In order to learn the secret location of a geek get together in your area, you must submit your email address.
The site promises that I won't be spammed, but I have found repeatedly that many companies don't share my definition of spam.
Easy. Your email is cmdrtaco@slashdot.org, and your password is slashdot. I tried it, and I guess I am not the first one to try it, because it says "Welcome back cmdrtaco!"
The parent poster sort of got to it first, but it is a question I have always had about AI.
Why don't AI researchers build a learning computer, instead of an already intelligent one? Look at humans - we don't start out knowing anything, we have to learn. It takes us years to learn just how to talk in complete sentences, yet researchers are trying to jump-the-gun by building all of that in from the start. What do you think about building something that learns well, and then teaching it. Or is something like this already being worked on?
This includes their recommendation to the industry to fight the 'downloading problem.'
This is why the RIAA is ignorant. They see a shift in the market as a "problem". Instead of saying to themselves "10% of our market has shifted, we need to be where they are going" they are saying "10% of our market has shifted, let's force them back into our way of doing things".
Now I am not businessman, but that seems pretty stupid to me. Here is an idea - make people WANT to listen to more music. That is your market. The MP3 format has woken up the music-listening public, much in the same way CDs did. Hey, it is a new format to listen to music on. With CDs it was quality (over cassettes), and with MP3s it is convenience and portability. It HAS these attributes, so utilize them instead of trying to control them. DAMN. This makes me want to send $5 to some of the bands whose music I have downloaded, and a letter of encouragement to release more stuff outside the record company.
Depressing glimpses of a bleak future. Corporatism... worse than any previous manifestation of socialism, comm....
THIS is exactly is what isn't needed. You sound like some sci-fi dork who is role-playing. This is exactly the perception that doesn't need to be propagated about people who care about this stuff. Stop with the diatribes, the real world is not an online chat-room, where flaming is cool. Why not deal in reality for once? That is where these issues are going to be decided.
Which begs the question: where are these driver problems?
Upgrade your drivers to the most current ones, and see what happens to your system. Then try to go back to the old ones.
Granted, the card was stable up until the point I installed the new drivers (mine were about a year old), but installing new, improved drivers from the manufacturer should not do that. I don't consider the instability unlucky, I consider the stability lucky. Oh, it was on an AMD900, 256RAM, Win98SE.
Congratulations ATI, on your wonderful new video card. But you lost me back when your "new and improved" drivers for the AIW-128Pro effing freaked my system out. It took me a week to get it back to the way it was, and I am still not convinced it is as stable as it used to be. Until I hear people proclaiming "ATI finally got the drivers right", I will not consider purchasing another ATI video card. And even then, probably not, because there isn't that much of a gap between you and your competition. I don't need the latest and greatest card out there, I just want something stable.
Screw it, if any one needs to reach me, send me a damn letter...
You mean like: - You may have already won $10,000 !!! - You have been Pre-Approved for a credit card - You have won a small island in the South Pacific, call 900-SUCKERZ to claim your prize. Hurry! - Here is a book of coupons for shit you will never buy. - Please donate to some organization you have never heard of before. - Get 500 CDs for the price of 1 (plus shipping, handling, and handing over your soul) - Dear (last person who lived at this address) you have been Pre-approved for a credit card! - Are the bills getting you down? Debt consolidation can help. - A special offer just for you Homer J Simpsoy. - Limited Time Offer! - We can beat your insurance rates, and save you money $$$$. - Dated material, open immediately! - Postal Carrier, do not forward. This is a fantastic prize intended only for the recipient shown below. - Here is a check for $5000. By endorsing it you agree to open an account with us for that amount, with 27% interest. (this is a real one I got) - Dell Catalogs - Victoria's Secret catalogs (OK, I don't mind those)
How far ahead are you of what is out in theatres now? By the time they are released, movies are always behind the technology, simply because they take time to produce (and the technology moves so fast). Movies like Shrek and Monsters Inc, which really pushed the capabilities, were in production for years. I am sure T2 took a lot of time as well.
What is going to wow us when it comes out? How much further ahead are the things that you are working on now?
