When anyone starts talking statistics when referencing outer space, I just have to cringe. So, let me get this straight, just so I understand your argument.
1) aliens who use radio waves must be technologically advanced. 2) Technologically advanced aliens would expand to other planets (why? what if they cannot handle weightlessness, what if they don't WANT to?) 3) Said expansion would use relativistic speeds at all times to expand
ergo: We would not recieve signals much before we recieved aliens.
Now, let's look at a simple argument against your _Very_ loose logic.
1) Space is three dimensional. Even assuming your "expansion" theory is correct, you must assume either (a) the species multiplies as fast as they expand radially outward (so that the population density is large enough that they will run into us eventually, as their expansion reaches us.
or (b) they are targeting us as a direction to move towards. Personally, I don't find any plausibility to either of these arguments.
2) You assume that since it only took us several thousand years to get where we are, there would HAVE to be species that evolved before us. There is no proof, anecdotal or otherwise that we, as a species are either late or early comers to the scene. I am resonably sure that to be able to withstand the change needed to create technology, some form of advanced, multi-cellular organism would be required. This requires a long process of evolution, assuming you believe in such.
There are other problems, I won't go into them now....
I've been wondering about this for a while, and since there's an url associated with the movie, I figured I'd stick this one here.
why on earth hasn't hollywood suggested, and gotten a.movie (.mov) or.film (.flm) suffix for all movie websites? I'm REALLY sick of seeing advertizements with urls attached like "reallylongmoviename_themovie.net" and such.
Plus you could have a directory page (newmovies.mov, or movies.mov) that has links, and possibly reviews/synopses, etc)...
That this has ABSOLUTELY NO EFFECT. The entire point of the Supreme Court is that they are not swayed by public opinion. That's why, once appointed, the justices are in until they retire. Their only decision making process _should_ be the law.
That said, good for these guys. I am a huge fan of public, attention grabbing demonstrations, plus I like book mobiles.
The question dealt with here should be one of "acting out" of aggression, not of "level of anger" The problem with the study described above is that it has no socialogical impact. If someone is "more angry" do they stay angry after they hit the bag? For how long? What did they do/say about their anger?
What about the other group? Did they stay angry, get less angry, or what?
You could follow up on this experiment, ask them in a week.. "what did I do that made you angry?" and see who remembers what.
A psychology experiment may or may not be valid, but our interpretations of it are usually wrong.
Not that this is directly related, but I just heard a song off of Tom Petty's upcoming album called "The Last DJ", and I think it may be one of the better pieces of music which may not get played anywhere on mainstream stations.
The subject of the song is the last DJ, fighting corporate station masters who want to choose his programming. The lyric I remember (cause it's in the chorus) is:
"there goes the last DJ, there goes the last real voice, there goes your freedom of choice.
If y'all could just pull yourselves over to the side of the self-rightiousness highway for jus' a second, you might wanna look at what is actually being said, and what it might mean...
Microsoft has finally admitted that they need to make improvements to its software suite to compete. Look, regardless of what they have done in the past, Microsoft has a large portion of market share, and are slowly losing it to Linux, MacOS and others. Aparently (reading between the lines here) they were able to FORCE Novell to go under via using that incredible market share, but now they can't do that. So...They have to actually IMPROVE their PRODUCTS to regain their market share.
Regardless of the eventual outcome of the OS wars that are unfolding before us, this is a GOOD THING(tm) for consumers. Period.
Anyone commenting "Those bastards shouldn't violate the GPL!!!!" need to read the article, and if they have, they need to get their critical thinking caps on and RE-read the article. For all of you who just skim over the comments before making your own (I know you're out there), Here's a brief synopsis: our "heroes" (the writers of this rather elitist sounding article) were concerned about the closed beta testing that went on, and asked how they "got away" with it w/o violating the GPL. UL said something non-commital, which the article attempted to paint as evil, and included a letter from the FSF asking to SEE the NDA that beta testers had to sign.
THAT'S IT!! There is NO PROOF OF ANYTHING. TO my mind, this is just a giant FUD (yep, I said it) to drum up anti-UL sentiment. The UL people didn't say anything bad during the conference call, as far as I can tell, but the tone of the article is set up to riducle and shame the UL project for anything it said out of line. (see the crack about "line-ux"...
