Same difference, with the range just shifted arithmetically up to zero. Only if there were some multiplicative or other dimensional scaling would that change make a difference.
The problem is that we want to give a linear grade to nonlinear judgements. What if I want to look at "funny flamebaits"? By linearizing the system, we make it fail to reflect what it's describing. Which is the basis for system gaming. There are other nonlinear, but problematically combinatorial, features of moderation, like the prohibition on moderating a thread in which the moderator has commented, even if the two comments are in distant subthreads. That's why I patch the problem with more feedback. But I don't expect it to happen: the Slashcode seems to be static except for superficial bells/whistles like the new threading and tagging features. Compared to the coding history Taco recounted in this story, it seems like the Slashcode is set in stone.
But what's clear is that such a baseless, anonymous, unexplained mod was more important to the modder to make than actually arguing with something they disagree with.
A good improvement to the Slashcode would be requiring negative moderations to include a hidden, but viewable, reason why. Including a checkbox next to a definition of "Troll" or "Flamebait" to indicate the modder is explicitly saying that the post meets that definition. It wouldn't eliminate the committed trollMod, but it would make it easier to disagree with their abuse in a response, which would be a service to metaMods and readers. Oh, and give metamoderation some real teeth that the persistent plague of bad mods proves it lacks.
Digital signatures offer security only when all IPC (including kernel/system calls) is signed, and when signature logs survive an attack by that signed app. Otherwise, after the attack, the signed app can cover its tracks. ActiveX signatures, for example, are worthless.
Since the iPhone depends on its network for all app installation, and nearly all its operation, it can enforce those policies. Since practically all the data on the iPhone, including voice call data, is private, that enforcement is an absolute necessity. Apple should include a server account that backs up the signature logs, and encrypted key storage to other accounts the iPhone is used to access.
Once people are used to that minimum assurance of accountability of installed apps and data on their mobile phones, maybe they'll start to expect it on their notebooks and desktops. Apple could leverage the service to those products, too. And maybe that competition will finally force Microsoft to secure the vast majority of the world's private data that their platforms are responsible for.
I note by your UserID# that you joined Slashdot exactly when it was exploding in membership, like when AOL gatewayed to the Internet. That ought to make you an expert in how Slashdot got worse when it went from "word of mouth" to mass popularity. But by the same token, not worth listening to your opinion about it. Especially when you're trashing a site you post to several times a day. Who's taking themself too seriously again?
If a cell sits in a forest but no one is locked in it, is it really "punishment"?
As you pointed out with that sparse history, punishable is not punished. The rate of punishment for such lying is probably under a thousandth of a percent of the rate of the lying.
Hell, Congress didn't even file contempt charges, inherent or otherwise, against AG Gonzales, while he spent months, years, lying to Congress about matters of the utmost Constitutional (criminal) importance.
Maybe "toothless" isn't quite the word. Maybe "gummy" is more accurate.
Yahoo's answer will be "because lying to Congress only got me this annoying reinvitation to your toothless American committee, but telling the truth would have cost us $millions in business with the deadly serious Chinese mafia government".
Please cut the pussy bullshit and just run for president as a Republican already.
Promising to waste your votes on losing Republicans for the rest of your life is hardly a scary threat. As if your puny vote for a permanent minority party is any kind of counterbalance to my telling the truth about it, and about politards like you.
All it takes to use contempt against the entire industry would indeed be charging a few dozen execs. But that's harder than charging a single government official, whose hotseat and testimony would push those execs to show up anyway.
Let's not overlook the extensive bribes (and threats of layoffs) that motive Democratic congressmembers, too, even if not so much as the Republicans. But with Democrats in the majority, that will switch over, too. Which is another reason why impeaching an official with whom Democrats are actually in (more or less) direct conflict is more likely. Or, rather, the impeach/contempt mixture I specificed, which pushes and pulls on the most vulnerable joints.
