Why is that so surprising? Is the assumption anyone over the age of 22&1/2 is too dim to get open source? Or are we all assumed to be sterile or gay or something?
Oh man! Thanks for making my day! My dad bought that *exact* car (color and all) when we were kids and used it to tow us and a camper all around the 5 great lakes on a 3-month oddessy of camping, poison ivy and broken bones (brother fell at Warren Dunes in Michigan and broke his collar bone).
Geez, never thought I'd see one again. That POS promptly turned into a scabbed, scaly pile of rusing sheet metal and groaning iron about 2 &1/2 years after it was purchased. I've never seen any model of car go to rust as quickly as a 70's Ford Torino.
Yeah, I'm usually wary of clicking links from AC's without looking in the status bar to see what the actual URL is. I notice that my karma went up a point as well after that... Taco is a sick dude if slash has something that says
>I think one thing that needs to stop is the unprofessional behavior by some of the Slashdot staff.
I think this is where you are damned if you do, damned if you don't. Rob is Rob, he has rough edges, a properly inflated ego and a potty mouth. So what?
One of the big questions when Andover bought/. that I remember was if things were going to change a lot. Was Rob going to take a back seat and a bunch of suits come in to run the site. IIRC, we were told that/. would remain somewhat autonomous and Rob and Jeff would pretty much keep on doing what they were doing (which, afterall is what made/. successful in the first place, why screw with it?)
Seeing Rob on IRC blasting Signal 11 and making other "unprofessional" remarks serves, if nothing else, to demonstrate that Rob is pretty much Rob and he doesn't filter himself for Andover or PR or anything.
If Rob were to 'go straight' and start being "professional" there would no doubt be a howl from the readers that Rob had become a corp drone. For my money,/. is a very colorful place, reflecting Rob's personality to a degree -- I don't really see any reason for it to be otherwise.
>If you could create a difference in the speed of magnetic currents, then you could create lift
But I thought the principle behind an airfoil was that air moving over the top surface faster than those moving over the bottom created a pressure differential compared to the surrounding atmosphere which resulted in lift.
I don't know how that would equate to magnetic/gravitational effects in a vacuum. The solar particles hitting the sail are transferring their energy to the vehicle. The craft accelerates as a result of particles running into the sail. Having them travel past the sail at different speeds on opposite sides doesn't seem to lend itself to creating propulstion via magnetic/gravitational differentials.
>I used to value my Karma, but I really don't anymore. It's just a number.
I agree. The whole karma system was kind of interesting at first to see some kind of tangible feedback to your comments. Getting the bonus point and being able to moderate and watching your posts to see if they are replied to and/or moderated added a little something to/.
But now it becomes this little game that some people play to mess with others and to attach a number to their self-worth. I agree that sig appears to attach _way_ too much importance to slashdot and it appears to be out of some need to validate himself.
From his user-page:
It seems my lasting legacy on Slashdot is in the
moderation system.
I think when he was the "poster boy for the moderation system" he got a sense of self-importance. When Taco somewhat neutralized the karma issue by placing the cap, it took away some of sig's impact here and with that he decided to move over to K5 where seems to want to rebuild his status and standing. More power to him.
He also mentions the old bitchslapping incident:
When Malda's solution to unfair moderation
was the "bitchslap" - a practice whereby someone's karma is set to -50, and their
default posting score to -1, was first used, I spoke with some of the people who it
had happened to. People accused me of being the cause. After a lot of research and
talking to Rob, I managed to get a couple of those accounts placed back at 0 karma
and they were able to post again and be seen. Nobody really bothered to thank me.
For the record, I was one of the ones who got my account crippled for moderation abuse. I didn't blame him, but I also didn't thank him for having anything to do with getting this account restored. I did that on my own by e-mailing Taco. All sig appeared to do was misrepresent the facts of the matter.
Karma doesn't/shouldn't really matter. Having something interesting to say should.
one could coin a term for this - when people die and then a law or regulation or somesuch gets enacted after the fact to prevent future incidents, I think they call is 'tombstone legislation' or something like that.
so - what can we call it when Microsoft develops a security patch only after 'billions' of damage is caused by a, er, 'issue' (gaping security hole)?
a)Tombstone Security b)Innovation Restriction c)Microsoft Update d)none of the above - you suck
(well, there probably could have been a good joke there, but it's too early and I'm far too coffee-deficient to do better at this point):-(
>Seriously, who has the right to claim rights to the human genome.
