Slashdot Mirror


User: Luyseyal

Luyseyal's activity in the archive.

Stories
0
Comments
1,608
First seen
Last seen
Profile
(view on slashdot.org)

Comments · 1,608

  1. Re:disservice to postmodernism on Why Community Matters · · Score: 1
    Modernist teachings depend on logical fallacies, like circular reasoning.

    To which fallacies do you refer? If you buy Nietzsche's Death of God, sure, but if you take a Cartesian guarantee then the logic is not circular. It seems a very naive view, yes, but it is not circular if you have God, or say, a Platonic realm, guaranteeing your observations.

    My point is you have to have a prior commitment to sophisticated representationalism and empiricism to commit the fallacy here. Of course, this is a straw man because I'm not sure what your point actually was... so I thought I'd just do a little thought exercise for the day.

    -l

  2. Re:Good poll question: Best Ultima Ever? on Lord British Talks About EA, UO,& The Future · · Score: 1

    Ultima VII was my favorite.
    . the plot[s] were cool, and you didn't have to complete them all to win.
    . the graphics were nice for the time and the interface was relatively intuitive
    . it worked, albeit slowly, on my 386/20
    . the pharlap hack isn't too nice, but the exile project for U7 for x86 unices seems to have gotten around that problem (which is more of a DOSEMU issue)
    . the guardian was a big dumb-ass, but he was the least annoying in U7.
    . the modpacks were cool
    . can anyone forget Hoe of Destruction?!!
    . if you lost your magic carpet, for example, you could use the commandline hack to get it back. i wouldn't want to beat the game this way, but it's nice if you screw up pretty badly.

    -l

  3. School and Work on CS vs CIS · · Score: 1

    If you're going to school just to get a job, I'd say you made a pretty poor decision to attend college. I know many self-taught programmers and IS people who make just as much, or more, money than those that went to college. Why? Because they got a head start in the industry.

    Schooling should be for your own personal growth and enjoyment, not because of an extra zero at the end of your paycheck. This is not to say the extra zero isn't nice, just that it is a fringe benefit to knowledge.

    When people ask me, an IS guy turned software engineer, why I'm majoring in Philosophy with a minor in Latin, I tell them I'm going to school for me. Not for the Man.

    -l

  4. elections on EFF Makes Call For DMCA Help · · Score: 1

    Election software is judged as content. No one is allowed to reverse engineer it because of the content control mechanisms put in place. Evil Corporation X fixes the elections with nasty software. No one can legally discover that the elections were fixed.

    -l

  5. US ignores international treaties anyway... on European Cybercrime Treaty 1.1 · · Score: 1

    CNN is running this story entitled Germany sues U.S. in World Court over Arizona executions regarding why and how the States are ignoring the 1963 Vienna Convention of Consular Relations.

    http://www.cnn.com /20 00/LAW/11/13/germany.v.us.pol/index.html

    -l

  6. the slashdot model on The LEP Collider Will Be Closed Down · · Score: 1
    did anyone else read this article as saying: According to the Slashdot Model of particle physics...

    it has been too long a day...

    -l

  7. An alternative theory... whacked but interesting. on Dinosaurs Never Held Heads High · · Score: 1
    Thesis: We propose that Earth was a satellite of Saturn, or more correctly a body which the ancients identified as Ouranus and which we shall refer to as proto-Saturn. The present day Saturn is all that remains of the once larger primary which we orbited as the closest and innermost satellite [1]...

    http://www.bearfabrique.org/Saturn/ianT

    -l

  8. Re:That's no moon... (Correction) on New 'Planet' Discovered in Solar System · · Score: 1

    BEN: Yeah, I think your right. Full reverse! Chewie, lock in the auxiliary power.

    HAN actually says this.

    -l

  9. Re: space station on New 'Planet' Discovered in Solar System · · Score: 1

    HAN says this, not BEN.

    -l

  10. Re:Then you change nothing on Politics With A Slice Of Lemon · · Score: 1

    I read the Don't Vote section of the site. It seems higher on rhetoric than facts. Sure, there are some decent links in there... I'm libertarian myself... but I think allowing a minority to control all the guns the US government has is a serious mistake. Let's dismantle political government from the inside lest others destroy us in the transition.

    -l

  11. Re:Gore's site runs Linux/PHP on Politics With A Slice Of Lemon · · Score: 1

    I just want you to know, you have the best handle.

  12. Brief Salon Interview with Harry Browne on Politics With A Slice Of Lemon · · Score: 4

    CmdrTaco whines about there being no submissions... well I submitted this and he didn't post it in his political links. Whatever, here it is for your consumption: http://ww w.s alon.com/business/green/2000/10/19/harry_browne/in dex.html.

    -l

  13. Re:Emperor Has No Clothes on Linus Speaks With c't On Clean Design And ReiserFS · · Score: 1

    Kswapd regularly dies on my 2.2.16 + USB machine. 2.2.16 is supposed to be a stable kernel -- release 16 of a stable kernel. I can oops the kernel by merely plugging in my scanner to the USB port.

