1. To open up a new window, so that you can tell you're not on the mailcity site still. Sort of a safeguard against anyone thinking they're looking at something on the mailcity site that isn't really on it.
2. To obscure the referring url when you go to the new site, so noone can log into the webmail system by knowing the session ID you were using (although that obviously shouldn't be an issue with a well-coded webmail app, but you know..)
This is the craziest most paranoid question ever. Trying to draw a line between someone registering nospam.com (which has MANY totally understandable valid uses) and being located in the Cayman Islands, and that person using it nefariously is just SO crazy.
The only way I can see you coming to a conclusion like this, or to even question it, is that you were like "oh man, i should get nopspam.com and see whose mail I get!" and then seeing that it was taken, and assuming whoever took it got it for that. Maaaaaan.
> internet access can establish a basis for a thriving economy (i mean, look what it did for our stock market)
This brings up an interesting point, whose economy is more crazy and irrational, a poor third-world country's, or a rich country like the USA where the economy is driven by 2 year old company's who are losing billions of dollars. Forget the Bay of Pigs, we're giving Latin America the invasion of the daytraders!
"Is it possible that near-universal Internet access might do more in the long run than plumbing and other infrastructure improvements to help raise people in developing nations out of poverty?"
It's definitely part of the solution, but it's not the whole thing. Access itself is great, but training people to use it is way more useful. Check out Peoplink, an organization that goes to poorer countries and gives them computers and teaches them how to use them to sell their goods online (I may be missing something else they do, but that's my understanding of it). I think they're a great, great thing because although access may give them "hopes and expectations" (and I'm not arguing those things are extremely valuable), they need training and skills in order to translate those hopes into something tangible and useful.
This is like the 3rd or 4th article in a few months that was about postgres vs. mysql. The other ones weren't specifically like that but the discussion areas became big wars over it with the exact same points being argued repeatedly by both sides. This time the actual article is totally about pitting them against each other, and while it's a valuable topic for phpbuilder to cover, I think anyone who has been reading slashdot long enough KNOWS what the differences are, no?
Seems to me, re-iterating this stuff over and over is just likely to fan the flames of another holy software war, and does anyone want that really? I guess it's worse this summer with no Star Wars movie to fill up 50% of the news with:)
A lot of people are lamenting this news as if it diminishes the accomplishments of the brave iron men who have struggled against time, nature and the elements to learn to use a command line, but let's look at it: The actual people who should be worried here are Cobalt and their RAQ servers.
Now instead of having to use RAQs when you want to have an easy-to-admin server remotely you can use any hardware you choose. That's great! Especially since this shouldn't actually remove any functionality anyway. Nice!
choice is fine I think. There are tons of good minds out there and if they duplicate each other on some stuff they might also find some useful code from each other too.
I think it's great we have KDE, Gnome, etc to choose from and wouldn't want it either way myself!
Oooh, geek shirts is a pretty cool little project. Is thinkgeek preparing any kind of strategy to deal with it? Embrace and extend, or wash and wear or rinse and repeat or umm umm umm...
Actually to be fair, there are a fine bunch of skinny-fat Unix guys out there too. You know the type, really skinny and pale, but not anywhere close to in shape, and if you poke at their gut a bit you get some definite jiggle. So don't worry, you're doing okay.
It'll only take a few years for you to develop the full Unix gut, trust me.
Oh sure, maybe in days gone by, but these days, Unix is at the forefront of the beards-n-rolls revolution! Novell beards were fine for their time, but the newer, more full-featured, robust Unix beards are the next wave!
Of course the biggest challenge to making MacOS more unix-like was giving the little mac guy who comes up during the startup screen a beard and making him fatter:)
p.s. no offence to anyone, i'm a fat unix guy with a beard. aren't we all?
haha, that's hilarious, because I also got the same feeling from telnetting to port 25! Basically anything somewhat techy like that can do it for people. And yup, these kids getting jobs would stop them, and lets face it, a lot of them DO end up getting jobs at ISPs doing tech support and whatever. They're not malicious primarily, the maliciousness is sort of a secondary thing, due to boredom I think
The 2 main guys from the irc transcripts will be happy that they're famous now, but one will feel sort of dirty because they changed his nickname to a girl's name, which may well lead to a life of surliness where he only interrupts his booze binges to beat his kid.
I was just thinking about this the other day, and I don't know anyone who uses passport, or even knows what it is really (from the half a dozen people I asked). I don't think it'll really catch on for a while, it woul dhave to reach a critical mass that I don't think it's even close to hitting.
And personally I hope to god it never does. It is a ridiculous idea, and people can come up with security safeguards for it as much as they want but history has proven time and time and time again that these kinds of security precautions will simply not work consistently if the idea itself is inherently insecure.
There is a buzz when you do something big with a computer, that's sort of like "haha, i actually DID that", which I have felt just when accomplishing non-bad things on the computers, and I think it's the same feeling the kiddies have.