Unless I've missed something, the discussion is around patenting the process for sequencing, not the sequence itself. The analogy I've heard is like union carbide patenting the process for cracking long-chain molecular compounds into simpler compounds which can be sold commercially. Now, they don't own every molecule on earth that matches the ones they have been able to refine, but anyone who wants to produce "Chemical X" using Union Carbide's patented process would have to pay a license. (note, I'm not a chemist or anything so forgive me if I've mangled the terminology somehow)
Ah, humor - yes... we are becoming somewhat familiar with this concept on our planet. Unfortunately, we have been studying the 'historical documents' of your slashdot for only a short time and have only observed the most highly-rated documents as examples of your humor, and so... we are confused. Signal 11, you are our last hope!
I disagree. "Think Different" is perfectly appropriate for Linux. You have different distributions, different architectures supported, different OEM's offering pre-installed machines and support, as well as different developers from all over the world writing software to run on GNU/Linux systems.:p
(Not to mention the fact that most of the people who use Linux tend to be, shall we say... "Different"):]
hmmm... is www.malign.net (aka malign.penguinpowered.com) down or/.'ed? I'd love to see that picture but I can't seem to reach the server right now.:-(
I got no karma back. I emailed taco about this and they 'fixed' my account so my posts no longer default to -1. All my posts previous to May 10 are marked offtopic with a score of -1. All the posts I made from Tursday until this morning started at -1, some of them were modded up. Any karma I have now is the result of moderation to posts I made since May 10 starting at -10 karma.
Follow the link in my.sig if you want to read more boring details.
Oh, yeah, well look what happened! Enough fallout from those tests caused genetic mutations in local reptiles resulting in a single, gigantic, really pissed lizard that ended up being in a really bad movie with Matthew Broderick!:-)
Hmm, well the moon isn't a planet and I'm not sure how much lasting damage you could really do since there is no atmosphere. But, I agree -- blasting the moon to make a point seems to demonstrate a calous disregard for nature.
But then, remember the setting for this. We were in a situation where we were routinely detonating nuclear tests on our own planet. Think they were worried about messing up the moon?
Even Carl Sagan was more interested in possible science from this than potential damage:
"At the time scientists still believed there might be microbial life on the moon and Sagan had suggested a nuclear explosion might be used to detect organisms."
So is the propulsion design based (in part at least) on assumptions about the number of hydrogen atoms in inter-solar space?
Thought I remembered an article not too long ago about some of this theorized 'dark matter' being found. Would be interesting if this solar sail vehicle were to encounter conditions that were unknown/unexpected and forced us to change some of our fundamental assumptions about space.
> I've already apologized to Dave for not talking with him before publishing my article, so that I could have gotten more of an inside view of how they now view their business.
Well, that's kind of reassuring that O'Reilly appears to be taking some personal accountability for this. Marks him up in my book as having the integrity munch a little crow in public.
The devil's advocate reply to this is if it were not for slash being acquired by Andover/VA Linux, Microsoft may not have cared. Why? Figure that since a recently-gone-public corp might be queasy about taking on Microsoft and perhaps Microsoft miscalculated that VA mgmt would cave and pull the posts rather than risk an expensive and disruptive legal battle.
I submit that it might be exactly because slashdot is now owned by a public company that Microsoft chose to make a public stand by demanding that the 'infringing' material and posts be removed.
What real benefit does Microsoft hope to gain? They can't really think that getting a few posts removed is really going to hide their spec, or stop anyone from finding out how to get around the EULA? No, I figure that they wanted to make a public point, and were counting on VA rolling over.
(too bad my posts default to -1; no one will ever see this:( )
Slashdot Mirror
Yep, Son 7 and daughter 4.
Why is that so surprising? Is the assumption anyone over the age of 22&1/2 is too dim to get open source? Or are we all assumed to be sterile or gay or something?
Oh man! Thanks for making my day! My dad bought that *exact* car (color and all) when we were kids and used it to tow us and a camper all around the 5 great lakes on a 3-month oddessy of camping, poison ivy and broken bones (brother fell at Warren Dunes in Michigan and broke his collar bone).
