You have violated Yu Suzuki's Golden ule by including the Devil's Lette (also known as 'R') in you post. Please efain from using this vile lette in futue posts and epent so that Yu Suzuki may save you sinful soul. For you convenience, a coected version of you post appears below.
This is what they mean by a bullet-poof seve?
Its an inteesting point though. Thee is an old 286 next to me that has a case stong enough that I bet I could dive my car ove. My cuent 400 Mhz machine has a case so flimsy I could not sit on it.
It would be fun to test hardware like this against ESD. Anyone have a Tase???
writes jbc, he does "Running a debate, between Tim O'Reilly and Q. Todd Dickinson, Patent Office Director he is, it is, the O'Reilly Network is. Tim's call, for a forum, like Slashdot it is, as a means of identifying prior art, serve it will, among the highlights it is." Patents leads to hate. Hate leads to fear. Fear leads to suffering. A debate, bare-knuckled it is, not as in depth as like, I would have, it is. To know Diskinson [sic]'s perspective, good it is. Always an open mind, a Jedi must keep. A list of educational patents, on computer assisted instruction techniques, they are, which go back to the 1960s, some fo them do, mentioned someone else mentioned. Patents, intellectual property, a Jedi craves not these things.
Yu Suzuki supports this opinion. Given the current demographic of Slashdot posters, it's likely that the Ham Radio Repeater would be of less interest than this story that I submitted:
2000-05-22 02:46:35 Calling All Trolls: Rolling-in-the-Grits Contest (articles,humor) (rejected)
I guess this story just lacked kd5biv's endorsement. Next time, I'll be sure to submit this story as "kd5biv Wants YOU to Join the Rolling-in-the-Grits Contest".
Thanks, kd5biv. May weasels crawl into your intestines and fart loudly.
2.5 million B.C.: OOG the Open Source Caveman develops the axe and releases it under the GPL. The axe quickly gains popularity as a means of crushing moderators' heads.
100,000 B.C.: Man domesticates the AIBO.
10,000 B.C.: Civilization begins when early farmers first learn to cultivate hot grits.
3000 B.C.: Sumerians develop a primitive cuneiform perl script.
2920 B.C.: A legendary flood sweeps Slashdot, filling up a Borland / Inprise story with hundreds of offtopic posts.
1750 B.C.: Hammurabi, a Mesopotamian king, codifies the first EULA.
490 B.C.: Greek city-states unite to defeat the Persians. ESR triumphantly proclaims that the Greeks "get it".
399 B.C.: Socrates is convicted of impiety. Despite the efforts of freesocrates.com, he is forced to kill himself by drinking hemlock.
336 B.C.: Fat-Time Charlie becomes King of Macedonia and conquers Persia.
4 B.C.: Following the Star (as in hot young actress) of Bethelem, wise men travel from far away to troll for baby Jesus.
A.D. 476: The Roman Empire BSODs.
A.D. 610: The Glorious MEEPT!! founds Islam after receiving a revelation from God. Following his disappearance from Slashdot in 632, a succession dispute results in the emergence of two troll factions: the Pythonni and the Perliites.
A.D. 800: Charlemagne conquers nearly all of Germany, only to be acquired by andover.net.
A.D. 874: Linus the Red discovers Iceland.
A.D. 1000: The epic of the Beowulf Cluster is written down. It is the first English epic poem.
A.D. 1095: Pope Bruce II calls for a crusade against the Turks when it is revealed they are violating the GPL. Later investigation reveals that Pope Bruce II had not yet contacted the Turks before calling for the crusade.
A.D. 1215: Bowing to pressure to open-source the British government, King John signs the Magna Carta, limiting the British monarchy's power. ESR triumphantly proclaims that the British monarchy "gets it".
A.D. 1348: The ILOVEYOU virus kills over half the population of Europe. (The other half was not using Outlook.)
A.D. 1420: Johann Gutenberg invents the printing press. He is immediately sued by monks claiming that the technology will promote the copying of hand-transcribed books, thus violating the church's intellectual property.
A.D. 1429: Natalie Portman of Arc gathers an army of Slashdot trolls to do battle with the moderators. She is eventually tried as a heretic and stoned (as in petrified).
A.D. 1478: The Catholic Church partners with doubleclick.net to launch the Spanish Inquisition. A.D. 1492: Christopher Columbus arrives in what he believes to be "India", but which RMS informs him is actually "GNU/India".
A.D. 1508-12: Michaelengelo attempts to paint the Sistine Chapel ceiling with ASCII art, only to have his plan thwarted by the "Lameness Filter."
A.D. 1517: Martin Luther nails his 95 Theses to the church door and is promptly moderated down to (-1, Flamebait).
