I disagree; attention it is, but not positive attention. Their servers are being hit with posts of 'that was a dumb thing to do' (look at the guest book) and the like. It's a lot of negative attention, and the kids are probably feeling pretty shitty right now being the target of name-calling and attacks (verbal, and their computers are probably being attacked also.) Don't stereotype that just because they are teenagers they crave any type of attention.
Note that statistically, 0.31% of defaced sites were running OpenBSD, which greatly contrasts with netcraft's statistics that over 59% of indexed web sites use the Apache httpd server, and considering that Apache runs on the BSD's, Linux, commercial *nix's, Windows, MacOS... even assuming an equal distribution, this means that the defaced sites are at least two orders of magnitude less than the total sites using OpenBSD (ok, that is a lot of assuming, but I couldn't find statistics of server OS distribution).
Come on, it's not bad for Apple that people see this a few hours earlier than they would.
But, judging from all the flame the design is getting (clay blob... bumbersome floating panel... etc.) this is my current Conspiracy Theory (tm):
1) Apple give Time Canada info about their new Mac in advance, but mock up the clay-blob-stick-panel design.
2) Let Time Canada release this early. Naturally/. and/or other news sites will pick up the "blunder";).
3) Reveal the/real/ new machine, far more slick and appealing than the old machine or the clay-blob-stick-panel (Apple has a good sense of aesthetics, why would they make something look silly?)
4) News sites will catch the discrepancy. People like the real one. People will talk!
As they say, there's no such thing as bad publicity. But I'm just a conspiracy theorist.
The last one was 1991 - now we have 2002.
But we won't have another for 110 years! (and then 110 every time after that one until 2992, after which we'll wait for 3003. But I'll be dead by then. Maybe slashdot won't!)
That's a little ironic - these chips are powered by inducing current from radio waves; and a powerful EMP wave could theoretically sizzle the transistors in the circuits themselves. Ok, maybe it's not as ironic as I originally thought. Still a possibility though.
I'm assuming that change machines, vending machines, etc. would use the RFID chip to determine whether or not the bill was valid (they currently optically determine this?). But then a bill gone past its lifetime, undergone a lot of physical stress, or had the RFID chip rendered useless some other way would be valueless. Isn't currency supposed to be resilient? If there is a tear in my good 'ol USA $, it's still worth the same as before it was torn (as long as it's not torn apart...)
A brand new programmer, fresh out of certification (MCSE's and the like) comes to look at a company he's interested in working for. The gurus at the company show him where they work, and show him a terminal on one of their *nix boxen. A guru logs in on the command line and starts up X, shows the new programmer some tools they use. The new programmer is impressed by what he sees and asks about the *nix system: "Does this run as a thread on NT?"
(Apparently NT is the only server platform, right?;)
I must take pity on Microsoft for their situation - being so large and omnipresent, they are a constant target of attack. Of course, their situation would be a lot simpler if they released source so that these things could be fixed by anyone as soon as a problem pops up, but that is a whole philosophical problem for Microsoft, so I can only pity them, not aid them.
Why is it that this bill makes me think of Johnson's Gulf of Tonkin Resolution?
Why is it that Afhghanistan reminds me of Vietnam?
Am I rightfully very, very scared?
Alas! The latin way is _not_ viri. Viri in latin is the plural of man, whose singular is Vir, although it is still second declension (there are a bunch of second declension words whose singular nominative do not end in -us, for example puer, which means boy and whose plural is pueri). As for virus, it is not second declension - there would just be too much confusion as to whether you were talking about men or scum (although some women might argue there would not be confusion;). Regardless, the proper latin plural of virus _is_ viruses; it is either 3rd declension or 4th, I believe it is 4th, and in both declensions it could be the same plural in the nominative case (but in 3rd it is also probable for it to be vires - unless my latin is rusty).
There are, however, some words that have double `i's as plural endings - I can't remember any offhand, but I remember their existance (and there is always the troublesome verb `to go', whose imperative singular is always disputed - is it `i' or `ii'? and is that pronounced doubled in the second case, or just stressed? I admit, latin is almost as screwy as english, and neither are perfect in any measure. Let's all switch to esparanto).
Not really true, but almost. Gravity affects things without mass, such as photons, as has been proven by the solar eclipse "star moving" experiment. Gravitons (if they really do exist, which I am a little skeptical of but will make a case for anyway) are attracted to the energy content of matter - which is why there really is no "anti-gravity" - anti-matter still has a positive energy density. Photons certainly have a positive energy density, so they are affected by gravity. I am not trying to say, as you seem to think, that gravity and inertia are not related to mass, but that the Bosons governing their nature are different.
