Because we don't want the spam. It's one thing entirely for the guv'mint to use something like Carnivore to invade our privacy. We, the 1st Slashdot Legion, fight against that because we have a right to privacy (at least in the U.S.). It is entirely another thing to receive unwanted e-mails, consistently.
If I don't like a commercial on TV, I change the channel. If I get junk mail via snail mail, it goes into the nearest garbage can (except for the pizza coupons). But for those who are using ISPs who have to pay per minute or hour (anything but unlimited usage, really), spam can be an annoyance. Especially when you have to take time to verify that it is spam and not something else, as not all spam is easy to detect as the stones of crap that it is.
Furthermore, a lot of the spam I personally get is from sites that I have never been to, but which have banner on sites I visit (luckily, I haven't gotten any spam from/.). I did not visit their sites, I do not want help with my mortgage (I live in an apartment for God's sake), I don't need aluminum siding (same reason), and I don't want to consistently hear about savings at Amazon.com.
Combine that with all the unsolicited porn spam that damn near everyone online gets, and it gets damn annoying.
That's why we fight against spam. And thanks to legislation, we can tell the spammers to stop. If they don't, we can sue them. Besides, I don't like paying for something that I didn't want to receive in the first place. If I liked that kind of crap, I'd have stayed in that tape club.
Yes, The Dynasty of Windows brought to you by those proud makers of Windows, Microsoft, who are completely unbiased and would never, ever manipulate you into believing that their OS is not the end all, be all of OS'es out there.
"It was announced today by one of Bush's top advisors that the United States would enter into a trade blockage with Australia and the countries of Europe over their DVD players."
See how silly that sounds?
BTW, any idea what the WTO's stance on this is? (Not that I care, really.) Is Australia even a member of the WTO?
Um, people are doing things for each other. Those who know how to make DVD players region-free are doing so. Much to the enjoyment of us all (unless you work for a DVD company).
Yeah, I tend to think that if serious campaign reform managed to get passed by the House and Senate, we might see some changes. Until then, the big spenders that are the corps have the money to control the guvmint.
I have to wonder how different it would be if every company that made DVD players was foreign based....
Exactly. You can bet that there are already sweatshops and factories churning out bootleg DVD players (along with the bootleg DVDs) all over the place, especially in countries like China. Fortune magazine had an article on the amount of counterfeiting done in China, and it is immense. You can bet that they love the concept of region codes, as they can produce bootlegs of region-coded DVD players to sell at lower costs and region-free DVD players to sell at higher costs (but still lower then non-bootleg DVDs, as the counterfeiters had to do no R&D and therefore don't have to recoup that money).
So which would you rather have? A region-coded DVD player, or a region-free one that is most likely counterfeited, but so much more useful?
Okay, then if they're pretty much freely available in Europe, then why not in America? Every person I know who has bought a DVD player has one with the region restriction on it. Not that it has stopped them some of them. Easy to get rid of pesky things like that when the DVD player is owned by a Comp. Sci. grad student...
Is there some "lack-of-free enterprise" reason why it is that much harder to find "open" DVD players in the US?
Hey, if Australia doesn't want that consignment of PS2's, we'll take 'em...
Seriously though, I am so proud of those Aussies this time. Yes, they've done some anti-tech things in the past, but since you can still use a DVD player without a region scanner, this is hardly anti-tech.
Yeah, the region codes supposedly stop low-priced imports, but since DeCSS allows anyone who can to make their own bootlegs, that arguement is pretty damn much moot. Second, the region codes really hurt anyone who ever has to move from one region to another (are all the region codes country based, or are there actual regions? I can't see Belgium being it's own region...), which happens more often then you think, especially amongst the techies and armed forces.
So, which country do you suppose will be next on the bandwagon against the region codes? Somehow, I could easily see China jump at this one...
I have to agree. It seems that if the screenshots of the interface take over a minute to load, even with the connection I have at work (isn't the graveyard shift fun?), then it seems to me that it might be too graphics intensive for the vast majority of Linux users and their processors.
Now, I hate the standard background (loathe would be a better word), so I tend to create graphics backgrounds in Bryce as a screen shot to have instead of any of the crap that came on the box. But it seems to me that if a whole new interface is going to be written it should satisfy the following requirements (which are not the only ones, just what I could think of):
1) The interface should not interfere with the normal operations of the OS/computer it is hosted on.
2) It should not require so much memory or processor cycles that Windows would be preferable.
3) If it is some kind of animated "3-D" interface, it should know to turn itself off when the user starts to use any full screen apps. There is no point to waste processor time on something you are not looking at.
4) It should look appealing. I don't care if you can animate a vomit cloud as an interface. I don't want it on my computer.
5) It should be flexibly modifiable by the User. I.e., give the user some options for it as to colour schemes, animation speed, etc.
