Or at the very least, get a black mark on his permanent record and make it much harder for him to get into a good college/university or get a good job.
I don't think such a mark would have that large significance. Here in Finland (and I believe it to be quite similar in Norway), colleges or universities can't pick students based on reputation (I'm not sure how it is in the US, at least you imply that they can). There may be some other routes with interviews etc, but the vast majority get in though tests. The ones with the highest marks get in.
Also, I doubt very many employers check any criminal records. (I'm not sure can they check them either, I doubt it.) And as someone said, it's also a good show of your skills.
What it might make difficult would be getting some state jobs relating to security (defence ministry, police, etc), and maybe getting credit cards, and of course getting a visa to the US, for example. But I doubt very much that they can set a "black mark" on someone that has really large effect.
It is a MacroVision-defeating hardware device, prepackaged, for $50 or so.
I was actually a bit astounded that someone hadn't come and stomped on the balls of this company.
Well, I can't see how something like this could be illegal (or at least upheld in any court). I bet that nowhere on the package did they even mention Macrovision. It's just a thing that makes the signal clearer, which can have many legitimate uses. The same stuff is bound to be in any reasonably high-end video editing suite too.
AFAIK, Macrovision removers haven't been illegal at least until the DMCA. But does the DMCA outlaw them? They're not exactly digital...
Because I use mozilla exclusively, and have turned off javascript's ability to
* open unrequested windows
* move or resize existing windows
* raise or lower windows
* hide the status bar
I use Galeon, and use similar restrictions. I am very pleased with the experience, but one irritating thing remains. Some places still open links in new windows using the non-javascript TARGET-tag. If I want to open a link in a new window, I'll click the link with the middle button, thankyouverymuch!
Is there any way of getting mozilla/galeon to ignore these requests for new windows? (Most new windows requested by Javascript often have content that fits a small window, but having the option of opening those in your main window would be nice, too.)
Can anybody here summarize any important changes that went on between 2.4.18 and 2.4.19? This changelog is just a ton of bug fixes between prereleases. Did they do anything interesting with it?
This is exactly the thing I'd like to see someone make. A simple list of notable changes for the average kernel-compiling Linux user. I've been wanting such a list for several years now, but have never seen one.
Something in the form of, "If you which to use hardware X with option Y, you may wish to upgrade, as this version adds beta support for it. If you use option Z you should definately upgrade, there are many bugfixes...."
Is there any kind of ChangeLog summary available anywhere? And if not, why? I shouldn't think it would be such a big deal for someone with some knowledge of the kernel.
Stellarium is an impressive piece of free software for Linux and Windoze that renders the sky at any given time given your coordinates.
As for a more general star-browsing program, XEphem is great (free for personal use, sources available). It takes a little getting used to, but is very versatile with lots of nifty features, and it allows you to load star catalogs to increase the number of objects it knows.
Any other astronomy programs somebody would recommend?
Say, O Wise Ones, why is it that when I attempt to configure this illustrious program, I am told such blasphemous lies as "GL not found - please install GL or MesaGL" when there doth exist a/usr/include/GL on my humble system and I hath installed every Mandrake cooker even containing the word "Mesa" at www.rpmfind.net?
Check the file config.log. It tells you what went wrong.
I got that same error message, and when I checked the file, it was complaining that it can't find some pthread_xxx functions. I tried "LDFLAGS=-lpthread./configure; make" and it worked (Debian woody).
However, when I started it, it segfaulted (in some PNG loading routines). (And yes, I'm too lazy to make a bug report, especially as I should be working.)
Why do they deem it necessary to stoop to all this sneaky shit? If the product is good, people will want it without some fucking Jedi Mind Trick-style advertising campaign.
Simple. Because they want to sell the product regardless of whether it is good or not.
* Most of us sustained some sort of heavy electrical shock as children, either by inserting metallic things into outlets or cutting hot wires. Monitor coils were also popular. * No one brought a digital camera, but everyone said they'd bring one next time. * None of us could remember anyone's name. Once we paid the tab and removed the nametags, it was a lot of "what was your name, again?"
