I made a laser powered paper airplane once. Actually it was made out of aluminum, not paper. Well, actually one of those little foil gum wrappers, I'm not sure if it was aluminum or not. And I guess it wasn't really a laser, I guess it was my finger flicking it... but I was holding a laser pointer in the other hand and was guiding the plane to the target using it! (And then after I made a few of those and threw them into a big pile, I made a beowulf cluster out of them just for good measure.)
"Ananova is reporting that Japanese scientists spent an afternoon making a laser-launched tin foil plane. A blast of light from a commercial laser heats up a droplet of acrylic polymer or water on its surface, which blows up and knocks the plane off the desk. Although I just told you basically the whole thing, full story here"
One thing about alot of distributed processing applications is that it doesn't matter how long it takes for node X to process a data unit. So if a 386 can't process a Seti@home data until in 3 months... no big deal, it can be assumed to be a lost unit and sent on to another machine, or it can just wait.
But for chess, I assume moves need to be made in a certain amount of time if you're playing by tournament rules. If you send off a processing unit, and it never comes back, there might not be time to send it again. It seems like this would cause important parts of the processing tree to be missed.
In this algoritm, it seems like there would need to be a priority assigned to units, and those units would be sent to machines assumed to be the fastest on the network to ensure that they would be processed in time. Of course, normal chess programs probably already do this when working under a deadline, but in this case you also have to factor in network connnection speeds, processing speeds, and the fact that certain machines may suddenly become unavailable and drop work units.
If Microsoft really wanted to sabotage Linux they would port Outlook to Linux - except that none of the distributions would have it on their disks and the Linux community would roar in anger if they did.
Yep, that is a very good point. I find it pretty odd that this kind of move by Microsoft is probably the only way Linux could gain general acceptance as a client OS in most businesses... and suddenly, for all the roaring of the community, Linux would sell well, would look alot more like Windows, and would start seeing just as many viruses/worms as Windows currently does.
Don't kid yourself... the fact attachments take several clicks to open rather than one doesn't make this type of virus less potent.
The body of the email can always provide instructions on how to run the file. *IF* Linux becomes more popular on the desktop, converted Windows users will probably find them working around restrictions and differences between Linux and Windows to do alot of things.
There's nothing stopping anyone from writing a Linux email client similar to Outlook that allows one click opening of executable attachments. And there's nothing stopping software that's easier to use from becoming the most popular... and then say hello to viruses and worms.
1) Any of the Windows viruses/worms that are of the "double click the attachment" variety would work just as well on Linux as they would on Windows, were there more "Windows users" using Linux. They modify/damage user files and replicate themselves though email... who needs root to do that? I think the main reason you don't see as many of these is 1) the ratio of Windows desktops to Linux desktops is very large, and 2) Linux users usually know not to touch attachments like this. So if you're a virus/worm writer, why bother with Linux at all when your code can spread 100 times as fast though the Windows systems?
2) That comment about a Linux virus being easier to clean up is a bunch of crap. I've seen plenty of novice Windows users try to remove viruses from thier system using instructions and fail, and it's not because "there are no hidden files." It's because manual removal of viruses on Windows usually involves using system utilities and commands that most Windows computer users have never used before (regedit, command prompt.) Sure, the instructions are easy to follow for Linux... it's because you're a Linux user, and have to use the equivalents of these Windows utilities in every day tasks anyway.
3) "So it looks like the old dream of Linux eventually overtaking Windows and becoming the world's most popular operating system will never come to pass..." Well, if Linux was to become easier to use for the users who suffer from attachment-clicking syndrome, and who don't have the skills/balls to follow clean-up instructions, suddenly Linux will be alot more popular, will see alot more viruses, and virus scan software will still be business as usual.
'Birdhouse In Your Soul' for example. Here's a song that seems to make very little sense at all. The trick is that if you pay attention, it's a song written from the perspective of a nightlight shaped like a canary.
Not that a song written from the perspective of a nightlight shaped like a canary makes sense either.:) I've listened to plenty of other music with non-sensical lyrics, and I usually prefer just to listen to them for what they are (some interesting beats can be created using words and such, and sometimes the music is more important than the words anyway.) But the TMBG songs I've heard don't seem to have any of that... the music may be eclectic, but is not particularly innovative in any way... the lyrical gimmickry is the only thing they have going. And once you figure out what nonsensical thing the song is supposed to be about, what's left?
