While it is possible for ISPs to block packets (such as Napster or Gnutella packets) based on their content, that could break some of the ISP's legal protections. Most of them enjoy common carrier status - meaning they're not responsible for the content of data transmitted through their equipment - much the same way that phone companies aren't responsible when customers make drug deals over the phone. If ISPs or backbone providers start blocking packets based on content, they step into a legal minefield as they become responsible for all of the content passed through their systems - as they are exercising editorial control over that content.
"This" is referring to implementing "Loser Pays" statutes, where if the plaintiff of a lawsuit loses the trial, he pays the defendant's legal bills & such. As discussed elsewhere in this story, this solution has problems (Poor plaintiffs are discouraged from filing lawsuits against rich defendants for fear of getting stuck with the bill, even if they do have a case.)
One idea would be to impose spending limits on parties in trials. The richer party would be limited to spending what the poorer party is capable of spending. So if Big Bad Corporation sues Joe Littleguy, and Joe can only cough up $1000 to pay for attorneys fees and court expenses, Big Bad Corporation can only spend $1000. Once that money is spent, they're done. That should make the courtrooms a little more fair to the little guys.
I don't remember the URL, but Cnet did a spot on the top ten games that should never be made. They included games such as Seal Clubber (as gruesome as it sounds), Geriatric Racer (tear down the streets in your rambler at speeds up to 20 mph!!!) , SimDictator, and my personal favorite, Barbie's Cosmetic Surgery Makeover (submit your worst and see if you can get Freak of the Week!)
Voting tests would be a Bad Thing. Back in the bad ol' days of Jim Crow, the Southern States would require people (typically black) to take "literacy tests" in order to vote. They also had the original Grandfather Clause - if your grandfather could vote, you could vote, convienient because most white folks' grandfathers were slave owners or free men, most blacks' grandfathers were slaves. In a nutshell, voting tests are easily abusable.
In the Perl Journal there is an entry in the Obfuscated Perl Contest that compiles in both Perl and C. It was said that this program caused one of the judges to run to the bathroom to wash his hands compulsively.;) I'm wondering if the author's going to enter that program into the IOCCC.
Speaking of compromising, why don't the xanim people get involved. FYI, xanim is an almost open source video player for X Windows. Most of the code is open, except for a few precompiled object files for proprietary codecs. If the xanim people were to talk to the DVD people, they could put a precompiled CSS decoder into xanim, for DVD decryption. I know, it's not a perfect solution, it isn't even open source, but it would be better than no DVD.
One password scheme I've read about on Usenet a long time ago was called Shocking Nonsense. The idea is to come up with a phrase that is shocking, vile and disgusting, and at the same time total nonsense. The combination of shocking and nonsense will guarantee that you'll remember it.
Example: "Rape 256 nemotode worms with a trash can lid." Take the first letters and numbers and you have a password: "R256NWwaTCL".
Bury annoying comments like "Free Tibet!", "Falun Gong Rules!", "Remember Tiananmen!" or "Independence for Taiwan!" in the source somewhere in the process scheduler or SCSI drivers.
Nuking CDs is too cool. Take a CD, set it on a glass in the middle of the microwave (to prevent it from arcing to the walls), and cook for 3 seconds. You get a cool electric light show, and a CD etched with fractalish patterns. Oh, if you leave the microwave on too long, you get this nasty burned plastic smell that won't go away, so 3 seconds is plenty. As far as safety goes, the only thing I can say is my microwave still works.
Cool toys, but the one I want on my car is a lightning gun. It would be based on the principles used to make lightning shows for theatrical productions (Yes, this is actual electrical lightning, gigawatts of fun.) Instead of using wires, I'd use an ultraviolet laser (nitrogen laser, I think) to ionize the air between the gun and the target to direct the arc. That'll be the last time that luser cuts me off while yakking into a cell-phone.
One problem I see is getting enough power from the engine's alternator to charge the caps fast enough to fire more often than once a month. I'd also find difficulty with driving while wearing an arc-welding mask to protect my eyes from the flash.
Right now I'm surfing using kfm - the web browser/file manager built into KDE. It does work pretty well, and it's much faster than Bloatscape, but it's missing some fundamental stuff like Javascript, and its table support mangles some web pages. As of KDE 1.1.2, kfm's notorious memory leaks have been fixed. Let's hear it for stability instead of bloat.
As far as Mozilla goes, I've played with it a bit. I'll come back to it when it's ready for prime time.
As much as I hate seeing companies playing Big Brother with their employees, I have to concede that if you're getting paid to use the company's machines to get work done, they have the right to know how their machines are being used.
That said, if a company breathes too hard down the necks of their employees, the result is abusive managers, burned out employees, nasty office politics and extremely low productivity, meaning lost profit for the company. It's in a company's own best interests to respect their employees.
