SkiFree was a bona fide classic. It even has an XKCD comic!
https://www.google.co.uk/#q=skifree&es_sm=93
FFS.. what is/. coming to? Mentioning that a topic has an XKCD related cartoon yet not even linking to the original source
Even the ACs here are getting lamer.
But yeah, I'm with the OP on this one. I predate Windows in total for working with computers and I have no idea about skiFree. Maybe its a split between those of use who see computers as a tool for work vs those that see them as entertainment.
Oh that's been solved. We know everything there is to know about human intelligence. Don't believe me? Well, that's just because you're not smart enough.
I think the Brian Kernighan quote may be relevant here
Everyone knows that debugging is twice as hard as writing a program in the first place. So if you're as clever as you can be when you write it, how will you ever debug it?
Apparently it's some apologism for Windows 10, but an unbelievably poor one. "Oh no, no no! Please don't panic because Windows phones home to over 100 different servers even when you turn the telemetry off. It's probably, eh... nobody's quite sure, but I'm sure everything will be okay!"
Is this another one of those quizzes where the answer is "People who did't read TFA"?
Either you read the TFA and are totally mis-representing what was in it, or you didn't read TFA. Because in TFA it clearly identifies and describes the network traffic that was identified by the Voat user and points out 1) how innocuous it is, 2) how bad the methodology was, and 3) How Forbes sensationalized it.
Seeing this makes me wonder if this was the real reason for the IRS stopping to accept electronically filed returns last week. No mention of it in TFA, but the Christian Science Monitor was a bit cynical when reporting Tax filing halted by IRS computer outage. Will refunds be delayed? by putting quotes around the "hardware failure".
A "hardware failure" forced the shutdown of several tax processing systems, including the e-file system, the IRS said in a statement.
whereas the actual IRS statement was (in the same article)
The IRS experienced a hardware failure this afternoon affecting a number of tax processing systems, which are currently unavailable. Several of our systems are not currently operating, including our modernized e-file system and a number of other related systems. The IRS is currently in the process of making repairs and working to restore normal operations as soon as possible. We anticipate some of the systems will remain unavailable until tomorrow.
Sure, that's easy... I did not say that traditional energy sources had a zero footprint, they do have a footprint. But things like coal, oil, natural gas come from underground. Most of the refineries, processing facilities and power plants are already in place. Mining more coal or extracting more oil to generate power will not consume much more surface area of the planet (zero in the case of existing mines and wells). Any expansion of solar will consume more surface area and destroy vegetation (even in a desert), unless we get smarter and utilize the roofs of existing structures....
By ignoring existing infrastructure you are already starting off with a false equivalence. You have to count everything in order to have a far comparison. And that also includes the byproducts of those power stations.
Anyway, I have nothing against solar, but it's not as "green" as everyone seems to pretend it is. Any source of energy has a "cost" associated with it. Even if you covered every square inch of the planet in solar panels, you still couldn't generate enough power to meet demand. Solar is great, but it's not the end-all be-all solution for energy. We need to responsibly use multiple sources. Coal, oil, and gas are natural products, btw. Wind is nice too, unfortunately the big turbine blades are killing a lot of birds.
You say you have nothing against solar, but you used "green" as a pejorative and as an absolute. And this comment about "Even if you covered every square inch of the planet in solar panels" is totally wrong. These calculations are easily done and the total area needed is less than 0.5% of the earth for 100% solar power to meet all requirements.
And as for birds and wind turbines.. yes they killed, but how is that compared to the number of birds killed by flying into buildings? Does it represent a larger or smaller amount? So again, you can't just trot out an absolute and make a proclamation about it.
So they're destroying 6,178 acres of vegetation and covering it with solar panels and/or other collectors, which are made from caustic chemicals and other non-biodegradeable materials, in order to generate power.... How is that "green"?
Until you compare that 6000 acres with the equivalent area effected by a coal mine or a uranium mine or a bunch or natural gas wells, plus all the area needed for the ancillary equipment to process and supply those fuels to their respective power station types, then your complaint of this solar plant not being green is meaningless.
Nuclear power: 500MW is considered a "small/compact" nuclear plant, costing about $1.5 billion with a footprint of a few acres with a lifetime of approx. 40 years.
So where did you get your costs from? My quick google pops up the current cost of a nuke plant as up to $9B nowadays.
So these types are systems are interesting in the long run only if the energy storage question is answered, permitting a shift between the time the solar panels are producing and the when the energy is consumed. So to me the big "Green" energy question is not Wind or Solar or whatever your favorite renewable is, but how to store large amount (We're talking GWh at least on the scale of a country) energy and release it when needed
D.
