I went through security at Copenhagen airport once. I had this hammer with a sharp pointy end that was specificaly designed for breaking glass on a train in an energency. I had put it in the pocket of my jacket months ago, and it has slipped through a hole, into the lining of my jacket, and I had completely forgotten about it.
I went through the metal detector and it went off. I took every metal thing I had out of my pockets (one of them was actually a pocket knife). it still went off. Eventualy they got out the hand sensor thing, and found it went off around the left side of my jacket. I felt there, and noticed something hard. Spent about 5 minutes trying to figure out what it was, eventually I found the hole in my pocket, fished around inside my jacket lining, and pulled out this glass breaking hammer.
As you can imagine I was quite embarressed and was ready to be pulled in for questioning. However the security guard just handled me back my stuff (inlcuding the pocket knife) and waved me past WITH THE HAMMER IN MY HAND. I couldn't believe that I had gotten away with that. I still can't. This, I think, is an even better example of bad security than people sneaking guns through. I mean the guy saw the hammer. saw that I had it hidden inside the lining of my jacket, he didn't just let me go, he let me take the thing with me. bizzare.
I would give as much credence to the Taliban controlled media as I would to CNN. In my opinion, both are serving an agenda and neither are a trustworthy news source.
Today's attacks seem to have been at serious military targets, with little potential for civilian casualities.
So says CNN, who have a history of reporting falacies during war time. Do not think for a moment that you are hearing anything other than what the government wants you to hear. Time will tell what is really happening in Afghansitan. For all we know they may very well be carpet bombing. We may not find out till later, or we may never find out. I would never move to support these strikes, because I have no idea what I would be supporting.
I am sorry, but your point of view does not make sense to me. I can't see how it is possible for a company to parasitise the work that you do under GPL. I have read your earlier posts about companies hiring people to work on your code, and change it etc, but I mean, what is wrong with this? Surely you write GPLed code for the love of your project. If there is someone being paid to work on this project, there are going to be 2 outcomes, either they improve your project, and you incorporate their changes into it (you win), or the project gets forked, and you still have your project, and they have another (who cares).
What is your problem with this? The GPL explicitly states that anyone can do this if they want. If you have a problem with this, you shouldn't be writing GPL code. I think that you may not be farmiliar with the spirit of GPL. You put the code out there for users to use. You don't get to decide how they use it. That is a big part of it. If you want to control how people use your code then the GPL is not for you, and you should never have started a GPLed project.
Since I don't live in the US, I don't really give a toss. The current standard of living in the US (and most developed nations) is far higher than necessary. Personally, I couldn't give a shit if a million US citizens had to buy cheaper cars and houses, and cut down on take away if it would mean a billion people in the rest of the world could look forward to a life that did not involve starving to death.
A revolutionary power source would most likely require a revolution to our economic and political systems as well, in order to accomodate the great changes in social heighrachies that are liekly to occur.
Perhaps everyone in the US would wish for the good old days of oil dependance, but I would bet your average chinese or african would think a little differently
What I find really interesting is that the article states that smaller reactors are more efficient and usefull than one large reactor. Now I am curious as to how small they can make these, because what would cause a major revolution in society would be the availability of cheap personal reactors that you could run your home on. This would allow people to be free of the power grid, and generate their own power at a very good cost. The potential of this for raising the standard of living in 3rd world countries is amazing.
As well as the environmental aspect, this would be a trully liberating technology. I can see see massive resistance to something like this from existing power structures, but I really really hope that that cheap small scall fusion technologies emerge. It would quite possibly be the greatest acheivement of modern society.
The one thing about the game that I never liked was the army battle sequences - I always hated that there was no mouse support, since the keyboard is so clumsy there, and I never had much success in using any sort of "strategery" there. Still a fantastic game, overall
Here is what I do, if attacking, I always use the katana approach. I take a set of footmen to each side of one of their units, but not too close. The I get the archers to fire on them, and draw them forward, in between my two teams of footmen, who then proceed to close in on their flanks. This is exceptionaly successful, and if you can pick of one team at a time in this way, you can win a battle where you are greatly outnumbered with hardly any casualties.
I like to take this approach to win as many of the assigned battles as I can, with each victory, you get a piece of land, and if you do it over and over you end up a rich rich man.
