To think of how far we've come, how far technology has progressed, and how much work it took to put it all together, all I can say is I'm amazed that they were able to keep the webcast going smoothly through that tumultuous server load!
Oh yeah and the spaceship dudes did pretty good to.
Though seriously it is a huge accomplishment by Burt Rutan, Mike Melville and their team to put a craft into space. I'm just elated that I was able to spend an hour at work watching the whole thing happen live. Got pretty hairy there when the rolls started up (plus a little freaky the first time the sun shone directly on the camera and washed out the lense:) it's awesome that it all worked out!!
2 year patents for pharmaceuticals would make it useless to develop new medicines, due to the extensive testing required by the FDA prior to marketing. This is why most drugs are only on the market a few years before the patent expires, allowing generics to be developed.
The proper amount of time is very dependent upon the nature of the patent an the industry it is involved with.
What about time to market + 2 years up to a maximum pf 10 (maybe 15 if pharmaceuticals really take that long).
What is your biggest weakness. What is your opponent's biggest strength? DAMN This is a good one! Mod the parent through the roof!!
Is it too late to slip in a late entry? This would fit in nicely with the 13-17 age group, seriously I've seen a lot of questions here but am definately most interested by how they would answer this question, if nothing else it will be fun to watch them squirm, each trying to outguess the other by seeming more gracious without actually giving the other any ammo.
I can see dropping the Iran reference, while it provides some context it might give them a side issue to discuss instead and think it can be dropped without damaging the question too much. However it total this question is a DEFINATE keeping, it's a very real situation and the only real kind of discussion I've heard given to it is Rumsfeld saying that they might not hold the elections in parts of the country that are "too violent" (ie disenfranchise the anti-american regions)
Increasing the number of people creates more jobs that it takes. If this weren't the case, then villages with a population of 5 would have full employment, and cities with a population of 10 million would have 99.999% unemployment.
Add to that the increase in cultural diversity that immigrants bring ( I believe something the Yanks are sorely missing, by the way ), and you have some very strong arguments for increasing the number of immigrants.
Please don't let this nationalist trash get regurgitated again.
I agree with you, now I have to say I'm pretty damn interested if the candidates do as well. The slant of the question can be excused by it being from a low age group but I'm certainly interested to hear what the candidates say about this, I wouldn't be surprized if they start sprouting that same nationalist trash back in the answer and that answer I feel is very relevant, I say the question should stay.
I'm thinking they are looking for the most childish questions from this age group? I remember being 13 and I'm sure I could come up with more challenging stuff then this. All this does is lets the candidates go "In a second RAH! RAH! let's go team!" Kerry will bring his war record into it (don't think Bush will mention the war;) but other then that this question will be nothing but filler.
If you want a chance at a real answer maybe,
"Under what circumstances do you feel someone should choose to die for their country?"
They'll still try to give the same answer in all likelyhood but maybe we'll at least see some good acrobatics.
I really don't know about this question. There MIGHT be a possbility it that it could come across as cute and be tough for them to evade without sounding heartless but frankly it sounds REALLY childish. The "When I grow up and become President" bit is just begging for an evasive side track. The whole tone of the question just detracts from the seriousness and intelligence of what I feel are some really excellent questions being asked elsewhere. Instead try something like,
"Negative advertising is growing more common in political campaigns. To what degree do you feel that it's appropriate to restrict smear campaigns through the restriction of certain types of free speech?"
For something like this you have to be specific to get anything but a pile of fluff, anyone have any further refinements?
Definately, though the thing I really think needs to be established is that a) marjiuanna is not a gateway drug (I garuntee this will be their answer unless it's countered in the question itself) or if conclusive evidence of a cannot be found then b) marjiuanna is a gateway drug only due to the fact that it is illegal (can any evidence from Holland be gathered here?), this makes it very tough to justify draconian anti-marjiuanna laws. Of course it's easy to say this, now we actually need the studies to back it up:)
I feel that 9 is too aggressive suggesting racial motivation and possibly giving the candidate an easy out by challenging the stereotype rather than answering the question. Question 7 as well suffers from a touch of rhetoric, perhaps a combined question would do better.
