I take exception whenever somebody says that something is unsinkable, impenetrable, or any other variant on idiot-proof, because it seems to me that you're just tempting fate to come up with a better idiot. If there were more Mac users, there would be more virus/spyware developpers targetting Mac. Something is bound to get through, because no system is perfect.
Having a false sense of security is more dangerous than having no security at all, IMO.
That's the official part of the google modification (thanks to the guy who pointed to line 389). Now, where was DVD Jon's patch to compare?
It's in his blog.... but probably the easiest way to do it is to change this: + goto error;
To this: +// goto error;
If you do that, it'll still pop up the invalid host error, but it'll continue and play anyway. If you want to get rid of the invalid host error, comment out the previous line, too.
[quote]Sort of like satellite, but at least with digital cable you still get a picture when it rains.[/quote]
I've been on Satellite for more than 5 years. In the last year, I've lost signal due to inclement weather once, and that wasn't such a big deal, because I lost Hydro 5 minutes thereafter. By the time Hydro came back, the Satellite was back.
The technology has really improved a lot in recent years. While agree that sometimes the channel takes a little longer to change than cable did, the picture is so much cleaner, and the sound so much crisper that I'm willing to put up with it. In the days where so many TV channels are broadcasting in HDTV, and just about every program I watch is filmed in HDTV with at least 5.1 sound, it's worth having a satellite dish. Even on my backup TV, an old 21" Samsung, the picture and sound is way better on Satellite than it ever was on cable.
With that link, and a little knowhow, you, too, can crack the code and make your own Google Video viewer. The upshot is that you can compile it for Linux (Google has only released it for Windows). The downshot is that I'm surprised it took Jon so long to make the change.:)
It's not like it was hard to find... go to http://video.google.com/ click on "Install", and then click on "Get the source code". It's under "patches".
You do need 6 points to plot a point in 3D unless you're doing it with vectors and an agreed-upon origin point. But from a soundscape point of view, you would have to be at the dead centre point of the speakers for it to sound right. Even 1 foot to the left or right would screw up the sound balance.
That would just be an extension to the old 4.0 standard, however. That was Left-Right,Front-Back. Dolby went with the 5.0/5.1 speaker alignment because while it still doesn't sound right if you aren't at the focal point, the sweet spot is larger. IOW, the sound quality/balance doesn't fall off quite as fast the further you get off center.
And theatre 13.1 sound is just repeating the front and back right/left channels through speakers on the side. I'm not aware of any movies that were recorded in anything > 7.1 surround.
And yet my AMD-64-based server runs at 38'C with an OEM heatsink and no additional case fans....
But the OP was referring to computing power, not electrical power. There's very little that you can do on a 3.8GHz system that you can't do on a 1.7GHz system. You can achieve equal or even better performance on the 1.7GHz system with better memory access and better instruction pipelining. There's a reason the AMD Athlon 64 FX-57 blows everything Intel has out of the water, even though it's 1GHz slower than Intel's best offering.
About 12.1 million internet connections in Canada, and yes, about 5 million broadband connections in use. Canada has the highest broadband penetration in the world. Canada also has the highest Cellular/PCS penetration in the world, and the highest sattelite/digital TV penetration.
To put things in perspective, we switched to broadband in 1994 (ISDN, cable in 1996), my folks have had a cell phone since 1985 (I'm 24, but I got my first cell phone in 1997), and I switched to StarChoice in 1998.
Canada has always been an early adopter of new technology. Coupled with a relatively small population (33 million or so) that's mostly living in a handful of urban centers and a very large middle class, and you've got a recipe for high penetration of services like these.
You seem to have missed my point.... China has nukes. Iraq never had 'em, and most of the world thought Dubya was full of shit when he kept hopping up and down and saying Saddam had 'em. China, however, is known to have nukes.
Not as many as Dubya, but enough to make a serious dent in the US's ability to make war....
Tack on ".nyud.net:8090" to the end of any FQDN and get it from coral cache instead of direct from the host.
And yes, it is fugly and not even close to what I would expect or want from a USB mass storage painting.;) It's not a bad painting. Not quite my style, but not bad. But tacking a Maxtor 80GB hard drive on the visible side of the painting is ugly.
