How about RFC #1438 describing IETF SOBs? Or RFC #2325? Or even better, RFC #2100 which details the naming of hosts.
And an old but, but a classic, RFC #748 which details several "new" Telnet options to facilitate random data/service losses.
I should probably point out that all of those were submitted on April 1st and are actual RFCs that are archived on the Internet Engineering Task Force's webpage. I've got a longer list, should anyone care, but I've got to pick and choose...
The only point to this is that some real RFC's turn out to be hoaxes, in a way! Hope people find those funny. If not, then you should try and implement TCP/IP as described in RFC #1217. Either that or try RFC #2549 - it was discovered that Linux could not implement it because penguins can't fly.
The question is what does the company do with any information they get that way. First of all, I have to wonder what they think about all the spam selling porno sites that many of those online e-mail sites suffer from. Do they assume that you were looking for porn on company time?
The problem is not just the sending of inflammatory material, it's the receiving. If you pissed some script k1dd13 and he decides to spam your mailbox with many [pick something inflammatory] messages, is that your problem? If you get an IM from a friend, and the friend starts trying to turn the conversation into something inappropriate, what about that? What if they assume that your friend even saying that indicates they should fire you?
There's also a much more evil side to that, assuming your company wants to be or can be draconian. Say that you're talking to your wife on IM about how you think one of your kids has the flu or some other disease, and you think you should see a doctor. They pick that up, assume "expensive" and drop your health benefits. More than likely, this wouldn't happen, and it would probably be illegal anyway, but it's still a scary thought.
My main point is that it's possible for people to take things, especially conversations which rely on a context that those watching wouldn't understand. (For a while, a girl I knew from highschool and I were joking about sending commando teams to kill each other. If that were ever taken out of context... (Of course, anyone stupid enough to ignore the emmoticons used in those... >:))) It's still a scary thought what they might guess from communications. That's what's potentially scary - the company firing someone who they think might cost them too much due to an illness in the family. There are urban legends about that type of thing happening. That's why people are scared.
You see, it takes Slash to take something that was written correctly and change into should have read:
java.awt.Robot
This class is used to generate native system input events for the purposes of test automation, self-running demos, and other
applications where control of the mouse and keyboard is needed. The primary purpose of Robot is to facilitate automated testing of
Java platform implementations.
How about this: override dispatchEvent in the base UI, so that it records the events that have taken place here. Save the event to a file using the serialize methods. Make the logging part optional, probably based on the existance of an java.io.ObjectStream. Then call super.dispatchEvent() to do things normally.
When you want to play back the user's actions, disable logging, and then call dispatchEvent() with each of the deserialized events. That should give you a play-by-play exact copy of everything the user did (including moving the mouse...)
This won't work if you have multiple windows unless you're creative... so be creative with it.
Standard disclaimer that this doesn't represent professional advice and I've never tried it, but it might work...
Ah, but it's not a codec - the Windows things are just the dec part. So maybe they should call them decs, instead of codecs. (Actually, a codec is a coder-decoder. To be a codec, you must be able to take raw input and encode things, then decode that back into raw output. The codecs under Windows only decode.)
The browser + plugin is the damn player, with buffer underflows. And you can't just download the thing from HTML source because if you attempt to "go" to that location, it'll start "viewing location" in Mozilla/Netscape/IE. The solution is to create a NEW PAGE with that link so that you can right click and "save as" which is more work than it's really worth.
The "QuickTime isn't free" was referring to the actual codec, and not the decoder portion. The free version is only the decoder and a viewer - an amazingly slow one at that.
Actually, the speed issues I can probably ignore, now, since I'd be using an Athlon and not a K6. (Amazing how AMD chips became good when it became an Athlon - people make fun of lousy K6's.)
The point is that there are alternatives to QuickTime which other people can use. (Along that line, people who use AVIs should also be shot. Probably more so since that basically locks them into one architecture - plus you can never tell what "codec" you need to decode the thing.) QuickTime is really a one-architecture beast. The player doesn't even do full-screen mode, something that makes viewing the files a lot nicer! Some of the alternatives file formats are free to use or encode! So why bother paying the extra money to use something which isn't cross-platform anyway?
Keep in mind that the Windows port of QuickTime is an amazingly poor port. It looks exactly like the Mac version, except that it doesn't seem to be optimized for Windows - WinAmp does a completely pix-map player, but it's nowhere near as slow. So does Media Player 7 (which is annoying, since it now looks like a cross between Real Player and the QuickTime viewer - Imaging QuickTime with channels along the side (that you can't hide!).)
There are other, better, video alternatives out that which are more open to other platforms. It's just not worth the troubles that the player causes to be able to watch video from the many sites that do QuickTime only.
I should also note that it's possible to burn VCDs, so that MPEG2 videos can be converted into something that most DVD players can play. A wider audience, if you will.
Heh, I almost did that too when I got the magical 25 karma. (Noticed it on the last preview before posting - was kinda cool. BTW, it's a +1 bonus, you post at 2:)) Personally, I think that the karma bonus point should be off by default. Why do you think so many people abuse it? It's there, you have to explicitly disable it! So if I'm not careful, it's easy to accidently post with +1. And I've done it before - although usually, the consequences are mild.
Nope. Because there's a huge difference between multiple reads, and multiple writes.
I really should have gone into that originally, but left it out. My bad. First of all, a lot of Slashdot is cached - the front page is cached, and most of the articles are cached. If you ever run Slash, you'll have to start "slashd," the Slash daemon that basically proves that Rob doesn't know what cron is for:). Actually, slashd is a better solution, but basically it periodically creates new cached copies.
The other thing is your database server. It'll cache whatever it can. If 10,000 people want to read the stories, it'll cache the realitive rows/columns in memory so that it can return them faster. Plus, you can do multiple reads on multiple threads.
