Just FYI, they're re-releasing a bunch of the most popular original Transformers, and some new (and very very good) designs under the moniker Transformers 2000. http://www.planetanime.com has them, along with just about every other Japanese toy retailer on the net. Optimus Prime, Ultra Magnus (the Optimus cab with the car-carrier trailer), and a couple very nice new cars are available today, along with Fortress Maximus (which is the ungodly huge one you see in those pictures). I also have in my pocket the reserve slip for the original Megatron, due for release in June. I was as giddy as a schoolgirl when I found out about that.
Repeat after me. The Slashdot readership is not monolithic. That means that different people espouse different opinions on different topics. If you were super anal retentive, you could go through the posts and find individuals who said one thing about that hack, and another thing about this hack, but a) I bet you wouldn't find many and b) the situations are different.
This hack is about defeating hackers who are stealing service. The other hack would be (theoretically) to defeat the company who tries to "steal" a feature that I paid for from me.
Let me ask the basic question again...why should a taxpayer not be able to take their tax-funded voucher to whatever school they want to? If they want their children to go to Sideshow Bob's School of Advanced Villainy, they should be allowed to do so. Let the parents make an informed decision, and let the State go back to legislating more mohair subsidies.
What if the tax dollars DO get funneled into religious schools? Wouldn't that mean that the tax payers have taken their voucher to the school of their choice? Why is this bad? Before you get all excited about separation of church and state, remember that the state in this case is not giving preferential treatment to ANYBODY. The People are making the choice. Isn't that what we're all hoping for?
You figure out how to make it work, and I'll find you however much startup capital you need. We will be the wealthiest and most powerful individuals on Earth, and we can take turns using Bill Gates as a footstool.
Never mind the environmental damage...how about the cost? The best rocket technology we've got on the drawing boards has a cost of $1000/lb of payload to low Earth orbit. (That's a tenfold reduction in cost over the Shuttle, by the way) Getting the stuff to escape the Earth's gravitation into a decaying orbit around the sun takes another huge delta-V (which means using a rocket to launch a rocket that carries the payload of the nasty you don't want to deal with)...
In other words, it will not ever be feasible to get rid of energy production waste by dumping it into space, since "dumping" it involves spending amounts of energy many orders of magnitude larger than those wastes generate to get the gunk out of the gravity well.
Huh? Radio and visible light are the same things. If it's not physically occluded by a planet, laser light will bend around a gravity well just like any other EM source. Radio waves don't travel through large objects (like planets) very well, either. You're right in that a coherent light beam can be more easily blocked by a stellar body than an omnidirectional radio wave, but the odds of either preventing us from talking to aliens are, pardon the pun, astronomical.
If our species has a significant fraction of its biomass still sitting on this rock in 10,000 years, we DESERVE to get spanked by a passing meteorite/black hole/Vogon construction ship. The only way for a species to surviving planetary scale disasters is to live on more than one planet. Or asteroid. Or interstellar autonomous spacecraft.
Uhh...because they don't have to? Because they don't see any shareholder advantage to doing so? They're a corporation. Not only do corporations rarely share, they're explicitly designed not to. Darwin is an amazing departure from that structure. Man, if you're bitter about three megabytes, you're probably going to be upset about something else that Apple didn't explain to your satisfaction even if they DID release the specs. Don't like their hardware? Don't use it. Nobody's got a gun to your head here...
There's a difference in believing they are going to change the world and imagining what the world would be like if they did. I'm a skeptic myself (good trait for an engineering student), but I also don't mind exploring interesting, even improbable, ideas.
I'm certainly not going to give them any money. : )
Regarding your last point, it's interesting that the first computers DID cost $500 million EASILY (depending on how you want to adjust for inflation), but you can get a superb pocket calculator for $15. It's not as far fetched as it might seem on the face of it...
What, you're going to land on that and ignore all the people who say "Here here!" when they should be saying "Hear hear!"
Just like Mr. Simpson says. "It's pronounced noo-kyew-lar."
