Here's one where she rips on racism and music. The interesting part is if you scroll 2/3s down and read about what she things of the Volkswagon advertisement. Frankly, I can't understand what she is so up-in-arms about. A reader partially takes her to task in this letter to the editor (near the end of the page, titled "bugged"). She responds and rants about the racism in advertising.
My two cents is that this author is more noise than signal.
I have to take issue with several points the author raised. However, the most central is that school shootings is a young-white-male-only phenomena. It parallels in 1980 with saying that AIDS is a gay-white-male-only phenomena. The fact that is mostly hits males is obvious. The fact that it mostly hits white males could easily be because they make up the majority of the population.
If the number of shootings were to increase to a figure, such as 100, we would see more minority representation. Just as the number of AIDS cases increase, we see other groups represented as well. Perhaps it is incendiary to some to compare the original class of people in shootings to the original class of people with AIDS, but the point is that you can't say it's a white boy only phenomena based on a handful of events. MORE DATA NEEDED.
The other thing that is shocking is the claim that JAIL is the closest analogy to high school! And the admission of a "cruel social order". I hardly think that just because something goes on in jail, it should also go on in the high schools.
> Use some ridiculous encryption on the level of > rot13 - the computer programs will never figure > out!
*Exactly.* If you use PGP or Netscape or whatever _everyday piece of software_ to encode your messages, you can bet money that it'll be decoded by someone else. You DON'T need 128 bit encryption to be private... what you need is 'foreign encryption'... an encryption method that does NOT follow a standard.
If you simply take someone's encryption code, and make a slight modification to it (rot13 as suggested, or whatever), you've got yourself a completely private method of communications. And if you're small fry, you have absolutely no worry that they'll ever break it until long after you are dead. (Save for things like "traffic analysis" and such.)
Perhaps a slight flame, but this reminds me of the disaster recovery group at my own company. You have people who are completely non-technical trying to drive technical solutions. In this case, the RIAA wants all sorts of ridiculous things. What we see is the stuff that is halfway filtered after the technical people they consult say "that's impossible". I'm sure the raw and uncut demands going around inside the RIAA are even more amusing.
I had to vent a little there, sorry. The point being that these 'solutions' are not being technically driven, and they are trying to fix something that, from the broad perspective, only they think is broken. But it is everyone else who they have to change to scratch their itch. The mindset seems to parallel with the people who want to censor the Internet.
How does that quote go? "The Internet treats censorship as damage, and routes around it." Even though we (or at least I) don't have all the details about the nature of the censorship, it is obvious that there will be legitimate sites that are blocked. And people who want to get around the censorship can easily do so. Such is the nature of online censorship. (Maybe the net effect is to make visiting a 'naughty site' a crime? Who knows.)
What is interesting is that a modern western nation of a significant size is doing this. It looks like it is going to be the experiment for the rest of the governments in the western world to witness. Here's hoping for miserable failure.
One parallel that the author didn't catch is that the "weblog", like Slashdot, is interesting to many people because it is the online synonym of the talk-show. A topic is discussed, and the audience gets to react. (Actually, the "McLaughlin Group" would make for a better comparison.)
But for nerds, it is much better than a talk show. Not only is the initial presentation of the topic far more developed (the story or site being linked to), but the audience participation is far FAR more involved. And the subject matter is more intelligent. But let's face it, the 'audience participation' is what makes Slashdot so interesting to many of us.
So Microsoft ports MSIE to Linux. Anyone care to guess which (if any) distribution would carry it? It seems to me that Microsoft has pretty much locked itself out of the Linux desktop. Of course, there's always "MS:L". Ugh.
Re:eBay: Moderation points for auction
on
Slashdot Notes
·
· Score: 1
I'm sure that if a moderator was to offer their points on eBay, they wouldn't use their Slashdot name or their email address that can be tracked back to their Slashdot account. Actually, they could announce that they are a moderator quite anonymously.
You're pretty evil. Obviously, this is an attempt to get Slashdotters to use all their moderator points. TACO: You should have some code that looks that the 'moderation pool' to ensure that there are at least xxx moderation points floating around at any one time.
It doesn't make sense that the label given to a post is chosen by the last moderator. Especially when a "5" is downrated, or a non-anonymous post with a 0 score is promoted back to 1. What would provide much more value, if possible, is the last five ratings on a post. What one person sees as insightful another could see as informative. And what someone sees as a troll, another sees as flamebait.
If we're going to attach reasons for the moderation, I'd like to know more than what the last person who touched the message thought of it.
