I would assume everyone on slashdot knows that GMT has been replaced by UTC.
They're nearly the same thing. There's two things that everyone should know about GMT and UTC:
* UTC is more specific than GMT. This makes it a better standard
* UTC and GMT never differ by more than a second
So, UTC is better for system administration, because the standard is more exact. If you are giving a time for a press conference, and the margin of error is more than a second anyway, GMT is perfectly fine. Many people would say GMT is preferable in such situations, because the "G" is recognizable as Greenwich, and that translates to a real place.
Here at the U of I, we built the 4th computer ever made: the Illiac
24 hours a day, an operator would sit at the computer to operate it. "Software" or jobs would be submitted by faculty. When one finished, the operator would load the next one.
Since only one job could be running at a time, it was quite important to detect infinite loops. The last bit of the ALU was connected to a speaker, and would produce sound similar to static when the computer was running correctly. If an infinite loop was encountered, then the static would suddenly hum a pitch, and the operator would kick out the job, and move to the next.
As the story goes, the very first machine music was written by a math professor, and submitted as an Illiac job, as a prank on the operator. Sometime around 3am, the operator picked up the next job and fed it to the machine. Immediately, the Illiac began playing "Hail to the Orange"!
Every teacher I know has their own facebook policy. I really think this is best.
Most teachers that I know have separate facebook accounts. One is for being friends with the students, and one is personal. I know one person that even uses facebook to discuss assignments during off-work hours. It's an easy way for her to make sure that the students see what she posts.
I can't figure out why a law would be needed here.
Or maybe Jonathan Blow, Markus Persson, and whoever "ExpiredPopsicle" is all reported themselves as Linux users and pulled up the average.
Markus Persson (Notch) has generally struck me as a linux guy, but I have no proof. He chose Xperia Play (Android) over IOS for mobile development, so I don't think he's a mac guy. He's always had linux on the download page, and he picked Java for development.
He _did_ sign a contract with Microsoft to develop a version for the 360. I think he just recognized it as a better community than the PSN community.
I've never been able to get any PC with an ATI card to hibernate correctly in linux, and I've found very little help on the topic. The best document I've found about the suspend process is here, and it is specific only to Ubuntu:
I'm not a particle physicist, but I've been extremely skeptical of such claims. The classical formula for momentum is p = m * v / sqrt (1- v^2/C^2). So, as the velocity approaches C, the upper limit for the mass approaches 0.
The only way to accelerate a particle past the speed of light is to supply it with greater-than-infinity energy, or for the mass of the particle to decrease below zero. I've never seen a journal stating that either one of those is possible.
So, the article that I linked above just smells bad. Even if the particle only passed the speed of light momentarily, it would take an infinite amount of energy to do so.
Obviously, the classical formula doesn't prohibit particles that are faster than the speed of light to continue travelling at FTL speeds. If such particles exist, we cannot interact with them.
It is now on someone's Web server, and they can (in theory) claim full ownership and copyright of the image at any time.
I suggest you refrain from participating when you have no fucking clue what you are talking about
I'm not sure what he said that was incorrect. He never said that they could be awarded full ownership. He just said that they could claim full ownership.
If I broke into the house of a famous photographer, copied their memory cards quickly and left, then I could claim full ownership of those images. If I began making prints and selling them before the original photographer, I'd probably be sued, but it may be hard for the original photographer to prove ownership. I think an app (as suggested here) is a lot more likely to do the same thing.
geekstuff4u.com had it available for sale at one time, but it's currently listed as out of stock. That model is almost 2 years old now, and I don't see any indication that they plan to update it.
Surely this has nothing at all to do with their recent infiltration of a certain company.
One of the reasons I've respected Anonymous is because not only do they do what everyone else cannot, but they get away without leaving tracks.
When HBGary claimed to have tracked them down and threatened to release their identities, they broke into HBGary, discovered that the information was faulty, and released it themselves.
So, no one can beat Anonymous at their own game, except for.... Fox News...? Well, grats guys! You now have my respect!
Re:Should have been a default in browsers from day
on
NoScript Awarded $10,000
·
· Score: 4, Informative
Ghosteryexists for Firefox/Chrome/IE/Safari, and can be taught to behave as noscript.
The article claims that they hope to find some with an exterior temperature below 225 C! For comparison, the earth's outer core ranges from 4400 C in the outer regions to 6100 C near the inner core, and the inner core is around 5400 C.
It's not ground-breaking. It is basically a limited version of Roller Coaster Tycoon, where your movement speed is limited as if you were actually living in the world that you are building. Nothing about the tech is actually new.
