Problem is, take the great state of South Dakota, (just west of Minnesota for you geographically handicapped readers).
We have 85,000 miles of road in an area of 77,123 square miles. A population of about 750,000 lives in that total area.
The Netherlands on the other hand, has just over 15,000,000 people in 34,000 square miles. In other words, they have about 500 people per square mile, whereas we have 9.7 on average.
So when we go to plow our roads, it's going to take a hell of a long time. And that fancy permeable road surface would be the biggest frozen death trap on all the world by the time the plows got there.
It works good in Europe where you have a monstrous tax base and people don't mind getting hosed on their taxes to buy a really expensive road, but here that just doesn't fly.
Further, snow plows don't cause potholes. They cause blade damage -- mostly scrapes and nicks out the the driving surface. Potholes are caused by overweight trucks and pooly compacted subsurface fill, aggrivated by freeze-thaw cycles which degrades the material density.
What the fuck happened to this (U.S.) country's pride? We just don't care about doing something like that anymore. All we care is whining about taxes, buying bigger SUVs, and building expensive missle defense systems (when the nuke that takes out NYC will be a back-pack nuke sailed in the bottom of a cargo ship into the Hudson probably. No SDI will protect us from that...)
Everyone with pride cashed in their social security cards and moved to Canda. In the process, they took a large amount of cigarettes and booze with them, but that didn't inhibit their ability to actually learn and sing the national anthem.
Don't believe me? Go to any sporting event in Canada. People actually sing along, remove their caps and show respect. Even Subway restaurants are different. They don't serve American cheese in Canadaian subways, they serve chedder. In the states it's American.
You can also see a model in some more activist unions of the union opposing things that aren't directly related to employment, but represent the beliefs of their employees. The National Education Association is probably the most notable such union -- much of their lobbying in education isn't related one way or the other to employment, but simply reflects what teachers believe are the best ways for schools to operate -- as opposed to what pundits, principles, school boards, and sound-bit-searching politicians think is best.
As someone who will be entering the teaching profession in the near future, I can speak with some authority on this. The NEA is NOT a labor union. Consult their website, read their literature. In none of those materials will you find the NEA refer to itself as a union, or be affilicated with other unions.
The AFT, American Federation of Teachers, is a union however. They are affilicated with the AFL-CIO, advocate strikes if conditions deteroriate to the point where they become necessary. The NEA does not advocate strikes on any level.
Yes, the NEA lobbies all levels of government on a variety of issues not overtly releated to teaching, but in the view of the NEA, all issues relate to teaching. The NEA has an official position on gun control (less guns in schools=good) and nuclear weapons (they kill people) for example.
The only national teachers' union, AFT, does not lobby for any issue not overtly releated to teaching. They have an official position on national testing, but leave gun control to others.
The NEA is a teacher ONLY organization. If you are not a teacher, you cannot join. The AFT, on the other hand, says that any school employee from the counselors to the bus drivers can join. The philosophy being that everyone who works for a school has a vested interest in it being the best possible. However, management of the school (administrators and principals) are not allowed to join. The NEA leaves that decision up to the local level. If local branches of the NEA wish to permit administrators to join, then that's kosher. Most local chapters will allow administrators to join, so long as they were members of NEA as teachers, before moving into the management position.
Calling the NEA a union is simply incorrect, despite them having a number of features which most unions have.
I'm no expert on the how and why of the Challenger, but in all the reading I've done here's what I came up with:
NASA was warned, warned, and warned that the O-ring system on the SRBs weren't capable of creating an adequate seal in cold temperatures.
There was an engineer, I forget his name, and as stupid as it sounds, his name was French sounding. He told them "Don't launch. It's not safe." This was repeated over and over. Morton-Thikol had tests showing that the O-ring was unsafe at low temps.
But when PR people clamored to have "The First Teacher in Space", and were sick of the delays, they forced a launch anyway. The results were pretty dramatic.
The engineer on the project, the one whose name I forgot, went public saying "look, NASA really screwed up". He got blackballed and will never again work as an engineer. He now makes a living, or at least used to, travelling the country and telling his story.
Challenger wasn't about hardware failures. At least not unpredicted failures. Everyone involved knew the possible consequences. What caused the Challenger explosion, looking at the wide-angle, was PR types and politicians trying to score some points for the department.