A few months ago I saw a step by step instruction set on how to exploit a machine with the BIND vulnerability, and I have to admit, I was tempted to try it, to see if it'd work. Moreso, I was kind of like "wow, I could do all these steps even though I'm dumb", and I know if I had there would have for sure been a little buzz of delight.
I used to buy beer with fake ID before I was of age, and it was the greatest, there was a total high when it worked. That is sort of script kiddy-like, it's not like I dud anything clever or anything, I just showed the clerk my ID and bought it, but it still felt wicked, and I think that's the thing in play here: It's easy to say "oh those kids don't know anything, what they're doing requires no thought" etc, and it's true (reading these transcripts makes you realize how incredibly dumb they are, it's really sad), but it is irrelevant, because as long as breaking into a box gives them a little buzz and feeling of accomplishment, they aren't going to stop.
p.s. the part where the guy is talking about how fat he is, that is so priceless and hilarious. If it wasn't so pathetic I'd laugh till I cried
SO true. Who are funding these guys? I mean if it was a local bunch of goofs in some club, fine, but this is an alleged business, that's sad. What's sadder is that if some guy just wrote in saying "hi slashdot, i'm doing this.." slashdot would NEVER post it. But this is a startup! A real company! Wow!
Even when this is done it'll be vaporware, it's so pointless. What will they really learn from this? LAAAAAAAAAAAME.
If it weren't for computers in classrooms I wouldn't have really pain ful carpal tunnel syndrome, I wouldn't spend all my nights coding, I would have a job where I went outdoors a lot and I wouldn't be a big fat lump. YAY COMPUTERS:)
Just give kids etch-a-sketch pads and tell them they're computers, that'll save money at least:)
I know this is obvious, but what kind of retarded drooling RETARD is going to join this thing and get all involved? Can you imagine being at some dinner party and one guy starts talking about the work he does for Greenpeace, then someone starts talking about their volunteer position with NAACP, and then some guy starts going "right on brothers! I also am fighting the man! The man is always trying to keep the little guy down and that is why I often send letters to my congressman telling him to keep off my brother Billy G's back. REVOLUTION NOW! REVOLUTION NOW!".
This isn't meant to be arguing, but if you're debating the merits of two videogame boxes, why would you bring up the fact that one boots linux? Isn't that like saying "Hmm, well Sony makes a better fridge than Microsoft, because the way they made it also happens to make it float, so it could make a pretty good raft" ? I have no problem with your facts, I just sort of fail to see the relevance of the system booting linux if you are arguing the merits of them as videogame systems.
Sorry to sound argumentative. Maybe this has to do with developing, but I sort of assumed whether the console booted linux or not would not affect game development.
Well no, see, that is the thing, i am really not trying to flame here, but gimp is NOT the same as photoshop. It is a great piece of software that does a lot of things that photoshop does, but you are not going to get anyone who uses photoshop regularily excited about open source programming by showing them gimp, because they'll say "well that's not as good as photoshop". You need to show them an open source product that is undoubtedly better than anything commercial that exists (ie. Apache) and then let them imagine how great it'd be to have a program twice as good as photoshop.
Anyway, you missed my whole point, which was not that i personally want an alternative to photoshop, but that that prospect would excite Mac people enough to get into open source if they really imagined it.
I'm a former mac guy who turned into a unix guy when I started programming backends for websites.
When I was just using macs I thought of open source stuff as just geeky stuff I didn't care about. I think if someone could have properly demonstrated to me the advantages of the model as it pertains to product quality I might have been converted faster.
Right now, when I think of the dream mac OSS initiative, it would be an open source alternative to Photoshop which would eventually surpass the quality of Adobe's program. Maybe you coul explain to people "Look, Dmoz.org kicks yahoo's ass because they have a zillion people all helping, imagine how fast a great free photoshop could be created with all the smart mac folks out there?", and then explain how great Apache really is, and why it could only have been developed using OSS. I know that right now that would totally convince and excite me, but I can't say if it'd fire up a mac guy. Mac programming is a completely different culture far removed from Open Source.
I guess though the trick really is to get a critical mass of mac programmers not just interested but excited about the possibilities of open source. If you can convince them what great work could be done with open source, you've got em!
Slashdot Mirror
1. To open up a new window, so that you can tell you're not on the mailcity site still. Sort of a safeguard against anyone thinking they're looking at something on the mailcity site that isn't really on it.
2. To obscure the referring url when you go to the new site, so noone can log into the webmail system by knowing the session ID you were using (although that obviously shouldn't be an issue with a well-coded webmail app, but you know..)
The only way I can see you coming to a conclusion like this, or to even question it, is that you were like "oh man, i should get nopspam.com and see whose mail I get!" and then seeing that it was taken, and assuming whoever took it got it for that. Maaaaaan.
This brings up an interesting point, whose economy is more crazy and irrational, a poor third-world country's, or a rich country like the USA where the economy is driven by 2 year old company's who are losing billions of dollars. Forget the Bay of Pigs, we're giving Latin America the invasion of the daytraders!
Be very very afraid.
