Also, the ACLU found that they identified a total of zero (0) criminals in Tampa with this system, so its also a waste of money....
And how many times have you compiled a program the first time with no errors? First runs aren't perfect, never have been, never will be. But had someone not pursued improvements on the first attempt at flight, we wouldn't have the space shuttle or intercontinental flights. And we all have more than a 1/2Mhz computer, so thank God someone improved on that...
I always looked at it this way...sex is going to be part of a normal person's life. Violence doesn't have to. Whether watching either will speed up the process of it entering into one's life, that remains to be settled.
A similar argument was once used in regards to lie detectors: Since there is a failsafe mechanism (a human) involved, the chance of abuse is lessened considerably. However, history has shown this not to be the case, and law enforcement frequently trusts the machine over the man.
But humans can't determine with their natural senses whether or not someone is lying, so if the machine catches an otherwise unknown sensation (ie, blood pressure rising, pulse quickening) that's when we take it's work over a humans'. However, I heartily agree with the person you're responding to...these things are filters, that reduce the number of candidates from 200,000 to 20. A person then comes in, looks at the picture and compares it to the real person. Heck, I don't care if security escorts me out into the hall briefly...I'm at a public event where they suspect someone may be endangering lives, I'll take 2 minutes out of my life to show them i'm not Arab or carrying a bomb.
I am a liberal. This means I read books and have opposable thumbs.
Frankly, I think this one sentence speaks volumes more than the rest of your post...
Actually, I kinda wonder about that. I *own* a Linux box, but I don't use it for surfing, I use it as a server (web/ftp/mail/etc). I do most of my surfing at work (shh! don't tell) where we run Windows NT. This story is leaving out a lot of info too...how did they determine the votes? Was it an actual vote (ie, click a radio button, click 'Vote!') or did they detect what OS someone was running? IMHO, most 'savvy' computer users skip right over those surveys, ruling them stupid and a waste of time.
Lotsa things could have skewed this vote, so I wouldn't take it too seriously.
This couldn't have been that hard to compile, all you have to do is grep through the Slashdot story titles for the past year for certain keywords and the timeline writes itself.
Yeah, I kinda liked it when you had to be smart to use a computer.
<sigh> Times change.
--trb
Re:I never really took to Lego
on
Battle Over Blocks
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
Why learn something as limited, expensive, and plasticky as Lego when you could learn real skills with the real thing?
Because you don't typically build a soap box derby car, then take it apart and build a tree fort, then take that apart and build a dog house. Legos are all about reusability. I had two big castle sets that I then made probably 20 different castles with. That doesn't typically happen with wood/metal. And furthermore, my mom wouldn't let me play with a hammer and drill when I was 5 (good call:).
Our technology is not thief proof. What it's meant to do is provide a speed bump to people who don't steal things, and wish to use them in the parameters that are suggested by the artists...
So they're making it harder for regular people to use CDs, but people who want to pirate still can? Doesn't the "If guns are illegal, only criminals will own them" argument apply here?
the majority of the problems I've seen occur with customers primarily come with netgear and linksys related products
More than likely, in the case of Linksys this is because it is probably the most popular router out there for small home solutions. Myself, I bought a DLink box when I left college for my roommates (I had been previously been running an old P120 Linux box that I still to this day run Red Hat on). Now, my roommates were about as computer literate as the mug sitting next to me on my desk, but they were able to set this thing up no problem given the instructions. Me personally, I'll stick with the linux box, but to each his own...
Sorry, the college student in me read this and thought "Damn traitors..."
It's a good idea, but WAY too easy to defeat and WAY to easy to trigger incorrectly. Opening the windows would dilute the air/alcohol content, drunk people in the car would set it off, and what about products that have alcohol in them? I don't know what the concentration of alcohol is in household products like window cleaner or nail polish, but I'm sure there are some out there that still have alcohol in them...are they going to pull me over for having used Windex recently?
One last note: "I dream that it would be especially neat if the experiment didn't work as planned and we could prove that it was interference from an extraterrestial transmission of some sort.... Did I mention that I like science fiction?"
Oh Doc, you had me until right here...now I think you may just be a quack. Someone should really have shut off the tape recorder on this interview about 20 seconds earlier.
Why don't we try this with cockroaches first? We have lots of em, they're hardy and resilient and everyone always says they will be the one species that survives a nuclear holocaust. I'll betcha they'd even have the no air/atmosphere thing figured out by the time they got there.