Rather than bothering to see this movie, I suggest you visit wilwheaton.net for some good old-fashioned self-important verbal masturbation. Here is a select sample:
When I come home late at night from E3, I toss my keys on the table, and say hello to Ferris.
I drop my fully-loaded "X-Box" bag-o-schwag on the floor, and sit down at my computer to check emails and make sure porn has not been banned from the internet. Oh good, it's still there.
It's late at night, and the rest of my house is asleep. The only sound other than my typing is that soft comforting hum of the fan in my computer. The room is dark, except for the light falling off of my monitor.
He's sitting in my open zipper, just outside the monitor's soft glow, staring at me.
"Hey, Wesley, I've got some good news."
"You've had a change of heart, and you're going to put me in a Jello mold with Counselor Troi and Princess Leia?"
"No. First of all, Princess Leia isn't even the right scale for you --"
"Who said anything about scale? I'm articulated!"
"Do you want to hear the good news, or not?"
He sighs the perturbed yet insecure sigh of an 18 year-old's penis. He strains his little body against the cold steel of the zipper.
"Yes."
"You're way more popular that I thought. People have bid nearly 300 dollars to suck you on eBay! You're a hit, Crusher! They love you!"
He stops straining and looks at me, incredulous.
"What?"
"Yeah! Take a look."
I pick him up and turn him to face the nude photo of Serenity.
"Hey, slow down, jackass. You're going to give me motion sickness."
I wonder if this is the correct penis. I wonder if I've picked up Anne's dildo, instead. I spin him around again, and look for the tell tale scar he got when I accidentally got him stuck in the vacuum cleaner rotor, but it's not there. I guess he's just cranky.
"Dude! Take it easy!"
"Sorry."
I slowly turn him back around, and point him at the monitor. I click the URL, and show him the money shot.
"See? Isn't that cool? All this time we thought people hated us, but they like us, Wesley! They really like us!"
He is silent for a moment, and when he finally speaks, his voice is thick with emotion.
"Yeah. That's....well....that's really cool," he says, and I swear I can feel the penis shudder a little bit in my hands.
"Hey, Wheaton,"
"Yeah?"
"Can you just put me down on the desk for awhile? I've...uh...I think I have something in my eye."
"Are you premeturely ejaculating, Wesley?"
"Shut up, Wheaton."
To find out what happens to Wil Wheaton's depraved penis, please visit wilwheaton.net.
All news items are "links" to others' news stories. There is no news on Slashdot.
So what you are saying is that the "User X writes" text is not news? Most newspapers summarize wire stories for a large majority of thier national news content in exactly the same way.
By most definitions "news" just means reports on events; I would say that linking to descriptions of events that people might otherwise not hear about constitutes news.
The Dell laptops in question can take new video cards. For instance, I could upgrade my 8100 (GF2GO) to a GF4GO or an ATI card. The cards just aren't your average shape and size. Dell will sell them to you on thier supplies page.
It sounds cleaner, but it also sounds like it's easier for a virus or worm to start a raging party... say by looking in your c:\eudora\attach directory and running all files that end with.exe or.vbs.
I don't see technical reasons behind this. In fact, most of the article goes on about market share, revenue, strategy etc., but it remains unclear to me how the vendors are going to tackle the technical issues and what pieces from which distributions will be retained to make this patched-up Linux distro.
Uh, market share, revenue, and strategy *are* the technical reasons. The companies didn't decided to do this because meging thier Linuxes would somehow make a "better Linux." They're not interested in a "better Linux." They did it because Suse's customers + Caldera's customers + Conectiva's customers + Turbolinux's customers, which is more than any one of those companies currently has. They also did it because by merging those resources, they can probably save money on thier end, and with that increased customer number that means more profit. And, as a "larger" company, they might gain even greater market share, and at the very least might be more resistant to RedHat running them over.
Which version of package A and lib B is going to be in can be figured out when they finally decide to ship the thing.
So instead of taking market share from Windows, the idea is to take it from Red Hat?
Doesn't this strike anyone else as just a wee bit stupid? After all, the strenght of linux is choice and now the goal is to limit that choice.
No, not really. Diversity may be good for consumers, but it does nothing for each of the individual companies that wants to sell and/or sell support for Linux. If your stuff doesn't produce revenue for a length of time, you go out of business (or in IBM's case, you just stop bothering.) Does having no choice sound better than having some choice? Or even having a choice at all?
