However, a blog where readers submit the stories and other readers approve the stories, and other readers comment on the stories, and other readers moderate those comments... now THAT is an interesting idea, indeed!
Those societal things are often why the various Asian nations tend not to make advances in science, medicine, and technology, though they may be the ones who best capitalize on it. Innovation, by definition, requires challenging the old order, the hierarchy. Confucian-type values make it very difficult to take this first step.
How many major, reasonably innovative (ie not a clone of Outlook) pieces of computer software (to take an example) are currently or were designed by an Asian (not an Asian American)? I can't think of one off the top of my head. Now how many are being coded by Asians (using design directives from non-Asians)?
This may sound horribly racist, but that is not the intent. If anything, it's pointing out a tension that exists between Confucianism and innovation. The fact that many persons "of Asian extraction" but who grew up in the West are great innovators indicates that it is not an issue of brain capacity; it is an issue of culturally-influenced psychology.
Traditionally, what often happens is an American company devises a technology but it's a Japanese company that brings it to fruition, often improving the underlying technology to make it more ready for the market.
There's a difference between the technology (DSL vs. cable) and the people who provide the service. YOu got a piece of shit ISP, plain and simple.
With my DSL, I pay $50/month, got a static IP, excellent uptime, and no TOS restrictions (short of a monthly upload limit of 2GB which I never came close to using up). The phone filters a slight pain in the ass, but that's the price you pay. Of course, I was with DirecTV DSL, so I'll have to go to crappier service now.... i wish SpeakEasy was available in my area.
Possible. However, the only two solutions that I've seen to the problem of an insecure PC playing a CD are:
Messing with the error correction to cause the hardware to report erroneous errors. This has the advantage of leaving the disc playable in non-error-checking players (which most, outside of mobile players, CD-ROM readers, and DVD players are). In this case, since it's the *hardware* that does the error checking, there's no way to get around it with software (short, perhaps, of reprogramming the error detection code of the reader). Any attempt to access the disc, afaict, will result in a read error being returned, not data from the disc.
Encrypting the content on the CD and authenticating. This allows the use of software and (barring something like DeCSS) prevents any unauthenticated playing. The downside is that this is completely unplayable except on CD-ROM readers.
Note that in my post, I specifically referred to "the data [sic] tracks" switching, implying a physical change in the medium (which is what the current anti-copy CDs do).
thats not necessarily true. CDs can play in normal cd players and not cdroms all the time...thats the biggest issue with copyprotection...its the datatracks that are corrupted which only cdrom drives read.
Very true, but how the hell could you have the data tracks switch between unplayable and playable states based on whether you agree to an EULA?
A proper business plan would have included a limit. For example, 10 Gigs for $50.
And that's what DirecTV DSL did... they do/did limit the amount of bandwidth you can use (2 GB uploads/month).
Re:Where are the $*#&@!!! real financials?
on
Mandrake News
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· Score: 2
Did you have a look to these figures before posting? I'm not a specialist in finances but it seems the following figures they provide sound "standard" financials at least in Europe:
That's true. Europe's standards of disclosure and accounting make WorldCom, Enron, Global Crossing, et al look like paragons of adequate disclosure. I hesitate to say that any of those stunts would even be illegal if those companies were in the EU.
It's really hilarious to see a European company go into contortions getting its books in order to trade on a US stock exchange (DaimlerChrysler comes to mind).
It's not my job to support their work or pay twice for an OS or product I've already paid for.
That's the case if you bought a boxed distro... then there's no real point in joining the Club (well, there are certain other privileges that you get, though whether they're worth it is questionable).
However, someone that downloads an ISO or performs a network install should, imho, join the Club.
Re:Record breaking bandwidth..
on
Mandrake News
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· Score: 1
In Soviet Russia, all your slashdot jokes are belong to us.
Isn't it more like "In Soviet Russia, all of us are belong to slashdot jokes?"
How much does Java matter on the desktop? Where are all those Java applets that would take over the web? Where are your Java-based office suites in wide use? Java is a backend technology, as is.Net and has the installed base advantage. Microsoft does not do well in invading areas where someone's already staked most of the claims, exceptions being Office suites (but do you remember how pitiful the first Windows versions of WP and 1-2-3 were?), web browsers (but MS didn't really start gaining market share until the 4.x generation, which, coincidentally was when Netscape became utter garbage in desperate need of major modifications (especially in the rendering engine)), and GUIs (where Apple seemed to have almost decided to fumble away a decade-plus head start while making every business blunder imaginable; no clones then clones after it was too late and they were doing more harm than good). Just as long as Sun and the others who have bet on Java don't put out crap products, they'll survive. Look at how Adobe has fended off Microsoft time and time again. Look at Autodesk. Hell, look at Macromedia.