So maybe I'm over-reacting - but on the other hand, just cause you're paranoid, doesn't mean they're not out to get you.
I download a compiled version of, say, Gimp. I reverse engineer it. Am I free of the licence restrictions?
This popped into my head when I was installing rpm packages of Java. See, the RPMs don't have any sort of type through licence on them, so I didn't agree to anything when I installed it, even though the person who MADE the rpm from the java installation must have...
1) gather huge user base 2) charge for making products for said user base 3) charge users on a per-site fee 4) disgrutled users move to other formats. 5) sell stock options and retire.
I _think_ the aussie's issue is not whether or not you CAN be a Jedi, but rather whether or not you actually ARE a Jedi. The wording of the "warning" implies (to me) that they don't believe that everyone claiming to be a Jedi actually are. After all, even I think it'd be funny to say "I'm a Jedi Knight" in a stupid religous orientation box in a stupid survey.
They don't want to spend resources on people who are essentially purpetrating a hoax by giving them legal status as a religion.
are we missing the point here?
on
Electric Armor
·
· Score: 1
There are a LOT of people who are pointing out that (pseudoqoute:) "all they (the bad guy) has to do is change their ammunition to XYZ to circumvent this armor." I will assume for the remainder of this article that they know what they're talking about. Hell, I even think they're right. BUT:
1) Copper heads on these so called RPGs are cheaper than any other, equally effective, munition type. 2) Why would anyone, other than someone who was gearing up specifically to fight the American/British land forces spend the time, money and general effort required to re-equip an entire force with more expensive, slightly less generally effective, but able to penetrate Electronic sheilding, weapons?
If you don't equip EVERY damn tank/light armor vehicle with them, you can effectivly protect a couple of VERY valuable vehicles.
>Isn't this a fucking democracy? Why is the majority submitting to laws made by the whims of the same companies that release O-Town records and other toxins into the environment? Why am I the only one sending daily letters to his Senator, that Clinton bitch, begging for support for our digital lifestyle?
Not to be a contrarian, but: 1) Doing what you want is NOT in the constitution. You have the right to pursue "happiness", but that's not the issue there is it? 2) The law has ALREADY been passed. If they pass another one, it'll just get thrown out if it conflicts with one that has already been passed. The issue here is one that needs DEFINITIVE clarification by the supreme court. I would love to see a DMCA case go to the supreme court, and if it passes the majority judgement, I'm moving to australia. But I think you're barking up the wrong tree trying to influence Hillary "censorship" clinton to help you rescind the DMCA.
That said, Why ARE we letting this happen? Why isn't anyone brave enough to start rallies? Anyone?
I know there were several companies in seattle that were working on line of sight/laser tech stuff, but couldn't you also have directed antennae that point from inside windows across the way?
Assuming that: 1) librarians want to know how often a book is checked out and in. 2) librarians want to be able to get their books back 3) Librarians are Good People(Tm) and want to protect privacy:
The system should look like this: 3 separate databases/tables: 1) book check out/in information. contains 3 fields: Book name/barcode, date out, date in. This is written to at the same time as the other database 2) Personal holdings: the table is set up as follows: Personal ID, Date Out, Date Due. 3) personal info: name, address, etc.
The second table is checked against the current date to see if the book is overdue, if any are, it sends you a letter. When your book is checked in, the check in date is filled in in table 1, and the record is DELETED in table 2.
Basically my question is this: Do you, as an employee of a patent office, feel that the work you do is done in an efficient, straightforward, and intelligently designed manner, and/or what are the parts of the procedure you would like to see change?
Hrmm, the thing only works two meters from the "computer" which I assume means the speakers. Oh well. In the meantime, at least I won't get malaria (or west Nile Virus here in the states)
My favorite qoute from the article: "Saranyou told the paper the latest version of the pest controller will not annoy dogs or risk causing headaches because the frequencies that annoy rats and cockroaches are undetectable by human or canine ears. "
*sigh* and here I thought they were talking about politicians.
umm, not to be fussy, but I would like to point out that an appeal is usually heard before the JUDICIAL branch, and the only time the RIAA is going to be able to "lobby" is when their legal team is on the floor.
Personally, I believe that they might just get it thrown out, as selective enforcement, but the issue is really what the "intent" of the law was. The danger of my "stealing" a song from streaming audio is about the same as my stealing it off the radio.
