I'm not sure how old this is (the internic regsitry is up-to-date now) but here is the People Eating Tasty Animals website. PETA
It seems that at one time they had the "peta.org" domain name, but it was confiscated by our wonderful US government after some legal disputes with those <flame>animal rights wakkos</flame>
It seems like they are trying to get around the "please take me off your calling list" laws that many states have adopted. The jist of it is that if "Big Company" calls you, you can tell them to take you off their calling list. If "Big Company" calls you again, you can take them to court and win some money. Each subsequent call from "Big Company" means a bigger cash settlement for you. The only proof you need to supply is the date and time that "Big Company" called.
If they never talk to a human, though, then they will never be subject to this law. Seems pretty sneaky to me.
In the US, voting is done mainly by districts; therefore you have to prove (usually by showing a state ID with your address) that you actually live in the district you are voting in. Why not use GPS to authenticate a voter's location before letting them vote online? If you have two voters living in one house then, the server can be programmed to allow only two votes from that residence.
Obviously you would want to couple this idea with a username and password, but sending the GPS data to the server could all be done behind the scenes. One drawback is that a GPS antenna would have to be attached to every computer that would be in the voting network.
My first computer was the original Apple Macintosh. It's main purpose in the house was to write essays and play the occasional game or two (or ten). My dad bought a copy of Apple BASIC, but I never showed interest in learning to program.
When I finally went to college about five years later, the computer went with me and continued to be a workhorse for writing papers. It was in college, though, that I finally discovered how much I enjoyed programming and that I was really good at it. This was not due to my exposure at an early age to programming but my exposure to mathematics and logic (I have a BS in Physics and a MS in Physics, and now I write code for a company in Boulder).
How does a really powerful calculator (computer) teach children to think? I have not found any programs that teach logic, analytical skills, observation and deduction, or the synthesis of thought. Bring back books and heated debates about systems of thought and current issues. But we're all too damned afraid of offending people with our ideas, especially in the schools. Heck! Teachers are prohibited from offending and telling students that they are wrong.
Okay, I'm done ranting. Computers are a nifty tool, but do we want unthinking keypunchers using them?
Goodhew added that C# allows "developers (to) access any hardware and software." C# provides "complete access to (the) underlying platform."
Hmm, "complete access to the underlying platform". It sounds like VB script viruses will now be showing up as C# viruses on all platforms. Never install this runtime environment on your Linux / BSD boxen.
Sorry, I did not mean for this to be a flame, but your comment was a little offtopic (had nothing to do with comments in the Linux kernel) and it was way too long (I am a product of pop culture and need everything in sound-bites).
Similar to humorus comments in code are humorus variables in mathematical equations. Doing graduate studies in physics means that you often times stay up very late trying to finish homework and generally keep from going crazy (friends and Unreal Tournament help with the crazy part). One very late night my friend came up with the "coffee cup" and "smiley face" notation. This prompted me to implement the star wars notation. At the end of two pages of work I was left with the equation "Death Star" + "Tie Fighter" = "Light Saber" where "X-Wing" and "Droid" had cancelled out about half-a-page before. This is made more funny by the fact that each figure was drawn out in painstaking detail.
I have no idea what I was trying to solve for, but it was funny as hell when I got the paper back and the solution was correct!
Before anyone starts lambasting M$ too much today, at least a fix is available for the security hole. They seem to be handling this one in a timely fashion in light of the LoveBug two weeks ago.
Let he who has never written a bug cast the first flame.
call me a karma whore if you will, but consider this first . . .
artificial == not real intelligence == smart therefore, artificial intelligence == not real smart
I remember AI being the big buzzword about seven or eight years ago, but it was set aside after failing to deliver computers that think and whatnot. Intelligent agents have taken the place of AI since then. It would be really cool to see universities supporting an intelligent agent network that would allow users to submit an agent to perform some specialized task.
The idea is for the agent to travel from machine to machine using unique data sets (usually massive data sets that would be unweildly to move around) to perform calculations or gather statistics. Or the agent coule replicate itself as it travels and perform a massively parallel calculation.