Wouldn't a moderate number of 'Western' countries (North America, the EU, and a few others who might want to tag along) banning the sending of unsolicited mail and the marketing of tools and lists with which to do it make a serious impact on the amount of spam recieved
I doubt it. The vast majority of spam I receive is non-Western (various East Asian charsets).
Re:Just to remind people why more bits is good..
on
AMD's 64-bit Plot
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· Score: 2
I wouldn't be to sure about the 100 years part either. But it out to be good for at least 10.
32-bit was good for 10+ years. If memory demand is growing in some Moore's Law-like fashion (which is probably somewhat reasonable), 64-bit should be good for at least 20 years, though when you start the clock matters...
Dunno about Red Hat, but Mandrake offers several kernels, including kernel-linus which is a stock kernel.org kernel precompiled (with everything as a module that can be modularized... Mandrake uses an initrd containing an ext2 filesystem to hold all the non-ext2 fs modules)
Hmm...Because it takes so much more skill to `emerge traceroute` than it does to `rpm -Uvh traceroute-major-minor.rpm` or `apt-get install traceroute`?:)
Or even urpmi traceroute...;o)
Hell,./configure; make; make install isn't that difficult...
Speed. I am running a Gentoo system. The big advantage is that you get new packages pretty quickly. All the code can be compiled specifically for you processor
How much of an advantage do you see just from compiling for a specific CPU (especially an Athlon...), as opposed to say upping the -O level in gcc or passing certain options to the./configure scripts? Does the performance gain from having everything at the highest possible optimization outweigh the time spent compiling?
It would seem to me that comparatively few pieces of software would benefit from being custom compiled in the Gentoo style. First of all, gcc does a fairly poor job of optimizing for AMD K7 or recent Intel CPUs (post i586), which reduces any potential advantages. Further, how much does even total, perfect optimization for one CPU get you. For something like the kernel, glibc, or X, you would probably see a difference. Possibly KDE/Gnome would benefit. Crypto apps and libs would see a speedup. The GIMP: definitely, as well as perhaps the various image and video libraries. Mozilla, OpenOffice, maybe even XMMS, though, don't tend to benefit that much from being custom compiled, and to be honest, probably aren't even worth the compile times. With something as huge as KDE, which can take hours to compile, is the slight speedup worth it?
Gentoo is a nice concept, and everybody should probably play around with it (or even better, do Linux from Scratch...), but it's not necessarily one to build around.
Oh well, perhaps he's just the kind of person who gets mad at the drop of a hat, or perhaps his girlfriend dumped him for someone with better karma. =)
The FAQ says that there is no correlation between karma and penis/bra size, though...
I agree with much of what you said, except the part about Lars Ulrich being able to fill out paperwork or speak in plain English. If that's what it would take for Metallica to protect themselves, well, the future looks bright for pirates.;)
Slashdot Mirror
Kuro5hin, perhaps?
K5 is pretty good, but it's not a cure-all. K5 is mob rule and occasionally the mob gets out of hand...
53c0nd p057 too!
...it's generally done on the grounds that the law is so obtuse that the average juror wouldn't understand it...
Kind of makes you wonder why they don't simplify the law a little, don't it?
Those societal things are often why the various Asian nations tend not to make advances in science, medicine, and technology, though they may be the ones who best capitalize on it. Innovation, by definition, requires challenging the old order, the hierarchy. Confucian-type values make it very difficult to take this first step.
How many major, reasonably innovative (ie not a clone of Outlook) pieces of computer software (to take an example) are currently or were designed by an Asian (not an Asian American)? I can't think of one off the top of my head. Now how many are being coded by Asians (using design directives from non-Asians)?
This may sound horribly racist, but that is not the intent. If anything, it's pointing out a tension that exists between Confucianism and innovation. The fact that many persons "of Asian extraction" but who grew up in the West are great innovators indicates that it is not an issue of brain capacity; it is an issue of culturally-influenced psychology.
Traditionally, what often happens is an American company devises a technology but it's a Japanese company that brings it to fruition, often improving the underlying technology to make it more ready for the market.
Nice troll. I'll bite anyway.
There's a difference between the technology (DSL vs. cable) and the people who provide the service. YOu got a piece of shit ISP, plain and simple.
