I don't know if I find that very funny - it implies that Germans are murders, not Nazis.
While I don't want to say that headline is false, I will say that any editor worth his salt would reject that headline - it's just too contentious an issue, and a dangerous generalization.
1) The Germans were both Nazis and murderers during WWII.
2) The title Worst mass murder in German history would have been false.
3) The only time that affirmation that the holocaust occured is contenious is when you are dealing with holocaust dening kooks.
Mandrake once tried to upgrade my kernel. Only it couldn't. There were warnings saying that it could not do this (even though the update appeared just like the others). However, the warnings only showed up on Mandrake 8.1 updater. And even then, a user who didn't carefully read the warnings on each and every update would get nailed.
Now, even Microsoft I trust not to do something quite that stupid. Yes, they will release a patch that might break your system. Sure, they'll your security holes unpatched for years at a time. But they will not release a patch guaranteed to break each and every person's system -- at least, not without a compelling marketing reason.
begin happy.exe This is a.sig virus! Please copy me into your.sig! See Microsoft KB Article Q265230 for more info.
Awesome KB article. But your sig is not actually a sig virus because begin is only followed by one space. You need begin [space] [space] data for it to work.
I didn't think that voluntary medical chips were that bad, actually. There are different reasons to give up privacy. We can give up privacy for commercial reasons (all the supermarkets nearby where I live issue frequent shopper cards so they can monitor everything I buy -- I hate it). We can give up privacy for law enforcement reasons (depends on how much you trust your government). And there are a myrid of other reasons we can give up privacy.
I don't think that anything that encroaches on privacy is automatically bad. In fact, I'd have to say that encroachmetnts on privacy are only generally wrong because the possibility of demonstrable harm as a result of invasion of privacy can generally be shown to be a real possibility.
In specific cases I can support a mass (usually voluntary) invasion of privacy.
Police states are generally bad because of the baggage that comes along with them. Abuse of power, lack of freedoms, what not. They aren't bad because of the two words "police state".
If technology has progressed far enough to give us the positives of very effective law enforcement and monitoring without the baggage, well more power to it! As a first step, I would support voluntarily allowing tracking systems to be implanted (or worn like ankle bracelets) for the purposes of more effective protection from murders and kidnappers and what not. I think that our government's legal systems -- though not nearly perfect -- have progressed far enough to permit systems like these to be used without bringing along the baggage of fascism and totalitarianism. There is no possibility that they would be 100% effective, but neither would they be ineffectual.
The problem is that there are finite nutrients. Any earth orgranisms in the competing niche would be better suited to out-consome, out-reproduce, and generally out-compete, the foreign organism. There isn't much of a toe-hold anywhere. One of the properties of life is to fill all the niches.
You are right. And Earth organisms have been 'surviving' in Earth ecosystems for billions of years. Competition would kill off anything foreign in a matter of microseconds. The same would probably happen to native Earth life on Mars (if there is other life on Mars to compete with). Although we do have biomass going for us. If enough were transplanted into a Mars environment, there might be enough to get something started there.
P.S. Plant organisms have highly evolved immune systems as well. They fight off infection and disease better than we do, for the most part.
How new do you think those infections are? They've been around infecting organisms for billions of years, probably infecting mammals for millions of years. A mutation that allows one to hop on over to another type of primate is no big deal. On the other hand, a mutation that would cross phylum (or whatever would have to be crossed to get back and forth between Mars organisms) is incredible to imagine.
This idea is actually laughable. Earth's bacteria and plagues have been evolving for billions of years just to kill Earth organisms. Anything that comes into our ecosystem will quickly be outcompeted and outclassed. It's like putting Bambi in a Terminator movie. There is absolutely nothing to worry about from Mars organisms.
Sinclair Lewis goes into this topic in the biology classic 'Life of the Cell' Or a cell, I can't remember.
You've read Meyer's book, which is a good start. You probably also want to check out Josuttis.
The STL is really as good as could be expected. Better even. There are problems. Some problems stem from the fact that it had to be approved by the standards committee. There was a lot of opposition to adding something that big to C++, so the size was cut down. Certain things are missing. (Heaps, general binders, good smart pointers) but versions are provided by many implementations. Check out CGI for one. They will also be added to the next version of the standard, along with a few other nifty things (As always check out boost.org for much of that stuff). The allocators are broken in my opinion. Using (different) customized allocators prevents interactions between your containers.