Privacy is one of the reasons why I left my last job. Now I have a much better, higher paying job where I don't have to worry about Big Brotherisms.
If you go into a particular spot on the board (the corner about an inch up and to the right of Pacman's starting position) without the ghosts "seeing" you, the ghosts' movements will revert to a fixed pattern and they won't find you.
The person who originally figured this out had way too much time on his hands.
Animal-Human organ transplants create new opportunities for animal virii to mutate and jump to humans. Some of the ugliest bugs out there started off as innocuous infections of animals that jumped to humans - AIDS originally was an infection of monkeys that mutated to infect humans. Imagine that process going a thousand times faster, that's what animal-human transplants do.
OTOH, if I ever get a finger chopped off by a deli slicer, it would be nice to use these polymer matrices to grow a new one out of my own cells.
http://www.ferrycam.com/livepush.html worked fine when I loaded it up with Communicator 4.6. As far as the tiny, ugly fonts go, yes that is a problem, but a fixable problem. Check out the Font Deuglification Mini HOW-TO at http://www.frii.com/~meldroc/F ont-Deuglification.html - it'll show you how to set up TrueType support and increase the size of those tiny fonts.
Re:Linux is not the fastest. No excuses.
on
NT vs. Linux: Again
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· Score: 1
This is now the chance for Linux to show its true strength - the Open Source Community. Even in the midst of the Mindcraft controversy, the kernel and Apache developers were busy using the Mindcraft tests to identify and fix the real performance bottlenecks that Linux has. Don't worry, we'll catch up.
just when you thought everything coexisted happily
on
Red Hat 6.0
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· Score: 1
There is a big difference between the KDE/GNOME situation and the VHS/Beta situation. While you can have both Gnome and KDE on the same system - with KDE apps running in Gnome & vice-versa, the average customer would have had a very difficult time finding a VCR that played both VHS and Beta cassettes.
So can linux 2.2 compile with egcs now?
on
egcs to become gcc
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· Score: 1
The 2.2.x series kernels compile just fine with egcs. The reason the 2.0.x kernels wouldn't compile wasn't the fault of egcs, it was the fault of the kernel - too much not-quite-ANSI-standard C code that egcs rejected. There are patches available for the 2.0.x kernels that fix these issues, but the 2.2.x kernels are better anyways.
Slashdot Mirror
While it is possible for ISPs to block packets (such as Napster or Gnutella packets) based on their content, that could break some of the ISP's legal protections. Most of them enjoy common carrier status - meaning they're not responsible for the content of data transmitted through their equipment - much the same way that phone companies aren't responsible when customers make drug deals over the phone. If ISPs or backbone providers start blocking packets based on content, they step into a legal minefield as they become responsible for all of the content passed through their systems - as they are exercising editorial control over that content.
...based solely on the name of the poster of that comment.
Next thread please.
"This" is referring to implementing "Loser Pays" statutes, where if the plaintiff of a lawsuit loses the trial, he pays the defendant's legal bills & such. As discussed elsewhere in this story, this solution has problems (Poor plaintiffs are discouraged from filing lawsuits against rich defendants for fear of getting stuck with the bill, even if they do have a case.)
One idea would be to impose spending limits on parties in trials. The richer party would be limited to spending what the poorer party is capable of spending. So if Big Bad Corporation sues Joe Littleguy, and Joe can only cough up $1000 to pay for attorneys fees and court expenses, Big Bad Corporation can only spend $1000. Once that money is spent, they're done. That should make the courtrooms a little more fair to the little guys.
I don't remember the URL, but Cnet did a spot on the top ten games that should never be made. They included games such as Seal Clubber (as gruesome as it sounds), Geriatric Racer (tear down the streets in your rambler at speeds up to 20 mph!!!) , SimDictator, and my personal favorite, Barbie's Cosmetic Surgery Makeover (submit your worst and see if you can get Freak of the Week!)
Voting tests would be a Bad Thing. Back in the bad ol' days of Jim Crow, the Southern States would require people (typically black) to take "literacy tests" in order to vote. They also had the original Grandfather Clause - if your grandfather could vote, you could vote, convienient because most white folks' grandfathers were slave owners or free men, most blacks' grandfathers were slaves. In a nutshell, voting tests are easily abusable.
A wise man once said there are three types of computer users.
In the Perl Journal there is an entry in the Obfuscated Perl Contest that compiles in both Perl and C. It was said that this program caused one of the judges to run to the bathroom to wash his hands compulsively. ;) I'm wondering if the author's going to enter that program into the IOCCC.
Speaking of compromising, why don't the xanim people get involved. FYI, xanim is an almost open source video player for X Windows. Most of the code is open, except for a few precompiled object files for proprietary codecs. If the xanim people were to talk to the DVD people, they could put a precompiled CSS decoder into xanim, for DVD decryption. I know, it's not a perfect solution, it isn't even open source, but it would be better than no DVD.
