What, you mean the slashdot story that contains a link to the original securityfocus story and some comments from people who know what they're talking about?
Yeah, can't think why that'd be a good thing.
I've found that in companies like this (with which I've no experience whatsoever, btw), it depends on whom you're dealing with. You're lucky, or you're not.
Regarding your.sig: I've karma to burn at the moment, so it's worth wasting a point or two.
Karma isn't there for your glorification. It's there for other readers with higher thresholds. A response is fine and dandy, but unless you're moderated up a lot of people won't see your pithy wit.
Where did this idea come from that karma is there as a reward?
If any moderators are thinking of modding this up as insightful, don't bother. It's offtopic. People who are reading at 2+ don't care about side issues; that's why they're reading at 2+.
If you're thinking of modding this down: bastard.
Re:The Right not to be born
on
The Year In Ideas
·
· Score: 2, Funny
But if you win your case, the by being awarded damages the state is acknowledging that you exist, which is a breach of your human rights.
The only correct course for the french government is to say "Who said that?".
I realise no-one cares, but I'm going to say it anyway.
CP/M stands for Control Program/Monitor. If it was Control Program for Microcomputers, it wouldn't have a slash.
Wow, it's been at least five years since I got to bore someone with that argument.
I'm sure I'm not the only one who sniggered when I read this. I'm also probably not the only one who doubts it'll happen.
The question is: why? When Microsoft get their way, this move is merely an investment for a few years down the road, when every donated OS will need to be upgraded at great expense. So how is the Justice Department going to justify not accepting Red Hat's offer?
That could be interesting. A german types in thenazipartyarentthatbadafterall.de (or its German equivalent), and they get their local government website.
Could be worse, I suppose. We might see the rarest of conditions, when politicians don't want the people's votes, after their picture seems to appear on amianaziornot.de
From the review, this book seems to have the same theme as many other business books - "don't be an asshole". If that's the case, I don't know that it'll have any effect other than increasing the bank balances of teh authors.
Scott Adams has made a career out of clueless managers; to an extent so has the BOFH. Both frequently cite PHBs reading up on the latest advice, and forgetting it ten minutes later.
I'm not saying that the book isn't well written - I haven't read it - but I am saying that I don't think it'll accomplish anything except in the immediate term. Let's face it; anyone who needs to be told they should listen to the advice of experts isn't going to be swayed by a mere book.
Mary Doria Russell.
Okay, she's only written two books (you have read The Sparrow, haven't you?), but if she keeps it up, she'll be regarded eventually as one of the true greats of the genre.
Lois McMaster Bujold.
Go on. I dare you, dismiss it as space opera. Okay, it is space opera, but all her books are great, widely read, Hugo- and Nebula-award-winning,...
Other have mentioned:
Clive Barker
He deserves to be remembered, if only for writing that rara avis: consistently intelligent, well-written horror.
Terry Pratchett
When I worked in an SF bookshop (that's a science fiction bookshop. In Dublin), Pratchett was consistently our best-sellign author. People with no interest in SF or fantasy would wander in for the latest, and even when spouses/SOs were wandering around, eyes glazed, they'd inevitably find themselves browsing the Pratchetts. I don't think anyone apart from Transworld realises exactly how popular he is.
Neal Stephenson
I'm going to commit heresy here. I think Stephenson is great, but not one of the greats. His books are all eminently readable, but most have been surpassed in their respective sub-genres (Read The Bohr Maker by Linda Nagata?). Crytonomicon is an exception, and not just cos it's the first novel I've read with embedded perl.
Aside: I suspect if someone ran the Cryptonomicon manuscript through Acme::Buffy, it'd still be better than all Buffy novels combined.
powerpoint does not have macros until Office 2000 and then Office XP I was writing powerpoint macros in Office 97 (possibly 95; not sure about that one).
SETI@HOME is silly i think, when there are more important things to do Fucksake...
Take any (any) endeavour, and you can come up with something more important if you put your mind to it. Protein folding? Why waste your time on such a trivial task when you can sell your computer and donate the money to helping children?
