Hearing the cast sing is alone worth the download (Well, maybe not Alyson Hannigan, but...)
She doesn't do a whole lot of singing as it is in the musical... Although if you listen closely during the the song "Walk Through The Fire" she has the line "I think this line's mostly filler."
Hopefully the instructor will realize that everyone drops a ; occasioanlly (however forgetting ; altogether is something else)
I never, ever, forget a semicolon. The problem is usually the other way around for me. I tend to find semicolons at the ends of my sentences in Lit papers while proofreading, or at the end of equations in math classes.
However, I could also start with an image of Bugs Bunny and gradually transform it into a naked 7 year old (i.e. child porn).
Also, consider if I charged you $1 for something. Well, I could charge you $1.01 and it wouldn't make that much of a difference to you. How about $1.02? Repeat until I'm at $100.
At some point in a gradual change the first entity loses its identity and becomes the second.
That said, I am in support of the crowd that believes the judge made a bad decision.
A reply to the parent was moderated as (-1, Flaimbait), and while that moderation was fair, the post did make a point that is worth reiterating in a more polite manner.
The concepts of "opt-in" and "opt-out" generally apply to the sharing of your information. That is, either, "You gave me permission to share your information, so I am able to do so." (opt-in), or "You didn't tell me not to share you information, so I am able to do so." (opt-out).
While this may be a pessimistic view, if you give information to a company (or individual, for that matter), you should EXPECT for it to be stored. Otherwise the information would not have been collected in the first place. So "opt-in" and "opt-out" laws shouldn't apply to simply storing information.
Since you explicitly claim that you have no intentions of doing anything with the information that you are obtaining, the opt-in/opt-out issue does not apply to you.
A bill that would REALLY make the hard core privacy advocates happy would be one that set more restrictions on what data can be legally required to be provided in the first place. I'm not sure that such legislation would be wise, though.
I can imagine us finding alternatives to our oil based fuels. I can think of many candidates off the top of my head. But it seems like we use an awful lot of oil just for its lubricating properties. What sort of alternatives do we have in that area?
Not being in a field of study relevant to the question, perhaps I am in a position to overlook an obvious answer.
You realize you just suggested that very few software projects should have any programmers. How is the project going to get completed without anyone working on it?
My boss seems to think that having a lot of meetings about it will do the trick.
When the user click on a button, it sends a message to the server telling it you clicked the button. The server may send the client messages, telling it to hide the button, or give a textbox a new value.
From what I understand, this is how X-Windows works.
Except with X, when you click on a button, the SERVER sends the CLIENT a message telling it the button was clicked.
X - where clients are servers and servers are clients.
(Yes, I know the naming makes sense when you think about how X is used, but that still doesn't keep it from confusing a ton of people.)
Even better yet, give them SSH access. Then they can port-forward to his mail server from the inside, where there are no open relay problems.
Slightly off topic, but could you (or anyone else) explain how to do this?
Currently, to send mail from my account at my university, I have to SSH in and use something like pine from the inside. I would much prefer to use my local mail client (KMail), even if I still have to establish an SSH connection first.
What a second. The linked article says that customers were double and triple billed. What did they get 4-6 spams instead of 2? Or is this statement wrong and there was a cost for the service?
It's a bit difficult to tell from the article. I took "customers" to mean the people for whom they were advertising, rather than the people to whom they were (not) providing DSL service.
This raises some scary possibilities, especially in parts of the world where reproduction is controlled by government (China) or families are encouraged to have male children. (Quite a bit of the world, actually.) Having a gender imbalance will do a number on women's rights.
Humans are odd. Among species that have a large male to female ratio (ants, bees, etc), the females are made queen. Though I agree with your implied assessment that tilting the ratio significantly in favor of males would probably result in oppressed females. Plus, it would make it even harder for a geek to get a date.
The common thread is that people wouldn't want to sacrifice content for a flashy web site, and that just shows their ignorance. These people don't realize that good design does not involve compromizes. Good design is about presenting the content in such a manner that the appearance enhances the content presentation, not distracts from it.
If all you want to do while on the web is watch things change color and move around the screen, then you are absolutely correct. However, what I want from the web is to be able to quickly find and digest any sort of information that exists subject to my whims. There are few things more frustrating than going to a web site, waiting for their flash intro to download, sitting through the intro, closing twenty popups, figuring out how their custom web GUI works, figuring out how to navigate to the information I want, and then realizing that they don't even have the information that I want (or indeed, any information at all).
If you want to make your web site pretty, then by all means do so! A pretty site is more enjoyable than an ugly one, if that is the only difference. But if you are trying to create art, rather than conveying information, you would probably be more successful with a different medium.
