I was unable to properly view your site. I received connection errors and failed to successfully download some graphics.
My question is this: What design elements would you recommend revising in order to better deal with the awesome power of the Slashdot Effect, using your site as the example?;)
You think you've got it bad, I've got to come up with an alternative to black holes in Starship Traders and rewrite some code! Of course, people have been suspicious of my wormholes, microbots, and antimatter drives for quite a while now anyway...;)
"Err, anyway, regarding the DDOS... it seems strange trying to get news on it from other sites when/. is usually the first to report this sort of thing. Tell us what's going on please!"
I never go to Wired.com anymore -- but found myself there recently reading a story about Slashdot. Weird.
Rob, Jeff, I understand that you might not want to discuss the DDoS in order to avoid 'encouraging' that sort of thing, but if you're gonna talk about it to Wired, talk to us too!
You needn't reveal technically sensitive details, but, please, tell us what you can.
Don't make us start submitting news stories about the Wired article!;) [heh. I'll bet you already got some, huh?]
"A few million people will not make any difference: for moving and coordinating a million people you need a communication infrastructure that is hard to aquire and maintain: you will march with your SUVs on the Interstate highway? You will use cell phones? Geez: YOU NEED TO FEED A MILLION PEOPLE.
Too many macho guys..."
The notion that an armed populace is useless against a modern army, and only useful as an army itself misses the point.
Remember that the armed citizens are interspersed thoughout all segments of society and the country. Meanwhile, those who would suppress the rights of the people have to live somewhere too. They have to live among the armed citizenry.
Consider this scenario: you are a member of a powerful, modern occupation force suppressing self-government in a foreign country. Now, consider that there is one private gun somewhere for every resident of the country.
How safe would you feel knowing that your missiles won't stop a tiny bullet? How long would such an occupation last? Are you 'macho' enough to be a member of the occupation force?
"but apparently/. can tread on your first post rights... *G*"
And, as Microsoft would have it,/. is not the only one. But the real authority to tread on a comment is the commenter [him|her]self.
Slashdot should allow post owners to edit/remove their own posts. I know this would not always be pretty and wouldn't work for anonymous posts, but it is possible. I realize that comments don't remain in the database very long, and that once an article is archived, there is no practical way to allow editing. I've allowed users to delete (but not edit) their own posts for years at starshiptraders.com without any problems. At sitereview.org, contributors can edit their submissions without limit -- as long as they didn't post anonymously. We do add a line that says "Updated: [date]" on modified articles to help minimize confusion.
Of course, slashdot is in a class by itself, with it's own small army of trolls and DoS kiddies in tow, and would have to do a lot of analysis and tweaking to get a comment-editing system into place... and it might not even be workable here at all. But, then again, Rob hasn't shied away from too many such challenges in the past.;)
Too late. Our respective governments have had such a monopoly on that for so long that there is already a huge number of objects up there in orbit. In 1963 the U.S. Air Force launched into orbit 400 million tiny needle-sized objects in a single experiment! Maybe that's why we see so few UFO's these days...;)
Bliss and Staog are the first two known Linux viruses. Of those, I believe only Bliss has been found in the wild. They both seem to suffer from a serious fertility problem though.
"The Register is reporting that...the Love Bug does effect Linux and Apple."
weeeelll... It doesn't affect the Linux and Apple users as Linux and Apple users. It only affects them indirectly, much like this article affects slashdot and all its myriad *BSD, BeOS, and even Solaris/Linux users like myself.;)
"Windows, measured in man-hours, is the single greatest engineering project in the history of humanity."
hmmm... I wonder how many man-hours went into the pyramids and the great wall... Any of you engineers wanna venture an estimate on the G.W.? I think the ancient Chinese beat MS hands down.;)
"Along that line, it could be argued that "hard" science fiction is the wrong target for such a project: If someone has no idea if what can be done and what cant, they're much more likely to come up with an idea thats worth changing what can be done for."
Interesting point, but venturing away from 'hard' science fiction would widen the search. With your method, more fundamental developments might be made, but the difficulty of the search would seem to go up dramatically.
