Microsoft IS being anti-competitive. No Question. However, I think that the more important issue here is freedom of software.
ANY company should be able to develop ANY damn piece of software they want. If it undercuts another piece of software, hey, that sucks, get a net.
I am forced to use NT4 at work, due to the fact that the system I'm programming is forced to run on it (long story). And, I hate to say this, but Internet Explorer is much, much, much better than Netscape on this platform. WAY better. It has more security problems, true. A lot of "features" turned out to be bugs in the long run. But it works better, doesn't crash nearly as often, and is one hell of a lot faster than Netscape is.
Netscape could have beaten IE. Anti-competitive practice aside, there was a point, when IE was being integrated into the OS, that Netscape could have utterly destroyed IE forever. All they had to do was usurp the integration away from IE. IE became the windows default shell (it's not anymore, BTW.. IE5 doesn't even give you that option anymore). If Netscape had given you that option, back in Netscape 3, IE would have been toast. OEM's would have integrated the thing before anyone else had the chance.
And let's face it. Netscape had one hell of a monopoly on the market. They had almost total market coverage. For a long time, Netscape was the ONLY browser ANYONE used. They assured this by: a) giving it away for free b) using netscape propietary extensions (CENTER anyone?) c) always supporting the latest HTML specs d) making it into an overall system. (e-mail, ftp, gopher, everything but telnet)
Then, they made a lot of money by selling licenses to businesses, for the same free product they gave to individuals, at unreasonably huge rates. We're talking upwards of $1000 a copy here. (I know this is true, since I worked for a company that had to buy these damn things. The paperwork was immense.) And the businesses, at that time, had no other choices, since nothing else was on the market.
Let's face it. Netscape had it, they lost it. Microsoft may have been a bit anti-competitive, but Netscape sure as hell had a monopoly. Don't nail one without the other too.
Is it just me, or are both of these groups (anti-online and attrition.org) complete idiots?
What's the point of saying this group did this or this group did that? Who really cares? Why not just say the site was hacked and not give the groups any attention at all?
It's only because of sites like these that claim to have the eyes of important people and that will report on crap like this that these hacks are perpetrated at all. You cannot tell me that someone would go out of their way to hack some site and muck with the web page (which is very stupid anyway), if they knew no-one would report on it.
I know of no widely accepted standard that has proven this statment. If such is "given," then I ask, by whom?
Pretty much by any person using his brain.:-)
Have you ever felt genuine faith before? If not, you have no place to say it is irrational. Feelings afterall, are very rational.
Wrong again. Feelings are irrational. Get a dictionary. Rational describes that which is reasoned. Do you reason how you feel? If so, I feel sorry for you.
Or maybe you'd like to talk about bio-chemistry. The feelings are situated in the thalamus (sp?). The center of reason is in the cortex. These are two entirely separate structures.
Describing faith to someone is difficlt to do with words. I immagine it would be something like explaining taste to someone who has no tongue; or color to a person with no eyes to see.
I perfectly well understand what faith is. Faith is a belief, in the face of lack of evidence, or in the face of evidence to the contrary, that something is true. And there is nothing wrong with that. I'm fairly sure that alien intelligences exist, even though I have no proof of that. One could say I have faith this is true. It is an irrational assumption to make, but there it is.
And so the prospect of faith, a belief in something with no physical evidence, can only be thought as irrational to those who have never felt it before. Or to those whose faith has let them down and have become disillusioned with their beliefs.
Any thinking person, with or without faith, must recognize that faith itself is irrational. Don't define irrational as "a bad thing" until you understand what it means. Irrationality is a good thing. A very good thing. It's what makes humans human, instead of vulcans. Didn't you ever watch Star Trek?:-)
Many theists, though, just like to argue.
So do many atheists.:-)
Some hold the opinion that, to find truth, one must doubt all until tangible evidences present themselves. I say, to have a truly open mind, one must not doubt, but seek. It is not bad to believe; in believing we discover. Only when we are unable to change our beliefs is when we have truly closed our minds.
True. I do not hold that the existance of a god is impossible. There is damn little that is impossible. But I do hold the belief in the existance of a god is, and has always been, a bad thing for all of humanity. This is because belief, in general, closes those minds. A mind that holds a belief against all reason to the contrary is closed, by definition. And that's how most beliefs humanity holds work.
I find that interesting: around Slashdot, the assumption most often expressed is that anyone religious must be an irrational fool.... Maybe the assumption that religious = irrational is at fault?
Religion is irrational. Faith is irrational. These are given. A religious person needs no proof of the religion, and this is irrational. Bt, that's not the problem.
The problem lies in the fact that many people assume that a person is irrational in all they do, all the time. In other words, people think irrational==fool, which is clearly not true.
