I see a few people complaining that there's not enough good science fiction out now; I beg to differ. Off the top of my head, Egan, Vinge, and Bear have all written some great books in the past few years; and have you ever read "Ribofunk" by di Filippo?
For years I've been using the THE INTERNET TOP 100 SF/FANTASY LIST as my reference as to what science fiction I should be reading. It's not as flighty as a "current bestsellers" list is, but new books do work onto the list in due time. And most of the books on the list really do deserve to be there.
Over the past five years, I've managed to read probably about half of the books on the list, and have an idea about most of the others. No small task, because the list does change over time. (Although looking at it now, I see a few names I don't recognize, which means it's time to start doing more reading).
Saw this letter a few months ago, but it still seems relevant today. (Quote: "The merger is like two starving men agreeing to share a crust of bread.") Short but insightful, highly recommended.
"No feel for numbers" is relative to the problem domain: If these were marathon times we were talking about, someone slicing 26% off the current record would be unthinkable. Beating a box office record by 26% isn't that insane, but it is pretty good.
Trying to locate a bug in a program that makes heavy use of templates, and specifically STL templates, can be infuriating. Besides having your data stored in a obscure data format that's difficult to view through normal debugging commands, you've also got type names that can be hundreds of characters long. The Sun Workshop debugger used to actually SEGV on some of those long names; apparently a buffer in the debugger overflowed. (This problem was fixed a few years ago).
Hiding the implementation of complex data structures makes for easier coding, but makes life hell when you're trying to vivisect a live process. At my work, we do use STL, but in small, measured doses.
Re:Software companies think they can do anything..
on
Spyware Fights Back
·
· Score: 3, Funny
Want EULAs to be declared invalid? Write a popular software package that everybody wants, and then one day, change the EULA to say, "You may not use this software if you are not white." (Or "if you are white"...whatever, the point is to be arbitrarily racist.) If that's a little too radical for you, make it say, "You may not use this software if you are an employee of Microsoft or the U.S. Federal government".
I suspect that the public outcry would have a lot more people scrutinizing EULAs very quickly.
Or write an EULA that for one customer out of 100 comes up with, "You agree to allow us to publish your credit card numbers on the web for all to use." (As it turns out, this isn't very far from a lot of spyware EULAs, it's just much more to-the-point)
In any case, abuse of EULAs has become so widespread that I suspect they're going to end up getting regulated, anyway. Let's hope it's sooner rather than later.
I know lots of you have had problems with IBM drives, but my personal hard drive failure anecdotes all involve other companies. In fact, if you avoid the "problem" drives, I think I'm not the only one who likes IBM drives, because the non-problem drives seem to get pretty good ratings from other people, too.
But now I'm being forced to change brands. So my question to the collective mind of slashdot is: Of the remaining companies, who's the best? I prefer reliablity and compatablity over cost and speed. (Not that cheap and fast are bad; I just usually make the trade off in favor of reliable). Thanks.
Will you look at those morons! I payed my taxes over a year ago! --Homer Simpson
Titanium wedding rings = more torn off fingers?
on
The Sexiest Metal
·
· Score: 2
When I received my order of the engineer ring, one of the speakers mentioned that it's a very good idea to remove the ring while working with machinery, even moreso than with normal jewelry. The stainless steel is much less likely to break than a gold ring, and thus that much more likely to pull your finger off in an industrial accident.
Then again, a titanium ring helped that dude in "The Abyss", so maybe it has advantages, too.
I agree that there's a strong argument to be made for the "back" menu to appear in the context menus everywhere. In fact, a few months ago, this would have been infuriating.
But I've switched to using gestures, and I no longer ever use the context menu for "back"; just a quick flick of the wrist and I'm where I want to be. It's so cool, I'm going to use two syllables here to pronounce the word "sweet": Sah-Weet!
I suspect that the "back" menu item will reappear in mozilla shortly, but in the meanwhile, take this opportunity to try out the gestures feature. You might end up preferring it.
Dear Slashdot editors: A one-time pad is provably unbreakable provided you meet the very strict, precise definitions for what a one-time pad is.