Man, I dig this game. It just hits the right balance and continues to interest me each time I play it.
Sword of the Samurai was one of the first games I ever played, I loved it then, and I love it now. I still play it, at least once a month. There is nothing like conquering the whole of Japan to make you feel damn good about yourself. I even got it to run on win2k, I expected it not to work.
This game is truly awesome, it has a great deal of complexity and an engaging story. You have many choises as to the way in which you acheive your goals. Even the graphics have an excellent retro feel. I would recomend this game to anyone, even today. I introduced some people in my office to it, they were dubious at first, but after a while, I found them playing instead of working. They were addicted
By the way, it was published in 1989 by Microprose
Right whatever, that is not really my point. I meant if you read my post, I do admit that technologies can be used for purposes other than that which they were intended for (like passenger planes into buildings). However these devices are built expressly to inflic pain on people, which gives them and inherently evil nature.
I disagree, tools can be made with evil intent built into them. It depends on the purpose of the tool builder. For example, it is hard to imagine a use for the various technologies used in torture chambers that is not evil. Such devices are built expressly for evil purpose, and such can be considered to be evil devices.
A technology can be thought of as being neutral, but, generaly, they are bult for a purpose, and, as such, have an inherent morality to them. Of course it is possible to twist the technology and use it for something it is not meant to be used for (for example a passenger plane), but the technology has a purpose, and that purpose has some form of implied morality to it.
PGP is a technology built to help people protect their communications. It makes no discripminations as to who it protects, and it allows no one to overide the rights of another to protect their communications. This technology is essentialy democratic and fair. However it is moraly ambiguous, since it makes no distinction as to the the morality of the user. It is then a question of whether it is better to be fair or to be moraly correct. And in the case of PGP the decision was that attempting to make the product more morally correct would in fact make it potentially very morally incorrect (i.e. installing a government back door could allow the whole system to be compromised).
So I would argue that technologies can have an inherent morality, but in the case of PGP, I would have to say that it is fairly neutral in its morality, but at the same time democratic and fair. Its up to you if you think this is a good thing or not. I think it is.
Damn straight. I have a fun job. I sit at my desk and design and write code. Hardly anyone bothers me for most of the day, I can get totaly into the zone, and write code all day long. This is fun for me, as I imagine it would be to many others who read/.
When I was at uni, I used to do this in my spare time, now I get paid to do it all day long, what more could I ask for?
Secondly, even if I was a sys admin, most MS sys admins I have seen solve the porblem by: restart it . . . if it still doesn't work, call MS tech support . . . You don't have a allot of choice when you problem is:
Server is running normaly for a month.
Server blue screens for no apparent reason
Server is restarted and runs normaly again for a month.
I am in Sydney (Australia) MCSEs fall out of trees when u shake em but it doesn't mean they actually know anything. Especial when your problem is the actual OS or something that you can't fix cause you can't see the source. In such times the MCSE says: "lets call MS support", and then the same thing happens as in my original post.
The only real reason that most businesses I know of go with MS is just because it is a big corp, which keeps management in their comfort zone. I am convinced that is all there is to it.
The thing is that the support issue is completely imagined. I have never found anything as frustrating as dealing with MS support. You have a problem, and you check their website. You don't find anything relevant, so you are forced to call support, and all they do is check the same database as the website you just looked on, and suggest a bunch of entries you have already found for yourself.
Your only course of action then is to be escallated to second level support, which you then have to pay for. Only to be told that the problem you are aving is a known bug with no current fix or work around available. Or, even worse, your problem is a product feature that will never be changed!!!
In comparison, maintenance of a (for example) linux system is hardly any different. The main difference is that you DON'T have to pay people for them to tell you that there is nothing you can do to fix your problem.
Ja, we got an IBM eServer xSeries 340. Its not top of the line, but its IBM server quality hardware, and it aint cheap. We get BSOD about once a month running NT.
Its a hunk of shit I tell you.
Not hard to find if you look
on
More On Tragedy
·
· Score: 1
There was a context in what I was saying. You have to carry out the transaction first. Der. I am saying that if you sold some diablo items to someone and they gave u a stolen CC number, and the payment service found out, perhaps if you took screenshots of the transaction. You could use that as proof that the goods were delivered.
