Incompetence
on
Apollo 1
·
· Score: 5, Interesting
Every astronaut that has ever been KIA has had buerocratic imcompetence to blame. There have been two NASA tragedies: Apollo 1 and challenger. In the case of Apollo 1, NASA was too lazy to use a proper atmosphere: "The committee can only conclude that NASA's long history of successes in testing and launching space vehicles with pure oxygen environments at 16.7 p.s.i. and lower pressures led to overconfidence and complacency.". In challenger, the O-ring manager knew very well that they were likely to rupture and demanded that the launch be scrubbed, but was overruled by his ignorant superiors. It seems to me that astronauts are alot more likely to be killed as a result of someone else's incompetence than their own. They certainly deserve the accolade of bravery since trusting others takes alot more of it than trusting yourself.
...than put up with my status quo. Allow me to outline it briefly:
- The school board turned down a request for a $100 budget allocation in order to buy more computer paper by the head of our school's computing department. Now, if you want to print anything, you need to bring your own paper.
- All computers in the school share a single ISDN line. At peak times, i.e. the only times that we're allowed to be in the media center, we get a throughput of about 5 bytes per second.
- Except for a few iMacs that were donated last year, all the computers are 486s with 8mb of memory, running win95.
- The school was awarded $100 per student for being an "A" school. There was a referendum among the faculty as to whether to spend 90% on bonuses and 10% on technology, or 100% on bonuses. I'll leave it to you to guess how that turned out.
Basically, at the high school level, technology is essentially a zero budget operation. I would MUCH rather pay an annual fee for the right to use the computers than put up with what we have now.
I've tried out gcc 3.x and it's MUCH faster, buggy as it is. Garbage collection is just a buzzword I picked up from gcc.gnu.org and is their explanation for 3.x's speed.
I was born on July 27, the anniversary (I don't remember how many years) of M$ purchasing QDOS from some geek after having told IBM they had an OS when they really didn't.
Nickel a point?
on
Pay to Play
·
· Score: 2, Funny
The "department" line for this article presents an interesting concept. Of course it's ridiculous, but I'd be curious to see how players would behave with this pricing model. Would they compete for the lowest score? Would they make their objectives accomplishments that do not score points? Or would they just not give a damn?
As usual, it's better when it's free
on
Pay to Play
·
· Score: 1
Although I've pretty much grown tired now of online role-playing, I once shelled out some $30(? I don't remember the exact amount any more) per month to play Gemstone III. That is, until I discovered MUDs. There were hundreds of them, they were free, and they were just as much fun. Of course I use Linux now so I wouldn't be able to play Gemstone anyway, but this is just one more example of free software triumphing over pay/subscription-ware.
If we're efficient in blocking them, you'll post maybe 600 more comments and waste about a tenth of a cent of our disk space. Meanwhile, I will hunt you down.
Being a member of generation D, condescending elders often ask me if I even know what a vinyl record is. I tell them "sure. It's a giant CD that uses a needle instead of a laser and melts if you leave it in the sun."
Yes, you're right. My explanation was highly simplified and I can think of several other ways to beat it as stated, though I admit that one didn't occur to me.
I don't think it would be too difficult to write a
program that would:
1. Count how many times 'showpage' shows up in a
postscript doucment
2. keep track of how many 'showpage's each student
has sent
3. pass all arugment received by the program to lpr
4. gives lpr its own uid, have only that uid be able to access the printer, have only that uid be able to run lpr, and have your program run suid
I'm guessing they used 2.95.3 because that's what comes with SuSE 7.3. 3.x still has some major issues and isn't suitable for most systems, but it uses garbage collection so it's _much_ faster. I'd like to see the results then.
Maybe the FCC is causing some trouble, but Cringely's slap at GWB was a little below the belt. Yes, the FCC is in the executive branch which the president is the head of, but I seriously doubt GWB has any direct involvement in the matter. Cringely, if you can provide me with evidence that Bush is directly responsible for delaying approval, then I'll consider that in Nov 2004, but if you are unable to do so, that's pretty low of you.
Cringely asserts that the technology is likely to be bought out by big business, but it seems to me that this would be a boon to the communications companies. What high-tech company wouldn't love to get first dibs on superior technology? I think that if the technology is halted, the culprit is much more likely to be the FCC. Buerocracies like the FCC are unlikely to recognize the promise of anything new and aren't going to like the idea of it even marginally interfering with other devices.
