Slashdot, close your operation, shutdown -h NOW! Tomorrow you can resume normal activity, and rejoice by talking about how proper your behavior was.
Yes, because we all know it's the only moral and correct thing to do. And it makes so much sense to protest in a manner that makes your act of protesting completely unknowable on the one day people care about it.
I think it's much more dramatic to see the explosion without hearing the sound, like they did in 2001: A Space Oddessy, rather than the way they did it in Star Wars, which came across as rather cartoonish in comparison.
Did you actually watch "2001: A Space Odyssey"? The silent outer space scenes were certainly dramatic, but frankly, they were boring as all get-out. The overuse of classical music was equally dramatic and boring. "2010" got it better, with dramatic background music for all the silent space shots instead of gratuitous sound effects.
Never underestimate the power of sound in a motion picture. The reason outer space explosions go "boom!" is, simply, because that's more interesting. Of all the scientific flubs Hollywood makes on a regular basis, this is the first one I'm willing to forgive.
I'm sorry, but it turns out we at SCO have identified our copyrighted code in your robots' neural programming. We are currently pursuing legal recognition of our rights to the software, but in the meantime we would like to extend an offer of $7,999 per robot brain in exchange for a license to continue functioning.
If you hadn't seen that, you'd really be worried when the Smiths completely enveloped Neo, because you wouldn't know how he was going to get out of it.
You don't watch many action movies, do you? There's no way in Sheol that the star of an action trilogy is going to be overcome halfway through the second film.
For those who don't: The United States once made alcoholic beverages illegal by amending the Constitution. The very day it went into effect, organized crime took up where legitimate distribution left off. All the enforcement the government could muster did little to impact the real problem of illegal distribution and profit-making. In the end, the amendment was repealed because the cost of enforcing the amendment far outweighed the benefits of having it.
Now, spam certainly isn't in the same category as this, but the same basic problem remains. It has more in common with illegal alcohol than annoying telemarketing. Most of the spam I get isn't legitimate, in the sense that it offers and honors my "opt-out" requests. Heck, most of the spam nowadays I get doesn't even use the English language. Legitimate spam is already either easy to identify and block or easy to opt out of.
Legislation would be fine and good, but it wouldn't begin to solve the problem. "Legitimate" spammers would either be squeezed out of a business (unlikely) or resort to additional sneakery to get their job done. In that sense, while legislation is a nice idea, enforcing it would be impractical if not impossible and therefore probably wouldn't be done at all.
Sony technology is great. Really, it is. But their computer products are at least as restrictive as Apple's, if not more so. I've read too many reports on Memory Sticks being unreadable in Mac computers to even think about buying their cameras. Same with their CDRW and DVD drives. Their Clie handhelds run the Palm OS, but you need special shareware to sync it with a Mac. And from what I've heard, many non-Sony PCs have similar problems more often than they should.
If I owned a Vaio PC, I'm sure it'd be no contest. But there's no question that if Sony could sell those PCs with their own branded version of Linux or BSD, they would.
My daughter once had a math worksheet where the problem was unsolvable, because it required her to solve for x by dividing by zero. I actually pointed this out to her math teacher the next morning, and his reply was that he wanted the kids to let zero be the result when dividing by zero, because (I suppose) he didn't want to digress from the book and explain something that wasn't covered.
Her science textbook that year also claimed that fungi were plants, that there were only two kingdoms of living things, plant and animal, and that humans were neither.
The iTunes Music Store has what's generally considered the most sensible approach to DRM: share with no more than three computers on the same subnet, burn to no more than 10 CDs without changing your playlist, and make this apply to every downloadable song. In contrast, BuyMusic.com has much more restrictive DRM and they change with every song. In your opinion, do either of these stores have DRM "done right"?
I don't see the government's ban on sports betting as hypocritical at all. The problem with sports betting has always been one of authorizing the results: if anyone has a lot of money riding on a particular game, then he has a motive to rig the game or otherwise pressure the players involved to throw the game. This ruins the betting practice, the game, and everyone else's fun--not to mention making a lot more work for the government's law-enforcement agencies.