This is not suggesting that you can make money from creating fake screenshots ?!?! I wonder if you even read more than the first sentance or two of what I wrote.
This really sucks. How could you get around something like this? Do you think screenshots would count?
Despite some of the comments here, I can't see any serious problems with selling items. You worked for them, if some sucker wants to pay you for them, good for you. If I had more time I would be doing it myself.
But considering the sort of people we are dealing with here, there is a big risk of stolen numbers being used. Did you find out what the iBill people would consider to be proof of delivery? I was thinking before and after screenshots with the character's name in them etc. . . .
Anything else you can think of? Does diablo log this stuff? This is an interesting question I think.
I cannot comprehend your vision of society. Education is the best tool against poverty and ignorance. More education is a GOOD thing. It is not a dangerous tool that should be given only to the worthy.
You seem to have some kind of ideals but it is not clear. A system you are suggesting provides education only to those who can afford it. Why should a poor family struggle to provide education to their children, when I rich family can do it without problems. How could this possible be of benefit to society. Education should be available to all people who are capable of being educated, be they rich or poor. This is what will lead to a better society.
Of course I am talking about true education, teaching people to think criticaly, to analyse, to solve problems, to think for themselves. and providing the resources to help them expand their knowledge. I am not talking about a piece of paper that guarentees them a better job than someone else. Perhaps this is what you are talking about.
Re:Beauty for beauty's sake makes crappy software
on
Software Aesthetics
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
I agree, and actually I would go so far as to say that bridges are not that different to software
Having studdied civil engineering before I moved into computer science, I found that the basic rules are the same, you design the bridge or whatever to the required specs, cutting costs wherever possoible. The only real difference is that most customers tollerate software bugs, whereas your average city full of people will not tolerate a bridge that falls down in the normal corse of business
Civil engineers put allot of effort into their designs becasue they have to, there are laws in place to make them do so. If these laws were not in place we would see many bridges falling down. These laws are just another requirement. If there were laws stating that software must contain less than so many bugs, then that would be another requirement and you would find that more effort was put into the design of the software to ensure this requirement was met.
So really, the comparison does not really prove anything except that software companies don't need to design their products as well as civil engineers do. Its not usualy a requirement.
This is so true, I remember the first time I switched from OS/2 to wind95. . . I sat there staring at the green desktop and strange grey bar. I was all like . . . so ... where are all the programs? what the hell am I supposed to do. Start? what the hell does that mean.
I must admit though that jumping from win2k to openBSD took me longer . . . in fact I am still in the transition period, but I still remember the zen state that win95 got me into that first time I sat contemplating its strangeness
The same goes for people around me, my flatemates had never used win95 when they first tried to open a word processor on my machine one day when I was out (grrr), and after an hour of trying to work it out they gave up and gave me shit about why I can't have a normal computer (I assume they meant a win3.1 box, but who the hell knows really)
Windows is hard as hell when you don't know it
Re:It is "medium" because hysteria won't help us
on
Code Redux
·
· Score: 1
See, the thingwith Code Red is you don't need to have the virus to suffer from it.
My compnay uses domino HTTP servers and so we are safe from CR, however I am currently developing a system for another company, which depends on maintaining conenctievity to their database servers. However their ISP has closed off all access to their servers due to the fact that they were getting hit by code red so hard (from servers outside their network that were infected) that they actually couldn't afford to pay for all the extra network traffic. So the ISP basicaly went offline, leaving me sitting here reading slashdot with deadlines fast approaching.
It seems to me that CR is a threat to businesses. Even if you have no way of getting infected, you can still get messed around indirectly by it
Wrong, Sealand was in international waters, before britan extended its claim of the ocean. Now it surrounded by british waters. The story is here, scroll down to the part that says: Extension of Territorial Waters
You think holywood does bad british accents, you should hear them attempt australian accents
My God! I don't know a single Australian that didn't cringe uncontrolably when that so called Aussie policeman in Point Break calls out "We'll get em when he comes back in". Shite! it sounded like a cross between a new zealander and south african with something painful stuck up his arse.