With my DSL, I pay $50/month, got a static IP, excellent uptime, and no TOS restrictions (short of a monthly upload limit of 2GB which I never came close to using up). The phone filters a slight pain in the ass, but that's the price you pay. Of course, I was with DirecTV DSL, so I'll have to go to crappier service now.... i wish SpeakEasy was available in my area.
Possible. However, the only two solutions that I've seen to the problem of an insecure PC playing a CD are:
Note that in my post, I specifically referred to "the data [sic] tracks" switching, implying a physical change in the medium (which is what the current anti-copy CDs do).
Very true, but how the hell could you have the data tracks switch between unplayable and playable states based on whether you agree to an EULA?
And that's what DirecTV DSL did... they do/did limit the amount of bandwidth you can use (2 GB uploads/month).
That's true. Europe's standards of disclosure and accounting make WorldCom, Enron, Global Crossing, et al look like paragons of adequate disclosure. I hesitate to say that any of those stunts would even be illegal if those companies were in the EU.
It's really hilarious to see a European company go into contortions getting its books in order to trade on a US stock exchange (DaimlerChrysler comes to mind).
That's the case if you bought a boxed distro... then there's no real point in joining the Club (well, there are certain other privileges that you get, though whether they're worth it is questionable).
However, someone that downloads an ISO or performs a network install should, imho, join the Club.
Isn't it more like "In Soviet Russia, all of us are belong to slashdot jokes?"
It's just chrisd... he seems incapable of going more than a few weeks at a time without utterly embarassing himself.
How much does Java matter on the desktop? Where are all those Java applets that would take over the web? Where are your Java-based office suites in wide use? Java is a backend technology, as is .Net and has the installed base advantage. Microsoft does not do well in invading areas where someone's already staked most of the claims, exceptions being Office suites (but do you remember how pitiful the first Windows versions of WP and 1-2-3 were?), web browsers (but MS didn't really start gaining market share until the 4.x generation, which, coincidentally was when Netscape became utter garbage in desperate need of major modifications (especially in the rendering engine)), and GUIs (where Apple seemed to have almost decided to fumble away a decade-plus head start while making every business blunder imaginable; no clones then clones after it was too late and they were doing more harm than good). Just as long as Sun and the others who have bet on Java don't put out crap products, they'll survive. Look at how Adobe has fended off Microsoft time and time again. Look at Autodesk. Hell, look at Macromedia.
That is true. There are too many questions of free speech involved, though that rarely stops the Congress from doing anything.
I doubt it. The vast majority of spam I receive is non-Western (various East Asian charsets).
32-bit was good for 10+ years. If memory demand is growing in some Moore's Law-like fashion (which is probably somewhat reasonable), 64-bit should be good for at least 20 years, though when you start the clock matters...
Dunno about Red Hat, but Mandrake offers several kernels, including kernel-linus which is a stock kernel.org kernel precompiled (with everything as a module that can be modularized... Mandrake uses an initrd containing an ext2 filesystem to hold all the non-ext2 fs modules)
Or even urpmi traceroute... ;o)
Hell, ./configure; make; make install isn't that difficult...
How much of an advantage do you see just from compiling for a specific CPU (especially an Athlon...), as opposed to say upping the -O level in gcc or passing certain options to the ./configure scripts? Does the performance gain from having everything at the highest possible optimization outweigh the time spent compiling?
It would seem to me that comparatively few pieces of software would benefit from being custom compiled in the Gentoo style. First of all, gcc does a fairly poor job of optimizing for AMD K7 or recent Intel CPUs (post i586), which reduces any potential advantages. Further, how much does even total, perfect optimization for one CPU get you. For something like the kernel, glibc, or X, you would probably see a difference. Possibly KDE/Gnome would benefit. Crypto apps and libs would see a speedup. The GIMP: definitely, as well as perhaps the various image and video libraries. Mozilla, OpenOffice, maybe even XMMS, though, don't tend to benefit that much from being custom compiled, and to be honest, probably aren't even worth the compile times. With something as huge as KDE, which can take hours to compile, is the slight speedup worth it?
Gentoo is a nice concept, and everybody should probably play around with it (or even better, do Linux from Scratch...), but it's not necessarily one to build around.
The FAQ says that there is no correlation between karma and penis/bra size, though...
:o)
...do commercials featuring ALF and Emmitt Smith?
Never mind... that's 10-10-220.
Mod that up as funny and insightful!
Also, how much synergy between the black holes can be leveraged to deliver greater shareholder value?
Opera 6.1 (at least for Linux) offers one-button disabling of all plugins on a per-window basis.