Of all the "great geeks" that you interviewed in your specials, who was the most fun in person?
Which of your specials is your favorite?
"T of the N" I and II are both recommended viewing for freshmen entering in the Computer Science curriculum at my university. What other works do you think would give a good introduction to the history of computing?
What do you think will be the most valuable computer programming language to possess as a skill in the next few years?
What do you think a freshman neophyte programmer should learn as their first programming language?
My curiosity comes from my previous teaching experiences teaching "Introduction to Computer Programming" to college freshmen. So I suppose the kinds of answers I'm digging for are more academically bent. I'm curious to know how you think Universities should be directing NEW geeks along their careers... or whether you believe a college education is truly valuable anymore?
and until I read it, I wouldn't have believed it. Could this technology eventually make radar systems obsolete? What would that do to our missle defense systems? Could I put one on my car to avoid speeding tickets?
Having studied old DES designs in college I have always wondered... exactly what WERE the "S-boxes" originally? I know what most solid state systems model them as, but I'd love to know what the designer's had in mind.
How much of what are known as the "classic cyphers" are still relevant to today's cryptographic systems?
Most modern cryptographic advancements appear to be number-theoretic in nature, what is the future of purely linguistic approaches?
What is the single most important cryptographic advancement (that is not classified) of the last century, and who should we be harolding as the "King or Queen" of 20th century cryptography.
What is the NSA's ideal vision for public and international collaboration on the development of cryptographic systems? ie: what does cryptographic utopia look like to the NSA?
How has the role of cryptography changed in the last century, how has the NSA effected those changes?
What role does the NSA see Cryptography playing for the average citizen in the future? Does the NSA believe that the average person needs to utilize cryptographic technology (beyond it's current embedded uses)?
I'm curious to see how the NSA would answer these questions and what it would package for us as their "official response". I'm also curious if the NSA would answer differently to CNN than it would to slashdot... but I have no way of testing that. It should also be noted that I'm not digging for anything, just making small talk, I seriously doubt they would show a schematic for the new version of DES no matter how benign I was.
"In the next five years, we are going to move to a counterterrorism model," he said. "It will turn into a witch hunt, unless we stop the script kiddies today."
As if there is even the slightest hope of a centralized controlled effort to stamp out "script kiddie" activity. No one can control the internet as long as there is free speech... no one can stop the release of exploits or software as long as people are willing to write them... someone, however, can start a "witch-hunt".
It's not like there haven't been "witch-hunts" before in modern history (Blair aside, I'm thinking McCarthy) and I wonder just how successful that would be given the nature of the internet? I can't imagine a "counter-terrorism" effort doing anything else but causing mass panic and consumption of "anti-hacking" (term used loosely) utilities. I'd have to say that this whole article is nothing but mass-media fodder. Marcus Ranum doesn't give us any really viable solutions I suspect he wants us to pay for them.
Unfortuantely I have to agree that JavaScript is most likely the best way to start kids 'gramming. This is because it is both instantly accessable and readily available. The kids get instant gratification and instant feed back from the experience and parents don't have to shell out for an IDE or figure out an SDK until they know that their kid is committed to programming.
I have some friends who asked me how to get their kids into programming... they are a very poor family and can't afford much in the way of hardware or software. I'm using gcc on linux almost exclusively now so I'm giving them my old copy of MS VC++ 5.0 but some how I think this is a bit over the kids' heads.
I figure that I could hook the kids with HTML, JavaScript, and then slide them into C++ and OpenGL/Glut in time... with VC they can stay comfortable on Windows until they are "31337" enough for Linux.
Well, these are 13 year olds. They won't be professionally programming for a while... just amature programming... so I guess they aren't PRO-'grammers they are AMA-'grammers!
I'm moved to point out that when you simply layer additional features on software without analysing the total design... you are inherently adding additional layers of complexity without properly mitigating risk factors and therefore increasing the probability of failure. But... this being slashdot, everyone else probably thought that too.
As a general rule kludged and patched together software usually doesn't work well. BUT you can make a well detailed design that is readily expandable and extensible... ie Apache is designed to be patched together and works well.
The folly here is taking two unrelated products and "slapping" them together. I intuit that "Cyber Patrol" was never designed as a module for the "Gauntlet" firewall... neither was "Gauntlet" designed with a product like "Cyber Patrol" in mind.