In the name of America's youth, billions of dollars have been spent on the War on Drugs. Drug convictions are punished with a disproportionate severity with respect to other crimes. This shows up not only in terms of a rapidly growing prison population but other punishments like the HEA drug provision which deny students with drug convictions from receiving financial aid, a privilege that rapists and murderers are allowed. As a member of the so-called "DARE generation", my question is simply, do you find our current drug strategy effective, or is it time to look to alternatives for reform?
I'm worried that I didn't quantify the "disproportionate severity" well enough (think they'll get an out arguing that?) and I wouldn't mind incorporating the fact that the HEA drug provision specifically interferes with the ability of the person to rehabilitate but couldn't find an easy way to slip it in there without asking a second question.
Any improvements?
btw. technically I am also a member of the "DARE generation" so I'm not an american so I don't know if I can really hijack the question:)
Sounds like a plan, have to indicate what it's a dupe of of course, maybe users will just mark stories as dupes of eachother rather than choosing saying a specific one is the dupe then you only promote the best one.
If I had the space and the time, I would start a version of Slashdot that took Wikipedia's Neutral Point of View as a matter of policy.
Damn fine idea, one of the things I find most irritating is blatant bias showing up in the summary, the summary is just that, a summary of the article or topic to be discussed. Bias should be found in the comments, where it belongs, a biased summary too often distracts from the topic that is to be discussed and makes the site appear shallow and childish.
I find the idea of a wiki based slashdot type site (not quite what you mentioned but I think it would work) interesting. There would be a bunch of sections, subitters could submit their stories to one of the sections and people would read through these sections, a story which achieves some metric for activity would then make it to the front page. It might take a couple hours for the story to make it to the front page depending on the metric but it's not like/. is known for its prompt reporting anyway. Furthermore we'll have some defense against lots of dupes or useless stories since by definition any story that makes it to the front page has generated a lot of interest. The only real class of dupes that could still be a problem is a current issue where two stories both have enough activity to make it to the front page, anyone have ideas for this (some kind of dupe checking code, ie link crawlers and keywords would really help here).
Slashdot must be making a reasonable amount of money out of its subscribers and advertising, perhaps a small fraction of that could be spent on vetting what is posted on the front page?
I have to say I considered subscribing a couple times but then just took a look not just at the rampants dupes but even worse the massive factual errors that show up so often in the summary that even a cursory glance through the article would reveal. How many times I've read about a company doing some great evil in the summary only to find they've done nothing of the sort in the article, or about some event described as something completely different. Almost all of these errors could be caught with 3 min of research, it's gotten to the point where I don't even pay attention to the summary or even the title other then to see if it's something that might be interesting, it's the article and comments that I use for info.
I mean, I really really don't it. It's already illegal share movies.
You mean if I make a movie or tape a song by myself it's illegal for me to share it? What if the work is under a creative commons license? Because those are two of the situations this bill will affect.
Just thinking that lawsuits seem to be very popular in the US and this seems to be the perfect time for one. Wouldn't it be possible for some group of you down there to sue Diebold
RTFA. They are.
You can't be serious. That was in like the 3rd paragraph, I would of had to read over a hundred words to get there!!
Just thinking that lawsuits seem to be very popular in the US and this seems to be the perfect time for one. Wouldn't it be possible for some group of you down there to sue Diebold on the grounds that either they're disenfranchising you, or at least being reckless and making it easy for a third party to disenfranchise you, via the horrible security and lack of paper trail of their voting machines?
Probably wouldn't win but at the very least it would make a heck of a splash in the media and might cause something to be done about it.
Personally, I suspect (and having watched a documentary, suspect even more) that the makers didn't know what was happening in 2001; 2010 (both movie and film) seem to extrapolate from the 2001 novel- but as mentioned above, 2001 the novel is *not* the same as the movie (there are significant plot differences).
On the contrary Clarke has specifically stated that the novels were supposed to be sequels of the movies, not the books, ie the 2010 novel was a squel on the 2001 movie and 2061 was a squel of 2010, probably for the reason you could count on any reader of the novel to have seen the movie but not vice versa.
Can google compete with open-source options like mozilla and opera?
From the article
Last month, Google hosted Mozilla Developer Day on its campus, a gathering of programmers that work together to build sequels to the re-named Netscape browser.