A.D. 1553: "Bloody" Mary ascends the throne of England and begins an infamous crusade against Protestants. ESR eats his words.
A.D. 1588: The "IF I EVER MEET YOU, I WILL KICK YOUR ASS" guy meets the Spanish Armada.
A.D. 1603: Tokugawa Ieyasu unites the feuding pancake-eating ninjas of Japan.
A.D. 1611: Mattel adds Galileo Galilei to its CyberPatrol block list for proposing that the Earth revolves around the sun.
A.D. 1688: In the so-called "Glorious Revolution", King James II is bloodlessly forced out of power and flees to France. ESR again triumphantly proclaims that the British monarchy "gets it".
A.D. 1692: Anti-GIF hysteria in the New World comes to a head in the infamous "Salem GIF Trials", in which 20 alleged GIFs are burned at the stake. Later investigation reveals that mayn of the supposed GIFs were actually PNGs.
A.D. 1769: James Watt patents the one-click steam engine.
A.D. 1776: Trolls, angered by CmdrTaco's passage of the Moderation Act, rebel. After a several-year flame war, the trolls succeed in seceding from Slashdot and forming the United Coalition of Trolls.
A.D. 1789: The French Revolution begins with a distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack on the Bastille.
A.D. 1799: Attempts at discovering Egyptian hieroglyphs receive a major boost when Napoleon's troops discover the Rosetta stone. Sadly, the stone is quickly outlawed under the DMCA as an illegal means of circumventing encryption.
A.D. 1844: Samuel Morse invents Morse code. Cryptography export restrictions prevent the telegraph's use outside the U.S. and Canada.
A.D. 1853: United States Commodore Matthew C. Perry arrives in Japan and forces the xenophobic nation to open its doors to foreign trade. ESR triumphantly proclaims that Japan finally "gets it".
A.D. 1865: President Lincoln is 'bitchslapped.' The nation mourns.
A.D. 1901: Italian inventor Guglielmo Marcoli first demonstrates the radio. Metallica drummer Lars Ulrich immediately delivers to Marcoli a list of 335,435 suspected radio users.
A.D. 1911: Facing a break-up by the United States Supreme Court, Standard Oil Co. defends its "freedom to innovate" and proposes numerous rejected settlements. Slashbots mock the company as "Standa~1" and depict John D. Rockefeller as a member of the Borg.
A.D. 1929: V.A. Linux's stock drops over 200 dollars on "Black Tuesday", October 29th.
A.D. 1945: In the secret Manhattan Project, scientists working in Los Alamos, New Mexico, construct a nuclear bomb from Star Wars Legos.
A.D. 1948: Slashdot runs the infamous headline "DEWEY DEFEATS TRUMAN." Shamefaced, the site quickly retracts the story when numerous readers point out that it is not news for nerds, stuff that matters.
A.D. 1965: Jon Katz delivers his famous "I Have A Post-Hellmouth Dream" speech, which stated: "I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia the geeks of former slaves and the geeks of former slave geeks will be able to sit down together at the table of geeks... I have a dream that my geek little geeks will one geek live in a nation where they will not be geeked by the geek of their geek but by the geek of their geek."
A.D. 1969: Neil Armstrong becomes the first man to set foot on the moon. His immortal words: "FIRST MOONWALK!!!"
A.D. 1970: Ohio National Guardsmen shoot four students at Kent State University for "Internet theft".
A.D. 1989: The United States invades Panama to capture renowned "hacker" Manual Noriega, who is suspected of writing the DeCSS utility.
A.D. 1990: West Germany and East Germany reunite after 45 years of separation. ESR triumphantly proclaims that Germany "gets it".
A.D. 1994: As years of apartheid rule finally end, Nelson Mandela is elected president of South Africa. ESR is sick, and sadly misses his chance to triumphantly proclaim that South Africa "gets it".
A.D. 1997: Slashdot reports that Scottish scientists have succeeded in cloning a female sheep named Dolly. Numerous readers complain that if they had wanted information on the latest sheep releases, they would have just gone to freshsheep.net
The legality of Nazi-related speech and materials has always been a really controversial issue, and it's easy to see why. I mean, who wants to take the side of anybody connected with the Nazis? Nobody likes the Nazis, and with good reason -- they committed some horrendous deeds and are responsible for the deaths of millions of innocent citizens.
But just because they're now unpopular doesn't mean they're right. Now, don't get me wrong, I value free speech too. I completely understand why we should allow people to hold Neo-Nazi rallies -- it's their right to state their positions, and if we try to stifle that, we're only going to add more fuel to their fire.
