Ah, PRT, the future of transportation. West Virginia University has had it's own PRT (Personal Rapid Transit, also known by the students as Pretty Retarded Train) system since the early 1970's. The PRT serves as the primary mode of transportation between the two main campuses for thousands of students every day.
In fact, this morning I was riding the PRT to my CS lab, when I experienced first hand one of the minor glitches in the computer system that controls the PRT.
The computer system is still the original one from the 70's, housed in a warehouse-like building, mainframes with magnetic tape reels and all, running programs written in Fortran by the engineering students that built the thing, with all the processing power of the average digital watch.
Anyways, the PRT car I was in was right in the middle of the long straight stretch, having reached it's top running speed of about 40 miles per hour, when the power went out. The little electric cars are designed so that when the power goes out, the wheels lock up.
So, our PRT car goes from 40 mph to a dead stop in under 1 second. I was immediately reminded of physics class; objects in motion tend to stay in motion unless acted upon by an outside force. I was standing up at the time. Fortunately, the outside force acting upon me was the soft and squishy back of the person in front of me. The people sitting in the front had the less pleasant experience of having their faces acted upon at 40 mph by the front plexiglass window.
Situation 1 - The police come to your house with a warrant, because you are a suspect in a crime, and they follow rules of search and seizure as mandated by the constitution.
Situation 2 - Someone from a non-profit organization that you've never heard of (which happens to be a front for a certain Software Company, which has been found in a court of law to illegally maintain its monopoly on the software industry) comes to your house and demands to see what you have installed on your computer.
The first situation is called "enforcing the law". I don't know what you would call the second situation, but under some circumstances it might be "extortion".
So I'm reading this at 6:00 AM, having spent last night compiling GNOME from cvs instead of sleeping. Knowing what my problem is doesn't make me feel any better though...
Right. For every program I ever want to download, I'm going to take the time to read and understand every single line of code, so I can be sure no one has slipped a trojan into the source code.
from this page: "
Q: THERE'S AN "EVIL DEAD 4" SCRIPT POSTED ON THE WEB. IS THIS OFFICIAL?
A: Absolutely not. It's "fan-fiction," which I cannot condone. It really isn't anyone's place other than ours to even think about making an Evil Dead. Besides, IT'S ILLEGAL! People should channel their creative energies into original stuff.
"
You're kidding, right? I can never tell when Bruce is being sarcastic or not.
If people say "Mozilla sucks!", I would say, "Why does it suck, and what can we do to make it better?"
However, that is not the case at the moment. People are saying, "I don't want to use a calendar in Mozilla." So I say, "The calendar is optional, don't use it if you don't want to, and quit complaining just because it's there." You would rather I demand that they use it anyway?
You people are stuck in the closed software mentality that when a new option is added to some software, you will be locked in and forced to use it. This is not the case in most Free software.
I don't know why I even bother replying to an AC...
Nobody is going to force you to use it, or even download it, even if you do choose to use Mozilla as your browser. This component, like the mail/news, and all other components, will be optional.
>Interesting that they broke red carpet (shades of Microsoft!), I guess it competes too much with their rhnetwork thing.
Way to jump to conclusions there, cowboy.
Redhat didn't do anything to break Red Carpet. It was broken because it was linked to an old version of rpm. This is fixed in the new version of Red Carpet, which should run flawlessly on Redhat 7.2. You can read about it on Ximian's Red Carpet mailing list.
In fact, I'm going to do the full Ximian install on my new Redhat 7.2 system as soon as I get home.
From the Red Carpetmailing list:
On Tue, 2001-10-23 at 09:52, eichen@raleigh.ibm.com wrote:
> Do you have an estimate as to when red-carpet will support
> redhat 7.2?
We shipped support for Red Hat 7.2 yesterday, so Red Carpet 1.1.3 should
be included, which supports RH 7.2 and RPM 4.0.3.
I've been testing the Roswell Beta for quite a while, so I already know this is a pretty schweet distro.