It's the classic reader/writer synchronization problem - where you can have any number of readers looking at the data, but those writers must go through one at a time. So, one pageview can be done during another pageview, but as soon as someone moderates, or posts a comment, everyone else has to wait for them to finish. Imagine this takes 1 millisecond to update a moderation, including CPU time. Multiply by 10 comments moderated, 100 page views, and you're up to 1 second, not counting anything else the system is doing. I'm not sure how fast Slashdot's database server can go, but many many table updates will definately slow it down. (And since MySQL doesn't support transactions, it increases the chance of two processes clobbering each other.)
I'm not exactly sure how well Slashdot scales, but keep in mind, writing data is harder than reading data, simply because multiple people can read data at the same time. They have to take a turn when they wish to write.
Uh, it would be kinda nice for those of us who would like to try hacking new stuff into Slash to be able to get a beta of 2.0. Release early and release often, remember that? Right now I have serveral things I wanted to see if I could get Slash to do, but I don't want to fool around with 1.0.8 because 2.0 is coming out "soon."
From what I understand, Crusoe is really meant for embedded computing applications. For instance, (assuming it's small enough), it could be installed into a TI calculator, or into a cell phone. It never was intended for desktop tasks, was it? If it was, than Transmeta is dead. It might have some cool applications in various embedded fields, but not for Quake-playing.
For doing things like word-processing or Power Point, the Crusoe chip should be fine. Most laptops are used in the corporate world for taking demonstations on the road - often times, you don't need massive computing power. (Except for one project I saw which had something like SQLServer, an HTTP server (dunno which one), and a Java client as the demo, all running on one laptop. One expensive laptop.)
Don't forget, for most corporate people, their laptop is where they write up next quarter's report on, and what they use to explain things to their investors and peers. It's not a development platform, it's not a server. And it's not really any good for some serious Quake-playing. (Or, if you're like me, some Counter Strike action.) Sounds like the Crusoe would do most tasks that you really need a laptop for nicely.
I dunno what you'd do with a laptop, but I know why I want one. It's not for "serious tasks." It's for being able to do development work anywhere I can. I'd love to get a laptop running Linux so that I can work on my current pet project anywhere I am. Crusoe should be fine for that, assuming I'm not doing something with millions of lines of code.
Seriously, it's a laptop. It's not the latest Alpha server from Digit- uh, Compaq. You don't need something overly powerful. The long battery life should make up for speed difficencies.
But doing averages on a system that's receiving over 100,000 pageviews a day isn't. That's the problem - it's adding in several extra steps, that'll increase the load on an already burdened system.
The current system works by reducing the burden by allowing only a few to moderate, and preventing people from posting more often than once a minute.
Adding another level (and by repeatedly doing averages, I was counting ALL the load, including the load of getting the numbers off the DB, the fact that Slashdot would then need something capable of transactions since people attempting to do this at the same time is much more likely, and all the other fun things that come into play when the system must scale to Slashdot sizes) you greatly increase what the server is doing. There's still a massive amount of load simply because Slashdot is incredibly dynamic. Simply put, it's easier for me to say "ooo, that should be 5" and so I could do it much more often than I could post a comment. Allowing everyone to moderate would greatly increase the load, simply because most of the system time would be doing the average - pulling the score from the table, doing the math, putting it back. Then you'd have to keep track of who did what - ugh.
Besides, I can bring a system to a near halt if all it's doing is repeatedly computing an average. It won't be able to do anything useful! Try running while(1) { } for a while - it'll take up all your CPU, but it's not doing anything useful! The act of doing one average may be small, but the act of doing it over and over and over and over again isn't.
That's why moderators get 5 points - it greatly reduces the amount of crap the system must worry about. Slashdot's moderation scheme isn't the way it is simply to remove trolls - it also takes load into account.
Adding my moderation scheme just wouldn't scale. So it's not really a solution. As pointed out in the IRC logs, Kuro5hin's solution also won't scale. But it's a nice thought. That's one of the reason Slashdot uses the current system - it scales rather nicely.
Gee, I was on IRC at the time. Chat log - Hah! - I was there, reading it through the connect/disconnect messages.
(BTW, the questions asked by _xeno_ are me:). Too bad the ones I really wanted answered never made it through the bot.)
So I skipped reading the log - besides, I've got my own copy. If anyone wants a (text) log including what happened after CmdrTaco et. al left (up to the point when Emmett and CowboyNeal left, I think) I've got it, minus all the connect-disconnect messages.
Highly unlikely. It's not worth my time to verify "Redundant" mods in M2.
Actually, it's not worth my time to participate in M2 at all.
Besides, CID 12 really shouldn't be modded down since it is quite true. CmdrTaco seemed to rationalize it by "I've taken enough shit from others, I can give it to Signal."
(Actually, I'm surprised - since most trolling is done under AC, I would have thought it much lower. Then again, starting at zero you can only lose one point and can gain five, so I guess that does make sense. Although I'm still pissed at Slash (-code, not -dot) after losing 5 karma on one post - if you start at 2, you should only be able to fall 4 points! It also involves hitting "submit" when I thought I hit "preview.")
Signal 11 personifies everything that is wrong with slashdot. He was the most effective and the most vocal personality for, what I call, the slashdot junior crowd. Everything he said was a targeted populism, designed to strike a cord with this crowd.
Actually, that was the entire point of Signal 11. He created the account, at least according to what he said, to see what would happen if he basically posted toting the party line. I think we all know the end result. In the end, Signal basically showed one problem with the moderation system - it's done by the "elite" Slashdotters.