They might just jump on board and make a re-branded mozilla (or firefox, in fact probably firefox). The only problem with that is mozilla is still a touch flaky at times and I'm not sure that the current firefox designs will fit in with googles current design philosophy which is the embodiment of KISS (Keep It Simple Stupid). Gmail for all it's little goodies is still very utilitarian, the google search engine itself is the epitomy of simplicity, firefox while an amazing piece of software and simpler than mozilla just doesn't have nearly this level of simplicity. Google may choose to go with firefox due to the already existing user base and code but doing something along the lines of Safari is certainly an option that must be considered (and considering googles history is something I'm very interested to see).
On the other hand this is all still a bunch of speculation. Look at the evidence so far, they have a former lead Java guy from Sun, also
The company also hired four people who worked on Microsoft's Web browser, Internet Explorer, and later founded their own company. One of them, Adam Bosworth, is credited with being a driving force not only behind IE, but Microsoft's database-management program, Access.
Could be a browser yeah, but what did these guys do in this new company? Also note that the biggest hire was also a database guy.
Most recently, Google grabbed Joe Beda, the lead developer on Avalon, Microsoft's code name for the user interface that will part of the next version of Windows, called Longhorn.
Nice catch if you ignore the jokes about Microsoft UI but certainly nothing specific to web browsers there that I can see. More on mozilla day,
Mozilla, which is "open source" and available to anyone, could be shaped to Google's specifications and be embedded with Google search, Gmail free e-mail and other Google applications.
Seems to me that they're making the logical move of trying to see if they can get google stuff is integrated into mozilla. The last bit is perhaps the most telling,
Other blogs and analysts believe Google is working on an instant-messaging program and a Web browser to challenge Internet Explorer.
Well if bloggers and analysts are saying so then it MUST be true!! The fact is that google is everyones favorite company so we're rooting for it to get into the front lines of the browser wars, the place where Microsoft is considered most vulnerable by the geek population. I hope that google is working on a browser, I hope it will blow IE out of the water but there's a difference between wishful thinking and fact. Look at the main apps that google does have, google itself, the google toolbar, and gmail, wonderful apps but from a users perspective extremely simple and not subject to the whims of screwy users systems, I can't imagine them jumping into the browser wars where they don't hold all the cards (dependent on the OS) and the product is orders of magnitude more complex, I just don't think it's gonna happen.
The instant messaging program however, now that I can see, little more complex but still very simple and a somewhat natural extension for them (bring up ads and stuff based on conversations and easy searching in logs like gmail).
AIM requires about 6.25 megs. ICQ requires about 11.1 megs. gaim requires about 13.9 megs plus 14.4 megs for the gtk files. Install AIM and ICQ, use about 17.5 megs of disk. Install gaim, use about 28.3 megs of disk. If the only messaging services you use are AIM and ICQ, you are better off installing AIM and ICQ, as opposed to installing gaim.
Though if you're already using something gtk based, say gimp, the 14.4M for the gtk files can no longer be blamed on gaim alone and it wins the disk space battle. That being said the problem with icon sizes is definately an issue. If you want you can try submitting a bug report, see what they say.
As I clicked on this story a popup ad for an XServe came up (how it got around blocker...). I've seen it happen once before (a few weeks ago) has anyone seen this happen before? Did/. somehow send the popup or did another site I was visiting send it (there's only one site that was open that was allowed to open popups and it only opens them for info, not ads) when I went to this story. Offtopic yeah but was just wondering if anyone had any info.
Is there a math-to-English translator for those of the Slashdot community that can't understand the PDF? Theoretically, I should be able to read it -- I have a degree in mathematics
Slashdot Mirror
I have to say as a Canadian I wasn't really concerned about this whole terrorist thing before, but then I read this
Pandagon: Terrorists Could Infiltrate Hockey
OMG!!! They could be anywhere!!
Quick mobilize the military, alert the RCMP, defend the crease^H^H^Hborder!!!
Before it's too late we need to put those terrorists in the box! Remember if the NHL season doesn't start the terrorists have already won!
To think of how far we've come, how far technology has progressed, and how much work it took to put it all together, all I can say is I'm amazed that they were able to keep the webcast going smoothly through that tumultuous server load!
Oh yeah and the spaceship dudes did pretty good to.
