings of the material would be located at every intersection in a grid of thin wires strung along two axes. Any single magnetic ring can be addressed via two wires (one on each axis). A third wire will wind its way through all of the magnetic rings along a diagonal pattern. To store a bit, the x,y wires will receive a large pulse of current. The polarity of this pulse determines wheather a '1' or a '0' is to be stored in the tiny ring. To read the bit back, Another pulse (always in the same polarity is sent down the x,y axes again). Depending on the currently magnetized state of the ring, a differing current pulse level will be detected in the 3rd wire which can be used to interpret the stored value. Since this pulse may destroy the bit value stored in the magnetic ring, the value just read must be written back immediately to the ring. This exciting new technology means that someday, computers may have many planes of vast grids of these tiny magnetic beads as their primary work storage. And will shrink the size computers down greatly while making them much faster. Scientists have yet to name this new technology and will turn to the public for ideas on this matter. Yes folks, it's an exciting time to be alive!
The dangers of net friends.... They may be minors.
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LonelyNet
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· Score: 2
On the net, no one knows who you really are. You may make friends with someone sharing common interests (like video games or Sailor Moon or whatever), and then later, waaay down the line, find yourself on the blunt end of cease-and-desist orders or facing "angry parents" or interrogation or questions from police regarding your "relationship" with your net friend who may, in reality, turned out to have been a 14 year old girl. I never asked her her age. It wasn't relevant to our mutual interests. Now everyone's looking at you like some sort of pedo/pervert when all you wanted to talk about was wheather Sailor Jupiter or Sailor Mars has the stronger attack.
I fear we're in a climate ripe for legislation to make it "illegal" to contact minors on the net without parental permission. Of course, the "but how can you know and what if kids lie about their age" issue will be doged by the wording of the law to make all net friends a risky venture.
Slashdot Mirror
Dualshock 2 for the PS2 goes the whole hog, and has analogue buttons.
Yeah, but dual shock for PSX came out waaay late in its life. The best games were already made and didn't work with dual shock.
Game consoles are still missing non stick/button controls as stock controls. A paddle/wheel? Light guns? (Nintendo seemed to quit doing this after NES) Driving games suck without a wheel. Hell, even today's game systems can't do a decent tempest or even an ancient breakout or pong game because of a lack of proper control. There should be a hole at the center of the directional pad that you can insert the optional paddle wheel into. But all these extra controls NEED TO COME WITH THE CONSOLE because few developpers will code for a optional controller that they knew few people have.
What you're really talking about here is "hangout places". Malls and arcades were the place in my day. Now it's on the net. No real change here.
School. If you know how to browse, you know how to cheat on research reports. All of your friends do it, so you want to learn how.
Cliffs Notes anyone? Monarch notes? Encyclopaedias? The three forbidden reference sources for any school report. Again, nothing's really changed.
Peer Pressure. You don't want to be the only person in your circle of friends who doesn't know how to use computers. And you want to keep up with
the latest trends. Your friend emails you about some new site or program, you get it. If you want something to talk about the next day, you learn as
much as you can. You might try other similar programs and learn about them.
Peer pressure. Yah. That's a new one. One's tastes and knowledge of music or video games or sports got you judged as much as "PC skilz" does now. Still nothing new here.
Jobs. Don't kid yourself. Kids are smarter than they seem. They know a good job when they see one. Gee, I can sit in front of a computer screen for 8
hours a day and get paid four times what the mechanic does, or the gardener, or my parents!
Same thing not so long ago with digital "electronics" (I'm talking discrete logic stuff here, not true 'computers'.) And before that it was the transistor. And before that the vacuum tube. Each new gen made the former look less skilled. Once again, nothing new here.
Dumb movies. Hackers probably inspired more than a few wanna-be's to learn about computers. Of course, if they got far enough in their studies, they
probably found out that what's real is more exciting than the movies.
War games anyone? Or dumber... Wierd Science? Short Circuit? Bond Movies? Mission Impossible? Star Trek (TOS)? There's no shortage of hokey tech movies/TV in the past. Still no big difference.