Personally, I have no faith in a god of any sort. I do have faith in other things, and much that I do is irrational, even downright stupid. But, in certain areas, I do things very rationally indeed. I do not condemn a person for believing in a god, since what they believe is their own business. I do condemn a person for believing in a god and then condemning me because I do not. Usually I will not associate with these people.
Once I met a guy who discovered I was an atheist (not something I talk about normally, but he brought it up), then he got his whole damn family trying to convince me otherwise. I think I did fairly well in the debates with them, considering I know the Bible a LOT better than they did (So few believers ever really read the thing cover to cover...), but it never seemed to do any good. Eventually I had to threaten him that I'd kill his cat if he didn't drop it. (Believe me, the situation was out of control. I love cats, really. Dogs, on the other hand...) They backpedaled quickly.
Anyway, the point is that few non-believers get upset with believers, it's usually the other way around. Then the non-believer gets upset because the believer won't drop it. We atheists have (usually) put a hell of a lot of thought into the subject, and are quite satisfied with our beliefs or lack thereof.
The original aim of our "CAM-Brain Project", as stated at its beginning in 1993, was to build an artificial brain with a billion artificial neurons, by the year 2001, using evolved cellular automata (CA) based neural circuit modules. In reality, 6.5 years later, this number will be maximum 75 million neurons and 64,000 modules. These CA based neural network modules grow and evolve at electronic speeds inside special FPGA based hardware called a CAM-Brain Machine (CBM), which can update CA cells at a rate of 130 Billion a second, and can evolve a neural net module in about 1 second.
Questions I have:
a) These CA Modules.. Are they discrete units? Are you just tossing a bunch of gates onto a chip and then connecting them randomly or what? Details, man.. All I wanna know is what you consider to be the "individual neuron".
b) How the hell are you gonna get a billion of these inside that little cat thing, and still have room for wiring, motors, etc. Build something bigger, like a good sized tiger that you can ride around.:-)
Hopefully the major US Linux distributions (Debian, Redhat) will soon ship with GPG preinstalled. When that happens you'll see other modifications put in, like say, automatic downloads of public keys from keyservers and automatic encryption in sendmail. After which GPG/PGP should really take off.
Damn right. I'd use encryption on all my e-mail, IF the process of encrypting and decrypting the e-mail was transparent. GPG/PGP/Whatever. I feel that if this process was totally simple, everyone would use it. Heck, even Microsoft would be forced to add it to Outlook Express, although with the encryption broken badly.:-)
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Perhaps explanations are needed.
on
Moderation Ideas
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· Score: 2
I find that a lot of posts are marked as "troll", and upon reading them, they are in fact not trolls at all. Do a lot of the people moderating not fully understand what a troll is?
Perhaps we should quote the Jargon File:
troll troll/v.,n./ [From the Usenet group alt.folklore.urban] To utter a posting on Usenet designed to attract predictable responses or flames. Derives from the phrase "trolling for newbies" which in turn comes from mainstream "trolling", a style of fishing in which one trails bait through a likely spot hoping for a bite. The well-constructed troll is a post that induces lots of newbies and flamers to make themselves look even more clueless than they already do, while subtly conveying to the more savvy and experienced that it is in fact a deliberate troll. If you don't fall for the joke, you get to be in on it.
Some people claim that the troll is properly a narrower category than flame bait, that a troll is categorized by containing some assertion that is wrong but not overtly controversial.
Let's define FlameBait while we're at it:
flame bait flame bait/n./ A posting intended to trigger a flame war, or one that invites flames in reply. See also troll.
All I really ask is that, when a person is moderating, keep these ideas in mind. Don't mark something stupid a troll just because it's stupid. Stick to the definitions of the terms. If you simply want to mark something up or down, use over/under-rated..
trolls make for some of the funniest threads there are. Yes there are the occasional assholes but I find that many comments moderated down to -1 are actually pretty damn funny. slashdot (the community) needs to get over itself and lighten up.
Look, there are times when I consider a well-written troll to be one of the more outstanding examples of modern prose. Plus they are truly unique. I liken this to a city next to a forest. The troll is a very interesting creature, spawned from the Usenet, and the troll can lead a very interesting life, causing wonderfully hiliarious havoc, by blundering out of the forest, knocking down mailboxes, kicking over fire hydrants for the children to play in the water, peeing on telephone booths, then disappearing into the trees, leaving wonderful confusion in his path. Also usually leaving lots of hair lying around.
But a lot of the time I'm looking for something good to read, to stimulate the mind. A discussion with those I consider to be my peers. I liken it to a formal dinner party. In this case, the average troll is a horrible beast, blundering around the room, knocking over the furniture, spilling all the beer on the rug (okay, not that formal of a party), and generally making enough racket to be unable to have a rational conversation.