No, it's not the wacky little connection of home grown websites that it used to be, but it's not necessarily a bad thing that more people have been given access either.
No, but there are times when I start talking to people about computers or the web and start out by saying "Back in my day..." and end with some whim about a 2400 baud modem (I'm 23, btw). By giving the general population access to the net, we've diluted the population of people that want to use the net for legitimate reasons (ie, not shopping, looking at pr0n or emailing their girlfriends down the street). The net is no longer mostly made up of academics and computer geeks. This brings a dilemna because...
1. What the majority wants is what will bring business
2. Businesses will typically bring capital backing
3. What the majority wants is typically (garbage|eye candy|sound bite)
So more people have internet access, great. I can now talk to my granmother about email without having to explain how a mouse works, but I also have to wade through 10 pop ups in order to find the driver for my laptop's trackball. Yeah, yeah...you can make the argument that without the commercial viability that came with the increased population Dell wouldn't have bothered posting that driver, but I think given time they would have had enough requests to make it worth their wild anyways, and damn it...I liked the small neighborhood the net USED to be.
As long as a CD costs $18 there will be a poor college kid trying to pirate it because he DOESN'T HAVE THAT MUCH MONEY.
This is really important for two reasons. One is that poverty tends to breed crime, and while I wouldn't consider a college kid at the state school to be poor, they usually don't have great amounts of extra money (hence the market for ramen noodles). People without money tend to find ways to solve problems without following the legal system, ie shoplifting or pirating.
The second reason is that the most innovative people in the field of technology tend to be in this same group. While I don't necessarily condone breaking the law, I remember the rush I got the first time I cracked the copy protection on a game (probably some Sierra game back in the late 80's). Was it legal? No, ofcouse not, but damn if that didn't start me thinking. How'd they do that copy protection? Could I write a similar program? What other programs could I write? The thrill of being innovative on a computer, whether legal or not, aimed a lot of us towards this field.
Sure we should find legal and productive ways to be innovative, but a lot of great software came from people who started out as malicious hackers (as opposed to the beneficient ones). Why? Because they're the people that had a goal and figured stuff out.
This is good for hardware because ATI and NVidia will continue to push the envelope, developing more and more advanced graphics boards. Features will creep from one end to the other, just staggered a generation.
Eh, I don't know. I would compare this to the late 80's when computers were being developed by Amiga, IBM (and clones), Mac, Apple, etc...you had certain games/software that were available on a given platform and not the other, people just couldn't support multiple hardware configurations. As long as there are multiple companies producing competing products, is there really a reason they can't be compatible at the software level? Personally, I'd rather be able to look at a video card's features (memory, fps) than what games I'm going to be able to play with it.
My DSL line got cut last night sometime (and I was going to do work this weekend!) and I just have one question...how? There is a huge market for DSL out there, and apparently Northpoint had a ton of cutomers. Exactly how does a company who owns tons of lines across the US and has an EASY market to contend with (let's face it, you install some lines, maintain them a little and get paid a bundle each month for em) suddenly go bankrupt?
Unfortunately, nobody is picking up the Northpoint lines and services in Fairfax, Va, at least not where I live. People are getting sick of me whining about it...
Great, so we'll now have Warez/Pr0n/Napster password sites? I can't wait.
Napster has to provide more of a service than what it's currently doing. All it is is a protocol, they don't have anything to do with the actual files. In order for them to charge for a 'service', they have to provide one, don't they? I would assume they would start hosting files on their servers. Add that to the fact they'll have to get the files from the music companies, I don't trust most people's copies out there.
Also, how would this affect stuff like live recordings? Would Joe Schmoe who went to a Metallica show and had front row seats and taped it on his Minidisc recorder (never done this, really:) be able to share his live recordings still?
I'll be interested to read the fine print of the service agreement they'll be writing up.
--trb
Re:And the graphics look like... ASS?
on
Gifts For Geeks
·
· Score: 1
For the same reason that people choose to play games like Tradewars 2002 and MUDs...they're fun and the graphics really aren't that important, it's the ideas behind them. Ever play Bardstale? Great game, pretty shitty graphics. I still enjoy playing it.
