"Despite the high technology and fabulous effects of the movie, it explicitly handles the issue of existence and creation, which are related to the three divine religions, which we all respect and believe in."
We all believe in three divine religions?
Even among the seemingly small community of
non-atheist SlashDotters, that seems like two
too many!
[OK, so this is off-topic. I know. But it's interesting.]
There was a sudden mass extinction of dinosaurs. More on this as it develops.
Actually, there may or may not have been a sudden
mass extinction: it's one of the big, long-running
controversies among dinosaur palaeontologists.
What's not in doubt is that there was a mass
extinction (well, duh!) but the timescale has
not been and may never be established - the
evidence just doesn't have enough resolution,
at 65 million years' distance, to establish
whether the dinos died in a day, a month or
a hundred thousand years.
Also: contrary to popular opinion, it is far from
universally accepted that a bolide (= meteor
or comet) impact was responsible for dinosaur
extinction. That is perhaps more widely accepted
than any single alternative, but probably less
than half of all dino palaeontologists believe
it. The strongest alternative theory at the
moment seems to be an extended period of
extreme volcanic activity resulting in the same
kind of "nuclear winter" effect that the bolide
is often assumed to have caused. There are
plenty of other theories, including but not
limited to: radiation from a nearby supernova;
disease; climactic changes unrelated to bolide
or vulcanism.
Anyone else notice the incredible range of
books with titles of the form X for Y recently?
Extreme Programming for Web Projects. Lifecycle
Management for Java. Python for Information
Engineers. Buzzword Awareness for Techies.
Cluefulness for Suits. There seems to be no end
to this trend...
It's all very well tweaking stuff like the
length of the history list that the BACK button
knows about, but it's not the real issue.
The real issue is SPEED.
In Netscape 3, going BACK was instantaneous.
Of course it was: the browser already had the
page in its cache, so it was a simple matter of
re-rendering it.
Not any more: going BACK now entails re-fetching
the page. Why? This is nonsense. If I want
the page refreshed, I have a perfectly good
REFRESH button to do that with. But when I click
BACK, it's because I want to go back to what I
was looking at before.
And with Mozilla (I don't think NS6 did this but
I'm not sure), it's yet worse: if you go BACK
to a page that you reached by POSTing a form,
you have to click a button to re-submit the
form contents. For badgers' sake! Just show
me the page I was looking at already!
Could someone please remind me - what,
exactly, is so bad about this? I mean, I
don't have anything to hide. And I'm sure
you don't either. So what's the problem?
Or have we just all been telling each other that
This Kind Of Thing Is Bad for so long that we've
lost all our critical faculties?
Anyone who has worked in industry long enough to have experienced a business cycle knows how unbearable the job pressure can get when a company is in trouble and how this pressure can turn otherwise excellent and honest scientists into willing deceivers. It is neither uncommon nor hard to understand. Threaten a resourceful person with loss of home and endangerment of family and it is scarcely surprising that the person "innovates."
There you have it ``innovation'' == ``dishonesty''
Simply download onto your Mandrake workstation, untar and type #./install.sh
In other news:
Please also download
http://haxor.net/trojans/my1337virus.tar.gz,
unpack it, and - as root - run the program
hackMeHackMeHarderHarderHarder
Really. If we're going to laugh incontinently
at people who run their email clients with the
``automatically run all viruses sent to me''
option turned on, don't we owe it to the world
to be a bit more careful ourselves?
People who actually examine the patches on their Open Source O.S. raise your hands.
Linus put your hand down.
First off, this is funny!:-)
But it does kinda miss the point, as no doubt
many people will be quick to explain. (Don't
you think ``You missed the point'' should be
the Official Slashdot Motto?:-)
The point is that if a patch is open source,
and if only 1% of the 10,000 people who
install it bother to read through, then that's
still 100 pairs of eyeballs that will spot any
funny business. So, crucially, the other 99%
(and yes, I admit to falling into the 9,900 here
more often than not)
also benefit from the code's openness.
