You're obviously not old enough to remember when this kind of censorship was the norm. When I was in college, I knew a guy (bookstore clerk) who got arrested for selling a Richard Crumb comic book. Charges dropped when the store agreed to stop selling the comic.
To answer your question: Back then, judges decided what didn't meet "community standards" for "decency", based on testimony from "community leaders". The above concepts no longer carry much weight. So I'd expect some state regulatory agency to trot out psychologists and other "experts" who would claim that small kids who see porn will grow up to be rapists and serial killers.
Anyway, I agree with you: this is a job for parents. Who would be better served by tracking and controlling their kids internet usage, instead of leaving it up to some unreliable ISP filter. It's ironic that conservative groups whine about "big government", but never hesitate to call for more intrusive government action when it suits their agenda.
Why do you even worry about your laptop overheating? Standard consumer and business systems are designed to be OK provided the environment doesn't exceed 85 degrees F. (At least that's what it says on the A+ exam.) The only people who need to worry about their systems overheating are people who customize -- case modders, overclockers, or people who've replaced fans and power supplies with quieter versions.
I once considered doing that last thing myself, so I did a little Googling and found a couple of gadgets that let you stick a temperature prope through a case slot so you can check for overheating. You'll have to find them for yourself.
In any case, suppose your laptop is overheating. What are you going to do about it?
I used to own a Sony Picturebook, which generated the same kind of heat. Except that it contained a Crusoe processor, which is supposed to have a lot fewer transistors than the equivalent Pentium. Since the thing only got 4 hours on a charge, I also had to wonder what all the Crusoe hype was about.
... is a version of the tutorial that's not on PDF. Since the tutorial was authored on OpenOffice, it would have been just as easy to provide a web version.
And how about a good tutorial on Ruby itself? Most of us have no idea what this language is about.
...just as Ted Bundy escaped into pornography. It is not a release of aggression. It is training for aggression.
Porn might have encouraged Bundy's nastier fantasies. But fantasies don't create the sociopathy that allowed him to inflict real suffering on people. If it did, every action movie would be just as "dangerous" as Bundy's porn.
CP/M-86 wasn't available until after IBM committed to shipping MS-DOS licensed from Microsoft.
Nevertheless, the original OS plan for the PC (drawn up by Bill Gates himself) was for IBM to commission DR to port CP/M to the 86. This plan fell through for obscure reasons. (Various stories about that. The one I believe is that IBM wanted airtight nondisclosure areements with DR before they'd even open negotiations, and DR balked.) Bill Gates was afraid that if he couldn't give IBM an OS, he couldn't sell them development tools. So he hurriedly bought up QDOS, a cheapo CP/M clone. Little did he know that the money he'd make from a rehacked QDOS would dwarf his tools business!
You make it sound as if customers dind't have a choice. IBM announced and made available three operating systems - PC-DOS, CP/M-86 and UCSD P-System.
Yeah, and there were others from third parties. But MS-DOS was what 90% of all early users bought, because it was the cheapest. Developers can't afford to code for every platform around -- they go where the users are. Soon most of the popular desktop applications were available only on IBM-compatibles running MS-DOS. New users "chose" MS-DOS because that's what ran the apps they wanted. Developers "chose" MS-DOS because that's where the users were. A vicious cycle that continues to this day.
Ironically, MS-DOS's very flaws promoted this lock-in effect. Since MS-DOS started out as a CP/M clone, it should have been easy to write software that ran both on MS-DOS and CP/M. But MS-DOS was so flaky, MS-DOS programmers had to rely on thousands of little undocumented "features" that didn't exist on CP/M. Worse, MS-DOS didn't provide many basic services, and programmers often had to implement these features themselves, calling the IBM BIOS directly to do so. Which meant more lockin.
In no way did Tim Patterson rip off CP/M.
That statement is at such total variance with the facts, I have no idea how to respond to it.
Not by choice. If you wanted to use standard applications -- word processors, spreadsheets, games -- you had to buy a copy of MS-DOS. Actually, you didn't even make that decision -- you decided to buy an IBM-compatible and that meant buying MS-DOS.
MSDOS does not do much compared to VMS or VM/CMS but what it does it does on an 8/16 bit processor running at a few MHz.
Comparing MS-DOS to a mini or mainframe OS is like comparing a leaky dinghy to a well-build cabin cruiser. Makes no practical sense. Better to compare it to a well-built dinghy. Which in this case is CP/M -- the OS that Bill Gates himself recommended to IBM at first.
The original Microsoft Basic was not exactly extensive but most people would agree that it was a cool piece of coding.
A cool piece of coding? It was crude 8080 assembler code that threw away many standard BASIC features and had a lot of horrible bugs.
For what was going at the time, MSDOS achieved a lot.