My point: there's no way to guard against stupid people if stupid people are in charge.
The reason for this is that it's simply stupid and unproductive for everyone not to speak the same langauge. At the time, the only language that seems to have the possibility of becoming a truely universal language is English, so I hope more people will talk English.
Either unaware or blissfully ignorant you've chosen to ignore 4000 years of linguistic development.
Does it sound at all plausable that 2000 years ago, people were clamoring over Latin being the universal language, just like you are clamoring over English as a universal language?
English is destined to fail, much like Latin, as a 'universal language'.
Here's the example of Latin:
As more and more people spoke it, they each brutalized the language a little differently -- a little colloquism here and there, different stresses on syllables etc...
It grew to the point where Latin wasn't really latin anymore. Out of this grew the romance languages. From one root, came French, Italian, Spanish etc...
Now look at English. As more and more people speak it, they brutualize Standard English. The English spoken in Malaysia is nothing like the English spoken in Vermont. It's not english, it's malaysianglish.
People argue "Oh, but they just have bad accents." WRONG. They are speaking English using the pronunciation rules of Javanese (langauge of Malaysia). Further, words and phrases completely unknown in English are used.
The sucess of English will be it's downfall. Just like Latin splintered into hundreds of languages, English will follow. The world most of you envision, one cleverly ripped off from Lennon's Imagine, is that of everyone with a flower on their lapel speaking English.
The reality is that the English spoken in South Dakota will be vastly different from the English spoken in China -- it is an entirely different dialect.
Look no further than the US. Take that South Dakotan and place him in the South Side of Chichago. Do you think he is going to understand a word of English spoken there? Hell no. It's english, but it's an entirely different dialect.
That's your Brave New World. Piss on unity. We're heading toward a day of thousands of languages and dialectss, WITH NO COMMON GROUND.
I too just stumbled onto this. For whatever reason, one can suck all the bandwidth possible by using Napster, Mojonation, gnutella etc...but try a legitimate application such as VNC, and forget it.
It makes absolutely no sense to me. They disclaim away all possible liabilities from have an insecure box, but take these measures?
I suspect it has something to do with residential vs. commercial offerings. While this is all hypothetical, I'd guess that for some fantastically huge monthly sum, you can get 'business' level service which is actually usable for something other than the internet staples: porn and music.
Since 99% of slashdotters don't even bother to read the article before posting comments, it ought to be said that this isn't exactly 'high speed'. That's a bit deceptive. It's nifty and stuff, but not like you're getting broadband to the sega.
You're still limited by the modem in the dreamcast, regardless of how fast an internet connection you have.
Yeah, I'm replying to myself, but to clarify, all this information is incorrect in my post.
Unfortunately, the correct information is not as highly moderated, so no one will see it. This should be moderated down to like a 1, and the correct post in this thread moderate up.
It's hard to belive that this would get so highly moderated, but I guess the moderators don't bother to read half the crap they moderate.
I'm sick of QuickTime movies I can't view in Linux and RealVideo movies I'd prefer not to download the player for
How the hell can anyone be "for" anything that you don't have a clue about? If this shapes up to be like 90% of all other big commercial ventures, it'll be Windows only. Maybe the Mac, and probably not Linux. Second, it's a custom codec, so if you're too lazy to DL realplayer, MPEG4 isn't going to be any different.
Don't hold your breath expecting any open source details on the custom codec. In fact, the mere mention of any customization of a standard (oxymoron), should flash huge warning signs.
Same ol same ol, is about the best I'm hoping for.
Because those who are capable understand that if a catastrophe were to occur due to such a trojan/virus, then their nice little lifestyle would be ruined for a very long time (imprisonment if caught, or banking/commerce/etc within his/her country suffering and he wouldn't be able to do what he'd normally do).
More likely is that people skilled enough and clever enough to create such a trojan/virus have very well paying jobs, keeping them satisfied to work within the system, vs against it.
In a way, it's similar to voting. [long comparision ahead]. Me voting is useless. One vote in any election *never* makes a difference (dare you to find one...). Even so called "close" races are decided by a few hundred votes.
So why bother voting? My one vote is pointless. Well, the government knows this too, and vehemently encourages voting anyway.
The reason: it makes people feel like part of the system. Voting sedates them, keeps them from doing other nefarious things like shooting politicians or staging protests. voting is an outlet for political frustrations.