In fact the only time in my life I have heard an aussie accent that sounds like an aussie accent comming from hollywood is in Russel Crowe movies. Which proves that US actors just CANNOT do them
Slashdot Mirror
Well, I could have used either to hold up the plane and fly it into a building for example.
I went through security at Copenhagen airport once. I had this hammer with a sharp pointy end that was specificaly designed for breaking glass on a train in an energency. I had put it in the pocket of my jacket months ago, and it has slipped through a hole, into the lining of my jacket, and I had completely forgotten about it.
I went through the metal detector and it went off. I took every metal thing I had out of my pockets (one of them was actually a pocket knife). it still went off. Eventualy they got out the hand sensor thing, and found it went off around the left side of my jacket. I felt there, and noticed something hard. Spent about 5 minutes trying to figure out what it was, eventually I found the hole in my pocket, fished around inside my jacket lining, and pulled out this glass breaking hammer.
As you can imagine I was quite embarressed and was ready to be pulled in for questioning. However the security guard just handled me back my stuff (inlcuding the pocket knife) and waved me past WITH THE HAMMER IN MY HAND. I couldn't believe that I had gotten away with that. I still can't. This, I think, is an even better example of bad security than people sneaking guns through. I mean the guy saw the hammer. saw that I had it hidden inside the lining of my jacket, he didn't just let me go, he let me take the thing with me. bizzare.
I would give as much credence to the Taliban controlled media as I would to CNN. In my opinion, both are serving an agenda and neither are a trustworthy news source.
Today's attacks seem to have been at serious military targets, with little potential for civilian casualities.
So says CNN, who have a history of reporting falacies during war time. Do not think for a moment that you are hearing anything other than what the government wants you to hear. Time will tell what is really happening in Afghansitan. For all we know they may very well be carpet bombing. We may not find out till later, or we may never find out. I would never move to support these strikes, because I have no idea what I would be supporting.
I am sorry, but your point of view does not make sense to me. I can't see how it is possible for a company to parasitise the work that you do under GPL. I have read your earlier posts about companies hiring people to work on your code, and change it etc, but I mean, what is wrong with this? Surely you write GPLed code for the love of your project. If there is someone being paid to work on this project, there are going to be 2 outcomes, either they improve your project, and you incorporate their changes into it (you win), or the project gets forked, and you still have your project, and they have another (who cares).
What is your problem with this? The GPL explicitly states that anyone can do this if they want. If you have a problem with this, you shouldn't be writing GPL code. I think that you may not be farmiliar with the spirit of GPL. You put the code out there for users to use. You don't get to decide how they use it. That is a big part of it. If you want to control how people use your code then the GPL is not for you, and you should never have started a GPLed project.
Since I don't live in the US, I don't really give a toss. The current standard of living in the US (and most developed nations) is far higher than necessary. Personally, I couldn't give a shit if a million US citizens had to buy cheaper cars and houses, and cut down on take away if it would mean a billion people in the rest of the world could look forward to a life that did not involve starving to death.
A revolutionary power source would most likely require a revolution to our economic and political systems as well, in order to accomodate the great changes in social heighrachies that are liekly to occur.
Perhaps everyone in the US would wish for the good old days of oil dependance, but I would bet your average chinese or african would think a little differently
What I find really interesting is that the article states that smaller reactors are more efficient and usefull than one large reactor. Now I am curious as to how small they can make these, because what would cause a major revolution in society would be the availability of cheap personal reactors that you could run your home on. This would allow people to be free of the power grid, and generate their own power at a very good cost. The potential of this for raising the standard of living in 3rd world countries is amazing.
As well as the environmental aspect, this would be a trully liberating technology. I can see see massive resistance to something like this from existing power structures, but I really really hope that that cheap small scall fusion technologies emerge. It would quite possibly be the greatest acheivement of modern society.
The one thing about the game that I never liked was the army battle sequences - I always hated that there was no mouse support, since the keyboard is so clumsy there, and I never had much success in using any sort of "strategery" there. Still a fantastic game, overall
Here is what I do, if attacking, I always use the katana approach. I take a set of footmen to each side of one of their units, but not too close. The I get the archers to fire on them, and draw them forward, in between my two teams of footmen, who then proceed to close in on their flanks. This is exceptionaly successful, and if you can pick of one team at a time in this way, you can win a battle where you are greatly outnumbered with hardly any casualties.