Many licenses forbid you to reverse engineer software. I'm not sure how they get away with or enforce this. Anyway, if that's not in there, you can use the reverse engineered code up to whatever amount is permitted by the fair use doctrine. As for patents, I seriously doubt they bothered but you ought to check just in case.
Ridiculous patents like this one _do_ often get revoked. I've spent hours LMAO at www.bustpatents.com. Hopefully this one will join the ranks.
Why would anyone want this?
on
Lindows Reviewed
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
Alright, it's a beta, but this seems to me to be the worst of both worlds. You get none of the flexibility and hacker-friendliness of Linux, and your Windows apps are even more unstable than under Windows. Furthermore, you pay $99 when Linux is free and get a UI that looks familiar but undoubtedly has some quirks. Exactly what benefit does this provide over Linux+Wine+fvwm95 except an easy installation process that there's no reason can't be matched by a Linux distro?
I'm against nearly all patents, but the very worst ones often do get revoked. Some of the more glaring/humorous ones can be found www.bustpatents.com. It's possible to entertain yourself for hours on end by reading these.
Two ideas for handling spammers, inspired by User Friendly:
1. Next time you get a "501 compliant spam" that starts off with something like "This is not unsolicited bulk e-mail. Buy me.", flood their server with messages stating "This is not a denial of service attack."
2. The following poem seems to work well:
I got your mail and wrote you back
just so that you'd have no doubt
that if you spam me ever again
your router shall cease to route
If time is a fourth dimension, then we can set up the equation x^2 + y^2 + z^2 + t^2 = C^2, where x,y,z, and t are the magnitudes of the vectors in each dimension and C is the speed of light. So all we need to do is travel at an imaginary speed in x, y, and z and x^2 + y^2 + z^2 will be negative so we'll be able to speed up time. Woohoo!
I may be off base here, but it seems to me that Linux users want Linux games, not Linux ports of windows games. Yes, I know plenty of people who play Quake on Linux, but compare its popularity to say, nethack. My guess is that nethack, simple as it is, would be way ahead. Nethack is open source, which carries alot of weight with many Linux users, including me.
Next time you need to haul a telescope with a large apearature more than a few feet you'll quickly realize the benefits of refracting telescopes. While reflectors are cheaper, they get very bulky very quickly.
Slashdot Mirror
Every astronaut that has ever been KIA has had buerocratic imcompetence to blame. There have been two NASA tragedies: Apollo 1 and challenger. In the case of Apollo 1, NASA was too lazy to use a proper atmosphere: "The committee can only conclude that NASA's long history of successes in testing and launching space vehicles with pure oxygen environments at 16.7 p.s.i. and lower pressures led to overconfidence and complacency.". In challenger, the O-ring manager knew very well that they were likely to rupture and demanded that the launch be scrubbed, but was overruled by his ignorant superiors. It seems to me that astronauts are alot more likely to be killed as a result of someone else's incompetence than their own. They certainly deserve the accolade of bravery since trusting others takes alot more of it than trusting yourself.
...than put up with my status quo. Allow me to outline it briefly:
- The school board turned down a request for a $100 budget allocation in order to buy more computer paper by the head of our school's computing department. Now, if you want to print anything, you need to bring your own paper.
- All computers in the school share a single ISDN line. At peak times, i.e. the only times that we're allowed to be in the media center, we get a throughput of about 5 bytes per second.
- Except for a few iMacs that were donated last year, all the computers are 486s with 8mb of memory, running win95.
- The school was awarded $100 per student for being an "A" school. There was a referendum among the faculty as to whether to spend 90% on bonuses and 10% on technology, or 100% on bonuses. I'll leave it to you to guess how that turned out.
Basically, at the high school level, technology is essentially a zero budget operation. I would MUCH rather pay an annual fee for the right to use the computers than put up with what we have now.
I've tried out gcc 3.x and it's MUCH faster, buggy as it is. Garbage collection is just a buzzword I picked up from gcc.gnu.org and is their explanation for 3.x's speed.
I'll be 21 in july. If I were to get arrested for drinking alcohol (which I don't), I wonder what the police would do if I pointed that out.
I was born on July 27, the anniversary (I don't remember how many years) of M$ purchasing QDOS from some geek after having told IBM they had an OS when they really didn't.
The "department" line for this article presents an interesting concept. Of course it's ridiculous, but I'd be curious to see how players would behave with this pricing model. Would they compete for the lowest score? Would they make their objectives accomplishments that do not score points? Or would they just not give a damn?