Yes, yes, yes, but what about viruses and malevolent users etc. etc. etc. The network admins and managers would have to restrict usage to those would could be trusted. The code would also have a trust level associated with it as well (along the lines of Java and the JVM). ------------------------------------------------ ----------------
There is a growing tendancy among web designers to use flashy graphics and plug-ins to make their websites more attractive to the average user. However, the average user does not have the fat pipe into their home necessary to efficiently view these types of web pages. In fact, the whole of the internet suffers under the weight of streaming video, macromedia plug-ins, and the like.
Is the trend in web design going to continue down this path - bigger, better, slower - as the size and complexity of web pages outstrip the medium which distributes them, or will we begin to see a return to simple and elegant websites?
On their website, TransOrbital Inc. offers anyone willing to cough up the cash the opportunity to have their business card flown to the moon on their space vehicles. All this for a mere $2000 (US). If that is a little to steep, then you can have a personal letter, poetry (or whatever else will fit onto an 8-1/2" x 11" piece of paper) etched onto a nickel disk (read "stored on a hard drive") and sent to the moon for $50 a page.
My proposal is to take the currently disputed Slashdot pages along with Microsoft's basterdized Kerberos code and send them to the moon. We could all send a few dollars to CmdrTaco (et. al.) to pay for the disk space on the satellite. It would be Slashdot's new claim to fame -- the only website violating the DMCA on two celestial bodies. And, if Bill wants the code removed, he can go to the moon and get it himself!
Maybe Slashdot could run a server on the moon and get around the DMCA all together . . . but that damn network latency!
If you were a big business (and these thing were a little more beefy overall) you could assign one of these to each employee and then have docking stations w/ monitor and keyboards at each desk. It would be the ultimate in the portable/configurable office. Not to mention that your employees could work from home with a similar setup there.
You could have a similar setup in a university setting. Computing labs which provide docking stations. Just plug your Espresso in and go, and then work at home or in your dorm on the same machine.
The logistics of setting this up might be a nightmare, but DHCP is fairly reliable. The only problem would be the proliferation of viruses and the non-standard configuations of the machines. Each user would be responsible for their own configuration management and trouble shooting as well. Some would like that idea and some wouldn't.
I'm sure there is a market somewhere -- mainly a cheaper alternative to a laptop for IT professionals who want to use the same machine at work and at home -- but the "bang-for-your-buck" factor is not too high.
IMHO, since they are offering this dirt-cheap web appliance and since they are not charging any internet subscription fees, it would appear that the WebPlayer is purely a market research device.
Consider the fact that they require you to surf the web for at least ten hours per month. They also require you to supply them with any information that they request at any time (section 5.4 of the user agreement). With about 99.99684% accuracy, I can guarantee that they will be tracking your websurfing habbits and then selling that information to any corporation with cash.
Using this little dohickey would be equivalent to running Doubleclick's web-tracking software right on your own machine -- it's one big cookie that you pay $50 a year to use, and they won't let you hack it either (section 2.2 of the user agreement).
In the words of Monty Python: "Run away! Run away! Run away!" ------------------------------------------ ----------------------
What I really need is a faster monitor. The current 17" sitting on my desk has a refresh rate of ~66Hz. A video card spitting out 80 - 100fps is really not going to do me any good since the monitor will only be able to display 66 of those frames in any given second. The new flat panel that I want is even worse with a refresh rate around 50Hz . . . sigh!
Well, back to hacking code. ------------------------------- ---------------
I will be trekking in Nepal at the end of June. The idea crossed my mind of bringing along my laptop (Dell Inspiron 5000) and other high tech toys to e-mail photos back to the U.S. A solar panel would be great for a situation like this -- just pop it on top of the pack and let it charge the computer during the day and use the computer at night.
So, if all the Slashdotters would pitch in a few bucks for the solar panels and plane ticktes to Nepal, I'll do some field research and let you know how well the panels work. Oh, and I'll need a Sherpa to lug around 6lbs of solar panels and 7.5lbs of computer.
Okay, I'll give the author the benefit of the doubt and say "sure, you could possibly get this thing to work". But how are you going to get it to move?
The problem lies in the fact that inside your "gravitational sheilding", the craft will posses the same mass (inertial) that it has always had. Slap some engines on that baby and they will still have to overcome Newton's first law: an object at rest wants to stay at rest - the law of inertia.