For the same reason, all the people capable of writing evil computer programs are already employed, and for the most part sedated.
Look at the people accused for most virus attacks: sort of losers, crappy jobs, not paid well etc... I doubt you'll ever hear of anyone from Red Hat, or Cisco, or Yahoo writing a computer virus. (I may take this comment back someday however.)
These email worms aren't quite as effective as spreading, I guess, since there are enough non-idiots to stop it eventually.
What you presume, incorrectly, is that smart people outnumber stupid people. Having worked a few years at a retail store selling computer products, I can assure you stupid people are the majority.
There's only so many cookies one can pull out of a floppy drive before losing faith in humanity.
top the ultimate hardware hack ever: the MacQuarium.
Gutted Mac Classic, Classic II or SE. The monitor is removed and cut glass installed to make a fish bowl.
Advantages over current hardware: crash resitant, near perfect implementation of artifical intelligence (how smart are fish anyway? They'll eat themselves to death). Much more enjoyable than psuedo fishtank screensavers.
Disad: Crash leads to death, requires 24/7 uptime and system monitoring. Operating elements will sometimes eat each other.
No kidding. People like to take the side of big business by painting GPL as some marauder beating them to their knees. Hardly. And for a company to say "oops" that's is such horse shit.
If I steal Nvidida's chip designs, and make my own video card, do you think they're going to say "well, as long as it was an accident and you promise not to steal from us again. Heck, take a few weeks to get things all figured out and keep selling the stolen chip designs."
If a company can't hire programmers to do their own work, and can't police it's super secret code very well, why the hell should anyone spend money with them? Screw all the crap about "well, they admitted it, so they shouldn't we shoudln't pass judgement on it. It will keep other companies from coming forward." Who reported the violation? Not nVidia.
But, it all comes down to lawyers. Corporations regularly screw over people, break contracts, etc...the GNU folks don't have a PR mouthpiece, don't have $250/hour lawyers. So they're left sit in the dust.
nVidia owes the programmers it stole from a royality, say 20%. That's still not right, but maybe they can end up with a little folding cash in their pockets.
Re:Don't worry about it, Napster's a different iss
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MP3.com Loses In Court
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· Score: 1
I don't think it's at all unfair to close this service down, since MP3.com can keep offering downloads of songs it *does* have a right to offer, such as from artists who've given permission, have contracts with them for downloads, etc. This was a very limited part of MP3.com's services which was ruled a violation.
A few months back when this started brewing, I recall that an analysis of the my.mp3.com system was conducted. Auditors found that the mp3.com system was *very* good at determining if the CD you had in your possession was a bona fide release -- not some MP3 burn, even direct from the original album.
In fact, the protocol was so careful that people were complaining it was overly careful, to the point of privacy advocates saying the system was too nosy. A lot of commentary around this said "well, this can only help mp3.com's chances in court".
It's a shame it didn't. Perhaps they have some hope on appeal. I really like the service. I'm pretty brutal on CDs (don't know what my problem is, but they just get scratched for me), and having access to albums from home and work is fantastic.
than any other felon who wants to profit, either in fame or fortune, from his crimes. Rapists can't write books about their crimes and sell them. It's come up over and over in the courts, and each time the victims trouce the "free-speech" arguments put forth by the felon.
It's not about free speech. Mitinick would not be well known at all if he lacked a criminal record. He wouldn't have the enclaves of fervent followers proclaiming "Free Kevin", and nobody would give a damn what some drop out loser said about security.
If Mitinick wanted to be a Toastmasters guru, he should have been a little wiser about his leisure activities in the early 90s. He had been on probation before, and still jerked the legal system around. This time there's no sympathy for the guy. And rightly so. He had more than a second chance, and now it's time to pay up.
This is an internal ArsDigita analysis (in Excel format; why?) of Zope. Obviously ArsDigita sees Zope a competitor if it comes with suggestions on how to handle it.
Ok, time to quit reading the tobacco trial transcripts and FOIAing documents. This isn't some vast conspiracy to snub out another product.
Yeah, this document is so internal that ANYONE can read it. That's hardcore internal insider off the record stuff.