Have you read the moderator FAQ. Rob doesn't want us to moderate down anti-Linux posts. In fact, if it's a really good anti-Linux post with a lot of information and stinging details, he wants us to moderate UP! Remember that the moderation system is used to filter out the well-thought out posts from the everyday trash. And all anti-Linux posts don't fall into the category of midlessly worshiping the Gates' cult of personality.
eBay: Moderation points for auction
on
Slashdot Notes
·
· Score: 3
With the latest trend in auctioning virtual property and services, the "moderator for a day... or two" idea is going to keep "RARE: Slashdot Moderation Points!" off of eBay for a while. Thank goodness for at least THAT much!
It isn't quite that fluid. Today, at least, you just can't buy a T1 across the US for the afternoon then relinquish it later in the day. It takes time to set up the circuits, test it out, what not. Imagine the nightmare of trying to arrange for a T1 for a mid-day conference... there's a lot they're going to have to work out beyond buying and selling.
Then there's service level agreements, what happens during a fiber cut... it all sounds like a nightmare. I think it is a neat idea, but the devil is in the details on this one.
But this may not be so good for the everday users. We're back on the cost-per-connection model that everyone loves to hate.
I have to say that this post is deliciously recursive. It is a "first post" so should be -1. However, once it is a -1, it shows its relevance, because it does an excellent job of demonstrating the moderation, making it very on-topic. But then again, it is a first post...
I think the commander needs to put a LARGE DISCLAIMER up every time moderation is mentioned. It is easy, I would imagine, for a moderator to easily forget the "can't admit I'm a moderator" rule when the topic of moderation is directly discussed.
Thanks for the information...
on
Slashdot Notes
·
· Score: 4
I had noticed that Slashdot had been down frequently lately (and did a traceroute to confirm that there was connectivity one hop before the destination). I'm glad to see an explanation for it, even if there is not a resolution at this time. However, why weren't we told any earlier?
I read slashdot along with several other news sites, and I sorely miss it when it is down.
> It doesn't matter, we can do both! There > aren't any kernel-level issues...
Absolutely!:)
Microsoft understood the Linux community when they posted their results. They had a good idea how we would react. What they also knew is that more effort would be put into SMP scaling and high-end features. Why would Microsoft do this? It would seem to be to their advantage to get Linux to accelerate its development on high-end features so it could do battle with the the larger UNIX manufacturers.
There's lot of benefits from Microsoft's perspective. They have a poor story to tell on high end systems, so if Linux takes some steps forward there, it is no loss. But what is more interesting is that they begin to encroach on Sun, IBM, HP, etc in the higher performance computing. Microsoft would love for Linux to develop high end features and to take on the major UNIX vendors. Less heat for Microsoft, more heat for Linux.
Heck, if I were Microsoft, I would actually pay coders to develop high-end Linux features!
I have to wonder if Microsoft isn't trying to steer Linux in the wrong direction. At a time that Linux is focusing on the desktop, Microsoft pulls out a comparison of a top-end system with a really odd configuration (like the four 100baseT connections) and focus the conversation there.
That is *NOT* the issue. High-end systems, while interesting, and good to tune for, may not be where Linux should be in the near-term.
The _server_ battle is not won by getting a Linux server performing a major task at AT&T. While a nice feather in the cap, the battle is won (and the dollars are shifted) at the lower levels, where the everyday medium to small company is. And that's where Microsoft doesn't want Linux to be.
Where Microsoft doesn't want Linux to be is *painfully* obvious -- the desktop. Microsoft knows that control of modern computing is centered around the desktop. This is where you can make and break standards. This is where you can impose the most leverage. (Sun knows this to, which is why they're trying to change the game to fat servers with thin clients.)
Who knows? We may be seeing more high-end benchmarks down the road that are given by Microsoft to independent parties to run. The funny thing is that if you stack NT up to one of the mature commercial UNIX operating systems, NT falls short.
Strange, isn't it? NT is utterly demolished at the high end. They've practically given away the low-end. They're trying to tell a story about the middle-high range, but they can't unless they pick what is currently the wrong competitor.
I think it is very safe to assume that the number of eyes at Microsoft focused on Linux is much greater than twenty. These ten have the ability to marshall the forces of other groups, such as the Microsoft 'test labs'. In addition, it is an obvious assumption that this is only the early core of the group. Microsoft wanted to make a statement with that number because the true number would have been scary. Imagine the press release... "Microsoft unleashes two hundred against Linux!" Woo-hoo!
