And atomic warheads are made in Utah. Oh, those peace loving Mormons.
Re:OT, may the mods have mercy on my karma
on
High Density CDs
·
· Score: 1
Now, punching the high-density hole on a DD floppy- that was risky. Sometimes the manufacturer's DD media was good enough to hold HD tracks, but often not. Usually you found out a few months down the line when your "HD on the cheap" floppies started having data errors.
Heheh, you must've had better drives then I. I can't remember having floppies that lasted more then a few months even if I bought them and used them at the right density.
We bitch because its annoying as hell. Fugly and unusuable UI - adds icons and system tray crap all over the place, and has that stupid "upgrade to full" message. I want a player to play movies and nothing else. Well, maybe some file operations.
My OS has a fine skin - use that. Every other app has a frigin maximize button that actually does something productive. And I don't care who you are - on my winbox, its my fscking system tray. Stay the fsck out unless I tell you to.
No, they just take enough money from you that you and your family become destitute - and heaven help you if you have any conditions that require health coverage that you can no longer afford... wait, so if you have a serious condition, you do die. And possiblly dependant family members. Whoops.
Besides, anyone who thinks that a Mars mission is feasible hasn't really thought it through. Here's the deal - Mars is not like the Moon. It is much bigger and has atmosphere. It is also really, really far away.
So there are several design challenges. First, lets imagine the smallest earth->orbit launch vehicle we can make. Shrink it down a bit to accomodate the Martian gravity and atmosphere. So, we have a decently small rocket. That rocket is still friggin' huge by any standards but its own.
Now, consider that rocket is the *payload* - that rocket must be transported across millions of miles of space, and then *landed* on the Martian surface. How do you suggest they get it down? Expend precious fuel thrusting upwards, Moon-trip style? Or use the thin atmosphere for a parachute to splashdown in non-existent oceans? Or maybe try and build some sort of airplane-like vehicle to glide in on the too-thin atmosphere, and hope it doesn't burn up like Columbia did.
So, our payload gets bigger - we need our mars liftoff vehicle, and our mars lander system to attach to the liftoff vehicle. I imagine that must be about the size of the space shuttle, total.
Now, consider that is still payload. We need a system to get that whole huge mass to and from mars on a tighter schedule then any other interplanetary vehicle ever made. We have to transport a freaking enourmous payload at high speed across an interplanetary gap. That is one huge amount of fuel. Returning could be cheaper - the lander/liftoff system can be discarded, plus it's downhill.
And, hardest of all, we have to get this humoungous interplanetary craft off the earth and into orbit. It could probably be launched in sections and assembled there, but still that's no small order - for one thing, you wouldn't want to perform in-orbit assembly on the lander/liftoff component - that's just asking for another Columbia. If you look at any space vehicle, probably 80-90% of its mass is just launch equipment (this is just a guess, not an exact figure). Imagine the size of a rocket designed to lift up a B52. Pleasent, eh?
And, last but not least, we've got to get our intrepid astronauts back down onto earth. For that, just send the shuttle to pick them up from their vehicle.
So, we have to launch the most tremendous space vehicle ever made off the earth, and get a few scraps of it that can be carried in the shuttle back to earth.
Keep in mind that Russians have by far the best plasma-physicists in the world. While their craft may be inferior to the americans in aerodynamics and safety (2 catastrophes in entire project lifespan is good compared to the Russians), they beat the Americans and the Europeans all to hell in fuel efficiency - and where every pound costs thousands, fuel efficiency is key.
Honestly, the sets are why I liked the show. Star Trek looks like a cruise liner, not a military ship. FireFly is the first sci-fi where the inside of the ship actually looks like the inside of a real ship - functional, cheap, and not as many windows as people would like. And the freaking sofas and normal terrestrial furniture/decorations reinforce that.
I loved how FireFly's ship just seemed so real. A ship I could finally believe.
Actually, some folks have beaten you to it. IMHO, the best-thought-out realistic space sci-fi setting, technology-wise, is Albedo. Unfortunately, Albedo "Erma Felna: EDF" is a Furry setting, so if you look it up you'll be deluged by sick fucks. Still, its a really good sci-fi setting with well thought-out ships, technology, etc. The ships are as you describe - decks perpendicular to the direction of thrust. Actually, for modular reasons all ships have standardized deck shapes - all decks are cylindrical and fixed in diameter. The ships are shaped like a giant pill, with the fore and aft sections of the ship flooded with heavy water. Because the ship will always be travelling forward or backwards (backwards while braking) this means the directions of movement are covered, with the fuel tanks doubling as crumple zones for collisions (the fuel is deuterium, reactive only in the atomic sense). The ships are pill-shaped because surface-area must be minimized for FTL cost-efficiency reasons - the entire ships surface must be lined with expensive FTL coils. Weapons and thrusters are low-profile protrusions along the surface of the hull.