No, it's not an American thing. I bet there are people in other countries that have bad grammar too...I'm just not good enough (enuff?) at reading their languages to pick it up. And British authors...hell, they think car hoods are called bonnets and cookies are called biscuits! Never mind grey and colour. Or Aluminium (sic). Who can tell what those poofters (weirdos) think is a grammar error?
Do you have any idea how much venture capital you could get if you had a credible design for a five year battery for a computer? ANY computer? If you know how to do that, I'll be glad to scare up some financing. Somehow.
Yeah, remember all those press releases about cool new technology that happened eighteen months ago but I can't buy at the store yet? Those all must suck, so they should go ahead and stop developing them.
Science takes time, but it ALWAYS ALWAYS gets results. Project Apollo took, what, a whole 15 years to get people from primitive jet engines to walking on the moon. Who wants to wait that long?
Basically, the argument is that computer time at a public library is a finite resource that costs the taxpayer money, in the form of hardware and 'Net access. Therefore, time on those computers used for activities that "appeal to the prurient interest" (or whatever obscenity litmus test you want to apply) prevent other users from accessing "legitimate" sites (IE those that are assumed to be in line with the political and sociological views of the taxpayers).
I don't subscribe to that argument, but there it is. I think an unfiltered internet is far less dangerous to society than giving the keys to a private corporate entity would be.
Compared to how often Dolemite smacks hoes, that ain't shit, muthafucka.
http://www.dolemite.com
And for extra weird kung-fu goodness, complete with topless ninja ho's, find yourself a copy of Shaolin Dolemite. It is available at NetFlix, or at whichever DVD store you like. Blockbuster? Funk dat trick ass company.
Yes, Apple has in fact opened their hardware in the eight (ten?) years since they manufactured the newest of the boxes you mentioned here. OpenFirmware IS open. The boot loader was not open in the past...now it is. Is this complicated? Is it even BAD? NetBSD works on your hardware, doesn't it? What's the problem here?
Look at the back of a new Mac and find a proprietary port. You won't find one. Look inside the box for proprietary ROMs. Not there. Again...what's the problem here?
No. The question is NOT whether you would bet your own life. The question is whether you would bet the astronauts' lives on it. Considering the current political climate, and NASA's stature in the international space community, you're also betting the future of manned space flight.
If the decision was my call, I'd have zero tolerance for detectable defects too, particularly with a system that has failed over to backup before with similar launch conditions.
Yes, there is a romantic notion about risking one's life for exploration, but the political dimension makes such risks suicidal for NASA's mission.
Wow. Excellent reply. Far better than run of the mill Slashdot fare. Sounds like there's meat for a real discussion here, rather than the normal rant/counter rant.
Your use of "expertise" in place of "right" does indeed clarify your meaning. Although I'm not one to pick semantic nits either, since the basic discussion here has centered around what does and does not constitute a "right", it's not a good term to throw around loosely.
It seems like, at the very basic level, you are fighting against human xenophobia and stupidity. All of the "structures" (my term, encompassing all of the sociological interactions you mentioned above) you describe have developed over many thousands of years of history. I'm not trying to argue that that makes them right, but it's going to make them almost impossible to fight against.
Let me address specifically your points about treatment of females by service (car and computer) personnel. First of all, I'd argue that these persons do not provide an accurate representation of white males, and they certainly aren't the ones at the top of the sociological power structure.
As for your point about computer parts, let me put forth a thought experiment.
Two men walk into a computer store. One is tall, has red hair, a big voice, and smiles a lot. (like me) One is shorter, quieter, some might say less obnoxious. The lummox (me) walks up to the counter, and starts talking about computer parts. Would it be surprising for the clerk to direct his responses to the quiet person? Yes. If the quiet person happened to be a woman, it would STILL not be surprising if the clerk spoke to the lummox, since that is the person who initiated the conversation.
In other words, if you argue that you commonly go into computer (or car) stores, exhibit a basic understanding of what's going on, and the clerks STILL talk around you to a (possibly male) companion, you might have a case to argue that that individual is sexist. You've still got a long way to go to prove that white males control the power structure of the world. (I, for instance, do not have a decoder ring...)