The fundamental problem here lies in the design phase of the project... the integrated system design model should have had an over-arching security function point to handle buffer attacks. The problem is compounded by the fact that the Risk Management analysis apparently missed this possibility (buffer overrun), and that the Testing Phase didn't think of testing in this area (buffer overrun attacks).
ye gods! I actually learned something in school! Wait a minute... does technobabble count as learning?
Before I went to college I payed my bills by working as a service writer in an autoshop. They had just computerized and I had the responsibility of helping everyone get used to the new system.
The mechanics would log parts requests and services preformed at a terminal in the shop and service writers would do the billing and restocking operations. We went through quite a few terminals in the shop because even with a membrane the keyboard would get damaged by spilt oil or the plain old greasy finger syndrome.
Automechanics aren't in general the most tidy of folks. The system would be tortured by various shop disasters. But I remember the keyboard and monitor were forever covered in a thick layer of slime. Fortuantely we had the sense to put the system box in another room.
I'm sure this rubber keyboard idea would have saved a few bucks... well, at least the keyboard would have been happier.
I liked how the article refered to "beeping" on a barcode hyper link. I started thinking about it.
I can see other uses for this tech. You could embed these barcodes on canned food so if you needed to get the ingredients you could *beep* on the can... if you buy a car, beep on it for recall notices... while working on the car you could beep on parts to get repair instructions... if you need to buy a part, beep on it somewhere else and order it online... Need a light bulb? beep on the burnt out one...
We could even tattoo the beep codes onto people for their personal websites so when you meet a new person you could just beep them. That alone would save a lot of trouble.
Someone needs to start a slashdot-like website for lawyers called: (IAALaIMHO.org) I Am A Lawyer and In My Humble Opinion dot Org. I can see why we need an entire army of lawyers to function in this country. Didn't someone brittish upon hearing about the first draft of the constitution say, "They've written it down? Don't they know they'll be a-wash in lawyers?"
Unfortunately, no one can be told what the Linux is... they must be shown.
...choose the Red-Hat and we stay in wonderland and see how deep the rabbit hole goes... choose the Blue-Hat and you go back to your life and believe what ever you want to believe... and run windows.
--// Hartsock//
Re:Not So Overwhelming, After All...
on
ATI Radeon 256
·
· Score: 2
I certainly hope ATI is paying attention. I absolutely love the ATI hardware, but you're absolutely correct... ATI drivers suck.
It's such a shame that such beautiful hardware has to be hobbled by such awful software.
*LoL* Linux on x86 is beautiful software hobbled by awful hardware! The irony is killing me.
I'd love something like that so I could read webzines in a recliner or in bed instead of knealing at my console all the time. Wouldn't have to be under $500 if it had a Really Usefull Engine.
It won't really affect "us" in the PC world for a while. There are fundamental changes that the Personal Computer will have to go through first before 0.07 micron chips for a Personal System make sense. The effect will hit the big time server and super-computing centers first, which is natural.
I doubt that a 0.07 micron chip will be used in anything for the average consumer for over a decade. By then we will hope-fully have a "PnP" type parallel CPU array and Fire-Wire type PnP for hot swapping peripherals... making 150 GHz not all that impressive.
seriously, it's not nearly as bad as illegitimate spam... where you don't know if the message is forged or what. At least with legitimate spam you can complain.
It amazes me how many people love spam... sending spam... getting spam. Really, I'm almost liable to think that spam isn't so bad... nah. It is.
My only major complaint with the old D&D saturday morning cartoon was that the characters each could only have one magic item. That always bugged me... I had trouble to sticking to only seven magic items for my paladins! So, I'm to gather that this party never could manage to accumulate or hold on to any items?
I know, I know it's just a TV show.
But don't you think that at least Cavalier could at least get a friggin' sword or something? Sure give the coward the best AC and no weapons!
Your observation of PEAR affects the results of their studies remotely. If you wouldn't look so hard at them you wouldn't change the state of their results. See, it's a quantum mechanical effect! So, stop looking into their research with an unbiased mind-set, you must believe that their research is producing results with out ever analysing it. Then, and only then will you see... the amazing truth?
You've really hit on something. The Hacker ethos is the Cowboy ethos. Cowboys could be good or bad, and there was no confusion about it. If you had a black or white hat (or red) you were still a cowboy.
Justice was won in the old west by the people of the old west since the government couldn't reach that far. The Hacker could be the guy commiting a crime to save the villagers, or he could be leading a gang to rob them... all in the cybernetic prarie land.
I'm really intrigued by your idea... it goes to show that people are still the same, the technology just changes. I know if I were in the 1800s I'd be a cowboy on the frontier for the same reason that in the 2000s I'm on the technological frontier... it's where the action is.
