It's no different than if their books on military hardware maintained that Canada had orbiting launch platforms capable of launching creme pies at any government official.
Except then it would be the truth!
It's part of the NSA/CIA/FBI/RSA/KGB/CHS/NBC/CBS/HBO/Showtime/Playb oy/ComedyCentral/Illuminati/Bozo-the-clo wn conspiracy! Their eventual hope is to be able to launch a creme pie at any person in the world within 0.05 seconds of that person uttering the words, "I sure could use a creme pie."
Right now, even as I type, armies of trained nanobots are scurrying through your room, implanting hidden circuts to listen for the words of what they call "the creme pie death wish"... The launching platform actually is the Hubble telescope. It creates it's creme pies by using a solar oven (which you can't see because it's totally black, using alien technology to mix the paint) to gather heat from the sun to cook the pie crusts, which NASA has been delivering slowly, for testing purposes. The creme is made using a wonderful new superconducting technology which has been kept secret by the oil companies, because the creme gets 120 MPG when mixed with dryer lint.
Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they're not really after you.
I recall when I first went to college. They had hundreds of computers all over the place (mostly Pentiums), and not a single one had a hard drive. They booted from a network server, mapped all the drives out, and ran just fine, all through the network. Admittedly, they used a bunch of custom software, and MS-DOS 5-6, but I'm sure it wouldn't be hard to do something like that with Linux. But it'd be just as pointless.
You see, about 2 years later they started scrapping that whole idea, because the fact was you couldn't get any actual work done that was useful. You could run Windows or XWindows if you really wanted, but the network traffic got so unbearable that usually, you didn't bother. They became e-mail checking machines and that was about it.
Storage is cheap, administration can just as easily be done by some good scripting. No need to waste your bandwidth by an obscene amount.
While we certainly have some amazing, wonderfully talented and creative people in the/. community, I don't think we can consider ourselves "one of the largest collection of intelligent people on the planet."
Of course/. is "one of the largest collection of intelligent people on the planet." It just a matter of defining your terms correctly, and using correct English.
First, Slashdot has a large number of intelligent people. Not the brightest people on the planet (some are), but they are intelligent. Intelligence != genius here.
Second,/. has a subscriber base of what now? 300,000? 400,000? The majority of these are probably one time signups or throwaway accounts, so I'd say maybe 15% - 25% actually participate in the forums (these are rough numbers I just made up).
So, figure 25% of 400k, and that's 100,000 people. Even if the majority of those are idiots (stupid first post people), that's still ~50,000 bright people. Even allowing for the fact that I totally made up these numbers should give around ~(10k - 20k)...:-)
That's a whole lotta smart folks.
This egotistical view feels good, I'm sure, but I think we equate our knowledge of computers, the net, and linux too often to that of intelligence.
No, I equate intelligence to the ability to learn new things, to adapt to new situations.
To tie one own shoes.
I'm not saying this forum doesn't know a lot about the 'net, about computers, about Linux. They do. But a human being knows more than one thing. When was the last time you met a person who could do ONE thing and ONE thing alone? Well.. an intelligent person then. I know several managers who can't even do that one thing.
The point is that people who participate in/. aren't usually one-shot people. They're usually computer people by and large, general technologists, and then, well.. we all have our hobbies.
Too bad I was out of town when that article appeared, otherwise, I'd have thrown my $1.95 in (inflation is a bitch)..
Still, after having read the original article now, and all the comments, I'm glad someone is at least doing it right.
We read all these articles (usually by big name news sources) that get posted to/. , and the majority of them have a lot of errors, misinformation, FUD, etc.. While we can easily tear them apart here in comments, those comments are not read by the majority of the mass public who read these articles and do not read/. Therefore, they don't have the whole truth of the story, and their thinking is biased based on the crap the news media puts out.
The best thing about/. IMO, is the simple fact that you get one of the largest collection of intelligent people on the planet coming together to give you the truth behind the headlines. Sure, you get some crap thrown in there because of the open nature of it, but that's a small price to pay, isn't it? If I want to know the truth behind the latest news, I simply check/. and turn on the moderation. Even if it's not the whole truth, it sure is a bunch of interesting informed opinions.
The best time of the year to buy, I've found, has always been in the middle of the year. Prices, for the past few years, seem to bottom out in June, and then slowly rise to peak in October/November. They should start dropping like a brick soon and, by the middle of next year, you'll wonder why you ever spent $80 for 128 megs of SDRAM when it's $40 now.
I would have no problem spending $80 for 128 megs. I do have a problem spending $231 for the same 128 megs. That is the lowest price on pricewatch as I write this.
Now hopefully I'll be able to afford the RAM I need for my new system before X-mas.
It's always the way isn't it? RAM stays so cheap for so long, then I finally start building my system and prices go through the roof. Then, as they're starting to drop again, Taiwan has an earthquake, pushing RAM prices up further (Even if they haven't peaked because of that, they will).. Just perfect. And I refuse to buy RAM for more than a buck a meg.
Oh yeah... now I can get twice as hammered. You see, today also happens to be national Tues-day, always a reason to drink. I got six more celebrations where that came from.
You complete lush. I confine my drinking to days ending in 'Y'...:-)
The report only mentioned black diamond, so I wouldn't get your hopes up for the engagement ring from Neptune. The best question is, what is the most efficient use of diamond, if we can get it like this?