Inherent contempt is hard to use against an entire industry. More powerful is an impeachment trial. And not just Gonzales, but Bush and Cheney (who are also subject to inherent contempt).
The most effective strategy would be impeachment, which Cheney would especially ignore, which then could be tried as inherent contempt (which does include P/VP), an easier charge to stick. And then, once inherent contempt is applied, proceeding with impeachment, even in absentia, with severely weakened (even if still in denial) officials.
Congress can file contempt charges against the telcos refusing formal requests, but those contempt charges have to be prosecuted by the Attorney General. Who is, of course, in Bush's pocket, chosen to protect illegal programs exactly like the one these telcos helped Bush violate. We don't even have an actual AG right now, but whoever is in the job will run interference against justice - obstruction of justice, but the bureaucratic kind that's even harder to get the Department of Justice to prosecute.
That logjam is one reason why Congress should have impeached Gonzales, the illegal wiretapping program's primary defender. Trying his impeachment would have given Congress power to force the telcos to turn over the evidence, without relying on the Justice Department whose head was on trial. In fact, it's still not too late to try Gonzales, even though he's out of office, as there is clear precedent in US law. William Belknap was impeached after he resigned (like Nixon, he resigned to escape impeachment).
Or, better yet, cut off the snake's head: impeach Cheney. Or cut out its forked tongue: impeach Bush.
Or leave it all to politics as usual, and leave the telcos and the next government with these same abusive powers. And watch the country continue to go down the drain, sacrificing both wealth and freedom on the altar to fruitless imperial power.
Do you get bursty bandwidth, where your 256Kbps rate is only an average over longer times, longer than a 30s (1MB) buffer? So your buffer runs out before it can get a blast of the latent packets?
When last I tried EVDO, on a Sprint Treo a couple of years ago, it could deliver only about 100Kbps average, but would alternate between 40Kbps and 160Kbps in about 45-60s peaks/troughs.
Even though TV is packed with "business news" shows, I don't expect to see this strong argument against SW patents even mentioned anywhere near people who determine the rules that govern inventors, who drive the entire economy.
All we'll ever hear about is "incumbent economics", which is how the rich always get richer, despite the actual economic values.
What I want out of my mobile "phone" is streaming. Streaming audio/video, mainly audio: Internet radio. For low-latency, the basic voice protocol is what's important. Streaming doesn't need low latency, or any of those other EDGE features - it needs the higher bandwidth of 3G. And though it consumes power, that's consequent of any app that that delivers steady content to my terminal.
Where are the instructions for starting a party like that one (not necessarily aligned politically, or even agreeing on policies) in the USA, that can also get into the Federal Elections Commission approved racket here in the USA?
But what about the reality, where people are going to keep Outlook for many years (if not decades), regardless of how bad it is, because that's what they've already got? And the "component" design of replacing Exchange is already largely underway, except the hard part of the proprietary and covered up Outlook/Exchange protocol - until perhaps now, with that code supposedly appearing in Thunderbird?
In other words, how does the completely hypothetical "better" approach you're talking about look when compared to the actual reality that I'm describing?
I'm not really sure what your post means, semantically. But lots of orgs are stuck with the Outlook/Exchange/Office "ecosystem". If they could replace Exchange they would, especially if no one noticed, because Exchange is about as popular as it is an awful app platform. They'd keep Outlook because all the users know how to use it, the main "switching" impediment in any org. They can't replace Exchange because the Outlook/Exchange protocol is secret/obfuscated. If OO.o can offer that protocol code, that's a boon to the Exchange replacements. And thereby also a boon to OO.o being an Office replacement.
I can't dispute your reasoning because I can't decipher it. But I don't see how it can dispute what I just said.
I know about the global stories of "an" ancient flood. I didn't know there was any scientific consensus that it was even a single flood, let alone that it was 4Kya.
Or are you just saying some Creationist timeline at me? If so, where do you get off talking about "sarcasm" about growing/shrinking bones confusion?