Since MAC addresses can be used instead, and since virtually all corporate PC's have them, this excuse is for a redundant id code. (This argument is weakened slightly by the fact that you might replace your network card, thereby changing the MAC address.)
And, of course, it's use for tracking people remotely would require the "victim" to execute code to identify himself.
No, the real use of such code would have to be for copy protection schemes. Mainframe users have long lived with programs that are installed with a key specific to a particular machine's CPU ID. Software I have installed on a Sun 10000 attempted to do the same thing -- but using a network adapter's MAC address -- but became terribly confused when I added a fifth or sixth adapter. The boneheaded scheme then disabled our *backup* software.
A universal CPU ID would be a copy-protection/software licensing dream come true.
Well, Galactic Domination looks promising but I haven't logged in for about a month and don't know how much progress has been made (I seem to have forgotten my password, doh!).
I've never tried TNE but steady work has been done on it but it is available now for download.
Of course, I prefer Starship Traders, but the software isn't available and it only runs right now at the one site -- it may or may not be fast from your site. The server can handle many, many users without bogging down but there is netlag that semi-randomly will slow down access for 5 minutes at a time for some. It never seems to affect me, but I have my own connection problems, which may mask it.
The web interface preference eliminates almost all of the older stuff though -- which is the majority of the downloadable code.
I played Tradwars 2, Yankee Trader, Galactic Warzone (those last two were kinda buggy and you could exploit all sorts of fun stuff:) and even wrote one, Czarwars. I ran Czarwars for about 6 years on my AutoBBS system on one phone line...:P
I never played TW1000 or the original TW though.
A friend of mine has a copy of the book, The People's Book of Computer Games, which included a little BASIC program, "Star Trader", that started it all. I tried to buy the book from him but, of course, he wouldn't sell.
starshiptraders.com (this one supports telnet and http, supports lots of players and games, and is available to play -- I wrote this one), Tradewars, The New Era (you can download this one and run it yourself), and "Galactic Domination", which I've logged in to but don't have permission to make public -- it's under development.
Here in the 'land of the free' things are changing incrementally, just slowly enough to let us refer to those who would point it out as alarmists and extremists.
A fine example of that tactic was when those who fought to cap the new federal income tax at 10% were called alarmists -- because the number they chose for the cap was so absurdly high!;)
I can imagine governments attempting to require computer vendors to supply these so that intelligence agencies can check on your activities -- with a warrant, of course.;) That is consistent with the various attempts to require ISP's to provide taps on demand and makers of cryptosystems to provide 'master keys' to their algorithms.
As for uses, I could certainly use one. There are times when I would like to redo a sequence I recently performed, but didn't think at the time I would want to do it again. To scroll through a keyboard buffer and pick it out would be nice. I could even unplug the keyboard and take it to work with me. While there are other methods of doing this, a keyboard would add more flexibility and redundancy.
Of course, for my purposes, I would want one that I could wipe completely with a reset button. That, naturally, would be absent from any government-imposed model.
If they were/are selling it, while thinking that it is worthless without their service, why is that? Why don't they just say, "Sure, it's $99 initially, and $xx/month to use"? I suspect that the reason for the "sale" is to take advantage of some naive customer's assumptions.
If that's not the case, perhaps they have just made an honest mistake in their marketing (heh!). Do you also turn down "loss leaders" in other areas when you know that the company will be losing money on your purchase?
Hmmm... I suppose we should just ignore MSoft's...
on
On Paying Bills Online
·
· Score: 3
...reputation for manipulation, their abysmal quality standards, and their obvious lack of concern for security, lest we be accused of hypocrisy?
Slashdot Mirror
"My first puter was a Timex Sinclair with the 16K RAM pack."
;)
I just want the old Atari Star Raiders game. It's been obsolete 17 or 18 years... surely no one could lose opening that!
Heh... now I can fit 1024x768 8-bit images in a high-speed cache! This is the graphics engine I need. Uhm, can someone lend me a coupla grand?
I was unable to properly view your site. I received connection errors and failed to successfully download some graphics.
