I understand hangglider users are rather annoyed at this: Those transponders are designed for extreme reliability and durability, and as such they are of considerable weight. Enough to seriously impair performance on such a small and lightweight glider.
Slashdot is not a community opposed to pornography. Be honest: A lot of you enjoy it. I'll freely admit myself to frequently engaging in sexual roleplay online. It's a lot of fun. Because of this though, a lot of us have no understanding of the other side of the debate. All we see is a caricature screaming 'sex is evil!' I don't know anything about the philippines, but in the interests of fairness, here is the official stance of one of the leading American anti-pornography organisations:
"Pornography has spread like a plague in our nation. It has moved from the margins of our culture to the mainstream, attacking marriages, families, and communities. Worst of all, it has stolen a time of innocence from our children.... Pornography is a visual representation of sexuality which distorts an individual's concept of the nature of conjugal relations. This, in turn, alters both sexual attitudes and behavior. It is a major threat to marriage, to family, to children and to individual happiness. In undermining marriage it is one of the factors in undermining social stability.... Pornography use is a pathway to infidelity and divorce, and is frequently a major factor in these family disasters. Among couples affected by one spouse's addiction, two-thirds experience a loss of interest in sexual intercourse. Men who view pornography regularly have a higher tolerance for abnormal sexuality, including rape, sexual aggression, and sexual promiscuity. Pornography engenders greater sexual permissiveness, which in turn leads to a greater risk of out-of-wedlock births and STDs. These, in turn, lead to still more weaknesses and debilities. Child-sex offenders are more likely to view pornography regularly or to be involved in its distribution. he presence of sexually oriented businesses significantly harms the surrounding community, leading to increases in crime and decreases in property values."
On second thoughts... no, the caricature is about right. I was hoping to find some more depth on their site to quote so that slashdot could pick apart their arguments, but they don't really have any. Just scaremongering. I especially like how they claim in one part that pornography ruins marriages by making men not want sex, and in another part that it claims that pornography makes men have more casual sex leading to STIs and out-of-wedlock births. Then they have to drag out talk of child pornography, the atomic bomb of debate. So go ahead, make fun of them. They deserve it.
This just depends on your definition of haggis. Being a traditional food, any deviation from the custom is considered suspicious: It isn't a tradition if you keep changing it. So many would consider lungless haggis to be not quite the real thing. Pseudo-haggis, or haggis-substitute. Close enough in a pinch, if you can't get the good stuff.
Half true. Free markets can exist without government intervention, but only providing that ownership of property is practical. For physical goods that means you need at least enough government to run a police force, otherwise the price of any good is reduced to the price of the ammunition required to take it from the current owners. For domain names, the authority over the root servers and a general consensus to use them imparts ownership - ICANN alone 'owns' domains, and everyone else merely rents them.
Haggis is banned in the US, as the FDA has not approved offal for human consumption. Amusingly enough, if you're in America, a shift of power towards the liberiatian is the best hope of seeing it legalised again.
This also applies to unpasteurised dairy products.
I want this thing running linux before the month is out. I'd even settle for Windows 7. Just... not the Windows 8 abomination. Anything but that.
If it weren't for the price, I rather like the idea of an x86 high-spec tablet. The android offerings have to make a lot of compromises to keep weight down and battery life up. The Surface pro doesn't: It's a lap-burning battery-sucking brick with processing power to rival a laptop. That's the type of tablet I want.
You're confusing individual benefit with collective. If I have children, they will increase the money available in the collective pool to support me in old age... by an insignificant amount. It's the classic tragedy of the commons: The economic incentive for each individual is to take all they can without contributing in return. If humans always made the financially optimal decision, there'd be far fewer of them around.
Immortality for your genes isn't worth very much. It gives you a legacy, but you don't get to see it.
I'm young enough that I've a chance, if only a very slim one, that immortality-tech will become available within my lifetime. Body transplant, cryonics that actually works, maybe even the holy grail of mind uploading. It's a long shot, but it's the only chance I see. If not, well... not much I can do about it.