The problem here is that this isn't just a free speech issue. People are actually buying the items being offered for sale (presumambly, or they wouldn't have auctioned off in the first place); there's a big difference there. This isn't just "stating your opinion", it's "taking action based on your opinion". The former is harmless, the latter is a real-world action that can actually lead to harm.
For example, suppose a KKK member decided to burn a Jewish's man house as a way of showing his (the KKK member's) beliefs. You can argue that the KKK member should be able to, as it's part of his right to free speech -- but, c'mon, the Jewish guy lost his house. We can't allow one extremist individual to take away from the rights of everyone else.
There are times when your free speech becomes secondary to others' rights. Just like we wouldn't want arch-conservative Southern hicks deciding to start up their own slave plantation this summer, we shouldn't let Neo-Nazis commandeer a public forum and use it to attack Jewish citizens. This is an "action", not a "speech", and should be judicized accordingly.
Now things are getting really confusing. I've got a Jornada, and Slashdot is wrong; it does have a 16-bit display, with a full 65,536 colors.
Apparently, the HP erratum is actually an error; it was the result of miscommunication between management and several systems analysts. The original specs are correct.
I've been waiting for a long time for a company to put out a product like this. It's pretty obvious that a fingerprint scanner model like this boasts some evident advantages; it's definitely going to make Internet transactions more secure.
However, what concerns me is whether or not this type of thing will be actually allowed for use by the U.S. government. Since everyone has his or her own unique fingerprint -- after all, the police use fingerprints to identify suspects -- that means there must be a lot of different factors and variables that go into a fingerprint. Doesn't that mean that a fingerprint has too many "bits" of information and couldn't be uploaded under current export restrictions?
It's sad to see the United States government is holding back technological progress by attempting to impose its own short-sighted laws on the rest of the world. I'd love to have a personal fingerprint scanner -- how about you, Bob Dole?
The Dreamcast uses GD-ROMs, a proprietary media format. The PlayStation 2 has a standard DVD-ROM / CD-ROM drive, and wouldn't be able to read Dreamcast GD-ROM discs.
Remember in 1932 when FDR declared a national bank holiday and closed down all the banks for a few day to still the Great Depression panic and help restore confidence in America's banking system? I think that's what we could use here -- a chance to examine the gun control laws in the United States while gun sales are temporarily down.
Gun control debates aren't something to be ashamed of. People often want to avoid speaking out in favor of the Second Amendment because they're worried they'll be portrayed as lunatics or right-wing extremists. This needs to change; we need to hear all viewpoints regarding this important isuse. America needs to have a dialogue -- a dialogue with itself, about gun control.
Remember the spirit of Chataqua? Why can't we have that now; a place for Americans with viewpoints from all around the spectrum of this debate to speak their mind and respectfully disagree with those from other walks of life. Extreme laws in either direction are not the answer; what we need is calm, rational debate, the kind that Socrates could respect. The only solution that will work is one every American agrees to. It's called direct democracy, and there's no better form of government.
Remember, if you find yourself wondering what to do about gun control, just ask yourself who your real friends are.
Wow, I can set up a network connection between my Palm and my Linux box? Sweet! Now I won't need to lug a laptop around ever where I go; I can just access it all from my Palm. Nothing beats having all your entire address book stored inside your hand?
It's great to see innovations like these making good on the promise of nanotechnology -- but I still have to wonder, can I network my Sole, Lower Back, or Nose in addition to my Palm?
The whole idea of free software is just that -- that it's free and is being made to produce good software and not because someone is pursuing a cash prize. A certain project being developed with the Software Carpentry Project competition in mind might be rushed through development just so it can meet the contest deadline. End result: A buggier product with fewer features.
I'll probably be accused of being a "zealot", but I really think that big-money competitions just aren't in the spirit of free software. There's nothing wrong with receiving some financial compensation for your work, but coding solely to earn money was exactly the concept that free software was supposed to eliminate.
I really admire the ingenuity of the people who come up with these hacks, but is it really safe to be stuffing other boards into a Mac Colour (or Color, if you Americans prefer) Classic? Let's face, old cases weren't designed with the perfomance of today's chips in mind. Today's chips, of course, run much faster, and generate a lot more heat. That's fine, because today's mini-towers are equipped with appropriate fans, but what if the chips are being placed in antiquated cases? Remember when the Pentium first came out -- there was a huge to-do about the chips frying in older computer cases.
So why should we care? As was pointed out in the Slashdot story itself, this seems economical -- why buy a whole new computer when you can just stick some new chips in your old Colour (Color, whatever) Classic? I could easily see some clueless MCSE guy deciding to put "mission critical" data on a hacked Colour (Color) Classic Mac that's liable to burn out at any second -- and I don't know about you, but I'd prefer not to have our airplanes and nuclear missiles being run on overclocked 1990s Macintoshes. Ugh.