The international space-station is turning into one fabulous hack. Us software geeks should pay serious attention to the developments on the space-station not because it's "cool" or anything but because it represents one of the largest projects humanity has ever undertaken next to the construction of Operating Systems.
An old prof. at my U. loves to point out that MS Windows, the Great Pyramids, and the Great Wall, all share approximately equivalent numbers of person hours in them. So, he asks... what makes the great wall and the pyramids stand for centuries and Windows crash almost daily?
The answer is (according to my prof.) that by the time of the pyramids and the great wall, construction was a technology that humans were very familiar with. The project was huge but the tech was well known. Software and space-stations are brand-new, and therefore a certain amount of instability will be inherent in the project.
(* microsoft flame & linux chest-beating omitted *)
What intrests me in the space-station aside from the coolness factor are "patches" like the one posted in this article. NASA is slapping together a mission to prevent catastrophic falure of the project... its a hack. A quick and dirty fix until other team members get their act together. I've seen this millions of times in software-engineering projects.
Open-Source is an intriguing way of dealing with enourmous projects. I think that NASA could stand to learn a few lessons from OS development... as well as OS building from NASA. I find this an intriguing problem set... enormous projects in a short time with huge unknowns... and no one pays attention unless you make a mistake and blow something up.
BTW: Anybody got numbers for the person hours spent on any given linux distro?
Oh yeah? Well, my first programming project was a xerox copier! It didn't have ANY RAM, you had to grab a student and hand them a piece of paper with what buttons to push... then they'd stand there all day poking at the face plate! Now that's coding on the bare metal without a whole heck-uva lotta system resouces!
I've been reading slashdot just barely long enough to remember there being no moderation. I used to post alot, then I stopped because I didn't get a whole lot of karma.
Until recently I haven't done a lot of posting. My account was set to see only score:3 or better ranked comments and I would only read the top 3 comments. But that changed recently. I've pretty much figured out that you only get moderated up if you are in the first 50 posts or so, say something good, and if you have a positive karma, it probably influences the moderator.
As for the guys gunning for negative karma. Negative karma is so much easier to come by rather than positive karma. The negative karma points can be gleaned on just about any new story that is still active. So, some posters are having fun raking up negative karma points.
The resulting behaviours are similar to stuff I used to see way back when on the old BBS systems. Some guys play the good guy part to the hilt and strive to earn positive karma. Some guys wallow in thier negative karma, seeing themselves as 3l33t evil dudes... the negative karma gives status.
So, slashdot has inadvertantly become a MUD-like environ (I don't really understand the new ones but I do remember things like them from my Trade Wars days where I was Commander Zarf not Zarf like you're thinking tho'). There were always the guys who prided themselves on getting as low an experiance and alignment as possible.
Now the strange bit, often the guys who were the ones with 120 days play-time and 12 xp with a -1200 alignment were the same ones who where playing other characters who were on the top ten list. strange right? What I would watch some of these amazing players take one character say in position 3 and another in position 75 and swap their positions back and forth just by playing.
I wouldn't be the least bit surprized to see 2 or 3 slashdot accounts that are really run by the same person. One with extremely high karma, one with extremely low karma. I wouldn't be surprized to see the two accounts flaming each other. I wouldn't even be surprized to see someone with a negative fifty karma fighting upto a positive fifty karma.
Slashdot has become a mud due to karma. This is the danger of extending any system of reward and punishment that is synthetic to the real process at hand. It's not all bad, we just need to realize what is happening. now that I know how to play the game, you'll see a lot more posting from me, oh and by the way, I usually try to play the paladin role first.
There are some ways slashdot could capitalize on it's new found role... I would like to see the ability to only view say... score 3 to 5... or see only score -1 to 0... that would be some what interesting wouldn't it? Theoretically all you would see is troll and insults in the range -1 to 0. In a strange space-moose sort of way it might be entertaining. I know there are some of us playing the evil troller role who would love this tool to help us rack up more negative karma.
Mom gives you your mitochondrial DNA which makes tracing maternal ancestry relatively easy. Paternal ancestry is harder since Dad only contributes sperm and blood type components. So, even tho' we can tell who your great-to-the-nth-power grandma is, I'm afraid we still don't know who's yer daddy.
Slashdot Mirror
Of all the "great geeks" that you interviewed in your specials, who was the most fun in person?
//
Which of your specials is your favorite?
"T of the N" I and II are both recommended viewing for freshmen entering in the Computer Science curriculum at my university. What other works do you think would give a good introduction to the history of computing?