Interesting... How many others recognised themselves from this? I've had an electrical shock from inserting a screw into an outlet (though I've never played with monitor coils). I wouldn't have remembered to take a camera (even if mine's weren't so awful), but would've liked to. And I can't remember anybody's name for the first 1/2 year I know them...
The patent is 17 years old, and only now is it put in use. Think how many patents are given to software nowadays. According to the article, in Japan there are 4,000 patents on image and wavelet technology alone. Think of what will happen in 15 years, when companies start bringing out all-but-forgotten patents on everyday algorithms from the good ol' dot-com days... The devastation will be much, much larger...
Because that is the nature of complex algorithmic systems. An algorithmic system is temporally inconsistent and unstable by nature. Using the algorithm as the basis of software construction is an ancient practice pioneered by Lady Ada Lovelace and Charles Babbage. It is the fundamental reason why dependable software systems are so hard to produce.
This reminds me of a story on Slashdot a few years ago about the process of writing the software that contols space shuttles. Still an interesting read.
(As timothy writes: These guys are "pretty thorough" the way Vlad the Impaler was "a little unbalanced." I could have certainly sometimes saved a lot of time using similar bug-documenting stuff.)
About OpenGL ... OpenGL is available on all other major computer platforms, including IRIX®, SolarisTM , HP-UX, Compaq® Tru64® UNIX®, AIX®, BeOS, Windows NT®, Windows® 98 and Mac® OS.
No Linux?
AFAIK Mesa isn't officially an OpenGL implementation, because it hasn't been tested, but aren't there any implementations that have gone through the tests?
Also missing from the list are the newer versions of Windows...
I would like to draw everyone's attention to something.
Somehow, I guessed this would be rated Offtopic. Strictly speaking, it doesn't deal in any way with the article, but with Slashdot in general.
However, what would be a better forum for discussion? There is no "Slashdot talk" forum, and news about Slashdot rarely is posted. The karma rules were changed, but no story was posted - where are you supposed to talk about it? (Well, there are the journals, but that's just talking to yourself. Nearly nobody reads them, with very few exceptions.)
IMO every Slashdot post deals with Slashdot, and the parent would be on-topic in any of them. There shouldn't be too much stuff about Slashdot that it would clog the discussion. So why not let the discussion go on? Unless, of course, the editors don't want people talking about such matters.
I would probably moderate the parent up, but I guess I have already been banned from moderation. I don't know why.
Neither of these are trolls, but discussion about Slashdot on Slashdot. Both this and the parent comment have been posted with the +1 Bonus, so the posters can't be mere trolls.
(This will probably also be modded down, but hell, I've already hit the limit so I've got some to spare.)
Even more interesting quote: (I didn't notice it at first.)
The officers were involved in an international operation to catch the website operators because, although they were created in Italy, the internet service providers were based in Washington DC and California.
Right now they do have the capabilities of warming deuterium plasma to 150million degrees celcius, which is sufficient to start fusion.
Fusion has been possible for quite a while now, but previously it took a lot more energy to keep the fusion going on than what it generated. Nowadays the state-of-the-art fusion generators are producing about as much energy as they consume. I've heard an estimate that fusion energy would start being profitable when it generates about 10 times as much as is consumes.
Currently there is a project in Europe to build one of the first reactors which generates more than consumes, to prove that it works. But they, too, are having some budget problems. (I'm not sure whether the US is also funding the project, or are they rivals.)
Who else get's a tinge of 1984 reading this? Government-sponsored violence games...? (Well, maybe I'm just being paranoid, as I've only just read it...)
Fry a turkey with only 100 C ?? I somehow have the feeling that you never fried a turkey yourself...hint: a turkey is not a cup of tea. You don't want to boil it - you want to fry it! That's around 200 C. Otherwise you'll just get a hot turkey.
The point being, the temperature would rise from room temperature to boiling point in about 1 second! And it would keep heating at approximately the same rate for some time, until it finally reaches an equilibrium state where it radiates away as much energy as it takes in.
If we assume that the turkey is a round black body object (at that point the surface being burnt-black (not that that makes it a black body)), say, 40cm in diameter, then the equlibrium state can be calculated from R=sigma*T^4, giving a temperature of about 3000 degrees Celsius. Is that enough to fry the turkey?
in case funding falls through in the middle of construction, the mirror can also be used to fry a turkey in under ten seconds...