Inoculating third world children? What a fucking waste of time. Most of them won't accomplish anything. You're better off donating money to schools for gifted children.
Schools for gifted children? If they're that smart, they don't need help.
The reason humanity is as wide, diverse and advanced as it is is that every one of us, in more ways than we can count, is standing on the shoulders of not just giants, but minnows (if you'll pardon the mixed metaphor). For every Newton, there are thousands of people whose names aren't recorded, but whose work has been passed down orally for generations, and is now taken as part of common sense instead of ground-breaking research.
Who gives a shit about how dinosaurs walked? Who cares about whether phlogiston is fixed air or carbon dioxide? Throughout history, people have spent time, money and effort on what those around them considered to be a criminal waste of talent. If they hadn't, we'd still be in the dark ages.
Will seti@home find anything? Maybe. Is my contribution likely to further mankind? Probably not. Is it more important than folding proteins? Depends on whether we find aliens or a cure for pancreatic cancer.
Remember: there are no stupid questions. And 'does the noise from Epislon Eridani contain an artifical signal' is as valid a question as any you can think of.
A while ago, when death by mobile phone was newsworthy, a woman was on television every fifteen minutes telling the world that her husband used a mobile phone for hours every day, then he go brain cancer. Result? Lawsuit.
Earlier this year, thousand of foolish parents refused to give their children MMR vaccines because shortly after it was given to a tiny percentage of children, they developed autism. Never mind that autism is detected at around teh same age as vaccinatin' time. Result? Lots of unvaccinated kids. Probably a few lawsuits.
What've got here? A couple of people whose motherboards blew while their pilots were plugged in. Result? Lawsuit. I bet Genius are delighted; they'd probably have been blamed if the first thing our litigious chums saw after the crash was a mouse.
Since B5 ended (am I the only one worried about the Rangers?) there've been three series that are not just good; they're great.
Lexx is great. Stargate has gone from okay to excellent. But far away ahead of them all is Farscape.
I don't know how much you Americans have seen, but I've been watching it on DVD and I'v seen up to about half way through the second series. It's taken a fairly old plot (old before Voyager used it) and the traditional format (individual episodes, occasionally two- or three-parters, the rare reference to previous plots), but managed to be truly excellent.
The reason it's so good? IMO, it's because it avoids cliches. On several occasions (I still haven't learnt), I've groaned as ten minutes into an episode it looks like it's going to be one of those ridiculous Trek episodes that make us all cringe. But I've invariably had to apologise (mentally, anyway) to the producers by the end of the episode.
It may not have all the strongest plot lines, but it avoids cliche. And that's a rare and wonderful thing.
In Rush Hour 1, the script was a little tighter and made a little more sense. Funny; I didn't like the first Rush Hour; I only watched the second one because I was getting into the cinema for free. I thought it was a much better. Not sure why...
Chris Tucker was funny once again Oh, yeah. Now I remember. Can't stand Chris Tucker. His high-pitched sreaming throughout the movie drove me fucking spare. In the second one, though, I was mentally prepared, so it didn't bother me as much. If I were to watch the first one again, I might enjoy it more.
What was the point of the "Snoopy tattoo" So we could zoom in on her semi-naked bod? Best reason I can think of.
Why did the customs agent say she got rid of Lee and Carter when she really sent them to find the plates? I'd assumed that she was sending them on a wild goose chase. Although now that you mention it, she wasn't. So: dunno.
Why did Ricky Tan look younger than Lee even though he used to be Lee's father's partner? Must be a Jackie Chan thing. Anita Mui played his mother in drunken master 2. That would have been silly if it weren't for a fact that any Anita Mui movie is a cause for celebration.
My big question: why was Chris Tucker ahead of the Great Jackie in the credits? That's just not right.
Hardly the monarchist instrument of repression the MSNBC starts with...
Jon 'Whingeing Pom' Peterson
The problem with 1600x1200 resolution is that text can sometimes be hard to read when you've only a 19" monitor. Are you a whingeing pom or do you like whingeing porn?
I can't remember when the film came out, but I'm pretty sure i gave up on the x-files before that (of course, being in Europe, it took a while to get here).