Though seriously it is a huge accomplishment by Burt Rutan, Mike Melville and their team to put a craft into space. I'm just elated that I was able to spend an hour at work watching the whole thing happen live. Got pretty hairy there when the rolls started up (plus a little freaky the first time the sun shone directly on the camera and washed out the lense:) it's awesome that it all worked out!!
2 year patents for pharmaceuticals would make it useless to develop new medicines, due to the extensive testing required by the FDA prior to marketing. This is why most drugs are only on the market a few years before the patent expires, allowing generics to be developed.
The proper amount of time is very dependent upon the nature of the patent an the industry it is involved with.
What about time to market + 2 years up to a maximum pf 10 (maybe 15 if pharmaceuticals really take that long).
I would love to see each of them answer...:
What is your biggest weakness. What is your opponent's biggest strength?
DAMN This is a good one! Mod the parent through the roof!!
Is it too late to slip in a late entry? This would fit in nicely with the 13-17 age group, seriously I've seen a lot of questions here but am definately most interested by how they would answer this question, if nothing else it will be fun to watch them squirm, each trying to outguess the other by seeming more gracious without actually giving the other any ammo.
I can see dropping the Iran reference, while it provides some context it might give them a side issue to discuss instead and think it can be dropped without damaging the question too much. However it total this question is a DEFINATE keeping, it's a very real situation and the only real kind of discussion I've heard given to it is Rumsfeld saying that they might not hold the elections in parts of the country that are "too violent" (ie disenfranchise the anti-american regions)
Interesting? Oh Lordy Lord!
Increasing the number of people creates more jobs that it takes. If this weren't the case, then villages with a population of 5 would have full employment, and cities with a population of 10 million would have 99.999% unemployment.
Add to that the increase in cultural diversity that immigrants bring ( I believe something the Yanks are sorely missing, by the way ), and you have some very strong arguments for increasing the number of immigrants.
Please don't let this nationalist trash get regurgitated again.
I agree with you, now I have to say I'm pretty damn interested if the candidates do as well. The slant of the question can be excused by it being from a low age group but I'm certainly interested to hear what the candidates say about this, I wouldn't be surprized if they start sprouting that same nationalist trash back in the answer and that answer I feel is very relevant, I say the question should stay.
I'm thinking they are looking for the most childish questions from this age group? I remember being 13 and I'm sure I could come up with more challenging stuff then this. All this does is lets the candidates go "In a second RAH! RAH! let's go team!" Kerry will bring his war record into it (don't think Bush will mention the war;) but other then that this question will be nothing but filler.
If you want a chance at a real answer maybe,
"Under what circumstances do you feel someone should choose to die for their country?"
They'll still try to give the same answer in all likelyhood but maybe we'll at least see some good acrobatics.
I really don't know about this question. There MIGHT be a possbility it that it could come across as cute and be tough for them to evade without sounding heartless but frankly it sounds REALLY childish. The "When I grow up and become President" bit is just begging for an evasive side track. The whole tone of the question just detracts from the seriousness and intelligence of what I feel are some really excellent questions being asked elsewhere. Instead try something like,
"Negative advertising is growing more common in political campaigns. To what degree do you feel that it's appropriate to restrict smear campaigns through the restriction of certain types of free speech?"
For something like this you have to be specific to get anything but a pile of fluff, anyone have any further refinements?
Definately, though the thing I really think needs to be established is that a) marjiuanna is not a gateway drug (I garuntee this will be their answer unless it's countered in the question itself) or if conclusive evidence of a cannot be found then b) marjiuanna is a gateway drug only due to the fact that it is illegal (can any evidence from Holland be gathered here?), this makes it very tough to justify draconian anti-marjiuanna laws. Of course it's easy to say this, now we actually need the studies to back it up :)
Combine 9 & 7.
:)
I feel that 9 is too aggressive suggesting racial motivation and possibly giving the candidate an easy out by challenging the stereotype rather than answering the question. Question 7 as well suffers from a touch of rhetoric, perhaps a combined question would do better.
In the name of America's youth, billions of dollars have been spent on the War on Drugs. Drug convictions are punished with a disproportionate severity with respect to other crimes. This shows up not only in terms of a rapidly growing prison population but other punishments like the HEA drug provision which deny students with drug convictions from receiving financial aid, a privilege that rapists and murderers are allowed. As a member of the so-called "DARE generation", my question is simply, do you find our current drug strategy effective, or is it time to look to alternatives for reform?