Moderators are chosen based on karma. According to the IRC log, that's the only reason for karma. The higher your karma, the more likely you can moderate. Think about this for a moment - the people who are most likely to moderate are those who have been moderated up in the past. That means those that follow Signal 11's "groupthink" ideal are more likely to be moderated up. These people are then most likely to moderate up people who agree. The system perpetuates "groupthink." There needs to be a way to allow dissenters to moderate. (Problem with that is that most people who go against the grain wind up being modded down; then again, those that don't are usually the most level-headed, and probably more deserving. The real problem is that it's impossible to distinguish between "disagrees with groupthink" and "is being a troll.")
Personally, I think that everyone should have moderator access, all the time. Everyone can vote on a comment, and the average of all the votes becomes the score. There are enough people reading Slashdot so that the troll moderators would be filtered out. Plus, since one person voting on something would be enough to send it to +5 or whatever, then posts lost in later discussion have a chance to be seen. You can then also elliminate +1 scoring.
There's only one problem with my purposed solution - it'll beat up servers. (Repeatedly doing averages would take a lot of CPU power.) So I dunno.
My hope is that a significant percentage of the audience grows tired of this routine, and demands a more mature discussion....
Unfortunately, that's not going to happen. Slashdot frequently manages to post stories that someone, somewhere, can be emotional about. And when someone emmotional about some topic, he or she isn't as logical, and not as mature. Which is why there even are distro flame wars. If you think about it, that's a pretty dumb thing to get all worked up against.
There will always be losers. There will always be trolls. Some days, I'm a troll. It gets stress out, and allows me to participate in real discussions. We all have our bad days - some people take them out on Slashdot.
Signal 11 doesn't really personify the problems, but he does demonstrate them. With any discussion, there must have those who disagree. Otherwise, it's not really a discussion, it's simply a bunch of people patting their own backs. That's what Signal 11's real point was. I can't think of a real solution to it - but hopefully, someone else can.
The claims are too vague to be useful anyway, but going through them anyway...
Myth: Linux performs better than Windows NT
Reality: Windows NT 4.0 Outperforms Linux On Common Customer Workloads
By redefining "common customer workloads" that'll be true. I can also do that to show that my TI-89 is better than Linux. (See, I couldn't get bash to integrate 1/x - it must suck!)
Myth: Linux is more reliable than Windows NT
Reality: Linux Needs Real World Proof Points Rather than Anecdotal Stories
No shit! But then again, so does Windows.
Myth: Linux is Free
Reality: Free Operating System Does Not Mean Low Total Cost of Ownership
I dunno about that one... Windows has so far cost me $200 for Win95 full and Win98 upgrade. Linux cost me $12 - $10 are actually dues to my local LUG, and $2 are a rough estimate of CD-R's burnt.
Myth: Linux is more secure than Windows NT
Reality: Linux Security Model Is Weak
This is actually quite true, but it's changing (dunno about in 2.4). The security model has one all-powerful user, and no permissions. I *know* from looking at 2.2.10 code that people were starting to implement user permissions/permissions for various kernel tasks (ie, a process can be allowed to update the system clock but be denied access to bind to ports lower than 1024). The file system has permissions separate from the kernel, sorta, and... ugh.
Myth: Linux can replace Windows on the desktop
Reality: Linux Makes No Sense at the Desktop
I can redefine "desktop" to make this true. Actually, in this reguard, I'd say that Win2000 is the best OS, in that it gets a nice balance between "desktop" tasks and "server" tasks. Then again, I don't run Win2000, I dual boot between Win98 and RedHat 7.0. Desktop under Linux works for me. But then again, I do most serious office-like tasks under Windows. This is sorta because lpr for whatever reason only works if I'm root and also because last time I tried to print under Linux, only the top row of the 600x600dpi matrix actually printed.
The Linux operating system is not suitable for mainstream usage by business or home users. Today with Windows NT 4.0, customers can be confident in delivering applications that are scalable, secure, and reliable--yet cost effective to deploy and manage. Linux clearly has a long way to go to be competitive with Windows NT 4.0. With the release of the Windows 2000 operating system, Microsoft extends the technical superiority of the platform even further ensuring that customers can deliver the next generation applications to solve their business challenges.
For the time being, I'd have to agree. Linux has come a long, long way - but for most things, Windows is currently better. (My current pet Linux peeve is the brain-dead scheduler... this mostly has to do with the fact that it isn't pre-emptive. Of course, I have a different beef with the WinNT scheduler about starving processes... Dunno if Win2000 has a different scheduler, but I'll bet a single CPU intensive task will make the thing look like it's crashed. I can explain my take on both if anyone wants more facts.)
First annoying thing about this is that it was posted after I thought I clicked "preview," but there it was, submitted, telling me I should have used the preview button. I'm not sure if I misclicked, or if Slash stills has some bugs in it, but anyway, it was posted.
Yes, it's whining - but that's why it says "Rant." It's a rant. It comes from the last time I tried to install QuickTime 4, and from watching the results. And it's about not being able to view the foolish trailer, which is what the story was about in the first place, because I don't want to install the file viewer.
What's really annoying is that more than likely, the movie will be released on DVD at some point. At that point, it will be encoded in MPEG Layer2 - something I can view under both Linux and Windows. MPEG is a cross-platform standard - in that it's a standard, period. QuickTime is a closed format that a company created before computers were really ready for streaming audio/video. (I could argue that they still aren't really ready for streaming audio/video.)
I'd like to watch the trailer, but I can't. Because they chose a format which I refuse to use - because the player for it messes things up. That's the link to the story, which is basically announcing that the trailer is available.
I do use Windows, and not just for games. I do development under Windows. I can write Windows applications. So it's not a "Windows sucks!" thing - it's a QuickTime sucks thing. The fact that most of the video files on the Internet are in QuickTime annoys me, because I'd rather not install the viewer, because I don't like it.