What is new is the social aspect. In RCT, I made lots of amazing creations, but never was able to show any of them off. Last night, I spent 2 hours building my own creation in Minecraft, though, and then spent 1 hour touring construction sites of other people on my server, and showing them what I had done. This is what makes it addicting.
I personally think that Minecraft is not that great of a game (if that term is even accurate). Even with texture packs, the graphics look 10-15 years old. The number of craftable items is low (only 1 one kind of armor, available in 4 different durabilities). The number of items you can find in the world is tiny (compared to games like Terraria or Eve Online). The server stability is weak. The built in tools for running a server are minimal. The mod support is promised, but currently very lacking. The monsters have bad AI. The combat is not interesting. The physics are weird and generally bad. The only thing that is new in Minecraft is redstone, and as cool as redstone is, that's not why people get sucked into the game.
I see the genre as having some promise. Eventually, someone is going to make an equivalent game that runs as a facebook app. When that happens, watch out.
Just so we are clear - there never was an incandescent light bulb ban; this was/is spin.
It was a ban in the US against any bulbs that did not meet a specific efficiency requirement. This requirement is low enough to include most current incandescent bulbs. The bill was the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007.
The ban did not start immediately. The first phase of the ban is bulbs of 100W, starting January 2012. By 2014, non-qualifying bulbs down to 40W will be banned. Colored bulbs, appliance bulbs, bulbs above 150W, and below 40W will be exempted, along with a few other special cases.
Regarding your comment, there are bulbs that are legal to buy now, that won't be legal to buy any more. I'm not sure if you are trying to split hairs, but your post is very inexact. I'm curious how you think this is "spin".
spamgourmet.com is a much better site for generating thousands of fake email address, although not as fun as mailinator. You can forward them all to your real email address, and then turn them off individually as they are compromised.
Spamgourmet.com also has a whole range of alternative names. I, for example, use mamber.net for the domain name of the addresses I generate. Visit the site, you'll get a laugh.
So, how does spamgourmet prevent one person from getting a complete list of all alternate names? Every few months, he displays 3 more alternate domain names, and removes all references to the previous 3. Those 3 will never be shown again. It's a much simpler solution, but clearly defeats the scripts.
If you really had a want of domain names, and thought it was extremely important to not let anyone get the full list, you could fragment the list based on the requester's location. For someone to get the entire list, they would need to find proxy servers for all regions other than their own.
Remember, the current program has cost something like 1000 American lives due to fuel convoy attacks, and is a logistical nightmare. Pretending that greener alternatives are impossible because they are ALSO logistical nightmares that will cost American lives is an unimpressive and unconvincing form of argument.
Solar panels are heavy. They are big. They are prone to damage by wind. They do not generate power at night, so they must be accompanied by large batteries or capacitors. They produce a trickle of power, and are not well designed for powering heavy machinery.
Are you suggesting that a mobile site in the desert should be surrounded by thousands of square meters of generators? Are you out of your mind? The are well suited for science fair projects, or convincing the masses that you are "green", but certainly not the right choice for mobile military installations.
In case you want to do the math yourself, be aware that a south-facing solar panel in Britain generates 0.022kW / square meter. Sure, you'll do better in the desert, but comparing this to diesel powered generators is just laughable.
If suddenly Apple had 90% of it's customers... being sued
I read the article, and assumed that only 0.1% of users would be at risk of being targeted.
Even if the RIAA decided to sue the top 5%, that would be an incredibly huge number of lawsuits. If the article claimed such a high percentage, then I would disregard it as FUD.
But, I think this article is very relevant. Let's say you or the small company you own do something to make Apple and the RIAA upset. If you've used iCloud at all, then they may be able to crash down on you hard, BSA-style. Even if you have not misused the service, defending such a case could be extremely expensive, and could ruin you.
For the teenager that appears to have purchased $1 Mil in music, they may also try to prosecute. But, if her family doesn't have a lot of money, there isn't really much to be made from such lawsuits.
Based on that type of analytic data, there's no way the RIAA or whoever could know whether you purchased the track legally or not.
I once read an article about various methods of encoding an inaudible watermark in audio's phase. Shift the audio two samples early or two samples late after a kick drum, or invert both channels' phase by 180 degrees after a crash cymbal, or the like. All this is imperceptible to the human auditory system, but the information it encodes still survives popular psychoacoustic codecs.
This isn't really relevant.
Can a watermark be added that would disappear or change only after the.mp3 has been transferred from my friend's computer to mine? If not, then there is no way to know whether I own the listening rights to the music in the mp3, or whether my friend does.
You might say that it would be an unrelated trademark, because it's software, but not strictly web-browser related.