Personally I like Clarke's idea. Build the space elevator.:-)
Of course, we could never get all that diamond in Jupiter, short of actually lighting the planet up and then scouring around for it, much as was done in the book. There's simply no easy way to pull it out of that immense gravity well. Hell, it mostly is the gravity well itself, being at the core.
In other words, let's detonate Jupiter. It could be fun.:-)
Looking closer at this pic and zooming in a bit.. I'm noticing something..
11 Neurons and 30 connections, hmm? Well, in the center (the big black circle) there's 11 little circles (or twelve if you'd call the third from the top on the left a circle.. looks like a mistake to me). Count all the lines going between these, and include the lines coming in from the left (the red ones) and the black one going to the big black circle and you have 30 lines.....
Anyone more knowledgable that I care to figure this one out?:-)
In fact, I'd like an EMP gun to waste the electronics of the next idiot whose car alarm goes off as I walk by it in a supermarket parking lot, or the second time that night at 0-dark-thirty, because they've got the sensitivity set to, "a pigeon shat on my car!!!"
I've been considering mounting an EMP gun in my trunk, aiming backwards mind you, and seeing how it affects cars behind me on the road. I can see enormous practical benefit from this. Cop trying to pull you over for speeding? Just fire off a few bursts of EMP, that'll fix his wagon...:-)
Anyway, if anyone has a spec to build one of these devices, post a link, mmm-kay?
That no-one seems to have ever conducted an unbiased test. Of course, doing that is a little problematic in my opinion, as I would think you would need people who cannot type, and then train them on the various keyboards. Also, the one you learn first you might possibly be better at, and so forth.
Learning is a bitch. Once you learn one way, it's extremely hard to go to another way. Take me for example. I learned QWERTY when I was around 8 years old, and I didn't learn the "five-finger" method or anything like that. My method of typing is basically hunt and peck, with the advantage that I know from memory where the keys are. I get around 50-60 words a minute with no mistakes. I simply know my keyboard. Almost all my typing is done with 4 fingers out of 10. It generally upsets people who see me type, especially if they learned "the right way".
Security hole in commercial package Known crontab exploit in RH box install.
Firstly, we can't yell at Redhat because of the exploit out of the box. Why? Well, NT has a lot of exploits out of the box too. Did they install the NT Service Pack and Hotfixes? If so, then they should, to be fair, apply the fixes for RH6 as well. If they applied Service Pack 5 and not the fixes for Redhat 6.0, then it's their fault, obviously.
Secondly, we can't blame Linux for having a problem because of a commercial third-party product. Would you blame Microsoft because someone got in the NT box via a third party product that was installed on it? I wouldn't, I'd blame the vendor of said product.
We also cannot blame RH or MS for having a bad default box install. This is why they release patches. When MS releases Win2k, it most likely won't have the same bugs that the box NT4 install has. Likewise, when RH releases 6.1, it won't have the same bugs that the box 6.0 has. Simple. They'll both have SOME exploits, which again will be fixed by freely available updates. This is how the update system works, people.
These are not in dispute, excepting that PCWeek has yet to say anything about it either way, AFAIK. If they'd acknowledge anything, no one would be bitching (maybe, as I know how some people just like to bitch).
Some people say that the Open Source model makes it easier to find an exploit for a system. I agree. It truly is a lot simpler to crack a system where you know all the code it is running.
HOWEVER, they forget the flip side of the coin. A system with exploits that can be easily found are found much, much quicker. Also, repairs (patches) to this system can be made by anyone, and distributed freely, and quickly. A problem found on a Linux system is found and a patch is usually out and about the same day. Most of the time, they are simultaneous, since the person that found it, fixed it, and told everyone else how t do so. For proof of this, just go browse the bugtraq list.
Conversely, a problem with a closed source system usually takes an annoyingly long time to fix. Fewer programmers working on the problem means that fewer people know the system, which means the longer it will probably (not always) take longer to fix. The power of parallelism that is at work on an Open Source system is amazing. Plus, with a closed source system, a bug may go unreported for a lot longer. Note the 49.7 day crash bug that was present in all of Win9x for over three YEARS before anyone spotted it. This is not an exploit per se, but it proves my point.
The problem I have with this contest is that information about it is not being dispursed. The linux box went down. Fine. Great. This is a testament to Open Source, in that we found out why, and realized that any boxes out there that are in a "real-world" environment are not susceptible to the same problem. What, you ask?
Let's define "real-world". A SysAdmin is running a server like this. What sysadmin in his right mind doesn't apply the latest patches? Even on NT you apply service packs and hotfixes! By not applying these, you are no longer "real-world". Instead, you are an idiot who shouldn't be running a web server.
Now the nay-sayers say that some home user running this Linux site would be susceptible to an attack, since he may not know that this kind of thing exists. He might not apply patches, service packs, hotfixes. I agree. But the same thing it true if he is running an NT site. Either way, he may not apply patches. But, then his box goes down from a crack. Guess what? He knows now, doesn't he? Learning is hard, and most people learn the hard way. Welcome to the "real-world".
Sheesh. When will these people just get a clue and switch to RF?