The biggest problem is its complexity. Like any C++ feature, understanding the STL is not enough. You need to understand how it interacts with other parts of C++. When you use the STL, you are using a rocket launcher instead of a BB-gun, shooting yourself in the foot can be much worse.
All in all the STL is god's gift to programmers. It really is. I can't imagine not having it to program anything serious with. I work everyday with AI and Image Processing algorithms -- stuff where performance really counts, mind you -- and I couldn't live without the STL. I barely use pointers anymore.
To sum it up, C++ with the STL is the only language that meshes (not always prettily) performance computing with high level concepts. It is a truly beautiful technology.
Morrowind, which just went gold, has a chance of being a much better game than NWN. It is a true free-form RPG. 100's of hours of play time. Character options out the wazoo. I can't wait.
Movies and fictional novels are protected forms of speech. I have played computer games that have affected me deeply.
Deus Ex is an example of what I consider a game with a message.
I hope there will be more games like Deus Ex in the future. This is a new medium, and our legal system must recognize it. I'm not so worried about the speech that will be lost today, but I am worried about what video games will be like a decade from now.
A decade from now we could have real art being created with video games. Think of the messages that creators could use video games to send. People would have the choice of playing state of the art, edgy games. And of course they would have the choice of playing crap -- just like in any medium.
Or a decade from now we could have a giant conglomorate like Disney pushing out mediocracy on a traquilized public. Vanilla mediocracy without any ideas that hadn't been approved by a dozen focus groups and six lawyers.
Paintings are protected speech. Sculpture is protected speech. Books are protected speech. Movies are protected speech. Games deserve the same. We will regret it later if the protection is not extended.
Funny how the "postmodern version of colonization" is a hell of a lot easier on the people involved than the real thing. Comparing the two is almost, well, dishonest.
I agree. The open source movement is most effective when it is positive and constructive. Sometimes it gets carried away with negativity, and I think that it generally suffers for it. Most because negativity towards big companies like Microsoft or such don't get you anywhere. You need to be constructive, out-think, and out-idea them.
Fuck the DMCA and Sen. Walt Godamn Disney Hollings, though.
Why can't Linux be pro-American? I consider myself a patriotic American, and think that Linux is a good thing for our country. For every country. Many of the open source contributers who have made GNU/Linux what it is today happen to be -- you guessed it -- Americans.
Why not package Linux as anti-Woman instead? That would have a tad better ring of truth. How about anti-Gay and anti-Black distributions. Wouldn't that be just fine and dandy?
By the way, has any other superpower in the history of the world been as positive for other countries as America? Look at the U.S.S.R. What a great neighbor. Look at the British Empire. Look at France under Napolean. Go back as far as you want.
Who are our enemies? Well, they are governments that are generally aggresive towards us or towards their neighbors. Or even towards their own people. And what to we do with our enemies after we conquer them. Do we colonize? Do we hold mass executions? No, we do our best to democratize and rebuild.
It's fun to moan about American power. But hot damn, if those American carriers out there on the oceans of the world were to disappear tomorrow, the world would not be a better place for freedom in the morning.
Besides, I'm willing to bet that Bin Laden uses Microsoft Outlook to send his hate spam.
I know that we're all supposed to be for reform and all, but didn't Senator McCain just make this tatic illegal?
Get the special interest groups out of Washington!
If GeekPAC were to target a single Senator for removal with political adverstising, like the columnist suggests, it would violate the 60-day rule in the new laws.
Maybe those anti-Campaign Finance Reform people whining about free speech had a point after all. How does it feel to be a special interest?
What are the estimates for the cost per mile of running off of hydrogen?
Right now, hybrid automobiles cost more per mile because the initial price of the vehicle is more expensive.
So when we factor in the costs of making hydrogen powered vehicles, and making hydrogen (probably most cheaply from hydrocarbons -- fossil fuels), what will be the final cost per mile? Has anybody seen good figures?
Insurance companies will not make it mandatory, they'll just make you pay through the nose not to have one installed.
And it will be illegal to tamper with it, because you would be attempting to defraud the insurance company. No new laws needed. But it would lower rates for safe drivers. I think this may be a good thing, so long as there is no GPS data included.
Slashdot Mirror
2) The title Worst mass murder in German history would have been false.