I think this was typical of the early/mid 90's. I remember doing the same thing with the group in the northern virginia/fairfax region. We all ran boards (all WWIV too) and each friday we'd go roller skating or bowling. Half of us went to the same high school and didn't know it until the first time we met in person (gotta love handles).
eh, the problem with this is that Tradewars was very interactive. You could be in the game and someone would kill you while you were flying around. Plus, if you're talking about carrying your PDA around, playing your turns, and then resyncing at night I see some major sync issues there, what with data in the game getting out of sync during the day, etc.
I recently found a web page leading to a telnet bbs that had Operation Overkill ][ on it. THAT was a great game (Tradewars was great and all, but Overkill! Wow, how many hours did I spend in the wastelands...). Unfortunately, because of the way that fighting occured in Overkil (AAA.....BBB......CCC....etc), it doesn't port so well to telnet sessions. Someone needs to rewrite the code for that, wish they would open source it so I could try. It would be well worth the time invested.
Slashdot Mirror
Also, the ACLU found that they identified a total of zero (0) criminals in Tampa with this system, so its also a waste of money....
And how many times have you compiled a program the first time with no errors? First runs aren't perfect, never have been, never will be. But had someone not pursued improvements on the first attempt at flight, we wouldn't have the space shuttle or intercontinental flights. And we all have more than a 1/2Mhz computer, so thank God someone improved on that...
--trb
I always looked at it this way...sex is going to be part of a normal person's life. Violence doesn't have to. Whether watching either will speed up the process of it entering into one's life, that remains to be settled.
--trb
A similar argument was once used in regards to lie detectors: Since there is a failsafe mechanism (a human) involved, the chance of abuse is lessened considerably. However, history has shown this not to be the case, and law enforcement frequently trusts the machine over the man.
But humans can't determine with their natural senses whether or not someone is lying, so if the machine catches an otherwise unknown sensation (ie, blood pressure rising, pulse quickening) that's when we take it's work over a humans'. However, I heartily agree with the person you're responding to...these things are filters, that reduce the number of candidates from 200,000 to 20. A person then comes in, looks at the picture and compares it to the real person. Heck, I don't care if security escorts me out into the hall briefly...I'm at a public event where they suspect someone may be endangering lives, I'll take 2 minutes out of my life to show them i'm not Arab or carrying a bomb.
I am a liberal. This means I read books and have opposable thumbs.
Frankly, I think this one sentence speaks volumes more than the rest of your post...
--trb
Actually, I kinda wonder about that. I *own* a Linux box, but I don't use it for surfing, I use it as a server (web/ftp/mail/etc). I do most of my surfing at work (shh! don't tell) where we run Windows NT. This story is leaving out a lot of info too...how did they determine the votes? Was it an actual vote (ie, click a radio button, click 'Vote!') or did they detect what OS someone was running? IMHO, most 'savvy' computer users skip right over those surveys, ruling them stupid and a waste of time.
Lotsa things could have skewed this vote, so I wouldn't take it too seriously.
-- trb
This couldn't have been that hard to compile, all you have to do is grep through the Slashdot story titles for the past year for certain keywords and the timeline writes itself.
--trb
Yeah, I kinda liked it when you had to be smart to use a computer.
<sigh> Times change.
--trb
Why learn something as limited, expensive, and plasticky as Lego when you could learn real skills with the real thing?
:).
Because you don't typically build a soap box derby car, then take it apart and build a tree fort, then take that apart and build a dog house. Legos are all about reusability. I had two big castle sets that I then made probably 20 different castles with. That doesn't typically happen with wood/metal. And furthermore, my mom wouldn't let me play with a hammer and drill when I was 5 (good call
--trb
Our technology is not thief proof. What it's meant to do is provide a speed bump to people who don't steal things, and wish to use them in the parameters that are suggested by the artists...
So they're making it harder for regular people to use CDs, but people who want to pirate still can? Doesn't the "If guns are illegal, only criminals will own them" argument apply here?
--trb
Yeah, it's impressive, but I'm waiting for the ultimate hack...linux embedded in a person. Finally make that 'Linux inside' tattoo worth getting...
--trb
Then I pray to God he isn't a Linux user too :)
--trb
the majority of the problems I've seen occur with customers primarily come with netgear and linksys related products
More than likely, in the case of Linksys this is because it is probably the most popular router out there for small home solutions. Myself, I bought a DLink box when I left college for my roommates (I had been previously been running an old P120 Linux box that I still to this day run Red Hat on). Now, my roommates were about as computer literate as the mug sitting next to me on my desk, but they were able to set this thing up no problem given the instructions. Me personally, I'll stick with the linux box, but to each his own...