This is one of those elementary school mix ups. The Higgs Boson is supposedly the particle which gives matter mass. But weight, on the other hand, is purely a gravitational matter (pardon the pun). In an environment free of all other matter, you would not have a weight since there would be nothing exerting a force of gravity on you. The Boson which cretaes the force of gravity is called the graviton.
Sorry to burst your bubble.
Just make sure no data gets transmitted at 60 hz!
Wait, don't they have different frequencies in different countries? And different voltages too? We don't want a direct bridge for that! (suddenly all of our power got drained to Uzbekistan . . . they work on the 3V standard . . .;)
We'll get it eventually!
Let them do what they want online; in time, the smarter kids will still survive, having not met online pedophiles; and the stronger kids will have survived their meetings with the pedophiles. Natural selection will assure that in the future only quality kids will exist, since the weaker ones will die off know.
Oh wait, ETHICALLY monitoring them?
Nevermind;)
But I already know what happens: we get bombed!
(This is my only qualm about war movies. Sorry, I have other qualms too, but Vonnegut better addresses them in his intro to Slaughterhouse Five. Read the book.)
It is also good to know that you are a scholar. How is staffordshire? Nice to see you use a stable, well tested version of linux on your box. And it's even better to see that you run ssh but not telnet! I'm proud of you even though you are a bad person.
I'm sorry to reveal the truth to you, but your presence in the slashdot community greatly decreases the average IQ. If you refrained from posting in the future, I'm sure everyone would appreciate the lack of bigotry.
I strangely have a feeling that I have more of a clue than you do. If, in fact, you DO have more of a clue than I do, why don't you reveal your nature and clue me in? That would show that you had a clue, whereas currently you are showing only your capacity to flame me, not respond intelligently.
Moreover, this brings up a philosophical point. Should everyone with an opinion post in response to something? Or only those people who think others care? Everyone should express themselves, IMHO, if nothing more than to have a question answered (or an idea corrected). What is your opinion on this? Please, this time, respond with something more substantial than one line berating my cluelessness.
I admire your wide vocabulary. It is a true sign of your mental superiority.
[Note for the writer to whom I am responding: The above is sarcastic. I felt the need to explain this since I did not feel you would understand it without an explanation.]
With wireless networks, all the nodes who want to be connected to each other must transmit or recieve on the same frequency in order to be able to expect data (where is adata coming? always on the same bands). This causes the same fundamental problem as collisions.
I, however, unlike you, will not rant about your lack of thought prior to posting. I had thought about Wireless LANs when I posted, which is why I did not include that.
The idea of a direct connection means effectively connected directly to everyone else. This means little or no routers in between. One way to accomplish this would be a massive backbone (a bus system) to which everyone is connected. However, collisions on this bus would be unmanageable. Another idea is a token ring, only gigantic. The most efficient way to do this would be to conenct consecutive addresses next to each other in net topology, which is quite restrictive and also pretty implausible. One more idea which has not been implemented currently (or at least not on a large scale) is random connectivity. Every computer would be connected to about 16 others or so (I'm guessing at this) and theoretically you get all computers connected together, but with a formless topolgy. Routing would be quite difficult in this setup.
No topology that comes to mind seems plausible for direct connections for everyone. Currently, the star - substar topology works well, where local nodes are connected to local routers in a star topology (hub, or a bunch of dialup users calling in to one center) which is conneted to its upstream provider in a similar setup (with an ATM bus system at the top level, but this is irrelevant). This system, though theoretically not as resiliant as direct connections, keeps routing tables small and paths relatively small. The idea is to reduce complexity. Most users currently lack the bandwidth to be a user and a router at the same time! When the dream of "broadband in the home" spreads everywhere, perhaps this might be more likely, but right now current topologies satisfy. The only major obstacle is that provider-to-provider connections are not as plentiful as we'd all like. My route to AOL goes through AT&T! You'd think that with a provider my size, they wouldn't have the intermediary netowrk.
Yet I digress.
Okay, this is a good move because of technical issues, but how many people are going to switch from linux to *BSD "just because slashdot uses it"? It's just as political, in this respect. I have not switched to BSD yet, though I have wanted to, because of my inexperience with it. This is the major hurdle for most computer related problems, I suppose, so I don't see why it has stopped me. Maybe I'm just too political.
(but *BSD is so more 31337!;)
Slashdot Mirror
I disagree;
attention it is, but not positive attention. Their servers are being hit with posts of 'that was a dumb thing to do' (look at the guest book) and the like. It's a lot of negative attention, and the kids are probably feeling pretty shitty right now being the target of name-calling and attacks (verbal, and their computers are probably being attacked also.)