Economically, today, children are a terrible idea. It made sense once, when children were a retirement plan - the only means of support when you get too old to work. But we have social security now.
However, the decision to breed* isn't economic. It's emotional. People choose to have children because they have a psychological need, and sometimes a pet just doesn't quite fill the niche fully.
*When it actually is a decision at all, and are are a lot of accidential children.
Semi-right. You are correct: Bleeding the animal is required as part of preservation. The most efficient way to do this is to simply hand the animal upside down and cut the neck. It will then die. The pain, though certainly severe, is also over very quickly if the slaughter is performed by someone practiced in the task. Halal slaughtering was perhaps the most humane and safe means of slaughtering an animal... in the bronze age.
The problem is that the slaughtering method became a ritualised aspect of a religion, and as such became entirely inflexible. We have new, better ways now: Stunning, sedation, aspixiation by carbon dioxide or nitrogen (Rather less painful than carbon dioxide: Human accounts say it is actually euphoric), captive bolt guns. Ways that have become standard practice in the secular meat industry: They can kill an animal dead in an instant, without any pain at all, reliably and cleanly. But these ways are off-limits to Muslims, and Jews too: Their holy books do not say 'slaughter like this until a better way comes along.' The books say 'Slaughter like this because your God commands you, and you will obey without question.' It doesn't matter what the original reasons for the halal slaughtering process were any more: It's a ritual, and the faithful demonstrate their faith to themselves and their God by adhering to the rituals as specified without deviation.
Some things need low-level hardware access to work that a VM can't do. Try running a triple-headed accelerated monitor setup from a VM. No easy thing. There's also a substantial memory overhead in virtualisation - if you've only got a laptop with a gig or two of ram, then you can't afford to throw 500MB of that away holding Windows in memory to host your Linux VM or vice versa.
The margin on most PCs is razor-thin. If they were required to buy a full Windows license, the cost of the machine to manufacture would shoot up by a hundred dollars. Microsoft provides heavily-discounted OEM edition licenses to OEMs, which they simply cannot do without: No OEM licenses, no business. So when Microsoft sets standards for that 'designed for Windows 8' sticker and the license discount that comes with it, OEMs have no option but to meet those standards. This gives MS the power to dictate a sweeping change. Sometimes something major, others something trivial like mandating an extra button on the keyboard.
Would you check the details on that? As I understood it, and I might be wrong, the Microsoft standard doesn't require OEMs provide the ability for the end user to add their own keys - that's up to the OEM. What it does do is require the OEMs provide the user with the option to disable secure boot entirely, and that this can only by done by someone physically present at the machine (The 'press F1 to enter setup' program).
True. Except that it can be used to bypass secure boot: 1. Boot secure OS. 2. Hack it, get root. 3. Write hibernate image to the drive containing your hacked kernel, which includes disabling of the code to delete the image after use. 4. Trigger reboot. 5. Pwnage.
It'd take some very impressive skill to do that - it isn't something you could just make a script-kiddie toolbox for. The only way to prevent this is for the kernel to use TPM hardware to sign the boot image. As this isn't yet an option, it's debated if Secure Boot linux should also disable hibernation, in order to be strictly compliant, even though it introduces much user annoyance to provide protection against an attack that would be near-impossible for even the best hacker to pull off.
The comment refers to a demonstration of ReactOS put on for Putin. Unsurprisingly, he is not at all happy about most of the computers in Russia running an OS under effective US control, for much the same reason the US is concerned about using Chinese hardware: It provides an invitation to industrial espionage and results in giving a lot of money to a country that could one day become an enemy. A few other Russian politicians have also expressed interest, presumably as an option for when the vast number of XP machines the country uses finally need replacing. If ReactOS can mature by then, it'll be a politically more acceptable option than upgrading everything to Windows 8 (Or 9).
Or they could sue ReactOS away. Even though the devs go to great lengths to ensure legal safety, I have no doubt there are plenty of software patents Microsoft holds that could be applied. The only reason they allow ReactOS to exist is that it poses no threat to them.
How has this not made it onto the internet yet? If this it running on any kind of scale, sooner or later someone is going to sneak the code off on a USB stick and try to make a name for themselves as the activist who stole the Windows code.