    Stay on topic, man. If you patch your kernel with an unstable patch, it's your problem when it oopses. Have you tried seeing if it oopses without the USB patch? If it does so, yes, you have discovered a bug. Another fun one is 'ls -w 10000000'. Also note that 2.2.17 is out and 2.2.18pre series needs testing. Perhaps you are the man we need to fix these problems?

    True, but interesting that it was stated during the 2.3 series that Ext3 would probably be included in the 2.4 kernel, even though it was less capable, less stable, and in less widespread use than ReiserFS at the time.

    Most of the confusion in these conversations was due to semantics: Reiser thought he'd be out of 2.4.x period, whereas ext3 would be in 2.4.0. I don't recall if ext3 will be in .0 or in a subsequent release, but all this is cleared up now.

    Streams. The reality is that POSIX plus streams is very complex and as such, require a much larger contingent of users who need it before they will be a supported feature. If you could point and say "look, almost a quarter of Linux ppl are patching their kernels to use our NTFS streams" you would probably get further than screaming "I need this very complex feature!"

    Perhaps they just don't like your patches and got sick of your long-winded style like I am.

    Linus won't use CVS because he has little patch control then. He likes the latest proposal for a mail-based revision control system with some basic bug tracking features.

    -l

  14. Re:I like FirstIB.com on OS-Independent Web Banking? · · Score: 1

    Ditto. Their interest rates rule and everything online is basic SSL and Javascript. It works under mozilla even with PSM.

    -l

  15. Re:daily show on Politics, Endorsements And Privacy · · Score: 1

    why vote for a "winning" candidate? just so you can brag "yeah i voted for the guy who won"?

    vote with you conscience. you only throw your vote away if you fail to vote at all. i'm voting for a guy who's only pulling in 2% at the polls. do i care? no. he's the guy i like; he's the guy i'm going to support.

    don't settle for second best.

    -l

  16. Re:Hmm.. on KDE Developer on the GNOME Foundation · · Score: 1

    I use Debian and GNOME and am very happy. Actually, I guess when people think of GNOME they are really thinking of 'panel' and probably 'gmc'. I use neither as I prefer to fullscreen all my apps on separate desktops under E and just use root menus for everything. Anyways, I like this environment. Good luck.

    -l

  17. Re:You gotta trust *somebody* on Cyberselfish: Technolibertarianism · · Score: 1

    I like your view. This is what I've been thinking about for awhile now... wanna start a political party? 8)

    I would like to overturn the ruling that corporations are persons under the law. Of course, this would effect corporate right to sue, per capita tax, etc. I would also like to disallow them from lobbying or giving gifts to politicians, period.

    Essentially, I'd like to see most/all groups regulated by vast bureacracy where nothing gets done except by grassroots effort (OSS or war, e.g.) but where individuals are highly free from restraint. Unfortunately, you'd have individuals spending 40hrs/week restrained and only night hours and weekends unrestrained.

    There're a lot of issues to think about here... probably worth the effort of 3 or 4 books in various angles.

    -l

  18. book on It's Official: Deckard Was A Replicant · · Score: 2

    My roommate has a book on Bladerunner that talks about this whole thing. The original screenwriter wrote Deckard's part as a human who came to understand the replicant perspective. It was Scott as director who changed the script to make him a replicant. Apparently, they had some pretty heated debates about it, but that probably contributed to the ambiguity in the final version which is so perfect.

    -l

  19. Re:my response - SMALL ISP? Says it all.... on Comment To FTC On Software Warranties And UCITA · · Score: 1

    heh. actually, you are wrong. i don't work for an ISP at all. if you had gone to the domain where my email addy is at, you'd've figured out right away where i work.

    thanks for playing,
    -l

  20. my response on Comment To FTC On Software Warranties And UCITA · · Score: 5

    This is far from "perfect," but it's the best I could manage.

    ------------
    1. Personal Background--I am the Internal Systems Administrator for a small internet company in Austin, TX. Our business both consumes and produces software, so I am very familiar with the issues at hand. In many instances, I have to evaluate software for purchase so warranty regulation is a concern for me in the workplace. Additionally, I use a computer at home and software reliability is a concern there as well.

    2. In the interest of intellectual honesty, I should disclose that I believe the notion of "intellectual property" is patently absurd (pun intended). However, as current law is based on said notion, this response will address the issue as given. Eben Moglen, attorney for the Free Software Foundation, http://fsf.org, and Professor of Law and Legal History at Columbia Law School, has written an excellent paper on this very subject at http://emoglen.law.columbia.edu/my_pubs/anarchism. html.

    3. Occupationally and personally, I am very involved with Free Software. Typically, licenses for such software disclaims warranties of any sort as the authors usually give the software away including human-readable source code (e.g., http://www.fsf.org/copyleft/gpl.html). The authors of such software often have neither the legal expertise nor the financial backing to warranty their software. Rather, they give the source code itself away as a replacement for a warranty. The source code gives the consumer the ability to examine for herself whether a given program is reliable and well-engineered. If the consumer is not capable of reading source code, or is simply too busy to do so, she has several options available. Many Free Software projects have homepages, mailing-lists, and large numbers of current users. It is not difficult to find information on the reliability of the software, even if forced to email the original author (which is sometimes the case if the project is a niche project of interest to only a few people).