You want to make something like that actually useful and something people are likely to buy? Design a picture frame that can have an array of these things on the hidden side. Make it smart, so you can just plug in extra hard drives to increase the storage. Maybe throw in a wireless ethernet connector instead of USB, and have an ethernet plug, too, and let it function as a network fileserver with an embedded kernel like QNX/Neutrino or some custom rolled Linux. That is something I would consider buying. Mix it with a nice picture or one of those klitchy inspirational posters that so many companies like, and you've got a product niche. When I've the money to burn, I might even consider designing and building something like that, but maybe somebody'll beat me to it.:)
There's anthrax in the soil where I live, and if you live near a farm, there's probably anthrax in the soil where you live, too.
It's a natural byproduct that's found in pig and cow shit, and sheep shit for that matter. If there's a pig or cow farm nearby, some will almost definitely have seeped into the soil. If there's a grain or fruit farm, you still might have some depending on whether the farmer spreads natural fertilizer or chemical alternatives.
In low concentrations, it isn't all that dangerous. It's just as lethal if it takes a hold, but usually in areas where decent veterinary care is available, the percentage of animals infected with it is low enough that any exposure will be small enough for your immune system to kill. If you're in farm country, you've probably been exposed to it at least once without even knowing.
The Shadow planetkillers were downright sinister....
To be honest, though, I liked the pulse guns that you saw on the "lesser" ships. The B5 defense system, starfuries, Drazi ships, and even some of the human battlecruisers. For some reason, when I think of energy-based weapons, a rapid pulse energy-based weapon seems more realistic.
A lot of modern cutting lasers are femtolasers. The laser beam actually hitting the target has better cutting/penetrating power than continuous contact, so you solve that problem by having a laser that does a billion pulses a minute.
The problem with a cat burglar is, no matter how many locks on the safe, if the Hope Diamond is inside, they are going to take the time they need to open it
Yeah, but it's Windows. As far as gemstones go, that's the Iron Pyrite of operating systems. Sure, it's a great gaming platform, and I run a copy of XP Pro on one of my systems, but mix it with the Internet, and you've got an accident waiting to happen.
Naw... I'm just smart enough not to use meta tags on pages I want to keep out of search engines.;)
Actually, part of the problem is that Google is ignoring my robots.txt. I get more visits from Inktomi, but fewer referrals, because Yahoo actually pays attention to the Robots telling it to ignore the blog, the gallery, and the MP3 section. A good 50% of the hits from Google are to the MP3 section. It's gotten to the point that I put in a script on that page that checks the referrer, and if it's a search engine, sends a "Location: http://apple.com/itunes/" header.:)
Yeah... Yahoo's service is more complete. But I doubt I'm alone when I say that I don't need webmail, or instant messaging, or online chatting. I've been there, I've done that, and I don't feel like doing it again.
I don't like Yahoo's webpage. It's cluttered, and full of crap. It reminds me of MSN, which is 2nd according to Alexa's stats.
Incidentally... more people may use Yahoo's other services, but many more people fall to Google for their searching. In that respect, Yahoo fails. It's all well and good if they can keep people coming to their site for their community services. It's an entirely different ballgame when people don't even consider the competition when it comes to searching.
To give an idea of what I'm talking about, here's yesterday's search engine stats from my webserver:
Links from an Internet Search Engine 2 different refering search engines Pages Percent Hits Percent Google 166 99.4 % 166 99.4 % AOL 1 0.5 % 1 0.5 %
Not strictly speaking true. Reputable AW sites (such as HOTU and Abandonia) will post a title, and inform the vendor that it's up. If the vendor complains, the title is taken down. If the vendor doesn't complain, then the product can be considered abandonware, and freely distributable.
Also, when a company no longer exists, and nobody bought the copyrights, their product becomes public domain. An awful lot of abandonware titles actually come from studios that went belly-up. In these cases, since there's no longer anybody who can make a claim to the copyright, the product in question becomes public domain.
The difference between Abandonware and Warez comes in whether the product is still within its natural saleable life. Only the vendor can make that decision, and when the vendor comes to that conclusion, there's two things they can do: they can either abandon the title, or they can release it for free download (like Rockstar Games has done with some of their material). As long as they think they can still sell it, it's not abandonware.
Unfortunate, although probably technically correct), because it was one of the most clueful things I've yet to see a court say about the media levy... If you make it legal to receive, you gotta make it legal to give or you didn't really accomplish anything.
True enough. But I can't be prosecuted for somebody else breaking the law. I don't do a whole lot of downloading anyway (one great thing about liking mostly stuff that's older than you are is that eventually you find yourself with a complete collection:)). Meanwhile, I can continue to download content while trying to work within the system for change. I've already left a couple phone messages with my MP's office, and written a few letters.