But the real reason I've been waiting for this release is that I miss my Ximian Desktop.
Supposedly, those Ximian code monkeys have a version of Red Carpet and their installer that works with Redhat 7.2, hidden away in their secret jungle lab and awaiting this release to see the light of day.
And the beast shall be made legion. Its numbers shall be increased a thousand thousand fold. The din of a million keyboards like unto a great storm shall cover the earth, and the followers of Mammon shall tremble.
from The Book of Mozilla, 3:31
(Red Letter Edition)
I have a bug for you, Mr. Taco
on
Evolution Bug-Hunt!
·
· Score: 0, Flamebait
What really bugs me is CmdrTaco, promoting stupidity on Slashdot by making dumbass comments like, "I have a bug, it keeps crashing."
Mr. Taco, by now you have surely been bitch-slapped by enough people who do real work on free software projects to know that that is a pathetic excuse for a bug. When whiny leeches like yourself submit bugs like that, the developers might ponder it for about.5 seconds before hitting the delete key.
What version were you using? On what operating system? What exactly were you doing when it crashed? Can you reproduce it? What are the steps that trigger the crash?
Or do you not really care about contributing? Perhaps you are too busy leading your army of trolls in insulting the efforts of those how spend their time creating software that everyone can freely use.
Slashdot: "An Open Source company wants to do something that Microsoft is doing. Therefore that Open Source company is Bad and is Doomed to Fail."
Writing articles like that requires no thought what so ever. Here's some food for real thought:
1.) Ximian is just a bunch of hackers. They are developing a.Net clone because they think it's a cool technology and see some potential in it, and just to prove that they can.
2.) It's Open-fscking-Source. No one is going to force you to use it. If you do want to use it you can do so free of charge. If you don't like the way it works you can change it.
3.) These people are actually contributing to the community and producing usefull stuff. The only thing Slashdot produces is whiny trolls who bitch about anything anyone tries to do.
None of the slashdotters really seem to understand why this is cool. The purpose is to render large sets of data as gazillions of pixels all viewable at once.
If I had one, I would definitely be rendering fractals on it. (for the totallly clueless, fractals are infinitely complex images created from simple equations.)
It would be nothing short of mindblowing to be able to see so many levels of detail at once. Think Mandelbrot set.
Re: I'm liking Republicans more and more
on
Carnivore To Die?
·
· Score: 1
I'm a Green myself, meaning that I'm pro-environment, pro-human rights, anti-corporate power. Pretty liberal in my views. But I'm starting to like Republicans more and more, because at least they have a point of view, compared to wishy washy bullshit Democrats, even if I don't always agree with those views.
You are absolutely right that it was Democrats who allowed the government to become so bloated that we would have things like Carnivore and the DMCA in the first place.
I still think the biggest threat to our freedom is the influence of powerful unaccountable corporations on our government. The answer, however, is not just more government to limit the power of these corporations. We must also limit the power of the government to implement these laws that are only beneficial to corporations and are harmful to the rights of citizens.
But the reason that corporations have more power than they should is the corrupt government. And the reason the governemnt is corrupt is the powerful corporations pumping so much money into it.
Mr. AC, you have said very succinctly what I had been thinking for a while. Is there any reason to criticize a small group of hackers for managing to blow through $13 million of someone else's money in a year while doing what they enjoy? Hell, no. I admire them. I would like to get a group of my friends together, start a company, and do the same.
Sure, Microsoft, take our code and use it in your closed source programs without our consent, without even acknowledging us. We like it! BSD all the way!
Slashdot Mirror
Ah, PRT, the future of transportation. West Virginia University has had it's own PRT (Personal Rapid Transit, also known by the students as Pretty Retarded Train) system since the early 1970's. The PRT serves as the primary mode of transportation between the two main campuses for thousands of students every day.
In fact, this morning I was riding the PRT to my CS lab, when I experienced first hand one of the minor glitches in the computer system that controls the PRT.
