Didn't I read a while back about a quantum computer they're builing at Los Alamos that can transfer information at (seemingly) faster-than-light speed? I seem to remember that they had it up to 12 KM sometime early this year. If you can transfer information instantly over 12 KM, I don't see why 12 billion miles would be that insurmountable (I'm serious).
Maybe we don't have to deal with planetary lag, after all. Or maybe I've just read Ender's Game one too many times.
1. Don't ever bitch about nerds mocking ordinary folks -- we're just making up for our formative years.
2. The lion's share of stories on this site are either about people with extremely humorous misunderstandings or people who have very basic problems following directions. In the former's case, I'm fairly certain that all professions have similar lore (picture a a bunch of chemists laughing because someone asked about the valence shells of trichloroethelyne and you'll get my drift).
The latter, the people who can't follow directions, are the really aggrivating ones. People who can't master pressing the "a" key or for whom the concept of clicking on the "Start" button seems horribly complicated. There are a lot of users who call for help and follow directions well; the others deserve to be laughed at -- imagine if you were teaching someone to drive and they couldn't find the steering wheel; you can't help but laugh, can you?
There is a third class as well: people who get themselves so worked up that they call tech support to vent and ignore the help that could so easily fix their problem. The reason they're funny is self-explanitory: if techs didn't laugh, they'd go postal. These calls are probably the most destructive possible influence on a support organization's morale; fortunately the company I used to work phone support for let me hang up on customers who got abusive (which is a good thing, since I would have anyhow).
Mewonders how well Ender's Game will translate to the screen. Well, I suppose that's what rewriting means, isn't it? Still, I'm afraid they'll have to remove a lot of the mindplay and replace it with a lot of Starship Troopers-like scenes to appeal to today's attention deficit moviegoers.
I also wonder about Anakin (is it Jake Reed) as Ender: First, I'm worried that everyone will be like "hey, it's Darth Vader" the whole time. Second, I thought he was only a marginally good actor, while the kid from The Sixth Sense was the best I've seen in a long time.
I don't smoke anything, but I also think that pot is probably the least dangerous illegal drug out there -- alcohol has got to be 10x as bad for you.
I find it ironic that when I went on a month-long bender after my girlfriend dumped me and society just shrugged. Even though I almost ended up in detox a couple of time and barely remember most of January that year, it was OK.
Of course, if I'd started smoking pot, they would have had to lock me up for my own good and to protect society from me.
I should have a right to know if the government is acting against me. They shouldn't be able use these "sealed warrents" to wander in and see if I'm being a good little patriot every so often.
I want my fscking lawyer the *second* the government starts snooping around. Without some kind of legal protection, it's too easy to strip away my rights (why do you think the cops never ever want anyone to call a lawyer?).
Hardware. It's the easiest point of entry to control, and the hardest to deactivate. And it's universal. Just legislate that all keystrokes must pass through a buffer where they're stored in, say, 12 megs of flashram someplace hidden on each motherboard.
Well, if I *were* really doing something I wanted to hide, I'd rig my closet with a faraday cage and do my work there. However, this kills the idea that the best way to have privacy is if everyone else exercises the right, too (the sealed envelope theory).
This matter is more important from a philisophical standpoint than a practical one -- do we really want our government to have this sort of intrusive control over our lives and our information? I certainly don't.
"Free flow of information is the only safeguard against tyranny. The once-chained people whose leaders at last lose their grip on information flow will soon burst with freedom and vitality, while the once free nation slowly restricting its grip of free discourse has begun its rapid slide into despotism.
Beware he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart he dreams himself your master"
This'd be easy a few years ago -- just get the industry to play along and have MS, IBM and whoever else makes OSes slip keyboard sniffers into their OS (it's easy for a government to pressure a company; I should point out that I don't think even MS would do something like this voluntarily).
Now, however, I can download my OS from, say, (where else) Finland, check out the source and compile it myself.
Of course, it occurs to me now they could build this sort of thing into the hardware and restrict the sale of other hardware in the US. At that point, I think I'd like to move to Cuba or Iran, or some other country where they make no pretense at loving libery and where despotism can be taken in its pure form.
I mean, who would start using their pay format when a perfectly good free one was available?
Actually, the cynical part of me thinks that mayhaps MS made this format easily crackible in order to assure acceptence and still seem above board. After all, only a small percentage of potential consumes will ever use a cracking tool. It may cost them millions or billions, but it has the potential to make them many times that much.
Re: The magnetosphere thing: You could probably tow yourself by a 10-mile cable if you're worried about messing with the crew (not to mention the scientific instruments). Hell, I'll bet you could use that same cable to generate a hell of a lot of energy while you're at it -- think of it as recycling.