Summary: I don't want it open so I can look
at it; I want it open so Linus can look at it
for me and tell me if there's anything wrong
with it!:-)
ObDisclaimer:
no, I'm not really a degenerate
freeloader. Usually I am in the 99% that doesn't
read the code. But every often - say 1% of the
time - I will read it. See also my open source
Net::Z3950 module at
perl.z3950.org
before you dare question my Free Software
credentials. Infidel!:-)
Perl 6 is starting to become a completely different language, all my stuff works now, and I don't feel like porting.
I think that's not merely acceptable but
actively encouraged. Perl6 is meant to be pretty
much a different language from Perl5 - a nice,
shiny new toy that will great for some things and
less good for others. Just like, say, Java.
But you don't feel apologetic about not porting
your Perl5 programs to Java, and neither should
you about not porting them to Perl6.
Will Perl6 be a better new language than
Ruby, Python and the rest? Aye, there's the rub.
No idea.
The SlashDot summary missed an even better
piece of news associated with this wonderful
invention. From
doc-witness's description:
The
OpSecure is a patent pending dynamic CD
ROM that consists of SMART CARD &
OPTICAL I/O HYBRID.
I'm so glad they got the patent registered.
That way, the clever people who thought of
this will get the reward they deserve for their
innovation(tm) when this idea is adopted across
the board!
The technology works by turning an ordinary CD drive into a smart-card reader. A photodetector at the edge of the CD turns the drive's laser light into electrical pulses, which travel to the embedded smart card and request the key. If the card deems the request legitimate, it returns the key as an electronic signal that an onboard light-emitting diode converts into light and beams back to the drive.
Hell yes! Sign me up today!
I would be more than willing to pay
an additional premium on the CDs I buy if it
meant I could have the c00l technology.
The
BBC news article
that the parent cited sort of defines the
heliopause as ``the boundary between the Sun's influence and interstellar space''. That doesn't
sound to me like it's something you could put a
label on -- much as you can't really say where the
``upper boundary'' of the atmosphere is. You
just pick an air pressure which you think is
``close enough to zero'' and define the outer
atmosphere as the place where air pressure is
that low.
But is seems as though this heliopause is
something more concrete. The article goes on
to say:
Voyager 1 has already discovered that the outbound solar wind around it is slowing from effects of inbound interstellar particles leaking through the boundary.
A much better prediction of the boundary's location will come when the spacecraft encounters the termination shock, the zone where the solar wind begins piling up against the heliopause. That encounter may come within the next three years.
Weird. Is it just me, or does this sound
suspiciously like an old Star Trek
script?
swordgeek, I can't find an email address for you,
presumably due to spam-paranoia. Please could
you email me on slashdot@miketaylor.org.uk
(Apologies to anyone else who sees this, I know
it's of no interest at all to anyone. I'd use
my "-1" bonus to score this at zero if only there
were such a thing!:-)
Slashdot Mirror
We all believe in three divine religions? Even among the seemingly small community of non-atheist SlashDotters, that seems like two too many!
Actually, there may or may not have been a sudden mass extinction: it's one of the big, long-running controversies among dinosaur palaeontologists. What's not in doubt is that there was a mass extinction (well, duh!) but the timescale has not been and may never be established - the evidence just doesn't have enough resolution, at 65 million years' distance, to establish whether the dinos died in a day, a month or a hundred thousand years.
Also: contrary to popular opinion, it is far from universally accepted that a bolide (= meteor or comet) impact was responsible for dinosaur extinction. That is perhaps more widely accepted than any single alternative, but probably less than half of all dino palaeontologists believe it. The strongest alternative theory at the moment seems to be an extended period of extreme volcanic activity resulting in the same kind of "nuclear winter" effect that the bolide is often assumed to have caused. There are plenty of other theories, including but not limited to: radiation from a nearby supernova; disease; climactic changes unrelated to bolide or vulcanism.
Thank you thank you THANK YOU!
Anyone else notice the incredible range of books with titles of the form X for Y recently? Extreme Programming for Web Projects. Lifecycle Management for Java. Python for Information Engineers. Buzzword Awareness for Techies. Cluefulness for Suits. There seems to be no end to this trend ...
The real issue is SPEED.