The sun deposits about 340 W/m^2 energy on the Earth. Say the mirror is round with a diameter of 100 meters, so we get an area of about 8000 m^2 -- a heating power of 2.7 Megawatts.
Say the turkey weighs 10 kg and is made up of only water (a reasonable estimate) and is at 20C. Let's boil it up to 100C. The change of 80 degrees takes about 80C*10kg*4200J/kgC = 3.3MJ of energy, so you could heat it up from room temperature to boiling point in just a bit over a second.
So if the turkey is frozen, then ten seconds sounds a reasonable time. Just hope it warms up on the inside too, or you'll get a deep-fried ice-turkey.:-)
When he looked at the old one, he saw that the keys were arranged alphabetically. with 'a' where the q is supposed to be, 'b' where the w is, etc.
I've actually done this on my keyboard. I've maintained the qwerty-layout, but the keys have been switched. Not very useful, but nobody except others that know qwerty can type on it.
Such a keyboard may also be good in teaching yourself touch typing. It's so easy to instinctively glance which key you are pressing. I've also recently bought a keyboard which is totally blank - no letters imprinted.
The only trouble I've had with it is the few keys which happen to be arranged on the new layout next to the keys in the keymap (i and v). Sometimes still when giving a one-letter command without having my hands on the keyboard, I glance to see where 'i' is and give the command 'o'.
Slashdot Mirror
Or at the very least, get a black mark on his permanent record and make it much harder for him to get into a good college/university or get a good job.
I don't think such a mark would have that large significance. Here in Finland (and I believe it to be quite similar in Norway), colleges or universities can't pick students based on reputation (I'm not sure how it is in the US, at least you imply that they can). There may be some other routes with interviews etc, but the vast majority get in though tests. The ones with the highest marks get in.
Also, I doubt very many employers check any criminal records. (I'm not sure can they check them either, I doubt it.) And as someone said, it's also a good show of your skills.
What it might make difficult would be getting some state jobs relating to security (defence ministry, police, etc), and maybe getting credit cards, and of course getting a visa to the US, for example. But I doubt very much that they can set a "black mark" on someone that has really large effect.
It is a MacroVision-defeating hardware device, prepackaged, for $50 or so.
I was actually a bit astounded that someone hadn't come and stomped on the balls of this company.
Well, I can't see how something like this could be illegal (or at least upheld in any court). I bet that nowhere on the package did they even mention Macrovision. It's just a thing that makes the signal clearer, which can have many legitimate uses. The same stuff is bound to be in any reasonably high-end video editing suite too.
AFAIK, Macrovision removers haven't been illegal at least until the DMCA. But does the DMCA outlaw them? They're not exactly digital...
Because I use mozilla exclusively, and have turned off javascript's ability to
* open unrequested windows
* move or resize existing windows
* raise or lower windows
* hide the status bar
I use Galeon, and use similar restrictions. I am very pleased with the experience, but one irritating thing remains. Some places still open links in new windows using the non-javascript TARGET-tag. If I want to open a link in a new window, I'll click the link with the middle button, thankyouverymuch!
Is there any way of getting mozilla/galeon to ignore these requests for new windows? (Most new windows requested by Javascript often have content that fits a small window, but having the option of opening those in your main window would be nice, too.)
Well, as the site seems slashdotted, you might try out the Google mirror.
A breathless story about how the best defense against [fill in the blank: piracy, virii, hacking] is a good offense at CNet.
Yes! CNet is the root of all these evils for publishing stuff like this! A good offence at CNet would surely be in the best intrest of the public.
Can anybody here summarize any important changes that went on between 2.4.18 and 2.4.19? This changelog is just a ton of bug fixes between prereleases. Did they do anything interesting with it?
..."
This is exactly the thing I'd like to see someone make. A simple list of notable changes for the average kernel-compiling Linux user. I've been wanting such a list for several years now, but have never seen one.
Something in the form of, "If you which to use hardware X with option Y, you may wish to upgrade, as this version adds beta support for it. If you use option Z you should definately upgrade, there are many bugfixes.
Is there any kind of ChangeLog summary available anywhere? And if not, why? I shouldn't think it would be such a big deal for someone with some knowledge of the kernel.