I'd love to see the lawyers say something like this: "It doesn't matter whether they _could_ copy it from our stream, because they are FAR more likely to copy it from kazaa" and watch the RIAA's head explode.
Re:What can be done about terrorism?
on
More On Tragedy
·
· Score: 1
Experts seem to agree that security measures can never completely prevent a determined, well organized attempt involving suicide killers.
In this case, I tend to agree. The only defense is to make it annoying enough to hijack a plane, that they have to do something else that is more likely to be detected. That said: I seriously doubt that anyone will use this method of terrorism again any time soon.
On the other front, I would like to say something about the "nuke the bastards" methodology.
Not only is it rather barbaric, but it doesn't really discourage future acts of terrorism. Martyrdom and religious fanatiscism are powerful tools in the hands of a terrorist. The only way to stop others from attempting an action like this is to take a more creative approach to reprisals than death.
Death is not an appropriate punishment for suicide bombers, nor for those who are willing to send suicide bombers to do thier dirty work.
Instead, I would like to see what the/. crowd thinks about more creative approches.
Thank you for warning us of such a problematic issue THE DAY IT"S SCHEDULED TO GO OFF!!!!! Not to poke any sarcasm your way or anything.
I'm sure I'm not the first one to have pointed out the IIS second-wave yesterday:
2001-07-30 19:28:56 'Code Red' Worm might be coming back (articles,microsoft) (rejected)
But, don't you think that putting out the word yesterday, when we already had stories out, would have reminded those sysadmins lax enough to "worry about it later" to get on the ball and patch their servers?
Slashdot Mirror
Statistics?
When anyone starts talking statistics when referencing outer space, I just have to cringe. So, let me get this straight, just so I understand your argument.
1) aliens who use radio waves must be technologically advanced.
2) Technologically advanced aliens would expand to other planets (why? what if they cannot handle weightlessness, what if they don't WANT to?)
3) Said expansion would use relativistic speeds at all times to expand
ergo: We would not recieve signals much before we recieved aliens.
Now, let's look at a simple argument against your _Very_ loose logic.
1) Space is three dimensional. Even assuming your "expansion" theory is correct, you must assume either (a) the species multiplies as fast as they expand radially outward (so that the population density is large enough that they will run into us eventually, as their expansion reaches us.
or (b) they are targeting us as a direction to move towards. Personally, I don't find any plausibility to either of these arguments.
2) You assume that since it only took us several thousand years to get where we are, there would HAVE to be species that evolved before us. There is no proof, anecdotal or otherwise that we, as a species are either late or early comers to the scene. I am resonably sure that to be able to withstand the change needed to create technology, some form of advanced, multi-cellular organism would be required. This requires a long process of evolution, assuming you believe in such.
There are other problems, I won't go into them now....
I've been wondering about this for a while, and since there's an url associated with the movie, I figured I'd stick this one here.
.movie (.mov) or .film (.flm) suffix for all movie websites? I'm REALLY sick of seeing advertizements with urls attached like "reallylongmoviename_themovie.net" and such.
why on earth hasn't hollywood suggested, and gotten a
Plus you could have a directory page (newmovies.mov, or movies.mov) that has links, and possibly reviews/synopses, etc)...
I know it's offtopic, but only sort of...
That this has ABSOLUTELY NO EFFECT. The entire point of the Supreme Court is that they are not swayed by public opinion. That's why, once appointed, the justices are in until they retire. Their only decision making process _should_ be the law.
That said, good for these guys. I am a huge fan of public, attention grabbing demonstrations, plus I like book mobiles.
And?
The question dealt with here should be one of "acting out" of aggression, not of "level of anger" The problem with the study described above is that it has no socialogical impact. If someone is "more angry" do they stay angry after they hit the bag? For how long? What did they do/say about their anger?
What about the other group? Did they stay angry, get less angry, or what?
You could follow up on this experiment, ask them in a week.. "what did I do that made you angry?" and see who remembers what.
A psychology experiment may or may not be valid, but our interpretations of it are usually wrong.
Matt
Not that this is directly related, but I just heard a song off of Tom Petty's upcoming album called "The Last DJ", and I think it may be one of the better pieces of music which may not get played anywhere on mainstream stations.