Let me put it to you this way. If you proceed from the assumption that white males are going to treat you (a woman) differently than they would treat a man, you are engaging in exactly the sort of behaviour you're arguing against.
As far as whether there is a power elite in America, I'm holding on to my romantic notion that there is not against all logical analysis. Please be careful about bursting my bubble. : )
Let's talk about your last paragraph here. Two specific points:
1) You're a radical lesbian feminist, so you have the right to speak on the subject. OK, so all us non-radical, non-lesbian, non-"feminist" (although I may classify myself as a feminist, depending on how you define the term) people, especially white males (like me), better shut the hell up and listen to their betters? Uhh...no.
2) There is something wrong with the CONCEPT of a white male? a) What is the concept of a white male? b) Why is it a problem?
If there's a ruling elite in america, it is neither identically nor exclusively the domain of white males. Most of us white males have to muddle along on our own, without even the chic of radical lesbian feminism to help us make sense of our pathetic, misguided lives.
And black males, statistically, commit more crimes than white males. Maybe we should have a tax on black people since they're more likely to commit crimes than white people. Wouldn't that be "fair"? NO.
Insurance company statistics are designed to do one thing and one thing only: wring as much money from the populace as the law allows. Since the law requires me to carry car insurance, this is a Bad Thing.
And lay off the ad hominem attacks. They don't add anything to the discussion.
Your argument is backwards. Since the insurance companies ALREADY discriminate based upon genetic information, how much WORSE do you think it's going to get when they get access to my entire genome? Or my personality profile based on what sites I visit?
I think it's reprehensible that insurers charge males more than females for car insurance. Just because they're doing it now doesn't mean it's OK.
Slashdot Mirror
Just FYI, they're re-releasing a bunch of the most popular original Transformers, and some new (and very very good) designs under the moniker Transformers 2000. http://www.planetanime.com has them, along with just about every other Japanese toy retailer on the net. Optimus Prime, Ultra Magnus (the Optimus cab with the car-carrier trailer), and a couple very nice new cars are available today, along with Fortress Maximus (which is the ungodly huge one you see in those pictures). I also have in my pocket the reserve slip for the original Megatron, due for release in June. I was as giddy as a schoolgirl when I found out about that.
Repeat after me. The Slashdot readership is not monolithic. That means that different people espouse different opinions on different topics. If you were super anal retentive, you could go through the posts and find individuals who said one thing about that hack, and another thing about this hack, but a) I bet you wouldn't find many and b) the situations are different.
This hack is about defeating hackers who are stealing service. The other hack would be (theoretically) to defeat the company who tries to "steal" a feature that I paid for from me.
Let me ask the basic question again...why should a taxpayer not be able to take their tax-funded voucher to whatever school they want to? If they want their children to go to Sideshow Bob's School of Advanced Villainy, they should be allowed to do so. Let the parents make an informed decision, and let the State go back to legislating more mohair subsidies.
Let me leap onto one small point in your comment.
What if the tax dollars DO get funneled into religious schools? Wouldn't that mean that the tax payers have taken their voucher to the school of their choice? Why is this bad? Before you get all excited about separation of church and state, remember that the state in this case is not giving preferential treatment to ANYBODY. The People are making the choice. Isn't that what we're all hoping for?
You figure out how to make it work, and I'll find you however much startup capital you need. We will be the wealthiest and most powerful individuals on Earth, and we can take turns using Bill Gates as a footstool.
Why make trillions when I can make...millions! *sticks pinkie finger to corner of mouth*
Never mind the environmental damage...how about the cost? The best rocket technology we've got on the drawing boards has a cost of $1000/lb of payload to low Earth orbit. (That's a tenfold reduction in cost over the Shuttle, by the way) Getting the stuff to escape the Earth's gravitation into a decaying orbit around the sun takes another huge delta-V (which means using a rocket to launch a rocket that carries the payload of the nasty you don't want to deal with)...