The computer system is still the original one from the 70's, housed in a warehouse-like building, mainframes with magnetic tape reels and all, running programs written in Fortran by the engineering students that built the thing, with all the processing power of the average digital watch.
Anyways, the PRT car I was in was right in the middle of the long straight stretch, having reached it's top running speed of about 40 miles per hour, when the power went out. The little electric cars are designed so that when the power goes out, the wheels lock up.
So, our PRT car goes from 40 mph to a dead stop in under 1 second. I was immediately reminded of physics class; objects in motion tend to stay in motion unless acted upon by an outside force. I was standing up at the time. Fortunately, the outside force acting upon me was the soft and squishy back of the person in front of me. The people sitting in the front had the less pleasant experience of having their faces acted upon at 40 mph by the front plexiglass window.
So, yeah, PRT all the way!
Same reason everyone else runs it: They don't want their web server to get r00ted every other day.
The difference is this:
Situation 1 - The police come to your house with a warrant, because you are a suspect in a crime, and they follow rules of search and seizure as mandated by the constitution.
Situation 2 - Someone from a non-profit organization that you've never heard of (which happens to be a front for a certain Software Company, which has been found in a court of law to illegally maintain its monopoly on the software industry) comes to your house and demands to see what you have installed on your computer.
The first situation is called "enforcing the law". I don't know what you would call the second situation, but under some circumstances it might be "extortion".
Now who's my friend?
So I'm reading this at 6:00 AM, having spent last night compiling GNOME from cvs instead of sleeping. Knowing what my problem is doesn't make me feel any better though...
Aaaaa! No place is safe! I have to go, I think I hear the Thought Police knocking at my door...
Right. For every program I ever want to download, I'm going to take the time to read and understand every single line of code, so I can be sure no one has slipped a trojan into the source code.
Who moderates the Meta-Moderators?
Nobody! That's why every day I meta-moderate 10 moderations as "unfair". If everyone joins me, we would put an end to all moderation on Slashdot.
from this page:
"
Q: THERE'S AN "EVIL DEAD 4" SCRIPT POSTED ON THE WEB. IS THIS OFFICIAL?
A: Absolutely not. It's "fan-fiction," which I cannot condone. It really isn't anyone's place other than ours to even think about making an Evil Dead. Besides, IT'S ILLEGAL! People should channel their creative energies into original stuff.
"
You're kidding, right? I can never tell when Bruce is being sarcastic or not.
...if it hadn't DESTROYED their CPU and their motherboard.
If people say "Mozilla sucks!", I would say, "Why does it suck, and what can we do to make it better?"
However, that is not the case at the moment. People are saying, "I don't want to use a calendar in Mozilla." So I say, "The calendar is optional, don't use it if you don't want to, and quit complaining just because it's there." You would rather I demand that they use it anyway?
You people are stuck in the closed software mentality that when a new option is added to some software, you will be locked in and forced to use it. This is not the case in most Free software.
I don't know why I even bother replying to an AC...
Because they can.
Nobody is going to force you to use it, or even download it, even if you do choose to use Mozilla as your browser. This component, like the mail/news, and all other components, will be optional.
while (software == free)
{
bitch();
moan();
}
>Interesting that they broke red carpet (shades of Microsoft!), I guess it competes too much with their rhnetwork thing.
Way to jump to conclusions there, cowboy.
Redhat didn't do anything to break Red Carpet. It was broken because it was linked to an old version of rpm. This is fixed in the new version of Red Carpet, which should run flawlessly on Redhat 7.2. You can read about it on Ximian's Red Carpet mailing list.
In fact, I'm going to do the full Ximian install on my new Redhat 7.2 system as soon as I get home.
From the Red Carpetmailing list:
On Tue, 2001-10-23 at 09:52, eichen@raleigh.ibm.com wrote:
> Do you have an estimate as to when red-carpet will support
> redhat 7.2?