That is strange indeed, because my apparent show of knowledge was actually just condensing things from several wikipedia articles together with what few fragments I already knew from reliable sources. Murdoch's gas work wasn't with natural gas though. Coal gas.
Numbers. Look at how useless this patent is. Do you think it's the only one? Amazon must file a ridiculous number of worthless junk patents like this - they've probably got lawyers who's only job is to review internal documents looking for patentable ideas. Every now and again they get lucky, and the patent will land before an examiner in an unusually lenient mood.
The inventor of that, William Murdoch, actually didn't patent it because James Watt Jr informed him that it wasn't patentable.
James Watt's father, the more famous James Watt of steam engine fame, then went on to steal the idea for himself.
*The* Watt is remembered as the father of the steam engine. His true contribution to history wasn't really technological: He invented patent trolling. Boulton and Watt's firm dominated the industrial revolution by systematically patenting every little detail they could come up with, right down to individual layouts of gears, and then letting the lawyers loose on anyone who dared compete. Far from advancing steam technology, he deliberately held it back, fearful that smaller and more practical engine technology would be disruptive to his highly profitable business manufacturing large stationary engines. Murdoch eventually became a partner in the firm once it passed from Sr to Jr, having established his loyalty both by his skill at invention and his willingness to perform industrial espionage - offering assistance to unsuspecting inventors and smaller steam firms, only so he could gain access to their workshops and later testify in court that he had seen them using mechanisms patented by Watt.
Most likely Amazon's policy is to patent anything and everything they can come up with. There is no penalty for a rejected application, so the worst that can happen is they waste some lawyer-time - if they were more selective, they'd risk not patenting something good, or being beaten to file by a competitor who invented simutainously but didn't waste time deciding if the invention was patentable.
Slashdot Mirror
I understand hangglider users are rather annoyed at this: Those transponders are designed for extreme reliability and durability, and as such they are of considerable weight. Enough to seriously impair performance on such a small and lightweight glider.
When I google for Clayton's medal, your post is the #3 result.
Slashdot is not a community opposed to pornography. Be honest: A lot of you enjoy it. I'll freely admit myself to frequently engaging in sexual roleplay online. It's a lot of fun. Because of this though, a lot of us have no understanding of the other side of the debate. All we see is a caricature screaming 'sex is evil!' I don't know anything about the philippines, but in the interests of fairness, here is the official stance of one of the leading American anti-pornography organisations:
"Pornography has spread like a plague in our nation. It has moved from the margins of our culture to the mainstream, attacking marriages, families, and communities. Worst of all, it has stolen a time of innocence from our children. ... Pornography is a visual representation of sexuality which distorts an individual's concept of the nature of conjugal relations. This, in turn, alters both sexual attitudes and behavior. It is a major threat to marriage, to family, to children and to individual happiness. In undermining marriage it is one of the factors in undermining social stability. ... Pornography use is a pathway to infidelity and divorce, and is frequently a major factor in these family disasters. Among couples affected by one spouse's addiction, two-thirds experience a loss of interest in sexual intercourse. Men who view pornography regularly have a higher tolerance for abnormal sexuality, including rape, sexual aggression, and sexual promiscuity. Pornography engenders greater sexual permissiveness, which in turn leads to a greater risk of out-of-wedlock births and STDs. These, in turn, lead to still more weaknesses and debilities. Child-sex offenders are more likely to view pornography regularly or to be involved in its distribution. he presence of sexually oriented businesses significantly harms the surrounding community, leading to increases in crime and decreases in property values."
On second thoughts... no, the caricature is about right. I was hoping to find some more depth on their site to quote so that slashdot could pick apart their arguments, but they don't really have any. Just scaremongering. I especially like how they claim in one part that pornography ruins marriages by making men not want sex, and in another part that it claims that pornography makes men have more casual sex leading to STIs and out-of-wedlock births. Then they have to drag out talk of child pornography, the atomic bomb of debate. So go ahead, make fun of them. They deserve it.
I'm going to look at porn now.