Moderation allows each person to selectively turn off the trolls in their vision. In other words, if you want to read the trolls, go for it. Just don't expect to force everyone do to things your way.
Funny, my position is just the opposite: if it needs advertising, it must be some crap that nobody wants nor needs. Everything that is genuinely useful doesn't need advertising; people will search for and find it themselves. Ever seen an ad for potatos?
Yes, when I was in Idaho, but one thing everyone has seen is the "Got Milk?" ads. What are they advertising? Milk. Is it genuinely useful? Well, cows dig it, so do babies, I like a glass now an again.
Sorta blows your argument straight to hell, huh?
Advertising sucks. But it's just another way to pay for a service. However, we internet denizens (yep, I live in the 'net. Well.. In an apartment next door, at least) have a bit more power than your average TV consumer. The web is not like TV, it is interactive, and we choose what we wish to see. There is no way to force an ad onto someone's screen if they have the knowledge and ability to keep you from doing it.
I use the Internet Junkbuster. I add domains to it fairly often. I had to add Slashdot's ad server (Adfu) the other day because it served me an ad that was so annoying that I couldn't take it anymore. Sorry Rob, I know it sucks, but I won't abide crap like that on my screen. Be more discriminating with your ads. A simple banner ad is fine, even with animation. But a banner ad does not need:
frames
form elements
layers
javascript
java applets (saw one recently that let you play pong with the mouse, in the background of the ad. Fun, yet annoying)
active x
any form of scripting for that matter (vb anyone?)
or any damn thing else other than a pic and a link. This one had four of the above. Look hard Rob, you'll find it.
But especially, ads do not need cookies.
If an ad server serves me cookies, and I notice it, WHAM, it goes in my cookie blockfile (yes, I know the cookie blockfile is reversed to allow cookies through, but I reworked it a bit).
In other words, don't take any shit from ad companies..
Besides having all the hardware be compatible, a linux notebook needs a keyboard without windows keys.
Steal em.. Where's the code to allow the keys to be used in Linux and potentially reprogrammed to do whatever you want?
Scratch the Windows logo off and get a little Penguin key. Someone should start selling little tiny penguin keys or stickers to go over the windows one. Ahh, if I wasn't so lazy....:-)
I forget which book it was in (#3 I think), but it does go into some detail about how, at first, they wee merely recording responses of people for playback, then they go more sophisticated at it, finally ending up with machine-stored personalities (although they did need the Heechee Technology to go that far). Plus, add in the fact that the Heechee carried their machine stored dead relatives around on their waists (they even called them "ancestors" or "old ones"), and I think you've broken this stupid patent..
>One-in-a-million chances happen nine times out of ten.
Yes, but only in a large thaumic field. For those who don't know, the thaum is defined as the amount of magic needed to produce, out of thin air, three medium sized billiard balls or one small dove.
Seriously, I don't see the need of a code of ethics for computer professionals. The crap codes by the IEEE, ACM and so forth concern professional things that don't really matter to us "hackers" (in the old, correct sense of the word). I have a good job as a computer programmer, and I work at it. I don't do anything to f*** anyone over, and that's fine by me. I've stolen code before; hell, that's practically how I got through college.
But whenever you try to make something "offical" and binding to the many, you ruin it, IMHO.. That's like all the idiots who want to unionize computer people.. It's not going to happen because most computer people think it's a rather stupid idea.
> The problem with this idea is that people's brains differ. To get a vision mod, you would need to map all the myriad connections for your own brain and tailor a device specially to it.
No. You create a mod that fairly generic, then let the brain figure out how to make the connection. The brain is adaptive, right? It may take a while (years maybe) for the brain to learn how to use this new data stream, and you might have some serious issues in the mean time, but it's possible.
a) Speed. Yahoo is slow as hell from most places I check e-mail.
b) At work I am forced to use Outlook Express (on NT4! Bleeeech!). It can directly check my hotmail account. Easy, and it works well.
c) Yahoo sucks. Yahoo has sucked for a long time. I dont ever use Yahoo for anything at all, ever, just on general principle. Ever since Yahoo started offering EVERYTHING, I stopped using it. A site should do one thing and do it well, IMHO, and I hate these so called "portals" that try to do every damn thing. Yahoo mail, yahoo auctions, yahoo friggin' maps... The hell with it, fuck yahoo.
After all the crap GT interactive has done to hurt the computer gaming industry (Unreal's way early release, as well as how they screwed id), I hope StarPlay wins enough money to buy those suckers out. Or put them out of business at least.
I use it because it's easy, it's fast (yeah, it is, most of the time), and because I don't like giving my real e-mail address out. I use that address for actual work. I can't have a spam flood on it.
But my hotmail account is practically a throwaway account. If the spam ever gets too bad, I toss it and sign up for another. No loss to me.
