In a recent interview with the Escapist, Russ Pitts reveals a lot about who John Romero really is.
For a person like myself who knows neither whom John Romero is nor whom Russ Pitts is, I suppose the slashdot editor and article submitter just assume that I'll feel compelled to read the article to figure it all out. I call poor editing; a good article summary should allow me to make an informed decision about whether to delve further, just from reading the article. Putting a blurb about who Romero is would make all the difference here, e.g. "... reveals a lot about who John Romero, the author of WhateverHeDid, is."
Is this really what people in general think of as 'great' and desirable? A house where you hardly have to move to achieve anything, with loads of electric and electronic gadgets that can do it all for you? To me it seems like what I call stupid luxury: luxurious things that you don't need, which will in the end make you less able to function on your own.
Miles away, a magic mirror comes to life and addresses Bill Gates as he lies on his hover-bed...
Mirror: Master, a thousand apologies for disturbing you, but I must report that you have been slightly and indirectly insulted by one "jandersen" on the slashdot site. Bill:(twitches left pinky slightly) Mirror: As you wish, master, I will have jandersen's heart brought to you in a box. Bill:(twitches left pinky twice) Mirror: Ah yes, and then I will have a chair thrown at the box.
From TFA The Coke can method Get a Coke can, drink the contents, rinse out the can. Carefully cut the lid section off the can. Superglue a small magnet to the inside of the upper lip of the can so that it's flush with the open top of the can.
a) Aluminium isn't magnetic, it wouldn't hold the can closed
b) Is it really that good an idea to have a magnet that close to your ipod?
Further, I'd say the "is it really a good idea" question would apply even more to their described Christopher Walken method.
That's the problem with pay-for-performance - it invites abuse.
Even so, I'd find pay-for-performance a preferable approach to pay-hugely-no-matter-what. Though better than either of those would be pay-human-scale-wage (heiristic: not to exceed 5x lowest paid employee salary).
[OSX] shouldn't be [creating invisible doppelganger files] for every file, only for files that
1. are stored on a file system where the OS X code doesn't natively support the resource fork/Finder attributes and
2. have a resource fork or Finder attributes added to them.
That still might be most of the files you see in some cases.
I'm seeing this behavior on FAT32, which has got to be one of the most common file systems in the universe; in fact, off the top of my head it's the only filesystem commonly writeable by linux, osx, and windows. And it happens in response to a mere file browsing in OSX; doesn't mean your point #2 is wrong, but if not then it would imply that the most common user operation in OSX results in this problem.
A strong objection I have to OSX's treatment of files is its practice of creating one invisible file for every visible file (differing in name only by a preceding dot). I consider this to be littering, and it causes trouble when disks are shared between operating systems (example: file-browse through a large collection of mp3s on OSX, then view the same mp3 collection in an mp3 application on another OS; suddenly you've got twice as many entries, half of which are not real mp3 files). IMO Apple should have chosen to maintain extra metadata somewhere else; optimally somewhere out of view, but at worst in the per-directory invisible file they write titled ".DSStore". Grr.
If anyone knows a way to disable this behavior, please do let me know.
Suppose we invert the example and make all the fuss over working with *white* people:
I know I'm going to get modded down as a "racist" for saying it, but this is hardly uncommon with white bosses. The last company I worked at had a white CEO, and he was an absolute NIGHTMARE to work with (as were the other two white people I had worked under in the past).
If such a post were made, would it get shunned? If so, can we interpret that to mean that people don't believe there is such a thing as rational discourse about potential differences as mapped to race?
If the post DIDN'T get shunned, could we conclude that people feel it's ok to discuss one group but not another?
The important thing is that [Google is] fighting on our corner.
