I've seen all good people...
on
Amazon.Heartbreak
·
· Score: 5, Funny
The company, he soon found out, was a bizarre corporate/yuppie/geek shell-game, equal parts myth, BS, and Yes
Cool! But was it the deep, experimental early stuff from albums such as Close to the Edge or Tales from Topographic Oceans, or the more pop-oriented later incarnations of the band on albums like 90125 and Big Generator?
there is a very impressive hole centered at 70 E and 40 S, between -7000 and -5000 meters, sourrounded by a 0 to 5000 meters zone - what happened there? A huge spacial hit?
That's Hellas Planitia, which is indeed an ancient impact basin. This page provides a good overview of Martian topography, with links to details.
Fans of the old SimEarth game will fondly recall Hellas as the best place to aim ice asteroids early in the Martian terraforming process; being at such a low altitude gives Hellas the highest atmospheric pressure on Mars, so liquid water has the best chance of lasting long enough to do some good if you collect it there.
I'm sorry, but I blame Apple for this one. No data, however warped and horrid, should be able to do this to a drive. That it can do so means that Apple misdesigned the drive (and its device drivers).
I'm reminded of the old C-64 1541 floppy drive, which could be wrecked by malicious boot-sector code that caused it to ram the head repeatedly against the stop until it misaligned itself. But I thought we were twenty years past such silly hardware and software design.
I was pleased to see someone else who instantly recognized Coruscant as equivalent to Trantor. I don't expect to see the Foundation Trilogy on film in my lifetime, so it was nice to see some Trantorian establishing shots, by any name.
Do note that labeling it as "Episode IV" and the subtitle "A New Hope" both came well after the the film was released. Later prints had the title sequence changed accordingly, but IIRC only after _ESB_ came out labeled as "Episode V".
The 'troll' mod in particular makes me a bit confused, but both the 'under' and 'overrated' are odd, too. Is there some storm of oddball mods going on?
Re:What happens when Tuvalu no longer exists...?
on
VeriSign Buys .tv
·
· Score: 2
When the country of Tuvalu finally sinks under the sea (which may happen in 50 years, maybe sooner), I hope that ICANN doesn't bow to pressure to let the domain continue after the ISO3166 country code is withdrawn...
I don't know ICANN policy on this, but I would hope that no country code will ever be withdrawn. After all, historical data (and data about history) would continue to make use of these codes.
(And yes, the RIAA backed off...but the threat was credible enough that it left the lingering possibility that someone could be prosecuted under the DMCA for breaking encryption when invited to do so, if the inviter disapproves of what they do with the information afterwards.)
In some ways, our involvement in Afghanistan has a clear moral justification and purpose, but is a Drone War, conducted mostly by airplanes with the help of some small numbers of ground forces.
One wonders if Mr. Katz has ever heard the words "Northern Alliance", and if he realizes just how many of them have fought and died trying to oust the Taliban.
Along that route, why clog up everyone's email servers with MP3's, when you can just upload it to a FTP server you and your friend have common access to?
Most/.ers have access to FTP servers that they could use in this way. But most AOLers don't. So doing this for the full community would
require expensive high-capacity FTP file servers with giant pipes to the backbone, run either as a public service or as part of a specific ISP offering
expose said giant servers' operators to (RI|MP)AA-led prosecution and lawsuits given all the ripped media that would be stored there
cause the transferred files to take nonoptimal routes between the sharing users. IP is already designed to find a best path; what's the sense in forcing a detour?
So, yes, by all means, use FTP. But do it by putting ftpd on each user's machine, most likely wrapped inside the IM client. And rather than 'attaching' the file to the message itself, tweak the UI so that sending the file looks like attaching, but really triggers an ftp upload.
It's not like it's going to get there any faster as a message attachment. The client can asynchronously alert the receiver when the upload is complete.
What's the problem with this design? What requirement am I missing?
Re:Well, before we all run off and buy Gundam suit
on
The Drone War
·
· Score: 2
Every militarized country in the world wishes it's military was comprised of individuals who purely execute orders.
Not quite true. In fact, one of the factors used to explain the recent successes of the US military is that we train our soldiers, right down to the lowest ranks, to exercise on-the-spot innovation in carrying out their orders, to the point of bending them if the situation on the ground is vastly different from what the orders were based on. This gives our troops enormous operational flexibility compared to more traditional, by-the-book units.