In sixty years, will people make greatly exagerated movies about life in the Wild Web?
This just depends on your definition of haggis. Being a traditional food, any deviation from the custom is considered suspicious: It isn't a tradition if you keep changing it. So many would consider lungless haggis to be not quite the real thing. Pseudo-haggis, or haggis-substitute. Close enough in a pinch, if you can't get the good stuff.
Half true. Free markets can exist without government intervention, but only providing that ownership of property is practical. For physical goods that means you need at least enough government to run a police force, otherwise the price of any good is reduced to the price of the ammunition required to take it from the current owners. For domain names, the authority over the root servers and a general consensus to use them imparts ownership - ICANN alone 'owns' domains, and everyone else merely rents them.
Haggis is banned in the US, as the FDA has not approved offal for human consumption. Amusingly enough, if you're in America, a shift of power towards the liberiatian is the best hope of seeing it legalised again.
This also applies to unpasteurised dairy products.
"it's funny how, activities that literally don't help human advancement (procreation)"
Like being a Catholic priest?
I want this thing running linux before the month is out. I'd even settle for Windows 7. Just... not the Windows 8 abomination. Anything but that.
If it weren't for the price, I rather like the idea of an x86 high-spec tablet. The android offerings have to make a lot of compromises to keep weight down and battery life up. The Surface pro doesn't: It's a lap-burning battery-sucking brick with processing power to rival a laptop. That's the type of tablet I want.
You're confusing individual benefit with collective. If I have children, they will increase the money available in the collective pool to support me in old age... by an insignificant amount. It's the classic tragedy of the commons: The economic incentive for each individual is to take all they can without contributing in return. If humans always made the financially optimal decision, there'd be far fewer of them around.
Immortality for your genes isn't worth very much. It gives you a legacy, but you don't get to see it.
I'm young enough that I've a chance, if only a very slim one, that immortality-tech will become available within my lifetime. Body transplant, cryonics that actually works, maybe even the holy grail of mind uploading. It's a long shot, but it's the only chance I see. If not, well... not much I can do about it.
Economically, today, children are a terrible idea. It made sense once, when children were a retirement plan - the only means of support when you get too old to work. But we have social security now.
However, the decision to breed* isn't economic. It's emotional. People choose to have children because they have a psychological need, and sometimes a pet just doesn't quite fill the niche fully.
*When it actually is a decision at all, and are are a lot of accidential children.
Semi-right. You are correct: Bleeding the animal is required as part of preservation. The most efficient way to do this is to simply hand the animal upside down and cut the neck. It will then die. The pain, though certainly severe, is also over very quickly if the slaughter is performed by someone practiced in the task. Halal slaughtering was perhaps the most humane and safe means of slaughtering an animal... in the bronze age.
The problem is that the slaughtering method became a ritualised aspect of a religion, and as such became entirely inflexible. We have new, better ways now: Stunning, sedation, aspixiation by carbon dioxide or nitrogen (Rather less painful than carbon dioxide: Human accounts say it is actually euphoric), captive bolt guns. Ways that have become standard practice in the secular meat industry: They can kill an animal dead in an instant, without any pain at all, reliably and cleanly. But these ways are off-limits to Muslims, and Jews too: Their holy books do not say 'slaughter like this until a better way comes along.' The books say 'Slaughter like this because your God commands you, and you will obey without question.' It doesn't matter what the original reasons for the halal slaughtering process were any more: It's a ritual, and the faithful demonstrate their faith to themselves and their God by adhering to the rituals as specified without deviation.
Some things need low-level hardware access to work that a VM can't do. Try running a triple-headed accelerated monitor setup from a VM. No easy thing. There's also a substantial memory overhead in virtualisation - if you've only got a laptop with a gig or two of ram, then you can't afford to throw 500MB of that away holding Windows in memory to host your Linux VM or vice versa.