The only way to get this thing to work is to have the propulsion module outside your gravitational sheilding. That way, the engines will be acting on a "reduced" inertial mass. So, how do you keep the propulsion module moving along with the craft but unattached to it?
Oh, and since the system described does not seem to affect an objects inertial mass, Newton's first law still holds. A mere 10N force will not give you 10^4 m/s acceleration.
The article mentioned a standalone gateway deveice that you can purchase for about $350 (american). It has a built-in 56.6k modem and an RJ45 ethernet adapter. You could simply plug your ADSL modem directly into the gateway and then have as many wireless computers around your house as you want.
the RG-1000 Residential Gateway access point that acts as a central base station in a house or small business. The Residential Gateway includes a built-in 56K modem that can be directly plugged into a phone line, and a 10baseT Ethernet jack for connecting to an existing wired Ethernet network or a xDSL or cable modem Internet connection. -- from the article --
Don't forget to use a crossover cable for the connection between the gateway and the DSL modem.
For everyone who mentioned that the expansion of the universe is actually accelerating, CNN posted this story some time ago (Feb, 1998). Here is a more in depth review complete with fancy equations for all you scientific types.
Dave Barry wrote a very funny article about the twenty-five most important things he has learned over the past fifty years. I don't remember which one this was, but it stuck in my mind.
Every three years, scientists announce that
The universe is even bigger than they thought
There are more sub-atomic particles than they thought
Everything they said previously about global warming was wrong
Slashdot Mirror
PETA
It seems that at one time they had the "peta.org" domain name, but it was confiscated by our wonderful US government after some legal disputes with those <flame>animal rights wakkos</flame>
-----------------
If they never talk to a human, though, then they will never be subject to this law. Seems pretty sneaky to me.
-----------------------------------------------
Obviously you would want to couple this idea with a username and password, but sending the GPS data to the server could all be done behind the scenes. One drawback is that a GPS antenna would have to be attached to every computer that would be in the voting network.
Any thoughts on this idea?
-----------------------------------------------
My first computer was the original Apple Macintosh. It's main purpose in the house was to write essays and play the occasional game or two (or ten). My dad bought a copy of Apple BASIC, but I never showed interest in learning to program.
When I finally went to college about five years later, the computer went with me and continued to be a workhorse for writing papers. It was in college, though, that I finally discovered how much I enjoyed programming and that I was really good at it. This was not due to my exposure at an early age to programming but my exposure to mathematics and logic (I have a BS in Physics and a MS in Physics, and now I write code for a company in Boulder).
How does a really powerful calculator (computer) teach children to think? I have not found any programs that teach logic, analytical skills, observation and deduction, or the synthesis of thought. Bring back books and heated debates about systems of thought and current issues. But we're all too damned afraid of offending people with our ideas, especially in the schools. Heck! Teachers are prohibited from offending and telling students that they are wrong.
Okay, I'm done ranting. Computers are a nifty tool, but do we want unthinking keypunchers using them?
-----------------------------------------------
Goodhew added that C# allows "developers (to) access any hardware and software." C# provides "complete access to (the) underlying platform."
Hmm, "complete access to the underlying platform". It sounds like VB script viruses will now be showing up as C# viruses on all platforms. Never install this runtime environment on your Linux / BSD boxen.
-----------------------------------------------
Sorry, I did not mean for this to be a flame, but your comment was a little offtopic (had nothing to do with comments in the Linux kernel) and it was way too long (I am a product of pop culture and need everything in sound-bites).
Similar to humorus comments in code are humorus variables in mathematical equations. Doing graduate studies in physics means that you often times stay up very late trying to finish homework and generally keep from going crazy (friends and Unreal Tournament help with the crazy part). One very late night my friend came up with the "coffee cup" and "smiley face" notation. This prompted me to implement the star wars notation. At the end of two pages of work I was left with the equation
"Death Star" + "Tie Fighter" = "Light Saber"
where "X-Wing" and "Droid" had cancelled out about half-a-page before. This is made more funny by the fact that each figure was drawn out in painstaking detail.
I have no idea what I was trying to solve for, but it was funny as hell when I got the paper back and the solution was correct!