Not precisely... more like Google is fighting the guy across the street, and doing so from the diagonally opposite corner. If Google happens to beat up the guy across the street, we don't know what they'll then do to us. I share your happiness that the guy across the street is getting hassled, but looking further ahead and doing some planning is still warranted.
research funded by a corperation is more likely to achieve results than that of academics. Academics are free to pursue whatever is most interesting as they work, and it is ok to get off on a tangent as long as some papers come out of it. However if you work for a company you need to get results
It would be wrong to conclude that academic research is therefor a waste. Companies do generally demand results, but more to the point: companies demand results within rigid timeframes. The net result is that companies probably produce more useful results given a short window of time, but would never get to many of the useful results that require longer-term windows and various speculative mis-steps along the way that academic research opens doors to. I assume you're not advocating the elimination of academic research, but to make a point: the elimination of academic research would quickly lead to a thoroughly limited and inbred pool of company research. Generally speaking, profit-driven company ongoings tend to be more "development" than research, and are most productive in the "last mile" application stage, and worth a lot less in the early pioneering stages. And when companies ocassionally do invest heavily in true research, they're a lot more focused on locking up the results in patents and lawsuits than academics are.
Would you have any recommendations on info sources where laptop shoppers like myself could acquaint themselves with the quality available from different intel laptop vendors? (Thanks for any help...)
I'm assuming they don't intend to outlaw an ftp transfer from one machine to another. So what defines "p2p"? Would it be a transfer between two machines where the discovery of the source machine was achieved via any search mechanism that does not employ dns or google/yahoo/$PORTAL? Any search mechanism that uses a distributed database? A transfer from multiple source machines to (one or more) destination machines?
seems like the term "free" being abused here
on
Firefox VoIP Client
·
· Score: 2, Informative
For a Free/free cross-platform Firefox VOIP extension try OpenWengo
Skimming the site, the software may be free/open/libre, but it looks like the infrastructure into which it taps is not free (Wengo charges money). Is this the case with all voip setups/clients (that they must necessarily tap into a non-free infrastructural provider)?
You talk about how oppressive "This Administration" is, when [criticism isn't tolerated on slashdot]
It depends on what the criticism is about. People who think issues involving the current administration (or indeed, the overall political direction of congress + corporations) have multiple nuanced sides all equally deserving of credibility just might be in the wrong crowd here on slashdot. This isn't Huffington's site, but it's more Huffington than Limbaugh no doubt.
from solar powered LEDs to memory LCD screens, it's all there.
What a spectrum, it's a veritable A to B of things, it boggles the mind. Like the Simpsons quote: "... and these manned orbits will answer questions that have limitless application, from watch making to watch repair."
It could instead be a defensive measure; the DOE doesn't want a private organization to build off of its research and then file their own patent, preventing a wider field from employing the technology. The DOE can file a patent to prevent this sort of abuse, and then decline to charge any licensing fee for companies or individuals that want to employ the technology.
The government should simply document it so that denial of prior art would subsequently be ridiculous. I agree w grandparent post, their filing for a patent smells weird.
I visited Zimmerman's site but wasn't clear on how man-in-the-middle attacks were being addressed. Zimmerman writes:
It uses ephemeral Diffie-Hellman with hash commitment, and allows the detection of man-in-the-middle (MiTM) attacks by displaying a short authentication string for the users to read and compare over the phone.
... but I couldn't find more detail. If one end sends an auth string to the other end, a MiTM attack would simply pass it on transparently. I'm sure I'm missing something, but what?
Tell me again how patents are protecting the inventor against large corporations?
Your question implies that the goal of patents is to protect small inventors against competition. Let's not lose sight of the fact that this is NOT the goal of patents. Their goal is to increase the number of useful inventions to which the public has access. It is only incidental (i.e. a means to an end) that the method being tried to achieve this aim happens to be granting a temporary monopoly. Interpreted one way, this ruling by the supreme court says it's not right to create an idea and then simply sit and goal tend it... I don't know the court's reasoning (haven't read the article or the ruling) but this would seem to align with the idea of making useful things available to the public.
I don't disagree with any of the thoughts you raise. My point is that well-reasoned arguments that firewire will continue do not include "the most recent machine has firewire".
FireWire is present, as it is on all new Intel-based Macs to date, proving that FireWire isn't going anywhere (anytime soon, anyway)
Don't mean to nitpick, but even "anytime soon" isn't proven unless "anytime soon" is defined to be "right now in this model". The next model... who knows?
In terms of semantics, claiming that the most recent observable case reliably proves a continued future trend is like that quote by Bart's evil twin: "They say I'm crazy, but aren't we all a little mad? I know *I* am." There is always a last machine as far as any given feature; Apple had a final SCSI machine, a final 8-din connector machine, and so on.