Well, in that case, I still think Mozilla beat Google to the punch here. Because they began using Chrome as the name for the XML defining the structure of their browser, in about 2003. Anyone who has made a skin for Mozilla or Firefox has dealt with chrome.
My assumption has always been that Google lifted the name from the Mozilla Project. When Microsoft wanted their new browser (IE) to compete with the current standard (Netscape), they decided to have it identify itself as a Mozilla-based browser. Even today, IE 9 today gives "Mozilla/4.0" as its User Agent ID. I assumed that Google did the same thing when they thought up Chromium and Chrome. Chrome, however, gives "Mozilla/5.0" as its User Agent ID -- one better than Microsoft. In addition to stealing the user agent ID, they named the browser itself off of the Netscape/Mozilla/Firefox architecture.
of this crap. These 'offensive' communications laws have been in place for decades, over radio, TV, and now the web.
TV and radio are much different, because they go over the air.
Theoretically, I could censor all the radio stations in my town. If they have programs that use offensive language, I can just broadcast my own signal, louder than theirs, blocking out what I find offensive.
Radio stations did not like vigilantes censoring them, and the result of this was the FCC. The FCC says that such malicious interference is illegal. As a compromise, though, they required all broadcasting stations to abide by basic standards. Sure, the constitution lets you say anything you like, but if you want the FCC to protect you from your neighbour's interference, then you have to abide by a certain amount of standards. Violating the decency standards of the FCC doesn't make you a criminal, you simply lose the license that was granted for your radio station.
As far as I can tell, there is no equivalence with the web. FCC broadcast licenses are not required for posting to forums. Tennessee is clearly making this a criminal issue. I can't understand how it even got to the governor's desk, but I know for a fact that it will crumble the first time it goes to the courts.
Slashdot Mirror
I would assume everyone on slashdot knows that GMT has been replaced by UTC.
They're nearly the same thing. There's two things that everyone should know about GMT and UTC:
So, UTC is better for system administration, because the standard is more exact. If you are giving a time for a press conference, and the margin of error is more than a second anyway, GMT is perfectly fine. Many people would say GMT is preferable in such situations, because the "G" is recognizable as Greenwich, and that translates to a real place.
tl;dr: UTC is for computers. GMT is for humans.
This is actually the outcome of the last write-in campaign.
According to USA Today, Miles Morales is drawn to look like Donald Glover.
Here at the U of I, we built the 4th computer ever made: the Illiac
24 hours a day, an operator would sit at the computer to operate it. "Software" or jobs would be submitted by faculty. When one finished, the operator would load the next one.
Since only one job could be running at a time, it was quite important to detect infinite loops. The last bit of the ALU was connected to a speaker, and would produce sound similar to static when the computer was running correctly. If an infinite loop was encountered, then the static would suddenly hum a pitch, and the operator would kick out the job, and move to the next.
As the story goes, the very first machine music was written by a math professor, and submitted as an Illiac job, as a prank on the operator. Sometime around 3am, the operator picked up the next job and fed it to the machine. Immediately, the Illiac began playing "Hail to the Orange"!
Every teacher I know has their own facebook policy. I really think this is best.
Most teachers that I know have separate facebook accounts. One is for being friends with the students, and one is personal. I know one person that even uses facebook to discuss assignments during off-work hours. It's an easy way for her to make sure that the students see what she posts.
I can't figure out why a law would be needed here.
Perhaps I missed a math lesson somewhere, but aren't
You missed the icon for this story. It's a chalkboard that says "2 - 2 = 5"
Here's a link to the icon:
http://a.fsdn.com/sd/topics/education_64.png
Or maybe Jonathan Blow, Markus Persson, and whoever "ExpiredPopsicle" is all reported themselves as Linux users and pulled up the average.
Markus Persson (Notch) has generally struck me as a linux guy, but I have no proof. He chose Xperia Play (Android) over IOS for mobile development, so I don't think he's a mac guy. He's always had linux on the download page, and he picked Java for development.
He _did_ sign a contract with Microsoft to develop a version for the 360. I think he just recognized it as a better community than the PSN community.
I've never been able to get any PC with an ATI card to hibernate correctly in linux, and I've found very little help on the topic. The best document I've found about the suspend process is here, and it is specific only to Ubuntu:
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UnderstandingSuspend
Suspend works on my laptop, but it will overheat when I place it in my bag. I really would like to get hibernate to work.
There have been numerous slashdot articles claiming that scientists have found ways to break the speed of light law. For example:
http://science.slashdot.org/story/02/01/24/2355259/Electrical-Pulses-Break-Light-Speed-Record
I'm not a particle physicist, but I've been extremely skeptical of such claims. The classical formula for momentum is p = m * v / sqrt (1- v^2/C^2). So, as the velocity approaches C, the upper limit for the mass approaches 0.