Re:cDc Talk
on
H2K2 Wrapup
·
· Score: 1, Flamebait
The best part of the cDc talk was when the cute little blonde got up on the stage and people began yelling "Show us your tits".
Fantastic. So your point is that hackers can be just as ignorant as the Nascar (pronounced Nas-corrr) drunken rednecks.
I say Peru go along with only using Open Source software, but keep Bill's gifts anyway.
RTFA.
"Peru's President Alejandro Toledo was at Microsoft Corp. headquarters on Monday, where he signed a deal to put the Internet into the Andean nation's schools and modernize its government."
The key phrase here is "signed a deal". Not that I wouldn't love to see them sell off all the software on eBay to fund their Open Source initiative.
What if you have an unsecured firearm, loaded, sitting on your front porch. Somebody comes by, steals it, and kills somebody with it.
As the owner of the gun, are you at all responsible?
That is a different matter, for this reason - chances are that nobody would leave a life-and-death system WIDE OPEN. I have to assume here that it has some level of security. To use your analogy, that gun owner would have it locked in a cabinet in his house, but someone broke in, picked the lock, and stole the gun. Now, is the gun owner AS RESPONSIBLE as the person who stole it and used it to kill someone?
Why is leaving your life/death technology unsecured any different than leaving your Smith & Wesson.45 unsecured?
Unsecured is not the same as something being secured, but compromised. And with physical as well as computer systems, there are resonable levels of security that should be expected.
Why is the white collar engineer NOT responsible for deaths he should be able to reasonably forsee? We've put ghetto youths to death/life imprisonment for starting a robbery where the clerk shoots a customer while shoorting at him [the thief], so why aren't the wealthy engineers responsible for the "forseeable consequences" of their actions?
Wow, that is quite a stretch, but I think we are talking about two different things here. For one, there is no single responsible person for many white collar crimes. With software, who is responsible - the designer, the developer, the project manager, the QA staff, the 3rd party vendor, etc.? No one person can be blamed for less-than-optimally secure software. However, most "hands on" crimes are more clear cut. How about wealthy CEOs who steal and rob money from employees and investors? Now there is a better analogy, those a-holes have ruined more than a few lives. (oh, but it is the auditors fault, or the CFO) But if found guilty, they won't be given life in prison, I can guarantee you. And wherever they serve, it probably won't be much of a prison. So I agree with you there. But compare robbery to robbery, it is a little easier to see the correlation.
If this system is something that could kill people of abused then a lousy sysadmin is as responsible as the person abusing the system IMHO.
Sorry, but this is bullshit. They have a responsibility, but they are not AS responsible. Just because someone CAN commit a crime doesn't mean that they should. I know this isn't what you are saying, but it is implied. That is like saying whoever sold the gun is as responsible as the person who pulled the trigger. Nope, doesn't fly. YES, there is some responsibility, but I object to the fact that they are AS responsible as the person doing the crime. It is a small disctinction, but is very important. It is a dangerous road to travel down. Why is the sysadmin responsible? Why not the programmer who wrote the buggy code? Why not QA who should have caught it? Why not the people who wrote the 3rd party encryption software that got cracked? Why not the maker of the OS that the system runs on, for having security holes? [arbitrary but realistic examples of security breaches] You can't dump the responsibility on the sysadmin, just like you can't dump it on anyone else in the software lifecycle. This assumes it was a software product with the hole, and not some communication standard.
Why does everyone have to assume that other civilizations are more advanced than us? All it would take would be one meteor, or a few good volcanic eruptions to wipe us out. Then all of our technological advancement is for naught. The other assumption is that life on other planets is like ours, that has the desire, ability, and raw materials to even consider space exploration. What if our planet had 3x the gravity it does? Our entire world would be different. "Life" doesn't mean people. Of course we want to think that we are the epitome of evolution, and we are what all life forms aspire to be like. I highly doubt this is the case though.
I just cut-and-pasted this story and sent it to my Yahoo account. No words were changed. You know why? Because I use text for email. Can someone explain why on earth you would use HTML for email anyway? I have never understood that.
Well, logically there wouldn't need to be a new law. But you are forgetting, lawyers will wiggle through any available hole. It could be argued that you can't actually murder someone through a computer because it isn't quite a tangible thing. The new law is probably just to plug that hole.
