At ClubCompy there's a reimagined version of BASIC and virtual display reminiscent of the C64 (but vastly more powerful due to HTML5 and modern browsers).
You can write your own programs, save them, and share them with others. Here's one I wrote: game of life simulation.
Don't try and browbeat ME with 'social contract'
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In Nothing We Trust
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· Score: 1
Social Security, the easiest social contract we have to hold and uphold, has been RAIDED - 4T and counting, already GONE. There is no money saved and accruing interest and keeping up with inflation. It's all paid for out of the general fund with loans from China and the rich in this country who are just sucking the life out of all of us. Medicare, medicaid - way worse shape - was there ever a trust fund that was funded for those programs?
What about the social contract the nation has with me? I consider it long since broken!
So, sorry, I'm playing along with your stupid contract charade right now because I have to. (Where else am I going to live, right?) But I yearn for the collapse to come. End the immoral thievery.
I've been wondering if it were possible to have raised virtual keyboard keys/reconfigurable tactile surfaces on smartphone screens. Looks like someone's figured out how to do it. I'd love to see the virtual keyboard key go flush with the display when I "press" it and then raise itself again when my finger comes up.
This professor needs to commercialize the concept.
A fair response, and a long and reasoned one at that. Thank you.
You are correct, it was complete conjecture (fancy, even) when I wondered if the sun's energy could have potentially been lower and that would have been a factor in the LIA. I didn't intend my statement to be otherwise.
On the climate studies and one-dimensional sun representation, I would say I'm more of a skeptical lawyer than a scientist, yes. That's fine, scientists are boring and the world needs more agitators like me. The bar for AGW is higher already, and I've hardly lifted finger-to-key.:D
The sun's the largest energy input into our climate system. Again, this is not a theory that I need to prove due to clear evidence.
Your 'No.' is quite certain, you're quite set in your ways. Some sort of... er proof for your alternate theories might be useful.
Shouldn't I be skeptical when I hear "No, the sun's energy output not being predictable isn't a problem" when I know the sun is the largest input? Shouldn't you be skeptical too??
But I'm not even allowed to wonder aloud in your book. I said,
The sun's output did matter in the Little Ice Age.
I mean, that's a fact. The sun has to be there for there to be climate, so indisputable. Then, I said,
Sol doesn't put out constant energy,
Again, true. I am clearly a master of observation. Finally, the line that you doomed me to AGW hell with,
perhaps it was coincidentally at a low during that period and that contributed to cooling.
By your reaction, you would have thought I just stabbed grandma and called her names. How can either of us prove or disprove that supposition? We don't have any data from the 1600's on solar output. I KNOW THAT! Can't a guy ask a question or think aloud 'round here without getting their head cut painfully from their torso?
And how was my statement a theory at all? Don't I need to posit something or some such for there to even be a theory?? You've hanged me over something I didn't try to do, which was, to prove anything! (Sheesh, getting on my case, so dang serious...)
And hey, I was just being honest about myself when I say I'm no climate scientist, no need to be such a sourpuss. But, do you claim to be some sort of expert? (NASA badge number, please.) Or, do you just pig out on pop-science junk food from hard hitting news sources like Newsweek and The Huffington Post like everyone else in your position seems to? You are what you eat, I suppose.
I lay here, prostrate, on the AGW altar at East Anglia - ready to be sacrified by you to Gaia!! I am ready for the TRUE knowledge floodgates to open and wash over me like a melting glacier fresh water tidalwave!! Oh, swoon!
Look at how much fun we're having! I'm laughing pretty hard rereading what I wrote to you, hehe. Whee, it's so late.
Is it a theory that the sun does not put out constant levels of energy? There's nothing bold about that, there's recorded data to back my statement up.
"The sun isn't predictable" is actually a huge problem for climate research, no? Maybe I'm blowing this out of proportion, I don't claim to be climate scientist. I welcome your skepticism of my skepticism.
The sun's hot. Some days it's hotter than others. Some years, it puts out more energy than others. The solar cycle is not yet precisely predictable. Anytime you hear about a "surprising" this or that about the sun's output, don't just scratch your head and shrug. ANY fluctuation in predicted solar cycles/output should trigger loud klaxxon bells in the heads of the AGW disciples, but instead it's just crickets or shrugged shoulders. I'll leave the speculation on why there's crickets and not klaxxons to the reader.
See, in the real world, it is important that the sun's energy is not behaving like some static constant or not always falling into some reasonable range. I reject any computer climate simulation du jour that treats the sun's output as a one dimensional number/table/whatever.
And yeah, flamebait me down to -1, I only need snarky R3d M3rcury to read this...:P
... and we don't really understand how they work now.
The sun's output did matter in the Little Ice Age. Sol doesn't put out constant energy, perhaps it was coincidentally at a low during that period and that contributed to cooling.
This climate system of ours is more complex and dynamic than the AGW devotees are willing to admit.