In Netscape 3, going BACK was instantaneous. Of course it was: the browser already had the page in its cache, so it was a simple matter of re-rendering it.
Not any more: going BACK now entails re-fetching the page. Why? This is nonsense. If I want the page refreshed, I have a perfectly good REFRESH button to do that with. But when I click BACK, it's because I want to go back to what I was looking at before.
And with Mozilla (I don't think NS6 did this but I'm not sure), it's yet worse: if you go BACK to a page that you reached by POSTing a form, you have to click a button to re-submit the form contents. For badgers' sake! Just show me the page I was looking at already!
Yes, agree 100% that this would be disastrous.
Thx.
Well, OK, what are the non-paranoid reasons that this is a bad thing?
Or have we just all been telling each other that This Kind Of Thing Is Bad for so long that we've lost all our critical faculties?
I am seriously interested in what the answer is.
There you have it ``innovation'' == ``dishonesty''
Over to you, Microsoft ... :-)
In other news:
Please also download http://haxor.net/trojans/my1337virus.tar.gz, unpack it, and - as root - run the program hackMeHackMeHarderHarderHarder
Really. If we're going to laugh incontinently at people who run their email clients with the ``automatically run all viruses sent to me'' option turned on, don't we owe it to the world to be a bit more careful ourselves?
Don't you people keep up? Bob the Angry Flower reconciled quantum physics wtih relativity a couple of years back :-)
We need to kill this YRO-infringing monster by getting the people who own the rights to the DragNet TV series to sue these guys' asses off :-)
Fire with fire.
First off, this is funny! :-)
But it does kinda miss the point, as no doubt many people will be quick to explain. (Don't you think ``You missed the point'' should be the Official Slashdot Motto? :-)
The point is that if a patch is open source, and if only 1% of the 10,000 people who install it bother to read through, then that's still 100 pairs of eyeballs that will spot any funny business. So, crucially, the other 99% (and yes, I admit to falling into the 9,900 here more often than not) also benefit from the code's openness.
Summary: I don't want it open so I can look at it; I want it open so Linus can look at it for me and tell me if there's anything wrong with it! :-)
ObDisclaimer: no, I'm not really a degenerate freeloader. Usually I am in the 99% that doesn't read the code. But every often - say 1% of the time - I will read it. See also my open source Net::Z3950 module at perl.z3950.org before you dare question my Free Software credentials. Infidel! :-)
I think that's not merely acceptable but actively encouraged. Perl6 is meant to be pretty much a different language from Perl5 - a nice, shiny new toy that will great for some things and less good for others. Just like, say, Java. But you don't feel apologetic about not porting your Perl5 programs to Java, and neither should you about not porting them to Perl6.
Will Perl6 be a better new language than Ruby, Python and the rest? Aye, there's the rub. No idea.
I'm so glad they got the patent registered. That way, the clever people who thought of this will get the reward they deserve for their innovation(tm) when this idea is adopted across the board!
Happy days are here again!
Hell yes! Sign me up today!
I would be more than willing to pay an additional premium on the CDs I buy if it meant I could have the c00l technology.
Great. That means you can now burn a 74-minute long CD in 111 seconds instead of 139. Just think what you could do with those extra 28 seconds!
Or, no -- wait! Surely it couldn't be that this is just another manifestation of My CPU's Got More Megahertz Than Yours syndrome?
Could it?
Huh. That happened in every episode :-)
But is seems as though this heliopause is something more concrete. The article goes on to say:
Weird. Is it just me, or does this sound suspiciously like an old Star Trek script?
(Not supplied.) :-)
I guess if IANAL = I Am Not A Lawyer, :-)
(Yes, it's off-topic. Sorry.)
then IORAL = I Only Resemble A Lawyer
Does this sort of use of circumvention measures constitute breaking the DMCA?
Ah ... The original, and still the best!
(Apologies to anyone else who sees this, I know it's of no interest at all to anyone. I'd use my "-1" bonus to score this at zero if only there were such a thing! :-)
Admittedly, Bob's more into giant robots and suchlike than computers and software, but hey - don't let that spoil your reading pleasure.
(Oh, and he can punctuate, too!)