What do you think will be the most valuable computer programming language to possess as a skill in the next few years?
What do you think a freshman neophyte programmer should learn as their first programming language?
My curiosity comes from my previous teaching experiences teaching "Introduction to Computer Programming" to college freshmen. So I suppose the kinds of answers I'm digging for are more academically bent. I'm curious to know how you think Universities should be directing NEW geeks along their careers... or whether you believe a college education is truly valuable anymore?
--// Hartsock
A nearer-term application is cloaking.
//
and until I read it, I wouldn't have believed it. Could this technology eventually make radar systems obsolete? What would that do to our missle defense systems? Could I put one on my car to avoid speeding tickets?
--// Hartsock
I'm curious to see how the NSA would answer these questions and what it would package for us as their "official response". I'm also curious if the NSA would answer differently to CNN than it would to slashdot... but I have no way of testing that. It should also be noted that I'm not digging for anything, just making small talk, I seriously doubt they would show a schematic for the new version of DES no matter how benign I was.
--// Hartsock
"In the next five years, we are going to move to a counterterrorism model," he said. "It will turn into a witch hunt, unless we stop the script kiddies today."
//
As if there is even the slightest hope of a centralized controlled effort to stamp out "script kiddie" activity. No one can control the internet as long as there is free speech... no one can stop the release of exploits or software as long as people are willing to write them... someone, however, can start a "witch-hunt".
It's not like there haven't been "witch-hunts" before in modern history (Blair aside, I'm thinking McCarthy) and I wonder just how successful that would be given the nature of the internet? I can't imagine a "counter-terrorism" effort doing anything else but causing mass panic and consumption of "anti-hacking" (term used loosely) utilities. I'd have to say that this whole article is nothing but mass-media fodder. Marcus Ranum doesn't give us any really viable solutions I suspect he wants us to pay for them.
--// Hartsock
Unfortuantely I have to agree that JavaScript is most likely the best way to start kids 'gramming. This is because it is both instantly accessable and readily available. The kids get instant gratification and instant feed back from the experience and parents don't have to shell out for an IDE or figure out an SDK until they know that their kid is committed to programming.
//
I have some friends who asked me how to get their kids into programming... they are a very poor family and can't afford much in the way of hardware or software. I'm using gcc on linux almost exclusively now so I'm giving them my old copy of MS VC++ 5.0 but some how I think this is a bit over the kids' heads.
I figure that I could hook the kids with HTML, JavaScript, and then slide them into C++ and OpenGL/Glut in time... with VC they can stay comfortable on Windows until they are "31337" enough for Linux.
Well, these are 13 year olds. They won't be professionally programming for a while... just amature programming... so I guess they aren't PRO-'grammers they are AMA-'grammers!
--// Hartsock
I'm moved to point out that when you simply layer additional features on software without analysing the total design... you are inherently adding additional layers of complexity without properly mitigating risk factors and therefore increasing the probability of failure. But... this being slashdot, everyone else probably thought that too.
//
As a general rule kludged and patched together software usually doesn't work well. BUT you can make a well detailed design that is readily expandable and extensible... ie Apache is designed to be patched together and works well.
The folly here is taking two unrelated products and "slapping" them together. I intuit that "Cyber Patrol" was never designed as a module for the "Gauntlet" firewall... neither was "Gauntlet" designed with a product like "Cyber Patrol" in mind.
The fundamental problem here lies in the design phase of the project... the integrated system design model should have had an over-arching security function point to handle buffer attacks. The problem is compounded by the fact that the Risk Management analysis apparently missed this possibility (buffer overrun), and that the Testing Phase didn't think of testing in this area (buffer overrun attacks).
ye gods! I actually learned something in school! Wait a minute... does technobabble count as learning?
--// Hartsock
Before I went to college I payed my bills by working as a service writer in an autoshop. They had just computerized and I had the responsibility of helping everyone get used to the new system.
//
The mechanics would log parts requests and services preformed at a terminal in the shop and service writers would do the billing and restocking operations. We went through quite a few terminals in the shop because even with a membrane the keyboard would get damaged by spilt oil or the plain old greasy finger syndrome.
Automechanics aren't in general the most tidy of folks. The system would be tortured by various shop disasters. But I remember the keyboard and monitor were forever covered in a thick layer of slime. Fortuantely we had the sense to put the system box in another room.
I'm sure this rubber keyboard idea would have saved a few bucks... well, at least the keyboard would have been happier.