A few random points... Documentation is going to help us out here, and I'm *not* talking about explaining the source code or the way the software works. Documenting our activities, and documenting theirs. The number of hours spent on the code, the number of individual bug fixed, the number of new features... they all provide powerful statistics which prove that the Bizaar has overwhelmed the Cathedral.
Aside from documenting our activities, we need to document Microsoft's. When a software developer starts courting Linux does an about-face due to a Microsoft donation/investment, it needs to be recorded. One can imagine the powerful counter to a Microsoft announcement of 'victory' in a certain application field, when it is shown step-by-step the coersion that took place that is NOT related to the quality of the software and why people have chosen it. May the better PRODUCT win!
The Air Force has some ruggedized Sun workstations they use. (The components are bought by a third company from Sun, repackaged, and then sold the to military.) The quote from my buddie in the armed services is that "It could be dropped from an airplane and keep on going."
I have to wonder how many packets per meters/second it generated.
It already connects to the internet. Why else do they have telnet apps and settings for your ISP, and those cool browsers?
Even worse: DISTRIBUTED.NET like processing...
on
Quake3 to go SMP
·
· Score: 2
Even better would be a network type environment where you could install a client on other machines throughout the office and to suck their idle CPU time from their systems and turn it into a hyper-reality gaming experience for you.:)
"Don't use your computer's idle time to search for aliens... use it to kill them!" -- Quake's new marketing line.
> the *needing* of 3d acceleration can hardly > be scary.
For games to 'jump to the next level', you need new hardware. Quake and what not wouldn't be Quake without the 3D cards. We'd all be stuck playing Master of Orion or something.:)
If taking advantage of new technology allows for a breakthrough in gaming... be it quality, complexity, or a complete new genre, go for it. It will only 'require' new hardware to the extent that the new hardware makes the entire thing possible.
[However, games that require mulitprocessors for apparently no reason should be SHOT.]
> needing* multiple processors, just as it now > *needs* 3D acceleration.
Well, your 3d accelerator card IS another processor, just dedicated to graphics. Personally, I'm all for multiple processors. If I can load Linux on a Sun E4000 and use ten processors for the screen, one for the game logic, and one of everything else -- and get some sort of super-reality game, heck, sign me up!
Let's start with the premise that Microsoft rarely does any thinking.
It sounds like flame bait, but it isn't. What happens is that they first "talk" about a new project. What they're really doing is throwing the topic into the air to collect comments. So, when Microsoft talks, they are actually listening. They listen to what everyone says. Then they go and make a very bad version 1.0 of it. People tell them what's wrong with it, and now they've got a version 1.1 of it.
(One could go on to say that people then start requesting things they want added, and version 2.0 appears. Then people tell them what's wrong with it again, and version 2.1 is born. And so on. You get the picture... you're a Slashdotter, right?)
So, Balmer announces to the media that "We're thinking about Open Source!" He gives a little tidbit or two of a thought. Now the real Microsoft army goes to work... The Media... and as much as I hate to say it... Slashdot too! People discuss the ramifications, hammer out the issues, raise the important points. Microsoft harvests the results of the collective IQ they focused on the issue. And if they don't get quite enough, they announce it again! And when they harvest enough, either the project is aborted, or Version 1.0 Open Source License is born.
Microsoft is watching. Express your view! Discuss the treasures and traps of Open Source licensing. Tell them how they can embrace, extend, and corrupt the Open Source system. Aren't they evil? You got to love Microsoft like you love Darth Vader. I'm just waiting for Bill to take the mask off.
Slashdot Mirror
My two cents is that this author is more noise than signal.
I have to take issue with several points the author raised. However, the most central is that school shootings is a young-white-male-only phenomena. It parallels in 1980 with saying that AIDS is a gay-white-male-only phenomena. The fact that is mostly hits males is obvious. The fact that it mostly hits white males could easily be because they make up the majority of the population.
If the number of shootings were to increase to a figure, such as 100, we would see more minority representation. Just as the number of AIDS cases increase, we see other groups represented as well. Perhaps it is incendiary to some to compare the original class of people in shootings to the original class of people with AIDS, but the point is that you can't say it's a white boy only phenomena based on a handful of events. MORE DATA NEEDED.
The other thing that is shocking is the claim that JAIL is the closest analogy to high school! And the admission of a "cruel social order". I hardly think that just because something goes on in jail, it should also go on in the high schools.
> Use some ridiculous encryption on the level of
> rot13 - the computer programs will never figure
> out!