--trb
Sorry, the college student in me read this and thought "Damn traitors..."
It's a good idea, but WAY too easy to defeat and WAY to easy to trigger incorrectly. Opening the windows would dilute the air/alcohol content, drunk people in the car would set it off, and what about products that have alcohol in them? I don't know what the concentration of alcohol is in household products like window cleaner or nail polish, but I'm sure there are some out there that still have alcohol in them...are they going to pull me over for having used Windex recently?
--trb
One last note: "I dream that it would be especially neat if the experiment didn't work as planned and we could prove that it was interference from an extraterrestial transmission of some sort.... Did I mention that I like science fiction?"
Oh Doc, you had me until right here...now I think you may just be a quack. Someone should really have shut off the tape recorder on this interview about 20 seconds earlier.
--trb
Why don't we try this with cockroaches first? We have lots of em, they're hardy and resilient and everyone always says they will be the one species that survives a nuclear holocaust. I'll betcha they'd even have the no air/atmosphere thing figured out by the time they got there.
--trb
No, it's not the wacky little connection of home grown websites that it used to be, but it's not necessarily a bad thing that more people have been given access either.
No, but there are times when I start talking to people about computers or the web and start out by saying "Back in my day..." and end with some whim about a 2400 baud modem (I'm 23, btw). By giving the general population access to the net, we've diluted the population of people that want to use the net for legitimate reasons (ie, not shopping, looking at pr0n or emailing their girlfriends down the street). The net is no longer mostly made up of academics and computer geeks. This brings a dilemna because...
1. What the majority wants is what will bring business
2. Businesses will typically bring capital backing
3. What the majority wants is typically (garbage|eye candy|sound bite)
So more people have internet access, great. I can now talk to my granmother about email without having to explain how a mouse works, but I also have to wade through 10 pop ups in order to find the driver for my laptop's trackball. Yeah, yeah...you can make the argument that without the commercial viability that came with the increased population Dell wouldn't have bothered posting that driver, but I think given time they would have had enough requests to make it worth their wild anyways, and damn it...I liked the small neighborhood the net USED to be.
--trb
This is really important for two reasons. One is that poverty tends to breed crime, and while I wouldn't consider a college kid at the state school to be poor, they usually don't have great amounts of extra money (hence the market for ramen noodles). People without money tend to find ways to solve problems without following the legal system, ie shoplifting or pirating.
The second reason is that the most innovative people in the field of technology tend to be in this same group. While I don't necessarily condone breaking the law, I remember the rush I got the first time I cracked the copy protection on a game (probably some Sierra game back in the late 80's). Was it legal? No, ofcouse not, but damn if that didn't start me thinking. How'd they do that copy protection? Could I write a similar program? What other programs could I write? The thrill of being innovative on a computer, whether legal or not, aimed a lot of us towards this field.
Sure we should find legal and productive ways to be innovative, but a lot of great software came from people who started out as malicious hackers (as opposed to the beneficient ones). Why? Because they're the people that had a goal and figured stuff out.
--trb
Eh, I don't know. I would compare this to the late 80's when computers were being developed by Amiga, IBM (and clones), Mac, Apple, etc...you had certain games/software that were available on a given platform and not the other, people just couldn't support multiple hardware configurations. As long as there are multiple companies producing competing products, is there really a reason they can't be compatible at the software level? Personally, I'd rather be able to look at a video card's features (memory, fps) than what games I'm going to be able to play with it.
--trb
--trb
Unfortunately, nobody is picking up the Northpoint lines and services in Fairfax, Va, at least not where I live. People are getting sick of me whining about it...
--trb
--trb
Napster has to provide more of a service than what it's currently doing. All it is is a protocol, they don't have anything to do with the actual files. In order for them to charge for a 'service', they have to provide one, don't they? I would assume they would start hosting files on their servers. Add that to the fact they'll have to get the files from the music companies, I don't trust most people's copies out there.
Also, how would this affect stuff like live recordings? Would Joe Schmoe who went to a Metallica show and had front row seats and taped it on his Minidisc recorder (never done this, really :) be able to share his live recordings still?
I'll be interested to read the fine print of the service agreement they'll be writing up.
--trb
--trb
fleeble
--trb
--trb