Overall nothing has really changed. Kids seem smarted today because they use tech that didn't exist in the past. Kids grow up to make more money today because of inflation. Hey a 2 Bedroom home in the L.A. sold for $22,000. Today, the same home costs $180,000. A new (and big, mind you) car in 1950 for under $2000? Oh yeah. As we all know, the biggest increases in salary come when you *change* jobs and *not* through merit raises and promotions. So yeah, the kid's new job pays more than mom or dad's job of 20 years. Things are more tha same than ever, IMHO.
[*] I think the transition from game play that required skill to mindless game play happened first with the nintendo NES. Before the NES, standard joysticks had the stick on the RIGHT side and the button on the LEFT side. Since most people are right handed, this seemed to imply that player movement and skill were of paramount importance in games. Since the NES, the button(s) have been switched to the RIGHT side, implying that slamming buttons has become more important... with "autofire" controllers representing the ultimate in game de-evolution. Though, "game shark" cheater carts and their ilk sink this even lower. The next generation of game systems will probably get rid of the stick completely. Oh wait, they already did. They're game "pads" now. That's really just 4 more buttons in a cross shape so I guess it *is* all buttons now. *sigh*
I hate football AND basketball. Too tense. Too commercialized. Too many rules. Rigidly timed games. Too much stats. Anything deviating from the stats is called an "upset". I always wonder why people watch if they have such a strong pre-determination of what they're about to see.
Baseball is far more relaxing and enjoyable to watch. A little more random. No clock to worry about. No scary buzzers. Far less cheating. No stress. Which is exactly what I need after racking my brain staring at severely inbred (inheritance wise) C++ code.
Aren't there any baseball fans anymore?
Way down the line when we have many genetically engineered walking among us, the health care providers are going to charge more to insure natural (i.e., random) people because they will statictically cost more. Employers will ask that you submit your genome like they do now with your salary history. And while they can today *require* neither one, you *know* what happens to resumes that don't include. Your genome will become the guide to determine your place in society.
Truck drivers better have the enhanced vision gene. Engineers better have the enhanced memory and logic genes. Teachers better not have the pedophile gene. The legal department says we just can't afford to do otherwise.
The poor who cannot afford genetically manipulated kids will see their kids discriminated against. A whole new caste system will result out of liability reasons.
So long as "all men are created equal", the gov't/marketplace/society/etc. must treat us as such. Creating the unequals will create distincts "levels" of people which society will then stratify.
Nonetheless, if 99% of nations ban genetic manipulation, 1% will allow it. The righ will travel there to procreate their perfect kids.
We will have the problem to deal with someday. It's already too late.
Do I own a loaf of bread?
Seriously. Do I own a load of bread that I buy? Can I examine it under a microscope? Can I run chemical tests on it? Can I run it through a spectrometer? A gas chromatograph? Can I reverse engineer the recipe and make exact copies of it? Can I sell the copies for profit and not pay anything to the original break maker? Is this legal? Is this illegal? Did I have to sign a license? Click one? Will anyone stand up and tell me that "clicks" are as legally binging as a signature? Legally binding at all? By clicking here you agree to pay me $10,000,000 or as much of that as you can and the debt must be inherited to spouses or offspring if you die until it's paid off at 500% annual intrest. Hey, you clicked it! It's a license/contract/agreement/whatever. You're bound. Yah sure. God the software lawyers are not just stupid but really lame assed stupid.
Now suppose that Benjamin Franklin was alive today and just now proposed the idea that large buildings be constructed with taxpayer dollars and more of those tax dollars be used to purchase books and magazines (copyrighted material) so that the public can come anytime and read these materials freely.
The print publishers would FLY INTO A RAGE and call Franklin every dirty name they could think of from "thief" to "crook" to, yes, even "pirate" who is "opposed to people profitting from their hard work" and "taking the food out of baby's mouths bacause writers won't be able to support their families anymore".
Of course, today, Franklin would have proposed that libraries included software, video, and audio, and indeed, all copyrighted works. Indeed many public libraries today do lend VHS and CDs.
And it wasn't just for the purpose of education and betterment of the public. Most books were an entertainment medium in the 18th century as much as movies are today. So don't isolate Franklin's idea as having only altruistic motives.
And who would say that closing all libraries would be a GOOD idea? Very few I'll wager. Why should it be any different when it comes to CDs/movies/software than it is with books/mags?