Generally: first three seasons great (only because of the Darin Morgan episodes in the third), next two seasons shite, other seasons unwatched.
This is just a case of a clueless, dictatorial management. Unfortunately, the comment here that is legit so far is that they *are* the employers machines, and if they want to be clueless and dictatorial about how they're used, they have that right. But they don't have any justification. Yes and no. While there are myriads of clueful setiathome users (your humble servant included), the fact remains that these managers - possibly Men in Black - dictated that it shouldn't be used. Speaking as a sysadmin, there's nothing worse than some asshole installing Outl^H^H^H^H something despite dire warnings. The management may have been wrong about the reasons for their decision, but once that decision was made the workers had no right - legal or moral - to run the software.
Of course, the users might have been more clueful than the sysadmins, but in my experience this never happens.
Re:Not really important
on
Space Blimps
·
· Score: 3
but it would be better to go for depth of exploration than breaKnow all there is to know about a small subset of the possibilities than try to get a little of everything. Eventually, yes; but first you've got to know where the best place to look is.
Consider mars: when Viking found nothing of profound interest, everyone said 'we looked in the wrong place'. Ditto pathfinder. Now that MGS has done a GS of M, we've a much better idea of good places to look. Sure the flood plain for pathfinder was a good idea, but we've much better data now about where water and/or life is/was likely to survive.
This is terrible. Imagine, the US government spending billions on a technology that the rest of the world and most of its own scientists tell them is a waste of time, and easily circumventable.
They've already had a, ahem, head start. Check out The Uranus Experiment. Shot on the vomit comet, it promises (and delivers) the world's first zero-g cum shot.
Okay, it's not space per se, but boldy coming on the comet is surely the first step.
Slashdot Mirror
What, you mean the slashdot story that contains a link to the original securityfocus story and some comments from people who know what they're talking about?
Yeah, can't think why that'd be a good thing.
I've found that in companies like this (with which I've no experience whatsoever, btw), it depends on whom you're dealing with. You're lucky, or you're not.
.sig: I've karma to burn at the moment, so it's worth wasting a point or two.
Regarding your
Karma isn't there for your glorification. It's there for other readers with higher thresholds. A response is fine and dandy, but unless you're moderated up a lot of people won't see your pithy wit.
Where did this idea come from that karma is there as a reward?
If any moderators are thinking of modding this up as insightful, don't bother. It's offtopic. People who are reading at 2+ don't care about side issues; that's why they're reading at 2+.
If you're thinking of modding this down: bastard.
But if you win your case, the by being awarded damages the state is acknowledging that you exist, which is a breach of your human rights.
The only correct course for the french government is to say "Who said that?".
So a speed date is the answer to all my woes, is it? Pah. Shows what you think of your readers. We're not all socially inept nerds, you know.
The real solution to all my woes is a linux-powered tricorder that scans for single women who like Lego.
But if these ads are as annoying as some people think, then "if you use this browser you won't see the ads" becomes a feature.
Am I the only mozilla user who clicked on the link anyway, and had the page sit there doing nothing until I got bored?
Calculate your own values for the drake equation here
I realise no-one cares, but I'm going to say it anyway.
CP/M stands for Control Program/Monitor. If it was Control Program for Microcomputers, it wouldn't have a slash.
Wow, it's been at least five years since I got to bore someone with that argument.
The rocketeer said the launch was 85% successful.
Good. So he'll come back safely; just without a head.
I'm sure I'm not the only one who sniggered when I read this. I'm also probably not the only one who doubts it'll happen.
The question is: why? When Microsoft get their way, this move is merely an investment for a few years down the road, when every donated OS will need to be upgraded at great expense. So how is the Justice Department going to justify not accepting Red Hat's offer?
That could be interesting. A german types in thenazipartyarentthatbadafterall.de (or its German equivalent), and they get their local government website.
Could be worse, I suppose. We might see the rarest of conditions, when politicians don't want the people's votes, after their picture seems to appear on amianaziornot.de
From the review, this book seems to have the same theme as many other business books - "don't be an asshole". If that's the case, I don't know that it'll have any effect other than increasing the bank balances of teh authors.
