One of the benefits of having the computer in a metal case is the shielding from high-frequency radiation. Older computers used to have a problem with RTC time skew because of interference from various components. The early plastic-cased computers with the external floppy drives could make cordless phones ring whenever they wrote to disk.
Maintaining a pack hierarchy is something even chickens manage to do by instinct - it's called "pecking order."
Wolves maintain pack hierarchy based on pheromones. Again, instinctive. Or didn't you know that ear and submision carry their own scents?
Evolutionary change isn't a smooth continuum over time, but occurs in spurts, as conditions change, and new "islands of stability" arise. Evolutionary change can happen in just a few years - witness the "super-bugs."
An increase in the ability to be introspective is an advantage - one that would quickly propagate throught the population, since its' bearers would, among other things, be well positioned to act on urges to monopolize the "breeding stock".
Under those conditions, a couple thousand years would be more than enough time, if the hardware was already pretty much there.
The hard drives in desktop PCs are a lot noisier, and use more energy. I have to stick my ear right above the keyboard to hear my laptops' fan when its running full speed (it automatically throttles down from 1.9 ghz to 800mz when it's running on battery power, or not under a real load, and then it's even quieter, and I don't really notice any difference in performance).
Since it uses less electricity than a desktop, it doesn't need to move as much air, so less noise than a desktop. If people were to do the cost analysis properly, a laptop is now cheaper than a similarly-spec'ed desktop. As youpoint out, for the desktop, you need to spec a higher-quality power supply to achieve anything near the same level of quiet. Also, a UPS that will allow you to run for over an hour is going to cost $$$ - those UPS ratings are really optimistic. One that's rated for 1200 VA - 100 minutes at minimum draw is good for 5 minutes at haf wattage... a UPS capable if giving a desktop an hour in "real life" runs around $500.00, not those cheapie POS you get at Worst Buy or Future Shit for $50 - $200.
I guess it depends on what you're using it for. I stuck OpenSUSE 11 on my laptop, and ethernet networking was automagic (but not the wireless = waiting for the new kernel to fix that:-)
The web cam, the second monitor support, firewire, usb, etc., all work great. It runs a lot faster than Vista (and it can actually use all 4 gigs). Flash works fine in firefox, seamonkey, etc., (but the latest build of opera doesn't work properly at all - have to right-click links, post doesn work, etc).
I use it as a dev machine, and I've got no complaints about speed or software compatability. The again, I ditched Windows way back when...
Cylon leaders have three brains, and even their soldiers have one.
Well, John McCain isn't a leader - he odesn't have 3 brains. He has two - one's lost, and the other is out looking for it. That's the conclusion I've come to, watching him in the debates.
It's interesting to see that we can transmit this same "consciousness", to some extent, to other animals, simply by interacting with them. Consciousness may be the ultimate meme, able to cross barriers in species. It's also a good example of how the observer affects the thing observed, not only at the quantum level (the two-slits experiments) but at all levels, just by the act of performing experiments and observing.
A good example is dogs. In the wild, they have a social structure, but no evidence of awareness of the difference between "self" and "other". Not so for many house pets. The dog may hate the bath, but he or she KNOWS that they look a lot better afterwards, and carry themselves with pride afterwards, real show-offs (pride - one of the "sins" - something animals aren't supposed to be capable of:-)
So McCain is just reverting to the original bicameral mind. He's on auto-pilot, making decisions without the necessary judgment. In other words, the feedback between the two sides, that keeps the two in balance, is no longer effective, and his decisions are showing more and more that they are from impulse than from conscious judgment.
"The problem isn't just the ear buds. There's a LOT of ambient noise in offices today, thanks to noisy fans in computers. "
Another reason to use thin clients. Now if we could only look at the hearing loss amongst IT professionals.
I've switched to bringing my laptop into work. Since it runs linux, it does everything I need as a developer, and it's QUIET. I plug my secondary display into it, jack in the eathernet cable, and I'm good for the day (the boss freaked over my "unauthroized" access point... but it was a hit with the other workers, and was more secure than the one he was using:-). For now, I can't turn off my former desktop because it's also serving files for some test machines... but the smart thing would be to consolidate everything when there's time (yeah, spare time - what's that???).
A modern 17" linux laptop with 4 gigs of ram, a full-sized keyboard, twin 320 gig hard drives, 2 screens... quiet AND energy efficient. What's not to like? If everyone stopped whining about how laptops "can't be desktop replacements" and switched, we'd have less noise pollution, save money on AC, not have to replace the batteries in our UPS every 2 years, as well as cash in on the savings wrt the direct cost of electricity to run the computer. It's time to scrap desktops as the inefficient energy and space hogs that they are.