Once you make the slightest change, it's no longer a "one-time pad", it's "a new unproven proprietary crypto system." There are NO exceptions to this rule. Any time you post a story that says, "Company X has a one-time pad system that is different than other one-time systems", they don't really have a one-time pad system, and you're just promoting their snake-oil for them. The OTP unbreakability is a mathematical proof, and you can't change the axioms and just claim the proof still holds!
Seriously, NO exceptions. Don't be tempted by their fancy footwork and wiley ways; they're trying to fool you
Can a company come up with a new cryptosystem that's cool? Yes, but they'll have to do a lot of hard work to prove it. This doesn't meet that standard.
I've got an Ultra 10, which I think is an Ultrasparc IIi processor at 440Mhz, 512M ram, Solaris 8. I'm also using Sun's gnome 1.4 package with sawfish as my window manager, which seems to make the system feel "slower" just all by itself. But the "perceived speed" issue I'm talking about are in comparison to Netscape 4.79 on the same machine, same setup. Mozilla just "feels" less snappy; I have no hard numbers to back this up.
But Mozilla should be quite useable on the Ultra5s. And you can download a nightly build rather than build it yourself. (I've found building on Solaris tougher than other platforms myself, and in fact have given up on it altogether since the nightly builds meet my needs.) Try it and let us know what you think.
Personally, I find mozilla outrageously fast on Windows; faster than anything else I've tried. However, on Solaris and OSX, the performance isn't where I'd like it to be. (But as the graph above shows, it's getting better, and I've noticed it on
OSX.). If you're a user of the Windows platform, and have heard the "slow performance" chatter that goes on, I think you'll be pleasantly surprised.
(In spite of the "I'd like it faster on Solaris" comment, that doesn't mean I don't like it. I still use mozilla exclusively on Solaris too; the tabbed browsing, integrated searching, and killing of popups would make it worthwhile at half the speed.)
There are also a large collection of performance bugs that probably won't make Moz 1.0, but do have a good chance of making 1.0.1. So there's even more good news just a little down the road.
Re:Boyer-Moore String Searching
on
Deep Algorithms?
·
· Score: 4, Informative
I don't even understand what I'm being accused of here. What exactly is the "it" that I tried to "blame on someone else"? I was basically saying that in my opinion (which I tried to explain) shareware usually isn't worth the price. No excuses involved, no blame to be assigned.
Actually, I'll just quote Linus: "
In my opinion, shareware tends to combine the worst of commercial software (no sources) with the worst of free software (no finishing touches). I simply do not believe in the shareware market at all. "
Perhaps I've been spoiled by Linux, but I'm getting into Mac OS X now, and there are tons of little apps that on Linux would be free, but some chump wants $9 for on OS X. Yeah, part of it is me being cheap, but I keep going back to Linus's quote and end up not buying it.
"Shareware + source" might be interesting, even with a non-RMS-compliant license, but I haven't seen it. (And of course, I'd prefer full GPL if possible.)
Hey, Jef: I use Solaris (and even SunOS 4(!) for some of the legacy systems) at work. I also use Windows NT at work. I have Windows 98 at home for games. I have a Linux box at home for networking. I have an iBook on which I run MacOSX and Yellow Dog Linux.
So, Mr Jef "Allowing users to customize their desktops creates a hodgepodge of interfaces" Raskin, I have a question: Have you considered that my life is already a hodgepodge of crazy and different intefaces, and that skins and themes actually let me make it MORE regular?
(Yeah, I know he's not really reading this. But I needed to vent somehow. If Sun, Apple, MS, and Red Hat will suddenly all agree on a common UI, I'll drop my need for customization.)
Several people have pointed out "If I send out one million emails, and have only a.001% response rate, it still was effective." HOWEVER, anybody who has ever worked in any position dealing with the public should realize that if you have 999,900 pissed off people, a small percentage of them are going to be wackos who will do anything to take you down. I guarantee that one pissed-off customer, if motivated enough, can do more than enough harm to counteract 100 good customers.
However, I still think the Spam business is thriving, for the sellers of Spam tools and lists. The fact that everyone gets Spam makes these tools and lists look effective. People think, "I get a lot of Spam and must be effective," purchase and use the tools, and spread the "Spam is thriving" meme some more. In fact, I wouldn't put it past the Spam folks to try to spread the meme even more, and hire a few poor chumps to post to every forum possible that "Spam works." (Play "Spot the plant on Slashdot" with me...)