Having the training and authority to see and exploit a sudden opportunity has great value on the battlefield. It will be a long time before robots can pull this off.
Orwell's "Drone Wars" come very much to mind here.
I'm quite certain Orwell never used the term "drone" in this way, and I really have no idea what Katz might mean here. The wars in _1984_ were fought by soldiers (and sailors, and pilots) with technology scarcely different from that of World War II. Even the use of missiles is very small-scale, like the V2s which hit London rather than Hiroshima-scale city killers.
There are certainly reasons to suspect that there is in fact no real war at all going on -- that the whole thing is being simulated, as a tool to keep the populace scared, patriotic, and easy manipulable. (Hmmmmm...) But to the extent the wars are real at all, they are no more automated or remote than WWII was.
John Katz, Ugly American
on
The Drone War
·
· Score: 2
There is no war in recent human history that involved so few humans, at least on one side of the conflict. The most staggering statistic out of Afghanistan might be that the first American combat casualty died nearly three months into the "war."
I'm sure this was immensely comforting to the hundreds of Northern Alliance soldiers who died during earlier phases of the war, which has sputtered on and off in Afghanistan for a decade (and that just in its current phase). Equating "no Americans on the ground" with "no humans on the ground" is the kind of thinking that gets the rest of the world so pissed off at us. And rightly so.
It's not available online, but the January 2002 issue of Scientific American has a very relevant article titled "The Economics of Fair Play". It discusses the nonrational dynamics of how groups of human expect and enforce fairness. Definitely worth a read for open-source economic theorists and fans of intriguing behavioral-psych experiments.
Hello?? Active Directory is LDAP based. Admittedly it's LDAP with the usual "embrace and extend" twists like proprietary Kerberos extensions and slightly non-standard schemas, but LDAP none the less.
It would be more accurate to say that (Microsoft's implementation of) LDAP is Active Directory based. LDAP is just a generic API for querying and manipulating underlying directory services. Microsoft provides an LDAP interface to AD, just as it provides other, proprietary interfaces.
Thinking of LDAP as a storage system is the path to utter confusion. LDAP is an interface spec, more like http than like a web server. Any underlying system can support LDAP queries or http connections if it provides the correct interface behavior.
Slap me with a strongly worded post if I am incorrect, but isn't Active Directory an LDAP implementation?
Yes, it is -- among other things. Remember that LDAP is just an interface spec; it says nothing about underlying representation. Just as XML may be used to report the contents of a database or the results from a calculation or any other data source, LDAP provides a generic front-end on any vaguely tree-like directory services provider. Thereore, Microsoft ADSI offers an LDAP interface along with several proprietary interfaces for use in querying and modifying the underlying directory store.
To their credit, the Microsoft ADSI LDAP implementation is remarkably standards-compliant. I developed an app which authenticated users against OpenLDAP, and extended it to support ADSI as well with minimal effort (mostly involving generalization of assumptions about directory layout, rather than interface changes per se).
What you maybe meant to say (I'm all about our constitutional rights) is something along the lines of protecting a right to fair trial if accused, protecting the right of SOLICITED (opt-in or the like) speech, and an accurate definition of SPAM.
Nope, that's not what I meant to say.
Trying to arrive at a useful and legally enforceable definition of spam is both futile and dangerous. Either you cast the net too narrowly (like the law under discussion, which will stop virtually no spam due to its geographic limits), or you cast it too wide.
For example, suppose we define spam as email of a commercial nature which is unsolicited and unwelcome. Now, let's consider a scenario. I am starting up a new company and looking for investors. I have heard my old college buddy Bob is doing quite well, so I decide to google-search his email address and drop him an email, laying out my business proposal and asking if he'd like to get on board. Unknown to me, however, Bob has since come to hate me, and is furious when he receives my email.
Can Bob have me thrown in jail? Can you come up with an anti-spam statute, written in terms a non-techie lawyer or cop will be able to understand and implement, that (a) keeps me out of jail in the scenario above, and (b) stops any meaningful amount of actual spam?
I'm prepared to be surprised, but I know which way I'm betting.
