'dd' is a command in UNIX/Linux systems that allows direct writing to the disk bit by bit. Using a program such as dd many times over would make it nearly impossible to recover old data from the drive (when deleted with 'rm', files can be recovered by programs readily available on the market-- they are still on the drive, but the OS doesn't know where they are). When every bit is set to zero several times over, however, then there is no way in hell you will find old data on the drive.
Hell, at least it's better than reloading 500 times/min trying to get that magical "f1rst p0st!!!" (and always with a CID of >1). Dear God, the boredom those people must feel to resign to doing that all day long
You think that's bad... I was in the Seattle Art Museum on a guided tour when a phone went off. At the loudest setting. It belonged to a man in the front row, who spoke in an extremely loud voice over the tour guide and glared at anyone giving him a disapproving look. He continued in this vein for ten minutes before being more or less escorted outside by security. Ye gods, have some people forgotten that there is an 'off' button on their cellphone? And that they should use it?
You are wrong in stating that providing ergonomic accomodations hurts the employer's bottom line. Studies have shown that employees who work in a more ergonomic environment tend to be happier and produce more (when you think about it, that employee is wasting productive time everytime s/he stands up and streches to rearrange their bones). Those $2000 ergo desks and chairs actually end up raising profits.
Your assumption that email has only an 'overhead cost' is wrong. Although this is true for normal use, what happens when a domain is spammed for each possible letter and number combination of email addresses? From 50 spammers? Or 500? If you don't have a huge amount of bandwidth (which tends to cost lots) and an incredibly powerful, redundant and fault-tolerant email server, you will go down. There is a lot of money that spammers cost buisinesses and individuals.
It's quite simple, really: those crack smokers view newest first, then find the first comments and moderate them down, while moderating up the truly redundant ones (because they came first in their page setup). All the more reason to lock anyone with moderation points into -1 threshold/oldest first/nested. CmdrTaco, you listening?
It seems to me that the BBB (Better Buisiness Bereau) was set up to handle situations just like this -- a buisiness doesn't provide services which it said it would. Although it usually doesn't have any official power AFAIK, the power of reputation in this case can be enormous.
I know that here in Washington (state), lawyers are departing the partnership track en masse to take a position in the Attorney General's office. They find that working there helps to make a difference, rather than just get rich. Keep in mind that this involves going from a possible seven-digit salary to about 50-75k a year. In fact, while many law firms are hiring madly, the Atty. Gen's office is turning down more applicants than it takes on. Just goes to show that there are good lawyers out there, I guess.
Auburn, WA?
I live here, and there is no Scientology presence here that I know of. That is really weird -- maybe there's one really rich cult member living here or something.
What I find most interesting about this article is the (possible) idea that humans could learn to see colors not dictated by their genetic code. If this is true, than humans might be able to accomodate some sort of enhanced vision device inside their eyes, once nanotechnology becomes more advanced. Think of the advantages to people in a nuclear power plant, for example, who could detect gamma rays through some sort of miniscule nano-Geiger counter implanted in their eyes and tied into the optic nerve, perhaps. Or for firefighters, say, who could percieve heat as another 'color', and identify the base of a flame. If we really can learn to percieve new colors, this really raises the bar for biomachine enhancements.
IIRC, I bought several software packages, mostly in the early 90s, that pulled exactly that dirty trick (By opening this packaging, you implicitly and irrevocably agree to the license statement enclosed in this packaging and are bound by it). The only problem was, that wasn't legal then. What UCITA does is make that kind of dirty trick legal. It is different from install time EULAs, however: those, you can read, and I'm certain many corporations have a team of lawyers go over them. It's just the typical slashdotter doesn't.
What if disturbing content is -good- for kids
on
Mandated Mediocrity
·
· Score: 2
It's probably been said before, but:
What happens when 'disturbing' content is good for a child's education?