Don't stereotype that just because they are teenagers they crave any type of attention.
Note that statistically, ... even assuming an equal distribution, this means that the defaced sites are at least two orders of magnitude less than the total sites using OpenBSD (ok, that is a lot of assuming, but I couldn't find statistics of server OS distribution).
0.31% of defaced sites were running OpenBSD, which greatly contrasts with netcraft's statistics that over 59% of indexed web sites use the Apache httpd server, and considering that Apache runs on the BSD's, Linux, commercial *nix's, Windows, MacOS
It would be a Bad Thing (tm) if quantum mechanics were inconsistant on a macroscopic scale *phew*.
Come on, it's not bad for Apple that people see this a few hours earlier than they would. ... bumbersome floating panel ... etc.) this is my current Conspiracy Theory (tm):
/. and/or other news sites will pick up the "blunder" ;).
/real/ new machine, far more slick and appealing than the old machine or the clay-blob-stick-panel (Apple has a good sense of aesthetics, why would they make something look silly?)
But, judging from all the flame the design is getting (clay blob
1) Apple give Time Canada info about their new Mac in advance, but mock up the clay-blob-stick-panel design.
2) Let Time Canada release this early. Naturally
3) Reveal the
4) News sites will catch the discrepancy. People like the real one. People will talk!
As they say, there's no such thing as bad publicity. But I'm just a conspiracy theorist.
The last one was 1991 - now we have 2002.
But we won't have another for 110 years! (and then 110 every time after that one until 2992, after which we'll wait for 3003. But I'll be dead by then. Maybe slashdot won't!)
That's a little ironic - these chips are powered by inducing current from radio waves; and a powerful EMP wave could theoretically sizzle the transistors in the circuits themselves. Ok, maybe it's not as ironic as I originally thought. Still a possibility though. ...)
I'm assuming that change machines, vending machines, etc. would use the RFID chip to determine whether or not the bill was valid (they currently optically determine this?). But then a bill gone past its lifetime, undergone a lot of physical stress, or had the RFID chip rendered useless some other way would be valueless. Isn't currency supposed to be resilient? If there is a tear in my good 'ol USA $, it's still worth the same as before it was torn (as long as it's not torn apart
This is a very classic story I heard ...
;)
A brand new programmer, fresh out of certification (MCSE's and the like) comes to look at a company he's interested in working for. The gurus at the company show him where they work, and show him a terminal on one of their *nix boxen. A guru logs in on the command line and starts up X, shows the new programmer some tools they use. The new programmer is impressed by what he sees and asks about the *nix system: "Does this run as a thread on NT?"
(Apparently NT is the only server platform, right?
I must take pity on Microsoft for their situation - being so large and omnipresent, they are a constant target of attack. Of course, their situation would be a lot simpler if they released source so that these things could be fixed by anyone as soon as a problem pops up, but that is a whole philosophical problem for Microsoft, so I can only pity them, not aid them.
Why is it that this bill makes me think of Johnson's Gulf of Tonkin Resolution?
Why is it that Afhghanistan reminds me of Vietnam?
Am I rightfully very, very scared?
Alas! The latin way is _not_ viri. Viri in latin is the plural of man, whose singular is Vir, although it is still second declension (there are a bunch of second declension words whose singular nominative do not end in -us, for example puer, which means boy and whose plural is pueri). As for virus, it is not second declension - there would just be too much confusion as to whether you were talking about men or scum (although some women might argue there would not be confusion ;). Regardless, the proper latin plural of virus _is_ viruses; it is either 3rd declension or 4th, I believe it is 4th, and in both declensions it could be the same plural in the nominative case (but in 3rd it is also probable for it to be vires - unless my latin is rusty).
There are, however, some words that have double `i's as plural endings - I can't remember any offhand, but I remember their existance (and there is always the troublesome verb `to go', whose imperative singular is always disputed - is it `i' or `ii'? and is that pronounced doubled in the second case, or just stressed? I admit, latin is almost as screwy as english, and neither are perfect in any measure. Let's all switch to esparanto).
Not really true, but almost. Gravity affects things without mass, such as photons, as has been proven by the solar eclipse "star moving" experiment. Gravitons (if they really do exist, which I am a little skeptical of but will make a case for anyway) are attracted to the energy content of matter - which is why there really is no "anti-gravity" - anti-matter still has a positive energy density. Photons certainly have a positive energy density, so they are affected by gravity. I am not trying to say, as you seem to think, that gravity and inertia are not related to mass, but that the Bosons governing their nature are different.