In terms of analysis, there may be args one way or the other that have to do with strategy analysis or market demand, but again the presence of firewire on this machine and all previous machines is not proof of Apple's plan to do any particular thing. Sample counter theory: for all we know, Apple will drop firewire the instant it has released at least one Intel machine for every slot in its lineup, so that the transition to intel machines seems less disruptive.
The U.S. legal system is so screwed up that it's now got me feeling sorry for big, evil corporations...
Get over it, seriously. The corporations have a wonderful free ride, owning the government with no social responsibility. The only ones stymied by the current situation are the newcomers trying to overcome the barriers to entry (barriers being the enormous patent portfolios of the entrenched players)... in other words, you and I can't go and start a corporation and compete, but the existing corporations are fat, happy, and delighted as punch that anyone might feel sorry for them.
There is some kind of calculus that volunteers for congressional reps use for various types of communication. For instance, an email is assumed to represent the thoughts of 5 other constiuents, a phone call, 20, and a paper letter, 50.
I'm wondering if the worth of phone call should perhaps be ratcheted up a notch. Of the three communication channels mentioned, it's the only one that requires the time of a human being on the receiving end in a way that you the sender can measure with any confidence. Put another way, email and postal mail are easily dismissed with zero accountability to the sender. Phone calls can also be dismissed, but only after a human on the receiving side has spent the time talking to the person on the sending side. That costs real money on the receiving side. I think this amounts to a supportable argument that phone calls are the only way to truly make an impression, especially if one assumes a government more concerned with placating the populace than serving it.
Slashdot Mirror
For a person like myself who knows neither whom John Romero is nor whom Russ Pitts is, I suppose the slashdot editor and article submitter just assume that I'll feel compelled to read the article to figure it all out. I call poor editing; a good article summary should allow me to make an informed decision about whether to delve further, just from reading the article. Putting a blurb about who Romero is would make all the difference here, e.g. "... reveals a lot about who John Romero, the author of WhateverHeDid, is."
Miles away, a magic mirror comes to life and addresses Bill Gates as he lies on his hover-bed...
Mirror: Master, a thousand apologies for disturbing you, but I must report that you have been slightly and indirectly insulted by one "jandersen" on the slashdot site.
Bill: (twitches left pinky slightly)
Mirror: As you wish, master, I will have jandersen's heart brought to you in a box.
Bill: (twitches left pinky twice)
Mirror: Ah yes, and then I will have a chair thrown at the box.
Oh please... that's like "advocating" nudity by trying to sell naked pictures of Whoopi Goldberg.
Further, I'd say the "is it really a good idea" question would apply even more to their described Christopher Walken method.
Even so, I'd find pay-for-performance a preferable approach to pay-hugely-no-matter-what. Though better than either of those would be pay-human-scale-wage (heiristic: not to exceed 5x lowest paid employee salary).
- 1. are stored on a file system where the OS X code doesn't natively support the resource fork/Finder attributes and
- 2. have a resource fork or Finder attributes added to them.
That still might be most of the files you see in some cases.I'm seeing this behavior on FAT32, which has got to be one of the most common file systems in the universe; in fact, off the top of my head it's the only filesystem commonly writeable by linux, osx, and windows. And it happens in response to a mere file browsing in OSX; doesn't mean your point #2 is wrong, but if not then it would imply that the most common user operation in OSX results in this problem.
If anyone knows a way to disable this behavior, please do let me know.
Suppose we invert the example and make all the fuss over working with *white* people:
If such a post were made, would it get shunned? If so, can we interpret that to mean that people don't believe there is such a thing as rational discourse about potential differences as mapped to race?If the post DIDN'T get shunned, could we conclude that people feel it's ok to discuss one group but not another?
Not precisely... more like Google is fighting the guy across the street, and doing so from the diagonally opposite corner. If Google happens to beat up the guy across the street, we don't know what they'll then do to us. I share your happiness that the guy across the street is getting hassled, but looking further ahead and doing some planning is still warranted.