Hacks are neat and all, but the danger of "burning out" the chips simply outweighs the cost -- in the long run, the Opportunity Cost of using standardized chips is much less.
I'd just like to give N*Vidia (are they of any relation to N*Sync?) for all the great things they've been doing lately -- they promptly apologized for their GPL violation and are now making an effort to fix the code. I think everyone in the OSS community can appreciate the positive manner in which this was handled.
However, one thing still concerns me. What would prevent N*Vidia from doing this again? How do we know that this shady "Tony Bennett" guy won't pillage from bttv.c the next time he needs to program something? Maybe every one of N*Vidia's future games will include GPLed code. Sure, we can whine and complain about it once they've done it, but it's a bit too late then, isn't it? IANAL, but if we don't take action to defend the GPL, doesn't it become invalid?
We have either two choices: A) Sit back and let the GPL waste away or B) Take action. I don't know about you, but I prefer Choice B. I propose a grassroots letter-writing campaign to your local senator or representative. Let them know about the GPL, what N*Vidia is doing, and why you think "Tony Bennett" should be banned from working on a computer for the next four year. I hate to say, but remember to be rude; as Slashdot trolls have proven, people are most likely to take action when they're being harassed by vulgar morons (look all the VA Linux stock price trolls that eventually resulting in CmdrTaco posting a story about it). Just remember above all the most important rule: Give me GNU or give me death!
I'm a pretty big fan of space stuff, so I spent a lot of time checking out this site. And I got to wondering: could any of this stuff actually be used today? I mean, sure, there aren't concrete blueprints or anything, but the concepts are probably sound -- the Pentagon wouldn't have wasted its money on anything that wasn't completely feasible.
That's why I'm starting to wonder whether putting DeepCold.com on the Intneret was a safe move. The principal threat in the world today has shifted from rogue nation-states to paramilitary fringe groups. What if some group of Buddhist extremists decides to build its own Blue Gemini or ZVEZDA and rain death down upon Western civilization? Would-be terrorists have often gotten bomb plans off the Internet... wouldn't getting spaceship plans off the Internet be the logical progression? We couldn't even do a damn thing to stop it, since U.N. regulations prohibit nations from building weapons in space. I really don't want to have look up in the sky every day wondering if a nuclear missile is waiting up there with my name on it. Remember that kids' book "Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs"? Well, picture a really, really violent version of that and you've sort of got what I have in mind. This is a fascinating subject, but as much as I hate to say it, some information is better off classified...
BTW, congrats to DeepCold.com for not suffering from the Slashdot Effect (yet).
Yu Suzuki
The Hubble Telescope VIOLATES ALIENS' PRIVACY
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Hubble Turns 10
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· Score: 5
I am continually outraged at how the Slashdot community -- a community which supposedly embraces privacy -- has turned a blind eye to the gross privacy violation of the Hubble Space Telescope. Imagine you're some three-eyed space alien living on some distant planet orbiting Alpha Centauri. You're living a happy life; everything seems cool. But what you don't know is that the watchful eye of the United States government has been staring you for the past ten years, taking pictures of you and gathering data on your life like some interplanetary version of The Truman Show. Or suppose you're some big-headed gray alien orbiting the Earth in your UFO, ready to abduct some cattle. You lean out the airlock to take a piss, when suddenly -- BAM! -- the Hubble Space Telescope captures you on film. Talk about humiliating.
Oh, sure, you might say that it doesn't matter what we do to aliens; that it's them, not us. But remember, a violation of anyone's privacy hurts us all. We never how soon it will be before Uncle Sam decides to turn his giant eye towards the Earth. The next thing you know, pictures of you, your family, and your house are being downloaded into NASA's computers. Echelon is nothing compared to the horrific spying power of this insidious machine.
Dismantle the Hubble Space Telescope -- because space aliens have rights too!
I'm no expert in the field, but wouldn't it make more sense to simply ban erotica (read: porn) online? As numerous studies have proven, mandating censorware has the potential to block out a lot of material that isn't erotica (read: porn). However, banning erotica (read: porn) would simply nip the erotica (read: porn) problem in the bud and leave other sites to carry on their business without being falsely accused --all the erotica (read: porn) sites have closed down, so nobody would accuse any of the sites of trafficking in erotica (read: porn).