Stellarium is an impressive piece of free software for Linux and Windoze that renders the sky at any given time given your coordinates.
As for a more general star-browsing program, XEphem is great (free for personal use, sources available). It takes a little getting used to, but is very versatile with lots of nifty features, and it allows you to load star catalogs to increase the number of objects it knows.
Any other astronomy programs somebody would recommend?
Say, O Wise Ones, why is it that when I attempt to configure this illustrious program, I am told such blasphemous lies as "GL not found - please install GL or MesaGL" when there doth exist a /usr/include/GL on my humble system and I hath installed every Mandrake cooker even containing the word "Mesa" at www.rpmfind.net?
./configure; make" and it worked (Debian woody).
Check the file config.log. It tells you what went wrong.
I got that same error message, and when I checked the file, it was complaining that it can't find some pthread_xxx functions. I tried "LDFLAGS=-lpthread
However, when I started it, it segfaulted (in some PNG loading routines). (And yes, I'm too lazy to make a bug report, especially as I should be working.)
Why do they deem it necessary to stoop to all this sneaky shit? If the product is good, people will want it without some fucking Jedi Mind Trick-style advertising campaign.
Simple. Because they want to sell the product regardless of whether it is good or not.
[cheapshot]
mpaa.org?
riaa.org?
What is 'noncommercial' about that? I guest we can chalk up another 'blow to speech' by the corporations that RUN mpaa and riaa.
[/cheapshot]
slashdot.org?
* Most of us sustained some sort of heavy electrical shock as children, either by inserting metallic things into outlets or cutting hot wires. Monitor coils were also popular.
* No one brought a digital camera, but everyone said they'd bring one next time.
* None of us could remember anyone's name. Once we paid the tab and removed the nametags, it was a lot of "what was your name, again?"
Interesting... How many others recognised themselves from this? I've had an electrical shock from inserting a screw into an outlet (though I've never played with monitor coils). I wouldn't have remembered to take a camera (even if mine's weren't so awful), but would've liked to. And I can't remember anybody's name for the first 1/2 year I know them...
Others like that out there?
considering a very resembling STS-51 less successful one.
Agreed. I read the headline, skimmed the text and thought, "why the hell is there a news item about an AGP slot being added to a space shuttle?"
Only after checking the article did it become clear...
The patent is 17 years old, and only now is it put in use. Think how many patents are given to software nowadays. According to the article, in Japan there are 4,000 patents on image and wavelet technology alone. Think of what will happen in 15 years, when companies start bringing out all-but-forgotten patents on everyday algorithms from the good ol' dot-com days... The devastation will be much, much larger...
Because that is the nature of complex algorithmic systems. An algorithmic system is temporally inconsistent and unstable by nature. Using the algorithm as the basis of software construction is an ancient practice pioneered by Lady Ada Lovelace and Charles Babbage. It is the fundamental reason why dependable software systems are so hard to produce.
This reminds me of a story on Slashdot a few years ago about the process of writing the software that contols space shuttles. Still an interesting read.
(As timothy writes: These guys are "pretty thorough" the way Vlad the Impaler was "a little unbalanced." I could have certainly sometimes saved a lot of time using similar bug-documenting stuff.)
About OpenGL
...
OpenGL is available on all other major computer platforms, including IRIX®, SolarisTM , HP-UX, Compaq® Tru64® UNIX®, AIX®, BeOS, Windows NT®, Windows® 98 and Mac® OS.
No Linux?
AFAIK Mesa isn't officially an OpenGL implementation, because it hasn't been tested, but aren't there any implementations that have gone through the tests?
Also missing from the list are the newer versions of Windows...
I would like to draw everyone's attention to something.
Somehow, I guessed this would be rated Offtopic. Strictly speaking, it doesn't deal in any way with the article, but with Slashdot in general.
However, what would be a better forum for discussion? There is no "Slashdot talk" forum, and news about Slashdot rarely is posted. The karma rules were changed, but no story was posted - where are you supposed to talk about it? (Well, there are the journals, but that's just talking to yourself. Nearly nobody reads them, with very few exceptions.)