The subject of the song is the last DJ, fighting corporate station masters who want to choose his programming. The lyric I remember (cause it's in the chorus) is:
"there goes the last DJ, there goes the last real voice, there goes your freedom of choice.
If y'all could just pull yourselves over to the side of the self-rightiousness highway for jus' a second, you might wanna look at what is actually being said, and what it might mean...
Microsoft has finally admitted that they need to make improvements to its software suite to compete. Look, regardless of what they have done in the past, Microsoft has a large portion of market share, and are slowly losing it to Linux, MacOS and others. Aparently (reading between the lines here) they were able to FORCE Novell to go under via using that incredible market share, but now they can't do that. So...They have to actually IMPROVE their PRODUCTS to regain their market share.
Regardless of the eventual outcome of the OS wars that are unfolding before us, this is a GOOD THING(tm) for consumers. Period.
Not that this thread should really be continued, but maybe you feel like posting the actual log entry? Just for curiosity's sake?
Look,
Anyone commenting "Those bastards shouldn't violate the GPL!!!!" need to read the article, and if they have, they need to get their critical thinking caps on and RE-read the article. For all of you who just skim over the comments before making your own (I know you're out there), Here's a brief synopsis:
our "heroes" (the writers of this rather elitist sounding article) were concerned about the closed beta testing that went on, and asked how they "got away" with it w/o violating the GPL. UL said something non-commital, which the article attempted to paint as evil, and included a letter from the FSF asking to SEE the NDA that beta testers had to sign.
THAT'S IT!! There is NO PROOF OF ANYTHING. TO my mind, this is just a giant FUD (yep, I said it) to drum up anti-UL sentiment. The UL people didn't say anything bad during the conference call, as far as I can tell, but the tone of the article is set up to riducle and shame the UL project for anything it said out of line. (see the crack about "line-ux"...
So maybe I'm over-reacting - but on the other hand, just cause you're paranoid, doesn't mean they're not out to get you.
just my $.02
so what about this:
I download a compiled version of, say, Gimp. I reverse engineer it. Am I free of the licence restrictions?
This popped into my head when I was installing rpm packages of Java. See, the RPMs don't have any sort of type through licence on them, so I didn't agree to anything when I installed it, even though the person who MADE the rpm from the java installation must have...
Just my $.025
1) gather huge user base
2) charge for making products for said user base
3) charge users on a per-site fee
4) disgrutled users move to other formats.
5) sell stock options and retire.
I _think_ the aussie's issue is not whether or not you CAN be a Jedi, but rather whether or not you actually ARE a Jedi. The wording of the "warning" implies (to me) that they don't believe that everyone claiming to be a Jedi actually are. After all, even I think it'd be funny to say "I'm a Jedi Knight" in a stupid religous orientation box in a stupid survey.
They don't want to spend resources on people who are essentially purpetrating a hoax by giving them legal status as a religion.
There are a LOT of people who are pointing out that (pseudoqoute:) "all they (the bad guy) has to do is change their ammunition to XYZ to circumvent this armor." I will assume for the remainder of this article that they know what they're talking about. Hell, I even think they're right. BUT:
1) Copper heads on these so called RPGs are cheaper than any other, equally effective, munition type.
2) Why would anyone, other than someone who was gearing up specifically to fight the American/British land forces spend the time, money and general effort required to re-equip an entire force with more expensive, slightly less generally effective, but able to penetrate Electronic sheilding, weapons?
If you don't equip EVERY damn tank/light armor vehicle with them, you can effectivly protect a couple of VERY valuable vehicles.
just my read on deployment type
>and it's not a publically treaded company
So why would they lie about profits?
>Isn't this a fucking democracy? Why is the majority submitting to laws made by the whims of the same companies that release O-Town records and other toxins into the environment? Why am I the only one sending daily letters to his Senator, that Clinton bitch, begging for support for our digital lifestyle?
Not to be a contrarian, but:
1) Doing what you want is NOT in the constitution. You have the right to pursue "happiness", but that's not the issue there is it?
2) The law has ALREADY been passed. If they pass another one, it'll just get thrown out if it conflicts with one that has already been passed. The issue here is one that needs DEFINITIVE clarification by the supreme court. I would love to see a DMCA case go to the supreme court, and if it passes the majority judgement, I'm moving to australia. But I think you're barking up the wrong tree trying to influence Hillary "censorship" clinton to help you rescind the DMCA.