The lack of dynamism and live connections between peers is what discourages me from considering Freenet. The ability to engage in commerce is the first thing I'll be looking for. Simply archiving and transmitting static documents encourages only the "niche" uses of the network that you described. Seems like it would mostly negative effects; not something I would care to support.
A wireless grid network needs a new standard that starts with connecting wireless routers and getting them to share data. If wireless routers began to support grid networking in their firmware, then we'd solve the chicken or egg problem I think you're describing where no one would setup a Freenet-enabled wireless router because no other compatible routers will ever be in range.
But, say there was an innocent new 802.x spec that new routers all began to support that happened to interconnect routers and make it possible to route traffic across the wireless grid between peers as well as the internet - then over years, as network hardware is purchased and equipped by normal citizens, the foundation for the grid would be established.
So I suppose the chicken or egg problem is: how could we go about establishing that router P2P interconnect standard such that new wireless routers will automatically become peers if another compatible router is in range? Is there a use case that could be satisfied that would allow for such a new networking style to become commonplace?
Piggybacking on Comcast's network isn't a long term workable situation, you'll always be a slave to the man. Control your means of production: adapt Freenet to run on wireless routers that can interconnect and form a zero-administration P2P network grid.
If you can pull that off, then I'd host a hotspot, a TB of storage, and even give you a CPU to play with.
Can I stream arbitrary data between endpoints using Freenet, or can I only host and request static resources on Freenet? I also require streaming encrypted data between peers over the usually-connected grid.
Cheers, Dave
Re:Probably was the best course of action
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EU ACTA Chief Resigns
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· Score: 0, Offtopic
It's funny for me to read this because I'm a rabid conservative libertarian. I've always thought the liberal forces should just wither away (as they are designed to do) and yield to those who would lead and do. There's this odd built-in, self-hating weakness in liberal thought that usually breeds more weakness whenever it gains traction with the herd.
As to whether the democracy genie will go back in the bottle or not, I like to think nature always finds a way. So, I'm thinking these niggly bureaucratic speedbumps we're running into today will eventually get ground away to nothingness by natural progress. The way the internet works is core to our human nature, and we're survivors, but it's also all very v1. Needs lots of refining just like our individual thinking needs refining.
Don't misunderestimate Gen-X, we're punchy and we're taking power.
Probably was the best course of action
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EU ACTA Chief Resigns
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· Score: 4, Interesting
It's probably best for himself and his family that he made a big show of his dissent like this. There's probably some angry, big moneyed cockroaches that are scurrying after the light was shone on their big bureaucratic power grab.
These fat media/government cockroaches are appearing more and more desperate, no?
It's just a matter of time till the lazy-ass 1337 network hackers get their collective acts together and start shunting their god-given right to free traffic off onto a pure P2P, encrypted, usually-connected, fido-net style worldwide wireless network grid a la "media net" from The Diamond Age by Neil Stephenson.
"The media net was designed from the ground up to provide privacy and security, so that people could use it to transfer money. That’s one reason the nation-states collapsed – as soon as the media grid was up and running, financial transactions could no longer be monitored by governments."
'Monitored' is post-central-government era term that means the same as 'controlled'. In our lifetimes, there will be no centralized corporate/governmental infrastructure worth controlling. And the most delicious part: their goofy special protections for DRM in the 90's will be their undoing.
Computer networks, exchange and value, ideation and realization - these have all become interlinked concepts. The hub is the network.
Guess what, cockroaches? The democracy genie is outta the bottle, and it has been for 15 years. These desperate, piddly attempts of yours to stuff it back in the bottle won't work for long. (And if the people would just WAKE UP, they won't work at all!)
You voted for them, over and over, they have the same comfortable (D) or (R) after their name as you do and that makes you feel good about your "team". But now your teammate is sponsoring SOPA/PIPA... What happened?
Are you feeling puzzled by this flagrant grab for power?
The reason you are puzzled is that you have a problem with trust. Or rather, that you trust in your government too much. You're only feeling the sting of that trust being broken because for once, it's your ox that's getting gored.
I guess my question for you, Mr. and Mrs. Big Government, is: why do you trust "your guy" and demonize the "other guy"? News flash: "your guy" is a DEMON!!
I've said it before, I'll say it again, if you voted to keep any of the current party leaders in power (don't forget the leadership controls the legislative agenda), or if you've ever voted for any of the original SOPA/PIPA sponsors, then YOU are the problem. YOU let this happen. Don't shrug your shoulders and complain how you didn't know or "why is he/she doing this to me?" YOU empowered these bastards! Shame on YOU! Don't repeat your stupid mistakes again. Your pack of liars that call themselves a political party isn't worth it - it isn't worth saving.
We're now, finally, playing for the whole kit-and-kaboodle. This is it. We're actually seeing the leading edge of a movement to take away control of our free ability to communicate with each other!