One part of a system that I'm working on uses a 2 megabit RF network. It works well, the parts are all fairly cheap. The only real problem is that of power. Since these are PCMCIA cards mostly in laptops or handheld devices, they frequently don't have to power to transmit over a great distance or over a lot of noise. But fixing this is easy. You see, somewhere you have to have a central station that hooks into your wire network. So, you just massively overcover the area with these stations. They're small and cheap too. And practically no setup, although they can be administered remotely by telnetting to one of them.
It's beautiful. Total of maybe 100-120 RF devices in the plant, and 250-300 base stations to get total coverage of every place you just might happen to be. Note that this is a manufacturing plant with one whole hell of a lot of RF noise produced by the machinery, so this overcoverage is necessary. In my office, my laptop (along with about 30 other peoples) goes through one base station at 2 megabits, from anywhere in the building. Only problem is when the wire network goes down, or someone unplugs the base unit. In the plant, of course, the base stations are mounted high in the rafters, so you can't see them anyway and your workers aren't doing something stupid like unplugging them to plug in the coffee maker (which happened once). Plus, adding any new devices to the network (stationary or not) is easy. Just plug in a radio card.
Anyway, RF devices are not new. These cards have been around for a few years, and work fairly well with a little forethought and planning. IR is a clumsy hack whose only use is close range connections. Wiring an office or anything like that is just ugly. MIRRORS to transmit your data around the office? You must be insane.
The experiment will check, very precisely, tiny changes in the direction of spin of four gyroscopes contained in an Earth satellite orbiting at 400-mile altitude directly over the poles.
Okay, maybe I'm not up on my astrophysics, but.. How the hell do you orbit something over the poles? I thought a geosync orbit had to be roughly equatorial. Do they mean a geosync orbit, hanging over the poles? Or am I being stupid again?
Other than the title being a bit obscure, I don't see how this patent could possibly cover internet ordering at all, other than possibly using the net as a transmission device. The patent is fairly specific, being mainly directed towards hotel booking and medical services. They refer to "user terminals" which could connotate a computer system, but from the language is obviously meant to be a separate device, possibly a TV with a box on it.:-)
It describes a lot of methodology, saying that the voice communication goes from here to there, this signal gets returned, we attach to this central processing unit (server), and so forth.
To me, looks like they're trying to build a system that will let you put a box on your tv and order travel tickets, book hotels, and even get emergency medical services. The wording is somewhat broad, but the gist of the document seems to not even consider this to be any form of internet ordering.
You know, I've liked Katz's stuff in the past. Really. I've defended him against those who would seek to have him banished from the realm that is/. Now, I'm not so sure. Has Katz finally lost his mind?
Okay, the Cybercylsm thing is a bit stupid. It sounds just like information overload taken to new, cool hardware. No big deal, but I don't know anyone with this problem, nor have I ever heard of anyone with it. As an uber-geek myself, I like having the latest toys (or at least playing with the latest toys), but damn few of these get used in an everyday life scenario. This is just reality.
And what the hell was this article about? I read it twice, much slower the second time, and I still can't grasp it. Clotho seems to me to be a ridiculous idea. Admittedly it's only a concept, but it just doesn't make a whole lot of sense. Is it filtering your information input? Is it not letting you find out about new cool stuff? How does a web site stop word of mouth? (which is where almost everyone finds out about this type of stuff). What the hell are you getting at? Because a lot of use Katz readers are in the dark on this one, buddy.
I dig the ideas this guy has. Of course, right now all he's done is to stick an unpowered transmitter in his arm, so that he can identify himself easily to his computer, but that's still cool. Here's some of the intresting bits...
Warwick is effusive about the possibilities and has even suggested that gun owners could get implanted to keep them from entering schools or other areas where heavily armed people may be unwelcome.
That bit looks rather stupid and is probably taken out of context...
We were never experimenting about the long term medical durability of the implant. All of our experimentation, which was very successful, was carried out within the 9 days. The implant was not actually designed to fit into the human body. It was in a glass capsule which could have broken or even exploded. It was, therefore, a trifle dangerous!
And that's why it's no big deal.. What the article says is something about "rejection" by the body... But how the hell is that going to happen in nine days? He even admits that it wasn't long term.. Still cool.
We want to investigate the interaction between signals to and from the human brain and computer. The next experiment will effectively provide an electronic short-circuit between the two. I really cannot see the need for keyboards or a computer mouse when such an implant is in position.
Seriously? In two YEARS? Hmmm.. I'd want more details before I'd believe THAT... Of course, if he's just hooking it in so he can read some brain signals, that's fine. Probably would be unable to decode them or anything, but then again, who needs to? Just learn to control the signal using your brain. Feedback is a wonderful thing.
I do not believe a student of Computer Science typically (there are obviously exceptions) gets a good idea of the true power of computers and how they can interact with the world about them.
As a computer science graduate, I find myself offended, but I see his point. Most CS people don't have a clue, being fit, IMHO, only for data entry.:-)
But the uber-geeks I think are the true pioneers. The guys that hang in the Sun labs all day, who rewire the phone systems to auto-dial pizza joints.. These are the people that really understand the computers interaction with the world around them. Of course, we've always got good ol' Al Gore, the man who "invented the internet.":-)
Do you have any advice for someone like myself who is interested in Biotechnology and Cybernetics? ... (iii) Buy my book "In the Mind of the Machine".