If some kids kicks agains the wall of a building and it collapses, who's to blame?
This is a very bad analogy. That is like saying "Honestly, I just pinged that company's website, and all of a sudden I was arrested." I really hate it when people paint the picture of the cracker (not hacker) as some innocent kid who didn't realize what he was doing. This law isn't for the kid who defaces a website, it is for something really friggin serious. And now you are suggesting that the owners of the system be punished too? What if someone roots your system, and then hacks into some bank, then gets caught? Should you be held responsible, or the bank? Gee, how about the person who knowingly did something illegal? That is a novel idea.
The obvious downside of this law is that it will be used when the situation isn't that serious. It would have to be a hack that endangered lives. If it were used against someone who just caused monetary damage, then it would be a sad day. After all, do you think the Enron and Andersen boys at the top are going to be spending life in prison? Hell, John Walker Lindh is only expeced to get 20 years.
...now with all of the wizards..., people don't have to learn to use their computer.
Not everyone wants to learn to use their computer, they just want to use it. That is a huge difference, and one that is keeping Linux off the desktop. I recently built a new computer for my parents, and I was *this* close to installing Linux on it instead of Win98. But they use it to email, look at pictures, check their stock prices, and surf the net a little. That's it. It was hard enough switching them over from Netscape 4.72 to Opera 6.02. I still get statements like "Well, it wasn't like that before", or "this just isn't what I am used to".
I have a Windows and a Linux machine, and I spend much more time on the Linux machine (it is always running). I only boot up Windows when I want to play a game, or get pics off my digital camera because I haven't gotten gphoto to work with my camera yet. But I don't expect everyone to want to tweak around with Linux. You shouldn't either, and neither should the developers. The great thing is that we recognize this as a fault, and some people, different types of people with different ideas, can try to solve it. I don't mind the pretty gui install that came with Redhat 7.3. I liked that it was easy to install. Sometimes I like to have my hand held, and other times I like to compile things and mess with config files. The beauty of Linux systems is that you have the option. As long as distros have both options, tech and non tech configurations, I will be happy.
Take about 4 sheets of paper (with lots of black on it if you're feeling particularly evil) and tape them together seamlessly. Insert it into your fax machine, and begin sending. As the first sheet comes through, tape it to the last sheet (which hasn't been fed in yet,) creating an endless loop that keeps cycling through like a multiple page fax.
I used to work for a company that created a fax-over-IP server with inboxes and the whole deal. I was in QA, and that was actually one of our tests. We dubbed it the "mobius fax".
Although we created a service, our customers often used it for fax spamming because you could build distribution lists. Of course, distro lists were valid too, like sending a fax to everyone in a company. It was a pretty cool service, and we actually used it. Everyone had an account, and faxes would be queued up in your inbox, which could be delivered to your email account. You could also "print to fax machine" from any Windows app, which was nice too. When our investors pulled out due to the dot-com crash, Net2Phone bought up all our assets.
I know this service exists out there, but this was a couple of years ago, and the company started about 9 years ago before email came along and hammered the business of faxing.
Re:As a Windows user I'm a bit surprised.
on
A Linux User Goes Back
·
· Score: 5, Interesting
I'm a bit surprised he didn't go to Win2K.
I'm not. His last MS OS was Win95. And according to his Linux experience, he seemed to want to go out and get the latest and greatest OS. So when he went to purchase a new MS OS, which one do you think appealed to him? Why, XP of course. If you go to microsoft's website, they have a comparison between XP and Win98 and between XP and Win95, to show you how advanced XP is over their "old" OS offerings. No mention of XP vs Win2k.
Re:Becoming a big industry is a double edged sword
on
High Score
·
· Score: 2
Innovation is what this industry needs. How do we get it??
The industry doesn't need innovation, there is plenty of that. First let me say I am not a gamer. OK, so I grew up with arcades in the 80's, then Atari, then Nintendo, but it pretty much stopped there. I had better things to do. I don't play that many games on the PC, although I have spent many many hours playing Quake Team Fortress. I even created my own map. Create your own map!? That is innovative. But for some reason, that is boring now. You know what made the old arcade games (and Quake TF) fun? Good gameplay. It doesn't have to be innovative, it needs to be FUN. And when a game is fun, what do most gamers do? They spend an entire weekend playing the damn thing 24/7. A month after a game has come out, it has been played to death and people are waiting for the next great thing.