--// Hartsock
I liked how the article refered to "beeping" on a barcode hyper link. I started thinking about it.
//
I can see other uses for this tech. You could embed these barcodes on canned food so if you needed to get the ingredients you could *beep* on the can... if you buy a car, beep on it for recall notices... while working on the car you could beep on parts to get repair instructions... if you need to buy a part, beep on it somewhere else and order it online... Need a light bulb? beep on the burnt out one...
We could even tattoo the beep codes onto people for their personal websites so when you meet a new person you could just beep them. That alone would save a lot of trouble.
--// Hartsock
Someone needs to start a slashdot-like website for lawyers called: (IAALaIMHO.org) I Am A Lawyer and In My Humble Opinion dot Org. I can see why we need an entire army of lawyers to function in this country. Didn't someone brittish upon hearing about the first draft of the constitution say, "They've written it down? Don't they know they'll be a-wash in lawyers?"
//
--// Hartsock
What is the Linux?
...choose the Red-Hat and we stay in wonderland and see how deep the rabbit hole goes... choose the Blue-Hat and you go back to your life and believe what ever you want to believe... and run windows.
//
Unfortunately, no one can be told what the Linux is... they must be shown.
--// Hartsock
I certainly hope ATI is paying attention. I absolutely love the ATI hardware, but you're absolutely correct... ATI drivers suck.
//
It's such a shame that such beautiful hardware has to be hobbled by such awful software.
*LoL* Linux on x86 is beautiful software hobbled by awful hardware! The irony is killing me.
--// Hartsock
I'd love something like that so I could read webzines in a recliner or in bed instead of knealing at my console all the time. Wouldn't have to be under $500 if it had a Really Usefull Engine.
//
--// Hartsock
It won't really affect "us" in the PC world for a while. There are fundamental changes that the Personal Computer will have to go through first before 0.07 micron chips for a Personal System make sense. The effect will hit the big time server and super-computing centers first, which is natural.
//
I doubt that a 0.07 micron chip will be used in anything for the average consumer for over a decade. By then we will hope-fully have a "PnP" type parallel CPU array and Fire-Wire type PnP for hot swapping peripherals... making 150 GHz not all that impressive.
--// Hartsock
Legitimate Spam knows who it's daddy is.
//
seriously, it's not nearly as bad as illegitimate spam... where you don't know if the message is forged or what. At least with legitimate spam you can complain.
It amazes me how many people love spam... sending spam... getting spam. Really, I'm almost liable to think that spam isn't so bad... nah. It is.
--// Hartsock
My only major complaint with the old D&D saturday morning cartoon was that the characters each could only have one magic item. That always bugged me... I had trouble to sticking to only seven magic items for my paladins! So, I'm to gather that this party never could manage to accumulate or hold on to any items?
//
I know, I know it's just a TV show.
But don't you think that at least Cavalier could at least get a friggin' sword or something? Sure give the coward the best AC and no weapons!
--// Hartsock
*start sarcasm*
//
Your observation of PEAR affects the results of their studies remotely. If you wouldn't look so hard at them you wouldn't change the state of their results. See, it's a quantum mechanical effect! So, stop looking into their research with an unbiased mind-set, you must believe that their research is producing results with out ever analysing it. Then, and only then will you see... the amazing truth?
*end sarcasm*
--// Hartsock
You've really hit on something. The Hacker ethos is the Cowboy ethos. Cowboys could be good or bad, and there was no confusion about it. If you had a black or white hat (or red) you were still a cowboy.
//
Justice was won in the old west by the people of the old west since the government couldn't reach that far. The Hacker could be the guy commiting a crime to save the villagers, or he could be leading a gang to rob them... all in the cybernetic prarie land.
I'm really intrigued by your idea... it goes to show that people are still the same, the technology just changes. I know if I were in the 1800s I'd be a cowboy on the frontier for the same reason that in the 2000s I'm on the technological frontier... it's where the action is.
I'm going to rent this movie tonight.
--// Hartsock
The international space-station is turning into one fabulous hack. Us software geeks should pay serious attention to the developments on the space-station not because it's "cool" or anything but because it represents one of the largest projects humanity has ever undertaken next to the construction of Operating Systems.
//
An old prof. at my U. loves to point out that MS Windows, the Great Pyramids, and the Great Wall, all share approximately equivalent numbers of person hours in them. So, he asks... what makes the great wall and the pyramids stand for centuries and Windows crash almost daily?