This way, I don't have to stuff earbuds in my ears - I'll just listen to your music from 10 feet away. At that distance, it's safe for MY hering. If you want to go deaf, that's your decision. After all, what's the point of being able to hear if you won;t listen to common sense anyway?
Seriously. Just blast it out. Keep in mind, though, it can have serious health consequences... and not only to your ears... if you choose to play crap like Celine Dion or The Village People or Achy Breaky Heart or Techno-Pop or... whatever... you could find your ear buds "accidently" wired to the mains.
Seriously. What a stupid question. If you don't play the audio any louder that a typical conversation, then it won't do any more damage than a typical conversation.
The problem isn't just the ear butds. There's a LOT of ambient noise in offices today, thanks to noisy fans in computers. You don't notice it until there's a power outage, but that constant drone will also cause a loss of audio acuity.
Then there's the problem of turning up the volume so you don't hear the stupid fans.
One of the benefits of laptops is they're a LOT quieter.
Why not be cheap AND get with the times. Do it in hexadecimal. LOTS of room left.
And when that (inevitably) threatens to overflow, do it in scientific notation. The Neocons and their supports won't understand it, and hopefully leave economic policy to people who don't think you can fix the economy by praying in public for lower gasoline prices.
>> Dear Slashdot Reader
>> This is an open-source virus.
>> Please forward it to all your friends
>> Then, as root, run "dd if=/dev/urandom of=/dev/sda"
Just do like I do - ignore anythig that's unenforceable. Don't even bring it up. It's not worth the ag. And if push comes to shove, the side trying to enforce an unenforceable clause ends up having to pay the costs, so there's no downside.
Moreover, they would take ownership of not just what they paid for, but also my changes leading up to this moment
Not possible. Even if you signed over your copyrights, the simple fact is that you can't unlicense the code that's already been released under the BSD license. So, while they might get the copyrights, they can't stop people from making copies legally.
In other words, what you would be working on is a fork of your own code.
They get to keep the modifications to the fork private. Nothing more.
Their obvious concern is that you might go back and add similar modifications to the main trunk.
If they're willing to pay, so might others. Find out who their competitors are, how much they're willing to offer, and under what terms. One of them may have a more enlightened view of open source and be willing to sponsor your work.
It's so excessive that it's probably unenforceable
Whether it's enforceable or not isn't the issue. If it's in a contract, and you sign it, it's effectively enforceable.
Nope. Clauses that are against public policy, statutory rights, or local laws, are totally unenforceable. Examples - signing a contract for murder, slave-trading, price-fixing, pimping.
Why do you think most contracts have a recision clause that states "Any part of this contract that is contrary to the laws of the jurisdiction hwere it is signed is without fource, without limiting the rest of the contract"?
Ideas are cheap, and frankly if Google finds *nothing* there are two possibilities:
1. you are a genius
-or-
2. your idea stinks, makes no sense, is infeasible, or there is a better solution that solves the problem in a more efficient way
Ya know, if he saw a flaw (and obviously there was something wrong since he installed a keylogger on at least one university computer)
At first I was sympathetic... but a moments' thinking changed my mind. The guy deserves a criminal record, and to be expelled.
The writer, who used a pseudonym, claimed he easily broke into the accounts using a program that captures computer keystrokes.
Thnk about it for a second. You don't install a keylogger on a server and then capture logins from students from remote machines... the keyloggers were installed on the students' laptops. This is NOT "hacking" or "cracking" the university's computers. He installed keyloggers on up to 37 other students' laptops to capture their login info.
How would you react if someone installed a keylogger on YOUR laptop? And dozens of others? Whether he tookThis isn't Soviet Russia - laptops don't (or shouldn't) log YOU!
If he had physically assaulted 37 students, rather than compromising their laptops and account info, he'd be in jail. Ditto if he had vandalized their cars, instead of their laptops. But looking at the comments, it's okay to screw with other people's property if you want to look 1337 to your peers.
Expulsion is the least the university can (and should) do, as well as pursuing criminal charges.
If the idea is good, I have no objection to "ruining the layout of a few million websites." For example, bringing IE into compliance is a good thing - I hate those sites that are "best viewed with Internet Explorer". Or worse, sites that don't work at all if you don't run IE. I won't want to do my online banking in Windows, even if they achieve a 100% score on acid3.
Slashdot Mirror
Two points:
In USSA, government bailout forks YOU!
Get your head out of Uranus. You'll get "ring around the collar."
Or, like some constipated astronaut, Klingons ...
Besides, when did the Poles get to Saturn? We haven't even made it to Mars yet.