One big problem with the survival book: no chapter about being stalked by supernatural entites. However, I understand that they are planning to rectify this in the next edition. Here's a sample:
Redirection: If you find yourself walking in circles when you should not be -- after heading in one compass direction or following a terrain feature, for example -- you are likely the victim of a redirection hex. The patch for this involves smearing yourself in the blood of a newly sacrificed black lamb and chanting "Cthulhu en vek tatty" five times while facing toward the east. Should this fail, your next best solution involves lighting a major forest fire and waiting for the firefighters to gets there...
It scared me. It was creepy and it gave me the willies. The actors didn't *look* like actors (in fact, they all vaguely look like people I know), the woods looked like any woods I've ever been in, etc. The film was a huge relief after all the crappy slasher movies I've seen in the past few years.
Sure, it had its problems (specifically, I thought that the part at the end felt much more scripted than the rest of the film did). Still, it was fairly original and well done. I also liked the fact that it didn't go for the typical movie cliches -- the interaction between the three felt really genuine.
What I don't get is all the people (and there always seem to be a oddly high number of these on/.) who ruin the movie for themselves because they can't suspend disbelief. Why did they end up in the same place after heading south all day? BECAUSE THE WOODS WERE FRICKIN' HAUNTED! (I can just see a/.'er sitting in front of his monitor right now saying to himself "Ha! The moron! There are no such things as haunted woods!"; I'd hate to see a movie a person like that would actually enjoy).
I heard a guy in the theater complaining that "we never even see the friggin' witch". Any maybe that's the problem -- everyone's so used to having the camera shoved into the gore that people don't appreciate a more subtle approach. Maybe we can't be scared without a special-effect laden 30 foot iguana running around eating people. Maybe we live in a world where many people don't appreciate Hitchcock anymore and think that "I Know What You Did Last Summer II" is a good example of the horror genre.
Ever go sailing? You can go in directions other than that the wind is blowing; you just need to use a little finesse. Interesting that the solar winds could represent the trade winds of the new age, carrying us to more literal "real worlds".
Whose thinking about going manned? I mean, we haven't even been back to our own moon in, what, 25 years? Methinks that this sort of thing would be a huge bonus for going to someplace relatively close to the sun (Mars).
Mars Direct, only moreso. Using this, you could cut down on fuel mass and bring along (a lot) more supplies (and thus make life easier for our mars explorers -- imagine having frozen strawberries once a month instead of Tang).
In any event: this would make getting to the outer planets a lot easier. Instead of having to do a Voyager and visit each one, we could orbit an observer satelite around anything we find interesting out there well within a decade -- all the planets, Titan, Io, Europa; watch 'em all at the same time, 24/7.
I tried to put in a new conditional offer at 10:50 EST and found they were no longer accepting them. The message I got from E*Trade saying that I had to do so had a time of 10:36 EST on it.
I feel so screwed over.
Fourteen goddamn minutes and I missed my chance to get in on the IPO I've been waiting a month for (and for which, incidently, I opened an E*Trade account in the first place). I can't believe they're going to get away with this kind of bulls***.
Anyway, I put in an offer for shares at $20, hoping to get some before the stock skyrockets. This is the last stock I'm using E*Trade for, though; those #*$&%# ain't getting another cent of my money.
Well then, I guess the party can start now. Jesse's here.
In defense of ZD I do like the way Linux has been treated for years on the ZDTV lineup (and on the Screen Savers in particular -- I knew I was watching a good show when I saw the huge-sized stuffed tux sitting in the corner).
It worries me that *anybody* owns more than one of the really really popular community sites for open source. Ah, well, at least the maintainers are getting rich.
Yep, I noticed it here at about 4:57 CDT. Actually, I can probably safely say that I got in thanks to my trusty cable modem as much as anything else, can't I?
Now, I wonder what my odds are at actually being granted some shares. I only had money in the account for 100 shares, so I wonder if that'll hurt me in relation to some of the swingers around here who have like 4000 on order.
Of course, from E*Trades' perspective, they're better off selling 40 100-share orders than on 4000-share order, since the commission is the same anyhow (40*$19.95 vs. 1*$19.95). In any event, I hope I do get some shares and that RHAT does do well; I've been losing money like nuts this week so far. =(
No, actually I meant that the average person *with* a computer who orders now (online purchases went well into the hundreds of billions of dollars last year) might not buy anything were this to pass.
For example, I put together a new computer this summer because all the parts were so cheap online. If I'd been relying on Best Buy or the local places, I woulda made do with my old machine for another year.
Here's a wish list of things that could (and should) be ported over to Linux. These are the remaining "musts" before I lose my Windows box:
Alpha Centauri
Adaptec's Easy-CD Creator software
MS Money (hey, you want snow, go to the arctic, right?)