One password scheme I've read about on Usenet a long time ago was called Shocking Nonsense. The idea is to come up with a phrase that is shocking, vile and disgusting, and at the same time total nonsense. The combination of shocking and nonsense will guarantee that you'll remember it.
Example: "Rape 256 nemotode worms with a trash can lid." Take the first letters and numbers and you have a password: "R256NWwaTCL".
Shocking and nonsensical, you'll never forget it.
Bury annoying comments like "Free Tibet!", "Falun Gong Rules!", "Remember Tiananmen!" or "Independence for Taiwan!" in the source somewhere in the process scheduler or SCSI drivers.
Do it enough and drive their censors crazy.
Nuking CDs is too cool. Take a CD, set it on a glass in the middle of the microwave (to prevent it from arcing to the walls), and cook for 3 seconds. You get a cool electric light show, and a CD etched with fractalish patterns. Oh, if you leave the microwave on too long, you get this nasty burned plastic smell that won't go away, so 3 seconds is plenty. As far as safety goes, the only thing I can say is my microwave still works.
Cool toys, but the one I want on my car is a lightning gun. It would be based on the principles used to make lightning shows for theatrical productions (Yes, this is actual electrical lightning, gigawatts of fun.) Instead of using wires, I'd use an ultraviolet laser (nitrogen laser, I think) to ionize the air between the gun and the target to direct the arc. That'll be the last time that luser cuts me off while yakking into a cell-phone.
One problem I see is getting enough power from the engine's alternator to charge the caps fast enough to fire more often than once a month. I'd also find difficulty with driving while wearing an arc-welding mask to protect my eyes from the flash.
Well, I can dream, can't I?
Right now I'm surfing using kfm - the web browser/file manager built into KDE. It does work pretty well, and it's much faster than Bloatscape, but it's missing some fundamental stuff like Javascript, and its table support mangles some web pages. As of KDE 1.1.2, kfm's notorious memory leaks have been fixed. Let's hear it for stability instead of bloat.
As far as Mozilla goes, I've played with it a bit. I'll come back to it when it's ready for prime time.
Check the Linux Today link, it says heise has confirmed this to be a hoax.
As much as I hate seeing companies playing Big Brother with their employees, I have to concede that if you're getting paid to use the company's machines to get work done, they have the right to know how their machines are being used.
That said, if a company breathes too hard down the necks of their employees, the result is abusive managers, burned out employees, nasty office politics and extremely low productivity, meaning lost profit for the company. It's in a company's own best interests to respect their employees.
Privacy is one of the reasons why I left my last job. Now I have a much better, higher paying job where I don't have to worry about Big Brotherisms.
Microsoft's meaning for Flextime is "You can work any 16 hours a day you want."
There is a way to do this.
If you go into a particular spot on the board (the corner about an inch up and to the right of Pacman's starting position) without the ghosts "seeing" you, the ghosts' movements will revert to a fixed pattern and they won't find you.
The person who originally figured this out had way too much time on his hands.
OTOH, if I ever get a finger chopped off by a deli slicer, it would be nice to use these polymer matrices to grow a new one out of my own cells.
If you are a user of Yahoo Mail, the new Terms of Service apply to this as well - meaning that your email is Yahoo's to sell, broadcast and exploit.
I seriously doubt that Yahoo would invade people's privacy this blatently, but technically, they do claim the right to do so if they wish.
The TOS needs some revisions.
Um, he spelled "satinism" incorrectly. ;)
http://www.ferrycam.com/livepush.html worked fine when I loaded it up with Communicator 4.6. As far as the tiny, ugly fonts go, yes that is a problem, but a fixable problem. Check out the Font Deuglification Mini HOW-TO at http://www.frii.com/~meldroc/F ont-Deuglification.html - it'll show you how to set up TrueType support and increase the size of those tiny fonts.
This is now the chance for Linux to show its true strength - the Open Source Community. Even in the midst of the Mindcraft controversy, the kernel and Apache developers were busy using the Mindcraft tests to identify and fix the real performance bottlenecks that Linux has. Don't worry, we'll catch up.
More likely is that the servers got Slashdotted.
There is a big difference between the KDE/GNOME situation and the VHS/Beta situation. While you can have both Gnome and KDE on the same system - with KDE apps running in Gnome & vice-versa, the average customer would have had a very difficult time finding a VCR that played both VHS and Beta cassettes.
The 2.2.x series kernels compile just fine with egcs. The reason the 2.0.x kernels wouldn't compile wasn't the fault of egcs, it was the fault of the kernel - too much not-quite-ANSI-standard C code that egcs rejected. There are patches available for the 2.0.x kernels that fix these issues, but the 2.2.x kernels are better anyways.