I know it seems weird to supporting government-mandated censorship of erotica (read: porn), but, as so many things in life, it's a trade-off. On one hand, we could give up our rights to free erotica (read: porn) to the relatively trustworthy government (the government may not always be doing the right thing, but at least they're not out to make a profit). On the other hand, we could keep our erotica (read: porn), but only that which is approved by our corporate masters over at Hasbro. Government censorship of erotica (read: porn) or corporate censorship of everything? The choice seems clear to me.
Yes, as crazy as it sounds, back when I was a teenager I actually built some jacks for my car that could propel it (the car) into the air. Basically, I hooked up a bunch of hydraulic pumps and springs to the carrock bit. When I wanted to jump, I flicked a switch to deflate the tires and send the car bouncing into the air. (Yes, this is probably massively illegal, but, as I said, I was just a bored teenager:P).
Of course, the tires had to be reinflated afterwards, and I could never get more than six inches off the ground, but I actually jumped over a fence in the neighbors' yard once. Boy, did that ever scare their dog. Ah, yes, those were the days...
And, before you ask, no, I did not have the little kid and/or a monkey in the trunk.
I don't mean to sound like some hysterical 1850s citizens who believed that humans couldn't go faster than 40 miles per hour without having their brains torn apart, but the Mach 5 is one fast car -- we're talking about-3,000 miles-per-hour fast. I enjoyed watching the Speed Racer anime too, but that doesn't mean I want to go cruising around at Mach 5. First there were those people trying to build a giant working mecha (one misstep and it crushes a misstep), and now there's some Sped Racer car cruising along at Mach 5? Dear Lord, when will people learn to distinguish between fantasy and reality? Get a grip -- the Mach 5 was just a 1960s cartoon!
According to this page, the creator died back in 1999. It sounds like the credit could be in dispute here. Can anyone from the Slashdot staff comment on this development? I'd like to get some facts here before we have another misattribution like the GNU / Linux fiasco, where Richard Stallman actually wrote Linux.
I didn't even know Daikatana was out (did it just come out this week or something?), and it's already sold 500,000 copies? I guess this is finally payback for all the people who kept predicting that Daikatana was going to flop... it just goes to show you that you can't judge a book by its cover.
Kudos to ION Storm for putting out their first great product and proving the critics wrong. It's nice to see a spark of innovation alive in the gaming industry.
I can just see it now -- Mom Yuppie is caught in heavy traffic at rush hour and pulls out her Super Tiny Expresso PC to check her e-mail. She doesn't notice the light turn green, and, bang, ten-car pile-up. Every study ever done on car phones has shown that people just can't drive as well when they're talking on the phone. Now imagine that same soccer mom typing away on a computer on a L.A. freeway. You know what they say about cars actually being much safer than airplanes? If tiny computers catch on, it's going to be the exact opposite -- airplanes will be the only safe way to travel, because every driver is going to be trying to drive and play Quake at the same time.
C'mon, enough with this silliness. If you're not planning to play with your electronics inside, don't play with them at all.
Slashdot Mirror
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Yu Suzuki
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Yu Suzuki
You have violated Yu Suzuki's Golden ule by including the Devil's Lette (also known as 'R') in you post. Please efain from using this vile lette in futue posts and epent so that Yu Suzuki may save you sinful soul. For you convenience, a coected version of you post appears below.
Yu Suzuki
writes jbc, he does "Running a debate, between Tim O'Reilly and Q. Todd Dickinson, Patent Office Director he is, it is, the O'Reilly Network is. Tim's call, for a forum, like Slashdot it is, as a means of identifying prior art, serve it will, among the highlights it is." Patents leads to hate. Hate leads to fear. Fear leads to suffering. A debate, bare-knuckled it is, not as in depth as like, I would have, it is. To know Diskinson [sic]'s perspective, good it is. Always an open mind, a Jedi must keep. A list of educational patents, on computer assisted instruction techniques, they are, which go back to the 1960s, some fo them do, mentioned someone else mentioned. Patents, intellectual property, a Jedi craves not these things.
Yu Suzuki
"Contest organizers say contestants may stuff the grits in their clothes, eat them, or simply roll around in them."
Yu Suzuki
2000-05-22 02:46:35 Calling All Trolls: Rolling-in-the-Grits Contest (articles,humor) (rejected)
I guess this story just lacked kd5biv's endorsement. Next time, I'll be sure to submit this story as "kd5biv Wants YOU to Join the Rolling-in-the-Grits Contest".
Thanks, kd5biv. May weasels crawl into your intestines and fart loudly.
Yu Suzuki
100,000 B.C.: Man domesticates the AIBO.
10,000 B.C.: Civilization begins when early farmers first learn to cultivate hot grits.