Obviously they used Excel to make it impossible for Linux users to open. Very clever. You outwitted them, good work.
will include all of the major ideas outlined in the 1993 book MacIntosh Human Interface Guidelines
Why does QuickTime 4 player and Sonique take forever to get used to vs. WinAmp? Sonique and QT 4 said "screw it" when it came to designing a user interface.
Apple did good by ripping off the Xerox people in the 80s. The Xerox people did good by ripping IBM off. Designers today think that 40 years of development are bogus apparently, as evidenced by user interfaces like Sonique and QuickTime 4. The beauty of the Apple concepts is that if you learn one Mac program, given that it's written according to the guidelines, you've already learned how to use 90% of any other Mac program on the market.
Look at the Windows environment: if I learn how to use BulletProof FTP, can I immediately sit down and use CoffeeCup FTP in just a few seconds? Hardly. CoffeeCup has a piss poor user interface which differs RADICALLY from every other FTP client for Windows. However, if I use Fetch on the Mac, then sit down and use Transmit (both FTP clients) they're very similar in look and feel.
For the biggest change in UIs, look at Macster and Napster. Macster is a breeze to use and sports an awsome UI vs. Napster. I'm jealous to be stuck using Napster.
What's written in the Apple book isn't just for the Mac, it's for anyone who wants to write a program or website, that doesn't need any explanation. Until windows came out, with it's atrocious interface and programs which subscribe to 15,000 different theories about UI, nobody had a "help" menu on their programs. Today a "help" menu is standard. That's says something about the quality of programs (not to mention cheapass companies which no longer include a printed manual)
You apparently don't read the Mandrake site, ever. If you did, you'd notice this:
March 24 2000 - Mandrake 7.0 for i486. It's been requested and awaited for a long time, now it's available: Linux-Mandrake 7.0 ISO image for i486 and compatibles machines can be downloaded from Tucows. You can now use your old machines again!
http://www.linux-mandrake.com/en/fnews.ph p3 will take you to the news page. Click on the download button on the nav bar for a list of mirrors which have the i486 ISO for download.
Also, you can get Mandrake for Sparc and Alpha too.
Re:sure, but also good science
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Hubble Turns 10
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· Score: 1
astronomy than *any* other satellite, ever
Not really. Think about Sputnik: worthless little orb not even fit for a christmas tree topper. It did more for astronomy, indirectly, than Hubble could ever do. Seriously.
why? Why not eschew the obfuscations and have a trip that is actually a vacation, rather than a trip away from the office. Doesn't anyone read Walden Pond by Thoreau, or The Dharma Bums by Kerouac anymore?
Take a rugged Nikon FM2, a 35mm lens and about 6 dozen rolls of Kodachrome 64. Leave computer at home. Enjoy the trip.
Advantages: get away from office. Customs easier to clear with a camera rather than gizmo electronics. Bill for film cheaper than new laptop. Not a fragile. Hard to fry camera on crappy phone line/power line. Don't have to diddle with power adapters. Weighs less. Can be carried on board. Picture quality much better, archival.
Disadvantages: Hardcore email withdrawl (lasts one week, but traumatic. Opium withdrawl supposedly more intense, but doesn't last as long. Your decision...) Arriving home to about 765,000 urgent email messages. Have to spend boo kou bucks on film processing. Have to scan film in. Won't end up with "so I'm at the airport and this guy whips out an uzi cuz he thinks my laptop is a bomb" stories. Can't say "my computer has been around the world".
Slashdot Mirror
Ok, as if the maps and binaries weren't already slow to download sans Slashdotting, this far too out of hand.
Here's a mirror on a fat pipe. Internet2 users rejoice, it's also on that.
Here's the files to DL, Win32.
AlephOne-0.11-Win32-bin.zip
Yeah, so Europe does it different.
Problem is, take the great state of South Dakota, (just west of Minnesota for you geographically handicapped readers).
We have 85,000 miles of road in an area of 77,123 square miles. A population of about 750,000 lives in that total area.
The Netherlands on the other hand, has just over 15,000,000 people in 34,000 square miles. In other words, they have about 500 people per square mile, whereas we have 9.7 on average.
So when we go to plow our roads, it's going to take a hell of a long time. And that fancy permeable road surface would be the biggest frozen death trap on all the world by the time the plows got there.
It works good in Europe where you have a monstrous tax base and people don't mind getting hosed on their taxes to buy a really expensive road, but here that just doesn't fly.