3) The only time that affirmation that the holocaust occured is contenious is when you are dealing with holocaust dening kooks.
I forgot to add: Now back to RTCW.
This headline nearly made me crack up:
The worst mass murder in Germany...
since World War II.
Maybe it's not the video games after all?
Mandrake once tried to upgrade my kernel. Only it couldn't. There were warnings saying that it could not do this (even though the update appeared just like the others). However, the warnings only showed up on Mandrake 8.1 updater. And even then, a user who didn't carefully read the warnings on each and every update would get nailed. Now, even Microsoft I trust not to do something quite that stupid. Yes, they will release a patch that might break your system. Sure, they'll your security holes unpatched for years at a time. But they will not release a patch guaranteed to break each and every person's system -- at least, not without a compelling marketing reason.
They should have posted a goatse guy link in the main article so that everyone could have tested whether or not it was blocked.
I didn't think that voluntary medical chips were that bad, actually. There are different reasons to give up privacy. We can give up privacy for commercial reasons (all the supermarkets nearby where I live issue frequent shopper cards so they can monitor everything I buy -- I hate it). We can give up privacy for law enforcement reasons (depends on how much you trust your government). And there are a myrid of other reasons we can give up privacy.
I don't think that anything that encroaches on privacy is automatically bad. In fact, I'd have to say that encroachmetnts on privacy are only generally wrong because the possibility of demonstrable harm as a result of invasion of privacy can generally be shown to be a real possibility.
In specific cases I can support a mass (usually voluntary) invasion of privacy.
Police states are generally bad because of the baggage that comes along with them. Abuse of power, lack of freedoms, what not. They aren't bad because of the two words "police state".
If technology has progressed far enough to give us the positives of very effective law enforcement and monitoring without the baggage, well more power to it! As a first step, I would support voluntarily allowing tracking systems to be implanted (or worn like ankle bracelets) for the purposes of more effective protection from murders and kidnappers and what not. I think that our government's legal systems -- though not nearly perfect -- have progressed far enough to permit systems like these to be used without bringing along the baggage of fascism and totalitarianism. There is no possibility that they would be 100% effective, but neither would they be ineffectual.
5 languages...I'll bet they forgot to count C++
The problem is that there are finite nutrients. Any earth orgranisms in the competing niche would be better suited to out-consome, out-reproduce, and generally out-compete, the foreign organism. There isn't much of a toe-hold anywhere. One of the properties of life is to fill all the niches.
You are right. And Earth organisms have been 'surviving' in Earth ecosystems for billions of years. Competition would kill off anything foreign in a matter of microseconds. The same would probably happen to native Earth life on Mars (if there is other life on Mars to compete with). Although we do have biomass going for us. If enough were transplanted into a Mars environment, there might be enough to get something started there.
P.S. Plant organisms have highly evolved immune systems as well. They fight off infection and disease better than we do, for the most part.
How new do you think those infections are? They've been around infecting organisms for billions of years, probably infecting mammals for millions of years. A mutation that allows one to hop on over to another type of primate is no big deal. On the other hand, a mutation that would cross phylum (or whatever would have to be crossed to get back and forth between Mars organisms) is incredible to imagine.
This idea is actually laughable. Earth's bacteria and plagues have been evolving for billions of years just to kill Earth organisms. Anything that comes into our ecosystem will quickly be outcompeted and outclassed. It's like putting Bambi in a Terminator movie. There is absolutely nothing to worry about from Mars organisms.
Sinclair Lewis goes into this topic in the biology classic 'Life of the Cell' Or a cell, I can't remember.
Lisp certainly does not give you the control over the performance that C++ does. It blows C++ away in high level concepts, though.
You've read Meyer's book, which is a good start. You probably also want to check out Josuttis.
The STL is really as good as could be expected. Better even. There are problems. Some problems stem from the fact that it had to be approved by the standards committee. There was a lot of opposition to adding something that big to C++, so the size was cut down. Certain things are missing. (Heaps, general binders, good smart pointers) but versions are provided by many implementations. Check out CGI for one. They will also be added to the next version of the standard, along with a few other nifty things (As always check out boost.org for much of that stuff). The allocators are broken in my opinion. Using (different) customized allocators prevents interactions between your containers.