The only way to accelerate a particle past the speed of light is to supply it with greater-than-infinity energy, or for the mass of the particle to decrease below zero. I've never seen a journal stating that either one of those is possible.
So, the article that I linked above just smells bad. Even if the particle only passed the speed of light momentarily, it would take an infinite amount of energy to do so.
Obviously, the classical formula doesn't prohibit particles that are faster than the speed of light to continue travelling at FTL speeds. If such particles exist, we cannot interact with them.
The slashdot article refers to a "James Rupert"?
Did James Murdoch change his last name to be his father's first name, or is this a different James?
Slashdot editors are gettin' sloppy.
Don't reply to the flamebait.
How did you get through school without learning about significant digits?
It is now on someone's Web server, and they can (in theory) claim full ownership and copyright of the image at any time.
I suggest you refrain from participating when you have no fucking clue what you are talking about
I'm not sure what he said that was incorrect. He never said that they could be awarded full ownership. He just said that they could claim full ownership.
If I broke into the house of a famous photographer, copied their memory cards quickly and left, then I could claim full ownership of those images. If I began making prints and selling them before the original photographer, I'd probably be sued, but it may be hard for the original photographer to prove ownership. I think an app (as suggested here) is a lot more likely to do the same thing.
The article says:
http://www.engadget.com/2009/11/27/kohjinshas-dual-sceen-dz-series-laptop-now-for-sale/
geekstuff4u.com had it available for sale at one time, but it's currently listed as out of stock. That model is almost 2 years old now, and I don't see any indication that they plan to update it.
Sarcasm from the article summary:
One of the reasons I've respected Anonymous is because not only do they do what everyone else cannot, but they get away without leaving tracks.
When HBGary claimed to have tracked them down and threatened to release their identities, they broke into HBGary, discovered that the information was faulty, and released it themselves.
So, no one can beat Anonymous at their own game, except for.... Fox News...? Well, grats guys! You now have my respect!
Ghosteryexists for Firefox/Chrome/IE/Safari, and can be taught to behave as noscript.
The article claims that they hope to find some with an exterior temperature below 225 C! For comparison, the earth's outer core ranges from 4400 C in the outer regions to 6100 C near the inner core, and the inner core is around 5400 C.
It's not ground-breaking. It is basically a limited version of Roller Coaster Tycoon, where your movement speed is limited as if you were actually living in the world that you are building. Nothing about the tech is actually new.
What is new is the social aspect. In RCT, I made lots of amazing creations, but never was able to show any of them off. Last night, I spent 2 hours building my own creation in Minecraft, though, and then spent 1 hour touring construction sites of other people on my server, and showing them what I had done. This is what makes it addicting.
I personally think that Minecraft is not that great of a game (if that term is even accurate). Even with texture packs, the graphics look 10-15 years old. The number of craftable items is low (only 1 one kind of armor, available in 4 different durabilities). The number of items you can find in the world is tiny (compared to games like Terraria or Eve Online). The server stability is weak. The built in tools for running a server are minimal. The mod support is promised, but currently very lacking. The monsters have bad AI. The combat is not interesting. The physics are weird and generally bad. The only thing that is new in Minecraft is redstone, and as cool as redstone is, that's not why people get sucked into the game.
I see the genre as having some promise. Eventually, someone is going to make an equivalent game that runs as a facebook app. When that happens, watch out.
Just so we are clear - there never was an incandescent light bulb ban; this was/is spin.
It was a ban in the US against any bulbs that did not meet a specific efficiency requirement. This requirement is low enough to include most current incandescent bulbs. The bill was the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007.
The ban did not start immediately. The first phase of the ban is bulbs of 100W, starting January 2012. By 2014, non-qualifying bulbs down to 40W will be banned. Colored bulbs, appliance bulbs, bulbs above 150W, and below 40W will be exempted, along with a few other special cases.
Regarding your comment, there are bulbs that are legal to buy now, that won't be legal to buy any more. I'm not sure if you are trying to split hairs, but your post is very inexact. I'm curious how you think this is "spin".
spamgourmet.com is a much better site for generating thousands of fake email address, although not as fun as mailinator. You can forward them all to your real email address, and then turn them off individually as they are compromised.
Spamgourmet.com also has a whole range of alternative names. I, for example, use mamber.net for the domain name of the addresses I generate. Visit the site, you'll get a laugh.
