(I should note that the change could have been done silently, so that you wouldn't have known who changed the password on your account.)
So the answer is more secrecy? That hardly seems consistent with the mission of YRO. You throw a fit every time a closed-source program dials out and shares user data with a secret server somewhere. You would've thrown a fit if Intel had secretly manufactured its PIIIs with serial numbers. You've built yourself a career here railing against abusive secrecy, and now you turn around and inflict the same?
I've never thought much of you, michael, but you've far exceeded my expectations here. You positively drip with hypocrisy. How can anyone read anything you ever post again knowing that whatever ideals you pretend to stand for are a ruse masking your power infatuation?
Thanks for reminding me why/. has lost all journalistic credibility. And thank you for doing your part to make it possible.
It violates the fundamental rule of multiplayer gaming: don't trust the clients. I'd rather my data be kept on a trusted server than be handed out to random clients that accost me.
If you actually read the article instead of launching into your infantile display of pseudoagressive censorship (i.e. moderation), you'd know that a masked link to goatse.cx is relevent, on topic, and insightful. Instead of taking out your subconcious anger at your mother for weaning you too early or at your father for not recusing himself from your mother's bed so that you may fulfill your oedipal desires, you should read the moderation faq and visit sid=moderation to learn about the important role and power you've abused.
Good to see these things come full circle
on
3dfx Does OpenGL
·
· Score: 2
I'd definitely have to say the turning point for opengl in its march to dominance of glide was when Apple adopted opengl as its primary 3d-graphics library a couple years ago (obsoleting the venerable Quicktime VR standard). As Apple succinctly states:
OpenGL for Macintosh will do for games what the invention of gunpowder did for warfare. In effect, it changes the rules of the game to make Mac gaming titles more real, more powerful, and more fun.
You're also making the assumption here that the carnivore box is some how progressive or positive, which is clearly not the case.
You are making the assumption that mechanized looms were somehow progressive or positive, which was clearly not the case. People lost their livelihoods and even their lives from the mass-displacement in the workforce perpetuated by mechanization. Remember, this was long before minimum wages, social welfare, and broad unionization, and every fewer person working the looms was one fewer person living to see tomorrow.
On slashdot of all places, I'd expect to find a more receptive audience for decrying the demise of the individual in pace with the rise of the godless corporate state.
Look. A month ago, Japan raised its primary lending interest rate from 0% to 0.5% (out of national egoism, more than any other reason, but that's another post altogether). This makes it more expensive to obtain the loans necessary to finance large manufacturing operations, so it's entirely natural that Sony should feel the pinch when it comes to getting these machines out the door. It's as simple as Sony not building another plant in time. That's all.
Cheers,
Froid
Who are you to say what the Web's spirit is?
on
Spirit Of The Web
·
· Score: 2
Seriously, I'm sick of people pretending that they have some special privileged access to the normative content of "true spirit" and "final purpose" in these matters. The Web just is -- it's an empirical fact, without any moral dimension. You'd just as well argue about how great life was in Italy before Mount Vesuvius erupted. You might even get some intellectually tired posers to agree with you that indeed, it's a pressing matter that we understand such a historical period because somehow, by some means, it'll be relevent in the present, but get off your high horse, please. The Web was. The Web is. And the Web will still be. And unless you're Bill Gates or Al Gore, you will play no part in choosing its direction.
Imagine this: one day in the near future, Congress and the FBI finally get their way and install Carnivore boxes not only at the ISP level, but at your local computers also. If Richard Stallman urged a call to arms and geeks everywhere organized massive protests where they liberally shattered the Carnivore boxes into little bits, would you not join? You too, Mr Slashbot, are a Luddite, by that standard, make no mistake about it. When someone shatters your own world-view, it is your right and duty to shatter his means, at whatever cost and to whatever ends.
If you ever have trouble explaining the approach the FBI is taking to someone, present him with this visual analogy. The FBI is Papa Smurf, and the FBI, and the little blue smurf is the American public. At first blush, it seems Papa Smurf is merely reading to the little smurf, but if you look more carefully at Papa Smurf's expression and the position of the little smurf on his lap, then you may get a clearer notion of what's really going on.
Judging from informal polling of some acquaintances of mine, I'd say only 50% of those who start a 300 page Steven King novel bother to read past page 100, and only 25% bother to read past page 200.