Oh, you don't think these bills can't possibly pass? Hm, how cute your optimism is! Let's take a quick trip down recent memory lane, shall we? Remember the lost cause of Obamacare and when Scott Brown got elected? It was gonna get the filibuster! Hooray, that obamination of Pelosicare is dead!! But then, suddenly, the Senate didn't matter... those hogs in congress just waved their greasy, fat little fingers and passed the house bill through the senate with a simple majority via "Reconciliation"! Reconciliation is a device that was only supposed to be used for BUDGET resolutions! Illegal? No, but definitely breaking some established rules. NOT COOL.
Don't forget: what the people want and demand no longer matters. These bills have big money backing them, they're going to at least come up for a vote. It's possible they could pass - there just need to be the right legislative devices used - deem-and-pass ("demonpass") at midnight if you have to. Do you really think Obama wouldn't rubber stamp just about any bill Harry Reid sends him? C'mon, WAKE UP, O IS A FAILURE!!
There is only one solution: it's time to primary challenge all these incumbents. You wannabe hippie OWS'ers and all you boring religious nuts and scatterbrains on the tea party side need to come together on this one issue and FLIP THE GODDAMN SWITCH! Every clown on the following two lists must be booted from public office at the next possible election - these are our ENEMIES!
The people are becoming aware that some absurd law scribbled on paper by filthy, sub-human bureaucrats does not carry the same weight as the laws of nature. History shows that when the injustice and oppression of the common citizen becomes too much, they will rise and throw off the shackles. Have a nice day!
Apple's iTV is coming. It's coming with an all-in-one TV, no set top box, in the same vein as UbuntuTV. iTV is going to eat the brainz of consumers just like iPod and iPhone and iPad did. Futuristic HD videophone is coming to the tv, apps and app stores to the tv, voice recognition is coming to the tv, artificial intelligence is coming to the tv, home automation is coming to the tv...
You think your quaint little Linux OS is the bee's knees, right? It sure would be nice if more people actually used Linux on a hardware platform that hosted apps, right? It would be fantastic to see more mainstream devs learning about and targeting Linux for development, right? Maybe Linux-as-a-platform on TV's could get a little foothold before Apple iTV storms onto the scene.
Just this once, rather than being snarky, you could think all strategic and positive and glowy about Linux. Put aside the odd name Ubuntu and the ongoing forward/backward version binary compatibility challenges in Linux. Put aside all your gripes about the state of desktop Linux, a separate issue.
Strip away all the technical stuff and consider now only this question ---> Can we position Linux as a prominent platform in a big segment of an existing, but poorly served, consumer market?
See now how important this move by Canonical is to get Linux on the TV? You and I know there's nothing ghetto about Linux when it's deployed right. It's in tons of embedded systems as the OS, so most people have some exposure to Linux. But Linux itself isn't the platform for apps development on those devices, something running atop Linux is, like Java. I don't know what UbuntuTV will use as it's runtime platform for apps, but if it's C/C++, then that means we could draw more developers to the Linux platform and have them become proficient at building products for it.
Please try to see the vision here: this is something to get excited about and rally around!
Oh, you're one of THOSE guys. You complain too much. Java isn't as bad as you say even if there's a whiff of truthiness in most of your criticisms.
I argue, Mr. Grouch, that the crown jewels of Java are not to be found in the language. They're found in the JVM. Plain and simple: the JVM is the most banged on, battle hardened, security-first computer programs ever written. There is no more trustworthy binary in the world more than java.exe. You want an unrockable web server? Run Tomcat with the NIO thingy enabled on the latest Java 6 atop Linux with the firewall all ratcheted up. And don't proxy through Apache HTTPD if you don't have to - that's just one more security-as-afterthought, million moving parts binary with perennial remote exploits to worry about.
Why do languages "that target the JVM" actually make a difference? Because you get all that bitchin runtime robustness without the Java language baggage you just love love love to complain about. And while we're at it: Java Native Invocation (JNI) is considered harmful. Native code tainting the JVM? You better have a darned important exotic business requirement to bring new native code into the equation. As far as I'm concerned, you're crazy as a loon to write native code these days unless you're doing embedded systems or device driver development. I'm wondering why you would suggest something so reckless! Care to elaborate?
I know the JVM's design makes life a real drag sometimes. It feels like a trusty slingshot that's been upgraded into a WMD. But, I could care less about aesthetics or the angst about Java that computer language and open source purists express. I care about stability. I care about uptime. I care about speed. But most of all, I care about security. I care about the total cost of the systems I run.
Clubcompy.com has an easily accessible interpreter for all as a main goal. I'd add that it's BASIC-like language and virtualized graphics engine makes it pretty easy to write fun games.
(Disclaimer: I'm one of the creators of clubcompy.com.)
