You could have bothered to look up the current record which is at 256 words per minute. There are several documented cases of people typing over 200 wpm. An average over 150 wpm is nice but it's not going to get you the record.
I've been using IPv6 for over 10 years and scans are very rare. I've just checked this months logs and I cannot find a single attempt to connect to ssh from an unknown host (it has happened in the past). I think that if that machine didn't have an 'easy' IPv6 adress but a randomly generated one it would never have happened.
Don't live there or accept the consequences. Every place of residence has its disadvantages. If you want to live far away from other humans you should be willing to spend a lot of time and money on shopping.
This argument is raised in any discussion that touches on cars or gas prices. The situation is about to get unsustainable. Somebody will get hurt over this. The longer the inevitable is delayed, the more people will get into trouble. It's time to start fixing. Slowly raise taxes on gas and use the money to improve the situation. Create bike lanes. Promote cycling. Improve the public transportation system. Convince people to live closer to their work.
It is because many IT-types got into computers because they couldn't stop messing with the settings. Tweaking a computer to (personal) perfection is something many Slashdot-readers can relate to.
The mere fact that Valve has a slot on the Ubuntu Developer Summit should have been a clue that they are actually working on supporting Linux. While rumours about this have existed for years we our now beyond the rumour stage. Valve does not try to hide it. In fact you can register for their beta-program right now.
Valve is one of the most influential companies in the gaming world. If they speak people will listen. This single statement will cause thousands of gamers to check out Linux.
This is a market that is willing to spend hundreds of dollars and hours of tweaking to gain a few percent more performance. Any rumour about a better system will cause a flood of gamers that want to be the first to get the advantage.
The laws of physics won't change, the average response-time of a car will. A human driver needs about 100ms to respond. But people are not always attentive so the traffic system is designed with 300-500ms response times in mind. Suppose that a computer-driver can guarantee to respond within 1ms. It could go through the curve much closer to the optimum than any human can achieve. Obviously there will always be limits, but computers can get us much closer to them.
You have to remember that Microsoft's main European headquarters is in Dublin in Ireland, and hence operates in Euros. The quantitative easing of the pound means that the UK goods become cheaper to export, and that conversely, it becomes more expensive for UK-ians to import good from abroad. In this case, it has become 33% more expensive for them to import MS software from Ireland.
Which raises the question: Why should Microsoft continue to choose Dublin as their main European base of operations if this is the kind of price hikes they will be forced to impose on perhaps their single largest European market? Low corporation tax rates? Not if that treaty gets passed sunshine.
This is less a problem for Microsoft--who can move around--than it is for Ireland, which is rapidly becoming unattractive to high tech industries who, due to the falling US and UK currencies, are seeing their costs soar in Dublin.
But where would they move to? Irelad is considered a tax-paradise. The only reason for having headquarters over there is the low tax-rate. If they move they will have to increase prices even further.
There is a significant number of games on Steam that have an official Linux version. Obviously that's only a fraction of the total, but it's a lot more than just the Source-games. Having all these games available through a single interface and through a single payment-processor might be enough to reach a critical mass.
Whatever way you look at it, the days of Wintel as the only platform that matters are over. It will be the most important platform for years to come, but it will end at some point. Any company that is tightly coupled to Windows should at least consider a future without it. Having a Linux-port may be a huge advantage in the future. As any company can hire a linux-hacker, the number of OS-developers working on Linux far outweighs the other platforms combined (especially if you count Android as Linux). Even if the OS of the future is not Linux-as-we-know-it, chances are that it will be heavily influenced by the current crop of Linux-developers.
When Steam was ported to the Mac the (absolute) number of mac-users was probably lower than the current Linux-userbase. Besides, Linux is what the more, ehm, fanatical users are using. Mac OS/ iOS users on the other hand tend to be more casual about gaming. Having the extreme gamers on you side could be a great advantage.
Personally I think Valve cannot afford not to do this, even if it turns out te be failure. Desura has been offering their product on Linux for month. If Valve doesn't step up they will loose the Linux market to Desura before the fight even started. If Desura becomes a hit on Linux it might challenge Steam on other platforms. The entire demonstration seems to be too good to be true. I think it's FUD to keep Linux-users away from Desura. If they can keep up this sherade for a few month Desura will go out of bussiness.
Some further remarks. We know that Valve employs a number of Linux programmers for the server-part of the games. It has also been suggested that the Steam-backend runs on Linux. We also know that Left4dead has contained Linux-bits right from the start. It might be the case that one of the backend-programmers continued the Linux port as a hobby, just like Doom was ported to Linux by a single guy with some free time.
