I agree with all your points apart from the bit about nuclear fuel being clean. I don't think anyone can predict what is going to be happening at any point in the world in 50 years' time, or 500, or 5000, or 1,000,000. But if you produce radioactive material, you have an obligation to make SURE that your waste material is not going to harm something down the line, be it human or whatever takes over when we get wiped off the face of the earth. The incredibly long half-life of waste material coming from nuclear reactors makes nuclear energy about the most irresponsible thing we can do to the planet. Now if you send it (waste) into the sun, I may be interested... But I don't think that's economically feasible.
I was interested in what you said about Intel & their distributed cancer research, so I checked it out. Unfortunately, their site is a little scarce on the details of who this research benefits. However it does mention that finding drugs to combat various diseases is a first priority. So I assume that a particular pharmecutical company would benefit from this, as would a small percentage of people with cancer who also have private health insurance. I would want my CPU time going in open-source medicine, and not someone else's patent that will be abused to make the most money possible. I'm not saying that this is the case with Intel's distributed cancer-curing client, but it kinda looks like that given the lack of details of beneficiaries. Anyone know for sure? I might email them...
KDE isn't the only open-source project to jump the gun. Maybe the should release a KDE-3_dont_use tarball;) I personally don't use KDE because it feels cluttered and slow. I usually use Enlightenment 0.17 CVS (when I can compile it). It looks great, is lightening fast, and is already very stable.
Anywho, whatever happened to Katabase, of KOffice? I have been waiting for that before I try a switch from OpenOffice to KOffice...
Dude that doesn't widen my page at all. You should hit the 'preview' button before posting. You're losing your touch man. There are better trolls hanging out in alt.os.linux
If people walked around naked all the time, there wouldn't be half as much porn around. Now if you put filters on the net access at school, here's what will happen:
1) The people with the filtering contract will get rich. 2) The politicians in marginal seats will sleep a little easier, knowing the sheep will vote them in for being morally 'pure'. 3) The kids will get around the filtering quite easily, and at the same time will develop a stronger taste for porn because of the imposed filter.
A moderately wise man once said to me "Push me, and I will resist. But lead me and I shall follow". This is the approach to take. You can't save the children from pornography by legislating, filtering, or throwing money around. Tell them not to look at it. If they don't listen - FINE. Leave them to their own devices. The more you try to stop them, the more they see through our double standards. They will grow to desire porn, and end up a porn star, completing the cycle.
My Via KT266A beast is VERY stable. I have an Epox 8KHA+ with 256MB of PC2100 and a 1600XP+ Athlon. I run Slackware only. I am thinking about re-installing Windows to play Black & White, but I can't comment on Windows stability at the moment. Linux stability seems very good. It only ever crashes with a cvs DRI X server for my Radeon - I haven't crashed xfree86-4.2.0 yet with this system. And I also tried with the CPU overclocked and reporting as a 1800XP+ Athlon. This was stable but it made me feel a little nervous so I clocked it back again. Are you sure it's Via's fault?
the amount of radiation necessary to cause many major mutations in a population is relatively large, much larger than anything that leaks out into the environment (accidentally or intentionally) from civillian nuclear power
That is absolute bullshit. Mutation by radiation is literally hit and miss. Sometimes a mutation doesn't have much effect on the overall form of the organism's offspring. Sometimes it has a HUGE effect. DNA's effect on an organism is not simple linear cause and effect. It is wildly nonlinear and unpredictable, and your telling the public that this is 'safe' is quite irresponsible - especially when you also claim to be a Reactor Physics Engineer. Natural selection will breed out HARMFUL mutations in the population, but what about POSITIVE mutations. There is such a thing. Rare, yes. But they do exist. How do you think we evolved out of the nothing?
They aren't mutants! It's been said about 5 million times already (did you read any of the other comments?) that they are merely sterilised, not mutant.
The fact that it has been said a million times doesn't make it true. They are NOT 'merely sterilised'. They are 'MOSTLY sterilised'. Some will produce mutant offspring. Search on google for DNA+mutation+radiation.
And for God's sake, people, THINK. This place used to be full of intelligent people...
if you actually read any more than the headline you'd see that they're sterilized by radiation
If you actually gave the article some thought you would realise that radiation doesn't have some magical property that makes flies sterile. It just happens that if you expose flies to radiation in this way they USUALLY become sterile. The reason this happens is because the genes in their sperm / egg are damaged to the point of being not functional. But not all of the sperm / eggs will be damaged to this extent. Some will just be mutated and will still be capable of producing offspring. And those offspring will be mutated.