It's only nP for sufficiently large numbers of nodes. The whole universe isn't wired yet, so we're mostly still talking about cleaning up the congestion between a few major sites in the US (one of the few places with the capital to fund one of these ventures, besides). Like with much of CS, systems rarely match the models with sufficient accuracy to produce all those hairy results we've come to fear and loathe.
IBM sure is ambitious about their embeded Linux toys, aren't they? I just hope we don't see headlines when some idiot pokes an eye out: Linux fork's too sharp; downgrade to MS Spork.
I don't want to come off as chicken little here, but....
Be sure of one thing: the MPAA is in bed with Congress and the Federal Government on the issue of preserving a near monopoly on the dissemination of copyrighted works in this country (US). Anyone who visibly participates in a movement or project that threatens this plutocratic dominance will be under severe scrutiny at all levels. Martin Luther King Jr, Albert Einstein, and John Lennon had entire reams of paper in their FBI files. What makes you think Linus Torvalds doesn't? And what makes you think that if you're the next Linus Torvalds, that you won't either?
Be very careful when pissing off people with power. The modern State exists for the purpose of inflicting deliberate pain upon a select minority whose very existence runs contrary to the governing principles of the majority. Are you willing to be that martyr?
You used the equivalent of a megaphone on slashdot (the +1 bonus) to tell us that you like it and think it's a good thing, in only slightly more words? Did you think this was actually insightful or worthy of everyone's attention, or did you just think "I want everyone to know what I think, and though I'm not more sophisticated about my thoughts than everyone else without a +1 bonus, I'm going to go ahead and say it, because I can"?
There is an aristocracy on slashdot; make no mistake about it. When people like drendite (userid=#3) speak, people bow down in worship, simply because of his low userid. It doesn't matter whether one actually makes a true contribution to society; what matters is the aristocratic entitlement conferred by longstanding existence (not participation).
Take the British Parliament, for example. Though Britain still hasn't come close to providing universal healthcare or proper dentistry they sorely need, they have finally seen the folly of maintaining a ruling aristocracy, and have eliminated the hereditary seats in the House of Lords. Slashdot should follow their lead.
The solution is not to take away the voice of people with low userids. Nor is the solution to eliminate the +1 bonus, because it serves a legitimate purpose and is democratically attainable by all, from the oldest poster to the neophyte with a five-figure userid. The solution is to eliminate the tagging of comments with the userid of their posters.
The userid tag does nothing to help the community, and does much to harm it, by encouraging wishywashy moderators to inflate the karma of oldtimers and penalize the newguys who express controversial opinions. (When moderators waver between slamming a post or modding it up, they usually defer to the userid in addressing its seriousness and authority. This is unacceptable.)
If you're worried about fraud and impersonation, then you already have an effective means of distinguishing between posts: the signature. The.sig is not generated by each user when he posts a comment, where he's free to forge it. It's appended by slashdot's servers. It's an effective deterrent to impersonation, and it must again receive its prominence within the social jurisprudencial realm of slashdot.
Effective policing (moderating) can only go so far. We must correct these social ills by striking at their sources -- their causes -- not merely at their symptoms. Join with me in tearing down the illegitimate reign of the slashdot aristocracy and their petty notions of insight and imformativeness, and lift up a glorious new tomorrow, where everyone, democratically, no matter what the tld of his email address or the number of his userid, shares in the same promise of opportunity for reasoned argument and receptive audience.
Article 2, Section 2, Clause 2: He shall have Power, by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, to make Treaties, provided two thirds of the Senators present concur; and he shall nominate, and by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, shall appoint Ambassadors, other public Ministers and Consuls, Judges of the supreme Court, and all other Officers of the United States, whose Appointments are not herein otherwise provided for, and which shall be established by Law: but the Congress may by Law vest the Appointment of such inferior Officers, as they think proper, in the President alone, in the Courts of Law, or in the Heads of Departments.
You left out Article II section 1, which specified that "He" is the president. Out of context and coupled with the constitution's peculiar capitalization, it reads like we're talking about the Divine One, who's free to enter into any damn treaties He pleases, I suppose. Perhaps that's what's missing from this treaty: a little divine intervention. I wouldn't want to be in Brussels or Washington when the helfire and brimstone comes a-raining down like on Sodom and Gomorrah of yore, smiting the corrupt tribes of Europe and USiA for this latest of ther abominations.
Do people still want to hurt each other? Do they still want to attach a badge of legitimacy to the suffering they cause? Do they still want to spend someone else's money on things they find important, rather than spending their own money or letting the other guy spend it on his own stuff? If you've answered yes to these three questions, then you surely realize politics is here to stay, perhaps forever. If you said no to any of them, then you should go home, Nader.