And oh yes, despite the existance of libraries, (gasp!) people still make money and can even (choke!) earn a living as writers and publishers. Well imagine that. Free access to copyrighted books and magazines didn't kill the industry after all. In fact, it expanded it. Just like VHS rentals resulted in Hollywood making more money today from home video sales than it ever did or ever will from theatrical ticket sales.
Ever rent a movie, video game, book, or magazine. Then you too are as much a pirate and thief an yo label others to be.
Let he who is without sin...
From telling the DOJ that "removing Explorer would disable Windows" (because their demo of deleting all DLLs/EXEs used by explorer, including shared libraries and stuff like GDI.EXE and KERNEL32.EXE) to the Halloween papers "LDK 1.2 contains JFC which we're going to be pissing on at every opportunity" to the telling of PC vendors, "if you sell any other OS on any line of machines, we will cancel your Windows license all together", I'm surprised that Microsoft has room for that many feet in their mouth. Even after the endless accusations and the start of close scrutiny by the DOJ and state courts, MS continues... continues... continues... to demonstrate utter comtempt for the consumer and the law.
Truly MS deserves to be broken up. Mote than AT&T. More than Standard Oil. NO ONE can say MS wasn't "given a chance to set things right" or two chances or 10 chances. They've dug their own grave so deep and so dark that not even light can escape it.
MS is a spoiled brat.
I had some X-10 units in my house. Then one day I got this Isobar, power filter/surge protector strip. Suddenly the X-10 units started to act flakey; sometimes working, sometimes not. It seems that any kind of AC noise filter will work on both sides of the line, filtering the power to the equipment and filtering "noise" on the rest of the house wiring, including desired line noise, like X-10 signals and not ethernet signals. Also won't EVERY transformer operated devide suppress some high frequency noise from the line. How many wall warts are in your house?
Slashdot seems to be inserting an extra blank line after the BR tags, instead of just doing a CRLF.
Light hearted cute girl anime:
Devil Hunter Yohko.
Dirty Pair Flash.
Battle Athletes
Battle Athletes Victory (longer better series)
You're Under Arrest.
Romance anime:
Oh My Goddess!
My Dear Marie.
Episodes 5 and 6 of Here is Greenwood.
Sailor Moon (very long, awful in dub version)
Pure cheesecake
Cutey Honey
Aika
Megami Paradise
Not so light cute girl anime:
Sol Bianca
Dirty Pair (not flash)
Anime with female heroines over age 30 (rare in anime):
Phantom Quest Corp (very ghostbusters like)
City Hunter.
Princess Mononoke
Sci-Fi without so many battling robots.
Ghost in the Shell.
Armitage III (avoid the one with Kiefer Sutherland/Elizabeth Berkeley)
Macross Plus (ok, I know, but the robots are immaterial to the real story).
Slash and Gore anime:
Mermaid Forest.
Vampire Hunter D.
Really silly anime:
Episodes 1 through 4 of Here is Greenwood
Slayers
Roujin Z (why too much spending on healthcare is bad).
Fantasy:
Record of Lodoss War
RG Veda
Surreal/Creepy:
Serial Experiments Lain.
Perfect Blue.
Revolutionary Girl Utena
Vampire Miyu
Well, that should occupy you for some time.
Instant.
Gratification.
Code stuff. "RUN". See stuff happening. Change stuff. "RUN". See new stuff happening.
Unfortunately there aren't many other good (for kids) interpreted languages out there today. There's VB (not really BASIC and possesses few of the above qualities that made BASIC great). Anyone do LOGO anymore? (ooo! Turtle graphics!) There's the various scripting/batch files of DOS, the *nix shells, but these are text only and lack ***simple*** sound/graphics commands and ***SIMPLE*** ways to read input devices (keyboard, joysticks, mice, etc.) that kids will HAVE FUN[*] with. I really miss the SET() and RESET() block graphics of TRS-80 BASIC. and the commodore 128 BASIC's 'SOUND' statement. HyperCard for the Mac wan't bad for the older kid (16+ year old) programmer looking for new ideas, but I think that's dead now too. What creative tools does the SW industry give kids? Dress barbie or Choreograph the Spice Girls. Blargh.