If you read TFA* you would see that this is a solar/thermal and not solar/voltaic power station and that there is energy storage via thermal mass already built into the system.
Here's a thought, why not wait until Thursday for the actual announcement instead of feeding shill accounts that link to ad block un-friendly sites who have been known purveyors of malware via ads???????
The submitter is a known hackaday shill account, their stories get promoted no matter what their quality, and they never interact with/. other than to submit stories.
I actually looked at TFA before seeing who submitted it (my mistake) and was left wondering where the content actually was. The whole IoT aspect seems to relate to the Nest debacle. And in general the root cause has nothing to do with IoT, but rather proof that testing physical devices is hard.
If you are traveling with a laptop whose power supply is capable of handling either 110v or 240v, why do you care about a surge protector for 110v? Surely all you need is a single surge protector that is rated for the highest voltage that your laptop can handle.
Also I wouldn't be too concerned about the 220v/240v differential. The components used in surge protectors don't suddenly cut off all spikes that just creep over their limit. In fact MOVs limit voltage to 3 to 4 times their rated value. So a 10% difference in line voltage is nothing to them.
The editors of Slashdot should not allow self-promotion. StartsWithABang is Ethan Siegel and we had several of these astronomy and science stories submitted by him that link to his own Forbes articles!
Well given that Forbes doesn't like my ad blocker (and quite a few people on/. run ad blockers for very good reasons) I'd say he's shooting himself in the foot by linking to his own articles on Forbes. He'll never get page views from all of us ad blockers, and eventually someone will post a link to a similar story on an ad blocker friendly site and their page view stats will go up.
But yeah. Shills still exist on/. no matter what whipslash* has said about cleaning them out, and stories like this always seem to bypass the firehouse.
*We loved you Whipslash when you spoke about cleaning up/. but when need to see you follow through on this or we will turn on you and opine about "Meet the new boss, same as the old boss".
K-8 Progression In early grades, students differentiate between responsible and irresponsible computing behaviors. Students learn that responsible behaviors can help individuals while irresponsible behaviors can hurt individuals. They examine legal and ethical considerations for obtaining and sharing information and apply those behaviors to protect original ideas. As students progress academically, they engage in legal and ethical behaviors to guard against intrusive applications and promote a safe and secure computing experience.
9-12 Statement Laws impact many areas of computing in an effort to protect privacy, data, property, information, and identity. The legal oversight of computing involves tradeoffs; such laws can expedite or delay advancements and infringe upon or protect human rights. Ethical concerns also shape computing practices and professions. International variations in legal and ethical considerations should be examined.
So based on 3 words in a DRAFT statement of a section that considers Laws and Ethics, you want tar and feather the whole course? Where the fuck do you consider legal aspects of computing if you don't do it here. And FFS this could easily apply to GPL or any other such license that relies on the legal framework to enforce its restrictions.
Eh, I don't think I agree with you. Scrapy is a free software project.
The story is on a site called practicalecommerce.com; if the story had been "come visit practicalecommerce.com! We have new stories! I can't believe #3!" then I would agree with you. But this is announcing that there is one fewer project that depends on Python 2.x, and I'm happy to hear it.
Feel free to disagree with me, but I'll still Binspam it when I see it. Yes it is news, but it is boring as shit news that is only relevant to the few people who use the service./. is all about the discussion yet there is nothing to discuss here. It is purely a product announcement for some minor system and nothing else. If it was some new revolutionary project that promised the world it would be a different thing. But it isn't. If it was some new announcement by tech visionary then it would generate some discussion. But it hasn't. This is the sort of thing that Freshmeat was meant for.
If you want to improve the quality of stories on/. then you have too cull crap like this from the main story feed.
$100 per month * 12 months is a lot of money to poor people like us. We'll just download the handful of TV shows we want to watch, and utilize OTA HD as well as pirate streams for sports.
Again, fuck right off, and take some of the comcast management with you.
If you are counting pirate streams in your cost reduction analysis then you are doing it wrong.
Slashdot Mirror
SkiFree was a bona fide classic. It even has an XKCD comic!
https://www.google.co.uk/#q=skifree&es_sm=93
FFS .. what is /. coming to? Mentioning that a topic has an XKCD related cartoon yet not even linking to the original source
Even the ACs here are getting lamer.
But yeah, I'm with the OP on this one. I predate Windows in total for working with computers and I have no idea about skiFree. Maybe its a split between those of use who see computers as a tool for work vs those that see them as entertainment.
Oh that's been solved. We know everything there is to know about human intelligence. Don't believe me? Well, that's just because you're not smart enough.
I think the Brian Kernighan quote may be relevant here
Everyone knows that debugging is twice as hard as writing a program in the first place. So if you're as clever as you can be when you write it, how will you ever debug it?