Everyone is just blathering on and on about their opinion as to why they did it. The simple fact is that no one will ever know precisely why... However, a lot of the opinions don't see the big picture. People saying that they were on drugs, they were outcasts, yadda yadda yadda..
The whole damn thing.. in fact, pretty much every evil ever committed on mankind by other mankind, is caused by one simple factor. Man has this tendancy to push his own beliefs onto others, and yet has the tendancy to resist against being pushed too hard.
That's it. Simple. Clear. Push a guy too far, he'll snap. Doesn't matter how you're pushing him, or even what you're pushing. All the evils in the world stem from someone thinking, "My beliefs are the only ones that matter."
So stick with that, okay? Deal with it, and move on with life.
"The failure to provide law enforcement with the necessary ability to obtain the plaintext version of the evidence makes existing authorities useless...Law enforcement has tools at its disposal to fight crime, but those tools are rendered useless when encryption gets involved"
Perhaps I don't understand. Free software ALREADY exists to do as good an unbreakable encryption as you want. If you are breaking the law already, what's to stop you from breaking it again, and simply, oh.. not giving away your private key to the escrow service? Hmmm? What the heck would law enforcement do then? Not a damn thing, because the evidence is encrypted! hah!
Key escrow is one of those things that can only hurt those who are honest enough to put their keys in escrow. Criminals wouldn't give away the key to their protected info to the law, just in case the law needed it to bust them! It simply makes no sense.
--- From: "Brad Wardell" Subject: Judgement Day results Date: Fri, 17 Sep 1999 13:46:45 -0400 Lines: 50 X-Priority: 3 X-MSMail-Priority: Normal X-Newsreader: Microsoft Outlook Express 5.00.2314.1300 X-Mimeole: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V5.00.2314.1300 Message-ID: Newsgroups: stardock.os2 Path: prospero.stardock.com Xref: prospero.stardock.com stardock.os2:2342 NNTP-Posting-Host: brad.stardock.com 209.69.142.81
In 1998, Stardock took the position that if IBM had no current or projected plans for a new fat OS/2 client, that it was in the interests of OS/2 users and the computing community in general that a third-party should work with IBM to license OS/2 technology on an OEM basis and make a new client available.
To that end, late last year, Stardock prepared a business plan and opened negotiations with IBM. The wheels of bureacracy grind slowly, but eventually it was up to "IBM" (executive level) to make the ultimate call on proceeding.
For the past 6 months, Stardock and IBM have been working closely together in hammering out the details of an OS/2 client. Everything from potential names down to which minute components would or would not be included. These meetings included multiple in-person meetings with IBM staff and executives here at Stardock's office complex in Livonia Michigan.
With an agreement in principle in place, the last major hurdle was this week in which the IBMers in favor of our proposal (mostly in Austin) presented their case to IBM as a whole.
The call has been made -- there will be no new client from Stardock and IBM has indicated that they have no plans for an OS/2-based client of their own.
Though IBM indicated Stardock had the strongest proposal, they have decided that it is currently not in IBM's or their customer's interests to license any current OS/2 technology on an OEM-basis.
There was never any discord between IBM and Stardock over financials, technical viability, target market, or the like. IBM has simply finally made the decision that a new OS/2 client would be in conflict with their strategic directions.
Stardock would like to extend a special thanks to all the IBMers (and in particular Ken Christopher and Timothy Sipples) who went above and beyond the call in working with us and going to bat inside IBM. Remember when you meet folks like them, who are and have been intimately involved with OS/2, that their hands may be just as tied as yours when the IBM Corporation as a whole sets policy.
Doesn't seem to say anything about whether or not this little gem takes care of the problem that Playstations only recognize CD's with a black surface....Does this take care of that problem? Do you still need the "ModChip" so that the playstation can read the Cds that you burn?
Stick a regular audio CD in there. Works, doesn't it? Good.
The problem isn't with the black surface. Never has been. The modchips out there are to correct a problem with the fact that you can't copy a playstation CD with most burners.
The black surface CD's have a country code on them in a place where burners almost always put something else (i'm not fully conversant with all the details). The playstation reads this, notices it's not the right country code, and voila, no game.
The modchip basically feeds it that code all the time so that it'll still read wrong, but that read data never makes it to the bit where it checks. It's replaced by the correct code.
That's also why the "swap trick" works. You put in a real playstation CD, let it read the code, then swap the cd's before it reads the rest of the cd. It's hard to time right, but can be done (i've only gotten it to happen a few times on my friends system. i don't own one.)
www.wrhambrecht.com is not responding. Wow, that's damn funny...
Well, anyway.. Just so I have something to say, this is not just a good thing, it's a great thing! However, the Dutch Auction of the shares I'm not so happy about. That'll run the price up way too high for any of us lowly poor people.:-(
Slashdot Mirror
It's no different than if their books on military hardware maintained that Canada had orbiting launch platforms capable of launching creme pies at any government official.
b oy/ComedyCentral/Illuminati/Bozo-the-clo wn conspiracy! Their eventual hope is to be able to launch a creme pie at any person in the world within 0.05 seconds of that person uttering the words, "I sure could use a creme pie."
Except then it would be the truth!