Lotteries and gambling devices like slot machines, on the other hand, are required by law to be completely random regardless of who's playing. It's awfully hard to "rig" a lottery when the numbers are being selected by ping-pong balls being bounced by random air jets on live television.
In other words, the government (on the average) has no problem with gambling, provided it doesn't increase the level of associated crime.
new "smart" machines can accurately infer your intents and help you to take better decisions or avoid mistakes.
Microsoft Windows/Office already has "intelligent" menus that organize the functions you use most, a spellchecker that rewrites your typing based on what you probably meant to type, and an Office "assistant" that pops up to offer helpful suggestions when you least need them. Sounds like a patent lawsuit in the making to me.
New warfare technology has ALWAYS triggered a new "arms race", starting with the first human being who ever beat another to death with a rock.
"Chief Ogg! The Tribe-Across-The-River has a powerful new weapon! They use these things called 'stones' and carry them with them into warfare and strike our men in the head! Not a single broken finger!"
"Put our top scientists on it right away, Urk! Dispatch spies to find out how the Tribe-Across-The-River is making these weapons -- we can't afford to be outmatched now! We must manufacture our own 'stones' before it's too late! Civilization depends on it!"
"Er, we're not civilized yet, Chief Ogg. We haven't even discovered fire yet."
But how do you match a face to a person's name and age? Your system wouldn't stop people registering as 'Abraham Lincoln'.
No, but it would keep people from identifying me as him. The idea is just to keep me from representing myself as someone I'm clearly not, which is all you really want from a computerized dating match. It also means I can't use multiple identities without risking being found out, since the recorded audio/video on each profile ought to match up with my live audio/video.
Is there really no reliable way to electronically identify oneself, so that you can prove you are a person with the name and age given?
Well, there is real-time audio and video. It's difficult (but not impossible) to disguise your voice effectively to impersonate the opposite gender; it's even harder to impersonate the face of a different human being, male or female.
Cumbersome, but I can imagine the value of a chatroom or dating site that ONLY allows users with video chat capabilities to make use of its database -- individuals could enter their profile with photos or short audio or video clips, begin communicating by voice, and then move to video to be sure of who they're talking to before trying anything IRL.
Not foolproof, of course -- no system is. But it's a good way to allow a certain amount of anonymity while ensuring a useful level of honesty.
Yes, having advertising affecting search results is not good for the end user but (and I'm just bringing this up as a discussion topic), in what other ways can a search engine make money.
Indeed. Open source is great when you're talking about just software. A web-based search engine, however, involves a LOT of hardware and bandwidth as well, all of which cost mucho bucks.
The only other option I can see is for the search software to be open and for miscellaneous companies to take it (for free) and build their own public search engines, which will necessarily supported by advertising--nobody less than a millionaire will be able to run a popular public search engine for donations only, at least not for very long.
So where's the advantage? So what if the GPL states they must publish the algorithm they use to bias advertiser's results--the results are still biased.
Slashdot Mirror
Slashdot, close your operation, shutdown -h NOW!
Tomorrow you can resume normal activity, and rejoice by talking about how proper your behavior was.
Yes, because we all know it's the only moral and correct thing to do. And it makes so much sense to protest in a manner that makes your act of protesting completely unknowable on the one day people care about it.
Geez, get your own website.
Granted, the Earth Simulator has more raw processing power, but when it comes to Quake 3 the G5 has it cold.
when was the last time you saw an MTV video where the lead singer was ....what's the word.. UGLY?
Oasis. Next question?
Apparently, it allows real-time pitch correction. They are actually being used at concerts.
Wonderful! About time they came up with something to make pop music marginally more tolerable.
Now if they could just integrate this technology in consumer karaoke machines, I'd be truly grateful.
It has been a long time coming but we are finally reaching the beginning stages of 64-bit mainstream computing.
I guess you didn't hear about the Apple PowerMac G5 when it was announced months ago and began shipping last week, then....