Anyway, it is a good service, for a free one. Anyone using this for any sensitive info at all however, is an idiot.
Okay, what's the point? So the head lives longer. Since you can't regrow nerves (yet), it can't move.. I can't think of anyone who would WANT to go on longer given that: a) you can't move b) you're a freak c) you probably stuck in the hospital for what's left of your life
> However, I don't see the point in taxing "the internet", per se. I mean, if you're going to do it, be fair about it...tax every out of state package, be it mail order, fax order, internet order, phoned in, whatever. But if that were the case, I wouldn't want to mail order something from out of state, who had a local store, and so, pay both state and federal tax on it.
I believe the bill applies to mail order only, not the internet, per se.
Straight from the article... But items that are bought through mail orders and the Internet have reduced the revenue for states and local merchants, Lane said. "We're in the middle of an education crisis," and the bill -- if it's passed -- "will no longer allow companies to skip taxes from where the product was bought," he added.
Looks like a end to interstate commerce being free from taxation, the article just puts an internet twist on it.
Okay, yes, if the client goes down, no problem. But on a proper linux setup, that client never will go down, ever, and you know this.
Honestly. There are Linux web servers out there with uptimes of YEARS. These are production servers.
Yes, the possiblity exists that one of the client boxes may fail. You simply switch over to another box. Heck, the most they appear to be using these for is as dumb-terminals to the HP for their main 911 software, then some other apps, such as Wordperfect and so forth. Nothing seriously difficult about switching to the next cubical's computer...
argh.. plus, the fact is that using pre-tested software, known stable kernels, and a proper network setup, you can't take the suckers down. I personally have a very simple pentium 100 system i use for IP-masqurading, web server, file server, ftp server, samba services, and a bunch of automated scripts to do things i don't want to do manually, and it has an uptime of 340 days now. It even controls the lights in my house and makes me coffee in the morning (just added that 2 weeks ago, X10.:-)
I don't believe the tales from M$ or from the linux-gurus. I believe the evidence of my eyes. I know my system will work because it has worked so well in the past. Proof through experience is the only proof worth having.
>BRRRRR the mere thought of that paperclip on a Linux box gives me the willies
I keep waiting for some enterprising programmer to program a penguin helper for Office 2k. He can sit around and berate you for using inferior MS products.:-)
Also, whenever you ask him how to do something in office, he'll tell you how you would do it using a REAL operating system...
You could read a newspaper from half a mile away or see the letters of a stop sign from 12 miles. That's the kind of strength and accuracy packed into the world's most powerful X-ray telescope -- NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory.
Wow.. works in Xray too.. reminds me of that video camera that could see thru clothing (kinda)..
"Now, the new NudieCam! Using fabulous X-ray technology developed by NASA, you can video tape women in their undies, from up to 12 miles away!"
Fermat's Last Theorem, which all/. readers *should* know.. Goes like this:
x^c+y^c=z^c is untrue for any c>2, where x,y,z, and c are all positive integers.
It has been proven. But many reason that the proof is nowhere NEAR what Fermat thought of, because Fermet wrote this in the sideline of some book or paper or something, along with a note saying "a very interesting proof, although I don't have time to write it here," or something similar. Apparently, a simple proof had just occured to him.
The proof that currently exists for this is huge and complicated. Annoyingly so at that. The search for the simple proof still exists, although most people believe Fermet had thought of what seemed a simple proof, but he was mistaken. I think this is probably the case.
Anyway... The draft author is referring to his (appearantly) unpublished work about his proof, or the existing proof, or something that relates to this, but from the comments beside it, he doesn't make reference in it to the theorem itself or the proof of it, just some other thing that's in that paper that has some bearing on this rfc.
Still, the draft is crap and the guy obviously has no idea how the hell subnetting works, or the fact that implementing his scheme would probably be more difficult than IPv6.
Follow the hacker model. If it's broken, throw it away and write a new one.
I find #5 and #9 to be the most funny on this list..
I also find it reprenhensible that Amazon would do something like this without the companies permission. I mean it's fine if the company in question says okay, but to just up and do it? I expect a lawsuit soon.
Microsoft's Top Ten books bought from Amazon.com ------------------------------------------------ 1. Business @ the Speed of Thought : Using a Digital Nervous System by Bill Gates, Collins Hemingway (Contributor)
2. The Invisible Computer : Why Good Products Can Fail, the Personal Computer Is So Complex, and Information Appliances Are the Solution by Donald A. Norman
3. Effective COM: 50 Ways to Improve Your COM and MTS-Based Applications (Addison-Wesley Object Technology Series) by Don Box(Editor), et al
4. Site Server 3.0 Personalization and Membership by Robert Howard
5. Competing on Internet Time : Lessons from Netscape and Its Battle With Microsoft by Michael A. Cusumano, David B. Yoffie
6. Professional Atl Com Programming by Richard Grimes
7. ATL Internals (The Addison-Wesley Object Technology Series) by Brent Rector, et al
8. Programming Microsoft Outlook and Microsoft Exchange by Thomas Rizzo, Thomas Rizzo Rizzo
9. The Microsoft File : The Secret Case Against Bill Gates by Wendy Goldman Rohm(Introduction)
10. Essential COM (The Addison-Wesley Object Technology Series) by Don Box
Slashdot Mirror
Okay guys, I hate to say this, but...