My big concern is with their provisions regarding illegal copying of protected content, and circumventing mechanisms in place to prevent copying and to collect user information. As a user of a non-Redmond OS, would I be breaking the law to even listen to my music on my PC?
His analysis says pretty clearly that downloading through p2p is still considered legal. It always will be as long as there's still a levy on every blank media purchase.
According to TFA, the real concern is that this *bill* (still hasn't been passed into law) would make it illegal to circumvent anti-piracy mechanisms on CDs and such. In other words, if there's garbling to prevent playing a CD on a computer (and likely old CD players too), it'd be illegal to hook up your CD player's line out to your computer's line in and record the songs directly. Likewise, it'd become illegal to circumvent some proprietary copy protection that collects your name and vitals when you rip a recording for personal use.
The only conclusion I can make is that they really don't want people buying their crap, which is an objective I'm more than happy to help with. If it happens, then I guess my solution would be to switch back to cassettes... for all of one album every couple of years.
Well... there's probably an exception to every rule, so keep that in mind when I say this:
I have an eidetic memory, and have never been accused of being dumb. In school, the only thing I was ever accused of, actually, was being incredibly arrogant, because it took embarrassingly long for me to realise that other kids didn't like me pointing out how I was smarter than them.
I'd really like to find out what study that is, because I have had technology around me all my life. Literally, all my life. I started reading when I was 2 years old. By the time I was 3, I spoke English, French, and German, and could read English and French. I was given a kit and built a transistor radio from it when I was 6. I cannot remember ever *not* having a TV, and can even remember when my parents upgraded from a Black&White TV to a colour TV. The thing is, that was when I was 2. My first computer was bought when I was 4, and I was writing programs in Basic by the time I was 6. When I got to school, I actually taught the other students how to use the computer, because the teachers were computer illiterate in those days. (still are, but that's another story)
I remember waking up at 4 o'clock in the morning to watch my cartoons on Saturday and Sunday, and then when the Football started, I can remember retiring to the computer to play some Space Quest 1. Or Police Quest 1, and turning on the sirens to go through traffic lights because you couldn't tell whether they were green/red on an orange-scale monitor w/ Hercules Monochrome graphics. And yes, for a long time, Mr. Wizard was my favourite TV show. That got replaced by Bill Nye for a few years, and now it's Discovery Channel. There's only two shows that aren't on Discovery that I watch with any regularity, actually: Stargate SG1 and Corner Gas.
Suffice to say that I spent an awful lot of my youth staring at flickering screens, and according to your psychology friend, becoming retarded because of it.
To be fair, I did a lot outside, as well. My house backed on to a provincially-significant wetland that's still there. I used to go out in the brack and play wargames with the neighbours. I played Soccer, Rugby, and was very active in aquatics.
I guess what I'm getting at is that I don't think it's the act of staring at a screen that causes problems in kids. I think it's the lack of truly meaningful stimulation. One thing I never had was a console. I also never had any games my parents didn't buy.... when I was growing up, that was a Pinball game, Math Blaster, the Carmen Sandiego series, and Sierra RPGs. Pretty educational software, really. Or at least stuff that makes you think... compare it to Halflife, for example, and they're not in the same category at all.
I'd allow games. At least, I'd allow games like Civilization (which is really just a very complicated Chess) and RPGs. But I'd also never buy my kid a gaming console, and I'd make sure my kid got into sports and other kinds of physical activity. Monkey see, monkey do. The best way, then, would be to go for lots of bike rides with the kid, take the kid x-country skiing, buy and actually use a treadmill (I'm on mine 60 minutes a day), and maybe get into martial arts. But above all, don't let the TV do the raising of your kids. Get rid of cable TV, or use the V-Chip to block non-educational channels without password. And spend time with the rugrats. Every Friday, one of my parents took a day off work, and they'd alternate so both took 2 Fridays a month. They'd stay home, and spend time with me and my brother, making sure we didn't kill each other, and didn't spend the day inside doing fsck-all.
Oh, and if you're in an area where it's possible, kill the air conditioning. It'll take some getting used to, but I'd wager that one reason kids spend too much time indoors is because it's too damned hot outside.:)
The guy's information is a little out of date.... For one, while it isn't a GUI-driven installation, Slack's install *is* menu-driven. If you read what you're presented with when you boot off the install CD, it's pretty obvious, too. It says very clearly, partition the disk, then type "setup". It even suggests using cfdisk to partition the disk if you want a "gui". I'd hardly call it arcane, since the information is given to you without your needing to hunt for it.