Man I am getting sick of reading every idiot and his dog pulling the "it's not as if they'll reproduce" line. Half-aresd humour does not cover up the scientific fact that mutants WILL be born. Of course there won't be many, but it only takes one to get the ball rolling.
Methinks you are getting fantasy and reality muddled up. Or else, nice troll! (Especially since most people out there know diddly-squat about matters Nuclear)
I wish you were wrong, but radiation does have this effect. Do a google search on 'DNA mutation radiation' and have a read...
a) an extra head or b) the mutation passed on to offspring.
Actually this is exactly what has happened, is happening, and will continue to happen around 3 mile island - fish are being discovered with very strange mutations such as 2 heads.
I am not claiming that damage to a parent's body will be passed onto its offspring, but damage to a parent's DNA which is donated at conception will CERTAINLY lead to mutation. And yes, I realise that the article says that radiation causes sterilisation. What it doesn't mention is that radiation doesn't ALWAYS cause sterilisation - just usually. Sometimes it causes cancer. Sometimes it alters strands of DNA in eggs / sperm. And sometimes fish are born with 2 heads...
We're not interested in what happens to CELLS. We are interested in what happens to DNA. What happens if the SPERM from an irradiated fly fertilises and egg? Mutation.
People here have to understand the distinction between radiation-induced mutation on a cellular basis and a VERY different kind of mutation based on mutated genes (via sperm / egg) being passed on to offspring. THINK PEOPLE!
You do know what radiation does, don't you? It's not a magical shiny blue ray that makes flies sterile. It's energy that rips though shit and damages it. In this case, USUALLY rendering the fly sterile - ie too much damage to it's DNA. However not all of the flies will be sterile. You remember the Simpsons cartoon with a 3-eyed fish near the nuclear power plant? Well that's no joke. That's what radiation does. We just can't afford to screw our environment this way. Once we destabalise it, there may never be a vaild path back to stability which doesn't involve the eradication of the main problem: US.
WTF is up with people these days? Am I the only one left with any foresight? The article claims the fly is costing 4.5 billion a year. So is that what the future of the world is worth - 4.5 billion a year? What happens when we get weird-ass mutant flies take over? Bring out the weird-ass mutant spiders? Idiots to the left of me, idiots to the right of me, I'm fucking... stuck in the middle with the WHO!
All you P2P advocates (and yes that includes me) had better quit programming P2P platforms and get on your lawyer-faggot wigs because in less than 24 months, Microsoft's DRM will be COMPULSORY on all new computers, and then some.
Tell your local member of parliament you think this fucking stinks. Or bye-bye P2P, scalable or not.
Interesting point.
I have considered the same thing, and also this:
Do we already have Martian bacteria on Earth?
Bacteria is very light and travels well through space.
I remember seeing somewhere that the sun's "atmosphere" extends out past Saturn.
Imagine what would happen to bacteria on Mars after a meteor shower.
I would think that by now we have been exposed to pretty much everything bacterial Mars has to offer. If it (Mars) was still alive & evolving, there would be a problem, but not now.
I see by the posts replying to you that most Slashdot readers are Yankees. Actually, considering the Slashdot tribe's values (freedom, love & harmony, etc) it is interesting to view their attitudes towards such things as the September 11 warning. I have tuned into various news broadcasts on shortwave radio from around the world, and it is surprising and VERY shocking the strong 'slant' that the American news has towards the US being the innocent hero and the rest of the world being profit potential or security risk. I am certainly glad the US doesn't control the international media, put it like that...
When I got my phone connected, they mis-spelt my last name. I have never seen my last name spelt like that ANYWHERE else.
I am in charge of our mail server at work (Slackware 8 beast running sendmail, squid, mysql, imap, etc...). Recently I did the following search:
grep unknown/var/log/messages
I was surprised to see my an error message regarding an unknown user, which consisted of my first initial, and last name - MIS-SPELT exactly as Telstra had, @mycompany.com.au. So someone obviously got my first & last names from Telstra. They informed my that 'anyone' can get this from the phone book or http://www.whitepages.com.au. Fair enough. But how did they link it to my place of work? Telstra swear that they don't have any record of where I (or anyone else) work. So is this Australia Post, ASIO, or what? I make a point of NOT telling people where I work, as I understand that if this information gets into the wrong hands, people can make life 'difficult' for you.