So yes, Virginia, you can have your cake and eat it too, provided that the web site is designed by a real graphic designer. Such an individual has both training and experience in creating designs that work.
A "real graphic designer" has no business creating a web site. They may design pictures, icons, and other such fluff to make a design more attractive, but optimizing information retrieval is a realm in which programmers accel.
Whatever you do, please try to use some form of valid HTML. You can very easily verify that your HTML is valid using the W3C Validator.
What is valid HTML? I suggest you check out The Web Design Group web page for extremely useful information on the topic. Also, the W3C web site has the definative specifications of HTML. Don't get tricked into thinking your WSIWYG editor is going to give you anything even close to resembling a valid HTML document. If you are even remotely seriously about doing a good job, you owe it to yourself to learn the standards.
At this point I would normally insert the comment that knowing the difference between valid HTML and invalid garbage marks the difference between a professional and a kid in a basement with FrontPage, but unfortunately the kids in the basements are producing more valid documents.
Yes, not many sites use valid HTML, but that is their problem. Don't make it yours. As an analogy -- a whole lot of big name commericial software products contain buffer overflow exploits, but that doesn't mean you should be lax about letting them into your code.
Finally. Design your content first, then make the web site fit the content. NEVER make the content fit the page, or all you will wind up with is a fancy (usually broken) design that ultimately just wastes everyone's time.
I have to disagree with you on this point. A kernel is the software that manages a computer's resources. The operating SYSTEM is the software that allows you the base functionality necessary for installing applications and performing system administration. I believe that an operating system should include things like text editors, ftp/telnet clients, etc. My opinion sways on whether a web browser should be included in that list.
But, for example. If I sit down at your computer, and you tell me that it is running , then I expect to be able to type 'ls' and get a list of files, yet the shell I am using and the ls could also be considered applications. I personally consider them part of the operating system.
Why does everyone always get so caught up on browser issues? I rather think that nowadays a browser BELONGS in the basic application set distributed with an operating system.
There are plenty of other illegal and/or unethical practices that Microsoft is using. How come we never hear about those? Why is it always about the browser? I would dare say that the reason IE is popular is because all of its competition sucked at the time it was building its dominance.
So should the be allowed to include IE with Windows? I think so. I haven't yet formed an opinion on things like Media Player, MSN Messenger, etc, but I lean towards removing those. Where do we draw the line? I don't know. But the issue of those other included products never comes up (at least not in popular press. I don't know what happens in the court rooms.). And I never hear anything at all about other illegal practices not related to 'commingling'.
Can't they find something new to talk about besides the browser?
Alan
Re:Something that isn't pointed out enough
on
SuSE 7.3 vs XP
·
· Score: 1
$startx --:0 &
$su - otherusername
$startx --:1 &
Granted, this isn't a "nice swapper interface", but you can certainly have multiple graphical environments active simultaneously.
I remember a picture from a science textbook way back in elementary school, labelled "Energy Pyramid". It had grasses and such at the bottom, with some rats on top of that, and on up until you got to things like eagles and such, which aren't normally consumed by other animals. It made the explicit point that as you move away from the primary producers into the secondary and tertiary consumers, a lot more energy per organism is required to sustain the population.
This is empirically supported if you just look at the relative bio-masses. What types of organisms do you see the most? Plants and algae. That is, primary producers, equivalent to "prey".
I am sure they are eminently more qualified to be conducting this experiment than I (if you can call it an experiment. It sounds more like a feature at Disney World to me.), but I would certainly like someone to explain how the expect 6 prey to stand up to 15 predators. It just doesn't make much sense. Perhaps they are just trying to make it something that will only last a day, for commercial reasons.
I'd also like to know (I didn't see anything in the article about it), if the predators are smart enough to go after each other when they get hungry enough.
If you want the nuts and bolts on.NET, I'd say start here.
I haven't delved through this extensively, but after acclimatizing yourself to the way they lay things out, Microsoft's SDK documentation usually turns out to be pretty decent.
Isn't 2005 a bit late to be rolling out something like this? I know lots of people and have read lots of articles claiming that by 2005 we'll be well into our cashless society stage.
Heck, I'm 99% there already. My paychecks go directly to my bank, and all but a few of the things I buy I pay for with a credit card, the bill from which is later paid for with a check. To me, money is just a number on a hard drive somewhere. (scary? I don't think so. Ask me when that number gets changed to be horribly wrong, though.)