3000 B.C.: Sumerians develop a primitive cuneiform perl script.
2920 B.C.: A legendary flood sweeps Slashdot, filling up a Borland / Inprise story with hundreds of offtopic posts.
1750 B.C.: Hammurabi, a Mesopotamian king, codifies the first EULA.
490 B.C.: Greek city-states unite to defeat the Persians. ESR triumphantly proclaims that the Greeks "get it".
399 B.C.: Socrates is convicted of impiety. Despite the efforts of freesocrates.com, he is forced to kill himself by drinking hemlock.
336 B.C.: Fat-Time Charlie becomes King of Macedonia and conquers Persia.
4 B.C.: Following the Star (as in hot young actress) of Bethelem, wise men travel from far away to troll for baby Jesus.
A.D. 476: The Roman Empire BSODs.
A.D. 610: The Glorious MEEPT!! founds Islam after receiving a revelation from God. Following his disappearance from Slashdot in 632, a succession dispute results in the emergence of two troll factions: the Pythonni and the Perliites.
A.D. 800: Charlemagne conquers nearly all of Germany, only to be acquired by andover.net.
A.D. 874: Linus the Red discovers Iceland.
A.D. 1000: The epic of the Beowulf Cluster is written down. It is the first English epic poem.
A.D. 1095: Pope Bruce II calls for a crusade against the Turks when it is revealed they are violating the GPL. Later investigation reveals that Pope Bruce II had not yet contacted the Turks before calling for the crusade.
A.D. 1215: Bowing to pressure to open-source the British government, King John signs the Magna Carta, limiting the British monarchy's power. ESR triumphantly proclaims that the British monarchy "gets it".
A.D. 1348: The ILOVEYOU virus kills over half the population of Europe. (The other half was not using Outlook.)
A.D. 1420: Johann Gutenberg invents the printing press. He is immediately sued by monks claiming that the technology will promote the copying of hand-transcribed books, thus violating the church's intellectual property.
A.D. 1429: Natalie Portman of Arc gathers an army of Slashdot trolls to do battle with the moderators. She is eventually tried as a heretic and stoned (as in petrified).
A.D. 1478: The Catholic Church partners with doubleclick.net to launch the Spanish Inquisition. A.D. 1492: Christopher Columbus arrives in what he believes to be "India", but which RMS informs him is actually "GNU/India".
A.D. 1508-12: Michaelengelo attempts to paint the Sistine Chapel ceiling with ASCII art, only to have his plan thwarted by the "Lameness Filter."
A.D. 1517: Martin Luther nails his 95 Theses to the church door and is promptly moderated down to (-1, Flamebait).
A.D. 1553: "Bloody" Mary ascends the throne of England and begins an infamous crusade against Protestants. ESR eats his words.
A.D. 1588: The "IF I EVER MEET YOU, I WILL KICK YOUR ASS" guy meets the Spanish Armada.
A.D. 1603: Tokugawa Ieyasu unites the feuding pancake-eating ninjas of Japan.
A.D. 1611: Mattel adds Galileo Galilei to its CyberPatrol block list for proposing that the Earth revolves around the sun.
A.D. 1688: In the so-called "Glorious Revolution", King James II is bloodlessly forced out of power and flees to France. ESR again triumphantly proclaims that the British monarchy "gets it".
A.D. 1692: Anti-GIF hysteria in the New World comes to a head in the infamous "Salem GIF Trials", in which 20 alleged GIFs are burned at the stake. Later investigation reveals that mayn of the supposed GIFs were actually PNGs.
A.D. 1769: James Watt patents the one-click steam engine.
A.D. 1776: Trolls, angered by CmdrTaco's passage of the Moderation Act, rebel. After a several-year flame war, the trolls succeed in seceding from Slashdot and forming the United Coalition of Trolls.
A.D. 1789: The French Revolution begins with a distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack on the Bastille.
A.D. 1799: Attempts at discovering Egyptian hieroglyphs receive a major boost when Napoleon's troops discover the Rosetta stone. Sadly, the stone is quickly outlawed under the DMCA as an illegal means of circumventing encryption.
A.D. 1844: Samuel Morse invents Morse code. Cryptography export restrictions prevent the telegraph's use outside the U.S. and Canada.
A.D. 1853: United States Commodore Matthew C. Perry arrives in Japan and forces the xenophobic nation to open its doors to foreign trade. ESR triumphantly proclaims that Japan finally "gets it".
A.D. 1865: President Lincoln is 'bitchslapped.' The nation mourns.
A.D. 1901: Italian inventor Guglielmo Marcoli first demonstrates the radio. Metallica drummer Lars Ulrich immediately delivers to Marcoli a list of 335,435 suspected radio users.