Scott Adams has made a career out of clueless managers; to an extent so has the BOFH. Both frequently cite PHBs reading up on the latest advice, and forgetting it ten minutes later.
I'm not saying that the book isn't well written - I haven't read it - but I am saying that I don't think it'll accomplish anything except in the immediate term. Let's face it; anyone who needs to be told they should listen to the advice of experts isn't going to be swayed by a mere book.
Mary Doria Russell.
Okay, she's only written two books (you have read The Sparrow, haven't you?), but if she keeps it up, she'll be regarded eventually as one of the true greats of the genre.
Lois McMaster Bujold. ...
Go on. I dare you, dismiss it as space opera. Okay, it is space opera, but all her books are great, widely read, Hugo- and Nebula-award-winning,
Other have mentioned:
Clive Barker
He deserves to be remembered, if only for writing that rara avis: consistently intelligent, well-written horror.
Terry Pratchett
When I worked in an SF bookshop (that's a science fiction bookshop. In Dublin), Pratchett was consistently our best-sellign author. People with no interest in SF or fantasy would wander in for the latest, and even when spouses/SOs were wandering around, eyes glazed, they'd inevitably find themselves browsing the Pratchetts. I don't think anyone apart from Transworld realises exactly how popular he is.
Neal Stephenson
I'm going to commit heresy here. I think Stephenson is great, but not one of the greats. His books are all eminently readable, but most have been surpassed in their respective sub-genres (Read The Bohr Maker by Linda Nagata?). Crytonomicon is an exception, and not just cos it's the first novel I've read with embedded perl.
Aside: I suspect if someone ran the Cryptonomicon manuscript through Acme::Buffy, it'd still be better than all Buffy novels combined.
powerpoint does not have macros until Office 2000 and then Office XP
I was writing powerpoint macros in Office 97 (possibly 95; not sure about that one).
SETI@HOME is silly i think, when there are more important things to do
Fucksake...
Take any (any) endeavour, and you can come up with something more important if you put your mind to it. Protein folding? Why waste your time on such a trivial task when you can sell your computer and donate the money to helping children?
Inoculating third world children? What a fucking waste of time. Most of them won't accomplish anything. You're better off donating money to schools for gifted children.
Schools for gifted children? If they're that smart, they don't need help.
The reason humanity is as wide, diverse and advanced as it is is that every one of us, in more ways than we can count, is standing on the shoulders of not just giants, but minnows (if you'll pardon the mixed metaphor). For every Newton, there are thousands of people whose names aren't recorded, but whose work has been passed down orally for generations, and is now taken as part of common sense instead of ground-breaking research.
Who gives a shit about how dinosaurs walked? Who cares about whether phlogiston is fixed air or carbon dioxide? Throughout history, people have spent time, money and effort on what those around them considered to be a criminal waste of talent. If they hadn't, we'd still be in the dark ages.
Will seti@home find anything? Maybe. Is my contribution likely to further mankind? Probably not. Is it more important than folding proteins? Depends on whether we find aliens or a cure for pancreatic cancer.
Remember: there are no stupid questions. And 'does the noise from Epislon Eridani contain an artifical signal' is as valid a question as any you can think of.
A while ago, when death by mobile phone was newsworthy, a woman was on television every fifteen minutes telling the world that her husband used a mobile phone for hours every day, then he go brain cancer. Result? Lawsuit.
Earlier this year, thousand of foolish parents refused to give their children MMR vaccines because shortly after it was given to a tiny percentage of children, they developed autism. Never mind that autism is detected at around teh same age as vaccinatin' time. Result? Lots of unvaccinated kids. Probably a few lawsuits.
What've got here? A couple of people whose motherboards blew while their pilots were plugged in. Result? Lawsuit. I bet Genius are delighted; they'd probably have been blamed if the first thing our litigious chums saw after the crash was a mouse.
Since B5 ended (am I the only one worried about the Rangers?) there've been three series that are not just good; they're great.
Lexx is great. Stargate has gone from okay to excellent. But far away ahead of them all is Farscape.