The issues are not all that clear cut.
Microsoft IS being anti-competitive. No Question. However, I think that the more important issue here is freedom of software.
ANY company should be able to develop ANY damn piece of software they want. If it undercuts another piece of software, hey, that sucks, get a net.
I am forced to use NT4 at work, due to the fact that the system I'm programming is forced to run on it (long story). And, I hate to say this, but Internet Explorer is much, much, much better than Netscape on this platform. WAY better. It has more security problems, true. A lot of "features" turned out to be bugs in the long run. But it works better, doesn't crash nearly as often, and is one hell of a lot faster than Netscape is.
Netscape could have beaten IE. Anti-competitive practice aside, there was a point, when IE was being integrated into the OS, that Netscape could have utterly destroyed IE forever. All they had to do was usurp the integration away from IE. IE became the windows default shell (it's not anymore, BTW.. IE5 doesn't even give you that option anymore). If Netscape had given you that option, back in Netscape 3, IE would have been toast. OEM's would have integrated the thing before anyone else had the chance.
And let's face it. Netscape had one hell of a monopoly on the market. They had almost total market coverage. For a long time, Netscape was the ONLY browser ANYONE used. They assured this by:
a) giving it away for free
b) using netscape propietary extensions (CENTER anyone?)
c) always supporting the latest HTML specs
d) making it into an overall system. (e-mail, ftp, gopher, everything but telnet)
Then, they made a lot of money by selling licenses to businesses, for the same free product they gave to individuals, at unreasonably huge rates. We're talking upwards of $1000 a copy here. (I know this is true, since I worked for a company that had to buy these damn things. The paperwork was immense.) And the businesses, at that time, had no other choices, since nothing else was on the market.
Let's face it. Netscape had it, they lost it. Microsoft may have been a bit anti-competitive, but Netscape sure as hell had a monopoly. Don't nail one without the other too.
Otto puts his flame-retardant-suit on...
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Is it just me, or are both of these groups (anti-online and attrition.org) complete idiots?
What's the point of saying this group did this or this group did that? Who really cares? Why not just say the site was hacked and not give the groups any attention at all?
It's only because of sites like these that claim to have the eyes of important people and that will report on crap like this that these hacks are perpetrated at all. You cannot tell me that someone would go out of their way to hack some site and muck with the web page (which is very stupid anyway), if they knew no-one would report on it.
Argh.. the sheer stupidity of it all.
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I know of no widely accepted standard that has proven this statment. If such is "given," then I ask, by whom?
:-)
:-)
:-)
Pretty much by any person using his brain.
Have you ever felt genuine faith before? If not, you have no place to say it is irrational. Feelings afterall, are very rational.
Wrong again. Feelings are irrational. Get a dictionary. Rational describes that which is reasoned. Do you reason how you feel? If so, I feel sorry for you.
Or maybe you'd like to talk about bio-chemistry. The feelings are situated in the thalamus (sp?). The center of reason is in the cortex. These are two entirely separate structures.
Describing faith to someone is difficlt to do with words. I immagine it would be something like explaining taste to someone who has no tongue; or color to a person with no eyes to see.
I perfectly well understand what faith is. Faith is a belief, in the face of lack of evidence, or in the face of evidence to the contrary, that something is true. And there is nothing wrong with that. I'm fairly sure that alien intelligences exist, even though I have no proof of that. One could say I have faith this is true. It is an irrational assumption to make, but there it is.
And so the prospect of faith, a belief in something with no physical evidence, can only be thought as irrational to those who have never felt it before. Or to those whose faith has let them down and have become disillusioned with their beliefs.
Any thinking person, with or without faith, must recognize that faith itself is irrational. Don't define irrational as "a bad thing" until you understand what it means. Irrationality is a good thing. A very good thing. It's what makes humans human, instead of vulcans. Didn't you ever watch Star Trek?
Many theists, though, just like to argue.
So do many atheists.
Some hold the opinion that, to find truth, one must doubt all until tangible evidences present themselves. I say, to have a truly open mind, one must not doubt, but seek. It is not bad to believe; in believing we discover. Only when we are unable to change our beliefs is when we have truly closed our minds.