Now this isn't true with all games, of course. Some have staying power. But how many games do you have that you can play once you have "beaten" it. I'll bet not that many. The consumers are driving the industry.
Maybe I don't fully get it because I am not a gamer. I don't want to be, quite honestly. Games turned into a big business, just like arcade games did. Believe me, there were plenty of stinker arcade games too. But I can still play a few games on my Galaga arcade machine, have an absolute blast, and walk away from it.
Slashdot Mirror
Why was the parent modded as Funny?
Easy. Your email is cmdrtaco@slashdot.org, and your password is slashdot. I tried it, and I guess I am not the first one to try it, because it says "Welcome back cmdrtaco!"
Did you ever consider they are related? After all, aren't all OSS users dirty pot-smoking hippies?
Why don't AI researchers build a learning computer, instead of an already intelligent one? Look at humans - we don't start out knowing anything, we have to learn. It takes us years to learn just how to talk in complete sentences, yet researchers are trying to jump-the-gun by building all of that in from the start. What do you think about building something that learns well, and then teaching it. Or is something like this already being worked on?
This is why the RIAA is ignorant. They see a shift in the market as a "problem".
Instead of saying to themselves "10% of our market has shifted, we need to be where they are going" they are saying "10% of our market has shifted, let's force them back into our way of doing things".
Now I am not businessman, but that seems pretty stupid to me. Here is an idea - make people WANT to listen to more music. That is your market. The MP3 format has woken up the music-listening public, much in the same way CDs did. Hey, it is a new format to listen to music on. With CDs it was quality (over cassettes), and with MP3s it is convenience and portability. It HAS these attributes, so utilize them instead of trying to control them.
DAMN. This makes me want to send $5 to some of the bands whose music I have downloaded, and a letter of encouragement to release more stuff outside the record company.
THIS is exactly is what isn't needed. You sound like some sci-fi dork who is role-playing. This is exactly the perception that doesn't need to be propagated about people who care about this stuff. Stop with the diatribes, the real world is not an online chat-room, where flaming is cool. Why not deal in reality for once? That is where these issues are going to be decided.
Upgrade your drivers to the most current ones, and see what happens to your system. Then try to go back to the old ones.
Granted, the card was stable up until the point I installed the new drivers (mine were about a year old), but installing new, improved drivers from the manufacturer should not do that. I don't consider the instability unlucky, I consider the stability lucky. Oh, it was on an AMD900, 256RAM, Win98SE.
Congratulations ATI, on your wonderful new video card. But you lost me back when your "new and improved" drivers for the AIW-128Pro effing freaked my system out. It took me a week to get it back to the way it was, and I am still not convinced it is as stable as it used to be. Until I hear people proclaiming "ATI finally got the drivers right", I will not consider purchasing another ATI video card. And even then, probably not, because there isn't that much of a gap between you and your competition. I don't need the latest and greatest card out there, I just want something stable.
You mean like:
- You may have already won $10,000 !!!
- You have been Pre-Approved for a credit card
- You have won a small island in the South Pacific, call 900-SUCKERZ to claim your prize. Hurry!
- Here is a book of coupons for shit you will never buy.
- Please donate to some organization you have never heard of before.
- Get 500 CDs for the price of 1 (plus shipping, handling, and handing over your soul)
- Dear (last person who lived at this address) you have been Pre-approved for a credit card!
- Are the bills getting you down? Debt consolidation can help.
- A special offer just for you Homer J Simpsoy.
- Limited Time Offer!
- We can beat your insurance rates, and save you money $$$$.
- Dated material, open immediately!
- Postal Carrier, do not forward. This is a fantastic prize intended only for the recipient shown below.
- Here is a check for $5000. By endorsing it you agree to open an account with us for that amount, with 27% interest. (this is a real one I got)
- Dell Catalogs
- Victoria's Secret catalogs (OK, I don't mind those)
What is going to wow us when it comes out? How much further ahead are the things that you are working on now?