I'm not sure I like this development. I mean, yes, I am as annoyed by spam as everyone else is, and I'm quite sure there is a special place in hell awaiting the spamlords. But should we really cheer the restraint of speech on the net? Given that, practically speaking, the processing costs are minimal to the point of invisibility, and that perfectly adequate receiving-end filters are available, why do we need or want The Man stepping in to solve this? Especially given that (as others have stated) this won't actually work at all?
What we end up with as a net result (pardon the pun) is that there is a law on the books restricting speech on the net; if this law survives further appeals, it becomes precedent for further laws restricting net speech. Personally, I would rather deal with spam and keep the regulators as far from the net as possible.
I hate it when people intentionally fudge facts on stuff.
"About 65 percent of executives polled by Goldman Sachs said they have no plans to use Linux at their company next year."
Well of course they don't, becuase 99% of them have no idea what is going on in the NOC.
Amen. Amusing case in point: Last year, I attempted to sell an open-source-based intranet solution to a division of a major car company. The FUD flew thick and furious as various CxOs and VPs and Directors of IT debated whether untried, anarchic, scary open source could be allowed to run something as important as their intranet data sharing system. In the midst of the whole chaotic mess, I checked to see what their external, mission-critical, prestige-of-the-biz-riding-on-them web servers were running. Needless to say, the answer was Apache.
The best part was that, when I pointed this out at our next meeting, the result was a roomfull of uncomprehending stares.
I don't understand why the record labels are expending so much effort and political capital on this. I mean, you can rip any CD by just connecting to the analog audio output.
The problem is that most consumer sound cards have very poor A->D conversion, intended for voice rather than music, so the D->A->D loopback ends up being lossy enough that the resulting sound is very noticeably degraded. You can buy high-end sound cards that have good A->D performance, but it's expensive.
Try it with your current equipment (if you're not using a high-end media machine) and you'll hear what I mean.
16
And he causeth all, both small and great, rich and poor, free and bond, to receive a mark in their right hand, or in their foreheads:
17
And that no man might buy or sell, save he that had the mark, or the name of the beast, or the number of his name.
18
Here is wisdom. Let him that hath understanding count the number of the beast: for it is the number of a man; and his number is Six hundred threescore and six.
Re:Where the hell is Microsoft's PR agency?
on
al Qaeda Hacks XP?
·
· Score: 2
That may be the Al-qeada plan to destroy America. make sure all MS products stop working after a certain date.
Not really. While finding the optimal solution is NP-complete, for real world, non-contrived cases, getting a suboptimal-but-close-enough solution gets you within a few percent of peak perfomance. And for most real-world cases, there exist P algorithms which converge on a good enough solution quite rapidly.
IMHO, stopping the increasing number of spam-mails is only possible with legislature forcing opt-in methods for advertisers and huge fines for those who don't conform.
Why clutter the books with yet another unenforceable law -- which will probably be so badly written that it illegalizes sending email to your mom -- when there are highly satisfactory technical responses? A good junk-mail filter (down to and including a hand-rolled.procmailrc) is perfectly adequate spam control.
Slashdot Mirror
Fans of the old SimEarth game will fondly recall Hellas as the best place to aim ice asteroids early in the Martian terraforming process; being at such a low altitude gives Hellas the highest atmospheric pressure on Mars, so liquid water has the best chance of lasting long enough to do some good if you collect it there.
I'm reminded of the old C-64 1541 floppy drive, which could be wrecked by malicious boot-sector code that caused it to ram the head repeatedly against the stop until it misaligned itself. But I thought we were twenty years past such silly hardware and software design.
I was pleased to see someone else who instantly recognized Coruscant as equivalent to Trantor. I don't expect to see the Foundation Trilogy on film in my lifetime, so it was nice to see some Trantorian establishing shots, by any name.
Do note that labeling it as "Episode IV" and the subtitle "A New Hope" both came well after the the film was released. Later prints had the title sequence changed accordingly, but IIRC only after _ESB_ came out labeled as "Episode V".
Troll=1, Informative=3, Overrated=1, Underrated=1, Total=6.
The 'troll' mod in particular makes me a bit confused, but both the 'under' and 'overrated' are odd, too. Is there some storm of oddball mods going on?
(And yes, the RIAA backed off...but the threat was credible enough that it left the lingering possibility that someone could be prosecuted under the DMCA for breaking encryption when invited to do so, if the inviter disapproves of what they do with the information afterwards.)