*Exactly.* If you use PGP or Netscape or whatever _everyday piece of software_ to encode your messages, you can bet money that it'll be decoded by someone else. You DON'T need 128 bit encryption to be private... what you need is 'foreign encryption'... an encryption method that does NOT follow a standard.
If you simply take someone's encryption code, and make a slight modification to it (rot13 as suggested, or whatever), you've got yourself a completely private method of communications. And if you're small fry, you have absolutely no worry that they'll ever break it until long after you are dead. (Save for things like "traffic analysis" and such.)
REMEMBER: Security through obscurity.
I had to vent a little there, sorry. The point being that these 'solutions' are not being technically driven, and they are trying to fix something that, from the broad perspective, only they think is broken. But it is everyone else who they have to change to scratch their itch. The mindset seems to parallel with the people who want to censor the Internet.
How does that quote go? "The Internet treats censorship as damage, and routes around it." Even though we (or at least I) don't have all the details about the nature of the censorship, it is obvious that there will be legitimate sites that are blocked. And people who want to get around the censorship can easily do so. Such is the nature of online censorship. (Maybe the net effect is to make visiting a 'naughty site' a crime? Who knows.)
What is interesting is that a modern western nation of a significant size is doing this. It looks like it is going to be the experiment for the rest of the governments in the western world to witness. Here's hoping for miserable failure.
But for nerds, it is much better than a talk show. Not only is the initial presentation of the topic far more developed (the story or site being linked to), but the audience participation is far FAR more involved. And the subject matter is more intelligent. But let's face it, the 'audience participation' is what makes Slashdot so interesting to many of us.
So Microsoft ports MSIE to Linux. Anyone care to guess which (if any) distribution would carry it? It seems to me that Microsoft has pretty much locked itself out of the Linux desktop. Of course, there's always "MS:L". Ugh.
I'm sure that if a moderator was to offer their points on eBay, they wouldn't use their Slashdot name or their email address that can be tracked back to their Slashdot account. Actually, they could announce that they are a moderator quite anonymously.
You're pretty evil. Obviously, this is an attempt to get Slashdotters to use all their moderator points. TACO: You should have some code that looks that the 'moderation pool' to ensure that there are at least xxx moderation points floating around at any one time.
It doesn't make sense that the label given to a post is chosen by the last moderator. Especially when a "5" is downrated, or a non-anonymous post with a 0 score is promoted back to 1. What would provide much more value, if possible, is the last five ratings on a post. What one person sees as insightful another could see as informative. And what someone sees as a troll, another sees as flamebait.
If we're going to attach reasons for the moderation, I'd like to know more than what the last person who touched the message thought of it.
Have you read the moderator FAQ. Rob doesn't want us to moderate down anti-Linux posts. In fact, if it's a really good anti-Linux post with a lot of information and stinging details, he wants us to moderate UP! Remember that the moderation system is used to filter out the well-thought out posts from the everyday trash. And all anti-Linux posts don't fall into the category of midlessly worshiping the Gates' cult of personality.
With the latest trend in auctioning virtual property and services, the "moderator for a day... or two" idea is going to keep "RARE: Slashdot Moderation Points!" off of eBay for a while. Thank goodness for at least THAT much!
Then there's service level agreements, what happens during a fiber cut... it all sounds like a nightmare. I think it is a neat idea, but the devil is in the details on this one.
But this may not be so good for the everday users. We're back on the cost-per-connection model that everyone loves to hate.
I have to say that this post is deliciously recursive. It is a "first post" so should be -1. However, once it is a -1, it shows its relevance, because it does an excellent job of demonstrating the moderation, making it very on-topic. But then again, it is a first post...
I think the commander needs to put a LARGE DISCLAIMER up every time moderation is mentioned. It is easy, I would imagine, for a moderator to easily forget the "can't admit I'm a moderator" rule when the topic of moderation is directly discussed.
I read slashdot along with several other news sites, and I sorely miss it when it is down.
Absolutely! :)
Microsoft understood the Linux community when they posted their results. They had a good idea how we would react. What they also knew is that more effort would be put into SMP scaling and high-end features. Why would Microsoft do this? It would seem to be to their advantage to get Linux to accelerate its development on high-end features so it could do battle with the the larger UNIX manufacturers.
There's lot of benefits from Microsoft's perspective. They have a poor story to tell on high end systems, so if Linux takes some steps forward there, it is no loss. But what is more interesting is that they begin to encroach on Sun, IBM, HP, etc in the higher performance computing. Microsoft would love for Linux to develop high end features and to take on the major UNIX vendors. Less heat for Microsoft, more heat for Linux.