I generally like Valve and I really hope that they are serious, but a few years of waiting has made me a bit sceptical.
I agree that it SHOULDN'T be a hard problem....but it is, at least from what I've seen the IPV6 routers frankly have NOT been very user friendly. Sadly it looks like it'll be the 80s all over again as it takes awhile for common sense designs to come out and until then its gonna be a royal clusterfuck.
While I agree with your opinion it's not going to change anything. New technologies are always hard at first. Most routers with IPv6 are high-end routers targeted at people that read Slashdot, not the average home-user. Yes, it's a mess, but nothing that people buying such routers are not able to deal with. The few people that actually use IPv6 at home tend to make a very conscious decision on what router to buy. By the time that ISPs start rolling out IPv6 to consumers they will select an appropriate router for their customers.
You do realize that almost every NAT-box also runs a firewall? Consumers don't see it because it is linked to the NAT interface. Whenever they 'forward' a port, the firewall is also adjusted to let this port through. Heck, in Linux (which all of those routers seem to use) NAT is special case of firewalling, both are managed with iptables. Granted, consumers have a lot of trouble with port-forwarding, but (only) using a firewall will not make this any more difficult and might even simplify things a bit.
The elephant in the room is that if you use a firewall you'll loose end-to-end-connectivity, which was supposed to be one of the big advantages of IPv6.
There are always desperate people around. Hunger is a very strong motivational tool. It sucks that people screwed up, but being an ass about it is not going to change that retroactively.
I'm sure there are more constructive ways to protest than stripping in an airport in front of people. As is the TSA screener has any power... "Oh, this guy with his wang hanging out... he really put a new perspective on things for me... I've got to take this straight to the top!" [snip] This was a completely ineffective protest.
I disagree. Convincing TSA screeners is pointless. They are just low-payed employees with no influence whatsover. Protesting is about getting attention for your cause from the masses. As this story is on Slashdot I think he succeeded and that his protest was very effective.
Allready happening. A few weeks ago the Dutch media were portraying TOR as the new Sodom & Gomorra of the Internet. Questions have been asked in parliament about blocking TOR. Ofcourse the media only focus on the downsides of having a truly anonymous network and not on the reasons of building such a network in the first place.
Interesting read, but it's a strawman. He first twists the observation and than goes on to debunk it. Increased efficiency will not make us spend more all by itself. Because it is more efficient it will be cheaper. Therefor we will buy more of it. That does not mean that we will spend more on it.
It's the same mistake the content-distribution-industry makes. If the price of content goes down we will use more of it, but as long as our salaries are not increased we will not spend any more on content.
Imagine if instead of the pirate bay running this, the music labels were. "We've decided to stop paying artists entirely, that is up to them. From now on we expect them to largely give their work away for free, and will offer some advertising for the first 5000 to sign up". I wonder how we'd react?
For many musicians that has been the case for decades. They need(ed) the companies to distribute and promote their work but that leaves so little money for the artists that many are effectively giving their work away for free. Sure, in return they get promotion and attention, but isn't that exactly what the Piratebay is doing, but without the overhead?
Besides all the privacy issues there is another reason to refuse: security.
I try to avoid typing passwords on any computer that I do not fully control. There is a real chance that the computer is infected with some kind of spyware. For my own systems I use two-factor authentication in the rare cases that I truly need remote access from somebody else's computer. Unfortunately that is not possible with Facebook. While my Facebook account/password by itself is of little value, it could be used in a social engineering attack. Besides that it would break my habit of not typing passwords on other peoples computer.
Any job that I would apply for would (should) appreciate this position.
This guy is one of the best teachers the old system has to offer, as demonstrated by his awards. He and the old system fit well together. Changing anything is likely to lower his performance. That does not say anything about all those other teachers that may be less 'optimized' for the current system.
IMHO the most important part of a lecture is that you have to be physically in the same room with no option but to listen to the teacher. Even if you are not focused you will still hear most of what he says.
It has not always been like that. For many years installing Linux on a laptop was painfull because laptops used a lot of non-standard hardware. Right now tablets are in the same boat. There are many suppliers and manufacturers take all kinds of shortcuts, using anything they can get away with. As they have total control over both hardware and software there is no incentive to use standards. That will come in a few years when the current startups realize they need to support and maintain their old hardware.
Slashdot Mirror
You could have bothered to look up the current record which is at 256 words per minute. There are several documented cases of people typing over 200 wpm. An average over 150 wpm is nice but it's not going to get you the record.