It's probably Stockholm Syndrome, but I'm... I'm actually feeling sad about this! I spent a ton of time on my site hacking in IE6 support. Just last month I got my compy characters to FINALLY layout correctly in all cases on IE6. Ok, I can't resist a little war story... In the past, the right hand column of character DIV's had a vertical offset of like 5 pixels. Why? WHY DID IT LAYOUT LIKE THAT?! There's no reason, no known peekaboo bug or whatever that I could figure was the cause... it was just IE6 getting its digs in. It's like it had planned bugs that only I would see.
Memory un-management, DOM-splosions, layout goofs, CSS head scratchers - it was like trying to carry water with a bucket that has a bunch of rebel army bullet holes in it. One thing I could always count on, IE6's JavaScript implementation was juuust good enough. Me and Resig always had a way to squeak out of the jungle alive.
IE6: I beat you. I beat you silly countless times. I won! But, I never thought you'd actually die from the beating. It seems you finally have given up the ghost. R.I.P., ancient warrior. As you rot in the 8th circle of hell, I want you to know that while I cursed you and your creators as foul on a daily basis, I secretly enjoyed our time together.
Please support Touch/Motion and tablets in general, but please don't try to unify the Tablet and Desktop UI's. Why not support two completely different presentation modes, a la Metro? (Just do it better and not so much of a bolt on.)
Who can tell if someone like me wrote the "OBVIOUS" retort above, or not? If I HAD written a lovely missive like that to my presumptive friend jd, I also would have posted AC. It's fun to have a Score 0 actually get read enough, be enjoyed, and get modded up. Getting even a Score 1 is a success. Thankfully, there are enough eye-rolling articles such as this on Slashdot that it's possible to actually have an AC success once in awhile.
Aren't there gobs of address blocks reserved for ISP's to talk to one another? Perhaps ISP's could lead the way by converting their back-channel host addresses over to IPv6 and then release those blocks for public site use? Are there really 2 or 3 billion IPv4 internet addresses serving public clients?
Perhaps IPv4 running out of available addresses is the necessity that will push the experts, at least, to convert over to IPv6...
I take it that the "route around failures" and other original design features of TCP/IP and the Internet as a whole relied upon trusting others always having good intentions and cooperating. Those designs were necessary at the time and the reason the internet exists today.
Nowadays distrust, firewalls, and coding defensively is the norm (or it should be). In that light, the internet's design seems creaky and vulnerable.
Do you have any thoughts or feelings on how software has changed and seemingly become so treacherous since you first designed TCP/IP? Would you advocate a ground-up redesign of internet transports and protocols starting with TCP/IP?
I have homebrew business ideas that I've been developing and I wanted to own my own servers and learn how to rack and manage them. I could have rented time on a cloud or PHP hosting site or whatever. But I figure that controlling my server infrastructure means controlling my costs. I consider that to be like owning my means of production if you wanna get all marxist about it.
I'm no sysadmin, but I know enough to get around Linux. I'm not doing an awesome job of it, and I have a big meltdown failure once every two years or so. Usually just a harddrive failure that I can recover from, but sometimes it's more serious. My sites haven't earned enough popularity to get sustained intense internet traffic yet; so far, my boxes have done okay with the occasional big burst of traffic for my sites ( https://clubcompy.com/ and http://cardmeeting.com/ ) that I get from Slashdot or some random blog.
I negotiated my costs as a fixed $150/mo for 4U and throttled monthly bandwidth. And I'm not alone, in the colocation facility I rent at, I see a lot of homebrew rigs racked up with google and yahoo-owned servers (obviously not in the same rack and not as well cooled, heh.) I had no idea what I was doing, and the techs at the facility were totally cool and taught me how to rack my boxes and helped hold them up for me while I mounted them to the rails. The server and network hardware that I have probably totals about 4K and I built them up over years. I've still got 2U free for future expansion. I use only mini-ITX form factor mobos because I want to rack them in teensy enclosures so I can max out my rackspace, and those motherboards run cool so they go for years without any failure - heat kills. I buy passively cooled MB's whenever they're available and still meet my requirements. I have found Intel Atom boards to be extremely reliable in 24/7 operation. CPU-wise they stink, and I wish I could go 64-bit with more RAM, but I just need cheep life support for SATA and ethernet at this stage. I've had DIMM's die before motherboards, I don't mind spending extra for the best manufacturing quality there.
If you have a steady, good paying job and you're a developer, you should have a homebrew project that you hope/wish/dream will someday blow up and become your livelihood. No excuses about cost if you have even a couple hundred dollars a month of discretionary funds to burn. If anything, do it for fun and chalk the costs up to hobby expenses and do it to learn new things. Make it a long term project - over years - and you can pay for it yourself. You don't need magical silicon valley angel vc startup capital to do very cool things on the internet or in wireless apps.
Slashdot Mirror
At ClubCompy there's a reimagined version of BASIC and virtual display reminiscent of the C64 (but vastly more powerful due to HTML5 and modern browsers).