In other words, it will not ever be feasible to get rid of energy production waste by dumping it into space, since "dumping" it involves spending amounts of energy many orders of magnitude larger than those wastes generate to get the gunk out of the gravity well.
You figure out how to get it out of the gravity well, and I'll find the VC for your startup. We'll make billions, no shit.
Huh? Radio and visible light are the same things. If it's not physically occluded by a planet, laser light will bend around a gravity well just like any other EM source. Radio waves don't travel through large objects (like planets) very well, either. You're right in that a coherent light beam can be more easily blocked by a stellar body than an omnidirectional radio wave, but the odds of either preventing us from talking to aliens are, pardon the pun, astronomical.
If our species has a significant fraction of its biomass still sitting on this rock in 10,000 years, we DESERVE to get spanked by a passing meteorite/black hole/Vogon construction ship. The only way for a species to surviving planetary scale disasters is to live on more than one planet. Or asteroid. Or interstellar autonomous spacecraft.
Uhh...because they don't have to? Because they don't see any shareholder advantage to doing so? They're a corporation. Not only do corporations rarely share, they're explicitly designed not to. Darwin is an amazing departure from that structure. Man, if you're bitter about three megabytes, you're probably going to be upset about something else that Apple didn't explain to your satisfaction even if they DID release the specs. Don't like their hardware? Don't use it. Nobody's got a gun to your head here...
There's a difference in believing they are going to change the world and imagining what the world would be like if they did. I'm a skeptic myself (good trait for an engineering student), but I also don't mind exploring interesting, even improbable, ideas.
I'm certainly not going to give them any money. : )
Regarding your last point, it's interesting that the first computers DID cost $500 million EASILY (depending on how you want to adjust for inflation), but you can get a superb pocket calculator for $15. It's not as far fetched as it might seem on the face of it...
What, you're going to land on that and ignore all the people who say "Here here!" when they should be saying "Hear hear!"
Just like Mr. Simpson says. "It's pronounced noo-kyew-lar."
No, it's not an American thing. I bet there are people in other countries that have bad grammar too...I'm just not good enough (enuff?) at reading their languages to pick it up. And British authors...hell, they think car hoods are called bonnets and cookies are called biscuits! Never mind grey and colour. Or Aluminium (sic). Who can tell what those poofters (weirdos) think is a grammar error?
Do you have any idea how much venture capital you could get if you had a credible design for a five year battery for a computer? ANY computer? If you know how to do that, I'll be glad to scare up some financing. Somehow.
Yeah, remember all those press releases about cool new technology that happened eighteen months ago but I can't buy at the store yet? Those all must suck, so they should go ahead and stop developing them.
Science takes time, but it ALWAYS ALWAYS gets results. Project Apollo took, what, a whole 15 years to get people from primitive jet engines to walking on the moon. Who wants to wait that long?
Basically, the argument is that computer time at a public library is a finite resource that costs the taxpayer money, in the form of hardware and 'Net access. Therefore, time on those computers used for activities that "appeal to the prurient interest" (or whatever obscenity litmus test you want to apply) prevent other users from accessing "legitimate" sites (IE those that are assumed to be in line with the political and sociological views of the taxpayers).
I don't subscribe to that argument, but there it is. I think an unfiltered internet is far less dangerous to society than giving the keys to a private corporate entity would be.
Compared to how often Dolemite smacks hoes, that ain't shit, muthafucka.
http://www.dolemite.com
And for extra weird kung-fu goodness, complete with topless ninja ho's, find yourself a copy of Shaolin Dolemite. It is available at NetFlix, or at whichever DVD store you like. Blockbuster? Funk dat trick ass company.
Yes, Apple has in fact opened their hardware in the eight (ten?) years since they manufactured the newest of the boxes you mentioned here. OpenFirmware IS open. The boot loader was not open in the past...now it is. Is this complicated? Is it even BAD? NetBSD works on your hardware, doesn't it? What's the problem here?