Fantastic. So your point is that hackers can be just as ignorant as the Nascar (pronounced Nas-corrr) drunken rednecks.
There is only one thing at Microsoft that scares me more than their software - their lawyers.
RTFA.
"Peru's President Alejandro Toledo was at Microsoft Corp. headquarters on Monday, where he signed a deal to put the Internet into the Andean nation's schools and modernize its government."
The key phrase here is "signed a deal". Not that I wouldn't love to see them sell off all the software on eBay to fund their Open Source initiative.
That is a different matter, for this reason - chances are that nobody would leave a life-and-death system WIDE OPEN. I have to assume here that it has some level of security. To use your analogy, that gun owner would have it locked in a cabinet in his house, but someone broke in, picked the lock, and stole the gun. Now, is the gun owner AS RESPONSIBLE as the person who stole it and used it to kill someone?
Why is leaving your life/death technology unsecured any different than leaving your Smith & Wesson .45 unsecured?
Unsecured is not the same as something being secured, but compromised. And with physical as well as computer systems, there are resonable levels of security that should be expected.
Why is the white collar engineer NOT responsible for deaths he should be able to reasonably forsee? We've put ghetto youths to death/life imprisonment for starting a robbery where the clerk shoots a customer while shoorting at him [the thief], so why aren't the wealthy engineers responsible for the "forseeable consequences" of their actions?
Wow, that is quite a stretch, but I think we are talking about two different things here. For one, there is no single responsible person for many white collar crimes. With software, who is responsible - the designer, the developer, the project manager, the QA staff, the 3rd party vendor, etc.? No one person can be blamed for less-than-optimally secure software. However, most "hands on" crimes are more clear cut. How about wealthy CEOs who steal and rob money from employees and investors? Now there is a better analogy, those a-holes have ruined more than a few lives. (oh, but it is the auditors fault, or the CFO) But if found guilty, they won't be given life in prison, I can guarantee you. And wherever they serve, it probably won't be much of a prison. So I agree with you there. But compare robbery to robbery, it is a little easier to see the correlation.
Sorry, but this is bullshit. They have a responsibility, but they are not AS responsible. Just because someone CAN commit a crime doesn't mean that they should. I know this isn't what you are saying, but it is implied. That is like saying whoever sold the gun is as responsible as the person who pulled the trigger. Nope, doesn't fly. YES, there is some responsibility, but I object to the fact that they are AS responsible as the person doing the crime. It is a small disctinction, but is very important. It is a dangerous road to travel down. Why is the sysadmin responsible? Why not the programmer who wrote the buggy code? Why not QA who should have caught it? Why not the people who wrote the 3rd party encryption software that got cracked? Why not the maker of the OS that the system runs on, for having security holes? [arbitrary but realistic examples of security breaches] You can't dump the responsibility on the sysadmin, just like you can't dump it on anyone else in the software lifecycle. This assumes it was a software product with the hole, and not some communication standard.
Why does everyone have to assume that other civilizations are more advanced than us? All it would take would be one meteor, or a few good volcanic eruptions to wipe us out. Then all of our technological advancement is for naught. The other assumption is that life on other planets is like ours, that has the desire, ability, and raw materials to even consider space exploration. What if our planet had 3x the gravity it does? Our entire world would be different. "Life" doesn't mean people. Of course we want to think that we are the epitome of evolution, and we are what all life forms aspire to be like. I highly doubt this is the case though.
I just cut-and-pasted this story and sent it to my Yahoo account. No words were changed. You know why? Because I use text for email. Can someone explain why on earth you would use HTML for email anyway? I have never understood that.
Well, logically there wouldn't need to be a new law. But you are forgetting, lawyers will wiggle through any available hole. It could be argued that you can't actually murder someone through a computer because it isn't quite a tangible thing. The new law is probably just to plug that hole.