It would be wrong to conclude that academic research is therefor a waste. Companies do generally demand results, but more to the point: companies demand results within rigid timeframes. The net result is that companies probably produce more useful results given a short window of time, but would never get to many of the useful results that require longer-term windows and various speculative mis-steps along the way that academic research opens doors to. I assume you're not advocating the elimination of academic research, but to make a point: the elimination of academic research would quickly lead to a thoroughly limited and inbred pool of company research. Generally speaking, profit-driven company ongoings tend to be more "development" than research, and are most productive in the "last mile" application stage, and worth a lot less in the early pioneering stages. And when companies ocassionally do invest heavily in true research, they're a lot more focused on locking up the results in patents and lawsuits than academics are.
Would you have any recommendations on info sources where laptop shoppers like myself could acquaint themselves with the quality available from different intel laptop vendors? (Thanks for any help...)
Oh, I was thinking about the *inclusive* OR, and the answer I was getting was "3". But we're in agreement that there would be ass-biting.
I'm assuming they don't intend to outlaw an ftp transfer from one machine to another. So what defines "p2p"? Would it be a transfer between two machines where the discovery of the source machine was achieved via any search mechanism that does not employ dns or google/yahoo/$PORTAL? Any search mechanism that uses a distributed database? A transfer from multiple source machines to (one or more) destination machines?
Skimming the site, the software may be free/open/libre, but it looks like the infrastructure into which it taps is not free (Wengo charges money). Is this the case with all voip setups/clients (that they must necessarily tap into a non-free infrastructural provider)?
Isn't there a more humane way? I mean, we're discussing cane toads, not the White House.
It depends on what the criticism is about. People who think issues involving the current administration (or indeed, the overall political direction of congress + corporations) have multiple nuanced sides all equally deserving of credibility just might be in the wrong crowd here on slashdot. This isn't Huffington's site, but it's more Huffington than Limbaugh no doubt.
I randomly chose 8 links (one level deep), all were fine...
What a spectrum, it's a veritable A to B of things, it boggles the mind. Like the Simpsons quote: "... and these manned orbits will answer questions that have limitless application, from watch making to watch repair."
The government should simply document it so that denial of prior art would subsequently be ridiculous. I agree w grandparent post, their filing for a patent smells weird.
Your question implies that the goal of patents is to protect small inventors against competition. Let's not lose sight of the fact that this is NOT the goal of patents. Their goal is to increase the number of useful inventions to which the public has access. It is only incidental (i.e. a means to an end) that the method being tried to achieve this aim happens to be granting a temporary monopoly. Interpreted one way, this ruling by the supreme court says it's not right to create an idea and then simply sit and goal tend it... I don't know the court's reasoning (haven't read the article or the ruling) but this would seem to align with the idea of making useful things available to the public.
I don't disagree with any of the thoughts you raise. My point is that well-reasoned arguments that firewire will continue do not include "the most recent machine has firewire".
Don't mean to nitpick, but even "anytime soon" isn't proven unless "anytime soon" is defined to be "right now in this model". The next model... who knows?
In terms of semantics, claiming that the most recent observable case reliably proves a continued future trend is like that quote by Bart's evil twin: "They say I'm crazy, but aren't we all a little mad? I know *I* am." There is always a last machine as far as any given feature; Apple had a final SCSI machine, a final 8-din connector machine, and so on.
In terms of analysis, there may be args one way or the other that have to do with strategy analysis or market demand, but again the presence of firewire on this machine and all previous machines is not proof of Apple's plan to do any particular thing. Sample counter theory: for all we know, Apple will drop firewire the instant it has released at least one Intel machine for every slot in its lineup, so that the transition to intel machines seems less disruptive.
Get over it, seriously. The corporations have a wonderful free ride, owning the government with no social responsibility. The only ones stymied by the current situation are the newcomers trying to overcome the barriers to entry (barriers being the enormous patent portfolios of the entrenched players)... in other words, you and I can't go and start a corporation and compete, but the existing corporations are fat, happy, and delighted as punch that anyone might feel sorry for them.
I'm wondering if the worth of phone call should perhaps be ratcheted up a notch. Of the three communication channels mentioned, it's the only one that requires the time of a human being on the receiving end in a way that you the sender can measure with any confidence. Put another way, email and postal mail are easily dismissed with zero accountability to the sender. Phone calls can also be dismissed, but only after a human on the receiving side has spent the time talking to the person on the sending side. That costs real money on the receiving side. I think this amounts to a supportable argument that phone calls are the only way to truly make an impression, especially if one assumes a government more concerned with placating the populace than serving it.