Hail to the King baby!
on
Duke3d in Linux
·
· Score: 5, Funny
Right, now lets start getting this ported to every system on earth. Duke3d for Dreamcast, PalmOS, and JavaVM everyone!
I'd like to see more power added to scripting engines and suchlike. Doom source ports have added a system called "fragglescript" that allows players to make scripted games such as soccer and hunt matches.
Really, if the scripting engine was powerful enough, it could be used for full game-mods (Team Fortress Duke anyone?)
Maybe someone could embed a Python interpreter and event system into the thing.
Alternately, there is the approach taken by Legacy, which was adding skins and GL lightsourcing/alpha to the game. That could be pretty too.
Of course, whos going to do the talking is a big issue. All the people I can think of who've been most vocal about the DMCA (Katz, RMS, etc) are the absolute last people I'd want representing us - we'd look like lunatic fringe, and add credence to the yuppies pushing this thing.
Whaat we'd need are well-spoken workers in computer technology and academics who can say that this limitation is bad for the economy and for progress/invention.
The problems of the metaphor is this - it not a retarded kid. Its a mad kid - he has a million personalities, most of them are good, but there's a handful of bully psychopaths in there.
Everyone agrees Saddam must go. What is in dispute is whether or not is worthwhile to kill the country in the process - even the infantrymen of Iraq should be considered innocent casualties - they are drafted and held in the war by MP's, secret police, and officers.
While I agree with you (I only use an LCD because I won it in a draw) keep in mind that LCD screens of the same recorded dimension are actually larger then CRT's. LCD's are not larger then the viewable screen, while CRT's measure the total size of the picture tube, which is substantially larger then the viewable screen. Therefore, add at least an inch (2 is better) to the size of the LCD when comparing them to a CRT.
That being said, I hate the lack of variable resolution on LCD's. Can't have everything, I guess.
Here's the problem - he's not one person. He's a few million. And they're not all with him - there's just one mad little man in charge. Hell, the military in Iraq is draftees. We're not killing jingoistic zealots who worship Saddam, we're killing normal city-slickers who got drafted to fight for a madman. And that's not even mentioning civilians.
Nobody would cry a tear if saddam died. We're just a little better at having a little empathy for all those people in Bagdhad that have done nothing wrong.
Really, what's so wrong about it? I mean, having a port open for use is like advertising a service. I think of a computer as a public office building - the kind dentists and lawyers work in - some doors are locked, various ones lead into offices. There is always a receptionist desk.
So, you can go down the hall and find out what offices are open to public business. Some doors are locked, some the secretary says "no, we don't want any new customers" or "you have to go get a t124350892 slip from elsewhere before you see the doctor" or "yes, we're open for business".
The admin is the security guard. If you don't want to be a security guard - lock the front door to the building. Any doors that contain offices that aren't for the public should be locked. Any doors that expect restricted traffic should be selective about who comes in.
Just because OS's are designed cryptically, software is careless, and it requires way more knowledge then it should to hold down a computer doesn't mean port-scanning itself is unethical.
In an ideal system, any server admin should be forced to see right on his main remote window what ports are open and what apps are running on them and what security is in place on each one. This should be on by default for any "dumb server" people plan to use. The problem is that there is that software is designed only for hardcores, and being used by people with a 5 page faq and the man pages. The user doens't see a nice UI showing him whats going on where, all he sees is a blinking white cursor. He knows he's installed a buttload of software, but has no clue what its doing. For efficiency's sake, the software is very cryptic, so he does not know what his machine is doing.
Really - fearing port scanning is security through obscurity. While in time-critical apps like network gaming there is a certain appeal to trusting the users, but in regular serving there should be no doors left open.
The solution to port-scanning isn't banning port-scanning, its making server boxen such that the admin knows what's going on.