That said, Why ARE we letting this happen? Why isn't anyone brave enough to start rallies? Anyone?
I know there were several companies in seattle that were working on line of sight/laser tech stuff, but couldn't you also have directed antennae that point from inside windows across the way?
Assuming that:
1) librarians want to know how often a book is checked out and in.
2) librarians want to be able to get their books back
3) Librarians are Good People(Tm) and want to protect privacy:
The system should look like this:
3 separate databases/tables:
1) book check out/in information. contains 3 fields: Book name/barcode, date out, date in. This is written to at the same time as the other database
2) Personal holdings: the table is set up as follows: Personal ID, Date Out, Date Due.
3) personal info: name, address, etc.
The second table is checked against the current date to see if the book is overdue, if any are, it sends you a letter.
When your book is checked in, the check in date is filled in in table 1, and the record is DELETED in table 2.
Simple, easy, completely safe.
With This code
code to music rendering on obfuscated code. Mmmmm...........
This makes me wonder:
1)Does Grace remember which judge she cut in front of? Does she have memory of interactions, and what kind?
2) Does she self program?
3) why don't they at least give the poor girl some hair?
Basically my question is this: Do you, as an employee of a patent office, feel that the work you do is done in an efficient, straightforward, and intelligently designed manner, and/or what are the parts of the procedure you would like to see change?
Hrmm, the thing only works two meters from the "computer" which I assume means the speakers. Oh well. In the meantime, at least I won't get malaria (or west Nile Virus here in the states)
My favorite qoute from the article:
"Saranyou told the paper the latest version of the pest controller will not annoy dogs or risk causing headaches because the frequencies that annoy rats and cockroaches are undetectable by human or canine ears. "
*sigh* and here I thought they were talking about politicians.
umm, not to be fussy, but I would like to point out that an appeal is usually heard before the JUDICIAL branch, and the only time the RIAA is going to be able to "lobby" is when their legal team is on the floor.
Personally, I believe that they might just get it thrown out, as selective enforcement, but the issue is really what the "intent" of the law was. The danger of my "stealing" a song from streaming audio is about the same as my stealing it off the radio.
I'd love to see the lawyers say something like this: "It doesn't matter whether they _could_ copy it from our stream, because they are FAR more likely to copy it from kazaa" and watch the RIAA's head explode.
Experts seem to agree that security measures can never completely prevent a determined, well organized attempt involving suicide killers.
In this case, I tend to agree. The only defense is to make it annoying enough to hijack a plane, that they have to do something else that is more likely to be detected. That said: I seriously doubt that anyone will use this method of terrorism again any time soon.
On the other front, I would like to say something about the "nuke the bastards" methodology.
Not only is it rather barbaric, but it doesn't really discourage future acts of terrorism. Martyrdom and religious fanatiscism are powerful tools in the hands of a terrorist. The only way to stop others from attempting an action like this is to take a more creative approach to reprisals than death.
Death is not an appropriate punishment for suicide bombers, nor for those who are willing to send suicide bombers to do thier dirty work.
Instead, I would like to see what the
I am:
1) Upset about the fact that _Slashdot_ is running stories about technology instead of the "attack on america"
2) Upset that slashdot stopped reporting important news about technology to talk about the "attack on america"
3) Upset because my whole world view came crashing down around my head this morning
5) Batman
4) Cowboy Neil
I fall under the other category.
Where's the "upset at GW Bush for being such a terrible speaker" option?
Personally, I think Legal and moral issues can be damned here: It's Freedom of Speech.
If you were to get sued, you can simply say "your machine was accessing freely published material" and tell them to shove it.
They can't sue for damages, because they can't prove that you caused any harm that Code Red didn't already cause...
Just my $.02
Dear Slashdot moderators:
Thank you for warning us of such a problematic issue THE DAY IT"S SCHEDULED TO GO OFF!!!!! Not to poke any sarcasm your way or anything.
I'm sure I'm not the first one to have pointed out the IIS second-wave yesterday:
2001-07-30 19:28:56 'Code Red' Worm might be coming back (articles,microsoft) (rejected)
But, don't you think that putting out the word yesterday, when we already had stories out, would have reminded those sysadmins lax enough to "worry about it later" to get on the ball and patch their servers?
Just curious