True. I do not hold that the existance of a god is impossible. There is damn little that is impossible. But I do hold the belief in the existance of a god is, and has always been, a bad thing for all of humanity. This is because belief, in general, closes those minds. A mind that holds a belief against all reason to the contrary is closed, by definition. And that's how most beliefs humanity holds work.
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I find that interesting: around Slashdot, the assumption most often expressed is that anyone religious must be an irrational fool. ... Maybe the assumption that religious = irrational is at fault?
Religion is irrational. Faith is irrational. These are given. A religious person needs no proof of the religion, and this is irrational. Bt, that's not the problem.
The problem lies in the fact that many people assume that a person is irrational in all they do, all the time. In other words, people think irrational==fool, which is clearly not true.
Personally, I have no faith in a god of any sort. I do have faith in other things, and much that I do is irrational, even downright stupid. But, in certain areas, I do things very rationally indeed. I do not condemn a person for believing in a god, since what they believe is their own business. I do condemn a person for believing in a god and then condemning me because I do not. Usually I will not associate with these people.
Once I met a guy who discovered I was an atheist (not something I talk about normally, but he brought it up), then he got his whole damn family trying to convince me otherwise. I think I did fairly well in the debates with them, considering I know the Bible a LOT better than they did (So few believers ever really read the thing cover to cover...), but it never seemed to do any good. Eventually I had to threaten him that I'd kill his cat if he didn't drop it. (Believe me, the situation was out of control. I love cats, really. Dogs, on the other hand...) They backpedaled quickly.
Anyway, the point is that few non-believers get upset with believers, it's usually the other way around. Then the non-believer gets upset because the believer won't drop it. We atheists have (usually) put a hell of a lot of thought into the subject, and are quite satisfied with our beliefs or lack thereof.
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Questions I have:
a) These CA Modules.. Are they discrete units? Are you just tossing a bunch of gates onto a chip and then connecting them randomly or what? Details, man.. All I wanna know is what you consider to be the "individual neuron".
b) How the hell are you gonna get a billion of these inside that little cat thing, and still have room for wiring, motors, etc. Build something bigger, like a good sized tiger that you can ride around.
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Hopefully the major US Linux distributions (Debian, Redhat) will soon ship with GPG preinstalled. When that happens you'll see other modifications put in, like say, automatic downloads of public keys from keyservers and automatic encryption in sendmail. After which GPG/PGP should really take off.
:-)
Damn right. I'd use encryption on all my e-mail, IF the process of encrypting and decrypting the e-mail was transparent. GPG/PGP/Whatever. I feel that if this process was totally simple, everyone would use it. Heck, even Microsoft would be forced to add it to Outlook Express, although with the encryption broken badly.
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Perhaps we should quote the Jargon File:
Let's define FlameBait while we're at it:
All I really ask is that, when a person is moderating, keep these ideas in mind. Don't mark something stupid a troll just because it's stupid. Stick to the definitions of the terms. If you simply want to mark something up or down, use over/under-rated..
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trolls make for some of the funniest threads there are. Yes there are the occasional assholes but I find that many comments moderated down to -1 are actually pretty damn funny. slashdot (the community) needs to get over itself and lighten up.
Look, there are times when I consider a well-written troll to be one of the more outstanding examples of modern prose. Plus they are truly unique. I liken this to a city next to a forest. The troll is a very interesting creature, spawned from the Usenet, and the troll can lead a very interesting life, causing wonderfully hiliarious havoc, by blundering out of the forest, knocking down mailboxes, kicking over fire hydrants for the children to play in the water, peeing on telephone booths, then disappearing into the trees, leaving wonderful confusion in his path. Also usually leaving lots of hair lying around.
But a lot of the time I'm looking for something good to read, to stimulate the mind. A discussion with those I consider to be my peers. I liken it to a formal dinner party. In this case, the average troll is a horrible beast, blundering around the room, knocking over the furniture, spilling all the beer on the rug (okay, not that formal of a party), and generally making enough racket to be unable to have a rational conversation.
Moderation allows each person to selectively turn off the trolls in their vision. In other words, if you want to read the trolls, go for it. Just don't expect to force everyone do to things your way.
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Yes, when I was in Idaho, but one thing everyone has seen is the "Got Milk?" ads. What are they advertising? Milk. Is it genuinely useful? Well, cows dig it, so do babies, I like a glass now an again.
Sorta blows your argument straight to hell, huh?
Advertising sucks. But it's just another way to pay for a service. However, we internet denizens (yep, I live in the 'net. Well.. In an apartment next door, at least) have a bit more power than your average TV consumer. The web is not like TV, it is interactive, and we choose what we wish to see. There is no way to force an ad onto someone's screen if they have the knowledge and ability to keep you from doing it.