Nonsense. There were plenty of real OSs around at the time, running on similar processors. The prime example is CP/M. Which, if you had bothered to follow the discussion, you would already know about, since the lawsuit is over whether QDOS was a "slapdash clone" of CP/M. Which, in point of fact, it was. Patterson knew jack about OS design, and thought he could clone CP/M just by writing his own versions of all the CP/M APIs -- something he didn't have the background to do.
MS-DOS dominated the market for one reason and for one reason only -- IBM chose it as the main OS for the PC. Since there were so many low-level compatibility issues with early PC clones, IBMs competitors had to copy the PC in painstaking detail. That included copying IBM's mistakes -- the biggest of which was using one of the worst OSs ever made. Not by today's standards, but by the standards then.
It's less confusing if you remember that Patterson still thinks his lame little effort is as good an OS as CP/M. What boggles the mind is that nobody has managed to disabuse him of this notion. I guess the dude has a lot of self-esteem tied up in this little illusion!
Why would Google need an OS engineer? And not just any OS engineer either, but one of the VMS people that Microsoft hired away from DEC to help create NT. The possibilities are very interesting!
The fact that Microsoft has trouble shipping software comes as no suprise to anybody who's watched the security patch deathmarch. But two years to get a code change into a product! Microsoft may yet do to itself what the anti-trust people failed to do to them.
"Ask Slashdot", at its best, is the most interesting part of Slashdot. When somebody has a subtle problem to solve, you get really interesting discussion.
But fewer and fewer ASs are at all interesting any more. For a long time, we've had those painfully dumb questions. Nothing wrong with asking dumb questions -- how else do you learn anything? -- but those belong on Google Groups or other party-line forums. And now we're starting to get "questions" like this one. Which isn't even a question, it's just an invitation to share somebody rage.
Hey, I despise the media monopolies too. But let's talk about them in some kind of useful context. There's too much aimless spleen-venting in the world already.
he wikipedia link you include describes one of the parts of the brain where the structural model is most applicable!
I never said that you couldn't describe functional centers of the brain. Of course the brain has functional centers. But what is the job of specific centers? Nobody really knows. It's clear that Broca's area plays a role in language processing, since damage to that area tends to cause language aphasia. But there's similar evidence for language roles in various other brain areas. So there's nothing you can point to and call "the language center".
"Pleasure center" is even worse. Suppose I stick a wire in your brain and stimulate it with electricity and that causes you to feel pleasure. (I'm too squeamish to do that in real life, so don't get nervous.) That doesn't prove that I've found your "pleasure center". It just means that I'm simulating some kind of brain input associated with pleasure. Maybe it has to do with sex, or a sensation of safety or well being.
Swing is a big culprit, but Sun's worst blunder was shipping early versions of Java with compilers hastily adapted from C++ and VMs that were simple-minded bytecode interpreters. Which thorough established Java's reputation as a poor performer.
Now I have to run the live cd, just to see how this performs. (Unfortunately, the server is thoroughly Slashdotted.) But it's unlikely to convince me that 3D GUIs are more than a lame gimmick.
Multi-tools are certainly not perfect, but they are useful enough to carry -- just for the convenience factor of NOT having to go all the way out to the car.
I can certainly see that some people would rather have a multitool than a whole box of tools. What I fail to grasp is that anybody has to have a multitool. That toolbox might be a lot less convenient, but it will do the job.
Actually, a lot of Sun sites are rather flaky today. Not very impressive, coming from the company whose motto is "The Network is the Computer."
They're claiming this is "Java-based". Never heard of this kind of stuff running any way except as native code. A breakthrough in VM technology, or more abuse of the Java "brand"?
The Schwartz demo provoked lots of applause, but I was pretty underwhelmed. There are a few cool-looking visual effects, like turning a window over so you can write on the back. But no case is made for this making anybody's job easier. Just a lot of noise about "community computing" and other warm and fuzzy concepts that don't particularly relate. Oh yeah, and of course Microsoft doesn't have this and doesn't want you to have this! Please.
Somebody has to point out that the original Yahoo is a total failure, since a manually-maintained hierarchical web index just wasn't a good idea. Except that Yahoo managed to establish itself as a popular web "portal" before that fact became painfully obvious. So Filo and Yang are failures in the sense that their original project was a bad idea, but probably don't care, since they're both now multi-millionaires. Depressing how many people get rich through blind luck!
I agree: there are specific brain structures that perform specific groups of functions. But that's not the same thing as saying that there's a specific brain center that's in charge of "pleasure". That's like saying there a little demon in your head that evaluates whether you are supposed to enjoy each and every experience. Which makes no sense.
Nor is there a "language center". What you do have is a lot of different structures, such as Broca's Area" that seem to play a role in use of language.