I am reminded of my high school global issues class a few years back. At that time, the atrocities in Kosovo were all over the news. To illustrate the point, the teacher showed us sites with links to quite graphic pictures of the victims of torture, murder, and rape. Although everyone was free to leave at any time, no one did. These 'obscene, wrong, and terrible' pictures helped bring the plight of the Albanians out of the realm of statistics -- those images are burned into my mind forever. Although I would not want my 5 year old cousin to see those pictures, I feel it is important to introduce children to the fact that the world is not all sweetness and light. Without knowledge, nothing can be done. I envision a future in which reports of atrocities like Hitler's Holocaust are forgotten because they are obscene and no one should be exposed to them. And, as it has been said, those who do not remember history are doomed to repeat it.
I don't know what exactly you should do - I don't know your students. However, I have, from previous experience in an AP CS class, some suggestions:
1. Design is important, but not the entire focus of the class. My teacher last year had us do excruciatingly long design papers: he required a 'problem statement' for "Hello, World" (Really!). When we got into a few hundred lines of code, the design statements would reach 10 pages, and he still wanted more. This simply turned off the kids to design, and led them to extrapolate the design from the code.
2. Make the class fun. If kids are playing games, don't ban those games: they'll just hate you. Instead, show them the source for Doom or Quake. If they're interested only in browsing the Web, show them how to create a Java chatroom or a database in MySQL and Perl/PHP. Above all, keep them interested in computers and CS.
3. If there are kids who seem to be hopelessly lost, help them to question if the class is right for them. It may be they simply have trouble with a certain part of the curriculum, or they may be better suited in an art class;-). We had wrestlers in our class who were only interested in looking at truck websites and had no idea what was going on: get kids like this out of the class.
4. Demand working code. In our class, people passed without ever turning in a single working application. When the AP test was over and we went to Windows programming, we were encouraged to design only interfaces! Don't fall into this trap: demand working code if the assignment calls for it.
In case you were wondering, my teacher was a former design consultant. He was actually hired for this reason! (Ugh!) One student passed the AP exam. I left with the same knowledge that I entered with. The class was, quite simply, a waste of time.
He even could say something like 'This is how I cracked Novell'. We have something called free speech in this country. Also, it could prove beneficial: by showing specific security holes, he could help to educate sysadmins.
Unlike many reporters, Hemos was able to actually hold off on the hype and tell us that there are several more years to go in a short post. Thank you Hemos!
Why would we bomb Taiwan? US: Muhahahaha! Now we own the entire market on child labor and crappy party favors! The USA is the most prosperous nation in the world. If we really want to fuck up a country, we just declare economic warfare on them and turn their economy into a quivering pile of Jello
Just something I had to mention: This utility does NOT, repeat NOT circumvent any blocking software. Those utilities existed well before this little 'incident'. All the program in question does is DECODE the database and allow users to see it; something Mattel should have done in the first place to show they have a good quality product IMHO.
As mentioned above (Yes, I do have Newest First, so don't flame me), this can and will bring the total cost of service UP. Although it may seem like you are getting free money, in truth there is no such thing. Sorry buddy, but when it looks to good to be true, it probably is.
What if you modify the file all the others are symlinked to? If there's no way to tell (in the name of 'user friendliness', M$ probably set it up so the avg. user cannot tell which is the link and which is the actual file), it would probably change the data there, while the links point to the same place on the FAT. Thus, utter chaos. Although this could have some use (ie everyone has the same copy of the file, namely the most recent) it seems to me that if I wanted this, I could just use *nix and set up symlinks. Thank god for M$ 'innovation' which ends up screwing up an excellent idea. (BTW, isn't this what 'shortcuts' in the 9x / NT4 interface were supposed to be for anyway?)
Finally... A sport that is Good For Geeks
on
Brainball!
·
· Score: 1
By focusing on brain activity (or lack thereof, which probably requires more concentration than simply increasing the voltages running through the brain, and thus more effort), this shows that one CAN create an interesting sport that relies on brain power. Probably this will never supercede football or other brainless sports, but it is an interesting proof of concept. Quite simply, it shows that sports can be created to showcase cranial ability, not idiots who spend all their time working out.
Slashdot Mirror
'dd' is a command in UNIX/Linux systems that allows direct writing to the disk bit by bit. Using a program such as dd many times over would make it nearly impossible to recover old data from the drive (when deleted with 'rm', files can be recovered by programs readily available on the market-- they are still on the drive, but the OS doesn't know where they are). When every bit is set to zero several times over, however, then there is no way in hell you will find old data on the drive.
