Frank Herbert wrote a book, "The White Plague", that was about exactly that. A researcher was vacationing with his family in Ireland, and watched (from the hotel window) his wife and kids get killed as they walked next to a car which blew up.
So he created a virus that killed only women, and released it to the world via paper money.
The only downside is the book had about 3x as many words as a gripping novel would have, or I was a bored teenager; I haven't read it in a dog's age.
"If you don't know how to breathe, you shouldn't bother taking your first breath."
Or, closer to the original: "Breathing. If you don't know how to, you shouldn't be messing with environmental oxygenation anyway."
Here's a link to a howto for configuring your Debian installation to use the experimental packages. (It's in section 4.6.4.3, or just search on the page for "experimental".)
True, but even if that gains one an interview, it's tough to act significantly less informed/trained/intelligent than one actually is. And if that acting does come easy, a career in acting would be likely much more lucrative (or conning).
Interesting story on diversification. (Not sure if it's true, it made the rounds back in the 90s.)
Bill Gates wanted to diversify so that all his eggs weren't in one basket, so he took 50% of his fortune and gave it to a financial advisor, asking to invest it in the best-looking opportunity.
The financial advisor invested it in Microsoft.
These days it wouldn't quite happen that way, but this was way back in 1996 or so.
Actually, if you're overqualified, it is rather difficult to get hired. They'd rather have someone who won't jump ship (and take away the training that Kinko's paid for) when the economy recovers. I went through this a few years ago.
[...] at a guess I'd imagine that most (recent) Windows machines get most of their updates via automatic updates, or not at all.
Good guess. I have a question: how do they get their updates via automatic updates? From thin air? No, they connect to some other machine's IP address, via a port. Perhaps it's not port 80, but I'm pretty certain it's the bank of Windows Update machines...
I have access to 3 XP machines, and none of them visit any of MS's sites [...]
Are your 3 XP machines configured to do anything about automatic updates? If so, then they're talking to Microsoft's machines.
So, exploiting those Windows Update machines, plus this WMF bug, equals take-over-the-world-type thinking. As other have mentioned, this might not have been performed with corporate approval.
[...] the gas pedal does not provide proportional input to fuel system.
Just wanted to agree with you there. I had an old 1990 Mustang which had an "aggressive" gas pedal. 90% of the power was in the first 50% of the "foot stroke". So it really felt like the car had... 80% more power than it actually did, unless you stomped it off the line every time.
But when a user pops their CF/SD/XD/whatever card out of their camera, they're going to want to access it without installing drivers, etc.
Someone else posted a link to an ext2-for-Windows project on SourceForge. Why not have something like an MBR on the card, from which Windows can install the ext2 driver if it's not already installed?
As I was typing this I realized that there's some sort of chicken-and-egg issue here, which is why I said "MBR" above: Windows needs to be able to read something from the card in order to get the driver off of it, but it doesn't necessarily have to be FAT; however, it does have to be something that Windows has drivers for to begin with, so perhaps I'm off my rocker.
It doesn't matter where in the chain they take the 25 cents, it will still only raise the end-user price by 25 cents.
Not really. It'll raise the component costs by 25c. However, administrative costs will also go up, as they'll have to spend resources reviewing the contract, signing it, accounting for the number of units sold, etc.
Why is it that one can claim in the name of science to be so right as to know that something is unobservable.
Reminds me of the quote (I tried to find it but couldn't, so this might be slightly incorrect): "While some claim a thing to be impossible, others are hard at work achieving it."
In other words, to state "there are no aliens" one must visit every planet in the universe. To state "there are aliens" one must only find one species, which one might do on the first planet visited.
So, is there a God? We haven't looked under all the subatomic particles yet. (Many of the quantum mechanical properties we've found seem to be quite similar to the types of feats ascribed to God.)
Not exactly. The scientific process ignores God. Subtle but important difference.
To be more verbose: the existence of God has no bearing on whether 2 + 2 = 4, and has no bearing on whether we can determine the laws of the universe (which God might have created in the first place).
I'm not discussing my beliefs, just that God and science are orthogonal.
For myself, I find no necessary conflict between the mechanisms described by science and the actions of God described by the Bible.
Explain Job (God killed everyone he held dear, destroyed his home and farm and animals, and gave him diseases over a bet with the Devil, just like Trading Places).