Further, snow plows don't cause potholes. They cause blade damage -- mostly scrapes and nicks out the the driving surface. Potholes are caused by overweight trucks and pooly compacted subsurface fill, aggrivated by freeze-thaw cycles which degrades the material density.
What the fuck happened to this (U.S.) country's pride? We just don't care about doing something like that anymore. All we care is whining about taxes, buying bigger SUVs, and building expensive missle defense systems (when the nuke that takes out NYC will be a back-pack nuke sailed in the bottom of a cargo ship into the Hudson probably. No SDI will protect us from that...)
Everyone with pride cashed in their social security cards and moved to Canda. In the process, they took a large amount of cigarettes and booze with them, but that didn't inhibit their ability to actually learn and sing the national anthem.
Don't believe me? Go to any sporting event in Canada. People actually sing along, remove their caps and show respect. Even Subway restaurants are different. They don't serve American cheese in Canadaian subways, they serve chedder. In the states it's American.
So there you go.
You can also see a model in some more activist unions of the union opposing things that aren't directly related to employment, but represent the beliefs of their employees. The National Education Association is probably the most notable such union -- much of their lobbying in education isn't related one way or the other to employment, but simply reflects what teachers believe are the best ways for schools to operate -- as opposed to what pundits, principles, school boards, and sound-bit-searching politicians think is best.
As someone who will be entering the teaching profession in the near future, I can speak with some authority on this. The NEA is NOT a labor union. Consult their website, read their literature. In none of those materials will you find the NEA refer to itself as a union, or be affilicated with other unions.
The AFT, American Federation of Teachers, is a union however. They are affilicated with the AFL-CIO, advocate strikes if conditions deteroriate to the point where they become necessary. The NEA does not advocate strikes on any level.
Yes, the NEA lobbies all levels of government on a variety of issues not overtly releated to teaching, but in the view of the NEA, all issues relate to teaching. The NEA has an official position on gun control (less guns in schools=good) and nuclear weapons (they kill people) for example.
The only national teachers' union, AFT, does not lobby for any issue not overtly releated to teaching. They have an official position on national testing, but leave gun control to others.
The NEA is a teacher ONLY organization. If you are not a teacher, you cannot join. The AFT, on the other hand, says that any school employee from the counselors to the bus drivers can join. The philosophy being that everyone who works for a school has a vested interest in it being the best possible. However, management of the school (administrators and principals) are not allowed to join. The NEA leaves that decision up to the local level. If local branches of the NEA wish to permit administrators to join, then that's kosher. Most local chapters will allow administrators to join, so long as they were members of NEA as teachers, before moving into the management position.
Calling the NEA a union is simply incorrect, despite them having a number of features which most unions have.
I'm no expert on the how and why of the Challenger, but in all the reading I've done here's what I came up with:
NASA was warned, warned, and warned that the O-ring system on the SRBs weren't capable of creating an adequate seal in cold temperatures.
There was an engineer, I forget his name, and as stupid as it sounds, his name was French sounding. He told them "Don't launch. It's not safe." This was repeated over and over. Morton-Thikol had tests showing that the O-ring was unsafe at low temps.
But when PR people clamored to have "The First Teacher in Space", and were sick of the delays, they forced a launch anyway. The results were pretty dramatic.
The engineer on the project, the one whose name I forgot, went public saying "look, NASA really screwed up". He got blackballed and will never again work as an engineer. He now makes a living, or at least used to, travelling the country and telling his story.
Challenger wasn't about hardware failures. At least not unpredicted failures. Everyone involved knew the possible consequences. What caused the Challenger explosion, looking at the wide-angle, was PR types and politicians trying to score some points for the department.
My point: there's no way to guard against stupid people if stupid people are in charge.
I'll post logged in here, but it probably doesn't count cuz my UID shows I'm so green...we'd better get a ruling from User 1606 or whatever.
Anyway, you make a few damn good points.
DXgaming has a copy running which isn't so polluted with problems and rampant cheating.
The reason for this is that it's simply stupid and unproductive for everyone not to speak the same langauge. At the time, the only language that seems to have the possibility of becoming a truely universal language is English, so I hope more people will talk English.
Either unaware or blissfully ignorant you've chosen to ignore 4000 years of linguistic development.