Smacks of _Treasure Island_
on
Geocaching
·
· Score: 4
[...] The next ten or twelve pages were filled with a curious series of entries. There was a date at one end of the line and at the other a sum of money, as in common account-books; but instead of explanatory writing, only a varying number of crosses between the two. On the 12th of June, 1745, for instance, a sum of seventy pounds had plainly become due to someone, and there was nothing but six crosses to explain the cause. In a few cases, to be sure, the name of a place would be added, as `Offe Caraccas;' or a mere entry of latitude and longitude, as `62 degrees 17' 20", 19 degrees 2' 40".' [...]
Arrr, me mateys, there she lies. 'Neath a Walmart parking lot, where Captain Flint stopped to take a leak!
Joe Leiberman and Dick Cheney have joined the ranks of political quake 3 skins available. Taunt and kill them before doing so becomes treason!
This would be, of course, unconstitutional, and not just because of the 1st amendment. Article III Section 3 reads in part: "Treason against the United States shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort." Unless Quake3-skin makers constitute their own sovereign state external to the United States, it could not be construed as treason. What's more, under that same clause, you'd either have to confess openly in court, or be convicted on the testimony of two witnesses to the act. So, if you frag alone in the dark, you're safe.
And if you're considering whether this is not on topic, ask yourself, "What exactly is on topic in Quickies articles?"
You're pumping large amounts of lead into your backyard (I assume you're not firing steel shot), but you stop to wonder about a little shrapnel? Just fire from a safe distance, and you should be fine. If you're too afraid to toss them by hand, then epoxy them to the underside of a clay, and fire that. A tattered aluminum AOL disc makes for a lovely conversation piece.
Have you ever actually fired an AK-47? Or are you just looking for a sexy-sounding weapon, and couldn't remember how to spell Kalishnikov? Or that they're even the same?
I ask, because lots of people on slashdot are just talking out of their asses. That, and anyone with any real weapons experience would know that 12-gauges make for much more AOL-cd-blasting fun. Who cares whether you can put little holes through them at great distances, when you can instead blow them into little bits, and they make for interesting clay-substitutes on the range.
Slashdot Mirror
(I should note that the change could have been done silently, so that you wouldn't have known who changed the password on your account.)
/. has lost all journalistic credibility. And thank you for doing your part to make it possible.
So the answer is more secrecy? That hardly seems consistent with the mission of YRO. You throw a fit every time a closed-source program dials out and shares user data with a secret server somewhere. You would've thrown a fit if Intel had secretly manufactured its PIIIs with serial numbers. You've built yourself a career here railing against abusive secrecy, and now you turn around and inflict the same?
I've never thought much of you, michael, but you've far exceeded my expectations here. You positively drip with hypocrisy. How can anyone read anything you ever post again knowing that whatever ideals you pretend to stand for are a ruse masking your power infatuation?
Thanks for reminding me why
It violates the fundamental rule of multiplayer gaming: don't trust the clients. I'd rather my data be kept on a trusted server than be handed out to random clients that accost me.
If you actually read the article instead of launching into your infantile display of pseudoagressive censorship (i.e. moderation), you'd know that a masked link to goatse.cx is relevent, on topic, and insightful. Instead of taking out your subconcious anger at your mother for weaning you too early or at your father for not recusing himself from your mother's bed so that you may fulfill your oedipal desires, you should read the moderation faq and visit sid=moderation to learn about the important role and power you've abused.
You're also making the assumption here that the carnivore box is some how progressive or positive, which is clearly not the case.
You are making the assumption that mechanized looms were somehow progressive or positive, which was clearly not the case. People lost their livelihoods and even their lives from the mass-displacement in the workforce perpetuated by mechanization. Remember, this was long before minimum wages, social welfare, and broad unionization, and every fewer person working the looms was one fewer person living to see tomorrow.
On slashdot of all places, I'd expect to find a more receptive audience for decrying the demise of the individual in pace with the rise of the godless corporate state.
Look. A month ago, Japan raised its primary lending interest rate from 0% to 0.5% (out of national egoism, more than any other reason, but that's another post altogether). This makes it more expensive to obtain the loans necessary to finance large manufacturing operations, so it's entirely natural that Sony should feel the pinch when it comes to getting these machines out the door. It's as simple as Sony not building another plant in time. That's all.