Or Abraham (God asked him to kill his son, then reneged (in horror?--unknown) when Abraham agreed).
I recently told a friend something similar: "I do not spend my resources genuflecting to imaginary friends. However, if that makes your life more enjoyable and productive, more power to you! Just don't try passing it into law or forcing others to believe."
There's a slight difference between convincing and forcing, but basically the gist is some people have a framework into which the convincing evidence needs to fit. ID does not fit into science's framework, and never will, at least until we can start talking to (and hearing back from) said imaginary friend.
(Note that in the above I said nothing about my beliefs; just about the resources I spend genuflecting over my beliefs.)
(I guess part of social security tax is paid for by the employer)
While that's true, it's also highly disingenuous (of the government, that is, not the parent).
If my company had 7.5% more of my salary, it might consider raising my salary. (Not by 7.5%; I'm not insane, but perhaps 2%--so it is still coming out of the employee's "total benefits package".)
Another idea, slightly OT (I clicked the "2" at the bottom of the page, and since so many people had posted since I first loaded the article, the top half of the page was posts I had already read).
Actually, there are 3 ideas here:
First, mark "already-read posts" in a different background color, like light gray or something.
Second, I saw a post that I had made as I was scrolling down. It would be nice to have a "button" identifying myself, perhaps in a bright orange or something to differentiate.
Third, it would be nice if the "buttons" also had text (perhaps invisible) so that people could search for "next friend post" more easily (ctrl+f, "/.friend", then ctrl+g for each next one, or something similar; also "/.foe", "/.freak", "/.fan", "/.friendoffriend", etc. Using this scheme, searching for any sort of relationship would be with "/.f").
I really like others' ideas about making threads collapsible. (Navigation seems to be a missing link.)
I've been reading this thread and did not know what nofollow was, so I decided to look it up. Anyone else who is curious can look here.
Short description so you don't have to click the link: nofollow means that Google won't raise the page rank of, for instance, "beatles" searches for submissions by the user "* * Beatles Beatles".
The CONTENT field is a comma separated list:
INDEX: search engine robots should include this page.
FOLLOW: robots should follow links from this page to other pages.
NOINDEX: links can be explored, although the page is not indexed.
NOFOLLOW: the page can be indexed, but no links are explored.
NONE: robots can ignore the page.
NOARCHIVE: Google uses this to prevent archiving of the page. See http://www.google.com/bot.html
When Slashdot had few users, didn't you and Hemos take it upon yourselves to find the news? How about getting back to the roots? Or did the money taint everything?
PS (since this is Taco I'm responding to), I'm not sure whether my sig indicates that I was mod-banned due to participating in a verboten thread (which I never received notice of), or if the mod system changed to "only subscribers can mod" (I was educated about the first possibility a few days ago, and the latter this morning). What can I do to fix this?
Slashdot Mirror
So he created a virus that killed only women, and released it to the world via paper money.
The only downside is the book had about 3x as many words as a gripping novel would have, or I was a bored teenager; I haven't read it in a dog's age.
Or, closer to the original: "Breathing. If you don't know how to, you shouldn't be messing with environmental oxygenation anyway."
Here's a link to a howto for configuring your Debian installation to use the experimental packages. (It's in section 4.6.4.3, or just search on the page for "experimental".)
True, but even if that gains one an interview, it's tough to act significantly less informed/trained/intelligent than one actually is. And if that acting does come easy, a career in acting would be likely much more lucrative (or conning).
Bill Gates wanted to diversify so that all his eggs weren't in one basket, so he took 50% of his fortune and gave it to a financial advisor, asking to invest it in the best-looking opportunity.
The financial advisor invested it in Microsoft.
These days it wouldn't quite happen that way, but this was way back in 1996 or so.
Actually, if you're overqualified, it is rather difficult to get hired. They'd rather have someone who won't jump ship (and take away the training that Kinko's paid for) when the economy recovers. I went through this a few years ago.
Basically nothing, if you're a Verizon customer. FUCK VERIZON!
New law to be announced in February: all telecommunications companies operating in the USA must route 100% of their calls through foreign soil.
Good guess. I have a question: how do they get their updates via automatic updates? From thin air? No, they connect to some other machine's IP address, via a port. Perhaps it's not port 80, but I'm pretty certain it's the bank of Windows Update machines...