Hell, at least it's better than reloading 500 times/min trying to get that magical "f1rst p0st!!!" (and always with a CID of >1). Dear God, the boredom those people must feel to resign to doing that all day long
You think that's bad... I was in the Seattle Art Museum on a guided tour when a phone went off. At the loudest setting. It belonged to a man in the front row, who spoke in an extremely loud voice over the tour guide and glared at anyone giving him a disapproving look. He continued in this vein for ten minutes before being more or less escorted outside by security. Ye gods, have some people forgotten that there is an 'off' button on their cellphone? And that they should use it?
You are wrong in stating that providing ergonomic accomodations hurts the employer's bottom line. Studies have shown that employees who work in a more ergonomic environment tend to be happier and produce more (when you think about it, that employee is wasting productive time everytime s/he stands up and streches to rearrange their bones). Those $2000 ergo desks and chairs actually end up raising profits.
The problem with your arguments:
Your assumption that email has only an 'overhead cost' is wrong. Although this is true for normal use, what happens when a domain is spammed for each possible letter and number combination of email addresses? From 50 spammers? Or 500? If you don't have a huge amount of bandwidth (which tends to cost lots) and an incredibly powerful, redundant and fault-tolerant email server, you will go down. There is a lot of money that spammers cost buisinesses and individuals.
It's quite simple, really: those crack smokers view newest first, then find the first comments and moderate them down, while moderating up the truly redundant ones (because they came first in their page setup). All the more reason to lock anyone with moderation points into -1 threshold/oldest first/nested. CmdrTaco, you listening?
It seems to me that the BBB (Better Buisiness Bereau) was set up to handle situations just like this -- a buisiness doesn't provide services which it said it would. Although it usually doesn't have any official power AFAIK, the power of reputation in this case can be enormous.
I know that here in Washington (state), lawyers are departing the partnership track en masse to take a position in the Attorney General's office. They find that working there helps to make a difference, rather than just get rich. Keep in mind that this involves going from a possible seven-digit salary to about 50-75k a year. In fact, while many law firms are hiring madly, the Atty. Gen's office is turning down more applicants than it takes on. Just goes to show that there are good lawyers out there, I guess.
Auburn, WA?
I live here, and there is no Scientology presence here that I know of. That is really weird -- maybe there's one really rich cult member living here or something.
"Cannot be removed under penalty of law except by the consumer."
What I find most interesting about this article is the (possible) idea that humans could learn to see colors not dictated by their genetic code. If this is true, than humans might be able to accomodate some sort of enhanced vision device inside their eyes, once nanotechnology becomes more advanced. Think of the advantages to people in a nuclear power plant, for example, who could detect gamma rays through some sort of miniscule nano-Geiger counter implanted in their eyes and tied into the optic nerve, perhaps. Or for firefighters, say, who could percieve heat as another 'color', and identify the base of a flame. If we really can learn to percieve new colors, this really raises the bar for biomachine enhancements.
IIRC, I bought several software packages, mostly in the early 90s, that pulled exactly that dirty trick (By opening this packaging, you implicitly and irrevocably agree to the license statement enclosed in this packaging and are bound by it). The only problem was, that wasn't legal then. What UCITA does is make that kind of dirty trick legal. It is different from install time EULAs, however: those, you can read, and I'm certain many corporations have a team of lawyers go over them. It's just the typical slashdotter doesn't.
It's probably been said before, but:
What happens when 'disturbing' content is good for a child's education?
I am reminded of my high school global issues class a few years back. At that time, the atrocities in Kosovo were all over the news. To illustrate the point, the teacher showed us sites with links to quite graphic pictures of the victims of torture, murder, and rape. Although everyone was free to leave at any time, no one did. These 'obscene, wrong, and terrible' pictures helped bring the plight of the Albanians out of the realm of statistics -- those images are burned into my mind forever. Although I would not want my 5 year old cousin to see those pictures, I feel it is important to introduce children to the fact that the world is not all sweetness and light. Without knowledge, nothing can be done. I envision a future in which reports of atrocities like Hitler's Holocaust are forgotten because they are obscene and no one should be exposed to them. And, as it has been said, those who do not remember history are doomed to repeat it.