Cheers,
Froid
Seriously, I'm sick of people pretending that they have some special privileged access to the normative content of "true spirit" and "final purpose" in these matters. The Web just is -- it's an empirical fact, without any moral dimension. You'd just as well argue about how great life was in Italy before Mount Vesuvius erupted. You might even get some intellectually tired posers to agree with you that indeed, it's a pressing matter that we understand such a historical period because somehow, by some means, it'll be relevent in the present, but get off your high horse, please. The Web was. The Web is. And the Web will still be. And unless you're Bill Gates or Al Gore, you will play no part in choosing its direction.
Imagine this: one day in the near future, Congress and the FBI finally get their way and install Carnivore boxes not only at the ISP level, but at your local computers also. If Richard Stallman urged a call to arms and geeks everywhere organized massive protests where they liberally shattered the Carnivore boxes into little bits, would you not join? You too, Mr Slashbot, are a Luddite, by that standard, make no mistake about it. When someone shatters your own world-view, it is your right and duty to shatter his means, at whatever cost and to whatever ends.
If you ever have trouble explaining the approach the FBI is taking to someone, present him with this visual analogy. The FBI is Papa Smurf, and the FBI, and the little blue smurf is the American public. At first blush, it seems Papa Smurf is merely reading to the little smurf, but if you look more carefully at Papa Smurf's expression and the position of the little smurf on his lap, then you may get a clearer notion of what's really going on.
Sorry about the lite-brite set, but there's hope for you yet.
Judging from informal polling of some acquaintances of mine, I'd say only 50% of those who start a 300 page Steven King novel bother to read past page 100, and only 25% bother to read past page 200.
I've got some tinfoil and a ten-watt smurf nightlight for you, and I'm prepared to undercut their offer. Is it a deal?
It's only nP for sufficiently large numbers of nodes. The whole universe isn't wired yet, so we're mostly still talking about cleaning up the congestion between a few major sites in the US (one of the few places with the capital to fund one of these ventures, besides). Like with much of CS, systems rarely match the models with sufficient accuracy to produce all those hairy results we've come to fear and loathe.
IBM sure is ambitious about their embeded Linux toys, aren't they? I just hope we don't see headlines when some idiot pokes an eye out: Linux fork's too sharp; downgrade to MS Spork.
I don't want to come off as chicken little here, but....
Be sure of one thing: the MPAA is in bed with Congress and the Federal Government on the issue of preserving a near monopoly on the dissemination of copyrighted works in this country (US). Anyone who visibly participates in a movement or project that threatens this plutocratic dominance will be under severe scrutiny at all levels. Martin Luther King Jr, Albert Einstein, and John Lennon had entire reams of paper in their FBI files. What makes you think Linus Torvalds doesn't? And what makes you think that if you're the next Linus Torvalds, that you won't either?
Be very careful when pissing off people with power. The modern State exists for the purpose of inflicting deliberate pain upon a select minority whose very existence runs contrary to the governing principles of the majority. Are you willing to be that martyr?
You used the equivalent of a megaphone on slashdot (the +1 bonus) to tell us that you like it and think it's a good thing, in only slightly more words? Did you think this was actually insightful or worthy of everyone's attention, or did you just think "I want everyone to know what I think, and though I'm not more sophisticated about my thoughts than everyone else without a +1 bonus, I'm going to go ahead and say it, because I can"?
.sig is not generated by each user when he posts a comment, where he's free to forge it. It's appended by slashdot's servers. It's an effective deterrent to impersonation, and it must again receive its prominence within the social jurisprudencial realm of slashdot.
There is an aristocracy on slashdot; make no mistake about it. When people like drendite (userid=#3) speak, people bow down in worship, simply because of his low userid. It doesn't matter whether one actually makes a true contribution to society; what matters is the aristocratic entitlement conferred by longstanding existence (not participation).
Take the British Parliament, for example. Though Britain still hasn't come close to providing universal healthcare or proper dentistry they sorely need, they have finally seen the folly of maintaining a ruling aristocracy, and have eliminated the hereditary seats in the House of Lords. Slashdot should follow their lead.
The solution is not to take away the voice of people with low userids. Nor is the solution to eliminate the +1 bonus, because it serves a legitimate purpose and is democratically attainable by all, from the oldest poster to the neophyte with a five-figure userid. The solution is to eliminate the tagging of comments with the userid of their posters.