Comments?
Kierthos
Re:Why did this trivial crap get posted while.....
on
Beer In Space
·
· Score: 1
Yeah, but there's not much we can do about it from here. Whereas, according to the great and powerful controllers of/., a beer in space is much more newsworthy.
Scratch that, I have no idea how they choose what stories they post. Maybe by some statistical method, like flipping a coin.
After careful consideration, I have to wonder: wtf? Big deal, an astronaut can have a cold one in space. The Russians have probably been drinking vodka in space for years, so it's not like the "Final Frontier" has been alcohol free or anything. About the only thing that this story might have in common with the slightest bit of scientific application is that a similar container could be used to house chemical reactions that produce gases for microgravity experiments.
But you'd think that would have been mentioned. As it is, this reads like a reject story from the Onion.
Now that's something I want to see, not that I drink beer. But a spheroid of microgravity beer, with the foam in the center. It sounds like it would look pretty interesting.
Maybe they wanted a beer container that would spew beer all over the inside of the shuttle when it was opened.... but then, what's wrong with using a squeeze bottle.
Now, if they were trying to find a way to brew beer in space, that would be different. I'm not sure how, if at all, fermentation would be affected by microgravity.
BTW, the article mentions that there would be no foamy head because that requires gravity. But since it is microgravity, not true 0-g, there would be a slight amount of foam, yes? And couldn't you apply a spin to the barrel to force any bubbles to the surface of the beer?
*nod* This is a very good case for always making sure what specs your contractors are working to. No doubt with the media attention that the NASA goof (well, contractor goof, but NASA missed it too) received, the Brits are triple-checking everything.
It still might fail, as nothing is 100% certain, but it won't be because of measurement conversions. This time, the alien intelligences living beneath the surface of Mars will have to do their own dirty work!:P
Well, I don't know. You're teaching them to concentrate, which is good for kids with ADD and ADHD, but you're teaching them to concentrate on video games, which probably won't help their school-work all that much...
Although safe, if health issues exist, it is recommended that a physician be consulted prior to use.
Yeah, if little Billy is prone to epileptic fits at bright flashes of light (found in many console and computer games), then adding something to "monitor" his brainwaves may not be the best idea. Same goes for autistic kids... they might start beating their heads against a wall because they're wearing the helmet.
But unless some first-person shooter or a decent RPG game is written for this thing, I don't see it going much of anywhere.
The primary importance of making a helmet that monitors your brainwaves and rewards concentration is having games for it where you need to concentrate.
I can play Everquest and Diablo II on remote, as it were, because of the character types I play (Warrior and Barbarian). I have high-scored Tetris while reading Heinlein novels. About the only games that I need to concentrate on are the ROMs of 80s games and a couple Pinball simulators.
Without a game that is interesting, this is nothing but a novelty. Even with good games, it's still a novelty. Now if you could hook it into Pinball Magic...
Second, at the time we had a TRS-80 (16+ years ago), we had dozens of games for it. Most were either on a tape drive (remember those, they were slow as get out, but eerily fun to listen to) or on 5 1/4" disks, usually one game per disk.
We also had an Atari 2600, with several games for it. Chalk it up to early senility or just posting early in the a.m., but I can't recall with clarity what system I played a game on over 16 years ago. I can easily see, 16 years from now, not being able to differentiate what games I played on the myriad consoles available now.
Finally, why wasn't the above comment modded down for trolling??? If he isn't trolling, I'll have to go look up the definition again, I've forgotten it.
You know, that may have been it. I know we had "Donkey King" on the TRS-80... and a Joust ripoff (it wasn't called Buzzard Bait, as I recall) and Trapfall sounds very familiar...
Actually, this brings up an interesting point... has/. ever been fooled? Has anyone ever managed to get a spoofed "News for Nerds" story posted here? One that has no basis in fact, but sounds plausible and has it's own links to fraudulent but well-built web pages?
Tell me about it... I remember playing Pitfall many many year ago, possibly on an Atari 2600 (we had one), but I can't recall whether or not we had a version ported over to the TRS-80 we had at the time.
Anyway, I know that I ran through dozens of screens of the same scenes over and over again, never seeming to get anywhere. It was fun though...
Now all we need is someone to get a perfect score on Sinistar...
Slashdot Mirror
Thank you for this excellent example of spam.
Kierthos
Because we don't want the spam. It's one thing entirely for the guv'mint to use something like Carnivore to invade our privacy. We, the 1st Slashdot Legion, fight against that because we have a right to privacy (at least in the U.S.). It is entirely another thing to receive unwanted e-mails, consistently.
/.). I did not visit their sites, I do not want help with my mortgage (I live in an apartment for God's sake), I don't need aluminum siding (same reason), and I don't want to consistently hear about savings at Amazon.com.