Any thought on how these 2 (Telstra's records of my name// my place of work) were related?
A recently posting by Rasterman on the Enlightenment developer's group says that he's working with DirectFB at the moment. His goal is to get a nice interfact for embedded systems and the like, but an interesting side-effect is that the new version on Enlightenment may be an easy port to DirectFB.
Of course many apps would need to be rewritten, but that may also be a good thing.
Then again, there is a lot of quality work in X, and it would be a shame to abandon it and start from scratch - especially since VA Linux are now VA software and no longer propping up the DRI developer team...
These guys are nothing more than SPAMMERS.
So they have a database. Big woop; so do SPAMMERS.
Our company took the path "Oh SHIT. Buy licences for all our software, and QUICK!". Of course I managed to make a 30% saving by installing StarOffice 5.2, and then 6-beta. I suggest everyone else do the same. There are issues; there's no denying that it's 100% compatible etc. But for God's sake, it's sooooooooo close that it doesn't matter. So everyone find a friend who has downloaded StarOffice 6-beta (the beta period / download is over), or better yet have a go at OpenOffice. It rocks. And you'll never have licensing problems again. Still not convinced? How about searching on Google for StarOffice + pdf and following the instructions for setting up your own PDF writer via Ghostscript. It works like a fucking charm! People email us and say "Hey. That must have cost a bit...". And we say "Yes. Actually it was all free." Good stuff.
If someone can't find the PDF instructions, reply to this post and I'll email you the instructions.
Yes SpamCop is good.
I can testify that they actually do make a difference because I was threatened with legal action myself after reporting a local (Australian) marketing company to spamcop. Apparently they lost their account with their ISP.
I got a phonecall from an idiot who started threatening me with a lawsuit to recover 'great financial hardship' or some crap. It was a very abusive conversation. So then I rang the Australian Direct Marketing Association and told a girl there my story, put together a formal complaint. I haven't heard anything since (this was probably 3-5 months ago now).
So anyway the point is that SpamCop works & work GOOD!
Click here and then each link on the page and the advertisers gets charged the amount shown in small print.
But for a permanent solution: I want to charge people who send me email. I would obviously pay back all those people who send stuff I wanted to see, and not pay back those who pissed me off. What's the chance of this happening? It would be good.
Slashdot Mirror
I agree with all your points apart from the bit about nuclear fuel being clean. I don't think anyone can predict what is going to be happening at any point in the world in 50 years' time, or 500, or 5000, or 1,000,000. But if you produce radioactive material, you have an obligation to make SURE that your waste material is not going to harm something down the line, be it human or whatever takes over when we get wiped off the face of the earth. The incredibly long half-life of waste material coming from nuclear reactors makes nuclear energy about the most irresponsible thing we can do to the planet.
Now if you send it (waste) into the sun, I may be interested... But I don't think that's economically feasible.
I was interested in what you said about Intel & their distributed cancer research, so I checked it out. Unfortunately, their site is a little scarce on the details of who this research benefits.
However it does mention that finding drugs to combat various diseases is a first priority. So I assume that a particular pharmecutical company would benefit from this, as would a small percentage of people with cancer who also have private health insurance.
I would want my CPU time going in open-source medicine, and not someone else's patent that will be abused to make the most money possible.
I'm not saying that this is the case with Intel's distributed cancer-curing client, but it kinda looks like that given the lack of details of beneficiaries.
Anyone know for sure?
I might email them...
KDE isn't the only open-source project to jump the gun. Maybe the should release a KDE-3_dont_use tarball ;)
I personally don't use KDE because it feels cluttered and slow. I usually use Enlightenment 0.17 CVS (when I can compile it). It looks great, is lightening fast, and is already very stable.
Anywho, whatever happened to Katabase, of KOffice? I have been waiting for that before I try a switch from OpenOffice to KOffice...
Dude that doesn't widen my page at all. You should hit the 'preview' button before posting.
You're losing your touch man. There are better trolls hanging out in alt.os.linux
If people walked around naked all the time, there wouldn't be half as much porn around. Now if you put filters on the net access at school, here's what will happen:
1) The people with the filtering contract will get rich.
2) The politicians in marginal seats will sleep a little easier, knowing the sheep will vote them in for being morally 'pure'.
3) The kids will get around the filtering quite easily, and at the same time will develop a stronger taste for porn because of the imposed filter.