The biggest problem is its complexity. Like any C++ feature, understanding the STL is not enough. You need to understand how it interacts with other parts of C++. When you use the STL, you are using a rocket launcher instead of a BB-gun, shooting yourself in the foot can be much worse.
All in all the STL is god's gift to programmers. It really is. I can't imagine not having it to program anything serious with. I work everyday with AI and Image Processing algorithms -- stuff where performance really counts, mind you -- and I couldn't live without the STL. I barely use pointers anymore.
To sum it up, C++ with the STL is the only language that meshes (not always prettily) performance computing with high level concepts. It is a truly beautiful technology.
Yes, it includes everything the developers used to create the game.
Morrowind, which just went gold, has a chance of being a much better game than NWN. It is a true free-form RPG. 100's of hours of play time. Character options out the wazoo. I can't wait.
Here's some speech:
All your base are belong to us!
Movies and fictional novels are protected forms of speech. I have played computer games that have affected me deeply.
Deus Ex is an example of what I consider a game with a message.
I hope there will be more games like Deus Ex in the future. This is a new medium, and our legal system must recognize it. I'm not so worried about the speech that will be lost today, but I am worried about what video games will be like a decade from now.
A decade from now we could have real art being created with video games. Think of the messages that creators could use video games to send. People would have the choice of playing state of the art, edgy games. And of course they would have the choice of playing crap -- just like in any medium.
Or a decade from now we could have a giant conglomorate like Disney pushing out mediocracy on a traquilized public. Vanilla mediocracy without any ideas that hadn't been approved by a dozen focus groups and six lawyers.
Paintings are protected speech. Sculpture is protected speech. Books are protected speech. Movies are protected speech. Games deserve the same. We will regret it later if the protection is not extended.
Funny how the "postmodern version of colonization" is a hell of a lot easier on the people involved than the real thing. Comparing the two is almost, well, dishonest.
I agree. The open source movement is most effective when it is positive and constructive. Sometimes it gets carried away with negativity, and I think that it generally suffers for it. Most because negativity towards big companies like Microsoft or such don't get you anywhere. You need to be constructive, out-think, and out-idea them.
Fuck the DMCA and Sen. Walt Godamn Disney Hollings, though.
Why can't Linux be pro-American? I consider myself a patriotic American, and think that Linux is a good thing for our country. For every country. Many of the open source contributers who have made GNU/Linux what it is today happen to be -- you guessed it -- Americans.
Why not package Linux as anti-Woman instead? That would have a tad better ring of truth. How about anti-Gay and anti-Black distributions. Wouldn't that be just fine and dandy?
By the way, has any other superpower in the history of the world been as positive for other countries as America? Look at the U.S.S.R. What a great neighbor. Look at the British Empire. Look at France under Napolean. Go back as far as you want.
Who are our enemies? Well, they are governments that are generally aggresive towards us or towards their neighbors. Or even towards their own people. And what to we do with our enemies after we conquer them. Do we colonize? Do we hold mass executions? No, we do our best to democratize and rebuild.
It's fun to moan about American power. But hot damn, if those American carriers out there on the oceans of the world were to disappear tomorrow, the world would not be a better place for freedom in the morning.
Besides, I'm willing to bet that Bin Laden uses Microsoft Outlook to send his hate spam.
I know that we're all supposed to be for reform and all, but didn't Senator McCain just make this tatic illegal?
Get the special interest groups out of Washington!
If GeekPAC were to target a single Senator for removal with political adverstising, like the columnist suggests, it would violate the 60-day rule in the new laws.
Maybe those anti-Campaign Finance Reform people whining about free speech had a point after all. How does it feel to be a special interest?
This is not a spoiler. It's your own damn fault for reading it. Don't you know that the great slashdot blackout is going on?
What are the estimates for the cost per mile of running off of hydrogen?
Right now, hybrid automobiles cost more per mile because the initial price of the vehicle is more expensive.
So when we factor in the costs of making hydrogen powered vehicles, and making hydrogen (probably most cheaply from hydrocarbons -- fossil fuels), what will be the final cost per mile? Has anybody seen good figures?
Insurance companies will not make it mandatory, they'll just make you pay through the nose not to have one installed.
And it will be illegal to tamper with it, because you would be attempting to defraud the insurance company. No new laws needed. But it would lower rates for safe drivers. I think this may be a good thing, so long as there is no GPS data included.