I like to take this approach to win as many of the assigned battles as I can, with each victory, you get a piece of land, and if you do it over and over you end up a rich rich man.
Man, I dig this game. It just hits the right balance and continues to interest me each time I play it.
Sword of the Samurai was one of the first games I ever played, I loved it then, and I love it now. I still play it, at least once a month. There is nothing like conquering the whole of Japan to make you feel damn good about yourself. I even got it to run on win2k, I expected it not to work.
This game is truly awesome, it has a great deal of complexity and an engaging story. You have many choises as to the way in which you acheive your goals. Even the graphics have an excellent retro feel. I would recomend this game to anyone, even today. I introduced some people in my office to it, they were dubious at first, but after a while, I found them playing instead of working. They were addicted
By the way, it was published in 1989 by Microprose
Right whatever, that is not really my point. I meant if you read my post, I do admit that technologies can be used for purposes other than that which they were intended for (like passenger planes into buildings). However these devices are built expressly to inflic pain on people, which gives them and inherently evil nature.
I disagree, tools can be made with evil intent built into them. It depends on the purpose of the tool builder. For example, it is hard to imagine a use for the various technologies used in torture chambers that is not evil. Such devices are built expressly for evil purpose, and such can be considered to be evil devices.
A technology can be thought of as being neutral, but, generaly, they are bult for a purpose, and, as such, have an inherent morality to them. Of course it is possible to twist the technology and use it for something it is not meant to be used for (for example a passenger plane), but the technology has a purpose, and that purpose has some form of implied morality to it.
PGP is a technology built to help people protect their communications. It makes no discripminations as to who it protects, and it allows no one to overide the rights of another to protect their communications. This technology is essentialy democratic and fair. However it is moraly ambiguous, since it makes no distinction as to the the morality of the user. It is then a question of whether it is better to be fair or to be moraly correct. And in the case of PGP the decision was that attempting to make the product more morally correct would in fact make it potentially very morally incorrect (i.e. installing a government back door could allow the whole system to be compromised).
So I would argue that technologies can have an inherent morality, but in the case of PGP, I would have to say that it is fairly neutral in its morality, but at the same time democratic and fair. Its up to you if you think this is a good thing or not. I think it is.
Damn straight. I have a fun job. I sit at my desk and design and write code. Hardly anyone bothers me for most of the day, I can get totaly into the zone, and write code all day long. This is fun for me, as I imagine it would be to many others who read /.
When I was at uni, I used to do this in my spare time, now I get paid to do it all day long, what more could I ask for?
Firstly I am not a sysadmin. I am a programer.
Secondly, even if I was a sys admin, most MS sys admins I have seen solve the porblem by: restart it . . . if it still doesn't work, call MS tech support . . . You don't have a allot of choice when you problem is:
I am in Sydney (Australia) MCSEs fall out of trees when u shake em but it doesn't mean they actually know anything. Especial when your problem is the actual OS or something that you can't fix cause you can't see the source. In such times the MCSE says: "lets call MS support", and then the same thing happens as in my original post.
The only real reason that most businesses I know of go with MS is just because it is a big corp, which keeps management in their comfort zone. I am convinced that is all there is to it.
The thing is that the support issue is completely imagined. I have never found anything as frustrating as dealing with MS support. You have a problem, and you check their website. You don't find anything relevant, so you are forced to call support, and all they do is check the same database as the website you just looked on, and suggest a bunch of entries you have already found for yourself.
Your only course of action then is to be escallated to second level support, which you then have to pay for. Only to be told that the problem you are aving is a known bug with no current fix or work around available. Or, even worse, your problem is a product feature that will never be changed!!!
In comparison, maintenance of a (for example) linux system is hardly any different. The main difference is that you DON'T have to pay people for them to tell you that there is nothing you can do to fix your problem.
Ja, we got an IBM eServer xSeries 340. Its not top of the line, but its IBM server quality hardware, and it aint cheap. We get BSOD about once a month running NT.
Its a hunk of shit I tell you.
This is the first link I got after typing "Koran" into google:
http://www.hti.umich.edu/k/koran/
There was a context in what I was saying. You have to carry out the transaction first. Der. I am saying that if you sold some diablo items to someone and they gave u a stolen CC number, and the payment service found out, perhaps if you took screenshots of the transaction. You could use that as proof that the goods were delivered.