Really, I can't say I'm surprised that this happened. Read any forum for any large software project (or popular forum in general: SlashDot) and you'll find that half the internet considers it their personal scrawlspace. Hell, if there's any bad side to the bloggin revolution, its that 12-16 year olds that used to be much more pleasantly silent have found their voice on the internet and are using it to annoy the hell of us who are trying to get some work done.
If you don't have a moderation system, patient moderators, etc, then avoid making your bugtracking or other internal information systems publicly available to unidentified users. Imagine if a guy posted a piece of software to Slashdot and said "hey, any bugs?" the quality of the responses he'd get.
The fact is that most bug-reporting database systems are designed for limited-beta testers, QC people, and developer communication. Not for joe user who just surfed in. Expecting it to be anything better is unrealistic. Look on SourceForge at the bugreport sites of any major game, instant messaging, or other project that appeals to teenagers and you'll see the same behaviour.
Mozilla is a huge project, and they've aimed at mainstream users - so you'll have every tom, dick, and harry using the bug-tracker. This means the bug-tracker has to be something better then a developer bugtracker if they want to get any useful data out of it. Maybe a bugtraq/slash engine hybrid? Mod your way to "take this bug seriously".
Okay, I'll bite. The idea is that you can do whatever you want with your owns stuff patented - however, if you want your patented material to be incorporated into the W3C standard, then its up to you to comply with their requirements. All standards boards have various requirements before something can be considered as "standard". It is for the good of the economy.
Whoever modded this troll is a jingoistic zealot. The poster is just saying that VB, for all its faults, is good for database RAD. Which many people would agree with.
No - the CEO's first responsability to the shareholders and the economy is to maximize profits.
However, the CEO's company operates in a nation, and the CEO also has responsibilities to the nation and its people. This is why GM doesn't sell crack - yes, its profitable, yes, it would maximize profits, but the nation has decided that it would be a bad thing for the country. So they made it illegal.
They can make other things illegal. You can make other things illegal. The government belongs to you. Do something, moron.
Re:cheap royalties or running joke?
on
Lucky Wander Boy
·
· Score: 1
Its because some sound engineer who probably hates his job of professionally hunting down varied canned laughter tracks has been told "go find me some videogame sounds and a speedball" by the director.
Slashdot Mirror
What about the Alaskan panhandle? Alaska itself was a purchase, but the panhandle itself is far less black and white.
And atomic warheads are made in Utah. Oh, those peace loving Mormons.
Heheh, you must've had better drives then I. I can't remember having floppies that lasted more then a few months even if I bought them and used them at the right density.
We bitch because its annoying as hell. Fugly and unusuable UI - adds icons and system tray crap all over the place, and has that stupid "upgrade to full" message. I want a player to play movies and nothing else. Well, maybe some file operations.
My OS has a fine skin - use that. Every other app has a frigin maximize button that actually does something productive. And I don't care who you are - on my winbox, its my fscking system tray. Stay the fsck out unless I tell you to.
No, they just take enough money from you that you and your family become destitute - and heaven help you if you have any conditions that require health coverage that you can no longer afford... wait, so if you have a serious condition, you do die. And possiblly dependant family members. Whoops.
Besides, anyone who thinks that a Mars mission is feasible hasn't really thought it through. Here's the deal - Mars is not like the Moon. It is much bigger and has atmosphere. It is also really, really far away.
So there are several design challenges. First, lets imagine the smallest earth->orbit launch vehicle we can make. Shrink it down a bit to accomodate the Martian gravity and atmosphere. So, we have a decently small rocket. That rocket is still friggin' huge by any standards but its own.
Now, consider that rocket is the *payload* - that rocket must be transported across millions of miles of space, and then *landed* on the Martian surface. How do you suggest they get it down? Expend precious fuel thrusting upwards, Moon-trip style? Or use the thin atmosphere for a parachute to splashdown in non-existent oceans? Or maybe try and build some sort of airplane-like vehicle to glide in on the too-thin atmosphere, and hope it doesn't burn up like Columbia did.
So, our payload gets bigger - we need our mars liftoff vehicle, and our mars lander system to attach to the liftoff vehicle. I imagine that must be about the size of the space shuttle, total.
Now, consider that is still payload. We need a system to get that whole huge mass to and from mars on a tighter schedule then any other interplanetary vehicle ever made. We have to transport a freaking enourmous payload at high speed across an interplanetary gap. That is one huge amount of fuel. Returning could be cheaper - the lander/liftoff system can be discarded, plus it's downhill.