Not to be off topic and totally boneheaded, but I'll go ahead and throw caution to the wind: the slashdot math you refer to is actually correct if you hit the karma cap. For instance, your 50 + 5 -3 = 49 could have gone this way:
+1 Funny: 50 + 1 = 50
+1 Funny: 50 + 1 = 50
+1 Funny: 50 + 1 = 50
-1 Ovrrt: 50 - 1 = 49
-1 Overt: 49 - 1 = 48
-1 Overt: 48 - 1 = 47
+1 Funny: 47 + 1 = 48
+1 Funny: 48 + 1 = 49
And there you have it. Who cares anyway... and if you do care, and your posts are good, you'll be banging your head on the ceiling again in no time.:)
1) Some people are not good at spelling, and wouldn't know microsoft.com from microssoft.com, especially if it's just seen in a few quick glances.
2) There are more TLDs out now, and the same name at a.biz or.info TLD does not mean it is the same company... but no doubt alot of people think that's true.
3) There's always the old numeral "1" swapped for the lowercase "L" or the uppercase "I", trick, among other similar things that never involved Unicode, but rather human vision and high-resolutions.
4) The "@" symbol in the URL trick, like http:\\microsoft.com\moneyfrombil@haxor.com?action =allyourmoneyarebelongtous
So if you haven't figured out my point yet, a good percentage of people that use the internet are going to be fooled by far simpler feats of social engineering. Who needs Unicode to do it?
Wasn't it just a few months ago that we were bitching about the fact that a member of N'Sync was trying to get into space any way he could? Interestingly, he recently had minor heart surgery with a possible motivation to be prepping for training. Sure you'd pay millions to go... but would you also go under the knife?
... but then again, most worked that evening until 9pm when we normally leave at about 5:30. "Skipping work" doesn't have to mean screwing your company. (Although, the sales people know you are there until 9.... they think you just ditched.)
Slashdot Mirror
I made a laser powered paper airplane once. Actually it was made out of aluminum, not paper. Well, actually one of those little foil gum wrappers, I'm not sure if it was aluminum or not. And I guess it wasn't really a laser, I guess it was my finger flicking it... but I was holding a laser pointer in the other hand and was guiding the plane to the target using it! (And then after I made a few of those and threw them into a big pile, I made a beowulf cluster out of them just for good measure.)
Can you really call it a "paper" plane if it's made out of aluminium foil?
Only if it's aluminum paper.
"Ananova is reporting that Japanese scientists spent an afternoon making a laser-launched tin foil plane. A blast of light from a commercial laser heats up a droplet of acrylic polymer or water on its surface, which blows up and knocks the plane off the desk. Although I just told you basically the whole thing, full story here"
Hmmm, I think I'll answer myself.
You could send out each unit to multiple machines simultaneously. You'd lose some of the mass power of your network, but it would be more reliable.
One thing about alot of distributed processing applications is that it doesn't matter how long it takes for node X to process a data unit. So if a 386 can't process a Seti@home data until in 3 months... no big deal, it can be assumed to be a lost unit and sent on to another machine, or it can just wait.
But for chess, I assume moves need to be made in a certain amount of time if you're playing by tournament rules. If you send off a processing unit, and it never comes back, there might not be time to send it again. It seems like this would cause important parts of the processing tree to be missed.
In this algoritm, it seems like there would need to be a priority assigned to units, and those units would be sent to machines assumed to be the fastest on the network to ensure that they would be processed in time. Of course, normal chess programs probably already do this when working under a deadline, but in this case you also have to factor in network connnection speeds, processing speeds, and the fact that certain machines may suddenly become unavailable and drop work units.
If Microsoft really wanted to sabotage Linux they would port Outlook to Linux - except that none of the distributions would have it on their disks and the Linux community would roar in anger if they did.
Yep, that is a very good point. I find it pretty odd that this kind of move by Microsoft is probably the only way Linux could gain general acceptance as a client OS in most businesses... and suddenly, for all the roaring of the community, Linux would sell well, would look alot more like Windows, and would start seeing just as many viruses/worms as Windows currently does.
Don't kid yourself... the fact attachments take several clicks to open rather than one doesn't make this type of virus less potent.
The body of the email can always provide instructions on how to run the file. *IF* Linux becomes more popular on the desktop, converted Windows users will probably find them working around restrictions and differences between Linux and Windows to do alot of things.
There's nothing stopping anyone from writing a Linux email client similar to Outlook that allows one click opening of executable attachments. And there's nothing stopping software that's easier to use from becoming the most popular... and then say hello to viruses and worms.