This is not suggesting that you can make money from creating fake screenshots ?!?! I wonder if you even read more than the first sentance or two of what I wrote.
This really sucks. How could you get around something like this? Do you think screenshots would count?
Despite some of the comments here, I can't see any serious problems with selling items. You worked for them, if some sucker wants to pay you for them, good for you. If I had more time I would be doing it myself.
But considering the sort of people we are dealing with here, there is a big risk of stolen numbers being used. Did you find out what the iBill people would consider to be proof of delivery? I was thinking before and after screenshots with the character's name in them etc. . . .
Anything else you can think of? Does diablo log this stuff? This is an interesting question I think.
I cannot comprehend your vision of society. Education is the best tool against poverty and ignorance. More education is a GOOD thing. It is not a dangerous tool that should be given only to the worthy.
You seem to have some kind of ideals but it is not clear. A system you are suggesting provides education only to those who can afford it. Why should a poor family struggle to provide education to their children, when I rich family can do it without problems. How could this possible be of benefit to society. Education should be available to all people who are capable of being educated, be they rich or poor. This is what will lead to a better society.
Of course I am talking about true education, teaching people to think criticaly, to analyse, to solve problems, to think for themselves. and providing the resources to help them expand their knowledge. I am not talking about a piece of paper that guarentees them a better job than someone else. Perhaps this is what you are talking about.
I agree, and actually I would go so far as to say that bridges are not that different to software
Having studdied civil engineering before I moved into computer science, I found that the basic rules are the same, you design the bridge or whatever to the required specs, cutting costs wherever possoible. The only real difference is that most customers tollerate software bugs, whereas your average city full of people will not tolerate a bridge that falls down in the normal corse of business
Civil engineers put allot of effort into their designs becasue they have to, there are laws in place to make them do so. If these laws were not in place we would see many bridges falling down. These laws are just another requirement. If there were laws stating that software must contain less than so many bugs, then that would be another requirement and you would find that more effort was put into the design of the software to ensure this requirement was met.
So really, the comparison does not really prove anything except that software companies don't need to design their products as well as civil engineers do. Its not usualy a requirement.
This is so true, I remember the first time I switched from OS/2 to wind95. . . I sat there staring at the green desktop and strange grey bar. I was all like . . . so . .. where are all the programs? what the hell am I supposed to do. Start? what the hell does that mean.
I must admit though that jumping from win2k to openBSD took me longer . . . in fact I am still in the transition period, but I still remember the zen state that win95 got me into that first time I sat contemplating its strangeness
The same goes for people around me, my flatemates had never used win95 when they first tried to open a word processor on my machine one day when I was out (grrr), and after an hour of trying to work it out they gave up and gave me shit about why I can't have a normal computer (I assume they meant a win3.1 box, but who the hell knows really)
Windows is hard as hell when you don't know it
See, the thingwith Code Red is you don't need to have the virus to suffer from it.
My compnay uses domino HTTP servers and so we are safe from CR, however I am currently developing a system for another company, which depends on maintaining conenctievity to their database servers. However their ISP has closed off all access to their servers due to the fact that they were getting hit by code red so hard (from servers outside their network that were infected) that they actually couldn't afford to pay for all the extra network traffic. So the ISP basicaly went offline, leaving me sitting here reading slashdot with deadlines fast approaching.
It seems to me that CR is a threat to businesses. Even if you have no way of getting infected, you can still get messed around indirectly by it
Wrong, Sealand was in international waters, before britan extended its claim of the ocean. Now it surrounded by british waters. The story is here, scroll down to the part that says: Extension of Territorial Waters
--
You think holywood does bad british accents, you should hear them attempt australian accents
My God! I don't know a single Australian that didn't cringe uncontrolably when that so called Aussie policeman in Point Break calls out "We'll get em when he comes back in". Shite! it sounded like a cross between a new zealander and south african with something painful stuck up his arse.
In fact the only time in my life I have heard an aussie accent that sounds like an aussie accent comming from hollywood is in Russel Crowe movies. Which proves that US actors just CANNOT do them
--