Photoshop
All of these still don't have a Linux equivalent (yeah, I like GIMP, but it's still not in the same league as Photoshop). The big one for me is MS Money, though; I really like how powerful it is and all the features it has (lemme alone). I left off Starcraft 'cause that plays reasonably well under WINE. I also didn't include future games that I'm waiting on 'cause I'm hoping that Loki will catch all of the really good ones (or that they'll be by id).
Usually, I can save money on medium-sized purchases over the 'net (books, CDs, movies) because the shipping balances out with the money I save and the tax I don't pay. This would put Amazon.Com out of contention -- I'd only use them for stuff I couldn't find.
Online retailers should be very, very worried. This is going to be pretty bad for the overall economy, too...
I don't think we should be using a broad brush to paint E*Trade as the bad guy here. Not allowing people with very little investment experience and not a whole lot of liquid wealth to participate in a risky investment like an IPO doesn't seem too cruel to me.
I mean, everyone seems to have the impression that an IPO like RedHat just can't lose. That is wrong, wrong, wrong. Look at what happened to MP3.Com (ticker symbol MPPP); they've been in a tailspin since the day their stock started trading.
Very few of us/.'ers qualify as even remotely savvy investors, so I can see E*Trade taking steps to protect us. It's like telling your boss that he probably shouldn't have "pre$ident" as his password. He might not like having a more difficult to remember password, but you and I both know that its for his own good and for the security of the entire company.
So, give E*Trade a break. We geeks like to think we know everything, but this is an area where a lot of us are pretty much lost.
Besides, I think DSCM is a better investment right now. =)
Slashdot Mirror
Maybe we don't have to deal with planetary lag, after all. Or maybe I've just read Ender's Game one too many times.
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1. Don't ever bitch about nerds mocking ordinary folks -- we're just making up for our formative years.
2. The lion's share of stories on this site are either about people with extremely humorous misunderstandings or people who have very basic problems following directions. In the former's case, I'm fairly certain that all professions have similar lore (picture a a bunch of chemists laughing because someone asked about the valence shells of trichloroethelyne and you'll get my drift).
The latter, the people who can't follow directions, are the really aggrivating ones. People who can't master pressing the "a" key or for whom the concept of clicking on the "Start" button seems horribly complicated. There are a lot of users who call for help and follow directions well; the others deserve to be laughed at -- imagine if you were teaching someone to drive and they couldn't find the steering wheel; you can't help but laugh, can you?
There is a third class as well: people who get themselves so worked up that they call tech support to vent and ignore the help that could so easily fix their problem. The reason they're funny is self-explanitory: if techs didn't laugh, they'd go postal. These calls are probably the most destructive possible influence on a support organization's morale; fortunately the company I used to work phone support for let me hang up on customers who got abusive (which is a good thing, since I would have anyhow).
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I also wonder about Anakin (is it Jake Reed) as Ender: First, I'm worried that everyone will be like "hey, it's Darth Vader" the whole time. Second, I thought he was only a marginally good actor, while the kid from The Sixth Sense was the best I've seen in a long time.
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I don't smoke anything, but I also think that pot is probably the least dangerous illegal drug out there -- alcohol has got to be 10x as bad for you.
I find it ironic that when I went on a month-long bender after my girlfriend dumped me and society just shrugged. Even though I almost ended up in detox a couple of time and barely remember most of January that year, it was OK.
Of course, if I'd started smoking pot, they would have had to lock me up for my own good and to protect society from me.
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I want my fscking lawyer the *second* the government starts snooping around. Without some kind of legal protection, it's too easy to strip away my rights (why do you think the cops never ever want anyone to call a lawyer?).
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Say goodbye to your personal liberties.
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This matter is more important from a philisophical standpoint than a practical one -- do we really want our government to have this sort of intrusive control over our lives and our information? I certainly don't.
"Free flow of information is the only safeguard against tyranny. The once-chained people whose leaders at last lose their grip on information flow will soon burst with freedom and vitality, while the once free nation slowly restricting its grip of free discourse has begun its rapid slide into despotism.
Beware he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart he dreams himself your master"
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Now, however, I can download my OS from, say, (where else) Finland, check out the source and compile it myself.
Of course, it occurs to me now they could build this sort of thing into the hardware and restrict the sale of other hardware in the US. At that point, I think I'd like to move to Cuba or Iran, or some other country where they make no pretense at loving libery and where despotism can be taken in its pure form.
----
Actually, the cynical part of me thinks that mayhaps MS made this format easily crackible in order to assure acceptence and still seem above board. After all, only a small percentage of potential consumes will ever use a cracking tool. It may cost them millions or billions, but it has the potential to make them many times that much.
