i mean, for once the excuse can't be: "well, they attacked [insert MS software title here] because it's the most popular". AIM and YIM have been around a lot longer and no one ever wrote a "worm" (debatable label in this case) for those...
1. North Face Digital. compact (narrow) backpack that can nevertheless carry my large a20p without a problem. very well designed to keep the laptop from jarring when backpack is placed on floor. fairly weather proof too. i've had mine for a year but as the winter approached i decided to switch to:
2. Timbuk2 Detour. amazingly weather proof backpack, not nearly as narrow as the digital (the laptop goes in horizontally, not vertically) which is a bummer. also, the laptop doesn't hang like the digital so be careful setting the bag down. otherwise a superb product, supposedly totally weather proof (tho it hasn't taken the torrential rain test yet like my booq backpack did last year, and, btw, failed miserably!), and very well designed for accessories. also it's convertible between a backpack and an over the shoulder bag, unlike the digital which is purely a backpack.
note: i ride a motorcycle so i need extra heavy weather protection for my thinkpad. i've even crashed with the digital on my back and slid about 100 feet and the laptop, while a little banged up, still booted fine. (yes, if you were on the bay bridge at 10:30am or so last tuesday heading into SF, that was me sliding behind my ducati. one word: ALLCELPHONEUSINGCLUELESSSUVDRIVERSMUSTDIE)
i agree with you. as you say the "standard model" is not *complete*. i certainly don't support creationism. i was just playing devil's advocate to point out the danger in your line of argument.
we've come up with some pretty rediculous side theories because we're so married to the big bang theory. super strings was one of my favourite wack theories.
i think we simply don't understand enough about gravity yet.
another example of where our mathematical models are failing us, imho, is when we discover planets thay are invariably giant jupiter x 10 sized object orbiting incredibly close to the parent star.
but in my opinion it's much more likely that our current understanding of gravity is incomplete causing mathematical errors that make us think an entire solar system is actually one super giant planet, etc. etc.
i think this applies to the dark matter problem as well. we're assuming there has to be 10x more matter in space without challenging the very nature of the computations used to arrive at that assumption.
the closer to the most basic part of the equation that there could be an error, the more it will effect the overall result.
...Interesting -- each incident happened at a 17 year interval...
...Whether or not this actually means anything is a matter of opinion. I just think it's one of those funny coincidences, but people more into numerology, gammatria, and grand conspiracy theories may be more likely to suspect something deeper...
i suspect something even more sinister... your inability to do simple math. the apollo 1 fire was in 1967, the challenger disaster in 1986. that's 19 years you know...
okay, the guy is a genius, but this article doesn't say anything new nor does it prove anything.
we all know security through obfuscation (or secret) is always going to have a hole.
guess what, passwords, password phrases, keys, certs, they're all secrets too. i don't know of any security protocol/technology that doesn't involve some sort of secret be it your fingerprint, a password, a changing code on a keycard, etc. all we can do is make the secrets as difficult as possible to discover.
Offtopic rant:
why must even diffe resolve to the always inapplicable but ever present automobile-software analogy?
what everyone seems to forget is that someone has to build the cars, it takes a lot of money to build them, and they are also easy to sell because you can't easily build one yourself, thus you have to buy one.
comparing automobiles to software code is therefore ludicrous. just because you have all the plans for a car doesn't mean you can build one. however having all the code to a piece of software certainly does mean so.
Here's an example: It's wrong to let the TV babysit the kids instead of paying attention to them yourself. However, it's not illegal to do so.
while i happen to agree with you on this particular point (not letting a kid sit in front of a TV) this is a very bad example of something that is wrong but not illegal.
what you state above is an OPINION and can be wrong/right depending on the individual.
here's a better example:
in the decimal system 2+2=5 is wrong, but it's not illegal:)
if all you're interested in doing is capturing a scene exactly as you see it, sure. but photography is not always about resolution and clarity. some of my favourite photographs were taken on grainy black and white film. sure, you can add grain in photoshop, but one thing to note:
almost ALL photoshop effects are the result of manipulating digital data to MIMIC film/optic effects. those effects would never exist if we didn't have film. film based photographers (mostly artists) are still experimenting with chemicals and films and coming up with new visual effects that an all digital system will never be able to create. yes, digital has many of it's own effects that film won't be able to reproduce.
cross-processing, infrared film, tungsten balanced films, these things simply don't exist in the digital domain (they can be mimic'ed but not exactly)
i'd be getting ready to commit suicide after seeing Gimli turned into comic relief and Legolas riding a skateboard down a staircase while shooting @ orcs.
well it's really a shame that all westerners always talk about the Cyberiad, treating Lem as a writer of satirical sci-fi comedy and completely dismissing the rest of his incredible body of work. everytime he comes up people who have heard of him have to bring up Cyberiada. Sigh.
yes, Lem doesn't have the incredibly well developed characters of someone like Dick, the silly alien interactions of Asimov, the wars and battles of Pournelle, or the geekness vindication of Stephensen or Gibson.