I've already got Windows 98. I might be upgrading to ME soon. But I also run Linux when I can. And in both cases, I don't really have a choice for QuickTime - it's Apple's player or bust. But I have multiple MPEG2 players, under both platforms. I can do that, and it works nicely. (Plus I can TV-out MPEG files, I can't do that with any other media. But that's a dxr3 thing.)
I don't hate QuickTime because it's closed. I don't care if the version is open or closed. I care that it sucks major ass. They created their own bastardization of the Mac GUI for it (ie, they actually add a window to move the menu up along the top), so it runs quite slowly under Windows.
Unlike most Slashdotters, I'm quite willing to switch to Windows to watch something. I installed QT4 once, and never want to install it again. It's just something I won't do. If I could watch QT movies any other way, it might be worth it. But I can't - I'm stuck with QuickTime, or writing some dumb applet using QuickTime for Java to do it. Java AWT flaws make using Java just as slow. (Keep in mind, Java fans, that while Java runs quite nicely for most tasks, the fine folks at Sun have managed to continuously slow down GUI tasks.) Also, from other people in the Java dev community, I've heard that QT for Java sucks major ass anyway.
I don't mind using Real (for some strange reason - it really is in many ways worse than QuickTime) because it just feels faster. It also does some annoying GUI stuff, but the people at Real actually did a fairly decent job of it and it runs fairly nicely. The things I really hate are the many sites that decide I must stream things from them, which QT attempts to do. (Although lynx -source URL | grep mov and then lynx -source mov URL > mov file works OK. Under Windows you have to run through hoops to find the proper URL, but it can be done. Properly configured Netscape and IE will then ask if you want to launch the app or save the file. Bang - you can save it.)
I don't care about the codec - I care that the software is buggy, that every three times you run it it displays an ad for QT Pro (which Real doesn't do, I guess that's why I can stand them), and that ad can not be deleted - it's not really a QT movie, it's a built in thing.
BTW, as for "chugging along at 25MHz," QuickTime 4 managed to bring my K6-233MHz system to a crawl while attempting to view 210x120 movies. If I killed the sound, it would run smoothly. Otherwise it would die. Annoyingly enough, movies of the same size encoded in say MPEG layer 2 would run quite nicely, with sound. The quality may have been subtely worse, but hey - it worked.
...it certainly makes the job of anybody trying to ship "Linux binaries" (well, for C++ only, but the point still remains) considerably more difficult, and could conceivably encourage "Red Hat only" products to be shipped...
The fact that this statement is possible worries me. First of all, it would be really nice for me as a developer to be told that library "A" is standard for all Linux distros, and they can feel free to (dynamically) link against it, with reasonable assurance that all "Linux" platforms will have library "A" and therefore run. Plus, with certain applications (read: Mozilla/XFree86), I'd rather install pre-built binaries simply because attempting to compile everything is usually much more time consuming to do than using pre-built binaries, and is also more likely to run into problems.
It would be nice to think that any binary compiled on any Linux system for a given platform would run on any other Linux system on the same platform with a compatible set of libraries (ie, an app linked against glibc 2.1 had better work on my system with RedHat 7.0's glibc 2.whatever). After having Nautilus bomb on me because I didn't have the appropriate compression library v0.9. This really annoyed me since I had a v1.x (forget the x) version installed. It's a newer version! I'd like it to work!
Actually, people breaking compatibility from a beta to a release is OK. But if glibc2.2 breaks glibc2.1 appps, that'd just be bad. Those who use Windows are familiar with "DLL Hell." Sounds like Linux developers are starting to create "Library Hell." This would be a very, very bad thing.
I wouldn't call Unix a fad. Feel free to call Linux a fad, I don't care. Time will tell. Sure, Linux is now a buzzword, but it existed for five years conservetivly before it became as popular as it is now. Most non-UNIX systems wind up taking on aspects of UNIX anyway. UNIX has been around for almost thirty years. Windows can claim 20, but it's really only been usable for 10. Macs also get around 20 years of time. So now the windowing metaphore is here to stay. But then again, so are many UNIXisms.
UNIX may be old, but it's definately not a fad. Linux's currently popularity may be a fad, but it will still be around even after it's time in the spotlight has faded.
Although I know many people who predict the death of Linux in the next five to ten years, I still believe that Linux will still have it's place. After all, the various BSDs are still around, and they're based on a UNIX 10-15 years older than Linux!
The original skewwed number started when Squaresoft was finally able to create an English localized copy of Final Fantasy IV. They hadn't done so with FF2 and FF3 for a variety of issues (mostly because the NES was nearing the end of it's US life when they were released, if I'm not mistaken). To avoid confusion for the American blokes, FF4 was renumbered FF2 since it was the second American release.
They then started translating, but never released Final Fantasy V (at least the SNES version - more later). They instead moved FFVI over and called it FFIII to again avoid confusion.
As everyone knows, there was a lot of hype about Final Fantasy VII - enough so that it would be more confusing (at least Square's marketing dept. thought so) to renumber it "4" to properly line up with the US releases.
After Final Fantasy became more popular in the US, they decided to release the already-translated FFV in the US. The data-files were already done; they'd already ported the code to the PlayStation for the Japanese re-release of Final Fantasy IV through VI, so they released it under the "new" naming scheme. (They didn't rerelease IV in the US which was annoying, since FF2US is actually FFIVJapan Easy Type version, with a watered down translation.)
It would be nice to see an official translation of the origianl FFII and FFIII, assuming they don't screw it up (since they're away from Nintendo of America's "we're a children's game company" policy, that's more possible). Keep in mind that FFVII was also the first Final Fantasy with a really decent translation.