This is a very bad analogy. That is like saying "Honestly, I just pinged that company's website, and all of a sudden I was arrested." I really hate it when people paint the picture of the cracker (not hacker) as some innocent kid who didn't realize what he was doing. This law isn't for the kid who defaces a website, it is for something really friggin serious. And now you are suggesting that the owners of the system be punished too? What if someone roots your system, and then hacks into some bank, then gets caught? Should you be held responsible, or the bank? Gee, how about the person who knowingly did something illegal? That is a novel idea.
The obvious downside of this law is that it will be used when the situation isn't that serious. It would have to be a hack that endangered lives. If it were used against someone who just caused monetary damage, then it would be a sad day. After all, do you think the Enron and Andersen boys at the top are going to be spending life in prison? Hell, John Walker Lindh is only expeced to get 20 years.
Now you want to talk good music in games? Not console games, I am talking the real deal - arcade games. How about these:
Bubble Bobble
Spy Hunter
Galaga
Gyruss (gotta love Bach)
Star Wars
So many others...
Not everyone wants to learn to use their computer, they just want to use it. That is a huge difference, and one that is keeping Linux off the desktop. I recently built a new computer for my parents, and I was *this* close to installing Linux on it instead of Win98. But they use it to email, look at pictures, check their stock prices, and surf the net a little. That's it. It was hard enough switching them over from Netscape 4.72 to Opera 6.02. I still get statements like "Well, it wasn't like that before", or "this just isn't what I am used to".
I have a Windows and a Linux machine, and I spend much more time on the Linux machine (it is always running). I only boot up Windows when I want to play a game, or get pics off my digital camera because I haven't gotten gphoto to work with my camera yet. But I don't expect everyone to want to tweak around with Linux. You shouldn't either, and neither should the developers. The great thing is that we recognize this as a fault, and some people, different types of people with different ideas, can try to solve it. I don't mind the pretty gui install that came with Redhat 7.3. I liked that it was easy to install. Sometimes I like to have my hand held, and other times I like to compile things and mess with config files. The beauty of Linux systems is that you have the option. As long as distros have both options, tech and non tech configurations, I will be happy.
I used to work for a company that created a fax-over-IP server with inboxes and the whole deal. I was in QA, and that was actually one of our tests. We dubbed it the "mobius fax".
Although we created a service, our customers often used it for fax spamming because you could build distribution lists. Of course, distro lists were valid too, like sending a fax to everyone in a company. It was a pretty cool service, and we actually used it. Everyone had an account, and faxes would be queued up in your inbox, which could be delivered to your email account. You could also "print to fax machine" from any Windows app, which was nice too. When our investors pulled out due to the dot-com crash, Net2Phone bought up all our assets.
I know this service exists out there, but this was a couple of years ago, and the company started about 9 years ago before email came along and hammered the business of faxing.
I'm not. His last MS OS was Win95. And according to his Linux experience, he seemed to want to go out and get the latest and greatest OS. So when he went to purchase a new MS OS, which one do you think appealed to him? Why, XP of course. If you go to microsoft's website, they have a comparison between XP and Win98 and between XP and Win95, to show you how advanced XP is over their "old" OS offerings. No mention of XP vs Win2k.
The industry doesn't need innovation, there is plenty of that. First let me say I am not a gamer. OK, so I grew up with arcades in the 80's, then Atari, then Nintendo, but it pretty much stopped there. I had better things to do. I don't play that many games on the PC, although I have spent many many hours playing Quake Team Fortress. I even created my own map. Create your own map!? That is innovative. But for some reason, that is boring now. You know what made the old arcade games (and Quake TF) fun? Good gameplay. It doesn't have to be innovative, it needs to be FUN. And when a game is fun, what do most gamers do? They spend an entire weekend playing the damn thing 24/7. A month after a game has come out, it has been played to death and people are waiting for the next great thing.
Now this isn't true with all games, of course. Some have staying power. But how many games do you have that you can play once you have "beaten" it. I'll bet not that many. The consumers are driving the industry.
Maybe I don't fully get it because I am not a gamer. I don't want to be, quite honestly. Games turned into a big business, just like arcade games did. Believe me, there were plenty of stinker arcade games too. But I can still play a few games on my Galaga arcade machine, have an absolute blast, and walk away from it.
Free as in beer, free as in speech, free as in money - ASK ME HOW!