We shipped support for Red Hat 7.2 yesterday, so Red Carpet 1.1.3 should
be included, which supports RH 7.2 and RPM 4.0.3.
Thanks,
Joe
I've been testing the Roswell Beta for quite a while, so I already know this is a pretty schweet distro.
But the real reason I've been waiting for this release is that I miss my Ximian Desktop.
Supposedly, those Ximian code monkeys have a version of Red Carpet and their installer that works with Redhat 7.2, hidden away in their secret jungle lab and awaiting this release to see the light of day.
And the beast shall be made legion. Its numbers shall be increased a thousand thousand fold. The din of a million keyboards like unto a great storm shall cover the earth, and the followers of Mammon shall tremble.
from The Book of Mozilla, 3:31
(Red Letter Edition)
What really bugs me is CmdrTaco, promoting stupidity on Slashdot by making dumbass comments like, "I have a bug, it keeps crashing."
.5 seconds before hitting the delete key.
Mr. Taco, by now you have surely been bitch-slapped by enough people who do real work on free software projects to know that that is a pathetic excuse for a bug. When whiny leeches like yourself submit bugs like that, the developers might ponder it for about
What version were you using? On what operating system? What exactly were you doing when it crashed? Can you reproduce it? What are the steps that trigger the crash?
Or do you not really care about contributing? Perhaps you are too busy leading your army of trolls in insulting the efforts of those how spend their time creating software that everyone can freely use.
Slashdot: "An Open Source company wants to do something that Microsoft is doing. Therefore that Open Source company is Bad and is Doomed to Fail."
.Net clone because they think it's a cool technology and see some potential in it, and just to prove that they can.
Writing articles like that requires no thought what so ever. Here's some food for real thought:
1.) Ximian is just a bunch of hackers. They are developing a
2.) It's Open-fscking-Source. No one is going to force you to use it. If you do want to use it you can do so free of charge. If you don't like the way it works you can change it.
3.) These people are actually contributing to the community and producing usefull stuff. The only thing Slashdot produces is whiny trolls who bitch about anything anyone tries to do.
None of the slashdotters really seem to understand why this is cool. The purpose is to render large sets of data as gazillions of pixels all viewable at once. If I had one, I would definitely be rendering fractals on it. (for the totallly clueless, fractals are infinitely complex images created from simple equations.) It would be nothing short of mindblowing to be able to see so many levels of detail at once. Think Mandelbrot set.
Brian: "You are all individuals!"
Crowd: "Yes! We are all individuals!"
Lone man: "I'm not."
I'm a Green myself, meaning that I'm pro-environment, pro-human rights, anti-corporate power. Pretty liberal in my views. But I'm starting to like Republicans more and more, because at least they have a point of view, compared to wishy washy bullshit Democrats, even if I don't always agree with those views.
You are absolutely right that it was Democrats who allowed the government to become so bloated that we would have things like Carnivore and the DMCA in the first place.
I still think the biggest threat to our freedom is the influence of powerful unaccountable corporations on our government. The answer, however, is not just more government to limit the power of these corporations. We must also limit the power of the government to implement these laws that are only beneficial to corporations and are harmful to the rights of citizens.
(end rant)But the reason that corporations have more power than they should is the corrupt government. And the reason the governemnt is corrupt is the powerful corporations pumping so much money into it.
Mr. AC, you have said very succinctly what I had been thinking for a while. Is there any reason to criticize a small group of hackers for managing to blow through $13 million of someone else's money in a year while doing what they enjoy? Hell, no. I admire them. I would like to get a group of my friends together, start a company, and do the same.
Slashdot should be the first on the list for the Information Purification Filters.
Otherwise, billions of Chinese children will grow up thinking that phrases like "hotting up" are standard English.
Then when they finally invade America, we will all be forced to communicate in a language that sounds like the characters from Zero Wing.
Sure, Microsoft, take our code and use it in your closed source programs without our consent, without even acknowledging us. We like it! BSD all the way!