One of my favorite examples of how Nintendo watered down FF3US is the scene where you meet Cyan behind Zozo or whatever, in the World of Ruin. If you pick up the key he drops, and open the locked chest, in the US version you find a book about machinery. In the Japanese version you find a porno mag. (In both cases, Cyan tries to hide it and blushes:) ) (Keep in mind you can't see the mag, but the text calls it such.)
Another decent example is the "dancer" that runs into Cyan at some point in the game. In the Japan version, she's a hooker.
Hope that gives some people some ideas of just what we in the US have been missing from the FF series.
I prefer the former, then you can register dot.slashdot.dot and slash.slashdot.dot.
Just so you know, all he'd register is the slashdot.dot domain. Once he has that, he can tack whatever the hell he wants on the beginning. A lookup would first ask the.dot server for who knows about slashdot.dot and then that server, which would be run by the slashteam, could have slash.slashdot.dot, beta.slashdot.dot, goatsex.slashdot.dot, or whatever. You only register the second level name. Microsoft owns all server names that end it microsoft.com. My college can have whatever names they want within wpi.edu.
OK, since this has been brought up like 50 times, one last attempt to drive it through everyone's skull:
TO CHANGE USER INFORMATION, YOU MUST LOG ON USING YOUR USERNAME AND PASSWORD. ALL THE ONE-CLICK COOKIE ALLOWS YOU TO DO IS TO ORDER THINGS IN ONE CLICK.
To change any other information, you need to log on using your username and password, through SSL. So it's secure. Assuming you remember to log out (through the "continue shopping" button) it'll erase any authorization tokens anyway. For all I know, it doesn't USE authorization cookies. Besides, it shouldn't matter because if the cookie was marked as "secure" it could only be sent over an SSL connection anyway.
To change the address/credit card/name/anything you must log on with a username and password. Must.
Slashdot Mirror
And an old but, but a classic, RFC #748 which details several "new" Telnet options to facilitate random data/service losses.
I should probably point out that all of those were submitted on April 1st and are actual RFCs that are archived on the Internet Engineering Task Force's webpage. I've got a longer list, should anyone care, but I've got to pick and choose...
The only point to this is that some real RFC's turn out to be hoaxes, in a way! Hope people find those funny. If not, then you should try and implement TCP/IP as described in RFC #1217. Either that or try RFC #2549 - it was discovered that Linux could not implement it because penguins can't fly.
The problem is not just the sending of inflammatory material, it's the receiving. If you pissed some script k1dd13 and he decides to spam your mailbox with many [pick something inflammatory] messages, is that your problem? If you get an IM from a friend, and the friend starts trying to turn the conversation into something inappropriate, what about that? What if they assume that your friend even saying that indicates they should fire you?
There's also a much more evil side to that, assuming your company wants to be or can be draconian. Say that you're talking to your wife on IM about how you think one of your kids has the flu or some other disease, and you think you should see a doctor. They pick that up, assume "expensive" and drop your health benefits. More than likely, this wouldn't happen, and it would probably be illegal anyway, but it's still a scary thought.
My main point is that it's possible for people to take things, especially conversations which rely on a context that those watching wouldn't understand. (For a while, a girl I knew from highschool and I were joking about sending commando teams to kill each other. If that were ever taken out of context... (Of course, anyone stupid enough to ignore the emmoticons used in those... >:))) It's still a scary thought what they might guess from communications. That's what's potentially scary - the company firing someone who they think might cost them too much due to an illness in the family. There are urban legends about that type of thing happening. That's why people are scared.
When you want to play back the user's actions, disable logging, and then call dispatchEvent() with each of the deserialized events. That should give you a play-by-play exact copy of everything the user did (including moving the mouse...)
This won't work if you have multiple windows unless you're creative... so be creative with it.
Standard disclaimer that this doesn't represent professional advice and I've never tried it, but it might work...
(Also, an AC mentioned java.awt.RobotThis class is used to generate native system input events for the purposes of test automation, self-running demos, and other applications where control of the mouse and keyboard is needed. The primary purpose of Robot is to facilitate automated testing of Java platform implementations.)
The browser + plugin is the damn player, with buffer underflows. And you can't just download the thing from HTML source because if you attempt to "go" to that location, it'll start "viewing location" in Mozilla/Netscape/IE. The solution is to create a NEW PAGE with that link so that you can right click and "save as" which is more work than it's really worth.
The "QuickTime isn't free" was referring to the actual codec, and not the decoder portion. The free version is only the decoder and a viewer - an amazingly slow one at that.
Actually, the speed issues I can probably ignore, now, since I'd be using an Athlon and not a K6. (Amazing how AMD chips became good when it became an Athlon - people make fun of lousy K6's.)
The point is that there are alternatives to QuickTime which other people can use. (Along that line, people who use AVIs should also be shot. Probably more so since that basically locks them into one architecture - plus you can never tell what "codec" you need to decode the thing.) QuickTime is really a one-architecture beast. The player doesn't even do full-screen mode, something that makes viewing the files a lot nicer! Some of the alternatives file formats are free to use or encode! So why bother paying the extra money to use something which isn't cross-platform anyway?
Keep in mind that the Windows port of QuickTime is an amazingly poor port. It looks exactly like the Mac version, except that it doesn't seem to be optimized for Windows - WinAmp does a completely pix-map player, but it's nowhere near as slow. So does Media Player 7 (which is annoying, since it now looks like a cross between Real Player and the QuickTime viewer - Imaging QuickTime with channels along the side (that you can't hide!).)
There are other, better, video alternatives out that which are more open to other platforms. It's just not worth the troubles that the player causes to be able to watch video from the many sites that do QuickTime only.
I should also note that it's possible to burn VCDs, so that MPEG2 videos can be converted into something that most DVD players can play. A wider audience, if you will.