Does it sound at all plausable that 2000 years ago, people were clamoring over Latin being the universal language, just like you are clamoring over English as a universal language?
English is destined to fail, much like Latin, as a 'universal language'.
Here's the example of Latin:
As more and more people spoke it, they each brutalized the language a little differently -- a little colloquism here and there, different stresses on syllables etc...
It grew to the point where Latin wasn't really latin anymore. Out of this grew the romance languages. From one root, came French, Italian, Spanish etc...
Now look at English. As more and more people speak it, they brutualize Standard English. The English spoken in Malaysia is nothing like the English spoken in Vermont. It's not english, it's malaysianglish.
People argue "Oh, but they just have bad accents." WRONG. They are speaking English using the pronunciation rules of Javanese (langauge of Malaysia). Further, words and phrases completely unknown in English are used.
The sucess of English will be it's downfall. Just like Latin splintered into hundreds of languages, English will follow. The world most of you envision, one cleverly ripped off from Lennon's Imagine, is that of everyone with a flower on their lapel speaking English.
The reality is that the English spoken in South Dakota will be vastly different from the English spoken in China -- it is an entirely different dialect.
Look no further than the US. Take that South Dakotan and place him in the South Side of Chichago. Do you think he is going to understand a word of English spoken there? Hell no. It's english, but it's an entirely different dialect.
That's your Brave New World. Piss on unity. We're heading toward a day of thousands of languages and dialectss, WITH NO COMMON GROUND.
I too just stumbled onto this. For whatever reason, one can suck all the bandwidth possible by using Napster, Mojonation, gnutella etc...but try a legitimate application such as VNC, and forget it.
It makes absolutely no sense to me. They disclaim away all possible liabilities from have an insecure box, but take these measures?
I suspect it has something to do with residential vs. commercial offerings. While this is all hypothetical, I'd guess that for some fantastically huge monthly sum, you can get 'business' level service which is actually usable for something other than the internet staples: porn and music.
Since 99% of slashdotters don't even bother to read the article before posting comments, it ought to be said that this isn't exactly 'high speed'. That's a bit deceptive. It's nifty and stuff, but not like you're getting broadband to the sega.
You're still limited by the modem in the dreamcast, regardless of how fast an internet connection you have.
A modem is not high speed.
Yeah, I'm replying to myself, but to clarify, all this information is incorrect in my post.
Unfortunately, the correct information is not as highly moderated, so no one will see it. This should be moderated down to like a 1, and the correct post in this thread moderate up.
It's hard to belive that this would get so highly moderated, but I guess the moderators don't bother to read half the crap they moderate.
From the ARIN whois search:
Concentric Network Corporation (NET-CNCX-BLK-5)
1400 Parkmoor Avenue
San Jose, CA 95126-3429
US
Netname: CNCX-BLK-5
Netblock: 208.36.0.0 - 208.37.255.255
Maintainer: CNCX
Coordinator:
DNS and IP ADMIN (DIA-ORG-ARIN) hostmaster@CONCENTRIC.NET
(408) 817-2800
Fax- - - (408) 817-2630
Domain System inverse mapping provided by:
NAMESERVER1.CONCENTRIC.NET 207.155.183.73
NAMESERVER2.CONCENTRIC.NET 207.155.184.72
NAMESERVER3.CONCENTRIC.NET 206.173.119.72
NAMESERVER.CONCENTRIC.NET 207.155.183.72
ADDRESSES WITHIN THIS BLOCK ARE NON-PORTABLE
*RWHOIS information on assignments from this
*block available from: rwhois.concentric.net 4321
Record last updated on 21-Jan-2000.
Database last updated on 7-Jul-2000 06:54:50 EDT.
So there you have it: 208.36.0.0 - 208.37.255.255
I'm sick of QuickTime movies I can't view in Linux and RealVideo movies I'd prefer not to download the player for
How the hell can anyone be "for" anything that you don't have a clue about? If this shapes up to be like 90% of all other big commercial ventures, it'll be Windows only. Maybe the Mac, and probably not Linux. Second, it's a custom codec, so if you're too lazy to DL realplayer, MPEG4 isn't going to be any different.
Don't hold your breath expecting any open source details on the custom codec. In fact, the mere mention of any customization of a standard (oxymoron), should flash huge warning signs.