Bigger is not always better
pfft.. that's not what she said!
She was just trying to make you feel better, zoloto.
I think it's much more dramatic to see the explosion without hearing the sound, like they did in 2001: A Space Oddessy, rather than the way they did it in Star Wars, which came across as rather cartoonish in comparison.
Did you actually watch "2001: A Space Odyssey"? The silent outer space scenes were certainly dramatic, but frankly, they were boring as all get-out. The overuse of classical music was equally dramatic and boring. "2010" got it better, with dramatic background music for all the silent space shots instead of gratuitous sound effects.
Never underestimate the power of sound in a motion picture. The reason outer space explosions go "boom!" is, simply, because that's more interesting. Of all the scientific flubs Hollywood makes on a regular basis, this is the first one I'm willing to forgive.
There is no corresponding demand for spam.
Tell that to the spammers.
Waitaminnute! Robots beating SCO! Perfect!
I'm sorry, but it turns out we at SCO have identified our copyrighted code in your robots' neural programming. We are currently pursuing legal recognition of our rights to the software, but in the meantime we would like to extend an offer of $7,999 per robot brain in exchange for a license to continue functioning.
If you hadn't seen that, you'd really be worried when the Smiths completely enveloped Neo, because you wouldn't know how he was going to get out of it.
You don't watch many action movies, do you? There's no way in Sheol that the star of an action trilogy is going to be overcome halfway through the second film.
For those who don't: The United States once made alcoholic beverages illegal by amending the Constitution. The very day it went into effect, organized crime took up where legitimate distribution left off. All the enforcement the government could muster did little to impact the real problem of illegal distribution and profit-making. In the end, the amendment was repealed because the cost of enforcing the amendment far outweighed the benefits of having it.
Now, spam certainly isn't in the same category as this, but the same basic problem remains. It has more in common with illegal alcohol than annoying telemarketing. Most of the spam I get isn't legitimate, in the sense that it offers and honors my "opt-out" requests. Heck, most of the spam nowadays I get doesn't even use the English language. Legitimate spam is already either easy to identify and block or easy to opt out of.
Legislation would be fine and good, but it wouldn't begin to solve the problem. "Legitimate" spammers would either be squeezed out of a business (unlikely) or resort to additional sneakery to get their job done. In that sense, while legislation is a nice idea, enforcing it would be impractical if not impossible and therefore probably wouldn't be done at all.
I'm sorry, that didn't make any sense at all. Could you please replace your keyboard with one that has periods and commas on it?
Sony technology is great. Really, it is. But their computer products are at least as restrictive as Apple's, if not more so. I've read too many reports on Memory Sticks being unreadable in Mac computers to even think about buying their cameras. Same with their CDRW and DVD drives. Their Clie handhelds run the Palm OS, but you need special shareware to sync it with a Mac. And from what I've heard, many non-Sony PCs have similar problems more often than they should.
If I owned a Vaio PC, I'm sure it'd be no contest. But there's no question that if Sony could sell those PCs with their own branded version of Linux or BSD, they would.
Anyone else experienced anything similar?
My daughter once had a math worksheet where the problem was unsolvable, because it required her to solve for x by dividing by zero. I actually pointed this out to her math teacher the next morning, and his reply was that he wanted the kids to let zero be the result when dividing by zero, because (I suppose) he didn't want to digress from the book and explain something that wasn't covered.
Her science textbook that year also claimed that fungi were plants, that there were only two kingdoms of living things, plant and animal, and that humans were neither.
I didn't know what else to say.
The only thing random about modern slot machines are who might be playing when a particular pay-out comes up.
Er, I believe that's exactly what I said.
How much the machine pays out is a fixed percentage of how much it takes in
Well, this makes sense. I'd hate to be the one designing a slot machine which could, conceivably, be asked to pay out more money than it has inside.