A.D. 1911: Facing a break-up by the United States Supreme Court, Standard Oil Co. defends its "freedom to innovate" and proposes numerous rejected settlements. Slashbots mock the company as "Standa~1" and depict John D. Rockefeller as a member of the Borg.
A.D. 1929: V.A. Linux's stock drops over 200 dollars on "Black Tuesday", October 29th.
A.D. 1945: In the secret Manhattan Project, scientists working in Los Alamos, New Mexico, construct a nuclear bomb from Star Wars Legos.
A.D. 1948: Slashdot runs the infamous headline "DEWEY DEFEATS TRUMAN." Shamefaced, the site quickly retracts the story when numerous readers point out that it is not news for nerds, stuff that matters.
A.D. 1965: Jon Katz delivers his famous "I Have A Post-Hellmouth Dream" speech, which stated: "I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia the geeks of former slaves and the geeks of former slave geeks will be able to sit down together at the table of geeks... I have a dream that my geek little geeks will one geek live in a nation where they will not be geeked by the geek of their geek but by the geek of their geek."
A.D. 1969: Neil Armstrong becomes the first man to set foot on the moon. His immortal words: "FIRST MOONWALK!!!"
A.D. 1970: Ohio National Guardsmen shoot four students at Kent State University for "Internet theft".
A.D. 1989: The United States invades Panama to capture renowned "hacker" Manual Noriega, who is suspected of writing the DeCSS utility.
A.D. 1990: West Germany and East Germany reunite after 45 years of separation. ESR triumphantly proclaims that Germany "gets it".
A.D. 1994: As years of apartheid rule finally end, Nelson Mandela is elected president of South Africa. ESR is sick, and sadly misses his chance to triumphantly proclaim that South Africa "gets it".
A.D. 1997: Slashdot reports that Scottish scientists have succeeded in cloning a female sheep named Dolly. Numerous readers complain that if they had wanted information on the latest sheep releases, they would have just gone to freshsheep.net
A.D. 1999: Miramax announces Don Knotts to play hacker Emmanuel Goldstein in upcoming movie "Takedown"
Yu Suzuki
But just because they're now unpopular doesn't mean they're right. Now, don't get me wrong, I value free speech too. I completely understand why we should allow people to hold Neo-Nazi rallies -- it's their right to state their positions, and if we try to stifle that, we're only going to add more fuel to their fire.
The problem here is that this isn't just a free speech issue. People are actually buying the items being offered for sale (presumambly, or they wouldn't have auctioned off in the first place); there's a big difference there. This isn't just "stating your opinion", it's "taking action based on your opinion". The former is harmless, the latter is a real-world action that can actually lead to harm.
For example, suppose a KKK member decided to burn a Jewish's man house as a way of showing his (the KKK member's) beliefs. You can argue that the KKK member should be able to, as it's part of his right to free speech -- but, c'mon, the Jewish guy lost his house. We can't allow one extremist individual to take away from the rights of everyone else.
There are times when your free speech becomes secondary to others' rights. Just like we wouldn't want arch-conservative Southern hicks deciding to start up their own slave plantation this summer, we shouldn't let Neo-Nazis commandeer a public forum and use it to attack Jewish citizens. This is an "action", not a "speech", and should be judicized accordingly.
Yu Suzuki
Apparently, the HP erratum is actually an error; it was the result of miscommunication between management and several systems analysts. The original specs are correct.
Yu Suzuki
However, what concerns me is whether or not this type of thing will be actually allowed for use by the U.S. government. Since everyone has his or her own unique fingerprint -- after all, the police use fingerprints to identify suspects -- that means there must be a lot of different factors and variables that go into a fingerprint. Doesn't that mean that a fingerprint has too many "bits" of information and couldn't be uploaded under current export restrictions?
It's sad to see the United States government is holding back technological progress by attempting to impose its own short-sighted laws on the rest of the world. I'd love to have a personal fingerprint scanner -- how about you, Bob Dole?
Yu Suzuki
Yu Suzuki
Gun control debates aren't something to be ashamed of. People often want to avoid speaking out in favor of the Second Amendment because they're worried they'll be portrayed as lunatics or right-wing extremists. This needs to change; we need to hear all viewpoints regarding this important isuse. America needs to have a dialogue -- a dialogue with itself, about gun control.
Remember the spirit of Chataqua? Why can't we have that now; a place for Americans with viewpoints from all around the spectrum of this debate to speak their mind and respectfully disagree with those from other walks of life. Extreme laws in either direction are not the answer; what we need is calm, rational debate, the kind that Socrates could respect. The only solution that will work is one every American agrees to. It's called direct democracy, and there's no better form of government.
Remember, if you find yourself wondering what to do about gun control, just ask yourself who your real friends are.