Same ol same ol, is about the best I'm hoping for.
Because those who are capable understand that if a catastrophe were to occur due to such a trojan/virus, then their nice little lifestyle would be ruined for a very long time (imprisonment if caught, or banking/commerce/etc within his/her country suffering and he wouldn't be able to do what he'd normally do).
More likely is that people skilled enough and clever enough to create such a trojan/virus have very well paying jobs, keeping them satisfied to work within the system, vs against it.
In a way, it's similar to voting. [long comparision ahead]. Me voting is useless. One vote in any election *never* makes a difference (dare you to find one...). Even so called "close" races are decided by a few hundred votes.
So why bother voting? My one vote is pointless. Well, the government knows this too, and vehemently encourages voting anyway.
The reason: it makes people feel like part of the system. Voting sedates them, keeps them from doing other nefarious things like shooting politicians or staging protests. voting is an outlet for political frustrations.
For the same reason, all the people capable of writing evil computer programs are already employed, and for the most part sedated.
Look at the people accused for most virus attacks: sort of losers, crappy jobs, not paid well etc... I doubt you'll ever hear of anyone from Red Hat, or Cisco, or Yahoo writing a computer virus. (I may take this comment back someday however.)
These email worms aren't quite as effective as spreading, I guess, since there are enough non-idiots to stop it eventually.
What you presume, incorrectly, is that smart people outnumber stupid people. Having worked a few years at a retail store selling computer products, I can assure you stupid people are the majority.
There's only so many cookies one can pull out of a floppy drive before losing faith in humanity.
top the ultimate hardware hack ever:
the MacQuarium.
Gutted Mac Classic, Classic II or SE. The monitor is removed and cut glass installed to make a fish bowl.
Advantages over current hardware: crash resitant, near perfect implementation of artifical intelligence (how smart are fish anyway? They'll eat themselves to death). Much more enjoyable than psuedo fishtank screensavers.
Disad: Crash leads to death, requires 24/7 uptime and system monitoring. Operating elements will sometimes eat each other.
The plans are here.
No kidding. People like to take the side of big business by painting GPL as some marauder beating them to their knees. Hardly. And for a company to say "oops" that's is such horse shit.
If I steal Nvidida's chip designs, and make my own video card, do you think they're going to say "well, as long as it was an accident and you promise not to steal from us again. Heck, take a few weeks to get things all figured out and keep selling the stolen chip designs."
If a company can't hire programmers to do their own work, and can't police it's super secret code very well, why the hell should anyone spend money with them? Screw all the crap about "well, they admitted it, so they shouldn't we shoudln't pass judgement on it. It will keep other companies from coming forward." Who reported the violation? Not nVidia.
But, it all comes down to lawyers. Corporations regularly screw over people, break contracts, etc...the GNU folks don't have a PR mouthpiece, don't have $250/hour lawyers. So they're left sit in the dust.
nVidia owes the programmers it stole from a royality, say 20%. That's still not right, but maybe they can end up with a little folding cash in their pockets.
I don't think it's at all unfair to close this service down, since MP3.com can keep offering downloads of songs it *does* have a right to offer, such as from artists who've given permission, have contracts with them for downloads, etc. This was a very limited part of MP3.com's services which was ruled a violation.
A few months back when this started brewing, I recall that an analysis of the my.mp3.com system was conducted. Auditors found that the mp3.com system was *very* good at determining if the CD you had in your possession was a bona fide release -- not some MP3 burn, even direct from the original album.
In fact, the protocol was so careful that people were complaining it was overly careful, to the point of privacy advocates saying the system was too nosy. A lot of commentary around this said "well, this can only help mp3.com's chances in court".
It's a shame it didn't. Perhaps they have some hope on appeal. I really like the service. I'm pretty brutal on CDs (don't know what my problem is, but they just get scratched for me), and having access to albums from home and work is fantastic.
than any other felon who wants to profit, either in fame or fortune, from his crimes. Rapists can't write books about their crimes and sell them. It's come up over and over in the courts, and each time the victims trouce the "free-speech" arguments put forth by the felon.
It's not about free speech. Mitinick would not be well known at all if he lacked a criminal record. He wouldn't have the enclaves of fervent followers proclaiming "Free Kevin", and nobody would give a damn what some drop out loser said about security.