The answer is (according to my prof.) that by the time of the pyramids and the great wall, construction was a technology that humans were very familiar with. The project was huge but the tech was well known. Software and space-stations are brand-new, and therefore a certain amount of instability will be inherent in the project.
(* microsoft flame & linux chest-beating omitted *)
What intrests me in the space-station aside from the coolness factor are "patches" like the one posted in this article. NASA is slapping together a mission to prevent catastrophic falure of the project... its a hack. A quick and dirty fix until other team members get their act together. I've seen this millions of times in software-engineering projects.
Open-Source is an intriguing way of dealing with enourmous projects. I think that NASA could stand to learn a few lessons from OS development... as well as OS building from NASA. I find this an intriguing problem set... enormous projects in a short time with huge unknowns... and no one pays attention unless you make a mistake and blow something up.
BTW:
Anybody got numbers for the person hours spent on any given linux distro?
--// Hartsock
Oh yeah? Well, my first programming project was a xerox copier! It didn't have ANY RAM, you had to grab a student and hand them a piece of paper with what buttons to push... then they'd stand there all day poking at the face plate! Now that's coding on the bare metal without a whole heck-uva lotta system resouces!
//
--// Hartsock
The demo is over a hundred megs. I'm 23, and I remember saving up money for a 40MB hard drive and a 2400 baud modem.
*lol*, I can't help but recall that my 32MB video card has more RAM than my first system! Darn kids these days and their new fangled graphics.--// Hartsock
I've been reading slashdot just barely long enough to remember there being no moderation. I used to post alot, then I stopped because I didn't get a whole lot of karma.
//
Until recently I haven't done a lot of posting. My account was set to see only score:3 or better ranked comments and I would only read the top 3 comments. But that changed recently. I've pretty much figured out that you only get moderated up if you are in the first 50 posts or so, say something good, and if you have a positive karma, it probably influences the moderator.
As for the guys gunning for negative karma. Negative karma is so much easier to come by rather than positive karma. The negative karma points can be gleaned on just about any new story that is still active. So, some posters are having fun raking up negative karma points.
The resulting behaviours are similar to stuff I used to see way back when on the old BBS systems. Some guys play the good guy part to the hilt and strive to earn positive karma. Some guys wallow in thier negative karma, seeing themselves as 3l33t evil dudes... the negative karma gives status.
So, slashdot has inadvertantly become a MUD-like environ (I don't really understand the new ones but I do remember things like them from my Trade Wars days where I was Commander Zarf not Zarf like you're thinking tho'). There were always the guys who prided themselves on getting as low an experiance and alignment as possible.
Now the strange bit, often the guys who were the ones with 120 days play-time and 12 xp with a -1200 alignment were the same ones who where playing other characters who were on the top ten list. strange right? What I would watch some of these amazing players take one character say in position 3 and another in position 75 and swap their positions back and forth just by playing.
I wouldn't be the least bit surprized to see 2 or 3 slashdot accounts that are really run by the same person. One with extremely high karma, one with extremely low karma. I wouldn't be surprized to see the two accounts flaming each other. I wouldn't even be surprized to see someone with a negative fifty karma fighting upto a positive fifty karma.
Slashdot has become a mud due to karma. This is the danger of extending any system of reward and punishment that is synthetic to the real process at hand. It's not all bad, we just need to realize what is happening. now that I know how to play the game, you'll see a lot more posting from me, oh and by the way, I usually try to play the paladin role first.
There are some ways slashdot could capitalize on it's new found role... I would like to see the ability to only view say... score 3 to 5... or see only score -1 to 0... that would be some what interesting wouldn't it? Theoretically all you would see is troll and insults in the range -1 to 0. In a strange space-moose sort of way it might be entertaining. I know there are some of us playing the evil troller role who would love this tool to help us rack up more negative karma.
--// Hartsock
A rack mounted server is the obvious use... a more creative use is to build autonomous stinging robots to annoy your neighbors and house-guests!
//
--// Hartsock
Buy real estate now! It's sure to go up in value when we have to compete with the andromedieans for the same space!!!
//
--// Hartsock
Mom gives you your mitochondrial DNA which makes tracing maternal ancestry relatively easy. Paternal ancestry is harder since Dad only contributes sperm and blood type components. So, even tho' we can tell who your great-to-the-nth-power grandma is, I'm afraid we still don't know who's yer daddy.
//
--// Hartsock
So what if HDTV pushes double the bandwidth, there's nothing good for them to push at us! we need double the bandwidth for TCP/IP not for NTSC.
//
--// Hartsock