There's some assumption that you know what you're doing, and Slack doesn't set X as the default runlevel, but there's also a really helpful book available for free at Slack's website. About the only thing you really need to know is that RL4 is X, not RL5. That, and that it uses BSD init placement (/etc/rc.d/) instead of SysV (/etc/rc.d/rc.X/). Other than that, it's Linux. What works for one distro will work for Slack. Only there's probably already a package so you don't have to compile from source, just check linuxpackages.net first.
Also, Gnome has been moved to/pasture. It's not in -current.
When combined with a site, such as http://pgl.yoyo.org/adservers/ you can blackhole adservers by FQDN. Since the cookies are sent by domain name, accessing the host by IP address won't do the cookies any good....
There's also a list of IP addresses that can easily be imported into a set of iptables rules if you would rather block 'em by IP address.
I, for one, know positively that you can change the future. Don't ask, unless you want a really long response.
In a thread which discusses the possibility and ramifications of time travel, I'm asking. And I'm hoping you're not going to come back with some philosophical mumbo jumbo about the future being indeterminate, and how every choice you make has an effect on the future. I already knew that.
Maybe neither time nor space are linear. Have you ever experienced precognition or deja vu? 90% of the people who say they have, may be nutjobs, but there are some people who can see things outside of our concept of space or time. That is, space would be "remove viewing", and time would be precognition (future) or deja vu (past).
While I'm hesitant to use the word "precognition" I will say that I experience Deja Vu about 5 or 6 times a day, and that any time I remember a dream when I wake up, it happens. Whether that's because I believe it's going to happen, and through my actions I make it happen, however, is something I don't think I'll ever figure out.
As for travelling back in time, naw. I doubt that travel *backwards* in time is possible. I'm reasonably sure that travelling forwards in time is possible, however, and that it can be achieved with our current level of technology. If the Hindus are right about the cyclical universe, then what would happen if you went so far forward in time that you ended up in the relative past of a future cycle?
Slashdot Mirror
And the Titanic was practically unsinkable.
I take exception whenever somebody says that something is unsinkable, impenetrable, or any other variant on idiot-proof, because it seems to me that you're just tempting fate to come up with a better idiot. If there were more Mac users, there would be more virus/spyware developpers targetting Mac. Something is bound to get through, because no system is perfect.
Having a false sense of security is more dangerous than having no security at all, IMO.
That's the official part of the google modification (thanks to the guy who pointed to line 389). Now, where was DVD Jon's patch to compare?
// goto error;
It's in his blog.... but probably the easiest way to do it is to change this:
+ goto error;
To this:
+
If you do that, it'll still pop up the invalid host error, but it'll continue and play anyway. If you want to get rid of the invalid host error, comment out the previous line, too.
[quote]Sort of like satellite, but at least with digital cable you still get a picture when it rains.[/quote]
I've been on Satellite for more than 5 years. In the last year, I've lost signal due to inclement weather once, and that wasn't such a big deal, because I lost Hydro 5 minutes thereafter. By the time Hydro came back, the Satellite was back.
The technology has really improved a lot in recent years. While agree that sometimes the channel takes a little longer to change than cable did, the picture is so much cleaner, and the sound so much crisper that I'm willing to put up with it. In the days where so many TV channels are broadcasting in HDTV, and just about every program I watch is filmed in HDTV with at least 5.1 sound, it's worth having a satellite dish. Even on my backup TV, an old 21" Samsung, the picture and sound is way better on Satellite than it ever was on cable.
Yeah, but how long can Adam West hold his breath?
http://code.google.com/patches.html
:)
With that link, and a little knowhow, you, too, can crack the code and make your own Google Video viewer. The upshot is that you can compile it for Linux (Google has only released it for Windows). The downshot is that I'm surprised it took Jon so long to make the change.
It's not like it was hard to find... go to http://video.google.com/ click on "Install", and then click on "Get the source code". It's under "patches".
You do need 6 points to plot a point in 3D unless you're doing it with vectors and an agreed-upon origin point. But from a soundscape point of view, you would have to be at the dead centre point of the speakers for it to sound right. Even 1 foot to the left or right would screw up the sound balance.