And, hardest of all, we have to get this humoungous interplanetary craft off the earth and into orbit. It could probably be launched in sections and assembled there, but still that's no small order - for one thing, you wouldn't want to perform in-orbit assembly on the lander/liftoff component - that's just asking for another Columbia. If you look at any space vehicle, probably 80-90% of its mass is just launch equipment (this is just a guess, not an exact figure). Imagine the size of a rocket designed to lift up a B52. Pleasent, eh?
And, last but not least, we've got to get our intrepid astronauts back down onto earth. For that, just send the shuttle to pick them up from their vehicle.
So, we have to launch the most tremendous space vehicle ever made off the earth, and get a few scraps of it that can be carried in the shuttle back to earth.
yay.
I don't see this happening any time soon.
Keep in mind that Russians have by far the best plasma-physicists in the world. While their craft may be inferior to the americans in aerodynamics and safety (2 catastrophes in entire project lifespan is good compared to the Russians), they beat the Americans and the Europeans all to hell in fuel efficiency - and where every pound costs thousands, fuel efficiency is key.
Honestly, the sets are why I liked the show. Star Trek looks like a cruise liner, not a military ship. FireFly is the first sci-fi where the inside of the ship actually looks like the inside of a real ship - functional, cheap, and not as many windows as people would like. And the freaking sofas and normal terrestrial furniture/decorations reinforce that.
I loved how FireFly's ship just seemed so real. A ship I could finally believe.
Actually, some folks have beaten you to it. IMHO, the best-thought-out realistic space sci-fi setting, technology-wise, is Albedo. Unfortunately, Albedo "Erma Felna: EDF" is a Furry setting, so if you look it up you'll be deluged by sick fucks. Still, its a really good sci-fi setting with well thought-out ships, technology, etc. The ships are as you describe - decks perpendicular to the direction of thrust. Actually, for modular reasons all ships have standardized deck shapes - all decks are cylindrical and fixed in diameter. The ships are shaped like a giant pill, with the fore and aft sections of the ship flooded with heavy water. Because the ship will always be travelling forward or backwards (backwards while braking) this means the directions of movement are covered, with the fuel tanks doubling as crumple zones for collisions (the fuel is deuterium, reactive only in the atomic sense). The ships are pill-shaped because surface-area must be minimized for FTL cost-efficiency reasons - the entire ships surface must be lined with expensive FTL coils. Weapons and thrusters are low-profile protrusions along the surface of the hull.
Right, now lets start getting this ported to every system on earth. Duke3d for Dreamcast, PalmOS, and JavaVM everyone!
I'd like to see more power added to scripting engines and suchlike. Doom source ports have added a system called "fragglescript" that allows players to make scripted games such as soccer and hunt matches.
Really, if the scripting engine was powerful enough, it could be used for full game-mods (Team Fortress Duke anyone?)
Maybe someone could embed a Python interpreter and event system into the thing.
Alternately, there is the approach taken by Legacy, which was adding skins and GL lightsourcing/alpha to the game. That could be pretty too.
I'm confused at that - those keys aren't even next to each other - how could that typo have existed? Maybe a Dvorak?
Or is it a bizarre acronym? Back-Exploit, 'cause its an old software version?
Of course, whos going to do the talking is a big issue. All the people I can think of who've been most vocal about the DMCA (Katz, RMS, etc) are the absolute last people I'd want representing us - we'd look like lunatic fringe, and add credence to the yuppies pushing this thing.
Whaat we'd need are well-spoken workers in computer technology and academics who can say that this limitation is bad for the economy and for progress/invention.
The problems of the metaphor is this - it not a retarded kid. Its a mad kid - he has a million personalities, most of them are good, but there's a handful of bully psychopaths in there.
Everyone agrees Saddam must go. What is in dispute is whether or not is worthwhile to kill the country in the process - even the infantrymen of Iraq should be considered innocent casualties - they are drafted and held in the war by MP's, secret police, and officers.
While I agree with you (I only use an LCD because I won it in a draw) keep in mind that LCD screens of the same recorded dimension are actually larger then CRT's. LCD's are not larger then the viewable screen, while CRT's measure the total size of the picture tube, which is substantially larger then the viewable screen. Therefore, add at least an inch (2 is better) to the size of the LCD when comparing them to a CRT.
That being said, I hate the lack of variable resolution on LCD's. Can't have everything, I guess.