If Mitinick wanted to be a Toastmasters guru, he should have been a little wiser about his leisure activities in the early 90s. He had been on probation before, and still jerked the legal system around. This time there's no sympathy for the guy. And rightly so. He had more than a second chance, and now it's time to pay up.
This is an internal ArsDigita analysis (in Excel format; why?) of Zope. Obviously ArsDigita sees Zope a competitor if it comes with suggestions on how to handle it.
Ok, time to quit reading the tobacco trial transcripts and FOIAing documents. This isn't some vast conspiracy to snub out another product.
Yeah, this document is so internal that ANYONE can read it. That's hardcore internal insider off the record stuff.
Obviously they used Excel to make it impossible for Linux users to open. Very clever. You outwitted them, good work.
Understandable that the GPL goggles would render your internet vision totally useless.
This is not unlike Juno, FreeDSL, FreePC, any free email, free dial up internet, free[anything].
You become a pawn in the direct market game. Not new, and not surprising. You just can't get something for nothing, not now, not ever.
will include all of the major ideas outlined in the 1993 book MacIntosh Human Interface Guidelines
Why does QuickTime 4 player and Sonique take forever to get used to vs. WinAmp? Sonique and QT 4 said "screw it" when it came to designing a user interface.
Apple did good by ripping off the Xerox people in the 80s. The Xerox people did good by ripping IBM off. Designers today think that 40 years of development are bogus apparently, as evidenced by user interfaces like Sonique and QuickTime 4. The beauty of the Apple concepts is that if you learn one Mac program, given that it's written according to the guidelines, you've already learned how to use 90% of any other Mac program on the market.
Look at the Windows environment: if I learn how to use BulletProof FTP, can I immediately sit down and use CoffeeCup FTP in just a few seconds? Hardly. CoffeeCup has a piss poor user interface which differs RADICALLY from every other FTP client for Windows. However, if I use Fetch on the Mac, then sit down and use Transmit (both FTP clients) they're very similar in look and feel.
For the biggest change in UIs, look at Macster and Napster. Macster is a breeze to use and sports an awsome UI vs. Napster. I'm jealous to be stuck using Napster.
What's written in the Apple book isn't just for the Mac, it's for anyone who wants to write a program or website, that doesn't need any explanation. Until windows came out, with it's atrocious interface and programs which subscribe to 15,000 different theories about UI, nobody had a "help" menu on their programs. Today a "help" menu is standard. That's says something about the quality of programs (not to mention cheapass companies which no longer include a printed manual)
You apparently don't read the Mandrake site, ever. If you did, you'd notice this:
March 24 2000 - Mandrake 7.0 for i486. It's been requested and awaited for a long time, now it's available: Linux-Mandrake 7.0 ISO image for i486 and compatibles machines can be downloaded from Tucows. You can now use your old machines again!
http://www.linux-mandrake.com/en/fnews.ph p3 will take you to the news page. Click on the download button on the nav bar for a list of mirrors which have the i486 ISO for download.
Also, you can get Mandrake for Sparc and Alpha too.
astronomy than *any* other satellite, ever
Not really. Think about Sputnik: worthless little orb not even fit for a christmas tree topper. It did more for astronomy, indirectly, than Hubble could ever do. Seriously.
why? Why not eschew the obfuscations and have a trip that is actually a vacation, rather than a trip away from the office. Doesn't anyone read Walden Pond by Thoreau, or The Dharma Bums by Kerouac anymore?
Take a rugged Nikon FM2, a 35mm lens and about 6 dozen rolls of Kodachrome 64. Leave computer at home. Enjoy the trip.
Advantages: get away from office. Customs easier to clear with a camera rather than gizmo electronics. Bill for film cheaper than new laptop. Not a fragile. Hard to fry camera on crappy phone line/power line. Don't have to diddle with power adapters. Weighs less. Can be carried on board. Picture quality much better, archival.
Disadvantages: Hardcore email withdrawl (lasts one week, but traumatic. Opium withdrawl supposedly more intense, but doesn't last as long. Your decision...) Arriving home to about 765,000 urgent email messages. Have to spend boo kou bucks on film processing. Have to scan film in. Won't end up with "so I'm at the airport and this guy whips out an uzi cuz he thinks my laptop is a bomb" stories. Can't say "my computer has been around the world".
I opt for the less is more approach however.