You can write your own programs, save them, and share them with others. Here's one I wrote: game of life simulation.
The system guide (PDF) describing the language is here: ClubCompy System Guide. And there are sample programs on display at the little benchmarking page.
Social Security, the easiest social contract we have to hold and uphold, has been RAIDED - 4T and counting, already GONE. There is no money saved and accruing interest and keeping up with inflation. It's all paid for out of the general fund with loans from China and the rich in this country who are just sucking the life out of all of us. Medicare, medicaid - way worse shape - was there ever a trust fund that was funded for those programs?
What about the social contract the nation has with me? I consider it long since broken!
So, sorry, I'm playing along with your stupid contract charade right now because I have to. (Where else am I going to live, right?) But I yearn for the collapse to come. End the immoral thievery.
I've been wondering if it were possible to have raised virtual keyboard keys/reconfigurable tactile surfaces on smartphone screens. Looks like someone's figured out how to do it. I'd love to see the virtual keyboard key go flush with the display when I "press" it and then raise itself again when my finger comes up.
This professor needs to commercialize the concept.
A fair response, and a long and reasoned one at that. Thank you.
You are correct, it was complete conjecture (fancy, even) when I wondered if the sun's energy could have potentially been lower and that would have been a factor in the LIA. I didn't intend my statement to be otherwise.
On the climate studies and one-dimensional sun representation, I would say I'm more of a skeptical lawyer than a scientist, yes. That's fine, scientists are boring and the world needs more agitators like me. The bar for AGW is higher already, and I've hardly lifted finger-to-key. :D
Good lord, I love the dickens out of you. You just stared that smug weenie down, gave him squinty-eye, and then made him heel like it was nothin'!
Seriously, I love you in a platonic cuddling sort of way, almost!
The sun's the largest energy input into our climate system. Again, this is not a theory that I need to prove due to clear evidence.
Your 'No.' is quite certain, you're quite set in your ways. Some sort of ... er proof for your alternate theories might be useful.
Shouldn't I be skeptical when I hear "No, the sun's energy output not being predictable isn't a problem" when I know the sun is the largest input? Shouldn't you be skeptical too??
But I'm not even allowed to wonder aloud in your book. I said,
I mean, that's a fact. The sun has to be there for there to be climate, so indisputable. Then, I said,
Again, true. I am clearly a master of observation. Finally, the line that you doomed me to AGW hell with,
By your reaction, you would have thought I just stabbed grandma and called her names. How can either of us prove or disprove that supposition? We don't have any data from the 1600's on solar output. I KNOW THAT! Can't a guy ask a question or think aloud 'round here without getting their head cut painfully from their torso?
And how was my statement a theory at all? Don't I need to posit something or some such for there to even be a theory?? You've hanged me over something I didn't try to do, which was, to prove anything! (Sheesh, getting on my case, so dang serious...)
And hey, I was just being honest about myself when I say I'm no climate scientist, no need to be such a sourpuss. But, do you claim to be some sort of expert? (NASA badge number, please.) Or, do you just pig out on pop-science junk food from hard hitting news sources like Newsweek and The Huffington Post like everyone else in your position seems to? You are what you eat, I suppose.
I lay here, prostrate, on the AGW altar at East Anglia - ready to be sacrified by you to Gaia!! I am ready for the TRUE knowledge floodgates to open and wash over me like a melting glacier fresh water tidalwave!! Oh, swoon!
Look at how much fun we're having! I'm laughing pretty hard rereading what I wrote to you, hehe. Whee, it's so late.
Is it a theory that the sun does not put out constant levels of energy? There's nothing bold about that, there's recorded data to back my statement up.
"The sun isn't predictable" is actually a huge problem for climate research, no? Maybe I'm blowing this out of proportion, I don't claim to be climate scientist. I welcome your skepticism of my skepticism.
Please, educate me.
The sun's hot. Some days it's hotter than others. Some years, it puts out more energy than others. The solar cycle is not yet precisely predictable. Anytime you hear about a "surprising" this or that about the sun's output, don't just scratch your head and shrug. ANY fluctuation in predicted solar cycles/output should trigger loud klaxxon bells in the heads of the AGW disciples, but instead it's just crickets or shrugged shoulders. I'll leave the speculation on why there's crickets and not klaxxons to the reader.
See, in the real world, it is important that the sun's energy is not behaving like some static constant or not always falling into some reasonable range. I reject any computer climate simulation du jour that treats the sun's output as a one dimensional number/table/whatever.
And yeah, flamebait me down to -1, I only need snarky R3d M3rcury to read this... :P
... and we don't really understand how they work now.
The sun's output did matter in the Little Ice Age. Sol doesn't put out constant energy, perhaps it was coincidentally at a low during that period and that contributed to cooling.
This climate system of ours is more complex and dynamic than the AGW devotees are willing to admit.