I don't know how much you Americans have seen, but I've been watching it on DVD and I'v seen up to about half way through the second series. It's taken a fairly old plot (old before Voyager used it) and the traditional format (individual episodes, occasionally two- or three-parters, the rare reference to previous plots), but managed to be truly excellent.
The reason it's so good? IMO, it's because it avoids cliches. On several occasions (I still haven't learnt), I've groaned as ten minutes into an episode it looks like it's going to be one of those ridiculous Trek episodes that make us all cringe. But I've invariably had to apologise (mentally, anyway) to the producers by the end of the episode.
It may not have all the strongest plot lines, but it avoids cliche. And that's a rare and wonderful thing.
I know it's bad form to post links to one's own web site, but observe.
In Rush Hour 1, the script was a little tighter and made a little more sense.
Funny; I didn't like the first Rush Hour; I only watched the second one because I was getting into the cinema for free. I thought it was a much better. Not sure why...
Chris Tucker was funny once again
Oh, yeah. Now I remember. Can't stand Chris Tucker. His high-pitched sreaming throughout the movie drove me fucking spare. In the second one, though, I was mentally prepared, so it didn't bother me as much. If I were to watch the first one again, I might enjoy it more.
What was the point of the "Snoopy tattoo"
So we could zoom in on her semi-naked bod? Best reason I can think of.
Why did the customs agent say she got rid of Lee and Carter when she really sent them to find the plates?
I'd assumed that she was sending them on a wild goose chase. Although now that you mention it, she wasn't. So: dunno.
Why did Ricky Tan look younger than Lee even though he used to be Lee's father's partner?
Must be a Jackie Chan thing. Anita Mui played his mother in drunken master 2. That would have been silly if it weren't for a fact that any Anita Mui movie is a cause for celebration.
My big question: why was Chris Tucker ahead of the Great Jackie in the credits? That's just not right.
I read this a couple of days ago on OverLawyered; they focussed more on Cybercheeze's reply. This is how we should all react to spurious lawsuits.
Hardly the monarchist instrument of repression the MSNBC starts with...
Jon 'Whingeing Pom' Peterson
The problem with 1600x1200 resolution is that text can sometimes be hard to read when you've only a 19" monitor. Are you a whingeing pom or do you like whingeing porn?
I can't remember when the film came out, but I'm pretty sure i gave up on the x-files before that (of course, being in Europe, it took a while to get here).
Generally: first three seasons great (only because of the Darin Morgan episodes in the third), next two seasons shite, other seasons unwatched.
This is just a case of a clueless, dictatorial management. Unfortunately, the comment here that is legit so far is that they *are* the employers machines, and if they want to be clueless and dictatorial about how they're used, they have that right. But they don't have any justification.
Yes and no. While there are myriads of clueful setiathome users (your humble servant included), the fact remains that these managers - possibly Men in Black - dictated that it shouldn't be used. Speaking as a sysadmin, there's nothing worse than some asshole installing Outl^H^H^H^H something despite dire warnings. The management may have been wrong about the reasons for their decision, but once that decision was made the workers had no right - legal or moral - to run the software.
Of course, the users might have been more clueful than the sysadmins, but in my experience this never happens.
but it would be better to go for depth of exploration than breaKnow all there is to know about a small subset of the possibilities than try to get a little of everything.
Eventually, yes; but first you've got to know where the best place to look is.
Consider mars: when Viking found nothing of profound interest, everyone said 'we looked in the wrong place'. Ditto pathfinder. Now that MGS has done a GS of M, we've a much better idea of good places to look. Sure the flood plain for pathfinder was a good idea, but we've much better data now about where water and/or life is/was likely to survive.
This is terrible. Imagine, the US government spending billions on a technology that the rest of the world and most of its own scientists tell them is a waste of time, and easily circumventable.
I never thought I'd see the day.
They've already had a, ahem, head start. Check out The Uranus Experiment. Shot on the vomit comet, it promises (and delivers) the world's first zero-g cum shot.
Okay, it's not space per se, but boldy coming on the comet is surely the first step.