IMO every Slashdot post deals with Slashdot, and the parent would be on-topic in any of them. There shouldn't be too much stuff about Slashdot that it would clog the discussion. So why not let the discussion go on? Unless, of course, the editors don't want people talking about such matters.
I would probably moderate the parent up, but I guess I have already been banned from moderation. I don't know why.
Neither of these are trolls, but discussion about Slashdot on Slashdot. Both this and the parent comment have been posted with the +1 Bonus, so the posters can't be mere trolls.
(This will probably also be modded down, but hell, I've already hit the limit so I've got some to spare.)
Everything for which there is no record of the object's orbit is garbage. I wonder how many military satellites that strategy would take out?
http://www.vnunet.com/News/1133397
Even more interesting quote: (I didn't notice it at first.)
The officers were involved in an international operation to catch the website operators because, although they were created in Italy, the internet service providers were based in Washington DC and California.
Found searching Google:
http://www.vnunet.com/News/1133397
More info, according to it they have been mixing pornography with religion.
"They then went on to show a nun in suggestive clothes [and] other things in poor taste."
Right now they do have the capabilities of warming deuterium plasma to 150million degrees celcius, which is sufficient to start fusion.
Fusion has been possible for quite a while now, but previously it took a lot more energy to keep the fusion going on than what it generated. Nowadays the state-of-the-art fusion generators are producing about as much energy as they consume. I've heard an estimate that fusion energy would start being profitable when it generates about 10 times as much as is consumes.
Currently there is a project in Europe to build one of the first reactors which generates more than consumes, to prove that it works. But they, too, are having some budget problems. (I'm not sure whether the US is also funding the project, or are they rivals.)
Who else get's a tinge of 1984 reading this? Government-sponsored violence games...?
(Well, maybe I'm just being paranoid, as I've only just read it...)
Fry a turkey with only 100 C ?? I somehow have the feeling that you never fried a turkey yourself...hint: a turkey is not a cup of tea. You don't want to boil it - you want to fry it! That's around 200 C. Otherwise you'll just get a hot turkey.
The point being, the temperature would rise from room temperature to boiling point in about 1 second! And it would keep heating at approximately the same rate for some time, until it finally reaches an equilibrium state where it radiates away as much energy as it takes in.
If we assume that the turkey is a round black body object (at that point the surface being burnt-black (not that that makes it a black body)), say, 40cm in diameter, then the equlibrium state can be calculated from R=sigma*T^4, giving a temperature of about 3000 degrees Celsius. Is that enough to fry the turkey?
I guess this is the first time slashdot has slashdotted a coffee machine...
I wonder if the coffee's heated with the CPU? Bet he'll be getting hot coffee now.
(OK, I don't know whether it was hosting the pages, 'cause I haven't read the article, 'cause the article's been slashdotted.)
in case funding falls through in the middle of construction, the mirror can also be used to fry a turkey in under ten seconds...
:-)
The sun deposits about 340 W/m^2 energy on the Earth. Say the mirror is round with a diameter of 100 meters, so we get an area of about 8000 m^2 -- a heating power of 2.7 Megawatts.
Say the turkey weighs 10 kg and is made up of only water (a reasonable estimate) and is at 20C. Let's boil it up to 100C. The change of 80 degrees takes about 80C*10kg*4200J/kgC = 3.3MJ of energy, so you could heat it up from room temperature to boiling point in just a bit over a second.
So if the turkey is frozen, then ten seconds sounds a reasonable time. Just hope it warms up on the inside too, or you'll get a deep-fried ice-turkey.
When he looked at the old one, he saw that the keys were arranged alphabetically. with 'a' where the q is supposed to be, 'b' where the w is, etc.
I've actually done this on my keyboard. I've maintained the qwerty-layout, but the keys have been switched. Not very useful, but nobody except others that know qwerty can type on it.
Such a keyboard may also be good in teaching yourself touch typing. It's so easy to instinctively glance which key you are pressing. I've also recently bought a keyboard which is totally blank - no letters imprinted.
The only trouble I've had with it is the few keys which happen to be arranged on the new layout next to the keys in the keymap (i and v). Sometimes still when giving a one-letter command without having my hands on the keyboard, I glance to see where 'i' is and give the command 'o'.