I've been using IPv6 for over 10 years and scans are very rare. I've just checked this months logs and I cannot find a single attempt to connect to ssh from an unknown host (it has happened in the past). I think that if that machine didn't have an 'easy' IPv6 adress but a randomly generated one it would never have happened.
Don't live there or accept the consequences. Every place of residence has its disadvantages. If you want to live far away from other humans you should be willing to spend a lot of time and money on shopping.
This argument is raised in any discussion that touches on cars or gas prices. The situation is about to get unsustainable. Somebody will get hurt over this. The longer the inevitable is delayed, the more people will get into trouble. It's time to start fixing. Slowly raise taxes on gas and use the money to improve the situation. Create bike lanes. Promote cycling. Improve the public transportation system. Convince people to live closer to their work.
It is because many IT-types got into computers because they couldn't stop messing with the settings. Tweaking a computer to (personal) perfection is something many Slashdot-readers can relate to.
The mere fact that Valve has a slot on the Ubuntu Developer Summit should have been a clue that they are actually working on supporting Linux. While rumours about this have existed for years we our now beyond the rumour stage. Valve does not try to hide it. In fact you can register for their beta-program right now.
Valve is one of the most influential companies in the gaming world. If they speak people will listen.
This single statement will cause thousands of gamers to check out Linux.
This is a market that is willing to spend hundreds of dollars and hours of tweaking to gain a few percent more performance. Any rumour about a better system will cause a flood of gamers that want to be the first to get the advantage.
Hmm...as a man, I've yet to be harmed by this "sex weapon". Do you need a license for it?
Only if you want to carry it unconcealed.
If all cars were computerdriven none would ever break the speed-limit. This would take away the incentive to do speed checking at all.
The laws of physics won't change, the average response-time of a car will. A human driver needs about 100ms to respond. But people are not always attentive so the traffic system is designed with 300-500ms response times in mind. Suppose that a computer-driver can guarantee to respond within 1ms. It could go through the curve much closer to the optimum than any human can achieve. Obviously there will always be limits, but computers can get us much closer to them.
You have to remember that Microsoft's main European headquarters is in Dublin in Ireland, and hence operates in Euros. The quantitative easing of the pound means that the UK goods become cheaper to export, and that conversely, it becomes more expensive for UK-ians to import good from abroad. In this case, it has become 33% more expensive for them to import MS software from Ireland.
Which raises the question: Why should Microsoft continue to choose Dublin as their main European base of operations if this is the kind of price hikes they will be forced to impose on perhaps their single largest European market? Low corporation tax rates? Not if that treaty gets passed sunshine.
This is less a problem for Microsoft--who can move around--than it is for Ireland, which is rapidly becoming unattractive to high tech industries who, due to the falling US and UK currencies, are seeing their costs soar in Dublin.
But where would they move to? Irelad is considered a tax-paradise. The only reason for having headquarters over there is the low tax-rate. If they move they will have to increase prices even further.
There is a significant number of games on Steam that have an official Linux version. Obviously that's only a fraction of the total, but it's a lot more than just the Source-games. Having all these games available through a single interface and through a single payment-processor might be enough to reach a critical mass.
Whatever way you look at it, the days of Wintel as the only platform that matters are over. It will be the most important platform for years to come, but it will end at some point. Any company that is tightly coupled to Windows should at least consider a future without it. Having a Linux-port may be a huge advantage in the future. As any company can hire a linux-hacker, the number of OS-developers working on Linux far outweighs the other platforms combined (especially if you count Android as Linux). Even if the OS of the future is not Linux-as-we-know-it, chances are that it will be heavily influenced by the current crop of Linux-developers.
When Steam was ported to the Mac the (absolute) number of mac-users was probably lower than the current Linux-userbase. Besides, Linux is what the more, ehm, fanatical users are using. Mac OS/ iOS users on the other hand tend to be more casual about gaming. Having the extreme gamers on you side could be a great advantage.
Personally I think Valve cannot afford not to do this, even if it turns out te be failure. Desura has been offering their product on Linux for month. If Valve doesn't step up they will loose the Linux market to Desura before the fight even started. If Desura becomes a hit on Linux it might challenge Steam on other platforms.
The entire demonstration seems to be too good to be true. I think it's FUD to keep Linux-users away from Desura. If they can keep up this sherade for a few month Desura will go out of bussiness.
Some further remarks. We know that Valve employs a number of Linux programmers for the server-part of the games. It has also been suggested that the Steam-backend runs on Linux. We also know that Left4dead has contained Linux-bits right from the start. It might be the case that one of the backend-programmers continued the Linux port as a hobby, just like Doom was ported to Linux by a single guy with some free time.