he doesn't try to make fantasy out of sci-fi, he doesn't try to give us a warm fuzzy about technology or society, or excite us with explosive plots. his books provide a mental challenge, paradoxes, psychology, and stark reality that most popular science fiction completely ignores. there are tons of people who used to say j.r.r. tolkien is boring. they don't anymore because JRRT is in the mainstream now, but c'mon, reading LOTR and the Silmarillion was a lot like reading history books with an occasional plot! (btw, i'm not knocking JRRT, i've always loved his work)
now, i'm a native Polish speaker (and reader) so of course i've read Lem in Polish and maybe a lot is lost in translation (actually, i think Solaris' translation isn't all that bad, i've read it in both Polish and English). give his other works a chance: Return from the Stars, Eden, Fiasco, the short stories of Ion Tichy (Star Diaries), the essays of One Human Minute...
i recently got 5 or 6 spams from some local bay area band. not sure if they were spamming bay area peeps only (wonder how they got that list) or in general and the bay area connection was just coincidence...
the spam itself was a nice looking message, and they're prolly a good band. but i reported them to their isp anyway...
i put this one in Topica's website on the day we launched (February something or other 1999) and it's still there (even tho most of the staff has since rotated out).
go to the topica directory, find Reptiles and Amphibians, there's a "hidden" clickable image just under the white on blue number towards the bottom of the page. click it.
there was also a better one in the works that directed users to a flash animation, but i left the company before building it into the site.
this whole get the students to use your hardware/software certainly worked for apple, right? hmmmm (checks market share)
i personally think that the whole point of this article is like saing the political energy of students doesn't change to the bitter cynical views of the middle aged.
lets face it. first off, the college/univ students are exposed to this stuff because unix was developed in academic environments and have always been embraced by such. i've never seen a csi program built on windows alone.
it has ALWAYS been this way. it's nothing new. we worked on a bunch of sperry 5000s or whatever running system V i think.
right now i am coding using VS.NET. why? because the job i'm on demands it. previous to that i was at various dotcoms where unix rules. now i'm building enterprise software. does it really matter what platform i learned to code on?
and besides. in a few years all the kids entering college would have been weened on XBOX and cheap PCs anyway.
Slashdot Mirror
because everything is controlled via friggin VB.
i mean, for once the excuse can't be: "well, they attacked [insert MS software title here] because it's the most popular". AIM and YIM have been around a lot longer and no one ever wrote a "worm" (debatable label in this case) for those...
2. Timbuk2 Detour. amazingly weather proof backpack, not nearly as narrow as the digital (the laptop goes in horizontally, not vertically) which is a bummer. also, the laptop doesn't hang like the digital so be careful setting the bag down. otherwise a superb product, supposedly totally weather proof (tho it hasn't taken the torrential rain test yet like my booq backpack did last year, and, btw, failed miserably!), and very well designed for accessories. also it's convertible between a backpack and an over the shoulder bag, unlike the digital which is purely a backpack.
note: i ride a motorcycle so i need extra heavy weather protection for my thinkpad. i've even crashed with the digital on my back and slid about 100 feet and the laptop, while a little banged up, still booted fine. (yes, if you were on the bay bridge at 10:30am or so last tuesday heading into SF, that was me sliding behind my ducati. one word: ALLCELPHONEUSINGCLUELESSSUVDRIVERSMUSTDIE)
see subject. we kenw tihs lnog ago...
heh, not only are they hypocrites, they're morons. isn't there like a half a million hacks for those versions of apache/php?
I deliberately wear sandels and wrinkled shirts to work to try to balance out my preppy past.
sounds to me like you're still quite the conformist...
i agree with you. as you say the "standard model" is not *complete*. i certainly don't support creationism. i was just playing devil's advocate to point out the danger in your line of argument.
we've come up with some pretty rediculous side theories because we're so married to the big bang theory. super strings was one of my favourite wack theories.
i think we simply don't understand enough about gravity yet.
another example of where our mathematical models are failing us, imho, is when we discover planets thay are invariably giant jupiter x 10 sized object orbiting incredibly close to the parent star.
but in my opinion it's much more likely that our current understanding of gravity is incomplete causing mathematical errors that make us think an entire solar system is actually one super giant planet, etc. etc.
i think this applies to the dark matter problem as well. we're assuming there has to be 10x more matter in space without challenging the very nature of the computations used to arrive at that assumption.
the closer to the most basic part of the equation that there could be an error, the more it will effect the overall result.
oh, you mean like where 90% of the universe's mass has gone? :)
so does it mean it'll be opened and read too? >:)
insignificant as it may be, why do i need the hassle of another one?
i suspect something even more sinister... your inability to do simple math. the apollo 1 fire was in 1967, the challenger disaster in 1986. that's 19 years you know...
scary is:
Windows Advanced Game Server
okay, the guy is a genius, but this article doesn't say anything new nor does it prove anything.
we all know security through obfuscation (or secret) is always going to have a hole.
guess what, passwords, password phrases, keys, certs, they're all secrets too. i don't know of any security protocol/technology that doesn't involve some sort of secret be it your fingerprint, a password, a changing code on a keycard, etc. all we can do is make the secrets as difficult as possible to discover.