Dude, we're not angry about AOL, Hotmail, or online stores. These are all good things. The problem, in the eyes of hackers and general Slashdot visitors, is what has been brought with it. The commercialization of the internet has given rise to free web page services that only give you 2MB of space and 300MB of bandwidth per month, cable modem services that will disconnect you if you run anything even remotely resembling a server, and a greater feeling among non-tech-heads that any site that isn't run by a multinational corporation that already owns fourteen newspapers and three TV stations "isn't trustworthy".
I agree that, in general, people are not too angry that services like AOL, Hotmail, or online stores, exist. But I don't think your example of what was "brought with it" is a particularly apt one. I see no fault whatsoever in "free web page services that only give you 2MB of space and 300MB of bandwidth per month". They are free, so take what they give you and don't whine about it. Also, cable modems and other forms of home-based broadband aren't something people had in "the early days", and though most broadband providers are crap right now, I imagine most people would agree that having SOME broadband option is better than having NO broadband option.
There are two primary issues that I believe are the cause of most of the attitudes you will find. First is a perceived loss of culture. In the "old days" there was a certain lingo and level of technical aptitude with which you could speak, and you could generally expect people to understand you. The Internet was not yet very diverse in the type of person that could gain access, and as a natural result those who could gain access formed a somewhat tightly-knit culture. While much of this culture still exists (as evidenced by Slashdot, various newsgroups, etc), it is often harder to find the tech solaces due to increased noise. The exploring tech-guy who happens to wander into other subcultures of the internet could, understandably, feel out of place, which could be a particularly offensive feeling for those that helped to create the internet in the first place. It is this issue that usually leads to comments that people see as elistist or excluding. As for a solution, I can't really give any answers, as it seems more of a natural social phenomena than anything.
The second issue is the one that seems to really drive people nuts. That is the attempt by commercial interests to exert CONTROL over the internet. There are several commercial entities at work that would like to see the internet standards come under proprietary control. Others exist that would like to see (more) legislation passed to censor what we can read, write, and do on the internet. Many of the "original" gang saw the internet as the ultimate in presonal freedom (particularly free speech). Commercial interests quite often (usually) act in direct opposition to this concept. This is what aggrivates most of the old school internet junkies. The attitude I see is more or less "What right do these corporations have to tell me what I can do on MY internet. I was here first, not bothering anybody, and they came along and crashed my party." Again, I can't claim to have any real answers as to how to combat this (I do have ideas and opinions, but they are beyond the scope of this post), but I definately feel this is the more serious issue.
Slashdot Mirror
She doesn't do a whole lot of singing as it is in the musical... Although if you listen closely during the the song "Walk Through The Fire" she has the line "I think this line's mostly filler."
Alan
We get signal.
What !!
I never, ever, forget a semicolon. The problem is usually the other way around for me. I tend to find semicolons at the ends of my sentences in Lit papers while proofreading, or at the end of equations in math classes.
- Alan
I think it would much more appropriate as:
fork(); fork(); fork();
aj
This is a good point, and I agree with it mostly.
However, I could also start with an image of Bugs Bunny and gradually transform it into a naked 7 year old (i.e. child porn).
Also, consider if I charged you $1 for something. Well, I could charge you $1.01 and it wouldn't make that much of a difference to you. How about $1.02? Repeat until I'm at $100.
At some point in a gradual change the first entity loses its identity and becomes the second.
That said, I am in support of the crowd that believes the judge made a bad decision.
aj
A reply to the parent was moderated as (-1, Flaimbait), and while that moderation was fair, the post did make a point that is worth reiterating in a more polite manner.
The concepts of "opt-in" and "opt-out" generally apply to the sharing of your information. That is, either, "You gave me permission to share your information, so I am able to do so." (opt-in), or "You didn't tell me not to share you information, so I am able to do so." (opt-out).
While this may be a pessimistic view, if you give information to a company (or individual, for that matter), you should EXPECT for it to be stored. Otherwise the information would not have been collected in the first place. So "opt-in" and "opt-out" laws shouldn't apply to simply storing information.
Since you explicitly claim that you have no intentions of doing anything with the information that you are obtaining, the opt-in/opt-out issue does not apply to you.
A bill that would REALLY make the hard core privacy advocates happy would be one that set more restrictions on what data can be legally required to be provided in the first place. I'm not sure that such legislation would be wise, though.
Alan
I can imagine us finding alternatives to our oil based fuels. I can think of many candidates off the top of my head. But it seems like we use an awful lot of oil just for its lubricating properties. What sort of alternatives do we have in that area?
Not being in a field of study relevant to the question, perhaps I am in a position to overlook an obvious answer.
Alan
My boss seems to think that having a lot of meetings about it will do the trick.
X - where clients are servers and servers are clients.