A moderately wise man once said to me "Push me, and I will resist. But lead me and I shall follow". This is the approach to take. You can't save the children from pornography by legislating, filtering, or throwing money around. Tell them not to look at it. If they don't listen - FINE. Leave them to their own devices. The more you try to stop them, the more they see through our double standards. They will grow to desire porn, and end up a porn star, completing the cycle.
My Via KT266A beast is VERY stable. I have an Epox 8KHA+ with 256MB of PC2100 and a 1600XP+ Athlon. I run Slackware only. I am thinking about re-installing Windows to play Black & White, but I can't comment on Windows stability at the moment. Linux stability seems very good. It only ever crashes with a cvs DRI X server for my Radeon - I haven't crashed xfree86-4.2.0 yet with this system. And I also tried with the CPU overclocked and reporting as a 1800XP+ Athlon. This was stable but it made me feel a little nervous so I clocked it back again.
Are you sure it's Via's fault?
That is absolute bullshit. Mutation by radiation is literally hit and miss. Sometimes a mutation doesn't have much effect on the overall form of the organism's offspring. Sometimes it has a HUGE effect. DNA's effect on an organism is not simple linear cause and effect. It is wildly nonlinear and unpredictable, and your telling the public that this is 'safe' is quite irresponsible - especially when you also claim to be a Reactor Physics Engineer.
Natural selection will breed out HARMFUL mutations in the population, but what about POSITIVE mutations. There is such a thing. Rare, yes. But they do exist. How do you think we evolved out of the nothing?
The fact that it has been said a million times doesn't make it true. They are NOT 'merely sterilised'. They are 'MOSTLY sterilised'. Some will produce mutant offspring. Search on google for DNA+mutation+radiation.
And for God's sake, people, THINK. This place used to be full of intelligent people...
If you actually gave the article some thought you would realise that radiation doesn't have some magical property that makes flies sterile. It just happens that if you expose flies to radiation in this way they USUALLY become sterile. The reason this happens is because the genes in their sperm / egg are damaged to the point of being not functional. But not all of the sperm / eggs will be damaged to this extent. Some will just be mutated and will still be capable of producing offspring. And those offspring will be mutated.
Man I am getting sick of reading every idiot and his dog pulling the "it's not as if they'll reproduce" line. Half-aresd humour does not cover up the scientific fact that mutants WILL be born. Of course there won't be many, but it only takes one to get the ball rolling.
THINK PEOPLE!
Actually this is exactly what has happened, is happening, and will continue to happen around 3 mile island - fish are being discovered with very strange mutations such as 2 heads.
I am not claiming that damage to a parent's body will be passed onto its offspring, but damage to a parent's DNA which is donated at conception will CERTAINLY lead to mutation. And yes, I realise that the article says that radiation causes sterilisation. What it doesn't mention is that radiation doesn't ALWAYS cause sterilisation - just usually. Sometimes it causes cancer. Sometimes it alters strands of DNA in eggs / sperm. And sometimes fish are born with 2 heads...
We're not interested in what happens to CELLS. We are interested in what happens to DNA. What happens if the SPERM from an irradiated fly fertilises and egg? Mutation.
People here have to understand the distinction between radiation-induced mutation on a cellular basis and a VERY different kind of mutation based on mutated genes (via sperm / egg) being passed on to offspring. THINK PEOPLE!
And what does radiation do again? NOT mutate things?
You do know what radiation does, don't you? It's not a magical shiny blue ray that makes flies sterile. It's energy that rips though shit and damages it. In this case, USUALLY rendering the fly sterile - ie too much damage to it's DNA. However not all of the flies will be sterile. You remember the Simpsons cartoon with a 3-eyed fish near the nuclear power plant? Well that's no joke. That's what radiation does.
We just can't afford to screw our environment this way. Once we destabalise it, there may never be a vaild path back to stability which doesn't involve the eradication of the main problem: US.
WTF is up with people these days? Am I the only one left with any foresight? The article claims the fly is costing 4.5 billion a year. So is that what the future of the world is worth - 4.5 billion a year? What happens when we get weird-ass mutant flies take over? Bring out the weird-ass mutant spiders? ... stuck in the middle with the WHO!
Idiots to the left of me, idiots to the right of me, I'm fucking
All you P2P advocates (and yes that includes me) had better quit programming P2P platforms and get on your lawyer-faggot wigs because in less than 24 months, Microsoft's DRM will be COMPULSORY on all new computers, and then some.