No, we haven't veered at all. We've just taken a soakin how Republican vehicular homicide is OK, but Democratic isn't. Republican secret government is OK, but Democratic isn't.
The actual original point: why do people let politicians get away with murder? Your answer proves that it's blind partisanship.
I bet you'd say that you're "Beyond_RepublicanandDemocrat". You're not.
This touch/scan/display is exactly the kind of tech needed to make transparent back/touch devices practical. The back side doesn't really need the display part, so the entire device can be cheaper.
To replace Outlook, OO.o would have to connect to MS Exchange for all kinds of shared databases, including calendars, distribution lists, contacts, as well as email. If OO.o can do that indistinguishably from Outlook, with the client code in GPL, that's excellent news. Not just for using OO.o, but for using Outlook.
Because there are several GPL projects out there working on replacing Exchange with something running (much better) on Linux. Their main problem is the Outlook/Exchange protocol. If OO.o offers the client side code for that protocol, then "inverse engineering" the Exchange server side protocol code would be much easier.
I hope all those "Exchange killer" projects get to use the OO.o code that way. And that at least one succeeds in producing the server code under GPL. Because then it'll be available to all those projects.
But the FBI, even though part of its job is to protect Americans from the Russian mob(s), doesn't seem interested in that sitting duck den of thieves. They're pretty industrious over at FBI, but they aren't protecting Americans from some of the most common crimes that rob people's life savings. That kind of "laziness" is usually a sign that the cops are bought off by the gangsters.
Slashdot Mirror
8 PS3s offer at least 1.6TFLOPS. The 2007.6 TOP500 supercomputers bottom out at just over 4TFLOPS. Two years ago, this PS3 cluster might even have made it to the TOP500 list proper; nine years ago it might have topped the list.
It might not be in the top 500, but it does seem to be a supercomputer.
Same difference, with the range just shifted arithmetically up to zero. Only if there were some multiplicative or other dimensional scaling would that change make a difference.
The problem is that we want to give a linear grade to nonlinear judgements. What if I want to look at "funny flamebaits"? By linearizing the system, we make it fail to reflect what it's describing. Which is the basis for system gaming. There are other nonlinear, but problematically combinatorial, features of moderation, like the prohibition on moderating a thread in which the moderator has commented, even if the two comments are in distant subthreads. That's why I patch the problem with more feedback. But I don't expect it to happen: the Slashcode seems to be static except for superficial bells/whistles like the new threading and tagging features. Compared to the coding history Taco recounted in this story, it seems like the Slashcode is set in stone.
The two meanings are not mutually exclusive.
But what's clear is that such a baseless, anonymous, unexplained mod was more important to the modder to make than actually arguing with something they disagree with.
A good improvement to the Slashcode would be requiring negative moderations to include a hidden, but viewable, reason why. Including a checkbox next to a definition of "Troll" or "Flamebait" to indicate the modder is explicitly saying that the post meets that definition. It wouldn't eliminate the committed trollMod, but it would make it easier to disagree with their abuse in a response, which would be a service to metaMods and readers. Oh, and give metamoderation some real teeth that the persistent plague of bad mods proves it lacks.
Digital signatures offer security only when all IPC (including kernel/system calls) is signed, and when signature logs survive an attack by that signed app. Otherwise, after the attack, the signed app can cover its tracks. ActiveX signatures, for example, are worthless.
Since the iPhone depends on its network for all app installation, and nearly all its operation, it can enforce those policies. Since practically all the data on the iPhone, including voice call data, is private, that enforcement is an absolute necessity. Apple should include a server account that backs up the signature logs, and encrypted key storage to other accounts the iPhone is used to access.
Once people are used to that minimum assurance of accountability of installed apps and data on their mobile phones, maybe they'll start to expect it on their notebooks and desktops. Apple could leverage the service to those products, too. And maybe that competition will finally force Microsoft to secure the vast majority of the world's private data that their platforms are responsible for.