Find me a company that made money off of Spam, and I'll show you a company that sells tools and lists.
It is profitable, but only to the people selling the SPAM tools and SPAM lists. Nobody, nobody sents their credit card to the poorly worded.ru-originating "Better tasting semen" people. (If you want better tasting semen, you should stick to domestic products!)
The reason it works is because everybody gets those messages, and some people conclude, "Wow, this must be a goldmine, I get these messages every 10 minutes. I should get in on the action." They purchase the lists and tools, send the email, and spread the meme again.
P.S. What I always wonder is: How did the "increase your ejaculation 581%" people get such an accurate measurement?
What I'd like to see in "New Kernel" announcements
on
Kernel 2.5.3 Released
·
· Score: 5, Interesting
Yeah, I know, everybody and their mother whines about, "Why does slashdot post new kernel announcements, wah, wah wah!" And I'm going to do the same, but hopefully I'm a litte more constructive.
What I'd like to see in these announcements is a description of what's changed. Not the changelists; I want the executive summary. Something like "New kernel 2.5.3 released; includes fixes for the FCI bus problems of 2.5.2, as well as the new virtual monitor support!" That would be immensely useful to those of us who don't want to install every kernel and keep track of every new feature, but do like to stay aware of the bigger trends.
P.S. There is no such thing as the FCI bus or virtual monitor support, as far as I know, it was just an example. But if you're smart enough to come up with the executive summary for this release, please, post it. This time and every time.
A while back, for work, I had to download something from Microsoft that required "a Passport account." As it turns out, they accept hotmail accounts for this purpose, too. The particular hotmail account's used here had a "real" name of "Stumpy McGee". However, when I signed up for the account, I did use my real USPS mailing address.
Flash forward six months. I start receiving random mailings from Microsoft, Adobe, etc., warning Stumpy McGee of "Fancy Schmancy Puters" that he's probably got pirated software in his company, and that disgruntled employees are lining up to report him, probably. The letter left little doubt that Stumpy was headed for big trouble. But of course, Stumpy could run the "Self-Audit" software and they would take it easy on him.
My question: Has anybody actually run this self-audit software? (I don't think they have a Linux version, so I was out of luck. Did I say "I was out of luck?" I meant Stumpy was out of luck, not me...) What exactly does the spyware do on your system?
Inquiring minds want to know.
Re:What constitutes intelligence (artificial or no
on
True Names
·
· Score: 5, Funny
How exactly do you define intelligence?
If you define it in terms of capabilities, computers are already faster at
calculations than any human could be. In the absence of a clearly defined
standard of what constitues intelligence, how do we know what the Singularity
IS much less when we get to that point?
You can question whether or not it's truly "intelligent", but when Skynet sends the T1000 killbot after you, this argument will seem pretty academic.
About three years ago, I sat in a theater that was about to show "Wing Commander." Why? Because they were going to show the "Star Wars" trailer. As the lights darkened and the projector fired up, the words "Lucasfilms" showed up on the screen. That was all it took to get the entire crowd to erupt in a tremendous cheer.
Then, Ep I came out.
Recently, I sat in a theater awaiting LOTR. "Lucasfilms" showed up on the screen. The audience collectively yawned. We've already been burned once by Lucas; we're pretty sure that AOTC is going to suck. Jar Jar, a lame-ass title, and now N'Sync pretty much confirm that.
Dr. Dietz used to teach at Purdue, and I had the good fortune to take a compiler course taught by him. On the first day, when introducing himself, he came to the part where he was describing how to get into contact with him. When giving out his phone number (at Purdue, on-campus numbers were 5 digits long) he mentioed that his phone number was "GEEKS". He added, "No, I didn't ask for GEEKS, but when I figured it out, I thought it was pretty cool."
I'm at a LAN party right now, and about half an hour ago, we were playing the Medal of Honor demo. I was shot point blank in the face by someone carrying a rocket launcher point blank. I died. He did not.
Slashdot Mirror
My eyes have flitted over this story on the front page, and every time I see it, I misread the headline as "Maverick Puppeteers Rock Space Access."