It's part of the NSA/CIA/FBI/RSA/KGB/CHS/NBC/CBS/HBO/Showtime/Play
Right now, even as I type, armies of trained nanobots are scurrying through your room, implanting hidden circuts to listen for the words of what they call "the creme pie death wish"... The launching platform actually is the Hubble telescope. It creates it's creme pies by using a solar oven (which you can't see because it's totally black, using alien technology to mix the paint) to gather heat from the sun to cook the pie crusts, which NASA has been delivering slowly, for testing purposes. The creme is made using a wonderful new superconducting technology which has been kept secret by the oil companies, because the creme gets 120 MPG when mixed with dryer lint.
Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they're not really after you.
:-)
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I recall when I first went to college. They had hundreds of computers all over the place (mostly Pentiums), and not a single one had a hard drive. They booted from a network server, mapped all the drives out, and ran just fine, all through the network. Admittedly, they used a bunch of custom software, and MS-DOS 5-6, but I'm sure it wouldn't be hard to do something like that with Linux. But it'd be just as pointless.
You see, about 2 years later they started scrapping that whole idea, because the fact was you couldn't get any actual work done that was useful. You could run Windows or XWindows if you really wanted, but the network traffic got so unbearable that usually, you didn't bother. They became e-mail checking machines and that was about it.
Storage is cheap, administration can just as easily be done by some good scripting. No need to waste your bandwidth by an obscene amount.
The NC is dead, man. Rest in peace.
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While we certainly have some amazing, wonderfully talented and creative people in the /. community, I don't think we can consider ourselves "one of the largest collection of intelligent people on the planet."
/. is "one of the largest collection of intelligent people on the planet." It just a matter of defining your terms correctly, and using correct English.
/. has a subscriber base of what now? 300,000? 400,000? The majority of these are probably one time signups or throwaway accounts, so I'd say maybe 15% - 25% actually participate in the forums (these are rough numbers I just made up).
:-)
/. aren't usually one-shot people. They're usually computer people by and large, general technologists, and then, well.. we all have our hobbies.
Of course
First, Slashdot has a large number of intelligent people. Not the brightest people on the planet (some are), but they are intelligent. Intelligence != genius here.
Second,
So, figure 25% of 400k, and that's 100,000 people. Even if the majority of those are idiots (stupid first post people), that's still ~50,000 bright people. Even allowing for the fact that I totally made up these numbers should give around ~(10k - 20k)...
That's a whole lotta smart folks.
This egotistical view feels good, I'm sure, but I think we equate our knowledge of computers, the net, and linux too often to that of intelligence.
No, I equate intelligence to the ability to learn new things, to adapt to new situations.
To tie one own shoes.
I'm not saying this forum doesn't know a lot about the 'net, about computers, about Linux. They do. But a human being knows more than one thing. When was the last time you met a person who could do ONE thing and ONE thing alone? Well.. an intelligent person then. I know several managers who can't even do that one thing.
The point is that people who participate in
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Too bad I was out of town when that article appeared, otherwise, I'd have thrown my $1.95 in (inflation is a bitch)..
/. , and the majority of them have a lot of errors, misinformation, FUD, etc.. While we can easily tear them apart here in comments, those comments are not read by the majority of the mass public who read these articles and do not read /. Therefore, they don't have the whole truth of the story, and their thinking is biased based on the crap the news media puts out.
/. IMO, is the simple fact that you get one of the largest collection of intelligent people on the planet coming together to give you the truth behind the headlines. Sure, you get some crap thrown in there because of the open nature of it, but that's a small price to pay, isn't it? If I want to know the truth behind the latest news, I simply check /. and turn on the moderation. Even if it's not the whole truth, it sure is a bunch of interesting informed opinions.
:-)
Still, after having read the original article now, and all the comments, I'm glad someone is at least doing it right.
We read all these articles (usually by big name news sources) that get posted to
The best thing about
Truly the future of journalism.
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The best time of the year to buy, I've found, has always been in the middle of the year. Prices, for the past few years, seem to bottom out in June, and then slowly rise to peak in October/November. They should start dropping like a brick soon and, by the middle of next year, you'll wonder why you ever spent $80 for 128 megs of SDRAM when it's $40 now.
I would have no problem spending $80 for 128 megs. I do have a problem spending $231 for the same 128 megs. That is the lowest price on pricewatch as I write this.
"Our prices are INSANE!!!!"
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Now hopefully I'll be able to afford the RAM I need for my new system before X-mas.
It's always the way isn't it? RAM stays so cheap for so long, then I finally start building my system and prices go through the roof. Then, as they're starting to drop again, Taiwan has an earthquake, pushing RAM prices up further (Even if they haven't peaked because of that, they will).. Just perfect. And I refuse to buy RAM for more than a buck a meg.
argh...
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Having to go an erase all you thoughts and writing's for the last ten years just because you got promoted? How ridiculous. How foolish, as well.
If only he'd used an alias (well, okay, not allowed on The Well...) or an anonymous coward method to express himself, his words would still be there.
How sad.
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Oh yeah... now I can get twice as hammered. You see, today also happens to be national Tues-day, always a reason to drink. I got six more celebrations where that came from.
:-)
You complete lush. I confine my drinking to days ending in 'Y'...
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National Techie Day: A good reason to get drunk, as if you really needed a reason.
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The report only mentioned black diamond, so I wouldn't get your hopes up for the engagement ring from Neptune. The best question is, what is the most efficient use of diamond, if we can get it like this?