That would just be an extension to the old 4.0 standard, however. That was Left-Right,Front-Back. Dolby went with the 5.0/5.1 speaker alignment because while it still doesn't sound right if you aren't at the focal point, the sweet spot is larger. IOW, the sound quality/balance doesn't fall off quite as fast the further you get off center.
And theatre 13.1 sound is just repeating the front and back right/left channels through speakers on the side. I'm not aware of any movies that were recorded in anything > 7.1 surround.
And yet my AMD-64-based server runs at 38'C with an OEM heatsink and no additional case fans....
But the OP was referring to computing power, not electrical power. There's very little that you can do on a 3.8GHz system that you can't do on a 1.7GHz system. You can achieve equal or even better performance on the 1.7GHz system with better memory access and better instruction pipelining. There's a reason the AMD Athlon 64 FX-57 blows everything Intel has out of the water, even though it's 1GHz slower than Intel's best offering.
About 12.1 million internet connections in Canada, and yes, about 5 million broadband connections in use. Canada has the highest broadband penetration in the world. Canada also has the highest Cellular/PCS penetration in the world, and the highest sattelite/digital TV penetration.
To put things in perspective, we switched to broadband in 1994 (ISDN, cable in 1996), my folks have had a cell phone since 1985 (I'm 24, but I got my first cell phone in 1997), and I switched to StarChoice in 1998.
Canada has always been an early adopter of new technology. Coupled with a relatively small population (33 million or so) that's mostly living in a handful of urban centers and a very large middle class, and you've got a recipe for high penetration of services like these.
Not quite as worried as I am about Dubya's itchy trigger finger, but worried enough....
You seem to have missed my point.... China has nukes. Iraq never had 'em, and most of the world thought Dubya was full of shit when he kept hopping up and down and saying Saddam had 'em. China, however, is known to have nukes.
Not as many as Dubya, but enough to make a serious dent in the US's ability to make war....
Have you heard about "Nuclear Weapons"?
You need to learn to use coral cache:
8
;) It's not a bad painting. Not quite my style, but not bad. But tacking a Maxtor 80GB hard drive on the visible side of the painting is ugly.
:)
http://www.billablog.com.nyud.net:8090/archives/1
Tack on ".nyud.net:8090" to the end of any FQDN and get it from coral cache instead of direct from the host.
And yes, it is fugly and not even close to what I would expect or want from a USB mass storage painting.
You want to make something like that actually useful and something people are likely to buy? Design a picture frame that can have an array of these things on the hidden side. Make it smart, so you can just plug in extra hard drives to increase the storage. Maybe throw in a wireless ethernet connector instead of USB, and have an ethernet plug, too, and let it function as a network fileserver with an embedded kernel like QNX/Neutrino or some custom rolled Linux. That is something I would consider buying. Mix it with a nice picture or one of those klitchy inspirational posters that so many companies like, and you've got a product niche. When I've the money to burn, I might even consider designing and building something like that, but maybe somebody'll beat me to it.
There's anthrax in the soil where I live, and if you live near a farm, there's probably anthrax in the soil where you live, too.
It's a natural byproduct that's found in pig and cow shit, and sheep shit for that matter. If there's a pig or cow farm nearby, some will almost definitely have seeped into the soil. If there's a grain or fruit farm, you still might have some depending on whether the farmer spreads natural fertilizer or chemical alternatives.
In low concentrations, it isn't all that dangerous. It's just as lethal if it takes a hold, but usually in areas where decent veterinary care is available, the percentage of animals infected with it is low enough that any exposure will be small enough for your immune system to kill. If you're in farm country, you've probably been exposed to it at least once without even knowing.
The Shadow planetkillers were downright sinister....
To be honest, though, I liked the pulse guns that you saw on the "lesser" ships. The B5 defense system, starfuries, Drazi ships, and even some of the human battlecruisers. For some reason, when I think of energy-based weapons, a rapid pulse energy-based weapon seems more realistic.
A lot of modern cutting lasers are femtolasers. The laser beam actually hitting the target has better cutting/penetrating power than continuous contact, so you solve that problem by having a laser that does a billion pulses a minute.
Or download it through MSDN or MSDN/AA. I didn't pay a dime for my copy of XP Pro, and it's 100% legal.
:)
I still run Linux as my primary OS, though.
The problem with a cat burglar is, no matter how many locks on the safe, if the Hope Diamond is inside, they are going to take the time they need to open it
Yeah, but it's Windows. As far as gemstones go, that's the Iron Pyrite of operating systems. Sure, it's a great gaming platform, and I run a copy of XP Pro on one of my systems, but mix it with the Internet, and you've got an accident waiting to happen.