Although I've pretty much grown tired now of online role-playing, I once shelled out some $30(? I don't remember the exact amount any more) per month to play Gemstone III. That is, until I discovered MUDs. There were hundreds of them, they were free, and they were just as much fun. Of course I use Linux now so I wouldn't be able to play Gemstone anyway, but this is just one more example of free software triumphing over pay/subscription-ware.
but I must have clicked the wrong reply link
If we're efficient in blocking them, you'll post maybe 600 more comments and waste about a tenth of a cent of our disk space. Meanwhile, I will hunt you down.
Being a member of generation D, condescending elders often ask me if I even know what a vinyl record is. I tell them "sure. It's a giant CD that uses a needle instead of a laser and melts if you leave it in the sun."
Yes, you're right. My explanation was highly simplified and I can think of several other ways to beat it as stated, though I admit that one didn't occur to me.
I don't think it would be too difficult to write a
program that would:
1. Count how many times 'showpage' shows up in a
postscript doucment
2. keep track of how many 'showpage's each student
has sent
3. pass all arugment received by the program to lpr
4. gives lpr its own uid, have only that uid be able to access the printer, have only that uid be able to run lpr, and have your program run suid
I'm guessing they used 2.95.3 because that's what comes with SuSE 7.3. 3.x still has some major issues and isn't suitable for most systems, but it uses garbage collection so it's _much_ faster. I'd like to see the results then.
Maybe the FCC is causing some trouble, but Cringely's slap at GWB was a little below the belt. Yes, the FCC is in the executive branch which the president is the head of, but I seriously doubt GWB has any direct involvement in the matter. Cringely, if you can provide me with evidence that Bush is directly responsible for delaying approval, then I'll consider that in Nov 2004, but if you are unable to do so, that's pretty low of you.
Cringely asserts that the technology is likely to be bought out by big business, but it seems to me that this would be a boon to the communications companies. What high-tech company wouldn't love to get first dibs on superior technology? I think that if the technology is halted, the culprit is much more likely to be the FCC. Buerocracies like the FCC are unlikely to recognize the promise of anything new and aren't going to like the idea of it even marginally interfering with other devices.
Many licenses forbid you to reverse engineer software. I'm not sure how they get away with or enforce this. Anyway, if that's not in there, you can use the reverse engineered code up to whatever amount is permitted by the fair use doctrine. As for patents, I seriously doubt they bothered but you ought to check just in case.
Ridiculous patents like this one _do_ often get revoked. I've spent hours LMAO at www.bustpatents.com. Hopefully this one will join the ranks.
Alright, it's a beta, but this seems to me to be the worst of both worlds. You get none of the flexibility and hacker-friendliness of Linux, and your Windows apps are even more unstable than under Windows. Furthermore, you pay $99 when Linux is free and get a UI that looks familiar but undoubtedly has some quirks. Exactly what benefit does this provide over Linux+Wine+fvwm95 except an easy installation process that there's no reason can't be matched by a Linux distro?
I'm against nearly all patents, but the very worst ones often do get revoked. Some of the more glaring/humorous ones can be found www.bustpatents.com. It's possible to entertain yourself for hours on end by reading these.
Two ideas for handling spammers, inspired by User Friendly:
1. Next time you get a "501 compliant spam" that starts off with something like "This is not unsolicited bulk e-mail. Buy me.", flood their server with messages stating "This is not a denial of service attack."
2. The following poem seems to work well:
I got your mail and wrote you back
just so that you'd have no doubt
that if you spam me ever again
your router shall cease to route
If time is a fourth dimension, then we can set up the equation x^2 + y^2 + z^2 + t^2 = C^2, where x,y,z, and t are the magnitudes of the vectors in each dimension and C is the speed of light. So all we need to do is travel at an imaginary speed in x, y, and z and x^2 + y^2 + z^2 will be negative so we'll be able to speed up time. Woohoo!
Uhm, reflectors do not fold their focal length. You're thinking of Schmidt-Cassengrains, which are a completely different animal.
I may be off base here, but it seems to me that Linux users want Linux games, not Linux ports of windows games. Yes, I know plenty of people who play Quake on Linux, but compare its popularity to say, nethack. My guess is that nethack, simple as it is, would be way ahead. Nethack is open source, which carries alot of weight with many Linux users, including me.
1. Accessing several different websites at the time
2. Port forwarding to computers using different operating systems
3. SMTP headers containing references to domain names used only by the LAN
Next time you need to haul a telescope with a large apearature more than a few feet you'll quickly realize the benefits of refracting telescopes. While reflectors are cheaper, they get very bulky very quickly.