The margin on most PCs is razor-thin. If they were required to buy a full Windows license, the cost of the machine to manufacture would shoot up by a hundred dollars. Microsoft provides heavily-discounted OEM edition licenses to OEMs, which they simply cannot do without: No OEM licenses, no business. So when Microsoft sets standards for that 'designed for Windows 8' sticker and the license discount that comes with it, OEMs have no option but to meet those standards. This gives MS the power to dictate a sweeping change. Sometimes something major, others something trivial like mandating an extra button on the keyboard.
Would you check the details on that? As I understood it, and I might be wrong, the Microsoft standard doesn't require OEMs provide the ability for the end user to add their own keys - that's up to the OEM. What it does do is require the OEMs provide the user with the option to disable secure boot entirely, and that this can only by done by someone physically present at the machine (The 'press F1 to enter setup' program).
True. Except that it can be used to bypass secure boot:
1. Boot secure OS.
2. Hack it, get root.
3. Write hibernate image to the drive containing your hacked kernel, which includes disabling of the code to delete the image after use.
4. Trigger reboot.
5. Pwnage.
It'd take some very impressive skill to do that - it isn't something you could just make a script-kiddie toolbox for. The only way to prevent this is for the kernel to use TPM hardware to sign the boot image. As this isn't yet an option, it's debated if Secure Boot linux should also disable hibernation, in order to be strictly compliant, even though it introduces much user annoyance to provide protection against an attack that would be near-impossible for even the best hacker to pull off.
"It's one of my toy languages that I created on a whim to teach myself how to write compilers, when I was 11"
Even by Slashdot standards, that's geeky.
The comment refers to a demonstration of ReactOS put on for Putin. Unsurprisingly, he is not at all happy about most of the computers in Russia running an OS under effective US control, for much the same reason the US is concerned about using Chinese hardware: It provides an invitation to industrial espionage and results in giving a lot of money to a country that could one day become an enemy. A few other Russian politicians have also expressed interest, presumably as an option for when the vast number of XP machines the country uses finally need replacing. If ReactOS can mature by then, it'll be a politically more acceptable option than upgrading everything to Windows 8 (Or 9).
Or they could sue ReactOS away. Even though the devs go to great lengths to ensure legal safety, I have no doubt there are plenty of software patents Microsoft holds that could be applied. The only reason they allow ReactOS to exist is that it poses no threat to them.
How has this not made it onto the internet yet? If this it running on any kind of scale, sooner or later someone is going to sneak the code off on a USB stick and try to make a name for themselves as the activist who stole the Windows code.
That is strange indeed, because my apparent show of knowledge was actually just condensing things from several wikipedia articles together with what few fragments I already knew from reliable sources. Murdoch's gas work wasn't with natural gas though. Coal gas.
Numbers. Look at how useless this patent is. Do you think it's the only one? Amazon must file a ridiculous number of worthless junk patents like this - they've probably got lawyers who's only job is to review internal documents looking for patentable ideas. Every now and again they get lucky, and the patent will land before an examiner in an unusually lenient mood.
The inventor of that, William Murdoch, actually didn't patent it because James Watt Jr informed him that it wasn't patentable.
James Watt's father, the more famous James Watt of steam engine fame, then went on to steal the idea for himself.
*The* Watt is remembered as the father of the steam engine. His true contribution to history wasn't really technological: He invented patent trolling. Boulton and Watt's firm dominated the industrial revolution by systematically patenting every little detail they could come up with, right down to individual layouts of gears, and then letting the lawyers loose on anyone who dared compete. Far from advancing steam technology, he deliberately held it back, fearful that smaller and more practical engine technology would be disruptive to his highly profitable business manufacturing large stationary engines. Murdoch eventually became a partner in the firm once it passed from Sr to Jr, having established his loyalty both by his skill at invention and his willingness to perform industrial espionage - offering assistance to unsuspecting inventors and smaller steam firms, only so he could gain access to their workshops and later testify in court that he had seen them using mechanisms patented by Watt.
Most likely Amazon's policy is to patent anything and everything they can come up with. There is no penalty for a rejected application, so the worst that can happen is they waste some lawyer-time - if they were more selective, they'd risk not patenting something good, or being beaten to file by a competitor who invented simutainously but didn't waste time deciding if the invention was patentable.