:-)
:-)
Personally I like Clarke's idea. Build the space elevator.
Of course, we could never get all that diamond in Jupiter, short of actually lighting the planet up and then scouring around for it, much as was done in the book. There's simply no easy way to pull it out of that immense gravity well. Hell, it mostly is the gravity well itself, being at the core.
In other words, let's detonate Jupiter. It could be fun.
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Did anyone else think 2061 was pretty abysmal? Has anyone read 3001? I'm guessing that is about the same.
:-)
I thought it was good, but rather drawn out.
3001, on the other hand, was very good. Quite entertaining. I really especially enjoyed the beginning when they find Frank Poole.
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htt p://www.usc.edu/ext-relations/news_service/release s/art/berger_liaw360x246.jpg
:-)
Looking closer at this pic and zooming in a bit.. I'm noticing something..
11 Neurons and 30 connections, hmm? Well, in the center (the big black circle) there's 11 little circles (or twelve if you'd call the third from the top on the left a circle.. looks like a mistake to me). Count all the lines going between these, and include the lines coming in from the left (the red ones) and the black one going to the big black circle and you have 30 lines.....
Anyone more knowledgable that I care to figure this one out?
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In fact, I'd like an EMP gun to waste the electronics of the next idiot whose car alarm goes off as I walk by it in a supermarket parking lot, or the second time that night at 0-dark-thirty, because they've got the sensitivity set to, "a pigeon shat on my car!!!"
:-)
I've been considering mounting an EMP gun in my trunk, aiming backwards mind you, and seeing how it affects cars behind me on the road. I can see enormous practical benefit from this. Cop trying to pull you over for speeding? Just fire off a few bursts of EMP, that'll fix his wagon...
Anyway, if anyone has a spec to build one of these devices, post a link, mmm-kay?
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That no-one seems to have ever conducted an unbiased test. Of course, doing that is a little problematic in my opinion, as I would think you would need people who cannot type, and then train them on the various keyboards. Also, the one you learn first you might possibly be better at, and so forth.
Learning is a bitch. Once you learn one way, it's extremely hard to go to another way. Take me for example. I learned QWERTY when I was around 8 years old, and I didn't learn the "five-finger" method or anything like that. My method of typing is basically hunt and peck, with the advantage that I know from memory where the keys are. I get around 50-60 words a minute with no mistakes. I simply know my keyboard. Almost all my typing is done with 4 fingers out of 10. It generally upsets people who see me type, especially if they learned "the right way".
But that's just me and I'm odd anyway.
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Okay, here's where it all stands:
Box was cracked using:
Security hole in commercial package
Known crontab exploit in RH box install.
Firstly, we can't yell at Redhat because of the exploit out of the box. Why? Well, NT has a lot of exploits out of the box too. Did they install the NT Service Pack and Hotfixes? If so, then they should, to be fair, apply the fixes for RH6 as well. If they applied Service Pack 5 and not the fixes for Redhat 6.0, then it's their fault, obviously.
Secondly, we can't blame Linux for having a problem because of a commercial third-party product. Would you blame Microsoft because someone got in the NT box via a third party product that was installed on it? I wouldn't, I'd blame the vendor of said product.
We also cannot blame RH or MS for having a bad default box install. This is why they release patches. When MS releases Win2k, it most likely won't have the same bugs that the box NT4 install has. Likewise, when RH releases 6.1, it won't have the same bugs that the box 6.0 has. Simple. They'll both have SOME exploits, which again will be fixed by freely available updates. This is how the update system works, people.
These are not in dispute, excepting that PCWeek has yet to say anything about it either way, AFAIK. If they'd acknowledge anything, no one would be bitching (maybe, as I know how some people just like to bitch).
Some people say that the Open Source model makes it easier to find an exploit for a system. I agree. It truly is a lot simpler to crack a system where you know all the code it is running.
HOWEVER, they forget the flip side of the coin. A system with exploits that can be easily found are found much, much quicker. Also, repairs (patches) to this system can be made by anyone, and distributed freely, and quickly. A problem found on a Linux system is found and a patch is usually out and about the same day. Most of the time, they are simultaneous, since the person that found it, fixed it, and told everyone else how t do so. For proof of this, just go browse the bugtraq list.
Conversely, a problem with a closed source system usually takes an annoyingly long time to fix. Fewer programmers working on the problem means that fewer people know the system, which means the longer it will probably (not always) take longer to fix. The power of parallelism that is at work on an Open Source system is amazing. Plus, with a closed source system, a bug may go unreported for a lot longer. Note the 49.7 day crash bug that was present in all of Win9x for over three YEARS before anyone spotted it. This is not an exploit per se, but it proves my point.
The problem I have with this contest is that information about it is not being dispursed. The linux box went down. Fine. Great. This is a testament to Open Source, in that we found out why, and realized that any boxes out there that are in a "real-world" environment are not susceptible to the same problem. What, you ask?
Let's define "real-world". A SysAdmin is running a server like this. What sysadmin in his right mind doesn't apply the latest patches? Even on NT you apply service packs and hotfixes! By not applying these, you are no longer "real-world". Instead, you are an idiot who shouldn't be running a web server.