Heh, I almost did that too when I got the magical 25 karma. (Noticed it on the last preview before posting - was kinda cool. BTW, it's a +1 bonus, you post at 2 :)) Personally, I think that the karma bonus point should be off by default. Why do you think so many people abuse it? It's there, you have to explicitly disable it! So if I'm not careful, it's easy to accidently post with +1. And I've done it before - although usually, the consequences are mild.
I really should have gone into that originally, but left it out. My bad. First of all, a lot of Slashdot is cached - the front page is cached, and most of the articles are cached. If you ever run Slash, you'll have to start "slashd," the Slash daemon that basically proves that Rob doesn't know what cron is for :). Actually, slashd is a better solution, but basically it periodically creates new cached copies.
The other thing is your database server. It'll cache whatever it can. If 10,000 people want to read the stories, it'll cache the realitive rows/columns in memory so that it can return them faster. Plus, you can do multiple reads on multiple threads.
It's the classic reader/writer synchronization problem - where you can have any number of readers looking at the data, but those writers must go through one at a time. So, one pageview can be done during another pageview, but as soon as someone moderates, or posts a comment, everyone else has to wait for them to finish. Imagine this takes 1 millisecond to update a moderation, including CPU time. Multiply by 10 comments moderated, 100 page views, and you're up to 1 second, not counting anything else the system is doing. I'm not sure how fast Slashdot's database server can go, but many many table updates will definately slow it down. (And since MySQL doesn't support transactions, it increases the chance of two processes clobbering each other.)
I'm not exactly sure how well Slashdot scales, but keep in mind, writing data is harder than reading data, simply because multiple people can read data at the same time. They have to take a turn when they wish to write.
Guess they're running out of precious metals... Titanium card? Weird.
Uh, it would be kinda nice for those of us who would like to try hacking new stuff into Slash to be able to get a beta of 2.0. Release early and release often, remember that? Right now I have serveral things I wanted to see if I could get Slash to do, but I don't want to fool around with 1.0.8 because 2.0 is coming out "soon."
For doing things like word-processing or Power Point, the Crusoe chip should be fine. Most laptops are used in the corporate world for taking demonstations on the road - often times, you don't need massive computing power. (Except for one project I saw which had something like SQLServer, an HTTP server (dunno which one), and a Java client as the demo, all running on one laptop. One expensive laptop.)
Don't forget, for most corporate people, their laptop is where they write up next quarter's report on, and what they use to explain things to their investors and peers. It's not a development platform, it's not a server. And it's not really any good for some serious Quake-playing. (Or, if you're like me, some Counter Strike action.) Sounds like the Crusoe would do most tasks that you really need a laptop for nicely.
I dunno what you'd do with a laptop, but I know why I want one. It's not for "serious tasks." It's for being able to do development work anywhere I can. I'd love to get a laptop running Linux so that I can work on my current pet project anywhere I am. Crusoe should be fine for that, assuming I'm not doing something with millions of lines of code.
Seriously, it's a laptop. It's not the latest Alpha server from Digit- uh, Compaq. You don't need something overly powerful. The long battery life should make up for speed difficencies.
The current system works by reducing the burden by allowing only a few to moderate, and preventing people from posting more often than once a minute.
Adding another level (and by repeatedly doing averages, I was counting ALL the load, including the load of getting the numbers off the DB, the fact that Slashdot would then need something capable of transactions since people attempting to do this at the same time is much more likely, and all the other fun things that come into play when the system must scale to Slashdot sizes) you greatly increase what the server is doing. There's still a massive amount of load simply because Slashdot is incredibly dynamic. Simply put, it's easier for me to say "ooo, that should be 5" and so I could do it much more often than I could post a comment. Allowing everyone to moderate would greatly increase the load, simply because most of the system time would be doing the average - pulling the score from the table, doing the math, putting it back. Then you'd have to keep track of who did what - ugh.
Besides, I can bring a system to a near halt if all it's doing is repeatedly computing an average. It won't be able to do anything useful! Try running while(1) { } for a while - it'll take up all your CPU, but it's not doing anything useful! The act of doing one average may be small, but the act of doing it over and over and over and over again isn't.
That's why moderators get 5 points - it greatly reduces the amount of crap the system must worry about. Slashdot's moderation scheme isn't the way it is simply to remove trolls - it also takes load into account.
Adding my moderation scheme just wouldn't scale. So it's not really a solution. As pointed out in the IRC logs, Kuro5hin's solution also won't scale. But it's a nice thought. That's one of the reason Slashdot uses the current system - it scales rather nicely.
(BTW, the questions asked by _xeno_ are me :). Too bad the ones I really wanted answered never made it through the bot.)
So I skipped reading the log - besides, I've got my own copy. If anyone wants a (text) log including what happened after CmdrTaco et. al left (up to the point when Emmett and CowboyNeal left, I think) I've got it, minus all the connect-disconnect messages.
Actually, it's not worth my time to participate in M2 at all.
Besides, CID 12 really shouldn't be modded down since it is quite true. CmdrTaco seemed to rationalize it by "I've taken enough shit from others, I can give it to Signal."
(Actually, I'm surprised - since most trolling is done under AC, I would have thought it much lower. Then again, starting at zero you can only lose one point and can gain five, so I guess that does make sense. Although I'm still pissed at Slash (-code, not -dot) after losing 5 karma on one post - if you start at 2, you should only be able to fall 4 points! It also involves hitting "submit" when I thought I hit "preview.")
Actually, that was the entire point of Signal 11. He created the account, at least according to what he said, to see what would happen if he basically posted toting the party line. I think we all know the end result. In the end, Signal basically showed one problem with the moderation system - it's done by the "elite" Slashdotters.