Heck, if I were Microsoft, I would actually pay coders to develop high-end Linux features!
That is *NOT* the issue. High-end systems, while interesting, and good to tune for, may not be where Linux should be in the near-term.
The _server_ battle is not won by getting a Linux server performing a major task at AT&T. While a nice feather in the cap, the battle is won (and the dollars are shifted) at the lower levels, where the everyday medium to small company is. And that's where Microsoft doesn't want Linux to be.
Where Microsoft doesn't want Linux to be is *painfully* obvious -- the desktop. Microsoft knows that control of modern computing is centered around the desktop. This is where you can make and break standards. This is where you can impose the most leverage. (Sun knows this to, which is why they're trying to change the game to fat servers with thin clients.)
Who knows? We may be seeing more high-end benchmarks down the road that are given by Microsoft to independent parties to run. The funny thing is that if you stack NT up to one of the mature commercial UNIX operating systems, NT falls short.
Strange, isn't it? NT is utterly demolished at the high end. They've practically given away the low-end. They're trying to tell a story about the middle-high range, but they can't unless they pick what is currently the wrong competitor.
A few random points...
Documentation is going to help us out here, and I'm *not* talking about explaining the source code or the way the software works. Documenting our activities, and documenting theirs. The number of hours spent on the code, the number of individual bug fixed, the number of new features... they all provide powerful statistics which prove that the Bizaar has overwhelmed the Cathedral.
Aside from documenting our activities, we need to document Microsoft's. When a software developer starts courting Linux does an about-face due to a Microsoft donation/investment, it needs to be recorded. One can imagine the powerful counter to a Microsoft announcement of 'victory' in a certain application field, when it is shown step-by-step the coersion that took place that is NOT related to the quality of the software and why people have chosen it.
May the better PRODUCT win!
The Air Force has some ruggedized Sun workstations they use. (The components are bought by a third company from Sun, repackaged, and then sold the to military.) The quote from my buddie in the armed services is that "It could be dropped from an airplane and keep on going."
I have to wonder how many packets per meters/second it generated.
It already connects to the internet. Why else do they have telnet apps and settings for your ISP, and those cool browsers?
Even better would be a network type environment where you could install a client on other machines throughout the office and to suck their idle CPU time from their systems and turn it into a hyper-reality gaming experience for you. :)
"Don't use your computer's idle time to search for aliens... use it to kill them!" -- Quake's new marketing line.
> the *needing* of 3d acceleration can hardly
:)
> be scary.
For games to 'jump to the next level', you need new hardware. Quake and what not wouldn't be Quake without the 3D cards. We'd all be stuck playing Master of Orion or something.
If taking advantage of new technology allows for a breakthrough in gaming... be it quality, complexity, or a complete new genre, go for it. It will only 'require' new hardware to the extent that the new hardware makes the entire thing possible.
[However, games that require mulitprocessors for apparently no reason should be SHOT.]
> needing* multiple processors, just as it now
> *needs* 3D acceleration.
Well, your 3d accelerator card IS another processor, just dedicated to graphics. Personally, I'm all for multiple processors. If I can load Linux on a Sun E4000 and use ten processors for the screen, one for the game logic, and one of everything else -- and get some sort of super-reality game, heck, sign me up!
It sounds like flame bait, but it isn't. What happens is that they first "talk" about a new project. What they're really doing is throwing the topic into the air to collect comments. So, when Microsoft talks, they are actually listening. They listen to what everyone says. Then they go and make a very bad version 1.0 of it. People tell them what's wrong with it, and now they've got a version 1.1 of it.
(One could go on to say that people then start requesting things they want added, and version 2.0 appears. Then people tell them what's wrong with it again, and version 2.1 is born. And so on. You get the picture... you're a Slashdotter, right?)
So, Balmer announces to the media that "We're thinking about Open Source!" He gives a little tidbit or two of a thought. Now the real Microsoft army goes to work... The Media... and as much as I hate to say it... Slashdot too! People discuss the ramifications, hammer out the issues, raise the important points. Microsoft harvests the results of the collective IQ they focused on the issue. And if they don't get quite enough, they announce it again! And when they harvest enough, either the project is aborted, or Version 1.0 Open Source License is born.
Microsoft is watching. Express your view! Discuss the treasures and traps of Open Source licensing. Tell them how they can embrace, extend, and corrupt the Open Source system. Aren't they evil? You got to love Microsoft like you love Darth Vader. I'm just waiting for Bill to take the mask off.