One of the benefits of having the computer in a metal case is the shielding from high-frequency radiation. Older computers used to have a problem with RTC time skew because of interference from various components. The early plastic-cased computers with the external floppy drives could make cordless phones ring whenever they wrote to disk.
This is NOT a healthy development.
Maintaining a pack hierarchy is something even chickens manage to do by instinct - it's called "pecking order."
Wolves maintain pack hierarchy based on pheromones. Again, instinctive. Or didn't you know that ear and submision carry their own scents?
Evolutionary change isn't a smooth continuum over time, but occurs in spurts, as conditions change, and new "islands of stability" arise. Evolutionary change can happen in just a few years - witness the "super-bugs."
An increase in the ability to be introspective is an advantage - one that would quickly propagate throught the population, since its' bearers would, among other things, be well positioned to act on urges to monopolize the "breeding stock".
Under those conditions, a couple thousand years would be more than enough time, if the hardware was already pretty much there.
The hard drives in desktop PCs are a lot noisier, and use more energy. I have to stick my ear right above the keyboard to hear my laptops' fan when its running full speed (it automatically throttles down from 1.9 ghz to 800mz when it's running on battery power, or not under a real load, and then it's even quieter, and I don't really notice any difference in performance).
Since it uses less electricity than a desktop, it doesn't need to move as much air, so less noise than a desktop. If people were to do the cost analysis properly, a laptop is now cheaper than a similarly-spec'ed desktop. As youpoint out, for the desktop, you need to spec a higher-quality power supply to achieve anything near the same level of quiet. Also, a UPS that will allow you to run for over an hour is going to cost $$$ - those UPS ratings are really optimistic. One that's rated for 1200 VA - 100 minutes at minimum draw is good for 5 minutes at haf wattage ... a UPS capable if giving a desktop an hour in "real life" runs around $500.00, not those cheapie POS you get at Worst Buy or Future Shit for $50 - $200.
I guess it depends on what you're using it for. I stuck OpenSUSE 11 on my laptop, and ethernet networking was automagic (but not the wireless = waiting for the new kernel to fix that :-)
The web cam, the second monitor support, firewire, usb, etc., all work great. It runs a lot faster than Vista (and it can actually use all 4 gigs). Flash works fine in firefox, seamonkey, etc., (but the latest build of opera doesn't work properly at all - have to right-click links, post doesn work, etc).
I use it as a dev machine, and I've got no complaints about speed or software compatability. The again, I ditched Windows way back when ...
Well, John McCain isn't a leader - he odesn't have 3 brains. He has two - one's lost, and the other is out looking for it. That's the conclusion I've come to, watching him in the debates.
Seriously - the human brain is divided into two halves, and there's some indication that we, as humans, only developed "self-awareness" and "consciousness" quite recently in history. In the case of some types of mental illness, as well as the breakdown of cognitive functioning in older people, we can see the reversion to our former "auto-pilot" state.
It's interesting to see that we can transmit this same "consciousness", to some extent, to other animals, simply by interacting with them. Consciousness may be the ultimate meme, able to cross barriers in species. It's also a good example of how the observer affects the thing observed, not only at the quantum level (the two-slits experiments) but at all levels, just by the act of performing experiments and observing.
A good example is dogs. In the wild, they have a social structure, but no evidence of awareness of the difference between "self" and "other". Not so for many house pets. The dog may hate the bath, but he or she KNOWS that they look a lot better afterwards, and carry themselves with pride afterwards, real show-offs (pride - one of the "sins" - something animals aren't supposed to be capable of :-)
So McCain is just reverting to the original bicameral mind. He's on auto-pilot, making decisions without the necessary judgment. In other words, the feedback between the two sides, that keeps the two in balance, is no longer effective, and his decisions are showing more and more that they are from impulse than from conscious judgment.
It says people are stupid. Like the 24% who are still using IE 6. Or Windows, for that matter - people with more money than brains :-/
BTW, on a side note, the motivation to use linux should not be to save money - that's just one of the beneficial side effects.
"The problem isn't just the ear buds. There's a LOT of ambient noise in offices today, thanks to noisy fans in computers. "
Another reason to use thin clients. Now if we could only look at the hearing loss amongst IT professionals.
I've switched to bringing my laptop into work. Since it runs linux, it does everything I need as a developer, and it's QUIET. I plug my secondary display into it, jack in the eathernet cable, and I'm good for the day (the boss freaked over my "unauthroized" access point ... but it was a hit with the other workers, and was more secure than the one he was using :-). For now, I can't turn off my former desktop because it's also serving files for some test machines ... but the smart thing would be to consolidate everything when there's time (yeah, spare time - what's that???).