That is a story I would like to see, though.
I see a few people complaining that there's not enough good science fiction out now; I beg to differ. Off the top of my head, Egan, Vinge, and Bear have all written some great books in the past few years; and have you ever read "Ribofunk" by di Filippo?
For years I've been using the THE INTERNET TOP 100 SF/FANTASY LIST as my reference as to what science fiction I should be reading. It's not as flighty as a "current bestsellers" list is, but new books do work onto the list in due time. And most of the books on the list really do deserve to be there. Over the past five years, I've managed to read probably about half of the books on the list, and have an idea about most of the others. No small task, because the list does change over time. (Although looking at it now, I see a few names I don't recognize, which means it's time to start doing more reading).
Saw this letter a few months ago, but it still seems relevant today. (Quote: "The merger is like two starving men agreeing to share a crust of bread.") Short but insightful, highly recommended.
"No feel for numbers" is relative to the problem domain: If these were marathon times we were talking about, someone slicing 26% off the current record would be unthinkable. Beating a box office record by 26% isn't that insane, but it is pretty good.
Trying to locate a bug in a program that makes heavy use of templates, and specifically STL templates, can be infuriating. Besides having your data stored in a obscure data format that's difficult to view through normal debugging commands, you've also got type names that can be hundreds of characters long. The Sun Workshop debugger used to actually SEGV on some of those long names; apparently a buffer in the debugger overflowed. (This problem was fixed a few years ago).
Hiding the implementation of complex data structures makes for easier coding, but makes life hell when you're trying to vivisect a live process. At my work, we do use STL, but in small, measured doses.
Want EULAs to be declared invalid? Write a popular software package that everybody wants, and then one day, change the EULA to say, "You may not use this software if you are not white." (Or "if you are white"...whatever, the point is to be arbitrarily racist.) If that's a little too radical for you, make it say, "You may not use this software if you are an employee of Microsoft or the U.S. Federal government".
I suspect that the public outcry would have a lot more people scrutinizing EULAs very quickly.
Or write an EULA that for one customer out of 100 comes up with, "You agree to allow us to publish your credit card numbers on the web for all to use." (As it turns out, this isn't very far from a lot of spyware EULAs, it's just much more to-the-point)
In any case, abuse of EULAs has become so widespread that I suspect they're going to end up getting regulated, anyway. Let's hope it's sooner rather than later.
I know lots of you have had problems with IBM drives, but my personal hard drive failure anecdotes all involve other companies. In fact, if you avoid the "problem" drives, I think I'm not the only one who likes IBM drives, because the non-problem drives seem to get pretty good ratings from other people, too.
But now I'm being forced to change brands. So my question to the collective mind of slashdot is: Of the remaining companies, who's the best? I prefer reliablity and compatablity over cost and speed. (Not that cheap and fast are bad; I just usually make the trade off in favor of reliable). Thanks.
Will you look at those morons! I payed my taxes over a year ago! --Homer Simpson
When I received my order of the engineer ring, one of the speakers mentioned that it's a very good idea to remove the ring while working with machinery, even moreso than with normal jewelry. The stainless steel is much less likely to break than a gold ring, and thus that much more likely to pull your finger off in an industrial accident.
Then again, a titanium ring helped that dude in "The Abyss", so maybe it has advantages, too.
I agree that there's a strong argument to be made for the "back" menu to appear in the context menus everywhere. In fact, a few months ago, this would have been infuriating.
But I've switched to using gestures, and I no longer ever use the context menu for "back"; just a quick flick of the wrist and I'm where I want to be. It's so cool, I'm going to use two syllables here to pronounce the word "sweet": Sah-Weet!
I suspect that the "back" menu item will reappear in mozilla shortly, but in the meanwhile, take this opportunity to try out the gestures feature. You might end up preferring it.
Dear Slashdot editors: A one-time pad is provably unbreakable provided you meet the very strict, precise definitions for what a one-time pad is.
Once you make the slightest change, it's no longer a "one-time pad", it's "a new unproven proprietary crypto system." There are NO exceptions to this rule. Any time you post a story that says, "Company X has a one-time pad system that is different than other one-time systems", they don't really have a one-time pad system, and you're just promoting their snake-oil for them. The OTP unbreakability is a mathematical proof, and you can't change the axioms and just claim the proof still holds!