. . but rather a more sophisticated matrix that has some ability to understand context.
Yeah, right.
I guess its loke a lot of abbreviated terms where its so commonly well-known that spelling it out seems weird. Like ATM.
Yeah, this is /. so you shouldn't have to spell out the names of your protocols.
Apparently it's some apologism for Windows 10, but an unbelievably poor one. "Oh no, no no! Please don't panic because Windows phones home to over 100 different servers even when you turn the telemetry off. It's probably, eh... nobody's quite sure, but I'm sure everything will be okay!"
Is this another one of those quizzes where the answer is "People who did't read TFA"?
Either you read the TFA and are totally mis-representing what was in it, or you didn't read TFA. Because in TFA it clearly identifies and describes the network traffic that was identified by the Voat user and points out 1) how innocuous it is, 2) how bad the methodology was, and 3) How Forbes sensationalized it.
If you have counter points then make them.
Look at that price .. $2600 for that. Only Dell fanboys would pay the Dell hardware premium for that overpriced piece of hardware.
Oh, wait
Seeing this makes me wonder if this was the real reason for the IRS stopping to accept electronically filed returns last week. No mention of it in TFA, but the Christian Science Monitor was a bit cynical when reporting Tax filing halted by IRS computer outage. Will refunds be delayed? by putting quotes around the "hardware failure".
A "hardware failure" forced the shutdown of several tax processing systems, including the e-file system, the IRS said in a statement.
whereas the actual IRS statement was (in the same article)
The IRS experienced a hardware failure this afternoon affecting a number of tax processing systems, which are currently unavailable. Several of our systems are not currently operating, including our modernized e-file system and a number of other related systems. The IRS is currently in the process of making repairs and working to restore normal operations as soon as possible. We anticipate some of the systems will remain unavailable until tomorrow.
Sure, that's easy... I did not say that traditional energy sources had a zero footprint, they do have a footprint. But things like coal, oil, natural gas come from underground. Most of the refineries, processing facilities and power plants are already in place. Mining more coal or extracting more oil to generate power will not consume much more surface area of the planet (zero in the case of existing mines and wells). Any expansion of solar will consume more surface area and destroy vegetation (even in a desert), unless we get smarter and utilize the roofs of existing structures....
By ignoring existing infrastructure you are already starting off with a false equivalence. You have to count everything in order to have a far comparison. And that also includes the byproducts of those power stations.
Anyway, I have nothing against solar, but it's not as "green" as everyone seems to pretend it is. Any source of energy has a "cost" associated with it. Even if you covered every square inch of the planet in solar panels, you still couldn't generate enough power to meet demand. Solar is great, but it's not the end-all be-all solution for energy. We need to responsibly use multiple sources. Coal, oil, and gas are natural products, btw. Wind is nice too, unfortunately the big turbine blades are killing a lot of birds.
You say you have nothing against solar, but you used "green" as a pejorative and as an absolute. And this comment about "Even if you covered every square inch of the planet in solar panels" is totally wrong. These calculations are easily done and the total area needed is less than 0.5% of the earth for 100% solar power to meet all requirements.
And as for birds and wind turbines .. yes they killed, but how is that compared to the number of birds killed by flying into buildings? Does it represent a larger or smaller amount? So again, you can't just trot out an absolute and make a proclamation about it.
So they're destroying 6,178 acres of vegetation and covering it with solar panels and/or other collectors, which are made from caustic chemicals and other non-biodegradeable materials, in order to generate power.... How is that "green"?
Until you compare that 6000 acres with the equivalent area effected by a coal mine or a uranium mine or a bunch or natural gas wells, plus all the area needed for the ancillary equipment to process and supply those fuels to their respective power station types, then your complaint of this solar plant not being green is meaningless.
Care to try for round 2?
Nuclear power: 500MW is considered a "small/compact" nuclear plant, costing about $1.5 billion with a footprint of a few acres with a lifetime of approx. 40 years.
So where did you get your costs from? My quick google pops up the current cost of a nuke plant as up to $9B nowadays.
So these types are systems are interesting in the long run only if the energy storage question is answered, permitting a shift between the time the solar panels are producing and the when the energy is consumed. So to me the big "Green" energy question is not Wind or Solar or whatever your favorite renewable is, but how to store large amount (We're talking GWh at least on the scale of a country) energy and release it when needed
D.
If you read TFA* you would see that this is a solar/thermal and not solar/voltaic power station and that there is energy storage via thermal mass already built into the system.
*You did read TFA didn't you?
Here's a thought, why not wait until Thursday for the actual announcement instead of feeding shill accounts that link to ad block un-friendly sites who have been known purveyors of malware via ads???????