Moderators are chosen based on karma. According to the IRC log, that's the only reason for karma. The higher your karma, the more likely you can moderate. Think about this for a moment - the people who are most likely to moderate are those who have been moderated up in the past. That means those that follow Signal 11's "groupthink" ideal are more likely to be moderated up. These people are then most likely to moderate up people who agree. The system perpetuates "groupthink." There needs to be a way to allow dissenters to moderate. (Problem with that is that most people who go against the grain wind up being modded down; then again, those that don't are usually the most level-headed, and probably more deserving. The real problem is that it's impossible to distinguish between "disagrees with groupthink" and "is being a troll.")
Personally, I think that everyone should have moderator access, all the time. Everyone can vote on a comment, and the average of all the votes becomes the score. There are enough people reading Slashdot so that the troll moderators would be filtered out. Plus, since one person voting on something would be enough to send it to +5 or whatever, then posts lost in later discussion have a chance to be seen. You can then also elliminate +1 scoring.
There's only one problem with my purposed solution - it'll beat up servers. (Repeatedly doing averages would take a lot of CPU power.) So I dunno.
My hope is that a significant percentage of the audience grows tired of this routine, and demands a more mature discussion....
Unfortunately, that's not going to happen. Slashdot frequently manages to post stories that someone, somewhere, can be emotional about. And when someone emmotional about some topic, he or she isn't as logical, and not as mature. Which is why there even are distro flame wars. If you think about it, that's a pretty dumb thing to get all worked up against.
There will always be losers. There will always be trolls. Some days, I'm a troll. It gets stress out, and allows me to participate in real discussions. We all have our bad days - some people take them out on Slashdot.
Signal 11 doesn't really personify the problems, but he does demonstrate them. With any discussion, there must have those who disagree. Otherwise, it's not really a discussion, it's simply a bunch of people patting their own backs. That's what Signal 11's real point was. I can't think of a real solution to it - but hopefully, someone else can.
Myth: Linux performs better than Windows NT
Reality: Windows NT 4.0 Outperforms Linux On Common Customer Workloads
By redefining "common customer workloads" that'll be true. I can also do that to show that my TI-89 is better than Linux. (See, I couldn't get bash to integrate 1/x - it must suck!)
Myth: Linux is more reliable than Windows NT
Reality: Linux Needs Real World Proof Points Rather than Anecdotal Stories
No shit! But then again, so does Windows.
Myth: Linux is Free
Reality: Free Operating System Does Not Mean Low Total Cost of Ownership
I dunno about that one... Windows has so far cost me $200 for Win95 full and Win98 upgrade. Linux cost me $12 - $10 are actually dues to my local LUG, and $2 are a rough estimate of CD-R's burnt.
Myth: Linux is more secure than Windows NT
Reality: Linux Security Model Is Weak
This is actually quite true, but it's changing (dunno about in 2.4). The security model has one all-powerful user, and no permissions. I *know* from looking at 2.2.10 code that people were starting to implement user permissions/permissions for various kernel tasks (ie, a process can be allowed to update the system clock but be denied access to bind to ports lower than 1024). The file system has permissions separate from the kernel, sorta, and... ugh.
Myth: Linux can replace Windows on the desktop
Reality: Linux Makes No Sense at the Desktop
I can redefine "desktop" to make this true. Actually, in this reguard, I'd say that Win2000 is the best OS, in that it gets a nice balance between "desktop" tasks and "server" tasks. Then again, I don't run Win2000, I dual boot between Win98 and RedHat 7.0. Desktop under Linux works for me. But then again, I do most serious office-like tasks under Windows. This is sorta because lpr for whatever reason only works if I'm root and also because last time I tried to print under Linux, only the top row of the 600x600dpi matrix actually printed.
For the time being, I'd have to agree. Linux has come a long, long way - but for most things, Windows is currently better. (My current pet Linux peeve is the brain-dead scheduler... this mostly has to do with the fact that it isn't pre-emptive. Of course, I have a different beef with the WinNT scheduler about starving processes... Dunno if Win2000 has a different scheduler, but I'll bet a single CPU intensive task will make the thing look like it's crashed. I can explain my take on both if anyone wants more facts.)
Yes, it's whining - but that's why it says "Rant." It's a rant. It comes from the last time I tried to install QuickTime 4, and from watching the results. And it's about not being able to view the foolish trailer, which is what the story was about in the first place, because I don't want to install the file viewer.
What's really annoying is that more than likely, the movie will be released on DVD at some point. At that point, it will be encoded in MPEG Layer2 - something I can view under both Linux and Windows. MPEG is a cross-platform standard - in that it's a standard, period. QuickTime is a closed format that a company created before computers were really ready for streaming audio/video. (I could argue that they still aren't really ready for streaming audio/video.)
I'd like to watch the trailer, but I can't. Because they chose a format which I refuse to use - because the player for it messes things up. That's the link to the story, which is basically announcing that the trailer is available.
I do use Windows, and not just for games. I do development under Windows. I can write Windows applications. So it's not a "Windows sucks!" thing - it's a QuickTime sucks thing. The fact that most of the video files on the Internet are in QuickTime annoys me, because I'd rather not install the viewer, because I don't like it.
I've already got Windows 98. I might be upgrading to ME soon. But I also run Linux when I can. And in both cases, I don't really have a choice for QuickTime - it's Apple's player or bust. But I have multiple MPEG2 players, under both platforms. I can do that, and it works nicely. (Plus I can TV-out MPEG files, I can't do that with any other media. But that's a dxr3 thing.)
Unlike most Slashdotters, I'm quite willing to switch to Windows to watch something. I installed QT4 once, and never want to install it again. It's just something I won't do. If I could watch QT movies any other way, it might be worth it. But I can't - I'm stuck with QuickTime, or writing some dumb applet using QuickTime for Java to do it. Java AWT flaws make using Java just as slow. (Keep in mind, Java fans, that while Java runs quite nicely for most tasks, the fine folks at Sun have managed to continuously slow down GUI tasks.) Also, from other people in the Java dev community, I've heard that QT for Java sucks major ass anyway.