A modern 17" linux laptop with 4 gigs of ram, a full-sized keyboard, twin 320 gig hard drives, 2 screens ... quiet AND energy efficient. What's not to like? If everyone stopped whining about how laptops "can't be desktop replacements" and switched, we'd have less noise pollution, save money on AC, not have to replace the batteries in our UPS every 2 years, as well as cash in on the savings wrt the direct cost of electricity to run the computer. It's time to scrap desktops as the inefficient energy and space hogs that they are.
http://www.429truth.com/2008/09/01/john-mccain-is-a-cylon/
http://cmpalmer.blogspot.com/2008/03/john-mccain-is-he-cylon.html http://www.adampieniazek.com/politics/battlestar-politica/
Or watch their election video http://tighroslin2008.com/
This way, I don't have to stuff earbuds in my ears - I'll just listen to your music from 10 feet away. At that distance, it's safe for MY hering. If you want to go deaf, that's your decision. After all, what's the point of being able to hear if you won;t listen to common sense anyway?
Seriously. Just blast it out. Keep in mind, though, it can have serious health consequences ... and not only to your ears ... if you choose to play crap like Celine Dion or The Village People or Achy Breaky Heart or Techno-Pop or ... whatever ... you could find your ear buds "accidently" wired to the mains.
The problem isn't just the ear butds. There's a LOT of ambient noise in offices today, thanks to noisy fans in computers. You don't notice it until there's a power outage, but that constant drone will also cause a loss of audio acuity.
Then there's the problem of turning up the volume so you don't hear the stupid fans.
One of the benefits of laptops is they're a LOT quieter.
And when that (inevitably) threatens to overflow, do it in scientific notation. The Neocons and their supports won't understand it, and hopefully leave economic policy to people who don't think you can fix the economy by praying in public for lower gasoline prices.
>> Dear Slashdot Reader
>> This is an open-source virus.
>> Please forward it to all your friends
>> Then, as root, run "dd if=/dev/urandom of=/dev/sda"
There - fixed it for you.
Sure it is. It's sole purpose is to transfer money from you to Microsoft and its' allies.
Fortunately, there are alternatives.
I guess it means they found a way to cram Vista onto it ...
Just do like I do - ignore anythig that's unenforceable. Don't even bring it up. It's not worth the ag. And if push comes to shove, the side trying to enforce an unenforceable clause ends up having to pay the costs, so there's no downside.
Not possible. Even if you signed over your copyrights, the simple fact is that you can't unlicense the code that's already been released under the BSD license. So, while they might get the copyrights, they can't stop people from making copies legally.
In other words, what you would be working on is a fork of your own code.
They get to keep the modifications to the fork private. Nothing more.
Their obvious concern is that you might go back and add similar modifications to the main trunk.
If they're willing to pay, so might others. Find out who their competitors are, how much they're willing to offer, and under what terms. One of them may have a more enlightened view of open source and be willing to sponsor your work.
Nope. Clauses that are against public policy, statutory rights, or local laws, are totally unenforceable. Examples - signing a contract for murder, slave-trading, price-fixing, pimping.
Why do you think most contracts have a recision clause that states "Any part of this contract that is contrary to the laws of the jurisdiction hwere it is signed is without fource, without limiting the rest of the contract"?
You can't use them now anyway ... at least not in the "not-spring-not-summer-not-fall" season, or in "that-time-between-2009-and-2011".
frak the greedy SOBs
I think we have the same boss ...
At first I was sympathetic ... but a moments' thinking changed my mind. The guy deserves a criminal record, and to be expelled.
Thnk about it for a second. You don't install a keylogger on a server and then capture logins from students from remote machines ... the keyloggers were installed on the students' laptops. This is NOT "hacking" or "cracking" the university's computers. He installed keyloggers on up to 37 other students' laptops to capture their login info.
How would you react if someone installed a keylogger on YOUR laptop? And dozens of others? Whether he tookThis isn't Soviet Russia - laptops don't (or shouldn't) log YOU!
If he had physically assaulted 37 students, rather than compromising their laptops and account info, he'd be in jail. Ditto if he had vandalized their cars, instead of their laptops. But looking at the comments, it's okay to screw with other people's property if you want to look 1337 to your peers.
Expulsion is the least the university can (and should) do, as well as pursuing criminal charges.
If the idea is good, I have no objection to "ruining the layout of a few million websites." For example, bringing IE into compliance is a good thing - I hate those sites that are "best viewed with Internet Explorer". Or worse, sites that don't work at all if you don't run IE. I won't want to do my online banking in Windows, even if they achieve a 100% score on acid3.