1) Any of the Windows viruses/worms that are of the "double click the attachment" variety would work just as well on Linux as they would on Windows, were there more "Windows users" using Linux. They modify/damage user files and replicate themselves though email... who needs root to do that? I think the main reason you don't see as many of these is 1) the ratio of Windows desktops to Linux desktops is very large, and 2) Linux users usually know not to touch attachments like this. So if you're a virus/worm writer, why bother with Linux at all when your code can spread 100 times as fast though the Windows systems?
2) That comment about a Linux virus being easier to clean up is a bunch of crap. I've seen plenty of novice Windows users try to remove viruses from thier system using instructions and fail, and it's not because "there are no hidden files." It's because manual removal of viruses on Windows usually involves using system utilities and commands that most Windows computer users have never used before (regedit, command prompt.) Sure, the instructions are easy to follow for Linux... it's because you're a Linux user, and have to use the equivalents of these Windows utilities in every day tasks anyway.
3) "So it looks like the old dream of Linux eventually overtaking Windows and becoming the world's most popular operating system will never come to pass..." Well, if Linux was to become easier to use for the users who suffer from attachment-clicking syndrome, and who don't have the skills/balls to follow clean-up instructions, suddenly Linux will be alot more popular, will see alot more viruses, and virus scan software will still be business as usual.
'Birdhouse In Your Soul' for example. Here's a song that seems to make very little sense at all. The trick is that if you pay attention, it's a song written from the perspective of a nightlight shaped like a canary.
:) I've listened to plenty of other music with non-sensical lyrics, and I usually prefer just to listen to them for what they are (some interesting beats can be created using words and such, and sometimes the music is more important than the words anyway.) But the TMBG songs I've heard don't seem to have any of that... the music may be eclectic, but is not particularly innovative in any way... the lyrical gimmickry is the only thing they have going. And once you figure out what nonsensical thing the song is supposed to be about, what's left?
Not that a song written from the perspective of a nightlight shaped like a canary makes sense either.
And Chad, stay the hell away from my computer.
Rather than bothering to see this movie, I suggest you visit wilwheaton.net for some good old-fashioned self-important verbal masturbation. Here is a select sample:
When I come home late at night from E3, I toss my keys on the table, and say hello to Ferris.
I drop my fully-loaded "X-Box" bag-o-schwag on the floor, and sit down at my computer to check emails and make sure porn has not been banned from the internet. Oh good, it's still there.
It's late at night, and the rest of my house is asleep. The only sound other than my typing is that soft comforting hum of the fan in my computer. The room is dark, except for the light falling off of my monitor.
He's sitting in my open zipper, just outside the monitor's soft glow, staring at me.
"Hey, Wesley, I've got some good news."
"You've had a change of heart, and you're going to put me in a Jello mold with Counselor Troi and Princess Leia?"
"No. First of all, Princess Leia isn't even the right scale for you --"
"Who said anything about scale? I'm articulated!"
"Do you want to hear the good news, or not?"
He sighs the perturbed yet insecure sigh of an 18 year-old's penis. He strains his little body against the cold steel of the zipper.
"Yes."
"You're way more popular that I thought. People have bid nearly 300 dollars to suck you on eBay! You're a hit, Crusher! They love you!"
He stops straining and looks at me, incredulous.
"What?"
"Yeah! Take a look."
I pick him up and turn him to face the nude photo of Serenity.
"Hey, slow down, jackass. You're going to give me motion sickness."
I wonder if this is the correct penis. I wonder if I've picked up Anne's dildo, instead. I spin him around again, and look for the tell tale scar he got when I accidentally got him stuck in the vacuum cleaner rotor, but it's not there. I guess he's just cranky.
"Dude! Take it easy!"
"Sorry."
I slowly turn him back around, and point him at the monitor. I click the URL, and show him the money shot.
"See? Isn't that cool? All this time we thought people hated us, but they like us, Wesley! They really like us!"
He is silent for a moment, and when he finally speaks, his voice is thick with emotion.
"Yeah. That's....well....that's really cool," he says, and I swear I can feel the penis shudder a little bit in my hands.
"Hey, Wheaton,"
"Yeah?"
"Can you just put me down on the desk for awhile? I've...uh...I think I have something in my eye."
"Are you premeturely ejaculating, Wesley?"
"Shut up, Wheaton."
To find out what happens to Wil Wheaton's depraved penis, please visit wilwheaton.net.
All news items are "links" to others' news stories. There is no news on Slashdot.