Are your 3 XP machines configured to do anything about automatic updates? If so, then they're talking to Microsoft's machines.
So, exploiting those Windows Update machines, plus this WMF bug, equals take-over-the-world-type thinking. As other have mentioned, this might not have been performed with corporate approval.
Actually, it's like advTHANKSance: it's a key to help you get some nice warm rice wine in New York City.
Just wanted to agree with you there. I had an old 1990 Mustang which had an "aggressive" gas pedal. 90% of the power was in the first 50% of the "foot stroke". So it really felt like the car had ... 80% more power than it actually did, unless you stomped it off the line every time.
Yeah, save some money and the environment so I can waste 3 sick days? No fucking thanks.
PS Slashdot broke today (was working yesterday); I'm running Mozilla 1.7.8 on XP. Broke as in not columns any more, everything is indented too far.
PS Love your sig, watched that episode of Firefly again tonight.
Someone else posted a link to an ext2-for-Windows project on SourceForge. Why not have something like an MBR on the card, from which Windows can install the ext2 driver if it's not already installed?
As I was typing this I realized that there's some sort of chicken-and-egg issue here, which is why I said "MBR" above: Windows needs to be able to read something from the card in order to get the driver off of it, but it doesn't necessarily have to be FAT; however, it does have to be something that Windows has drivers for to begin with, so perhaps I'm off my rocker.
End-user price might go up a couple bucks.
What was your grade?
Reminds me of the quote (I tried to find it but couldn't, so this might be slightly incorrect): "While some claim a thing to be impossible, others are hard at work achieving it."
In other words, to state "there are no aliens" one must visit every planet in the universe. To state "there are aliens" one must only find one species, which one might do on the first planet visited.
So, is there a God? We haven't looked under all the subatomic particles yet. (Many of the quantum mechanical properties we've found seem to be quite similar to the types of feats ascribed to God.)
To be more verbose: the existence of God has no bearing on whether 2 + 2 = 4, and has no bearing on whether we can determine the laws of the universe (which God might have created in the first place).
I'm not discussing my beliefs, just that God and science are orthogonal.
Explain Job (God killed everyone he held dear, destroyed his home and farm and animals, and gave him diseases over a bet with the Devil, just like Trading Places).
Or Abraham (God asked him to kill his son, then reneged (in horror?--unknown) when Abraham agreed).
There's a slight difference between convincing and forcing, but basically the gist is some people have a framework into which the convincing evidence needs to fit. ID does not fit into science's framework, and never will, at least until we can start talking to (and hearing back from) said imaginary friend.
(Note that in the above I said nothing about my beliefs; just about the resources I spend genuflecting over my beliefs.)
While that's true, it's also highly disingenuous (of the government, that is, not the parent).
If my company had 7.5% more of my salary, it might consider raising my salary. (Not by 7.5%; I'm not insane, but perhaps 2%--so it is still coming out of the employee's "total benefits package".)
Actually, there are 3 ideas here:
First, mark "already-read posts" in a different background color, like light gray or something.
Second, I saw a post that I had made as I was scrolling down. It would be nice to have a "button" identifying myself, perhaps in a bright orange or something to differentiate.
Third, it would be nice if the "buttons" also had text (perhaps invisible) so that people could search for "next friend post" more easily (ctrl+f, "/.friend", then ctrl+g for each next one, or something similar; also "/.foe", "/.freak", "/.fan", "/.friendoffriend", etc. Using this scheme, searching for any sort of relationship would be with "/.f").
I really like others' ideas about making threads collapsible. (Navigation seems to be a missing link.)
Short description so you don't have to click the link: nofollow means that Google won't raise the page rank of, for instance, "beatles" searches for submissions by the user "* * Beatles Beatles".
When Slashdot had few users, didn't you and Hemos take it upon yourselves to find the news? How about getting back to the roots? Or did the money taint everything?
PS (since this is Taco I'm responding to), I'm not sure whether my sig indicates that I was mod-banned due to participating in a verboten thread (which I never received notice of), or if the mod system changed to "only subscribers can mod" (I was educated about the first possibility a few days ago, and the latter this morning). What can I do to fix this?
Not even Taco?
(Seriously, that's not sarcasm: there's an implied "if not, why not?" and "if so, why so?")