;)
My question is this: What design elements would you recommend revising in order to better deal with the awesome power of the Slashdot Effect, using your site as the example?
You think you've got it bad, I've got to come up with an alternative to black holes in Starship Traders and rewrite some code! Of course, people have been suspicious of my wormholes, microbots, and antimatter drives for quite a while now anyway... ;)
"Err, anyway, regarding the DDOS... it seems strange trying to get news on it from other sites when /. is usually the first to report this sort of thing. Tell us what's going on please!"
;) [heh. I'll bet you already got some, huh?]
I never go to Wired.com anymore -- but found myself there recently reading a story about Slashdot. Weird.
Rob, Jeff, I understand that you might not want to discuss the DDoS in order to avoid 'encouraging' that sort of thing, but if you're gonna talk about it to Wired, talk to us too!
You needn't reveal technically sensitive details, but, please, tell us what you can.
Don't make us start submitting news stories about the Wired article!
"A few million people will not make any difference: for moving and coordinating a million people you need a communication infrastructure that is hard to aquire and maintain: you will march with your SUVs on the Interstate highway? You will use cell phones? Geez: YOU NEED TO FEED A MILLION PEOPLE.
Too many macho guys..."
The notion that an armed populace is useless against a modern army, and only useful as an army itself misses the point.
Remember that the armed citizens are interspersed thoughout all segments of society and the country. Meanwhile, those who would suppress the rights of the people have to live somewhere too. They have to live among the armed citizenry.
Consider this scenario: you are a member of a powerful, modern occupation force suppressing self-government in a foreign country. Now, consider that there is one private gun somewhere for every resident of the country.
How safe would you feel knowing that your missiles won't stop a tiny bullet? How long would such an occupation last? Are you 'macho' enough to be a member of the occupation force?
"but apparently /. can tread on your first post rights... *G*"
/. is not the only one. But the real authority to tread on a comment is the commenter [him|her]self.
;)
And, as Microsoft would have it,
Slashdot should allow post owners to edit/remove their own posts. I know this would not always be pretty and wouldn't work for anonymous posts, but it is possible. I realize that comments don't remain in the database very long, and that once an article is archived, there is no practical way to allow editing. I've allowed users to delete (but not edit) their own posts for years at starshiptraders.com without any problems. At sitereview.org, contributors can edit their submissions without limit -- as long as they didn't post anonymously. We do add a line that says "Updated: [date]" on modified articles to help minimize confusion.
Of course, slashdot is in a class by itself, with it's own small army of trolls and DoS kiddies in tow, and would have to do a lot of analysis and tweaking to get a comment-editing system into place... and it might not even be workable here at all. But, then again, Rob hasn't shied away from too many such challenges in the past.
Too late. Our respective governments have had such a monopoly on that for so long that there is already a huge number of objects up there in orbit. In 1963 the U.S. Air Force launched into orbit 400 million tiny needle-sized objects in a single experiment! Maybe that's why we see so few UFO's these days... ;)
damn. The worst part is that the meager million-unit release is on my birthday. I'd better start dropping hints now!
Bliss and Staog are the first two known Linux viruses. Of those, I believe only Bliss has been found in the wild. They both seem to suffer from a serious fertility problem though.
"The Register is reporting that...the Love Bug does effect Linux and Apple."
;)
weeeelll... It doesn't affect the Linux and Apple users as Linux and Apple users. It only affects them indirectly, much like this article affects slashdot and all its myriad *BSD, BeOS, and even Solaris/Linux users like myself.
"Windows, measured in man-hours, is the single greatest engineering project in the history of humanity."
;)
hmmm... I wonder how many man-hours went into the pyramids and the great wall... Any of you engineers wanna venture an estimate on the G.W.? I think the ancient Chinese beat MS hands down.
"Along that line, it could be argued that "hard" science fiction is the wrong target for such a project: If someone has no idea if what can be done and what cant, they're much more likely to come up with an idea thats worth changing what can be done for."
Interesting point, but venturing away from 'hard' science fiction would widen the search. With your method, more fundamental developments might be made, but the difficulty of the search would seem to go up dramatically.