If I don't like a commercial on TV, I change the channel. If I get junk mail via snail mail, it goes into the nearest garbage can (except for the pizza coupons). But for those who are using ISPs who have to pay per minute or hour (anything but unlimited usage, really), spam can be an annoyance. Especially when you have to take time to verify that it is spam and not something else, as not all spam is easy to detect as the stones of crap that it is.
Furthermore, a lot of the spam I personally get is from sites that I have never been to, but which have banner on sites I visit (luckily, I haven't gotten any spam from
Combine that with all the unsolicited porn spam that damn near everyone online gets, and it gets damn annoying.
That's why we fight against spam. And thanks to legislation, we can tell the spammers to stop. If they don't, we can sue them. Besides, I don't like paying for something that I didn't want to receive in the first place. If I liked that kind of crap, I'd have stayed in that tape club.
Kierthos
*shrug* On my ongoing attempt to actually make a web-page, I used the e-mail that came with it. And then I never read it.
You might also try a re-direct to yahoo mail, and never read that. BTW, yahoo does have some kind of bulk mail filter, so that does help.
Kierthos
Until you got to the covering of legislation I was wondering how the heck this made it here. Nice bit on that...
Kierthos
Yes, The Dynasty of Windows brought to you by those proud makers of Windows, Microsoft, who are completely unbiased and would never, ever manipulate you into believing that their OS is not the end all, be all of OS'es out there.
What the heck, a little more sarcasm never hurt.
Kierthos
Yup, and not a "KDE is better! No, GNOME is!" in sight...
Kierthos
"It was announced today by one of Bush's top advisors that the United States would enter into a trade blockage with Australia and the countries of Europe over their DVD players."
See how silly that sounds?
BTW, any idea what the WTO's stance on this is? (Not that I care, really.) Is Australia even a member of the WTO?
Kierthos
Um, people are doing things for each other. Those who know how to make DVD players region-free are doing so. Much to the enjoyment of us all (unless you work for a DVD company).
Kierthos
Yeah, I tend to think that if serious campaign reform managed to get passed by the House and Senate, we might see some changes. Until then, the big spenders that are the corps have the money to control the guvmint.
I have to wonder how different it would be if every company that made DVD players was foreign based....
Kierthos
Exactly. You can bet that there are already sweatshops and factories churning out bootleg DVD players (along with the bootleg DVDs) all over the place, especially in countries like China. Fortune magazine had an article on the amount of counterfeiting done in China, and it is immense. You can bet that they love the concept of region codes, as they can produce bootlegs of region-coded DVD players to sell at lower costs and region-free DVD players to sell at higher costs (but still lower then non-bootleg DVDs, as the counterfeiters had to do no R&D and therefore don't have to recoup that money).
So which would you rather have? A region-coded DVD player, or a region-free one that is most likely counterfeited, but so much more useful?
Kierthos
Okay, then if they're pretty much freely available in Europe, then why not in America? Every person I know who has bought a DVD player has one with the region restriction on it. Not that it has stopped them some of them. Easy to get rid of pesky things like that when the DVD player is owned by a Comp. Sci. grad student...
Is there some "lack-of-free enterprise" reason why it is that much harder to find "open" DVD players in the US?
Kierthos
Hey, if Australia doesn't want that consignment of PS2's, we'll take 'em...
Seriously though, I am so proud of those Aussies this time. Yes, they've done some anti-tech things in the past, but since you can still use a DVD player without a region scanner, this is hardly anti-tech.
Yeah, the region codes supposedly stop low-priced imports, but since DeCSS allows anyone who can to make their own bootlegs, that arguement is pretty damn much moot. Second, the region codes really hurt anyone who ever has to move from one region to another (are all the region codes country based, or are there actual regions? I can't see Belgium being it's own region...), which happens more often then you think, especially amongst the techies and armed forces.
So, which country do you suppose will be next on the bandwagon against the region codes? Somehow, I could easily see China jump at this one...
Kierthos
I have to agree. It seems that if the screenshots of the interface take over a minute to load, even with the connection I have at work (isn't the graveyard shift fun?), then it seems to me that it might be too graphics intensive for the vast majority of Linux users and their processors.
Now, I hate the standard background (loathe would be a better word), so I tend to create graphics backgrounds in Bryce as a screen shot to have instead of any of the crap that came on the box. But it seems to me that if a whole new interface is going to be written it should satisfy the following requirements (which are not the only ones, just what I could think of):
1) The interface should not interfere with the normal operations of the OS/computer it is hosted on.
2) It should not require so much memory or processor cycles that Windows would be preferable.
3) If it is some kind of animated "3-D" interface, it should know to turn itself off when the user starts to use any full screen apps. There is no point to waste processor time on something you are not looking at.
4) It should look appealing. I don't care if you can animate a vomit cloud as an interface. I don't want it on my computer.