Now the nay-sayers say that some home user running this Linux site would be susceptible to an attack, since he may not know that this kind of thing exists. He might not apply patches, service packs, hotfixes. I agree. But the same thing it true if he is running an NT site. Either way, he may not apply patches. But, then his box goes down from a crack. Guess what? He knows now, doesn't he? Learning is hard, and most people learn the hard way. Welcome to the "real-world".
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Sheesh. When will these people just get a clue and switch to RF?
One part of a system that I'm working on uses a 2 megabit RF network. It works well, the parts are all fairly cheap. The only real problem is that of power. Since these are PCMCIA cards mostly in laptops or handheld devices, they frequently don't have to power to transmit over a great distance or over a lot of noise. But fixing this is easy. You see, somewhere you have to have a central station that hooks into your wire network. So, you just massively overcover the area with these stations. They're small and cheap too. And practically no setup, although they can be administered remotely by telnetting to one of them.
It's beautiful. Total of maybe 100-120 RF devices in the plant, and 250-300 base stations to get total coverage of every place you just might happen to be. Note that this is a manufacturing plant with one whole hell of a lot of RF noise produced by the machinery, so this overcoverage is necessary. In my office, my laptop (along with about 30 other peoples) goes through one base station at 2 megabits, from anywhere in the building. Only problem is when the wire network goes down, or someone unplugs the base unit. In the plant, of course, the base stations are mounted high in the rafters, so you can't see them anyway and your workers aren't doing something stupid like unplugging them to plug in the coffee maker (which happened once). Plus, adding any new devices to the network (stationary or not) is easy. Just plug in a radio card.
Anyway, RF devices are not new. These cards have been around for a few years, and work fairly well with a little forethought and planning. IR is a clumsy hack whose only use is close range connections. Wiring an office or anything like that is just ugly. MIRRORS to transmit your data around the office? You must be insane.
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The experiment will check, very precisely, tiny changes in the direction of spin of four gyroscopes contained in an Earth satellite orbiting at 400-mile altitude directly over the poles.
Okay, maybe I'm not up on my astrophysics, but.. How the hell do you orbit something over the poles? I thought a geosync orbit had to be roughly equatorial. Do they mean a geosync orbit, hanging over the poles? Or am I being stupid again?
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Okay. First, here's the link to the patent:
:-)
http://patent.womplex.ibm.com/d etails?pn=EP00738446B1
Other than the title being a bit obscure, I don't see how this patent could possibly cover internet ordering at all, other than possibly using the net as a transmission device. The patent is fairly specific, being mainly directed towards hotel booking and medical services. They refer to "user terminals" which could connotate a computer system, but from the language is obviously meant to be a separate device, possibly a TV with a box on it.
It describes a lot of methodology, saying that the voice communication goes from here to there, this signal gets returned, we attach to this central processing unit (server), and so forth.
To me, looks like they're trying to build a system that will let you put a box on your tv and order travel tickets, book hotels, and even get emergency medical services. The wording is somewhat broad, but the gist of the document seems to not even consider this to be any form of internet ordering.
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You know, I've liked Katz's stuff in the past. Really. I've defended him against those who would seek to have him banished from the realm that is /. Now, I'm not so sure. Has Katz finally lost his mind?
Okay, the Cybercylsm thing is a bit stupid. It sounds just like information overload taken to new, cool hardware. No big deal, but I don't know anyone with this problem, nor have I ever heard of anyone with it. As an uber-geek myself, I like having the latest toys (or at least playing with the latest toys), but damn few of these get used in an everyday life scenario. This is just reality.
And what the hell was this article about? I read it twice, much slower the second time, and I still can't grasp it. Clotho seems to me to be a ridiculous idea. Admittedly it's only a concept, but it just doesn't make a whole lot of sense. Is it filtering your information input? Is it not letting you find out about new cool stuff? How does a web site stop word of mouth? (which is where almost everyone finds out about this type of stuff). What the hell are you getting at? Because a lot of use Katz readers are in the dark on this one, buddy.
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I dig the ideas this guy has. Of course, right now all he's done is to stick an unpowered transmitter in his arm, so that he can identify himself easily to his computer, but that's still cool. Here's some of the intresting bits...
:-)
:-)
:-)
Warwick is effusive about the possibilities and has even suggested that gun owners could get implanted to keep them from entering schools or other areas where heavily armed people may be unwelcome.
That bit looks rather stupid and is probably taken out of context...
We were never experimenting about the long term medical durability of the implant.
All of our experimentation, which was very successful, was carried out within the 9 days.
The implant was not actually designed to fit into the human body. It was in a glass capsule which could have broken or even exploded. It was, therefore, a trifle dangerous!
And that's why it's no big deal.. What the article says is something about "rejection" by the body... But how the hell is that going to happen in nine days? He even admits that it wasn't long term.. Still cool.
We want to investigate the interaction between signals to and from the human brain and computer. The next experiment will effectively provide an electronic short-circuit between the two. I really cannot see the need for keyboards or a computer mouse when such an implant is in position.
Seriously? In two YEARS? Hmmm.. I'd want more details before I'd believe THAT... Of course, if he's just hooking it in so he can read some brain signals, that's fine. Probably would be unable to decode them or anything, but then again, who needs to? Just learn to control the signal using your brain. Feedback is a wonderful thing.
I do not believe a student of Computer Science typically (there are obviously exceptions) gets a good idea of the true power of computers and how they can interact with the world about them.