So what you are saying is that the "User X writes" text is not news? Most newspapers summarize wire stories for a large majority of thier national news content in exactly the same way.
By most definitions "news" just means reports on events; I would say that linking to descriptions of events that people might otherwise not hear about constitutes news.
It's just an endless stream of links and editorials.
Most newspapers are just endless streams of newswire stories and editorials, what's the difference?
The Dell laptops in question can take new video cards. For instance, I could upgrade my 8100 (GF2GO) to a GF4GO or an ATI card. The cards just aren't your average shape and size. Dell will sell them to you on thier supplies page.
It sounds cleaner, but it also sounds like it's easier for a virus or worm to start a raging party... say by looking in your c:\eudora\attach directory and running all files that end with .exe or .vbs.
Select Body from Mail where User like 'Jason Pollock'?
As a last addition: It is not a funny OS either. Mandrake is. Cute little penguins and round, purple install buttons.
Cute!? The Mandrake penguin is frickin' scary. Duuubee dubee duuuu.....
I don't see technical reasons behind this. In fact, most of the article goes on about market share, revenue, strategy etc., but it remains unclear to me how the vendors are going to tackle the technical issues and what pieces from which distributions will be retained to make this patched-up Linux distro.
Uh, market share, revenue, and strategy *are* the technical reasons. The companies didn't decided to do this because meging thier Linuxes would somehow make a "better Linux." They're not interested in a "better Linux." They did it because Suse's customers + Caldera's customers + Conectiva's customers + Turbolinux's customers, which is more than any one of those companies currently has. They also did it because by merging those resources, they can probably save money on thier end, and with that increased customer number that means more profit. And, as a "larger" company, they might gain even greater market share, and at the very least might be more resistant to RedHat running them over.
Which version of package A and lib B is going to be in can be figured out when they finally decide to ship the thing.
So instead of taking market share from Windows, the idea is to take it from Red Hat?
Doesn't this strike anyone else as just a wee bit stupid? After all, the strenght of linux is choice and now the goal is to limit that choice.
No, not really. Diversity may be good for consumers, but it does nothing for each of the individual companies that wants to sell and/or sell support for Linux. If your stuff doesn't produce revenue for a length of time, you go out of business (or in IBM's case, you just stop bothering.) Does having no choice sound better than having some choice? Or even having a choice at all?
Being able to actually sell or convince people to use software so Linux doesn't die is good.
Not to be off topic and totally boneheaded, but I'll go ahead and throw caution to the wind: the slashdot math you refer to is actually correct if you hit the karma cap. For instance, your 50 + 5 -3 = 49 could have gone this way:
:)
+1 Funny: 50 + 1 = 50
+1 Funny: 50 + 1 = 50
+1 Funny: 50 + 1 = 50
-1 Ovrrt: 50 - 1 = 49
-1 Overt: 49 - 1 = 48
-1 Overt: 48 - 1 = 47
+1 Funny: 47 + 1 = 48
+1 Funny: 48 + 1 = 49
And there you have it. Who cares anyway... and if you do care, and your posts are good, you'll be banging your head on the ceiling again in no time.
1) Some people are not good at spelling, and wouldn't know microsoft.com from microssoft.com, especially if it's just seen in a few quick glances.
.biz or .info TLD does not mean it is the same company... but no doubt alot of people think that's true.
n =allyourmoneyarebelongtous
2) There are more TLDs out now, and the same name at a
3) There's always the old numeral "1" swapped for the lowercase "L" or the uppercase "I", trick, among other similar things that never involved Unicode, but rather human vision and high-resolutions.
4) The "@" symbol in the URL trick, like http:\\microsoft.com\moneyfrombil@haxor.com?actio
So if you haven't figured out my point yet, a good percentage of people that use the internet are going to be fooled by far simpler feats of social engineering. Who needs Unicode to do it?
Wasn't it just a few months ago that we were bitching about the fact that a member of N'Sync was trying to get into space any way he could? Interestingly, he recently had minor heart surgery with a possible motivation to be prepping for training. Sure you'd pay millions to go... but would you also go under the knife?
Yep. It confused the hell out of me yesterday. Taco and crew need to go back to web design school (or is that, *go* to web design school?)
(Although, the sales people DON'T know you are there until 9.... they think you just ditched.)
Yeah, put a *don't* in there and that makes some sense.
... but then again, most worked that evening until 9pm when we normally leave at about 5:30. "Skipping work" doesn't have to mean screwing your company. (Although, the sales people know you are there until 9.... they think you just ditched.)