5) It should be flexibly modifiable by the User. I.e., give the user some options for it as to colour schemes, animation speed, etc.
Comments?
Kierthos
Yeah, but there's not much we can do about it from here. Whereas, according to the great and powerful controllers of /., a beer in space is much more newsworthy.
Scratch that, I have no idea how they choose what stories they post. Maybe by some statistical method, like flipping a coin.
After careful consideration, I have to wonder: wtf? Big deal, an astronaut can have a cold one in space. The Russians have probably been drinking vodka in space for years, so it's not like the "Final Frontier" has been alcohol free or anything. About the only thing that this story might have in common with the slightest bit of scientific application is that a similar container could be used to house chemical reactions that produce gases for microgravity experiments.
But you'd think that would have been mentioned. As it is, this reads like a reject story from the Onion.
Kierthos
Now that's something I want to see, not that I drink beer. But a spheroid of microgravity beer, with the foam in the center. It sounds like it would look pretty interesting.
Kierthos
Maybe they wanted a beer container that would spew beer all over the inside of the shuttle when it was opened.... but then, what's wrong with using a squeeze bottle.
Now, if they were trying to find a way to brew beer in space, that would be different. I'm not sure how, if at all, fermentation would be affected by microgravity.
BTW, the article mentions that there would be no foamy head because that requires gravity. But since it is microgravity, not true 0-g, there would be a slight amount of foam, yes? And couldn't you apply a spin to the barrel to force any bubbles to the surface of the beer?
Kierthos
*nod* This is a very good case for always making sure what specs your contractors are working to. No doubt with the media attention that the NASA goof (well, contractor goof, but NASA missed it too) received, the Brits are triple-checking everything.
:P
It still might fail, as nothing is 100% certain, but it won't be because of measurement conversions. This time, the alien intelligences living beneath the surface of Mars will have to do their own dirty work!
Kierthos
Yeah, it would be nice to see what the short and long-term effects of this device would be. I wonder if it even has to any kind of medical testing?
Although, if it is a "home EEG", there could be some other uses for it, besides this. Wonder what the brainwave activity of my cat is?
Kierthos
Well, I don't know. You're teaching them to concentrate, which is good for kids with ADD and ADHD, but you're teaching them to concentrate on video games, which probably won't help their school-work all that much...
Just my 2 shekels.
Kierthos
Although safe, if health issues exist, it is recommended that a physician be consulted prior to use.
Yeah, if little Billy is prone to epileptic fits at bright flashes of light (found in many console and computer games), then adding something to "monitor" his brainwaves may not be the best idea. Same goes for autistic kids... they might start beating their heads against a wall because they're wearing the helmet.
Kierthos
But unless some first-person shooter or a decent RPG game is written for this thing, I don't see it going much of anywhere.
The primary importance of making a helmet that monitors your brainwaves and rewards concentration is having games for it where you need to concentrate.
I can play Everquest and Diablo II on remote, as it were, because of the character types I play (Warrior and Barbarian). I have high-scored Tetris while reading Heinlein novels. About the only games that I need to concentrate on are the ROMs of 80s games and a couple Pinball simulators.
Without a game that is interesting, this is nothing but a novelty. Even with good games, it's still a novelty. Now if you could hook it into Pinball Magic...
Kierthos
First and foremost, bite me.
Second, at the time we had a TRS-80 (16+ years ago), we had dozens of games for it. Most were either on a tape drive (remember those, they were slow as get out, but eerily fun to listen to) or on 5 1/4" disks, usually one game per disk.
We also had an Atari 2600, with several games for it. Chalk it up to early senility or just posting early in the a.m., but I can't recall with clarity what system I played a game on over 16 years ago. I can easily see, 16 years from now, not being able to differentiate what games I played on the myriad consoles available now.
Finally, why wasn't the above comment modded down for trolling??? If he isn't trolling, I'll have to go look up the definition again, I've forgotten it.
Kierthos
You know, that may have been it. I know we had "Donkey King" on the TRS-80... and a Joust ripoff (it wasn't called Buzzard Bait, as I recall) and Trapfall sounds very familiar...
Kierthos
Actually, this brings up an interesting point... has /. ever been fooled? Has anyone ever managed to get a spoofed "News for Nerds" story posted here? One that has no basis in fact, but sounds plausible and has it's own links to fraudulent but well-built web pages?
Just curious...
Kierthos
Tell me about it... I remember playing Pitfall many many year ago, possibly on an Atari 2600 (we had one), but I can't recall whether or not we had a version ported over to the TRS-80 we had at the time.
Anyway, I know that I ran through dozens of screens of the same scenes over and over again, never seeming to get anywhere. It was fun though...
Now all we need is someone to get a perfect score on Sinistar...
Kierthos