Moderation -2
100% Troll
TrollMods say "Troll" means "I disagree with you, but can't argue".
Maybe that OP was right.
I note by your UserID# that you joined Slashdot exactly when it was exploding in membership, like when AOL gatewayed to the Internet. That ought to make you an expert in how Slashdot got worse when it went from "word of mouth" to mass popularity. But by the same token, not worth listening to your opinion about it. Especially when you're trashing a site you post to several times a day. Who's taking themself too seriously again?
Ditto.
If a cell sits in a forest but no one is locked in it, is it really "punishment"?
As you pointed out with that sparse history, punishable is not punished. The rate of punishment for such lying is probably under a thousandth of a percent of the rate of the lying.
Hell, Congress didn't even file contempt charges, inherent or otherwise, against AG Gonzales, while he spent months, years, lying to Congress about matters of the utmost Constitutional (criminal) importance.
Maybe "toothless" isn't quite the word. Maybe "gummy" is more accurate.
Yahoo's answer will be "because lying to Congress only got me this annoying reinvitation to your toothless American committee, but telling the truth would have cost us $millions in business with the deadly serious Chinese mafia government".
Which their toothless committee already knows.
Please cut the pussy bullshit and just run for president as a Republican already.
Promising to waste your votes on losing Republicans for the rest of your life is hardly a scary threat. As if your puny vote for a permanent minority party is any kind of counterbalance to my telling the truth about it, and about politards like you.
All it takes to use contempt against the entire industry would indeed be charging a few dozen execs. But that's harder than charging a single government official, whose hotseat and testimony would push those execs to show up anyway.
Let's not overlook the extensive bribes (and threats of layoffs) that motive Democratic congressmembers, too, even if not so much as the Republicans. But with Democrats in the majority, that will switch over, too. Which is another reason why impeaching an official with whom Democrats are actually in (more or less) direct conflict is more likely. Or, rather, the impeach/contempt mixture I specificed, which pushes and pulls on the most vulnerable joints.
Inherent contempt is hard to use against an entire industry. More powerful is an impeachment trial. And not just Gonzales, but Bush and Cheney (who are also subject to inherent contempt).
The most effective strategy would be impeachment, which Cheney would especially ignore, which then could be tried as inherent contempt (which does include P/VP), an easier charge to stick. And then, once inherent contempt is applied, proceeding with impeachment, even in absentia, with severely weakened (even if still in denial) officials.
Congress can file contempt charges against the telcos refusing formal requests, but those contempt charges have to be prosecuted by the Attorney General. Who is, of course, in Bush's pocket, chosen to protect illegal programs exactly like the one these telcos helped Bush violate. We don't even have an actual AG right now, but whoever is in the job will run interference against justice - obstruction of justice, but the bureaucratic kind that's even harder to get the Department of Justice to prosecute.
That logjam is one reason why Congress should have impeached Gonzales, the illegal wiretapping program's primary defender. Trying his impeachment would have given Congress power to force the telcos to turn over the evidence, without relying on the Justice Department whose head was on trial. In fact, it's still not too late to try Gonzales, even though he's out of office, as there is clear precedent in US law. William Belknap was impeached after he resigned (like Nixon, he resigned to escape impeachment).
Or, better yet, cut off the snake's head: impeach Cheney. Or cut out its forked tongue: impeach Bush.
Or leave it all to politics as usual, and leave the telcos and the next government with these same abusive powers. And watch the country continue to go down the drain, sacrificing both wealth and freedom on the altar to fruitless imperial power.
Do you get bursty bandwidth, where your 256Kbps rate is only an average over longer times, longer than a 30s (1MB) buffer? So your buffer runs out before it can get a blast of the latent packets?
When last I tried EVDO, on a Sprint Treo a couple of years ago, it could deliver only about 100Kbps average, but would alternate between 40Kbps and 160Kbps in about 45-60s peaks/troughs.