Slashdot Mirror
To answer your question: Back then, judges decided what didn't meet "community standards" for "decency", based on testimony from "community leaders". The above concepts no longer carry much weight. So I'd expect some state regulatory agency to trot out psychologists and other "experts" who would claim that small kids who see porn will grow up to be rapists and serial killers.
Anyway, I agree with you: this is a job for parents. Who would be better served by tracking and controlling their kids internet usage, instead of leaving it up to some unreliable ISP filter. It's ironic that conservative groups whine about "big government", but never hesitate to call for more intrusive government action when it suits their agenda.
I'm just saying. Anyway, it's yet another argument for metricization: nobody can keep all the non-metric systems straight.
I once considered doing that last thing myself, so I did a little Googling and found a couple of gadgets that let you stick a temperature prope through a case slot so you can check for overheating. You'll have to find them for yourself.
In any case, suppose your laptop is overheating. What are you going to do about it?
No, just the other word, and inflected in passive voice.
I used to own a Sony Picturebook, which generated the same kind of heat. Except that it contained a Crusoe processor, which is supposed to have a lot fewer transistors than the equivalent Pentium. Since the thing only got 4 hours on a charge, I also had to wonder what all the Crusoe hype was about.
And how about a good tutorial on Ruby itself? Most of us have no idea what this language is about.
Not to mention that silly little amendment.
Ironically, MS-DOS's very flaws promoted this lock-in effect. Since MS-DOS started out as a CP/M clone, it should have been easy to write software that ran both on MS-DOS and CP/M. But MS-DOS was so flaky, MS-DOS programmers had to rely on thousands of little undocumented "features" that didn't exist on CP/M. Worse, MS-DOS didn't provide many basic services, and programmers often had to implement these features themselves, calling the IBM BIOS directly to do so. Which meant more lockin.
That statement is at such total variance with the facts, I have no idea how to respond to it.MS-DOS dominated the market for one reason and for one reason only -- IBM chose it as the main OS for the PC. Since there were so many low-level compatibility issues with early PC clones, IBMs competitors had to copy the PC in painstaking detail. That included copying IBM's mistakes -- the biggest of which was using one of the worst OSs ever made. Not by today's standards, but by the standards then.
Dean Swift obviously never hung out at Slashdot!
It's less confusing if you remember that Patterson still thinks his lame little effort is as good an OS as CP/M. What boggles the mind is that nobody has managed to disabuse him of this notion. I guess the dude has a lot of self-esteem tied up in this little illusion!
The fact that Microsoft has trouble shipping software comes as no suprise to anybody who's watched the security patch deathmarch. But two years to get a code change into a product! Microsoft may yet do to itself what the anti-trust people failed to do to them.
But fewer and fewer ASs are at all interesting any more. For a long time, we've had those painfully dumb questions. Nothing wrong with asking dumb questions -- how else do you learn anything? -- but those belong on Google Groups or other party-line forums. And now we're starting to get "questions" like this one. Which isn't even a question, it's just an invitation to share somebody rage.
Hey, I despise the media monopolies too. But let's talk about them in some kind of useful context. There's too much aimless spleen-venting in the world already.
Gee, thanks.
"Pleasure center" is even worse. Suppose I stick a wire in your brain and stimulate it with electricity and that causes you to feel pleasure. (I'm too squeamish to do that in real life, so don't get nervous.) That doesn't prove that I've found your "pleasure center". It just means that I'm simulating some kind of brain input associated with pleasure. Maybe it has to do with sex, or a sensation of safety or well being.
Now I have to run the live cd, just to see how this performs. (Unfortunately, the server is thoroughly Slashdotted.) But it's unlikely to convince me that 3D GUIs are more than a lame gimmick.
They're claiming this is "Java-based". Never heard of this kind of stuff running any way except as native code. A breakthrough in VM technology, or more abuse of the Java "brand"?
The Schwartz demo provoked lots of applause, but I was pretty underwhelmed. There are a few cool-looking visual effects, like turning a window over so you can write on the back. But no case is made for this making anybody's job easier. Just a lot of noise about "community computing" and other warm and fuzzy concepts that don't particularly relate. Oh yeah, and of course Microsoft doesn't have this and doesn't want you to have this! Please.
Somebody has to point out that the original Yahoo is a total failure, since a manually-maintained hierarchical web index just wasn't a good idea. Except that Yahoo managed to establish itself as a popular web "portal" before that fact became painfully obvious. So Filo and Yang are failures in the sense that their original project was a bad idea, but probably don't care, since they're both now multi-millionaires. Depressing how many people get rich through blind luck!
Nor is there a "language center". What you do have is a lot of different structures, such as Broca's Area" that seem to play a role in use of language.
Somehow, I don't think Larry Niven was thinking of the G Spot.