So, how does spamgourmet prevent one person from getting a complete list of all alternate names? Every few months, he displays 3 more alternate domain names, and removes all references to the previous 3. Those 3 will never be shown again. It's a much simpler solution, but clearly defeats the scripts.
If you really had a want of domain names, and thought it was extremely important to not let anyone get the full list, you could fragment the list based on the requester's location. For someone to get the entire list, they would need to find proxy servers for all regions other than their own.
Remember, the current program has cost something like 1000 American lives due to fuel convoy attacks, and is a logistical nightmare. Pretending that greener alternatives are impossible because they are ALSO logistical nightmares that will cost American lives is an unimpressive and unconvincing form of argument.
Solar panels are heavy. They are big. They are prone to damage by wind. They do not generate power at night, so they must be accompanied by large batteries or capacitors. They produce a trickle of power, and are not well designed for powering heavy machinery.
Are you suggesting that a mobile site in the desert should be surrounded by thousands of square meters of generators? Are you out of your mind? The are well suited for science fair projects, or convincing the masses that you are "green", but certainly not the right choice for mobile military installations.
In case you want to do the math yourself, be aware that a south-facing solar panel in Britain generates 0.022kW / square meter. Sure, you'll do better in the desert, but comparing this to diesel powered generators is just laughable.
If suddenly Apple had 90% of it's customers ... being sued
I read the article, and assumed that only 0.1% of users would be at risk of being targeted.
Even if the RIAA decided to sue the top 5%, that would be an incredibly huge number of lawsuits. If the article claimed such a high percentage, then I would disregard it as FUD.
But, I think this article is very relevant. Let's say you or the small company you own do something to make Apple and the RIAA upset. If you've used iCloud at all, then they may be able to crash down on you hard, BSA-style. Even if you have not misused the service, defending such a case could be extremely expensive, and could ruin you.
For the teenager that appears to have purchased $1 Mil in music, they may also try to prosecute. But, if her family doesn't have a lot of money, there isn't really much to be made from such lawsuits.
Based on that type of analytic data, there's no way the RIAA or whoever could know whether you purchased the track legally or not.
I once read an article about various methods of encoding an inaudible watermark in audio's phase. Shift the audio two samples early or two samples late after a kick drum, or invert both channels' phase by 180 degrees after a crash cymbal, or the like. All this is imperceptible to the human auditory system, but the information it encodes still survives popular psychoacoustic codecs.
This isn't really relevant.
Can a watermark be added that would disappear or change only after the .mp3 has been transferred from my friend's computer to mine? If not, then there is no way to know whether I own the listening rights to the music in the mp3, or whether my friend does.
If only Z-Company had done the same thing when they launched my.mp3.com.
For a history reminder, look at this case:
UMG vs. MP3.com
I'm pretty sure Google has the Chrome trademark.
I highly doubt it.
Microsoft began using the name in 1998 for the API for controlling DirectX from a stand-alone program.
You might say that it would be an unrelated trademark, because it's software, but not strictly web-browser related.
Well, in that case, I still think Mozilla beat Google to the punch here. Because they began using Chrome as the name for the XML defining the structure of their browser, in about 2003. Anyone who has made a skin for Mozilla or Firefox has dealt with chrome.
My assumption has always been that Google lifted the name from the Mozilla Project. When Microsoft wanted their new browser (IE) to compete with the current standard (Netscape), they decided to have it identify itself as a Mozilla-based browser. Even today, IE 9 today gives "Mozilla/4.0" as its User Agent ID. I assumed that Google did the same thing when they thought up Chromium and Chrome. Chrome, however, gives "Mozilla/5.0" as its User Agent ID -- one better than Microsoft. In addition to stealing the user agent ID, they named the browser itself off of the Netscape/Mozilla/Firefox architecture.
of this crap. These 'offensive' communications laws have been in place for decades, over radio, TV, and now the web.
TV and radio are much different, because they go over the air.
Theoretically, I could censor all the radio stations in my town. If they have programs that use offensive language, I can just broadcast my own signal, louder than theirs, blocking out what I find offensive.
Radio stations did not like vigilantes censoring them, and the result of this was the FCC. The FCC says that such malicious interference is illegal. As a compromise, though, they required all broadcasting stations to abide by basic standards. Sure, the constitution lets you say anything you like, but if you want the FCC to protect you from your neighbour's interference, then you have to abide by a certain amount of standards. Violating the decency standards of the FCC doesn't make you a criminal, you simply lose the license that was granted for your radio station.
As far as I can tell, there is no equivalence with the web. FCC broadcast licenses are not required for posting to forums. Tennessee is clearly making this a criminal issue. I can't understand how it even got to the governor's desk, but I know for a fact that it will crumble the first time it goes to the courts.