Even if we were to get Carnivore's source under the FOIA (yeah, right), main would probably look something like this:
#include (blacked out text)
int (blacked out)
{
while((blacked out)==(blacked out))
{
int (blacked out) = (blacked out);
(blacked out)();
(blacked out)();
}
and so on...
I don't know what exactly you should do - I don't know your students. However, I have, from previous experience in an AP CS class, some suggestions:
;-). We had wrestlers in our class who were only interested in looking at truck websites and had no idea what was going on: get kids like this out of the class.
1. Design is important, but not the entire focus of the class. My teacher last year had us do excruciatingly long design papers: he required a 'problem statement' for "Hello, World" (Really!). When we got into a few hundred lines of code, the design statements would reach 10 pages, and he still wanted more. This simply turned off the kids to design, and led them to extrapolate the design from the code.
2. Make the class fun. If kids are playing games, don't ban those games: they'll just hate you. Instead, show them the source for Doom or Quake. If they're interested only in browsing the Web, show them how to create a Java chatroom or a database in MySQL and Perl/PHP. Above all, keep them interested in computers and CS.
3. If there are kids who seem to be hopelessly lost, help them to question if the class is right for them. It may be they simply have trouble with a certain part of the curriculum, or they may be better suited in an art class
4. Demand working code. In our class, people passed without ever turning in a single working application. When the AP test was over and we went to Windows programming, we were encouraged to design only interfaces! Don't fall into this trap: demand working code if the assignment calls for it.
In case you were wondering, my teacher was a former design consultant. He was actually hired for this reason! (Ugh!) One student passed the AP exam. I left with the same knowledge that I entered with. The class was, quite simply, a waste of time.
So, AOL comments that their software is 'foolproof.' How about making it kid-with-half-a-brain-proof, guys? :-)
He even could say something like 'This is how I cracked Novell'. We have something called free speech in this country. Also, it could prove beneficial: by showing specific security holes, he could help to educate sysadmins.
I want to go, but I'm an American teenager...
Unlike many reporters, Hemos was able to actually hold off on the hype and tell us that there are several more years to go in a short post. Thank you Hemos!
Why would we bomb Taiwan? US: Muhahahaha! Now we own the entire market on child labor and crappy party favors! The USA is the most prosperous nation in the world. If we really want to fuck up a country, we just declare economic warfare on them and turn their economy into a quivering pile of Jello
Just something I had to mention: This utility does NOT, repeat NOT circumvent any blocking software. Those utilities existed well before this little 'incident'. All the program in question does is DECODE the database and allow users to see it; something Mattel should have done in the first place to show they have a good quality product IMHO.
Hate to pick nits, but: cout must have a operator. And, you don't need braces for one line of code. Have a nice day!
As mentioned above (Yes, I do have Newest First, so don't flame me), this can and will bring the total cost of service UP. Although it may seem like you are getting free money, in truth there is no such thing. Sorry buddy, but when it looks to good to be true, it probably is.
What if you modify the file all the others are symlinked to? If there's no way to tell (in the name of 'user friendliness', M$ probably set it up so the avg. user cannot tell which is the link and which is the actual file), it would probably change the data there, while the links point to the same place on the FAT. Thus, utter chaos. Although this could have some use (ie everyone has the same copy of the file, namely the most recent) it seems to me that if I wanted this, I could just use *nix and set up symlinks. Thank god for M$ 'innovation' which ends up screwing up an excellent idea. (BTW, isn't this what 'shortcuts' in the 9x / NT4 interface were supposed to be for anyway?)
By focusing on brain activity (or lack thereof, which probably requires more concentration than simply increasing the voltages running through the brain, and thus more effort), this shows that one CAN create an interesting sport that relies on brain power. Probably this will never supercede football or other brainless sports, but it is an interesting proof of concept. Quite simply, it shows that sports can be created to showcase cranial ability, not idiots who spend all their time working out.