The lack of dynamism and live connections between peers is what discourages me from considering Freenet. The ability to engage in commerce is the first thing I'll be looking for. Simply archiving and transmitting static documents encourages only the "niche" uses of the network that you described. Seems like it would mostly negative effects; not something I would care to support.
A wireless grid network needs a new standard that starts with connecting wireless routers and getting them to share data. If wireless routers began to support grid networking in their firmware, then we'd solve the chicken or egg problem I think you're describing where no one would setup a Freenet-enabled wireless router because no other compatible routers will ever be in range.
But, say there was an innocent new 802.x spec that new routers all began to support that happened to interconnect routers and make it possible to route traffic across the wireless grid between peers as well as the internet - then over years, as network hardware is purchased and equipped by normal citizens, the foundation for the grid would be established.
So I suppose the chicken or egg problem is: how could we go about establishing that router P2P interconnect standard such that new wireless routers will automatically become peers if another compatible router is in range? Is there a use case that could be satisfied that would allow for such a new networking style to become commonplace?
SuricouRaven,
Piggybacking on Comcast's network isn't a long term workable situation, you'll always be a slave to the man. Control your means of production: adapt Freenet to run on wireless routers that can interconnect and form a zero-administration P2P network grid.
If you can pull that off, then I'd host a hotspot, a TB of storage, and even give you a CPU to play with.
Can I stream arbitrary data between endpoints using Freenet, or can I only host and request static resources on Freenet? I also require streaming encrypted data between peers over the usually-connected grid.
Cheers,
Dave
It's funny for me to read this because I'm a rabid conservative libertarian. I've always thought the liberal forces should just wither away (as they are designed to do) and yield to those who would lead and do. There's this odd built-in, self-hating weakness in liberal thought that usually breeds more weakness whenever it gains traction with the herd.
As to whether the democracy genie will go back in the bottle or not, I like to think nature always finds a way. So, I'm thinking these niggly bureaucratic speedbumps we're running into today will eventually get ground away to nothingness by natural progress. The way the internet works is core to our human nature, and we're survivors, but it's also all very v1. Needs lots of refining just like our individual thinking needs refining.
Don't misunderestimate Gen-X, we're punchy and we're taking power.
It's probably best for himself and his family that he made a big show of his dissent like this. There's probably some angry, big moneyed cockroaches that are scurrying after the light was shone on their big bureaucratic power grab.
These fat media/government cockroaches are appearing more and more desperate, no?
It's just a matter of time till the lazy-ass 1337 network hackers get their collective acts together and start shunting their god-given right to free traffic off onto a pure P2P, encrypted, usually-connected, fido-net style worldwide wireless network grid a la "media net" from The Diamond Age by Neil Stephenson.
'Monitored' is post-central-government era term that means the same as 'controlled'. In our lifetimes, there will be no centralized corporate/governmental infrastructure worth controlling. And the most delicious part: their goofy special protections for DRM in the 90's will be their undoing.
Computer networks, exchange and value, ideation and realization - these have all become interlinked concepts. The hub is the network.
Guess what, cockroaches? The democracy genie is outta the bottle, and it has been for 15 years. These desperate, piddly attempts of yours to stuff it back in the bottle won't work for long. (And if the people would just WAKE UP, they won't work at all!)
You voted for them, over and over, they have the same comfortable (D) or (R) after their name as you do and that makes you feel good about your "team". But now your teammate is sponsoring SOPA/PIPA... What happened?
Are you feeling puzzled by this flagrant grab for power?
The reason you are puzzled is that you have a problem with trust. Or rather, that you trust in your government too much. You're only feeling the sting of that trust being broken because for once, it's your ox that's getting gored.
I guess my question for you, Mr. and Mrs. Big Government, is: why do you trust "your guy" and demonize the "other guy"? News flash: "your guy" is a DEMON!!
I've said it before, I'll say it again, if you voted to keep any of the current party leaders in power (don't forget the leadership controls the legislative agenda), or if you've ever voted for any of the original SOPA/PIPA sponsors, then YOU are the problem. YOU let this happen. Don't shrug your shoulders and complain how you didn't know or "why is he/she doing this to me?" YOU empowered these bastards! Shame on YOU! Don't repeat your stupid mistakes again. Your pack of liars that call themselves a political party isn't worth it - it isn't worth saving.
We're now, finally, playing for the whole kit-and-kaboodle. This is it. We're actually seeing the leading edge of a movement to take away control of our free ability to communicate with each other!
Oh, you don't think these bills can't possibly pass? Hm, how cute your optimism is! Let's take a quick trip down recent memory lane, shall we? Remember the lost cause of Obamacare and when Scott Brown got elected? It was gonna get the filibuster! Hooray, that obamination of Pelosicare is dead!! But then, suddenly, the Senate didn't matter ... those hogs in congress just waved their greasy, fat little fingers and passed the house bill through the senate with a simple majority via "Reconciliation"! Reconciliation is a device that was only supposed to be used for BUDGET resolutions! Illegal? No, but definitely breaking some established rules. NOT COOL.