Seriously, NO exceptions. Don't be tempted by their fancy footwork and wiley ways; they're trying to fool you
Can a company come up with a new cryptosystem that's cool? Yes, but they'll have to do a lot of hard work to prove it. This doesn't meet that standard.
I've got an Ultra 10, which I think is an Ultrasparc IIi processor at 440Mhz, 512M ram, Solaris 8. I'm also using Sun's gnome 1.4 package with sawfish as my window manager, which seems to make the system feel "slower" just all by itself. But the "perceived speed" issue I'm talking about are in comparison to Netscape 4.79 on the same machine, same setup. Mozilla just "feels" less snappy; I have no hard numbers to back this up.
But Mozilla should be quite useable on the Ultra5s. And you can download a nightly build rather than build it yourself. (I've found building on Solaris tougher than other platforms myself, and in fact have given up on it altogether since the nightly builds meet my needs.) Try it and let us know what you think.
Whenever there's a slashdot mozilla article, there's also the seemingly required collection of "It's too slow" comments.
However, if you haven't tried a nightly build recently, you aren't seeing the full picture. this graph shows the recent large performance gains that have recently gone into mozilla.
Personally, I find mozilla outrageously fast on Windows; faster than anything else I've tried. However, on Solaris and OSX, the performance isn't where I'd like it to be. (But as the graph above shows, it's getting better, and I've noticed it on OSX.). If you're a user of the Windows platform, and have heard the "slow performance" chatter that goes on, I think you'll be pleasantly surprised.
(In spite of the "I'd like it faster on Solaris" comment, that doesn't mean I don't like it. I still use mozilla exclusively on Solaris too; the tabbed browsing, integrated searching, and killing of popups would make it worthwhile at half the speed.)
There are also a large collection of performance bugs that probably won't make Moz 1.0, but do have a good chance of making 1.0.1. So there's even more good news just a little down the road.
For some reason, I like string searching algorithms too. Check out this monster list of thirty or so different exact string searching algorithms, complete with description, code, and an interactive java demo for each one.
I never thought I'd spend hours typing "baaabbabbabc" into a java applet until I found that page. :) Educational and cool.
I don't even understand what I'm being accused of here. What exactly is the "it" that I tried to "blame on someone else"? I was basically saying that in my opinion (which I tried to explain) shareware usually isn't worth the price. No excuses involved, no blame to be assigned.
Actually, I'll just quote Linus: " In my opinion, shareware tends to combine the worst of commercial software (no sources) with the worst of free software (no finishing touches). I simply do not believe in the shareware market at all. "
Perhaps I've been spoiled by Linux, but I'm getting into Mac OS X now, and there are tons of little apps that on Linux would be free, but some chump wants $9 for on OS X. Yeah, part of it is me being cheap, but I keep going back to Linus's quote and end up not buying it.
"Shareware + source" might be interesting, even with a non-RMS-compliant license, but I haven't seen it. (And of course, I'd prefer full GPL if possible.)
Hey, Jef: I use Solaris (and even SunOS 4(!) for some of the legacy systems) at work. I also use Windows NT at work. I have Windows 98 at home for games. I have a Linux box at home for networking. I have an iBook on which I run MacOSX and Yellow Dog Linux.
So, Mr Jef "Allowing users to customize their desktops creates a hodgepodge of interfaces" Raskin, I have a question: Have you considered that my life is already a hodgepodge of crazy and different intefaces, and that skins and themes actually let me make it MORE regular?
(Yeah, I know he's not really reading this. But I needed to vent somehow. If Sun, Apple, MS, and Red Hat will suddenly all agree on a common UI, I'll drop my need for customization.)
Several people have pointed out "If I send out one million emails, and have only a .001% response rate, it still was effective." HOWEVER, anybody who has ever worked in any position dealing with the public should realize that if you have 999,900 pissed off people, a small percentage of them are going to be wackos who will do anything to take you down. I guarantee that one pissed-off customer, if motivated enough, can do more than enough harm to counteract 100 good customers.