The userid tag does nothing to help the community, and does much to harm it, by encouraging wishywashy moderators to inflate the karma of oldtimers and penalize the newguys who express controversial opinions. (When moderators waver between slamming a post or modding it up, they usually defer to the userid in addressing its seriousness and authority. This is unacceptable.)
If you're worried about fraud and impersonation, then you already have an effective means of distinguishing between posts: the signature. The
Effective policing (moderating) can only go so far. We must correct these social ills by striking at their sources -- their causes -- not merely at their symptoms. Join with me in tearing down the illegitimate reign of the slashdot aristocracy and their petty notions of insight and imformativeness, and lift up a glorious new tomorrow, where everyone, democratically, no matter what the tld of his email address or the number of his userid, shares in the same promise of opportunity for reasoned argument and receptive audience.
Thank you for your time.
Froid
Article 2, Section 2, Clause 2: He shall have Power, by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, to make Treaties, provided two thirds of the Senators present concur; and he shall nominate, and by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, shall appoint Ambassadors, other public Ministers and Consuls, Judges of the supreme Court, and all other Officers of the United States, whose Appointments are not herein otherwise provided for, and which shall be established by Law: but the Congress may by Law vest the Appointment of such inferior Officers, as they think proper, in the President alone, in the Courts of Law, or in the Heads of Departments.
You left out Article II section 1, which specified that "He" is the president. Out of context and coupled with the constitution's peculiar capitalization, it reads like we're talking about the Divine One, who's free to enter into any damn treaties He pleases, I suppose. Perhaps that's what's missing from this treaty: a little divine intervention. I wouldn't want to be in Brussels or Washington when the helfire and brimstone comes a-raining down like on Sodom and Gomorrah of yore, smiting the corrupt tribes of Europe and USiA for this latest of ther abominations.
Do people still want to hurt each other? Do they still want to attach a badge of legitimacy to the suffering they cause? Do they still want to spend someone else's money on things they find important, rather than spending their own money or letting the other guy spend it on his own stuff? If you've answered yes to these three questions, then you surely realize politics is here to stay, perhaps forever. If you said no to any of them, then you should go home, Nader.
[...] The next ten or twelve pages were filled with a curious series of entries. There was a date at one end of the line and at the other a sum of money, as in common account-books; but instead of explanatory writing, only a varying number of crosses between the two. On the 12th of June, 1745, for instance, a sum of seventy pounds had plainly become due to someone, and there was nothing but six crosses to explain the cause. In a few cases, to be sure, the name of a place would be added, as `Offe Caraccas;' or a mere entry of latitude and longitude, as `62 degrees 17' 20", 19 degrees 2' 40".' [...]
Arrr, me mateys, there she lies. 'Neath a Walmart parking lot, where Captain Flint stopped to take a leak!
You must not think
impure thoughts [...]
Kinda tough with all those naked girls bouncing around the screen, don't you think?
Joe Leiberman and Dick Cheney have joined the ranks of political quake 3 skins available. Taunt and kill them before doing so becomes treason!
This would be, of course, unconstitutional, and not just because of the 1st amendment. Article III Section 3 reads in part: "Treason against the United States shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort." Unless Quake3-skin makers constitute their own sovereign state external to the United States, it could not be construed as treason. What's more, under that same clause, you'd either have to confess openly in court, or be convicted on the testimony of two witnesses to the act. So, if you frag alone in the dark, you're safe.
And if you're considering whether this is not on topic, ask yourself, "What exactly is on topic in Quickies articles?"
You sound really hostile. Did QNX steal your lunch money as a child, or something?
You're pumping large amounts of lead into your backyard (I assume you're not firing steel shot), but you stop to wonder about a little shrapnel? Just fire from a safe distance, and you should be fine. If you're too afraid to toss them by hand, then epoxy them to the underside of a clay, and fire that. A tattered aluminum AOL disc makes for a lovely conversation piece.
Have you ever actually fired an AK-47? Or are you just looking for a sexy-sounding weapon, and couldn't remember how to spell Kalishnikov? Or that they're even the same?
I ask, because lots of people on slashdot are just talking out of their asses. That, and anyone with any real weapons experience would know that 12-gauges make for much more AOL-cd-blasting fun. Who cares whether you can put little holes through them at great distances, when you can instead blow them into little bits, and they make for interesting clay-substitutes on the range.
No one will respect IT personel and the stresses they go through, until there is bloodshed. It's time to go postal, BOFH style!