Don't forget: what the people want and demand no longer matters. These bills have big money backing them, they're going to at least come up for a vote. It's possible they could pass - there just need to be the right legislative devices used - deem-and-pass ("demonpass") at midnight if you have to. Do you really think Obama wouldn't rubber stamp just about any bill Harry Reid sends him? C'mon, WAKE UP, O IS A FAILURE!!
There is only one solution: it's time to primary challenge all these incumbents. You wannabe hippie OWS'ers and all you boring religious nuts and scatterbrains on the tea party side need to come together on this one issue and FLIP THE GODDAMN SWITCH! Every clown on the following two lists must be booted from public office at the next possible election - these are our ENEMIES!
http://www.campaignforliberty.org/profile/7786/blog/2012/01/12/house-sopa-cosponsors
http://www.campaignforliberty.org/profile/7786/blog/2012/01/12/senate-pipa-cosponsors
Dave
The people are becoming aware that some absurd law scribbled on paper by filthy, sub-human bureaucrats does not carry the same weight as the laws of nature. History shows that when the injustice and oppression of the common citizen becomes too much, they will rise and throw off the shackles. Have a nice day!
Dear Snarky Slashdotters,
Apple's iTV is coming. It's coming with an all-in-one TV, no set top box, in the same vein as UbuntuTV. iTV is going to eat the brainz of consumers just like iPod and iPhone and iPad did. Futuristic HD videophone is coming to the tv, apps and app stores to the tv, voice recognition is coming to the tv, artificial intelligence is coming to the tv, home automation is coming to the tv...
You think your quaint little Linux OS is the bee's knees, right? It sure would be nice if more people actually used Linux on a hardware platform that hosted apps, right? It would be fantastic to see more mainstream devs learning about and targeting Linux for development, right? Maybe Linux-as-a-platform on TV's could get a little foothold before Apple iTV storms onto the scene.
Just this once, rather than being snarky, you could think all strategic and positive and glowy about Linux. Put aside the odd name Ubuntu and the ongoing forward/backward version binary compatibility challenges in Linux. Put aside all your gripes about the state of desktop Linux, a separate issue.
Strip away all the technical stuff and consider now only this question ---> Can we position Linux as a prominent platform in a big segment of an existing, but poorly served, consumer market?
See now how important this move by Canonical is to get Linux on the TV? You and I know there's nothing ghetto about Linux when it's deployed right. It's in tons of embedded systems as the OS, so most people have some exposure to Linux. But Linux itself isn't the platform for apps development on those devices, something running atop Linux is, like Java. I don't know what UbuntuTV will use as it's runtime platform for apps, but if it's C/C++, then that means we could draw more developers to the Linux platform and have them become proficient at building products for it.
Please try to see the vision here: this is something to get excited about and rally around!
Dave
Oh, you're one of THOSE guys. You complain too much. Java isn't as bad as you say even if there's a whiff of truthiness in most of your criticisms.
I argue, Mr. Grouch, that the crown jewels of Java are not to be found in the language. They're found in the JVM. Plain and simple: the JVM is the most banged on, battle hardened, security-first computer programs ever written. There is no more trustworthy binary in the world more than java.exe. You want an unrockable web server? Run Tomcat with the NIO thingy enabled on the latest Java 6 atop Linux with the firewall all ratcheted up. And don't proxy through Apache HTTPD if you don't have to - that's just one more security-as-afterthought, million moving parts binary with perennial remote exploits to worry about.
Why do languages "that target the JVM" actually make a difference? Because you get all that bitchin runtime robustness without the Java language baggage you just love love love to complain about. And while we're at it: Java Native Invocation (JNI) is considered harmful. Native code tainting the JVM? You better have a darned important exotic business requirement to bring new native code into the equation. As far as I'm concerned, you're crazy as a loon to write native code these days unless you're doing embedded systems or device driver development. I'm wondering why you would suggest something so reckless! Care to elaborate?
I know the JVM's design makes life a real drag sometimes. It feels like a trusty slingshot that's been upgraded into a WMD. But, I could care less about aesthetics or the angst about Java that computer language and open source purists express. I care about stability. I care about uptime. I care about speed. But most of all, I care about security. I care about the total cost of the systems I run.
Ok, ok, I'm leaving, I'm getting off your lawn.
Clubcompy.com has an easily accessible interpreter for all as a main goal. I'd add that it's BASIC-like language and virtualized graphics engine makes it pretty easy to write fun games.
(Disclaimer: I'm one of the creators of clubcompy.com.)
Yeah, it's a really good name!