Look at the back of a new Mac and find a proprietary port. You won't find one. Look inside the box for proprietary ROMs. Not there. Again...what's the problem here?
No. The question is NOT whether you would bet your own life. The question is whether you would bet the astronauts' lives on it. Considering the current political climate, and NASA's stature in the international space community, you're also betting the future of manned space flight.
If the decision was my call, I'd have zero tolerance for detectable defects too, particularly with a system that has failed over to backup before with similar launch conditions.
Yes, there is a romantic notion about risking one's life for exploration, but the political dimension makes such risks suicidal for NASA's mission.
Wow. Excellent reply. Far better than run of the mill Slashdot fare. Sounds like there's meat for a real discussion here, rather than the normal rant/counter rant.
Your use of "expertise" in place of "right" does indeed clarify your meaning. Although I'm not one to pick semantic nits either, since the basic discussion here has centered around what does and does not constitute a "right", it's not a good term to throw around loosely.
It seems like, at the very basic level, you are fighting against human xenophobia and stupidity. All of the "structures" (my term, encompassing all of the sociological interactions you mentioned above) you describe have developed over many thousands of years of history. I'm not trying to argue that that makes them right, but it's going to make them almost impossible to fight against.
Let me address specifically your points about treatment of females by service (car and computer) personnel. First of all, I'd argue that these persons do not provide an accurate representation of white males, and they certainly aren't the ones at the top of the sociological power structure.
As for your point about computer parts, let me put forth a thought experiment.
Two men walk into a computer store. One is tall, has red hair, a big voice, and smiles a lot. (like me) One is shorter, quieter, some might say less obnoxious. The lummox (me) walks up to the counter, and starts talking about computer parts. Would it be surprising for the clerk to direct his responses to the quiet person? Yes. If the quiet person happened to be a woman, it would STILL not be surprising if the clerk spoke to the lummox, since that is the person who initiated the conversation.
In other words, if you argue that you commonly go into computer (or car) stores, exhibit a basic understanding of what's going on, and the clerks STILL talk around you to a (possibly male) companion, you might have a case to argue that that individual is sexist. You've still got a long way to go to prove that white males control the power structure of the world. (I, for instance, do not have a decoder ring...)
Let me put it to you this way. If you proceed from the assumption that white males are going to treat you (a woman) differently than they would treat a man, you are engaging in exactly the sort of behaviour you're arguing against.
As far as whether there is a power elite in America, I'm holding on to my romantic notion that there is not against all logical analysis. Please be careful about bursting my bubble. : )
You forgot your attribution for that quote.
"We need politicians with backbones that can do the right thing even if it is unpopular."
-Henry VIII
Let's talk about your last paragraph here. Two specific points:
1) You're a radical lesbian feminist, so you have the right to speak on the subject. OK, so all us non-radical, non-lesbian, non-"feminist" (although I may classify myself as a feminist, depending on how you define the term) people, especially white males (like me), better shut the hell up and listen to their betters? Uhh...no.
2) There is something wrong with the CONCEPT of a white male? a) What is the concept of a white male? b) Why is it a problem?
If there's a ruling elite in america, it is neither identically nor exclusively the domain of white males. Most of us white males have to muddle along on our own, without even the chic of radical lesbian feminism to help us make sense of our pathetic, misguided lives.
And black males, statistically, commit more crimes than white males. Maybe we should have a tax on black people since they're more likely to commit crimes than white people. Wouldn't that be "fair"? NO.
Insurance company statistics are designed to do one thing and one thing only: wring as much money from the populace as the law allows. Since the law requires me to carry car insurance, this is a Bad Thing.
And lay off the ad hominem attacks. They don't add anything to the discussion.
Your argument is backwards. Since the insurance companies ALREADY discriminate based upon genetic information, how much WORSE do you think it's going to get when they get access to my entire genome? Or my personality profile based on what sites I visit?
I think it's reprehensible that insurers charge males more than females for car insurance. Just because they're doing it now doesn't mean it's OK.