I generally like Valve and I really hope that they are serious, but a few years of waiting has made me a bit sceptical.
I agree that it SHOULDN'T be a hard problem....but it is, at least from what I've seen the IPV6 routers frankly have NOT been very user friendly. Sadly it looks like it'll be the 80s all over again as it takes awhile for common sense designs to come out and until then its gonna be a royal clusterfuck.
While I agree with your opinion it's not going to change anything. New technologies are always hard at first. Most routers with IPv6 are high-end routers targeted at people that read Slashdot, not the average home-user. Yes, it's a mess, but nothing that people buying such routers are not able to deal with. The few people that actually use IPv6 at home tend to make a very conscious decision on what router to buy.
By the time that ISPs start rolling out IPv6 to consumers they will select an appropriate router for their customers.
You do realize that almost every NAT-box also runs a firewall?
Consumers don't see it because it is linked to the NAT interface. Whenever they 'forward' a port, the firewall is also adjusted to let this port through. Heck, in Linux (which all of those routers seem to use) NAT is special case of firewalling, both are managed with iptables. Granted, consumers have a lot of trouble with port-forwarding, but (only) using a firewall will not make this any more difficult and might even simplify things a bit.
The elephant in the room is that if you use a firewall you'll loose end-to-end-connectivity, which was supposed to be one of the big advantages of IPv6.
It's called i2p: http://www.i2p2.de/
There are always desperate people around. Hunger is a very strong motivational tool. It sucks that people screwed up, but being an ass about it is not going to change that retroactively.
I'm sure there are more constructive ways to protest than stripping in an airport in front of people. As is the TSA screener has any power... "Oh, this guy with his wang hanging out... he really put a new perspective on things for me... I've got to take this straight to the top!"
[snip]
This was a completely ineffective protest.
I disagree. Convincing TSA screeners is pointless. They are just low-payed employees with no influence whatsover. Protesting is about getting attention for your cause from the masses. As this story is on Slashdot I think he succeeded and that his protest was very effective.
Allready happening. A few weeks ago the Dutch media were portraying TOR as the new Sodom & Gomorra of the Internet. Questions have been asked in parliament about blocking TOR. Ofcourse the media only focus on the downsides of having a truly anonymous network and not on the reasons of building such a network in the first place.
Interesting read, but it's a strawman. He first twists the observation and than goes on to debunk it.
Increased efficiency will not make us spend more all by itself.
Because it is more efficient it will be cheaper. Therefor we will buy more of it. That does not mean that we will spend more on it.
It's the same mistake the content-distribution-industry makes. If the price of content goes down we will use more of it, but as long as our salaries are not increased we will not spend any more on content.
Imagine if instead of the pirate bay running this, the music labels were. "We've decided to stop paying artists entirely, that is up to them. From now on we expect them to largely give their work away for free, and will offer some advertising for the first 5000 to sign up". I wonder how we'd react?
For many musicians that has been the case for decades. They need(ed) the companies to distribute and promote their work but that leaves so little money for the artists that many are effectively giving their work away for free. Sure, in return they get promotion and attention, but isn't that exactly what the Piratebay is doing, but without the overhead?
I can't figure out if these people are stupid, incompetent or both. Is there any way in which they can make themselves seem any less sympathetic?
You can get very reasonable results by just taking last years results. This works for most sports.
Besides all the privacy issues there is another reason to refuse: security.
I try to avoid typing passwords on any computer that I do not fully control. There is a real chance that the computer is infected with some kind of spyware. For my own systems I use two-factor authentication in the rare cases that I truly need remote access from somebody else's computer.
Unfortunately that is not possible with Facebook. While my Facebook account/password by itself is of little value, it could be used in a social engineering attack. Besides that it would break my habit of not typing passwords on other peoples computer.
Any job that I would apply for would (should) appreciate this position.
This guy is one of the best teachers the old system has to offer, as demonstrated by his awards. He and the old system fit well together. Changing anything is likely to lower his performance. That does not say anything about all those other teachers that may be less 'optimized' for the current system.
IMHO the most important part of a lecture is that you have to be physically in the same room with no option but to listen to the teacher. Even if you are not focused you will still hear most of what he says.
It has not always been like that. For many years installing Linux on a laptop was painfull because laptops used a lot of non-standard hardware. Right now tablets are in the same boat. There are many suppliers and manufacturers take all kinds of shortcuts, using anything they can get away with. As they have total control over both hardware and software there is no incentive to use standards. That will come in a few years when the current startups realize they need to support and maintain their old hardware.