This is one of those elementary school mix ups. The Higgs Boson is supposedly the particle which gives matter mass. But weight, on the other hand, is purely a gravitational matter (pardon the pun). In an environment free of all other matter, you would not have a weight since there would be nothing exerting a force of gravity on you. The Boson which cretaes the force of gravity is called the graviton.
Sorry to burst your bubble.
Just make sure no data gets transmitted at 60 hz! ;)
Wait, don't they have different frequencies in different countries? And different voltages too? We don't want a direct bridge for that! (suddenly all of our power got drained to Uzbekistan . . . they work on the 3V standard . . .
We'll get it eventually!
Let them do what they want online; in time, the smarter kids will still survive, having not met online pedophiles; and the stronger kids will have survived their meetings with the pedophiles. Natural selection will assure that in the future only quality kids will exist, since the weaker ones will die off know. ;)
Oh wait, ETHICALLY monitoring them?
Nevermind
But I already know what happens: we get bombed!
(This is my only qualm about war movies. Sorry, I have other qualms too, but Vonnegut better addresses them in his intro to Slaughterhouse Five. Read the book.)
It is also good to know that you are a scholar. How is staffordshire? Nice to see you use a stable, well tested version of linux on your box. And it's even better to see that you run ssh but not telnet! I'm proud of you even though you are a bad person.
By the way, how are things over in the UK?
Are 11th graders there like 11th graders here (I can play too!)
Actually, I just think before I post, which is why I choose proper words. This also explains the lack of expletives.
Let me guess, you are either a bigot without a thought process or you are severely mentally retarded.
I'm sorry to reveal the truth to you, but your presence in the slashdot community greatly decreases the average IQ. If you refrained from posting in the future, I'm sure everyone would appreciate the lack of bigotry.
I strangely have a feeling that I have more of a clue than you do. If, in fact, you DO have more of a clue than I do, why don't you reveal your nature and clue me in? That would show that you had a clue, whereas currently you are showing only your capacity to flame me, not respond intelligently.
Moreover, this brings up a philosophical point. Should everyone with an opinion post in response to something? Or only those people who think others care? Everyone should express themselves, IMHO, if nothing more than to have a question answered (or an idea corrected). What is your opinion on this? Please, this time, respond with something more substantial than one line berating my cluelessness.
I admire your wide vocabulary. It is a true sign of your mental superiority.
[Note for the writer to whom I am responding: The above is sarcastic. I felt the need to explain this since I did not feel you would understand it without an explanation.]
With wireless networks, all the nodes who want to be connected to each other must transmit or recieve on the same frequency in order to be able to expect data (where is adata coming? always on the same bands). This causes the same fundamental problem as collisions.
I, however, unlike you, will not rant about your lack of thought prior to posting. I had thought about Wireless LANs when I posted, which is why I did not include that.
The idea of a direct connection means effectively connected directly to everyone else. This means little or no routers in between. One way to accomplish this would be a massive backbone (a bus system) to which everyone is connected. However, collisions on this bus would be unmanageable. Another idea is a token ring, only gigantic. The most efficient way to do this would be to conenct consecutive addresses next to each other in net topology, which is quite restrictive and also pretty implausible. One more idea which has not been implemented currently (or at least not on a large scale) is random connectivity. Every computer would be connected to about 16 others or so (I'm guessing at this) and theoretically you get all computers connected together, but with a formless topolgy. Routing would be quite difficult in this setup.
No topology that comes to mind seems plausible for direct connections for everyone. Currently, the star - substar topology works well, where local nodes are connected to local routers in a star topology (hub, or a bunch of dialup users calling in to one center) which is conneted to its upstream provider in a similar setup (with an ATM bus system at the top level, but this is irrelevant). This system, though theoretically not as resiliant as direct connections, keeps routing tables small and paths relatively small. The idea is to reduce complexity. Most users currently lack the bandwidth to be a user and a router at the same time! When the dream of "broadband in the home" spreads everywhere, perhaps this might be more likely, but right now current topologies satisfy. The only major obstacle is that provider-to-provider connections are not as plentiful as we'd all like. My route to AOL goes through AT&T! You'd think that with a provider my size, they wouldn't have the intermediary netowrk.
Yet I digress.
Okay, this is a good move because of technical issues, but how many people are going to switch from linux to *BSD "just because slashdot uses it"? It's just as political, in this respect. I have not switched to BSD yet, though I have wanted to, because of my inexperience with it. This is the major hurdle for most computer related problems, I suppose, so I don't see why it has stopped me. Maybe I'm just too political. ;)
(but *BSD is so more 31337!