(Yes, I know the naming makes sense when you think about how X is used, but that still doesn't keep it from confusing a ton of people.)
Alan
Even better yet, give them SSH access. Then they can port-forward to his mail server from the inside, where there are no open relay problems.
Slightly off topic, but could you (or anyone else) explain how to do this?
Currently, to send mail from my account at my university, I have to SSH in and use something like pine from the inside. I would much prefer to use my local mail client (KMail), even if I still have to establish an SSH connection first.
Alan
What a second. The linked article says that customers were double and triple billed. What did they get 4-6 spams instead of 2? Or is this statement wrong and there was a cost for the service?
It's a bit difficult to tell from the article. I took "customers" to mean the people for whom they were advertising, rather than the people to whom they were (not) providing DSL service.
Alan
This raises some scary possibilities, especially in parts of the world where reproduction is controlled by government (China) or families are encouraged to have male children. (Quite a bit of the world, actually.) Having a gender imbalance will do a number on women's rights.
Humans are odd. Among species that have a large male to female ratio (ants, bees, etc), the females are made queen. Though I agree with your implied assessment that tilting the ratio significantly in favor of males would probably result in oppressed females. Plus, it would make it even harder for a geek to get a date.
Alan
The common thread is that people wouldn't want to sacrifice content for a flashy web site, and that just shows their ignorance. These people don't realize that good design does not involve compromizes. Good design is about presenting the content in such a manner that the appearance enhances the content presentation, not distracts from it.
If all you want to do while on the web is watch things change color and move around the screen, then you are absolutely correct. However, what I want from the web is to be able to quickly find and digest any sort of information that exists subject to my whims. There are few things more frustrating than going to a web site, waiting for their flash intro to download, sitting through the intro, closing twenty popups, figuring out how their custom web GUI works, figuring out how to navigate to the information I want, and then realizing that they don't even have the information that I want (or indeed, any information at all).
If you want to make your web site pretty, then by all means do so! A pretty site is more enjoyable than an ugly one, if that is the only difference. But if you are trying to create art, rather than conveying information, you would probably be more successful with a different medium.
So yes, Virginia, you can have your cake and eat it too, provided that the web site is designed by a real graphic designer. Such an individual has both training and experience in creating designs that work.
A "real graphic designer" has no business creating a web site. They may design pictures, icons, and other such fluff to make a design more attractive, but optimizing information retrieval is a realm in which programmers accel.
Alan
Whatever you do, please try to use some form of valid HTML. You can very easily verify that your HTML is valid using the W3C Validator.
What is valid HTML? I suggest you check out The Web Design Group web page for extremely useful information on the topic. Also, the W3C web site has the definative specifications of HTML. Don't get tricked into thinking your WSIWYG editor is going to give you anything even close to resembling a valid HTML document. If you are even remotely seriously about doing a good job, you owe it to yourself to learn the standards.
At this point I would normally insert the comment that knowing the difference between valid HTML and invalid garbage marks the difference between a professional and a kid in a basement with FrontPage, but unfortunately the kids in the basements are producing more valid documents.
Yes, not many sites use valid HTML, but that is their problem. Don't make it yours. As an analogy -- a whole lot of big name commericial software products contain buffer overflow exploits, but that doesn't mean you should be lax about letting them into your code.
Finally. Design your content first, then make the web site fit the content. NEVER make the content fit the page, or all you will wind up with is a fancy (usually broken) design that ultimately just wastes everyone's time.
Alan
Try the Font Deuglification HOWTO.
You might find a more recent copy on linuxdoc.org, but they seem to be down at the moment.
Alan
I have to disagree with you on this point. A kernel is the software that manages a computer's resources. The operating SYSTEM is the software that allows you the base functionality necessary for installing applications and performing system administration. I believe that an operating system should include things like text editors, ftp/telnet clients, etc. My opinion sways on whether a web browser should be included in that list.
But, for example. If I sit down at your computer, and you tell me that it is running , then I expect to be able to type 'ls' and get a list of files, yet the shell I am using and the ls could also be considered applications. I personally consider them part of the operating system.
Alan
Why does everyone always get so caught up on browser issues? I rather think that nowadays a browser BELONGS in the basic application set distributed with an operating system.
There are plenty of other illegal and/or unethical practices that Microsoft is using. How come we never hear about those? Why is it always about the browser? I would dare say that the reason IE is popular is because all of its competition sucked at the time it was building its dominance.
So should the be allowed to include IE with Windows? I think so. I haven't yet formed an opinion on things like Media Player, MSN Messenger, etc, but I lean towards removing those. Where do we draw the line? I don't know. But the issue of those other included products never comes up (at least not in popular press. I don't know what happens in the court rooms.). And I never hear anything at all about other illegal practices not related to 'commingling'.