Naw... I'm just smart enough not to use meta tags on pages I want to keep out of search engines. ;)
:)
Actually, part of the problem is that Google is ignoring my robots.txt. I get more visits from Inktomi, but fewer referrals, because Yahoo actually pays attention to the Robots telling it to ignore the blog, the gallery, and the MP3 section. A good 50% of the hits from Google are to the MP3 section. It's gotten to the point that I put in a script on that page that checks the referrer, and if it's a search engine, sends a "Location: http://apple.com/itunes/" header.
I don't like Yahoo's webpage. It's cluttered, and full of crap. It reminds me of MSN, which is 2nd according to Alexa's stats.
Incidentally... more people may use Yahoo's other services, but many more people fall to Google for their searching. In that respect, Yahoo fails. It's all well and good if they can keep people coming to their site for their community services. It's an entirely different ballgame when people don't even consider the competition when it comes to searching.
To give an idea of what I'm talking about, here's yesterday's search engine stats from my webserver:
Not strictly speaking true. Reputable AW sites (such as HOTU and Abandonia) will post a title, and inform the vendor that it's up. If the vendor complains, the title is taken down. If the vendor doesn't complain, then the product can be considered abandonware, and freely distributable.
Also, when a company no longer exists, and nobody bought the copyrights, their product becomes public domain. An awful lot of abandonware titles actually come from studios that went belly-up. In these cases, since there's no longer anybody who can make a claim to the copyright, the product in question becomes public domain.
The difference between Abandonware and Warez comes in whether the product is still within its natural saleable life. Only the vendor can make that decision, and when the vendor comes to that conclusion, there's two things they can do: they can either abandon the title, or they can release it for free download (like Rockstar Games has done with some of their material). As long as they think they can still sell it, it's not abandonware.
Unfortunate, although probably technically correct), because it was one of the most clueful things I've yet to see a court say about the media levy... If you make it legal to receive, you gotta make it legal to give or you didn't really accomplish anything.
:)). Meanwhile, I can continue to download content while trying to work within the system for change. I've already left a couple phone messages with my MP's office, and written a few letters.
True enough. But I can't be prosecuted for somebody else breaking the law. I don't do a whole lot of downloading anyway (one great thing about liking mostly stuff that's older than you are is that eventually you find yourself with a complete collection
My big concern is with their provisions regarding illegal copying of protected content, and circumventing mechanisms in place to prevent copying and to collect user information. As a user of a non-Redmond OS, would I be breaking the law to even listen to my music on my PC?
Did you read the blog at all?
His analysis says pretty clearly that downloading through p2p is still considered legal. It always will be as long as there's still a levy on every blank media purchase.
According to TFA, the real concern is that this *bill* (still hasn't been passed into law) would make it illegal to circumvent anti-piracy mechanisms on CDs and such. In other words, if there's garbling to prevent playing a CD on a computer (and likely old CD players too), it'd be illegal to hook up your CD player's line out to your computer's line in and record the songs directly. Likewise, it'd become illegal to circumvent some proprietary copy protection that collects your name and vitals when you rip a recording for personal use.
The only conclusion I can make is that they really don't want people buying their crap, which is an objective I'm more than happy to help with. If it happens, then I guess my solution would be to switch back to cassettes... for all of one album every couple of years.
I have an eidetic memory, and have never been accused of being dumb. In school, the only thing I was ever accused of, actually, was being incredibly arrogant, because it took embarrassingly long for me to realise that other kids didn't like me pointing out how I was smarter than them.
I'd really like to find out what study that is, because I have had technology around me all my life. Literally, all my life. I started reading when I was 2 years old. By the time I was 3, I spoke English, French, and German, and could read English and French. I was given a kit and built a transistor radio from it when I was 6. I cannot remember ever *not* having a TV, and can even remember when my parents upgraded from a Black&White TV to a colour TV. The thing is, that was when I was 2. My first computer was bought when I was 4, and I was writing programs in Basic by the time I was 6. When I got to school, I actually taught the other students how to use the computer, because the teachers were computer illiterate in those days. (still are, but that's another story)
I remember waking up at 4 o'clock in the morning to watch my cartoons on Saturday and Sunday, and then when the Football started, I can remember retiring to the computer to play some Space Quest 1. Or Police Quest 1, and turning on the sirens to go through traffic lights because you couldn't tell whether they were green/red on an orange-scale monitor w/ Hercules Monochrome graphics. And yes, for a long time, Mr. Wizard was my favourite TV show. That got replaced by Bill Nye for a few years, and now it's Discovery Channel. There's only two shows that aren't on Discovery that I watch with any regularity, actually: Stargate SG1 and Corner Gas.