Here's the problem - he's not one person. He's a few million. And they're not all with him - there's just one mad little man in charge. Hell, the military in Iraq is draftees. We're not killing jingoistic zealots who worship Saddam, we're killing normal city-slickers who got drafted to fight for a madman. And that's not even mentioning civilians.
Nobody would cry a tear if saddam died. We're just a little better at having a little empathy for all those people in Bagdhad that have done nothing wrong.
Right, just like we protected East Timor, or the Palestineans, or... wait.
Who the fuck are you kidding.
The whole issue is this "killing his own citizens" thing, right?
Two words: Ariel Sharon.
Really, what's so wrong about it? I mean, having a port open for use is like advertising a service. I think of a computer as a public office building - the kind dentists and lawyers work in - some doors are locked, various ones lead into offices. There is always a receptionist desk.
So, you can go down the hall and find out what offices are open to public business. Some doors are locked, some the secretary says "no, we don't want any new customers" or "you have to go get a t124350892 slip from elsewhere before you see the doctor" or "yes, we're open for business".
The admin is the security guard. If you don't want to be a security guard - lock the front door to the building. Any doors that contain offices that aren't for the public should be locked. Any doors that expect restricted traffic should be selective about who comes in.
Just because OS's are designed cryptically, software is careless, and it requires way more knowledge then it should to hold down a computer doesn't mean port-scanning itself is unethical.
In an ideal system, any server admin should be forced to see right on his main remote window what ports are open and what apps are running on them and what security is in place on each one. This should be on by default for any "dumb server" people plan to use. The problem is that there is that software is designed only for hardcores, and being used by people with a 5 page faq and the man pages. The user doens't see a nice UI showing him whats going on where, all he sees is a blinking white cursor. He knows he's installed a buttload of software, but has no clue what its doing. For efficiency's sake, the software is very cryptic, so he does not know what his machine is doing.
Really - fearing port scanning is security through obscurity. While in time-critical apps like network gaming there is a certain appeal to trusting the users, but in regular serving there should be no doors left open.
The solution to port-scanning isn't banning port-scanning, its making server boxen such that the admin knows what's going on.
Really, I can't say I'm surprised that this happened. Read any forum for any large software project (or popular forum in general: SlashDot) and you'll find that half the internet considers it their personal scrawlspace. Hell, if there's any bad side to the bloggin revolution, its that 12-16 year olds that used to be much more pleasantly silent have found their voice on the internet and are using it to annoy the hell of us who are trying to get some work done.
If you don't have a moderation system, patient moderators, etc, then avoid making your bugtracking or other internal information systems publicly available to unidentified users. Imagine if a guy posted a piece of software to Slashdot and said "hey, any bugs?" the quality of the responses he'd get.
The fact is that most bug-reporting database systems are designed for limited-beta testers, QC people, and developer communication. Not for joe user who just surfed in. Expecting it to be anything better is unrealistic. Look on SourceForge at the bugreport sites of any major game, instant messaging, or other project that appeals to teenagers and you'll see the same behaviour.
Mozilla is a huge project, and they've aimed at mainstream users - so you'll have every tom, dick, and harry using the bug-tracker. This means the bug-tracker has to be something better then a developer bugtracker if they want to get any useful data out of it. Maybe a bugtraq/slash engine hybrid? Mod your way to "take this bug seriously".
Okay, I'll bite. The idea is that you can do whatever you want with your owns stuff patented - however, if you want your patented material to be incorporated into the W3C standard, then its up to you to comply with their requirements. All standards boards have various requirements before something can be considered as "standard". It is for the good of the economy.
Whoever modded this troll is a jingoistic zealot. The poster is just saying that VB, for all its faults, is good for database RAD. Which many people would agree with.
Blame whoever decided that all firewalls must block all traffic that's not HTTP and e-mail.
No - the CEO's first responsability to the shareholders and the economy is to maximize profits.
However, the CEO's company operates in a nation, and the CEO also has responsibilities to the nation and its people. This is why GM doesn't sell crack - yes, its profitable, yes, it would maximize profits, but the nation has decided that it would be a bad thing for the country. So they made it illegal.
They can make other things illegal. You can make other things illegal. The government belongs to you. Do something, moron.
Its because some sound engineer who probably hates his job of professionally hunting down varied canned laughter tracks has been told "go find me some videogame sounds and a speedball" by the director.