As a computer science graduate, I find myself offended, but I see his point. Most CS people don't have a clue, being fit, IMHO, only for data entry.
But the uber-geeks I think are the true pioneers. The guys that hang in the Sun labs all day, who rewire the phone systems to auto-dial pizza joints.. These are the people that really understand the computers interaction with the world around them. Of course, we've always got good ol' Al Gore, the man who "invented the internet."
Do you have any advice for someone like myself who is interested in Biotechnology and Cybernetics?
...
(iii) Buy my book "In the Mind of the Machine".
This guy's practical. I like it.
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Everyone is just blathering on and on about their opinion as to why they did it. The simple fact is that no one will ever know precisely why... However, a lot of the opinions don't see the big picture. People saying that they were on drugs, they were outcasts, yadda yadda yadda..
The whole damn thing.. in fact, pretty much every evil ever committed on mankind by other mankind, is caused by one simple factor. Man has this tendancy to push his own beliefs onto others, and yet has the tendancy to resist against being pushed too hard.
That's it. Simple. Clear. Push a guy too far, he'll snap. Doesn't matter how you're pushing him, or even what you're pushing. All the evils in the world stem from someone thinking, "My beliefs are the only ones that matter."
So stick with that, okay? Deal with it, and move on with life.
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"The failure to provide law enforcement with the necessary ability to obtain the plaintext version of the evidence makes existing authorities useless...Law enforcement has tools at its disposal to fight crime, but those tools are rendered useless when encryption gets involved"
Perhaps I don't understand. Free software ALREADY exists to do as good an unbreakable encryption as you want. If you are breaking the law already, what's to stop you from breaking it again, and simply, oh.. not giving away your private key to the escrow service? Hmmm? What the heck would law enforcement do then? Not a damn thing, because the evidence is encrypted! hah!
Key escrow is one of those things that can only hurt those who are honest enough to put their keys in escrow. Criminals wouldn't give away the key to their protected info to the law, just in case the law needed it to bust them! It simply makes no sense.
Silly politicians, privacy is for everyone!
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Since people are having problem with the link:
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From: "Brad Wardell"
Subject: Judgement Day results
Date: Fri, 17 Sep 1999 13:46:45 -0400
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Message-ID:
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NNTP-Posting-Host: brad.stardock.com 209.69.142.81
In 1998, Stardock took the position that if IBM had no current or projected
plans for a new fat OS/2 client, that it was in the interests of OS/2 users
and the computing community in general that a third-party should work with
IBM to license OS/2 technology on an OEM basis and make a new client
available.
To that end, late last year, Stardock prepared a business plan and opened
negotiations with IBM. The wheels of bureacracy grind slowly, but eventually
it was up to "IBM" (executive level) to make the ultimate call on
proceeding.
For the past 6 months, Stardock and IBM have been working closely together
in hammering out the details of an OS/2 client. Everything from potential
names down to which minute components would or would not be included. These
meetings included multiple in-person meetings with IBM staff and executives
here at Stardock's office complex in Livonia Michigan.
With an agreement in principle in place, the last major hurdle was this week
in which the IBMers in favor of our proposal (mostly in Austin) presented
their case to IBM as a whole.
The call has been made -- there will be no new client from Stardock and IBM
has indicated that they have no plans for an OS/2-based client of their own.
Though IBM indicated Stardock had the strongest proposal, they have decided
that it is currently not in IBM's or their customer's interests to license
any current OS/2 technology on an OEM-basis.
There was never any discord between IBM and Stardock over financials,
technical viability, target market, or the like. IBM has simply finally
made the decision that a new OS/2 client would be in conflict with their
strategic directions.
Stardock would like to extend a special thanks to all the IBMers (and in
particular Ken Christopher and Timothy Sipples) who went above and beyond
the call in working with us and going to bat inside IBM. Remember when you
meet folks like them, who are and have been intimately involved with OS/2,
that their hands may be just as tied as yours when the IBM Corporation as a
whole sets policy.
Everything that could be done was done.
Brad
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Brad Wardell
Product Manager: Object Desktop & The Corporate Machine
http://www.stardock.com
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Doesn't seem to say anything about whether or not this little gem takes care of the problem that Playstations only recognize CD's with a black surface....Does this take care of that problem? Do you still need the "ModChip" so that the playstation can read the Cds that you burn?
Stick a regular audio CD in there. Works, doesn't it? Good.
The problem isn't with the black surface. Never has been. The modchips out there are to correct a problem with the fact that you can't copy a playstation CD with most burners.
The black surface CD's have a country code on them in a place where burners almost always put something else (i'm not fully conversant with all the details). The playstation reads this, notices it's not the right country code, and voila, no game.
The modchip basically feeds it that code all the time so that it'll still read wrong, but that read data never makes it to the bit where it checks. It's replaced by the correct code.
That's also why the "swap trick" works. You put in a real playstation CD, let it read the code, then swap the cd's before it reads the rest of the cd. It's hard to time right, but can be done (i've only gotten it to happen a few times on my friends system. i don't own one.)
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www.wrhambrecht.com is not responding. Wow, that's damn funny...
:-(
Well, anyway.. Just so I have something to say, this is not just a good thing, it's a great thing! However, the Dutch Auction of the shares I'm not so happy about. That'll run the price up way too high for any of us lowly poor people.
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