Suffice to say that I spent an awful lot of my youth staring at flickering screens, and according to your psychology friend, becoming retarded because of it.
To be fair, I did a lot outside, as well. My house backed on to a provincially-significant wetland that's still there. I used to go out in the brack and play wargames with the neighbours. I played Soccer, Rugby, and was very active in aquatics.
I guess what I'm getting at is that I don't think it's the act of staring at a screen that causes problems in kids. I think it's the lack of truly meaningful stimulation. One thing I never had was a console. I also never had any games my parents didn't buy.... when I was growing up, that was a Pinball game, Math Blaster, the Carmen Sandiego series, and Sierra RPGs. Pretty educational software, really. Or at least stuff that makes you think... compare it to Halflife, for example, and they're not in the same category at all.
I'd allow games. At least, I'd allow games like Civilization (which is really just a very complicated Chess) and RPGs. But I'd also never buy my kid a gaming console, and I'd make sure my kid got into sports and other kinds of physical activity. Monkey see, monkey do. The best way, then, would be to go for lots of bike rides with the kid, take the kid x-country skiing, buy and actually use a treadmill (I'm on mine 60 minutes a day), and maybe get into martial arts. But above all, don't let the TV do the raising of your kids. Get rid of cable TV, or use the V-Chip to block non-educational channels without password. And spend time with the rugrats. Every Friday, one of my parents took a day off work, and they'd alternate so both took 2 Fridays a month. They'd stay home, and spend time with me and my brother, making sure we didn't kill each other, and didn't spend the day inside doing fsck-all.
Oh, and if you're in an area where it's possible, kill the air conditioning. It'll take some getting used to, but I'd wager that one reason kids spend too much time indoors is because it's too damned hot outside.
The guy's information is a little out of date.... For one, while it isn't a GUI-driven installation, Slack's install *is* menu-driven. If you read what you're presented with when you boot off the install CD, it's pretty obvious, too. It says very clearly, partition the disk, then type "setup". It even suggests using cfdisk to partition the disk if you want a "gui". I'd hardly call it arcane, since the information is given to you without your needing to hunt for it.
/pasture. It's not in -current.
There's some assumption that you know what you're doing, and Slack doesn't set X as the default runlevel, but there's also a really helpful book available for free at Slack's website. About the only thing you really need to know is that RL4 is X, not RL5. That, and that it uses BSD init placement (/etc/rc.d/) instead of SysV (/etc/rc.d/rc.X/). Other than that, it's Linux. What works for one distro will work for Slack. Only there's probably already a package so you don't have to compile from source, just check linuxpackages.net first.
Also, Gnome has been moved to
I like ISC's BIND for this...
When combined with a site, such as http://pgl.yoyo.org/adservers/ you can blackhole adservers by FQDN. Since the cookies are sent by domain name, accessing the host by IP address won't do the cookies any good....
There's also a list of IP addresses that can easily be imported into a set of iptables rules if you would rather block 'em by IP address.
In a thread which discusses the possibility and ramifications of time travel, I'm asking. And I'm hoping you're not going to come back with some philosophical mumbo jumbo about the future being indeterminate, and how every choice you make has an effect on the future. I already knew that.
Maybe neither time nor space are linear. Have you ever experienced precognition or deja vu? 90% of the people who say they have, may be nutjobs, but there are some people who can see things outside of our concept of space or time. That is, space would be "remove viewing", and time would be precognition (future) or deja vu (past).
While I'm hesitant to use the word "precognition" I will say that I experience Deja Vu about 5 or 6 times a day, and that any time I remember a dream when I wake up, it happens. Whether that's because I believe it's going to happen, and through my actions I make it happen, however, is something I don't think I'll ever figure out.
As for travelling back in time, naw. I doubt that travel *backwards* in time is possible. I'm reasonably sure that travelling forwards in time is possible, however, and that it can be achieved with our current level of technology. If the Hindus are right about the cyclical universe, then what would happen if you went so far forward in time that you ended up in the relative past of a future cycle?