The iTunes Music Store has what's generally considered the most sensible approach to DRM: share with no more than three computers on the same subnet, burn to no more than 10 CDs without changing your playlist, and make this apply to every downloadable song. In contrast, BuyMusic.com has much more restrictive DRM and they change with every song. In your opinion, do either of these stores have DRM "done right"?
I don't see the government's ban on sports betting as hypocritical at all. The problem with sports betting has always been one of authorizing the results: if anyone has a lot of money riding on a particular game, then he has a motive to rig the game or otherwise pressure the players involved to throw the game. This ruins the betting practice, the game, and everyone else's fun--not to mention making a lot more work for the government's law-enforcement agencies.
Lotteries and gambling devices like slot machines, on the other hand, are required by law to be completely random regardless of who's playing. It's awfully hard to "rig" a lottery when the numbers are being selected by ping-pong balls being bounced by random air jets on live television.
In other words, the government (on the average) has no problem with gambling, provided it doesn't increase the level of associated crime.
new "smart" machines can accurately infer your intents and help you to take better decisions or avoid mistakes.
Microsoft Windows/Office already has "intelligent" menus that organize the functions you use most, a spellchecker that rewrites your typing based on what you probably meant to type, and an Office "assistant" that pops up to offer helpful suggestions when you least need them. Sounds like a patent lawsuit in the making to me.
Hmm, aren't microorganisms eating iron and surviving in ovens are harder to extinct than some cm long creatures with hands and feet?
Well, they're certainly easier to 'extinct' than first-posters with bad grammar....
*Universe collapses.* /. still in it?
*Universe reemerges even more weird than before.*
Why is
Because this has already happened once before.
New warfare technology has ALWAYS triggered a new "arms race", starting with the first human being who ever beat another to death with a rock.
"Chief Ogg! The Tribe-Across-The-River has a powerful new weapon! They use these things called 'stones' and carry them with them into warfare and strike our men in the head! Not a single broken finger!"
"Put our top scientists on it right away, Urk! Dispatch spies to find out how the Tribe-Across-The-River is making these weapons -- we can't afford to be outmatched now! We must manufacture our own 'stones' before it's too late! Civilization depends on it!"
"Er, we're not civilized yet, Chief Ogg. We haven't even discovered fire yet."
"Don't interrupt me when I'm on a roll, Urk."
"Sorry, Chief."
But how do you match a face to a person's name and age? Your system wouldn't stop people registering as 'Abraham Lincoln'.
No, but it would keep people from identifying me as him. The idea is just to keep me from representing myself as someone I'm clearly not, which is all you really want from a computerized dating match. It also means I can't use multiple identities without risking being found out, since the recorded audio/video on each profile ought to match up with my live audio/video.
I just used LavaRnd's Lotto Number Generator with default values and it returned:
1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6
That's the same combination I use on my luggage!
Is there really no reliable way to electronically identify oneself, so that you can prove you are a person with the name and age given?
Well, there is real-time audio and video. It's difficult (but not impossible) to disguise your voice effectively to impersonate the opposite gender; it's even harder to impersonate the face of a different human being, male or female.
Cumbersome, but I can imagine the value of a chatroom or dating site that ONLY allows users with video chat capabilities to make use of its database -- individuals could enter their profile with photos or short audio or video clips, begin communicating by voice, and then move to video to be sure of who they're talking to before trying anything IRL.
Not foolproof, of course -- no system is. But it's a good way to allow a certain amount of anonymity while ensuring a useful level of honesty.
Yes, having advertising affecting search results is not good for the end user but (and I'm just bringing this up as a discussion topic), in what other ways can a search engine make money.
Indeed. Open source is great when you're talking about just software. A web-based search engine, however, involves a LOT of hardware and bandwidth as well, all of which cost mucho bucks.
The only other option I can see is for the search software to be open and for miscellaneous companies to take it (for free) and build their own public search engines, which will necessarily supported by advertising--nobody less than a millionaire will be able to run a popular public search engine for donations only, at least not for very long.
So where's the advantage? So what if the GPL states they must publish the algorithm they use to bias advertiser's results--the results are still biased.