Even though TV is packed with "business news" shows, I don't expect to see this strong argument against SW patents even mentioned anywhere near people who determine the rules that govern inventors, who drive the entire economy.
All we'll ever hear about is "incumbent economics", which is how the rich always get richer, despite the actual economic values.
What I want out of my mobile "phone" is streaming. Streaming audio/video, mainly audio: Internet radio. For low-latency, the basic voice protocol is what's important. Streaming doesn't need low latency, or any of those other EDGE features - it needs the higher bandwidth of 3G. And though it consumes power, that's consequent of any app that that delivers steady content to my terminal.
Where are the instructions for starting a party like that one (not necessarily aligned politically, or even agreeing on policies) in the USA, that can also get into the Federal Elections Commission approved racket here in the USA?
But what about the reality, where people are going to keep Outlook for many years (if not decades), regardless of how bad it is, because that's what they've already got? And the "component" design of replacing Exchange is already largely underway, except the hard part of the proprietary and covered up Outlook/Exchange protocol - until perhaps now, with that code supposedly appearing in Thunderbird?
In other words, how does the completely hypothetical "better" approach you're talking about look when compared to the actual reality that I'm describing?
The FBI's primary job is domestic police, which is in fact primarily "protecting Americans from Americans".
But they're also responsible for international criminal investigations that trace from or to criminal acts committed against Americans inside America.
I'm not really sure what your post means, semantically. But lots of orgs are stuck with the Outlook/Exchange/Office "ecosystem". If they could replace Exchange they would, especially if no one noticed, because Exchange is about as popular as it is an awful app platform. They'd keep Outlook because all the users know how to use it, the main "switching" impediment in any org. They can't replace Exchange because the Outlook/Exchange protocol is secret/obfuscated. If OO.o can offer that protocol code, that's a boon to the Exchange replacements. And thereby also a boon to OO.o being an Office replacement.
I can't dispute your reasoning because I can't decipher it. But I don't see how it can dispute what I just said.
I know about the global stories of "an" ancient flood. I didn't know there was any scientific consensus that it was even a single flood, let alone that it was 4Kya.
Or are you just saying some Creationist timeline at me? If so, where do you get off talking about "sarcasm" about growing/shrinking bones confusion?
No, we haven't veered at all. We've just taken a soakin how Republican vehicular homicide is OK, but Democratic isn't. Republican secret government is OK, but Democratic isn't.
The actual original point: why do people let politicians get away with murder? Your answer proves that it's blind partisanship.
I bet you'd say that you're "Beyond_RepublicanandDemocrat". You're not.
This touch/scan/display is exactly the kind of tech needed to make transparent back/touch devices practical. The back side doesn't really need the display part, so the entire device can be cheaper.
To replace Outlook, OO.o would have to connect to MS Exchange for all kinds of shared databases, including calendars, distribution lists, contacts, as well as email. If OO.o can do that indistinguishably from Outlook, with the client code in GPL, that's excellent news. Not just for using OO.o, but for using Outlook.
Because there are several GPL projects out there working on replacing Exchange with something running (much better) on Linux. Their main problem is the Outlook/Exchange protocol. If OO.o offers the client side code for that protocol, then "inverse engineering" the Exchange server side protocol code would be much easier.
I hope all those "Exchange killer" projects get to use the OO.o code that way. And that at least one succeeds in producing the server code under GPL. Because then it'll be available to all those projects.
The FBI seems to have all kinds of time to spy on Americans, in the operation that started even before 9/11/2001. Not so much time to listen to reports that Qaeda suicide bombers were learning to fly, but not land, jumbo jets.
But the FBI, even though part of its job is to protect Americans from the Russian mob(s), doesn't seem interested in that sitting duck den of thieves. They're pretty industrious over at FBI, but they aren't protecting Americans from some of the most common crimes that rob people's life savings. That kind of "laziness" is usually a sign that the cops are bought off by the gangsters.