Geez, never thought I'd see one again. That POS promptly turned into a scabbed, scaly pile of rusing sheet metal and groaning iron about 2 &1/2 years after it was purchased. I've never seen any model of car go to rust as quickly as a 70's Ford Torino.
Thanks for the flashback.
Yeah, I'm usually wary of clicking links from AC's without looking in the status bar to see what the actual URL is. I notice that my karma went up a point as well after that... Taco is a sick dude if slash has something that says
if (URL == goatse.cx) {
++user.karma
}
But I guess I wouldn't put it past him.
>Who's the black private dick, who's a sex machine for all the chicks?
Steeeve Dahl! (sorry, Chicago radio personality reference. Seeing that made me have a sudden flashback to 1984 growing up in Chicago Heights.)
Oh, you got me! Damn you (fscking troll)
I think the "hard" data you are looking for is/are probably here or here.
>I think one thing that needs to stop is the unprofessional behavior by some of the Slashdot staff.
/. that I remember was if things were going to change a lot. Was Rob going to take a back seat and a bunch of suits come in to run the site. IIRC, we were told that /. would remain somewhat autonomous and Rob and Jeff would pretty much keep on doing what they were doing (which, afterall is what made /. successful in the first place, why screw with it?)
/. is a very colorful place, reflecting Rob's personality to a degree -- I don't really see any reason for it to be otherwise.
I think this is where you are damned if you do, damned if you don't. Rob is Rob, he has rough edges, a properly inflated ego and a potty mouth. So what?
One of the big questions when Andover bought
Seeing Rob on IRC blasting Signal 11 and making other "unprofessional" remarks serves, if nothing else, to demonstrate that Rob is pretty much Rob and he doesn't filter himself for Andover or PR or anything.
If Rob were to 'go straight' and start being "professional" there would no doubt be a howl from the readers that Rob had become a corp drone. For my money,
>If you could create a difference in the speed of magnetic currents, then you could create lift
But I thought the principle behind an airfoil was that air moving over the top surface faster than those moving over the bottom created a pressure differential compared to the surrounding atmosphere which resulted in lift.
I don't know how that would equate to magnetic/gravitational effects in a vacuum. The solar particles hitting the sail are transferring their energy to the vehicle. The craft accelerates as a result of particles running into the sail. Having them travel past the sail at different speeds on opposite sides doesn't seem to lend itself to creating propulstion via magnetic/gravitational differentials.
Then again IANARS (I am not a rocket scientist)
I agree. The whole karma system was kind of interesting at first to see some kind of tangible feedback to your comments. Getting the bonus point and being able to moderate and watching your posts to see if they are replied to and/or moderated added a little something to /.
But now it becomes this little game that some people play to mess with others and to attach a number to their self-worth. I agree that sig appears to attach _way_ too much importance to slashdot and it appears to be out of some need to validate himself.
From his user-page:
It seems my lasting legacy on Slashdot is in the moderation system.
I think when he was the "poster boy for the moderation system" he got a sense of self-importance. When Taco somewhat neutralized the karma issue by placing the cap, it took away some of sig's impact here and with that he decided to move over to K5 where seems to want to rebuild his status and standing. More power to him.
He also mentions the old bitchslapping incident:
When Malda's solution to unfair moderation was the "bitchslap" - a practice whereby someone's karma is set to -50, and their default posting score to -1, was first used, I spoke with some of the people who it had happened to. People accused me of being the cause. After a lot of research and talking to Rob, I managed to get a couple of those accounts placed back at 0 karma and they were able to post again and be seen. Nobody really bothered to thank me.
For the record, I was one of the ones who got my account crippled for moderation abuse. I didn't blame him, but I also didn't thank him for having anything to do with getting this account restored. I did that on my own by e-mailing Taco. All sig appeared to do was misrepresent the facts of the matter.