This is not a new thing.
The submitter is a known hackaday shill account, their stories get promoted no matter what their quality, and they never interact with /. other than to submit stories.
I actually looked at TFA before seeing who submitted it (my mistake) and was left wondering where the content actually was. The whole IoT aspect seems to relate to the Nest debacle. And in general the root cause has nothing to do with IoT, but rather proof that testing physical devices is hard.
If you are traveling with a laptop whose power supply is capable of handling either 110v or 240v, why do you care about a surge protector for 110v? Surely all you need is a single surge protector that is rated for the highest voltage that your laptop can handle.
Also I wouldn't be too concerned about the 220v/240v differential. The components used in surge protectors don't suddenly cut off all spikes that just creep over their limit. In fact MOVs limit voltage to 3 to 4 times their rated value. So a 10% difference in line voltage is nothing to them.
The editors of Slashdot should not allow self-promotion. StartsWithABang is Ethan Siegel and we had several of these astronomy and science stories submitted by him that link to his own Forbes articles!
Well given that Forbes doesn't like my ad blocker (and quite a few people on /. run ad blockers for very good reasons) I'd say he's shooting himself in the foot by linking to his own articles on Forbes. He'll never get page views from all of us ad blockers, and eventually someone will post a link to a similar story on an ad blocker friendly site and their page view stats will go up.
But yeah. Shills still exist on /. no matter what whipslash* has said about cleaning them out, and stories like this always seem to bypass the firehouse.
*We loved you Whipslash when you spoke about cleaning up /. but when need to see you follow through on this or we will turn on you and opine about "Meet the new boss, same as the old boss".
Twitter Tackles Terrorists Through Targeted Takedown
The original headline could imply that the terrorists were in the middle of a targeted takedown when twitter tackled them.
This is perfect. We now don't even need to move our arms to watch netflix. The peak of civilization has now been achieved.
Netflix. Yeah, right.
The full quotes from TFA, Law and Ethics section
K-8 Progression
In early grades, students differentiate between responsible and irresponsible computing behaviors. Students learn that responsible behaviors can help individuals while irresponsible behaviors can hurt individuals. They examine legal and ethical considerations for obtaining and sharing information and apply those behaviors to protect original ideas. As students progress academically, they engage in legal and ethical behaviors to guard against intrusive applications and promote a safe and secure computing experience.
9-12 Statement
Laws impact many areas of computing in an effort to protect privacy, data, property, information, and identity. The legal oversight of computing involves tradeoffs; such laws can expedite or delay advancements and infringe upon or protect human rights. Ethical concerns also shape computing practices and professions. International variations in legal and ethical considerations should be examined.
So based on 3 words in a DRAFT statement of a section that considers Laws and Ethics, you want tar and feather the whole course? Where the fuck do you consider legal aspects of computing if you don't do it here. And FFS this could easily apply to GPL or any other such license that relies on the legal framework to enforce its restrictions.
Because that is what TFS and TFA read like. I hope there is more to this than meets the eye.
Eh, I don't think I agree with you. Scrapy is a free software project.
The story is on a site called practicalecommerce.com; if the story had been "come visit practicalecommerce.com! We have new stories! I can't believe #3!" then I would agree with you. But this is announcing that there is one fewer project that depends on Python 2.x, and I'm happy to hear it.
Feel free to disagree with me, but I'll still Binspam it when I see it. Yes it is news, but it is boring as shit news that is only relevant to the few people who use the service. /. is all about the discussion yet there is nothing to discuss here. It is purely a product announcement for some minor system and nothing else. If it was some new revolutionary project that promised the world it would be a different thing. But it isn't. If it was some new announcement by tech visionary then it would generate some discussion. But it hasn't. This is the sort of thing that Freshmeat was meant for.
If you want to improve the quality of stories on /. then you have too cull crap like this from the main story feed.
This is the sort of thing I mark as Binspam in the Firehose. Blatant advertising.
Unfortunately I was doing other things when it popped up.
Indeed. Our post WWII conduct with other countries was often extremely shameful.
Trust me .. it didn't start with WWII. Even Hawaii was a business deal framed as a military action.
I hadn't read or heard much about this guy,
Me too. Here I was thinking that he'd be a good foil for Trump's monomania and Cruz's religious extremism, and then he goes and does this.
Do I really want to use something that looks like an acronym for "Rootkit"??
Fuck off.
$100 per month * 12 months is a lot of money to poor people like us. We'll just download the handful of TV shows we want to watch, and utilize OTA HD as well as pirate streams for sports.
Again, fuck right off, and take some of the comcast management with you.
If you are counting pirate streams in your cost reduction analysis then you are doing it wrong.