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Redirection: If you find yourself walking in circles when you should not be -- after heading in one compass direction or following a terrain feature, for example -- you are likely the victim of a redirection hex. The patch for this involves smearing yourself in the blood of a newly sacrificed black lamb and chanting "Cthulhu en vek tatty" five times while facing toward the east. Should this fail, your next best solution involves lighting a major forest fire and waiting for the firefighters to gets there...
----
It scared me. It was creepy and it gave me the willies. The actors didn't *look* like actors (in fact, they all vaguely look like people I know), the woods looked like any woods I've ever been in, etc. The film was a huge relief after all the crappy slasher movies I've seen in the past few years.
Sure, it had its problems (specifically, I thought that the part at the end felt much more scripted than the rest of the film did). Still, it was fairly original and well done. I also liked the fact that it didn't go for the typical movie cliches -- the interaction between the three felt really genuine.
What I don't get is all the people (and there always seem to be a oddly high number of these on /.) who ruin the movie for themselves because they can't suspend disbelief. Why did they end up in the same place after heading south all day? BECAUSE THE WOODS WERE FRICKIN' HAUNTED! (I can just see a /.'er sitting in front of his monitor right now saying to himself "Ha! The moron! There are no such things as haunted woods!"; I'd hate to see a movie a person like that would actually enjoy).
I heard a guy in the theater complaining that "we never even see the friggin' witch". Any maybe that's the problem -- everyone's so used to having the camera shoved into the gore that people don't appreciate a more subtle approach. Maybe we can't be scared without a special-effect laden 30 foot iguana running around eating people. Maybe we live in a world where many people don't appreciate Hitchcock anymore and think that "I Know What You Did Last Summer II" is a good example of the horror genre.
Now that's scary.
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Mars Direct, only moreso. Using this, you could cut down on fuel mass and bring along (a lot) more supplies (and thus make life easier for our mars explorers -- imagine having frozen strawberries once a month instead of Tang).
In any event: this would make getting to the outer planets a lot easier. Instead of having to do a Voyager and visit each one, we could orbit an observer satelite around anything we find interesting out there well within a decade -- all the planets, Titan, Io, Europa; watch 'em all at the same time, 24/7.
Now *that's* a killer webcam site.
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I feel so screwed over.
Fourteen goddamn minutes and I missed my chance to get in on the IPO I've been waiting a month for (and for which, incidently, I opened an E*Trade account in the first place). I can't believe they're going to get away with this kind of bulls***.
Anyway, I put in an offer for shares at $20, hoping to get some before the stock skyrockets. This is the last stock I'm using E*Trade for, though; those #*$&%# ain't getting another cent of my money.
I am *so* angry right now.
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In defense of ZD I do like the way Linux has been treated for years on the ZDTV lineup (and on the Screen Savers in particular -- I knew I was watching a good show when I saw the huge-sized stuffed tux sitting in the corner).
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Now, I wonder what my odds are at actually being granted some shares. I only had money in the account for 100 shares, so I wonder if that'll hurt me in relation to some of the swingers around here who have like 4000 on order.
Of course, from E*Trades' perspective, they're better off selling 40 100-share orders than on 4000-share order, since the commission is the same anyhow (40*$19.95 vs. 1*$19.95). In any event, I hope I do get some shares and that RHAT does do well; I've been losing money like nuts this week so far. =(
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For example, I put together a new computer this summer because all the parts were so cheap online. If I'd been relying on Best Buy or the local places, I woulda made do with my old machine for another year.
PS: Don't be an asshole. You're no good at it.
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Alpha Centauri
Adaptec's Easy-CD Creator software
MS Money (hey, you want snow, go to the arctic, right?)
Photoshop
All of these still don't have a Linux equivalent (yeah, I like GIMP, but it's still not in the same league as Photoshop). The big one for me is MS Money, though; I really like how powerful it is and all the features it has (lemme alone). I left off Starcraft 'cause that plays reasonably well under WINE. I also didn't include future games that I'm waiting on 'cause I'm hoping that Loki will catch all of the really good ones (or that they'll be by id).
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Online retailers should be very, very worried. This is going to be pretty bad for the overall economy, too...
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I mean, everyone seems to have the impression that an IPO like RedHat just can't lose. That is wrong, wrong, wrong. Look at what happened to MP3.Com (ticker symbol MPPP); they've been in a tailspin since the day their stock started trading.
Very few of us /.'ers qualify as even remotely savvy investors, so I can see E*Trade taking steps to protect us. It's like telling your boss that he probably shouldn't have "pre$ident" as his password. He might not like having a more difficult to remember password, but you and I both know that its for his own good and for the security of the entire company.
So, give E*Trade a break. We geeks like to think we know everything, but this is an area where a lot of us are pretty much lost.
Besides, I think DSCM is a better investment right now. =)
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