Here in my data center, I still sometimes hear the refrain from the mainframers; "but Unix can't handle the I/O!".
;)
Little do they know that the EMC disk arrays that handle the mainframe storage are all Unix boxes themselves.
Since MAC addresses can be used instead, and since virtually all corporate PC's have them, this excuse is for a redundant id code. (This argument is weakened slightly by the fact that you might replace your network card, thereby changing the MAC address.)
And, of course, it's use for tracking people remotely would require the "victim" to execute code to identify himself.
No, the real use of such code would have to be for copy protection schemes. Mainframe users have long lived with programs that are installed with a key specific to a particular machine's CPU ID. Software I have installed on a Sun 10000 attempted to do the same thing -- but using a network adapter's MAC address -- but became terribly confused when I added a fifth or sixth adapter. The boneheaded scheme then disabled our *backup* software.
A universal CPU ID would be a copy-protection/software licensing dream come true.
Why is or isn't it consistent with your 'GNU/Linux' position to call Linux 'X/GNU/BSD/Linux'?
Well, Galactic Domination looks promising but I haven't logged in for about a month and don't know how much progress has been made (I seem to have forgotten my password, doh!).
I've never tried TNE but steady work has been done on it but it is available now for download.
Of course, I prefer Starship Traders, but the software isn't available and it only runs right now at the one site -- it may or may not be fast from your site. The server can handle many, many users without bogging down but there is netlag that semi-randomly will slow down access for 5 minutes at a time for some. It never seems to affect me, but I have my own connection problems, which may mask it.
The web interface preference eliminates almost all of the older stuff though -- which is the majority of the downloadable code.
I played Tradwars 2, Yankee Trader, Galactic Warzone (those last two were kinda buggy and you could exploit all sorts of fun stuff :) and even wrote one, Czarwars. I ran Czarwars for about 6 years on my AutoBBS system on one phone line... :P
I never played TW1000 or the original TW though.
A friend of mine has a copy of the book, The People's Book of Computer Games, which included a little BASIC program, "Star Trader", that started it all. I tried to buy the book from him but, of course, he wouldn't sell.
starshiptraders.com (this one supports telnet and http, supports lots of players and games, and is available to play -- I wrote this one), Tradewars, The New Era (you can download this one and run it yourself), and "Galactic Domination", which I've logged in to but don't have permission to make public -- it's under development.
Here in the 'land of the free' things are changing incrementally, just slowly enough to let us refer to those who would point it out as alarmists and extremists.
;)
A fine example of that tactic was when those who fought to cap the new federal income tax at 10% were called alarmists -- because the number they chose for the cap was so absurdly high!
Alas, sometimes the 'paranoid' are right...
Perhaps you'd like to elaborate on why our "love affair with guns" is "outdated"?
What has happened in the last 200 years that has fundamentally changed the nature of people and small arms?
I can imagine governments attempting to require computer vendors to supply these so that intelligence agencies can check on your activities -- with a warrant, of course. ;) That is consistent with the various attempts to require ISP's to provide taps on demand and makers of cryptosystems to provide 'master keys' to their algorithms.
As for uses, I could certainly use one. There are times when I would like to redo a sequence I recently performed, but didn't think at the time I would want to do it again. To scroll through a keyboard buffer and pick it out would be nice. I could even unplug the keyboard and take it to work with me. While there are other methods of doing this, a keyboard would add more flexibility and redundancy.
Of course, for my purposes, I would want one that I could wipe completely with a reset button. That, naturally, would be absent from any government-imposed model.
If they were/are selling it, while thinking that it is worthless without their service, why is that? Why don't they just say, "Sure, it's $99 initially, and $xx/month to use"? I suspect that the reason for the "sale" is to take advantage of some naive customer's assumptions.
If that's not the case, perhaps they have just made an honest mistake in their marketing (heh!). Do you also turn down "loss leaders" in other areas when you know that the company will be losing money on your purchase?
...reputation for manipulation, their abysmal quality standards, and their obvious lack of concern for security, lest we be accused of hypocrisy?
No, thanks.
But the original articles are on Wired and cnet, but it's about the same system... :)