I use the Internet Junkbuster. I add domains to it fairly often. I had to add Slashdot's ad server (Adfu) the other day because it served me an ad that was so annoying that I couldn't take it anymore. Sorry Rob, I know it sucks, but I won't abide crap like that on my screen. Be more discriminating with your ads. A simple banner ad is fine, even with animation. But a banner ad does not need:
frames
form elements
layers
javascript
java applets (saw one recently that let you play pong with the mouse, in the background of the ad. Fun, yet annoying)
active x
any form of scripting for that matter (vb anyone?)
or any damn thing else other than a pic and a link. This one had four of the above. Look hard Rob, you'll find it.
But especially, ads do not need cookies.
If an ad server serves me cookies, and I notice it, WHAM, it goes in my cookie blockfile (yes, I know the cookie blockfile is reversed to allow cookies through, but I reworked it a bit).
In other words, don't take any shit from ad companies..
Wow, that's pretty rambling... Guess I'm done now.
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Besides having all the hardware be compatible, a linux notebook needs a keyboard without windows keys.
:-)
Steal em.. Where's the code to allow the keys to be used in Linux and potentially reprogrammed to do whatever you want?
Scratch the Windows logo off and get a little Penguin key. Someone should start selling little tiny penguin keys or stickers to go over the windows one. Ahh, if I wasn't so lazy....
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I forget which book it was in (#3 I think), but it does go into some detail about how, at first, they wee merely recording responses of people for playback, then they go more sophisticated at it, finally ending up with machine-stored personalities (although they did need the Heechee Technology to go that far). Plus, add in the fact that the Heechee carried their machine stored dead relatives around on their waists (they even called them "ancestors" or "old ones"), and I think you've broken this stupid patent..
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>One-in-a-million chances happen nine times out of ten.
Yes, but only in a large thaumic field. For those who don't know, the thaum is defined as the amount of magic needed to produce, out of thin air, three medium sized billiard balls or one small dove.
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"Don't get caught"
Seriously, I don't see the need of a code of ethics for computer professionals. The crap codes by the IEEE, ACM and so forth concern professional things that don't really matter to us "hackers" (in the old, correct sense of the word). I have a good job as a computer programmer, and I work at it. I don't do anything to f*** anyone over, and that's fine by me. I've stolen code before; hell, that's practically how I got through college.
But whenever you try to make something "offical" and binding to the many, you ruin it, IMHO.. That's like all the idiots who want to unionize computer people.. It's not going to happen because most computer people think it's a rather stupid idea.
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> The problem with this idea is that people's brains differ. To get a vision mod, you would need to map all the myriad connections for your own brain and tailor a device specially to it.
No. You create a mod that fairly generic, then let the brain figure out how to make the connection. The brain is adaptive, right? It may take a while (years maybe) for the brain to learn how to use this new data stream, and you might have some serious issues in the mean time, but it's possible.
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a) Speed. Yahoo is slow as hell from most places I check e-mail.
b) At work I am forced to use Outlook Express (on NT4! Bleeeech!). It can directly check my hotmail account. Easy, and it works well.
c) Yahoo sucks. Yahoo has sucked for a long time. I dont ever use Yahoo for anything at all, ever, just on general principle. Ever since Yahoo started offering EVERYTHING, I stopped using it. A site should do one thing and do it well, IMHO, and I hate these so called "portals" that try to do every damn thing. Yahoo mail, yahoo auctions, yahoo friggin' maps... The hell with it, fuck yahoo.
anyway, just my opinion.
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After all the crap GT interactive has done to hurt the computer gaming industry (Unreal's way early release, as well as how they screwed id), I hope StarPlay wins enough money to buy those suckers out. Or put them out of business at least.
<with_feeling>
Bastards!
</with_feeling>
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I use it because it's easy, it's fast (yeah, it is, most of the time), and because I don't like giving my real e-mail address out. I use that address for actual work. I can't have a spam flood on it.
But my hotmail account is practically a throwaway account. If the spam ever gets too bad, I toss it and sign up for another. No loss to me.
Anyway, it is a good service, for a free one. Anyone using this for any sensitive info at all however, is an idiot.
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Okay, what's the point? So the head lives longer. Since you can't regrow nerves (yet), it can't move.. I can't think of anyone who would WANT to go on longer given that:
a) you can't move
b) you're a freak
c) you probably stuck in the hospital for what's left of your life
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> However, I don't see the point in taxing "the internet", per se. I mean, if you're going to do it, be fair about it...tax every out of state package, be it mail order, fax order, internet order, phoned in, whatever. But if that were the case, I wouldn't want to mail order something from out of state, who had a local store, and so, pay both state and federal tax on it.
I believe the bill applies to mail order only, not the internet, per se.
Straight from the article...