Can't they find something new to talk about besides the browser?
Alan
$startx -- :0 &
:1 &
$su - otherusername
$startx --
Granted, this isn't a "nice swapper interface", but you can certainly have multiple graphical environments active simultaneously.
Alan
I'd say that you are right on target about this.
I remember a picture from a science textbook way back in elementary school, labelled "Energy Pyramid". It had grasses and such at the bottom, with some rats on top of that, and on up until you got to things like eagles and such, which aren't normally consumed by other animals. It made the explicit point that as you move away from the primary producers into the secondary and tertiary consumers, a lot more energy per organism is required to sustain the population.
This is empirically supported if you just look at the relative bio-masses. What types of organisms do you see the most? Plants and algae. That is, primary producers, equivalent to "prey".
I am sure they are eminently more qualified to be conducting this experiment than I (if you can call it an experiment. It sounds more like a feature at Disney World to me.), but I would certainly like someone to explain how the expect 6 prey to stand up to 15 predators. It just doesn't make much sense. Perhaps they are just trying to make it something that will only last a day, for commercial reasons.
I'd also like to know (I didn't see anything in the article about it), if the predators are smart enough to go after each other when they get hungry enough.
Alan
is on Orion's website.
If you want the nuts and bolts on .NET, I'd say start here.
I haven't delved through this extensively, but after acclimatizing yourself to the way they lay things out, Microsoft's SDK documentation usually turns out to be pretty decent.
Alan
Isn't 2005 a bit late to be rolling out something like this? I know lots of people and have read lots of articles claiming that by 2005 we'll be well into our cashless society stage.
Heck, I'm 99% there already. My paychecks go directly to my bank, and all but a few of the things I buy I pay for with a credit card, the bill from which is later paid for with a check. To me, money is just a number on a hard drive somewhere. (scary? I don't think so. Ask me when that number gets changed to be horribly wrong, though.)
AJ
Dude, we're not angry about AOL, Hotmail, or online stores. These are all good things. The problem, in the eyes of hackers and general Slashdot visitors, is what has been brought with it. The commercialization of the internet has given rise to free web page services that only give you 2MB of space and 300MB of bandwidth per month, cable modem services that will disconnect you if you run anything even remotely resembling a server, and a greater feeling among non-tech-heads that any site that isn't run by a multinational corporation that already owns fourteen newspapers and three TV stations "isn't trustworthy".
I agree that, in general, people are not too angry that services like AOL, Hotmail, or online stores, exist. But I don't think your example of what was "brought with it" is a particularly apt one. I see no fault whatsoever in "free web page services that only give you 2MB of space and 300MB of bandwidth per month". They are free, so take what they give you and don't whine about it. Also, cable modems and other forms of home-based broadband aren't something people had in "the early days", and though most broadband providers are crap right now, I imagine most people would agree that having SOME broadband option is better than having NO broadband option.
There are two primary issues that I believe are the cause of most of the attitudes you will find. First is a perceived loss of culture. In the "old days" there was a certain lingo and level of technical aptitude with which you could speak, and you could generally expect people to understand you. The Internet was not yet very diverse in the type of person that could gain access, and as a natural result those who could gain access formed a somewhat tightly-knit culture. While much of this culture still exists (as evidenced by Slashdot, various newsgroups, etc), it is often harder to find the tech solaces due to increased noise. The exploring tech-guy who happens to wander into other subcultures of the internet could, understandably, feel out of place, which could be a particularly offensive feeling for those that helped to create the internet in the first place. It is this issue that usually leads to comments that people see as elistist or excluding. As for a solution, I can't really give any answers, as it seems more of a natural social phenomena than anything.
The second issue is the one that seems to really drive people nuts. That is the attempt by commercial interests to exert CONTROL over the internet. There are several commercial entities at work that would like to see the internet standards come under proprietary control. Others exist that would like to see (more) legislation passed to censor what we can read, write, and do on the internet. Many of the "original" gang saw the internet as the ultimate in presonal freedom (particularly free speech). Commercial interests quite often (usually) act in direct opposition to this concept. This is what aggrivates most of the old school internet junkies. The attitude I see is more or less "What right do these corporations have to tell me what I can do on MY internet. I was here first, not bothering anybody, and they came along and crashed my party." Again, I can't claim to have any real answers as to how to combat this (I do have ideas and opinions, but they are beyond the scope of this post), but I definately feel this is the more serious issue.
AJ
>
However, until you opened the matter compressor to see what happened, the cat would only be half black hole.
Alan