[*] Fun is really the key. Writing a pong game in BASIC for the C64 was fun because even at age 11, it was doable for me. If programming isn't fun, kids aren't gonna want to do it.
(1) Prohibition. When alcohol was banned, people still produced, transported, and consumed it. "But it was the law!" The amendment was withdrawn by a subsequent amendment. Work through proper channels? Write your representatives? Convince legislators through proper means? Didn't happen. And the people were REWARDED for their disregard of an unjust law.
(2) Segregation laws. Blacks must yield their seat on busses to whites. Rosa Parks refused. "But it was the law!" Should she have complied? I think not. Her refusal spawned the great civil rights movement. Work through proper channels? Write your representatives? Convince legislators through proper means? Didn't happen. And the people were REWARDED for their disregard of an unjust law.
(3) The 55 MPH speed limit. The Federal Gov't, which is not supposed to be involved in making local state law (10th amendment) effectively extorted states into mandating 55MPH by refusing them federal highway dollars if they refused to comply and legislate 55. The law was widely ignored by the public. "But it's the law!" The threat was finally ruled UNCONSTITUTIONAL and highway funds were ordered maintained regardless of local state speed limits. The result? Most states hiked local speed limits imediately. (And BTW, no increase in traffic fatalities appeared unkile what the naysayers predicted). Work through proper channels? Write your representatives? Convince legislators through proper means? Didn't happen. And the people were REWARDED for their disregard of an unjust law.
Am I making my point here?
Right now it's the internet turning IP law on its ear, just as the press removed literacy from the sole realm of high society. IP law cannot survive in a world of instantaneous global communication with each and every one of us granted equal power to publish anything. The dinosaurs will roar loudly, but they're already sinking into the tar pit.
Will the fall of IP law hurt a lot of people? Certainly. Recorded music put a lot of musicians out of business. Automatic pinsetters put a lot of people out of work. Computers and robots put a lot of factory workers out of work. Refrigeration put the ice deliverers out or work. The automobile hurt sales of horses. Airplanes depressed the commuter ship industry. The film camera hurt portrait artists. Cellular phones hurt the operators of coin operated phones. Something must be hurt or killed so that something new can live and grow. The fall of IP law will usher in a new wave of "information brokers" and "knowledge dealers". Knowledge will cease being for the wealthy or the "authoirized" and will become an omnipotent commodity upon which a new and better society will be built upon.
I for one am looking forward to the future.
Go to [local city/county agency] and apply for a background check. They do the check and give you a certificate with your name, SSN, maybe even your photo (so other ID by you is not needed when you use the certificate later), or whatever on it that says you're a clean, upstanding citizen.
It's good for 48 hours or so. Show it to buy 1 or many guns. The seller verfies the cert and your ID (visually only, no logging of info). Or don't use the cert at all and let it expire.
This way, background checks get performed. But no one has to collect information from you to write down or relay to local agencies about how many and what type of guns you bought, if any.
This achieves the purpose of backgrounds checks, thus "stopping criminals" as much as the current system does, right? I'll say it again because this is what the left keeps harping. My plan as described above WILL DO THE BACKGROUND CHECKS AND STOP CRIMINALS FROM BUYING GUNS JUST AS MUCH AS THE CURRENT SYSTEM (which democrats support) DOES!
Will politicians on the left accept this? No. Background checks aren't what they really want. That's just a ruse to dupe the public into supporting the mandates. What they really want to know is exactly who owns what, right down to the serial number so that when the bans come later (like they have so many times before), they can show up at your door and demand [banned make/model of the day].
Did you really think only criminals were being targeted?
I got tired of my ISP expiring the "legacy UNIX shell accounts" and having to change my email address and get everyone to update. My address is my identity. So I got my own domain name and host it on my own hardware. Now even if I move or switch ISPs. I just update my domain's DNS server addresses and keep my address. If NSI thinks they can yank domains for "any reason, at *their* sole discretion" then I want to transfer to another registrar. But there's no FAQ or info on how to do this. The registrars don't seem to like each other and without cooperation, domain transfers are impossible.
and never mind that noise you heard,
It's just the lawyers beneath your bed,
You use napster so you'll soon be DEAD!!!!!
Exit your rights!
Enter armed knights!