- require expensive high-capacity FTP file servers with giant pipes to the backbone, run either as a public service or as part of a specific ISP offering
- expose said giant servers' operators to (RI|MP)AA-led prosecution and lawsuits given all the ripped media that would be stored there
- cause the transferred files to take nonoptimal routes between the sharing users. IP is already designed to find a best path; what's the sense in forcing a detour?
So, yes, by all means, use FTP. But do it by putting ftpd on each user's machine, most likely wrapped inside the IM client. And rather than 'attaching' the file to the message itself, tweak the UI so that sending the file looks like attaching, but really triggers an ftp upload. It's not like it's going to get there any faster as a message attachment. The client can asynchronously alert the receiver when the upload is complete.What's the problem with this design? What requirement am I missing?
Having the training and authority to see and exploit a sudden opportunity has great value on the battlefield. It will be a long time before robots can pull this off.
There are certainly reasons to suspect that there is in fact no real war at all going on -- that the whole thing is being simulated, as a tool to keep the populace scared, patriotic, and easy manipulable. (Hmmmmm...) But to the extent the wars are real at all, they are no more automated or remote than WWII was.
It's not available online, but the January 2002 issue of Scientific American has a very relevant article titled "The Economics of Fair Play". It discusses the nonrational dynamics of how groups of human expect and enforce fairness. Definitely worth a read for open-source economic theorists and fans of intriguing behavioral-psych experiments.
Thinking of LDAP as a storage system is the path to utter confusion. LDAP is an interface spec, more like http than like a web server. Any underlying system can support LDAP queries or http connections if it provides the correct interface behavior.
To their credit, the Microsoft ADSI LDAP implementation is remarkably standards-compliant. I developed an app which authenticated users against OpenLDAP, and extended it to support ADSI as well with minimal effort (mostly involving generalization of assumptions about directory layout, rather than interface changes per se).
Trying to arrive at a useful and legally enforceable definition of spam is both futile and dangerous. Either you cast the net too narrowly (like the law under discussion, which will stop virtually no spam due to its geographic limits), or you cast it too wide.
For example, suppose we define spam as email of a commercial nature which is unsolicited and unwelcome. Now, let's consider a scenario. I am starting up a new company and looking for investors. I have heard my old college buddy Bob is doing quite well, so I decide to google-search his email address and drop him an email, laying out my business proposal and asking if he'd like to get on board. Unknown to me, however, Bob has since come to hate me, and is furious when he receives my email.
Can Bob have me thrown in jail? Can you come up with an anti-spam statute, written in terms a non-techie lawyer or cop will be able to understand and implement, that (a) keeps me out of jail in the scenario above, and (b) stops any meaningful amount of actual spam?
I'm prepared to be surprised, but I know which way I'm betting.
What we end up with as a net result (pardon the pun) is that there is a law on the books restricting speech on the net; if this law survives further appeals, it becomes precedent for further laws restricting net speech. Personally, I would rather deal with spam and keep the regulators as far from the net as possible.
Amen. Amusing case in point: Last year, I attempted to sell an open-source-based intranet solution to a division of a major car company. The FUD flew thick and furious as various CxOs and VPs and Directors of IT debated whether untried, anarchic, scary open source could be allowed to run something as important as their intranet data sharing system. In the midst of the whole chaotic mess, I checked to see what their external, mission-critical, prestige-of-the-biz-riding-on-them web servers were running. Needless to say, the answer was Apache.
The best part was that, when I pointed this out at our next meeting, the result was a roomfull of uncomprehending stares.
Try it with your current equipment (if you're not using a high-end media machine) and you'll hear what I mean.
16 And he causeth all, both small and great, rich and poor, free and bond, to receive a mark in their right hand, or in their foreheads:
17 And that no man might buy or sell, save he that had the mark, or the name of the beast, or the number of his name.
18 Here is wisdom. Let him that hath understanding count the number of the beast: for it is the number of a man; and his number is Six hundred threescore and six.
Not really. While finding the optimal solution is NP-complete, for real world, non-contrived cases, getting a suboptimal-but-close-enough solution gets you within a few percent of peak perfomance. And for most real-world cases, there exist P algorithms which converge on a good enough solution quite rapidly.