It's probably Stockholm Syndrome, but I'm ... I'm actually feeling sad about this! I spent a ton of time on my site hacking in IE6 support. Just last month I got my compy characters to FINALLY layout correctly in all cases on IE6. Ok, I can't resist a little war story ... In the past, the right hand column of character DIV's had a vertical offset of like 5 pixels. Why? WHY DID IT LAYOUT LIKE THAT?! There's no reason, no known peekaboo bug or whatever that I could figure was the cause ... it was just IE6 getting its digs in. It's like it had planned bugs that only I would see.
Memory un-management, DOM-splosions, layout goofs, CSS head scratchers - it was like trying to carry water with a bucket that has a bunch of rebel army bullet holes in it. One thing I could always count on, IE6's JavaScript implementation was juuust good enough. Me and Resig always had a way to squeak out of the jungle alive.
IE6: I beat you. I beat you silly countless times. I won! But, I never thought you'd actually die from the beating. It seems you finally have given up the ghost. R.I.P., ancient warrior. As you rot in the 8th circle of hell, I want you to know that while I cursed you and your creators as foul on a daily basis, I secretly enjoyed our time together.
Dave
Please support Touch/Motion and tablets in general, but please don't try to unify the Tablet and Desktop UI's. Why not support two completely different presentation modes, a la Metro? (Just do it better and not so much of a bolt on.)
Dear parent poster: get a name. This was worthy.
Who can tell if someone like me wrote the "OBVIOUS" retort above, or not? If I HAD written a lovely missive like that to my presumptive friend jd, I also would have posted AC. It's fun to have a Score 0 actually get read enough, be enjoyed, and get modded up. Getting even a Score 1 is a success. Thankfully, there are enough eye-rolling articles such as this on Slashdot that it's possible to actually have an AC success once in awhile.
Aren't there gobs of address blocks reserved for ISP's to talk to one another? Perhaps ISP's could lead the way by converting their back-channel host addresses over to IPv6 and then release those blocks for public site use? Are there really 2 or 3 billion IPv4 internet addresses serving public clients?
Perhaps IPv4 running out of available addresses is the necessity that will push the experts, at least, to convert over to IPv6...
16GB recommended, or else you'll be waiting quite awhile. But, you could build the thing in less RAM than that, right?
I take it that the "route around failures" and other original design features of TCP/IP and the Internet as a whole relied upon trusting others always having good intentions and cooperating. Those designs were necessary at the time and the reason the internet exists today.
Nowadays distrust, firewalls, and coding defensively is the norm (or it should be). In that light, the internet's design seems creaky and vulnerable.
Do you have any thoughts or feelings on how software has changed and seemingly become so treacherous since you first designed TCP/IP? Would you advocate a ground-up redesign of internet transports and protocols starting with TCP/IP?
I have homebrew business ideas that I've been developing and I wanted to own my own servers and learn how to rack and manage them. I could have rented time on a cloud or PHP hosting site or whatever. But I figure that controlling my server infrastructure means controlling my costs. I consider that to be like owning my means of production if you wanna get all marxist about it.
I'm no sysadmin, but I know enough to get around Linux. I'm not doing an awesome job of it, and I have a big meltdown failure once every two years or so. Usually just a harddrive failure that I can recover from, but sometimes it's more serious. My sites haven't earned enough popularity to get sustained intense internet traffic yet; so far, my boxes have done okay with the occasional big burst of traffic for my sites ( https://clubcompy.com/ and http://cardmeeting.com/ ) that I get from Slashdot or some random blog.
I negotiated my costs as a fixed $150/mo for 4U and throttled monthly bandwidth. And I'm not alone, in the colocation facility I rent at, I see a lot of homebrew rigs racked up with google and yahoo-owned servers (obviously not in the same rack and not as well cooled, heh.) I had no idea what I was doing, and the techs at the facility were totally cool and taught me how to rack my boxes and helped hold them up for me while I mounted them to the rails. The server and network hardware that I have probably totals about 4K and I built them up over years. I've still got 2U free for future expansion. I use only mini-ITX form factor mobos because I want to rack them in teensy enclosures so I can max out my rackspace, and those motherboards run cool so they go for years without any failure - heat kills. I buy passively cooled MB's whenever they're available and still meet my requirements. I have found Intel Atom boards to be extremely reliable in 24/7 operation. CPU-wise they stink, and I wish I could go 64-bit with more RAM, but I just need cheep life support for SATA and ethernet at this stage. I've had DIMM's die before motherboards, I don't mind spending extra for the best manufacturing quality there.
If you have a steady, good paying job and you're a developer, you should have a homebrew project that you hope/wish/dream will someday blow up and become your livelihood. No excuses about cost if you have even a couple hundred dollars a month of discretionary funds to burn. If anything, do it for fun and chalk the costs up to hobby expenses and do it to learn new things. Make it a long term project - over years - and you can pay for it yourself. You don't need magical silicon valley angel vc startup capital to do very cool things on the internet or in wireless apps.
Dave