Yu Suzuki
It's great to see innovations like these making good on the promise of nanotechnology -- but I still have to wonder, can I network my Sole, Lower Back, or Nose in addition to my Palm?
Yu Suzuki
I'll probably be accused of being a "zealot", but I really think that big-money competitions just aren't in the spirit of free software. There's nothing wrong with receiving some financial compensation for your work, but coding solely to earn money was exactly the concept that free software was supposed to eliminate.
Yu Suzuki
So why should we care? As was pointed out in the Slashdot story itself, this seems economical -- why buy a whole new computer when you can just stick some new chips in your old Colour (Color, whatever) Classic? I could easily see some clueless MCSE guy deciding to put "mission critical" data on a hacked Colour (Color) Classic Mac that's liable to burn out at any second -- and I don't know about you, but I'd prefer not to have our airplanes and nuclear missiles being run on overclocked 1990s Macintoshes. Ugh.
Hacks are neat and all, but the danger of "burning out" the chips simply outweighs the cost -- in the long run, the Opportunity Cost of using standardized chips is much less.
Yu Suzuki
However, one thing still concerns me. What would prevent N*Vidia from doing this again? How do we know that this shady "Tony Bennett" guy won't pillage from bttv.c the next time he needs to program something? Maybe every one of N*Vidia's future games will include GPLed code. Sure, we can whine and complain about it once they've done it, but it's a bit too late then, isn't it? IANAL, but if we don't take action to defend the GPL, doesn't it become invalid?
We have either two choices: A) Sit back and let the GPL waste away or B) Take action. I don't know about you, but I prefer Choice B. I propose a grassroots letter-writing campaign to your local senator or representative. Let them know about the GPL, what N*Vidia is doing, and why you think "Tony Bennett" should be banned from working on a computer for the next four year. I hate to say, but remember to be rude; as Slashdot trolls have proven, people are most likely to take action when they're being harassed by vulgar morons (look all the VA Linux stock price trolls that eventually resulting in CmdrTaco posting a story about it). Just remember above all the most important rule: Give me GNU or give me death!
Yu Suzuki
That's why I'm starting to wonder whether putting DeepCold.com on the Intneret was a safe move. The principal threat in the world today has shifted from rogue nation-states to paramilitary fringe groups. What if some group of Buddhist extremists decides to build its own Blue Gemini or ZVEZDA and rain death down upon Western civilization? Would-be terrorists have often gotten bomb plans off the Internet... wouldn't getting spaceship plans off the Internet be the logical progression? We couldn't even do a damn thing to stop it, since U.N. regulations prohibit nations from building weapons in space. I really don't want to have look up in the sky every day wondering if a nuclear missile is waiting up there with my name on it. Remember that kids' book "Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs"? Well, picture a really, really violent version of that and you've sort of got what I have in mind. This is a fascinating subject, but as much as I hate to say it, some information is better off classified...
BTW, congrats to DeepCold.com for not suffering from the Slashdot Effect (yet).
Yu Suzuki
Oh, sure, you might say that it doesn't matter what we do to aliens; that it's them, not us. But remember, a violation of anyone's privacy hurts us all. We never how soon it will be before Uncle Sam decides to turn his giant eye towards the Earth. The next thing you know, pictures of you, your family, and your house are being downloaded into NASA's computers. Echelon is nothing compared to the horrific spying power of this insidious machine.
Dismantle the Hubble Space Telescope -- because space aliens have rights too!
Yu Suzuki
I know it seems weird to supporting government-mandated censorship of erotica (read: porn), but, as so many things in life, it's a trade-off. On one hand, we could give up our rights to free erotica (read: porn) to the relatively trustworthy government (the government may not always be doing the right thing, but at least they're not out to make a profit). On the other hand, we could keep our erotica (read: porn), but only that which is approved by our corporate masters over at Hasbro. Government censorship of erotica (read: porn) or corporate censorship of everything? The choice seems clear to me.
Yu Suzuki
Yu Suzuki
Of course, the tires had to be reinflated afterwards, and I could never get more than six inches off the ground, but I actually jumped over a fence in the neighbors' yard once. Boy, did that ever scare their dog. Ah, yes, those were the days...
And, before you ask, no, I did not have the little kid and/or a monkey in the trunk.
Yu Suzuki
Don't go, Speed Racer, don't go!
Yu Suzuki
Yu Suzuki
Kudos to ION Storm for putting out their first great product and proving the critics wrong. It's nice to see a spark of innovation alive in the gaming industry.
Yu Suzuki
C'mon, enough with this silliness. If you're not planning to play with your electronics inside, don't play with them at all.
Yu Suzuki