I'm worried that I didn't quantify the "disproportionate severity" well enough (think they'll get an out arguing that?) and I wouldn't mind incorporating the fact that the HEA drug provision specifically interferes with the ability of the person to rehabilitate but couldn't find an easy way to slip it in there without asking a second question.
Any improvements?
btw. technically I am also a member of the "DARE generation" so I'm not an american so I don't know if I can really hijack the question
I've seen how bad most drivers are at working in 2 Dimensions, does anyone seriously think that they can handle another?
Sounds like a plan, have to indicate what it's a dupe of of course, maybe users will just mark stories as dupes of eachother rather than choosing saying a specific one is the dupe then you only promote the best one.
If I had the space and the time, I would start a version of Slashdot that took Wikipedia's Neutral Point of View as a matter of policy.
/. is known for its prompt reporting anyway. Furthermore we'll have some defense against lots of dupes or useless stories since by definition any story that makes it to the front page has generated a lot of interest. The only real class of dupes that could still be a problem is a current issue where two stories both have enough activity to make it to the front page, anyone have ideas for this (some kind of dupe checking code, ie link crawlers and keywords would really help here).
Damn fine idea, one of the things I find most irritating is blatant bias showing up in the summary, the summary is just that, a summary of the article or topic to be discussed. Bias should be found in the comments, where it belongs, a biased summary too often distracts from the topic that is to be discussed and makes the site appear shallow and childish.
I find the idea of a wiki based slashdot type site (not quite what you mentioned but I think it would work) interesting. There would be a bunch of sections, subitters could submit their stories to one of the sections and people would read through these sections, a story which achieves some metric for activity would then make it to the front page. It might take a couple hours for the story to make it to the front page depending on the metric but it's not like
Slashdot must be making a reasonable amount of money out of its subscribers and advertising, perhaps a small fraction of that could be spent on vetting what is posted on the front page?
I have to say I considered subscribing a couple times but then just took a look not just at the rampants dupes but even worse the massive factual errors that show up so often in the summary that even a cursory glance through the article would reveal. How many times I've read about a company doing some great evil in the summary only to find they've done nothing of the sort in the article, or about some event described as something completely different. Almost all of these errors could be caught with 3 min of research, it's gotten to the point where I don't even pay attention to the summary or even the title other then to see if it's something that might be interesting, it's the article and comments that I use for info.
Hotmail drags for everybody. Just check out this google search:
r t= 0&start=0&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&client=firefox-a&rls=o rg.mozilla:en-US:official
http://www.google.com/search?q=hotmail+slow&sta
How about gmail slow? Not that I'm arguing your point, just your evidence, I personally feel that gmail is tons faster then hotmail but google search containing your point isn't a good way to argue, what about a google fight, hotmail slow ( 426 000 results) versus hotmail fast (1 090 000 results)
DOH!
well
gmail slow ( 101 000 results) versus gmail fast ( 226 000 results)
that's better
I mean, I really really don't it. It's already illegal share movies.
You mean if I make a movie or tape a song by myself it's illegal for me to share it?
What if the work is under a creative commons license?
Because those are two of the situations this bill will affect.
Just thinking that lawsuits seem to be very popular in the US and this seems to be the perfect time for one. Wouldn't it be possible for some group of you down there to sue Diebold
RTFA. They are.
You can't be serious. That was in like the 3rd paragraph, I would of had to read over a hundred words to get there!!
Just thinking that lawsuits seem to be very popular in the US and this seems to be the perfect time for one. Wouldn't it be possible for some group of you down there to sue Diebold on the grounds that either they're disenfranchising you, or at least being reckless and making it easy for a third party to disenfranchise you, via the horrible security and lack of paper trail of their voting machines?
Probably wouldn't win but at the very least it would make a heck of a splash in the media and might cause something to be done about it.
Won't be long before we're all solving impossible encryption problems.
:)
Were he still alive, Andre the Giant would have something to say about this sentence.
Yeah, like it was Inigo Montoya who said the line you're thinking of
Personally, I suspect (and having watched a documentary, suspect even more) that the makers didn't know what was happening in 2001; 2010 (both movie and film) seem to extrapolate from the 2001 novel- but as mentioned above, 2001 the novel is *not* the same as the movie (there are significant plot differences).