I don't mind using Real (for some strange reason - it really is in many ways worse than QuickTime) because it just feels faster. It also does some annoying GUI stuff, but the people at Real actually did a fairly decent job of it and it runs fairly nicely. The things I really hate are the many sites that decide I must stream things from them, which QT attempts to do. (Although lynx -source URL | grep mov and then lynx -source mov URL > mov file works OK. Under Windows you have to run through hoops to find the proper URL, but it can be done. Properly configured Netscape and IE will then ask if you want to launch the app or save the file. Bang - you can save it.)
I don't care about the codec - I care that the software is buggy, that every three times you run it it displays an ad for QT Pro (which Real doesn't do, I guess that's why I can stand them), and that ad can not be deleted - it's not really a QT movie, it's a built in thing.
BTW, as for "chugging along at 25MHz," QuickTime 4 managed to bring my K6-233MHz system to a crawl while attempting to view 210x120 movies. If I killed the sound, it would run smoothly. Otherwise it would die. Annoyingly enough, movies of the same size encoded in say MPEG layer 2 would run quite nicely, with sound. The quality may have been subtely worse, but hey - it worked.
The fact that this statement is possible worries me. First of all, it would be really nice for me as a developer to be told that library "A" is standard for all Linux distros, and they can feel free to (dynamically) link against it, with reasonable assurance that all "Linux" platforms will have library "A" and therefore run. Plus, with certain applications (read: Mozilla/XFree86), I'd rather install pre-built binaries simply because attempting to compile everything is usually much more time consuming to do than using pre-built binaries, and is also more likely to run into problems.
It would be nice to think that any binary compiled on any Linux system for a given platform would run on any other Linux system on the same platform with a compatible set of libraries (ie, an app linked against glibc 2.1 had better work on my system with RedHat 7.0's glibc 2.whatever). After having Nautilus bomb on me because I didn't have the appropriate compression library v0.9. This really annoyed me since I had a v1.x (forget the x) version installed. It's a newer version! I'd like it to work!
Actually, people breaking compatibility from a beta to a release is OK. But if glibc2.2 breaks glibc2.1 appps, that'd just be bad. Those who use Windows are familiar with "DLL Hell." Sounds like Linux developers are starting to create "Library Hell." This would be a very, very bad thing.
Um, not everyone on Slashdot works at VA Linux.
But if you look at the quality and repetiveness/predicatability of Slashdot stories...
(BTW - it's a joke - I know the /. crew works hard on the stories.)
UNIX may be old, but it's definately not a fad. Linux's currently popularity may be a fad, but it will still be around even after it's time in the spotlight has faded.
Although I know many people who predict the death of Linux in the next five to ten years, I still believe that Linux will still have it's place. After all, the various BSDs are still around, and they're based on a UNIX 10-15 years older than Linux!
They then started translating, but never released Final Fantasy V (at least the SNES version - more later). They instead moved FFVI over and called it FFIII to again avoid confusion.
As everyone knows, there was a lot of hype about Final Fantasy VII - enough so that it would be more confusing (at least Square's marketing dept. thought so) to renumber it "4" to properly line up with the US releases.
After Final Fantasy became more popular in the US, they decided to release the already-translated FFV in the US. The data-files were already done; they'd already ported the code to the PlayStation for the Japanese re-release of Final Fantasy IV through VI, so they released it under the "new" naming scheme. (They didn't rerelease IV in the US which was annoying, since FF2US is actually FFIVJapan Easy Type version, with a watered down translation.)
It would be nice to see an official translation of the origianl FFII and FFIII, assuming they don't screw it up (since they're away from Nintendo of America's "we're a children's game company" policy, that's more possible). Keep in mind that FFVII was also the first Final Fantasy with a really decent translation.
One of my favorite examples of how Nintendo watered down FF3US is the scene where you meet Cyan behind Zozo or whatever, in the World of Ruin. If you pick up the key he drops, and open the locked chest, in the US version you find a book about machinery. In the Japanese version you find a porno mag. (In both cases, Cyan tries to hide it and blushes :) ) (Keep in mind you can't see the mag, but the text calls it such.)
Another decent example is the "dancer" that runs into Cyan at some point in the game. In the Japan version, she's a hooker.
Hope that gives some people some ideas of just what we in the US have been missing from the FF series.
Holy shit, up to a score:4? Wow, most of the moderators must be very desperate these days. I know I ... uh, never mind. Um. Yeah.
Just so you know, all he'd register is the slashdot.dot domain. Once he has that, he can tack whatever the hell he wants on the beginning. A lookup would first ask the .dot server for who knows about slashdot.dot and then that server, which would be run by the slashteam, could have slash.slashdot.dot, beta.slashdot.dot, goatsex.slashdot.dot, or whatever. You only register the second level name. Microsoft owns all server names that end it microsoft.com. My college can have whatever names they want within wpi.edu.
TO CHANGE USER INFORMATION, YOU MUST LOG ON USING YOUR USERNAME AND PASSWORD. ALL THE ONE-CLICK COOKIE ALLOWS YOU TO DO IS TO ORDER THINGS IN ONE CLICK.
To change any other information, you need to log on using your username and password, through SSL. So it's secure. Assuming you remember to log out (through the "continue shopping" button) it'll erase any authorization tokens anyway. For all I know, it doesn't USE authorization cookies. Besides, it shouldn't matter because if the cookie was marked as "secure" it could only be sent over an SSL connection anyway.
To change the address/credit card/name/anything you must log on with a username and password. Must.