    4. Additionally, many companies offer "support" (telephone help-desk support, specially tested packages of Free Software, security auditing, custom software development, etc.) for Free Software (e.g., http://www.redhat.com, http://www.linuxcare.com, etc.), even though the software itself is not warranted. This suggests that the companies are confident enough in Free Software such that they may reap profits from unused support.

    5. It could be argued that these companies would want the software to be shoddy so that more consumers would pay for support. However, this view ignores the fact that support companies are more like insurance companies: they are there when you need them. Legality aside, it is not in the best interest of a medical insurance company to pay ruffians to maim their customers in order to drive up demand as the payout for each claim is significantly higher than the loss of demand for medical insurance. Similarly, it is significantly cheaper for a support company to pool its resources into providing good software in the first place rather than providing costly telephone or emergency source code-level support.

    6. While it still might seem that Free Software is more likely to need warranting against ill-effects than proprietary software, one need only witness why many Free Software projects arise in the first place. Often, a proprietary product that fills a particular niche is unstable, less than featureful, or generally not well-supported. An industrious coder will want to "scratch that itch," so to speak, and starts a project to create a free alternative. The Linux kernel, http://linux.org, SAMBA, http://samba.org, and many other Free Software projects are good examples of this. Linus Torvalds was unhappy with the sad shape of consumer operating systems available for his lowly 386 and set out to create an alternative kernel to run on the tools created by the GNU project, http://gnu.org. SAMBA exists due to users unwilling to run an unstable operating system or pay insane amounts in licensing fees simply to serve files to others still using legacy proprietary systems.

    7. In essence, Free Software exists in part due to market failure. Instead of wooing customers with good products and good service, many proprietary software sought to lock consumers into their products and intentionally implanted incompatibilities to force customers to upgrade or be left behind, less able to effectively communicate with their partners who were licensed newer versions. Unwilling to sacrifice money or features to these ingrates, coders like Torvalds opted to create their own software and license it in such a way that it couldn't be coopted by unfaithful companies. Although Linux did not come along until 1991, the aforementioned GNU project was founded by Richard Stallman in the Eighties to combat the same sorts of tactics used by the old Unix vendors before the advent of the near ubiquitous consumer desktop.

    8. Consequently, it is only because of negligent proprietary software vendors that laws requiring software to be warranted appear necessary. Not surprisingly, they are the same people pushing bills like UCITA which require nominal warranties on software as they are betting they can have Free Software effectively outlawed. In exchange for their granting of nominal warranties to consumers, they demand draconian rights such as legal remote removal of so-called "pirated" software. If this sort of government-corporate collusion is allowed to pass, then I am moving myself and my tax dollars elsewhere.

    9. Lastly, many Free Software projects are collaborations involving individuals in many different countries. It would seem the height of folly to require them to follow stringent legal requirements, such as those detailed in UCITA, for distributing their products in the USA. As foreign coders cannot be expected to understand the vagaries of English legalese, they would have to hire a US-based attorney to review the warranty on their product. One can imagine the likelihood of that given the cost of such attorneys. It would be a shame to lose foreign contributors as, unlike in many physical object trade disputes which affect trade deficits and surpluses, software cum source code increases the intellectual wealth in all countries involved.

    10. I would like to thank the FTC for allowing citizens to comment in such a convenient format as email. Hopefully, all such government agencies will one day be able to gather direct feedback from the citizenry so easily.

    --
    Stephen Waters
    Austin, TX

  21. Re:How to secure your Linux system on SANS Releases Top Ten Exploits · · Score: 1
    Read the blurb on security at this page: http://www.postfix.org/goals.html

    -l

  22. Debian and XFree86 4 on XFree86 4.0 vs. XFree86 3.3.x · · Score: 2
    for anyone curious I found this, http://www.deb ian.org/Lists-Archives/debian-devel-0005/msg01828. html, regarding why Debian has not produced official 4.0 debs. Looks like they are waiting for 4.0.1 which has support for Sparc, bugfixes, security fixes, etc... the "brown paper bag" release.

    -l

  23. Re:SimEarth on NASA Prototype: Could It Make Mars Breathable? · · Score: 1
    SimEarth rules. I still have the original disks around somewhere (actually NOT the original... they got toasted and I had to send away for new ones from Maxis). The DOS version had nice color grapics.

    http://www.maxis.com/games/simearth/

    The system requirements say:

    • Windows 95 with a 486 or above
    • SVGA display
    • 8mb Memory
    • double-speed CD-ROM
    • mouse
    • or Windows 3.1 or higher with a 286 or above
    • EGA display
    • 2mb Memory
    • double-speed CD-ROM
    • mouse
    • or Macintosh System 6.0.2 or higher with a Mac Plus or above
    • 2mb Memory
    • standard CD-ROM
    • mouse
  24. VABSD on BSDI Acquires Telenet System Solutions · · Score: 1

    the subject says it all.

    -l

  25. Re:Works Great! on Athlon Motherboards And Chipsets Under Linux · · Score: 2

    gcc does not optimize well for AMD chips at this point.

    -l