But items that are bought through mail orders and the Internet have reduced the revenue for states and local merchants, Lane said. "We're in the middle of an education crisis," and the bill -- if it's passed -- "will no longer allow companies to skip taxes from where the product was bought," he added.
Looks like a end to interstate commerce being free from taxation, the article just puts an internet twist on it.
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Okay, yes, if the client goes down, no problem. But on a proper linux setup, that client never will go down, ever, and you know this.
:-)
Honestly. There are Linux web servers out there with uptimes of YEARS. These are production servers.
Yes, the possiblity exists that one of the client boxes may fail. You simply switch over to another box. Heck, the most they appear to be using these for is as dumb-terminals to the HP for their main 911 software, then some other apps, such as Wordperfect and so forth. Nothing seriously difficult about switching to the next cubical's computer...
argh.. plus, the fact is that using pre-tested software, known stable kernels, and a proper network setup, you can't take the suckers down. I personally have a very simple pentium 100 system i use for IP-masqurading, web server, file server, ftp server, samba services, and a bunch of automated scripts to do things i don't want to do manually, and it has an uptime of 340 days now. It even controls the lights in my house and makes me coffee in the morning (just added that 2 weeks ago, X10.
I don't believe the tales from M$ or from the linux-gurus. I believe the evidence of my eyes. I know my system will work because it has worked so well in the past. Proof through experience is the only proof worth having.
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>BRRRRR the mere thought of that paperclip on a Linux box gives me the willies
:-)
I keep waiting for some enterprising programmer to program a penguin helper for Office 2k. He can sit around and berate you for using inferior MS products.
Also, whenever you ask him how to do something in office, he'll tell you how you would do it using a REAL operating system...
Otto - who is forced to use NT4 at work...
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You could read a newspaper from half a mile away or see the letters of a stop sign from 12 miles. That's the kind of strength and accuracy packed into the world's most powerful X-ray telescope -- NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory.
Wow.. works in Xray too.. reminds me of that video camera that could see thru clothing (kinda)..
"Now, the new NudieCam! Using fabulous X-ray technology developed by NASA, you can video tape women in their undies, from up to 12 miles away!"
hah!
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"HELP! Am Being Slashdotted!"
At least, that's what the picture currently shows..
Ah heck, I'll take a screen shot..
Screen Shot
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Fermat's Last Theorem, which all /. readers *should* know.. Goes like this:
x^c+y^c=z^c is untrue for any c>2, where x,y,z, and c are all positive integers.
It has been proven. But many reason that the proof is nowhere NEAR what Fermat thought of, because Fermet wrote this in the sideline of some book or paper or something, along with a note saying "a very interesting proof, although I don't have time to write it here," or something similar. Apparently, a simple proof had just occured to him.
The proof that currently exists for this is huge and complicated. Annoyingly so at that. The search for the simple proof still exists, although most people believe Fermet had thought of what seemed a simple proof, but he was mistaken. I think this is probably the case.
Anyway... The draft author is referring to his (appearantly) unpublished work about his proof, or the existing proof, or something that relates to this, but from the comments beside it, he doesn't make reference in it to the theorem itself or the proof of it, just some other thing that's in that paper that has some bearing on this rfc.
Still, the draft is crap and the guy obviously has no idea how the hell subnetting works, or the fact that implementing his scheme would probably be more difficult than IPv6.
Follow the hacker model. If it's broken, throw it away and write a new one.
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I find #5 and #9 to be the most funny on this list..
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I also find it reprenhensible that Amazon would do something like this without the companies permission. I mean it's fine if the company in question says okay, but to just up and do it? I expect a lawsuit soon.
Microsoft's Top Ten books bought from Amazon.com
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1. Business @ the Speed of Thought : Using a Digital Nervous System
by Bill Gates, Collins Hemingway (Contributor)
2. The Invisible Computer : Why Good Products Can Fail, the Personal Computer Is So Complex, and Information Appliances Are the Solution
by Donald A. Norman
3. Effective COM: 50 Ways to Improve Your COM and MTS-Based Applications (Addison-Wesley Object Technology Series)
by Don Box(Editor), et al
4. Site Server 3.0 Personalization and Membership
by Robert Howard
5. Competing on Internet Time : Lessons from Netscape and Its Battle With Microsoft
by Michael A. Cusumano, David B. Yoffie
6. Professional Atl Com Programming
by Richard Grimes
7. ATL Internals (The Addison-Wesley Object Technology Series)
by Brent Rector, et al
8. Programming Microsoft Outlook and Microsoft Exchange
by Thomas Rizzo, Thomas Rizzo Rizzo
9. The Microsoft File : The Secret Case Against Bill Gates
by Wendy Goldman Rohm(Introduction)
10. Essential COM (The Addison-Wesley Object Technology Series)
by Don Box
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