Tell your local member of parliament you think this fucking stinks. Or bye-bye P2P, scalable or not.
Interesting point.
I have considered the same thing, and also this:
Do we already have Martian bacteria on Earth?
Bacteria is very light and travels well through space.
I remember seeing somewhere that the sun's "atmosphere" extends out past Saturn.
Imagine what would happen to bacteria on Mars after a meteor shower.
I would think that by now we have been exposed to pretty much everything bacterial Mars has to offer. If it (Mars) was still alive & evolving, there would be a problem, but not now.
Well that's what I think anyway!
I see by the posts replying to you that most Slashdot readers are Yankees. Actually, considering the Slashdot tribe's values (freedom, love & harmony, etc) it is interesting to view their attitudes towards such things as the September 11 warning. I have tuned into various news broadcasts on shortwave radio from around the world, and it is surprising and VERY shocking the strong 'slant' that the American news has towards the US being the innocent hero and the rest of the world being profit potential or security risk. I am certainly glad the US doesn't control the international media, put it like that...
When I got my phone connected, they mis-spelt my last name. I have never seen my last name spelt like that ANYWHERE else. /var/log/messages
// my place of work) were related?
I am in charge of our mail server at work (Slackware 8 beast running sendmail, squid, mysql, imap, etc...). Recently I did the following search:
grep unknown
I was surprised to see my an error message regarding an unknown user, which consisted of my first initial, and last name - MIS-SPELT exactly as Telstra had, @mycompany.com.au. So someone obviously got my first & last names from Telstra. They informed my that 'anyone' can get this from the phone book or http://www.whitepages.com.au. Fair enough. But how did they link it to my place of work? Telstra swear that they don't have any record of where I (or anyone else) work. So is this Australia Post, ASIO, or what? I make a point of NOT telling people where I work, as I understand that if this information gets into the wrong hands, people can make life 'difficult' for you.
Any thought on how these 2 (Telstra's records of my name
A recently posting by Rasterman on the Enlightenment developer's group says that he's working with DirectFB at the moment. His goal is to get a nice interfact for embedded systems and the like, but an interesting side-effect is that the new version on Enlightenment may be an easy port to DirectFB.
Of course many apps would need to be rewritten, but that may also be a good thing.
Then again, there is a lot of quality work in X, and it would be a shame to abandon it and start from scratch - especially since VA Linux are now VA software and no longer propping up the DRI developer team...
I did a search on this page to find xfree86, and did not find ONE mention.
How does this affect Mesa / xfree86-DRI?
Gay porn pop-ups.
Interesting.
You suck dude. Literally.
These guys are nothing more than SPAMMERS.
So they have a database. Big woop; so do SPAMMERS.
Our company took the path "Oh SHIT. Buy licences for all our software, and QUICK!". Of course I managed to make a 30% saving by installing StarOffice 5.2, and then 6-beta. I suggest everyone else do the same. There are issues; there's no denying that it's 100% compatible etc. But for God's sake, it's sooooooooo close that it doesn't matter. So everyone find a friend who has downloaded StarOffice 6-beta (the beta period / download is over), or better yet have a go at OpenOffice. It rocks. And you'll never have licensing problems again. Still not convinced? How about searching on Google for StarOffice + pdf and following the instructions for setting up your own PDF writer via Ghostscript. It works like a fucking charm! People email us and say "Hey. That must have cost a bit...". And we say "Yes. Actually it was all free." Good stuff.
If someone can't find the PDF instructions, reply to this post and I'll email you the instructions.
Yes SpamCop is good.
I can testify that they actually do make a difference because I was threatened with legal action myself after reporting a local (Australian) marketing company to spamcop. Apparently they lost their account with their ISP.
I got a phonecall from an idiot who started threatening me with a lawsuit to recover 'great financial hardship' or some crap. It was a very abusive conversation. So then I rang the Australian Direct Marketing Association and told a girl there my story, put together a formal complaint. I haven't heard anything since (this was probably 3-5 months ago now).
So anyway the point is that SpamCop works & work GOOD!
Click here and then each link on the page and the advertisers gets charged the amount shown in small print. But for a permanent solution: I want to charge people who send me email. I would obviously pay back all those people who send stuff I wanted to see, and not pay back those who pissed me off. What's the chance of this happening? It would be good.