Offtopic rant:
why must even diffe resolve to the always inapplicable but ever present automobile-software analogy?
what everyone seems to forget is that someone has to build the cars, it takes a lot of money to build them, and they are also easy to sell because you can't easily build one yourself, thus you have to buy one.
comparing automobiles to software code is therefore ludicrous. just because you have all the plans for a car doesn't mean you can build one. however having all the code to a piece of software certainly does mean so.
End of Offtopic Rant
while i happen to agree with you on this particular point (not letting a kid sit in front of a TV) this is a very bad example of something that is wrong but not illegal.
what you state above is an OPINION and can be wrong/right depending on the individual.
here's a better example: :)
in the decimal system 2+2=5 is wrong, but it's not illegal
if all you're interested in doing is capturing a scene exactly as you see it, sure. but photography is not always about resolution and clarity. some of my favourite photographs were taken on grainy black and white film. sure, you can add grain in photoshop, but one thing to note:
almost ALL photoshop effects are the result of manipulating digital data to MIMIC film/optic effects. those effects would never exist if we didn't have film. film based photographers (mostly artists) are still experimenting with chemicals and films and coming up with new visual effects that an all digital system will never be able to create. yes, digital has many of it's own effects that film won't be able to reproduce.
cross-processing, infrared film, tungsten balanced films, these things simply don't exist in the digital domain (they can be mimic'ed but not exactly)
i'd be getting ready to commit suicide after seeing Gimli turned into comic relief and Legolas riding a skateboard down a staircase while shooting @ orcs.
:(
oh Peter Peter Peter
yes, Lem doesn't have the incredibly well developed characters of someone like Dick, the silly alien interactions of Asimov, the wars and battles of Pournelle, or the geekness vindication of Stephensen or Gibson.
he doesn't try to make fantasy out of sci-fi, he doesn't try to give us a warm fuzzy about technology or society, or excite us with explosive plots. his books provide a mental challenge, paradoxes, psychology, and stark reality that most popular science fiction completely ignores. there are tons of people who used to say j.r.r. tolkien is boring. they don't anymore because JRRT is in the mainstream now, but c'mon, reading LOTR and the Silmarillion was a lot like reading history books with an occasional plot! (btw, i'm not knocking JRRT, i've always loved his work)
now, i'm a native Polish speaker (and reader) so of course i've read Lem in Polish and maybe a lot is lost in translation (actually, i think Solaris' translation isn't all that bad, i've read it in both Polish and English). give his other works a chance: Return from the Stars, Eden, Fiasco, the short stories of Ion Tichy (Star Diaries), the essays of One Human Minute...
read my epinions review of Lem for more, if you're interested.
frankly, i'm really disappointed that slashdotters would be so ignorant of Lem's amazing insights in the rest of his works...
i recently got 5 or 6 spams from some local bay area band. not sure if they were spamming bay area peeps only (wonder how they got that list) or in general and the bay area connection was just coincidence...
the spam itself was a nice looking message, and they're prolly a good band. but i reported them to their isp anyway...
Gary Coleman is a robot?
see subject
omg, the horror! the horror.
considering that America's Army is now out (and it's really quite good) i don't see what the point in trying to get TF2 out is at this point anyway.
TF2 did contribute one non-vaporous thing tho... the moving mouths when you speak through the mic in Counter-Strike. yeay!
ehehehe
.com's in SF. sigh
actually, a major transformer blew out bringing down several
i put this one in Topica's website on the day we launched (February something or other 1999) and it's still there (even tho most of the staff has since rotated out).
go to the topica directory, find Reptiles and Amphibians, there's a "hidden" clickable image just under the white on blue number towards the bottom of the page. click it.
there was also a better one in the works that directed users to a flash animation, but i left the company before building it into the site.
ah nostalgia.
looks like i'll have to upgrade my aluminum/lead helmet so the voices stop.
this whole get the students to use your hardware/software certainly worked for apple, right? hmmmm (checks market share)
i personally think that the whole point of this article is like saing the political energy of students doesn't change to the bitter cynical views of the middle aged.
lets face it. first off, the college/univ students are exposed to this stuff because unix was developed in academic environments and have always been embraced by such. i've never seen a csi program built on windows alone.
it has ALWAYS been this way. it's nothing new. we worked on a bunch of sperry 5000s or whatever running system V i think.
right now i am coding using VS.NET. why? because the job i'm on demands it. previous to that i was at various dotcoms where unix rules. now i'm building enterprise software. does it really matter what platform i learned to code on?
and besides. in a few years all the kids entering college would have been weened on XBOX and cheap PCs anyway.