Taaaaake the cops hand.....
off to your arraignment ladd!
(Muhahahaha!)
English is widely taught as part of required public schooling worldwide as a 2nd language if it's not already the local primary language. World documents like passports and such are printed ALWAYS in English, French, and then the local language if its not one of the two former, and the need for French is falling off.
The ASCII character set, promulgated by the internet tends to favor English usage by not supporting diacritical marks used in other roman-alphabet based languages (French, German [extra characters now officially deprecated by German gov't], Spanish, etc.) Non-roman writing based languages are very much hindered by 7-bit ASCII (Chinese, Japanese, Korean, The Cyrillic based languages, also Georgian, Hindi, the list is long).
And with global communications, languages have ceased diverging and evolving each in their own directions. Without global comm and fast worldwide travel, American English would have diverged from British English to become as different as Spanish and Portugese are today. These processes have halted and in fact have reversed and will eventually result in a nearly uniform version of English.
It's not really the internet that's causing this, but instantaneous global communications in general. Language has always been an evolutionary phenomenon; here we just get to watch it evolve faster. The idea of a new language popping up and being universally accepted is about as likely as everyone switching over to IPv6 on the same day.
Totally incorrect. The evolution has already slowed and reversed as I described above. A new language? Unlikely. One being adopted until nearly all understand it (like English) it'll happen. Not instantaneously but over time. English is already understood in more places on Earth today than just 75 years ago. Why? Satellite TV boradcasts, people traveling 10,000 miles regularly many times per year. Global business partnerships. If there's any evolving going it, it's everything evolving to merge together.
The odd man out? Space travel.
The difficulty of space travel and slow light speed communications will mean that the first settlements beyong the Earth will be isolated for long periods of time with only sparse contact with the Earth and cartainly no interactive contact (light time is neearly 1 hour just to get to Jupiter, and you though satellite delays were annoying!). This isolation may result is some new diverging and evolution of language again.
Until then look for one language growing at the expense of others and many languages to even die out. For good or bad, a common language has advantages and is necessary. It will happen.
However, it should still require registrations to be of the form DOMAIN.TLD, i.e., both parts domain and TLD extension are both needed to constitute a single registration application.
The TLDs themselves can be registered to no one, just like no one "owns" org or com or uk.
Of course the root servers will need some custom software to deal with this. I say, use the 1st letter of the TLD to decide what nameserver ([A-Z0-9].ROOT-SERVERS.NET) gets the request. This will accomplish load balancing and should be straightforward to implement.
The benefits of the system I described here include:
(1) An end to squatting by CorpInc on corpInc.{com|net|org|cc|...} because there would now be (for all practical purposes) and infinite number op possible combinations of CorpInc.* and *.CorpInc. Even microsoft can't affort to buy up microsoft.* and *.microsoft.
(2) An end to domain hoarders in general. With unlimited variations, no one domain name is all that important. Thus they lose their resaleable value.
(3) Space for similarly named companies to all happily coexist. apple.computers, apple.records, apple.farms, apple.employment, john.apple, the-big.apple, etc. No need to sue for limited domain name since they're no longer a limited resource.
Other possibility is to allow the full Unicide character set in domain names.
Thoughts?
Note the phrase "the right of the states".
Now here's the 2nd amendment of the US constitution. It's very short. One sentence:
Note the phrase "the right of the people".
That's a whopping revisionist statement by the ACLU there. Still think their mission is to defend the rights of individuals. Think again.
--
The best weapon is the one provided to you by your opponent.
Now this really *pisses* *me* *off*. RIAA thinks it it entitled to assess a fine *upon* *me* because *other* people are pirating. This leads me to one of two conclusions. (1) this fee is wrong, and should be banned or (2) Since I'm being punished along with the pirates, I may as well actually set out and pirate since I've already been judged guilty with sentence carried out. Since the crime has already been paid for, why not to pirate?
What's next? Do we tax a "murder fee" onto knife sales and give the monet to law enforcement, because x% of knives are used in murders every year?