It's definitely part of the solution, but it's not the whole thing. Access itself is great, but training people to use it is way more useful. Check out Peoplink, an organization that goes to poorer countries and gives them computers and teaches them how to use them to sell their goods online (I may be missing something else they do, but that's my understanding of it). I think they're a great, great thing because although access may give them "hopes and expectations" (and I'm not arguing those things are extremely valuable), they need training and skills in order to translate those hopes into something tangible and useful.
But again, yay internet! :)
Seems to me, re-iterating this stuff over and over is just likely to fan the flames of another holy software war, and does anyone want that really? I guess it's worse this summer with no Star Wars movie to fill up 50% of the news with:)
Now instead of having to use RAQs when you want to have an easy-to-admin server remotely you can use any hardware you choose. That's great! Especially since this shouldn't actually remove any functionality anyway. Nice!
I think it's great we have KDE, Gnome, etc to choose from and wouldn't want it either way myself!
That was sarcastic, or no? It's so hard to tell without a little winky face to guide me. Oh internet, what have you turned me into!!
Anyway, nice :)
It'll only take a few years for you to develop the full Unix gut, trust me.
Oh sure, maybe in days gone by, but these days, Unix is at the forefront of the beards-n-rolls revolution! Novell beards were fine for their time, but the newer, more full-featured, robust Unix beards are the next wave!
p.s. no offence to anyone, i'm a fat unix guy with a beard. aren't we all?
haha, that's hilarious, because I also got the same feeling from telnetting to port 25! Basically anything somewhat techy like that can do it for people. And yup, these kids getting jobs would stop them, and lets face it, a lot of them DO end up getting jobs at ISPs doing tech support and whatever. They're not malicious primarily, the maliciousness is sort of a secondary thing, due to boredom I think
'one finger keyboard' strikes me as a euphemism along the same lines as when you buy a 'facial massager', but then I'm a huge, huge pervert.
THANKS AGAIN SLASHDOT. GEEEZ.
And personally I hope to god it never does. It is a ridiculous idea, and people can come up with security safeguards for it as much as they want but history has proven time and time and time again that these kinds of security precautions will simply not work consistently if the idea itself is inherently insecure.
A few months ago I saw a step by step instruction set on how to exploit a machine with the BIND vulnerability, and I have to admit, I was tempted to try it, to see if it'd work. Moreso, I was kind of like "wow, I could do all these steps even though I'm dumb", and I know if I had there would have for sure been a little buzz of delight.
I used to buy beer with fake ID before I was of age, and it was the greatest, there was a total high when it worked. That is sort of script kiddy-like, it's not like I dud anything clever or anything, I just showed the clerk my ID and bought it, but it still felt wicked, and I think that's the thing in play here: It's easy to say "oh those kids don't know anything, what they're doing requires no thought" etc, and it's true (reading these transcripts makes you realize how incredibly dumb they are, it's really sad), but it is irrelevant, because as long as breaking into a box gives them a little buzz and feeling of accomplishment, they aren't going to stop.
p.s. the part where the guy is talking about how fat he is, that is so priceless and hilarious. If it wasn't so pathetic I'd laugh till I cried
Even when this is done it'll be vaporware, it's so pointless. What will they really learn from this? LAAAAAAAAAAAME.
Just give kids etch-a-sketch pads and tell them they're computers, that'll save money at least:)
I know this is obvious, but what kind of retarded drooling RETARD is going to join this thing and get all involved? Can you imagine being at some dinner party and one guy starts talking about the work he does for Greenpeace, then someone starts talking about their volunteer position with NAACP, and then some guy starts going "right on brothers! I also am fighting the man! The man is always trying to keep the little guy down and that is why I often send letters to my congressman telling him to keep off my brother Billy G's back. REVOLUTION NOW! REVOLUTION NOW!".
is how expensive the lawyers they hire to sue slashdot for linking to that brochure are.
A: Yes, drink it all. We'll all be together soon, in Redmond. Together forever, and ever.
Sorry to sound argumentative. Maybe this has to do with developing, but I sort of assumed whether the console booted linux or not would not affect game development.
Anyway, you missed my whole point, which was not that i personally want an alternative to photoshop, but that that prospect would excite Mac people enough to get into open source if they really imagined it.
When I was just using macs I thought of open source stuff as just geeky stuff I didn't care about. I think if someone could have properly demonstrated to me the advantages of the model as it pertains to product quality I might have been converted faster.
Right now, when I think of the dream mac OSS initiative, it would be an open source alternative to Photoshop which would eventually surpass the quality of Adobe's program. Maybe you coul explain to people "Look, Dmoz.org kicks yahoo's ass because they have a zillion people all helping, imagine how fast a great free photoshop could be created with all the smart mac folks out there?", and then explain how great Apache really is, and why it could only have been developed using OSS. I know that right now that would totally convince and excite me, but I can't say if it'd fire up a mac guy. Mac programming is a completely different culture far removed from Open Source.
I guess though the trick really is to get a critical mass of mac programmers not just interested but excited about the possibilities of open source. If you can convince them what great work could be done with open source, you've got em!