-----------------------------------------------
Let he who has never written a bug cast the first flame.
-----------------------------------------------
artificial == not real
intelligence == smart
therefore, artificial intelligence == not real smart
I remember AI being the big buzzword about seven or eight years ago, but it was set aside after failing to deliver computers that think and whatnot. Intelligent agents have taken the place of AI since then. It would be really cool to see universities supporting an intelligent agent network that would allow users to submit an agent to perform some specialized task.
The idea is for the agent to travel from machine to machine using unique data sets (usually massive data sets that would be unweildly to move around) to perform calculations or gather statistics. Or the agent coule replicate itself as it travels and perform a massively parallel calculation.
Yes, yes, yes, but what about viruses and malevolent users etc. etc. etc. The network admins and managers would have to restrict usage to those would could be trusted. The code would also have a trust level associated with it as well (along the lines of Java and the JVM).- ----------------
-----------------------------------------------
Is the trend in web design going to continue down this path - bigger, better, slower - as the size and complexity of web pages outstrip the medium which distributes them, or will we begin to see a return to simple and elegant websites?
-----------------------------------------------
My proposal is to take the currently disputed Slashdot pages along with Microsoft's basterdized Kerberos code and send them to the moon. We could all send a few dollars to CmdrTaco (et. al.) to pay for the disk space on the satellite. It would be Slashdot's new claim to fame -- the only website violating the DMCA on two celestial bodies. And, if Bill wants the code removed, he can go to the moon and get it himself!
Maybe Slashdot could run a server on the moon and get around the DMCA all together . . . but that damn network latency!
-----------------------------------------------
You could have a similar setup in a university setting. Computing labs which provide docking stations. Just plug your Espresso in and go, and then work at home or in your dorm on the same machine.
The logistics of setting this up might be a nightmare, but DHCP is fairly reliable. The only problem would be the proliferation of viruses and the non-standard configuations of the machines. Each user would be responsible for their own configuration management and trouble shooting as well. Some would like that idea and some wouldn't.
I'm sure there is a market somewhere -- mainly a cheaper alternative to a laptop for IT professionals who want to use the same machine at work and at home -- but the "bang-for-your-buck" factor is not too high.
-----------------------------------------------
Consider the fact that they require you to surf the web for at least ten hours per month. They also require you to supply them with any information that they request at any time (section 5.4 of the user agreement). With about 99.99684% accuracy, I can guarantee that they will be tracking your websurfing habbits and then selling that information to any corporation with cash.
Using this little dohickey would be equivalent to running Doubleclick's web-tracking software right on your own machine -- it's one big cookie that you pay $50 a year to use, and they won't let you hack it either (section 2.2 of the user agreement).
In the words of Monty Python: "Run away! Run away! Run away!"- ----------------------
-----------------------------------------
Well, back to hacking code.
-------------------------------
---------------
So, if all the Slashdotters would pitch in a few bucks for the solar panels and plane ticktes to Nepal, I'll do some field research and let you know how well the panels work. Oh, and I'll need a Sherpa to lug around 6lbs of solar panels and 7.5lbs of computer.
The problem lies in the fact that inside your "gravitational sheilding", the craft will posses the same mass (inertial) that it has always had. Slap some engines on that baby and they will still have to overcome Newton's first law: an object at rest wants to stay at rest - the law of inertia.
The only way to get this thing to work is to have the propulsion module outside your gravitational sheilding. That way, the engines will be acting on a "reduced" inertial mass. So, how do you keep the propulsion module moving along with the craft but unattached to it?
Oh, and since the system described does not seem to affect an objects inertial mass, Newton's first law still holds. A mere 10N force will not give you 10^4 m/s acceleration.
the RG-1000 Residential Gateway access point that acts as a central base station in a house or small business. The Residential Gateway includes a built-in 56K modem that can be directly plugged into a phone line, and a 10baseT Ethernet jack for connecting to an existing wired Ethernet network or a xDSL or cable modem Internet connection. -- from the article --
Don't forget to use a crossover cable for the connection between the gateway and the DSL modem.
Dave Barry wrote a very funny article about the twenty-five most important things he has learned over the past fifty years. I don't remember which one this was, but it stuck in my mind.
Every three years, scientists announce that