However, I still think the Spam business is thriving, for the sellers of Spam tools and lists. The fact that everyone gets Spam makes these tools and lists look effective. People think, "I get a lot of Spam and must be effective," purchase and use the tools, and spread the "Spam is thriving" meme some more. In fact, I wouldn't put it past the Spam folks to try to spread the meme even more, and hire a few poor chumps to post to every forum possible that "Spam works." (Play "Spot the plant on Slashdot" with me...)
Find me a company that made money off of Spam, and I'll show you a company that sells tools and lists.
It is profitable, but only to the people selling the SPAM tools and SPAM lists. Nobody, nobody sents their credit card to the poorly worded .ru-originating "Better tasting semen" people. (If you want better tasting semen, you should stick to domestic products!)
The reason it works is because everybody gets those messages, and some people conclude, "Wow, this must be a goldmine, I get these messages every 10 minutes. I should get in on the action." They purchase the lists and tools, send the email, and spread the meme again.
P.S. What I always wonder is: How did the "increase your ejaculation 581%" people get such an accurate measurement?
Yeah, I know, everybody and their mother whines about, "Why does slashdot post new kernel announcements, wah, wah wah!" And I'm going to do the same, but hopefully I'm a litte more constructive.
What I'd like to see in these announcements is a description of what's changed. Not the changelists; I want the executive summary. Something like "New kernel 2.5.3 released; includes fixes for the FCI bus problems of 2.5.2, as well as the new virtual monitor support!" That would be immensely useful to those of us who don't want to install every kernel and keep track of every new feature, but do like to stay aware of the bigger trends.
P.S. There is no such thing as the FCI bus or virtual monitor support, as far as I know, it was just an example. But if you're smart enough to come up with the executive summary for this release, please, post it. This time and every time.
A while back, for work, I had to download something from Microsoft that required "a Passport account." As it turns out, they accept hotmail accounts for this purpose, too. The particular hotmail account's used here had a "real" name of "Stumpy McGee". However, when I signed up for the account, I did use my real USPS mailing address.
Flash forward six months. I start receiving random mailings from Microsoft, Adobe, etc., warning Stumpy McGee of "Fancy Schmancy Puters" that he's probably got pirated software in his company, and that disgruntled employees are lining up to report him, probably. The letter left little doubt that Stumpy was headed for big trouble. But of course, Stumpy could run the "Self-Audit" software and they would take it easy on him.
My question: Has anybody actually run this self-audit software? (I don't think they have a Linux version, so I was out of luck. Did I say "I was out of luck?" I meant Stumpy was out of luck, not me...) What exactly does the spyware do on your system?
Inquiring minds want to know.
How exactly do you define intelligence?
If you define it in terms of capabilities, computers are already faster at calculations than any human could be. In the absence of a clearly defined standard of what constitues intelligence, how do we know what the Singularity IS much less when we get to that point?
You can question whether or not it's truly "intelligent", but when Skynet sends the T1000 killbot after you, this argument will seem pretty academic.
About three years ago, I sat in a theater that was about to show "Wing Commander." Why? Because they were going to show the "Star Wars" trailer. As the lights darkened and the projector fired up, the words "Lucasfilms" showed up on the screen. That was all it took to get the entire crowd to erupt in a tremendous cheer.
Then, Ep I came out.
Recently, I sat in a theater awaiting LOTR. "Lucasfilms" showed up on the screen. The audience collectively yawned. We've already been burned once by Lucas; we're pretty sure that AOTC is going to suck. Jar Jar, a lame-ass title, and now N'Sync pretty much confirm that.
Dr. Dietz used to teach at Purdue, and I had the good fortune to take a compiler course taught by him. On the first day, when introducing himself, he came to the part where he was describing how to get into contact with him. When giving out his phone number (at Purdue, on-campus numbers were 5 digits long) he mentioed that his phone number was "GEEKS". He added, "No, I didn't ask for GEEKS, but when I figured it out, I thought it was pretty cool."
Needless to say, it was a pretty cool course.
I'm at a LAN party right now, and about half an hour ago, we were playing the Medal of Honor demo. I was shot point blank in the face by someone carrying a rocket launcher point blank. I died. He did not.