On the contrary Clarke has specifically stated that the novels were supposed to be sequels of the movies, not the books, ie the 2010 novel was a squel on the 2001 movie and 2061 was a squel of 2010, probably for the reason you could count on any reader of the novel to have seen the movie but not vice versa.
Can google compete with open-source options like mozilla and opera?
From the article
Last month, Google hosted Mozilla Developer Day on its campus, a gathering of programmers that work together to build sequels to the re-named Netscape browser.
They might just jump on board and make a re-branded mozilla (or firefox, in fact probably firefox). The only problem with that is mozilla is still a touch flaky at times and I'm not sure that the current firefox designs will fit in with googles current design philosophy which is the embodiment of KISS (Keep It Simple Stupid). Gmail for all it's little goodies is still very utilitarian, the google search engine itself is the epitomy of simplicity, firefox while an amazing piece of software and simpler than mozilla just doesn't have nearly this level of simplicity. Google may choose to go with firefox due to the already existing user base and code but doing something along the lines of Safari is certainly an option that must be considered (and considering googles history is something I'm very interested to see).
On the other hand this is all still a bunch of speculation. Look at the evidence so far, they have a former lead Java guy from Sun, also
The company also hired four people who worked on Microsoft's Web browser, Internet Explorer, and later founded their own company. One of them, Adam Bosworth, is credited with being a driving force not only behind IE, but Microsoft's database-management program, Access.
Could be a browser yeah, but what did these guys do in this new company? Also note that the biggest hire was also a database guy.
Most recently, Google grabbed Joe Beda, the lead developer on Avalon, Microsoft's code name for the user interface that will part of the next version of Windows, called Longhorn.
Nice catch if you ignore the jokes about Microsoft UI but certainly nothing specific to web browsers there that I can see. More on mozilla day,
Mozilla, which is "open source" and available to anyone, could be shaped to Google's specifications and be embedded with Google search, Gmail free e-mail and other Google applications.
Seems to me that they're making the logical move of trying to see if they can get google stuff is integrated into mozilla. The last bit is perhaps the most telling,
Other blogs and analysts believe Google is working on an instant-messaging program and a Web browser to challenge Internet Explorer.
Well if bloggers and analysts are saying so then it MUST be true!! The fact is that google is everyones favorite company so we're rooting for it to get into the front lines of the browser wars, the place where Microsoft is considered most vulnerable by the geek population. I hope that google is working on a browser, I hope it will blow IE out of the water but there's a difference between wishful thinking and fact. Look at the main apps that google does have, google itself, the google toolbar, and gmail, wonderful apps but from a users perspective extremely simple and not subject to the whims of screwy users systems, I can't imagine them jumping into the browser wars where they don't hold all the cards (dependent on the OS) and the product is orders of magnitude more complex, I just don't think it's gonna happen.
The instant messaging program however, now that I can see, little more complex but still very simple and a somewhat natural extension for them (bring up ads and stuff based on conversations and easy searching in logs like gmail).
GTalk anyone?
At thge end of your page with the screenshots
AIM requires about 6.25 megs. ICQ requires about 11.1 megs. gaim requires about 13.9 megs plus 14.4 megs for the gtk files. Install AIM and ICQ, use about 17.5 megs of disk. Install gaim, use about 28.3 megs of disk. If the only messaging services you use are AIM and ICQ, you are better off installing AIM and ICQ, as opposed to installing gaim.
Though if you're already using something gtk based, say gimp, the 14.4M for the gtk files can no longer be blamed on gaim alone and it wins the disk space battle. That being said the problem with icon sizes is definately an issue. If you want you can try submitting a bug report, see what they say.
sounds like you've got ad-ware.. is this on IE? if so then nothings off-limits, if not IE then thats just weird..
Both times Mozilla on FC2, on two different machines with two completely different networks.
As I clicked on this story a popup ad for an XServe came up (how it got around blocker...). I've seen it happen once before (a few weeks ago) has anyone seen this happen before? Did /. somehow send the popup or did another site I was visiting send it (there's only one site that was open that was allowed to open popups and it only opens them for info, not ads) when I went to this story. Offtopic yeah but was just wondering if anyone had any info.
Hey, thanks for volunteering!!