Karma doesn't/shouldn't really matter. Having something interesting to say should.
nope, he is just a jackass
Heh, exactly what I was thinking
:-(
one could coin a term for this - when people die and then a law or regulation or somesuch gets enacted after the fact to prevent future incidents, I think they call is 'tombstone legislation' or something like that.
so - what can we call it when Microsoft develops a security patch only after 'billions' of damage is caused by a, er, 'issue' (gaping security hole)?
a)Tombstone Security
b)Innovation Restriction
c)Microsoft Update
d)none of the above - you suck
(well, there probably could have been a good joke there, but it's too early and I'm far too coffee-deficient to do better at this point)
Unless I've missed something, the discussion is around patenting the process for sequencing, not the sequence itself. The analogy I've heard is like union carbide patenting the process for cracking long-chain molecular compounds into simpler compounds which can be sold commercially. Now, they don't own every molecule on earth that matches the ones they have been able to refine, but anyone who wants to produce "Chemical X" using Union Carbide's patented process would have to pay a license. (note, I'm not a chemist or anything so forgive me if I've mangled the terminology somehow)
Ah, humor - yes... we are becoming somewhat familiar with this concept on our planet. Unfortunately, we have been studying the 'historical documents' of your slashdot for only a short time and have only observed the most highly-rated documents as examples of your humor, and so... we are confused. Signal 11, you are our last hope!
I disagree. "Think Different" is perfectly appropriate for Linux. You have different distributions, different architectures supported, different OEM's offering pre-installed machines and support, as well as different developers from all over the world writing software to run on GNU/Linux systems. :p
:]
(Not to mention the fact that most of the people who use Linux tend to be, shall we say... "Different")
hmmm... is www.malign.net (aka malign.penguinpowered.com) down or /.'ed? I'd love to see that picture but I can't seem to reach the server right now. :-(
>It is not safe to mod sig down.
;-)
Actually, as long as you don't brand him a troll, you are probably ok.
I got no karma back. I emailed taco about this and they 'fixed' my account so my posts no longer default to -1. All my posts previous to May 10 are marked offtopic with a score of -1. All the posts I made from Tursday until this morning started at -1, some of them were modded up. Any karma I have now is the result of moderation to posts I made since May 10 starting at -10 karma.
.sig if you want to read more boring details.
Follow the link in my
I've fallen off of several lusty boxes, but I've never been hurt. Your advice makes no sense.
sure, but only the moderators who haven't been bitchslapped
Oh, yeah, well look what happened! Enough fallout from those tests caused genetic mutations in local reptiles resulting in a single, gigantic, really pissed lizard that ended up being in a really bad movie with Matthew Broderick! :-)
Hmm, well the moon isn't a planet and I'm not sure how much lasting damage you could really do since there is no atmosphere. But, I agree -- blasting the moon to make a point seems to demonstrate a calous disregard for nature.
But then, remember the setting for this. We were in a situation where we were routinely detonating nuclear tests on our own planet. Think they were worried about messing up the moon?
Even Carl Sagan was more interested in possible science from this than potential damage:
"At the time scientists still believed there might be microbial life on the moon and Sagan had suggested a nuclear explosion might be used to detect organisms."
Hmm, was thinking kind of along the same lines.
What about dark matter?
So is the propulsion design based (in part at least) on assumptions about the number of hydrogen atoms in inter-solar space?
Thought I remembered an article not too long ago about some of this theorized 'dark matter' being found. Would be interesting if this solar sail vehicle were to encounter conditions that were unknown/unexpected and forced us to change some of our fundamental assumptions about space.
(or not)
Well, that's kind of reassuring that O'Reilly appears to be taking some personal accountability for this. Marks him up in my book as having the integrity munch a little crow in public.
The devil's advocate reply to this is if it were not for slash being acquired by Andover/VA Linux, Microsoft may not have cared. Why? Figure that since a recently-gone-public corp might be queasy about taking on Microsoft and perhaps Microsoft miscalculated that VA mgmt would cave and pull the posts rather than risk an expensive and disruptive legal battle.
:( )
I submit that it might be exactly because slashdot is now owned by a public company that Microsoft chose to make a public stand by demanding that the 'infringing' material and posts be removed.
What real benefit does Microsoft hope to gain? They can't really think that getting a few posts removed is really going to hide their spec, or stop anyone from finding out how to get around the EULA? No, I figure that they wanted to make a public point, and were counting on VA rolling over.
(too bad my posts default to -1; no one will ever see this
Really, thought the same time. We just priced a E5500 with only 4 processors and 2gig and a shitload of disk and the total was $180k.
If you have a Starfire fo $80k, let me in on where to pick one up!