(2) The movie companies feel that you should not be able to see a film before its released on the cinema in your country because that is stealing the claim to first showing from the cinemas. I might agree with this if region locks somehow automatically expired after a certain time. But fucking 50 year old movies are coming out today on DVD with region locks?! Kinda lays waste to the distribution argument, eh? Of course, many of the import DVDs I have will *never* see a local release, and even if they did, videos are often edited, extra features removed, audio dubbed over... the point being that IT ISN'T EVEN THE SAME PRODUCT ANYMORE. It's changed, so how can it can be seen as competing with the other region product anymore? And when I buy an import DVD, are not the original IP owners getting compensated? Isn't this what this whole protection scheme is supposed to really (3) You COULD use this to produce pirate videos.
This logic is so flawed, I'll leave its dubunking as an excercise for the reader.
Purity test. Bah! Being a /. geezer means I'm always right. I can blather on with the pointless stories about how I remember when there were no 'users' and everyone was anonymous, and when there was no Jon Katz, and no moderation, and when there was, I was in the 1st batch. With age comes wisdom and extreme cynicism, jadedness (is that a word) and outright paranoia (I think SETI@Home is actually Echelon@Home and people are actually scanning a chunk of net traffic for key words.) and discovering that you always make tpyos (and say the more important things inside the parens) rather than outside. Ooo! New article! Gotta go slamdunk some trolls!
Open the floodgates. Allow *anything* to be used as a TLD, HOWEVER.... and this is what's important: All domain registrations *must* still consist of two parts, domain+TLD. The TLD itself can be registered to no one nor belongs to anyone, thus insuring its availability to all.
This will accomplish the following:
(1) Campanies simply *cannot* "buy up" all the domains anymore as there will, for all practical purposes, be an infinite number of combinations for trademarkname.* as * can be now anything.
(2) Companies with similar or identical names, but doing different things now have plenty of elbow room to coexist (unlike now). Apple computers has apple.com. What is Apple Records to do? Why, apple.records, of course. A farmer could have apple.farms, the temp agency could have apple.employment, etc. since, emphasizing again, that the TLD itself (.apple) can't be registered to anyone, thus future companies and individuals can forever enjoy use and availibility of the .apple TLD. Even Mr. Joe Apple (joe.apple).
It'd be an end to squatting; an end to hoarding; an end to buying out of spite; an end to domain brokering. And how difficult would it be for servers to implement on a technical level? I see it as no worse than the .com subdomain is already being successfully handled (for now, inagine as *.com with the .com simply dropped).
Now while MS is busy, the Linux team will enter the compound, crash the WinCE running microsoft's security alarms and door locks by setting the date back to 12-31-99 and letting the clock roll over again, or by installing Explorer 5.0 or better yet, AOL Titanium. We will then move to the freezer section where the penguin is being held, free him, and get out before the crashed windows machines catch fire and fill the building with smoke. Stallman, (yes sir!) if there's time, you will go to the legal dept's office and replace the MS EULA with a copy of the GPL. And Young (yes sir!) you swap out the Win2K master CD on the assembly line with a Red Hat 6.3 distro cd.
Ok, break!
Scientists at a top research facility have theorized on a possible application of the use of this magnetic material as a random access stroage medium in computers. Tiny doughnut-shaped rings of the material would be located at every intersection in a grid of thin wires strung along two axes. Any single magnetic ring can be addressed via two wires (one on each axis). A third wire will wind its way through all of the magnetic rings along a diagonal pattern. To store a bit, the x,y wires will receive a large pulse of current. The polarity of this pulse determines wheather a '1' or a '0' is to be stored in the tiny ring. To read the bit back, Another pulse (always in the same polarity is sent down the x,y axes again). Depending on the currently magnetized state of the ring, a differing current pulse level will be detected in the 3rd wire which can be used to interpret the stored value. Since this pulse may destroy the bit value stored in the magnetic ring, the value just read must be written back immediately to the ring. This exciting new technology means that someday, computers may have many planes of vast grids of these tiny magnetic beads as their primary work storage. And will shrink the size computers down greatly while making them much faster. Scientists have yet to name this new technology and will turn to the public for ideas on this matter. Yes folks, it's an exciting time to be alive!
I fear we're in a climate ripe for legislation to make it "illegal" to contact minors on the net without parental permission. Of course, the "but how can you know and what if kids lie about their age" issue will be doged by the wording of the law to make all net friends a risky venture.