"With 2B people to feed, China has much more pressing issues that saving the Earth from comets."
That's the problem, iddn't it? They can't afford to be hit by a comet, either. Well roundedness/diversity can be a good thing. Consider the USA's space program. Suppose it never happened, would the USA be the same for it? Maybe they want to cover their butts and spark a little technological innovation to boot.
"This project is a cover for military operations in space. Maybe they're researching how to divert a planetoid into the Earth, potentially more powerful than any nuclear weapon."
Err maybe. The way I see it, though, this sort of weapon has the same drawbacks as a nuclear weapon. It's not like they're going to use it against their enemies without it being traced back to them. If they managed to drop a comet on somebody, from a consequences point of view they'd be in just as much shit as they would be if they had fired a nuclear weapon. Worse, it'd take a hell of a lot longer to get the ball rolling, not to mention the dangerous consequences of a small mistake. What would stop the USA or any other government from responding with nuclear weapons if China pulled a stunt like that? Truth be told, I have trouble imagining that the impact of a comet wouldn't rock their boat, anyway. If it hit the water, for example, well just think about that. If a big enough comet hit to kick a lot of dust into the air, well they wouldn't be fond of that, either. Maybe I'm just incredibly naieve about how useful of weapon a comet diversion would be, but IMHO this theory just seems too far-fetched.
An alternative explanation is that China's vasteness makes the concept of a comet or asteroidal impact a bit scary. (At least on a statistical level.) Perhaps they're worried about their own territory. They might even be trying to improve their global image. "We're trying to save the planet here!"
Anyway, I can speculate all day about it. I'm not trying to say you're wrong. I'm just not sure I suspect you're right.
"I personally am glad there is substantial complaining about dupes. Maybe if there is enough of it the so-called editors will begin to pay attention."
For every noisy bitch, there's an ad served. All Slashdot has to do is print a dupe and the ad counter will start rolling. Do you really think the editors are going to care more about people bitching, or ad revenue?
It isn't as much fun, nor does it earn as much karma, but if you IGNORE THE FUCKING DUPES they'll GO AWAY.
" If you're so offended by people pointing out (and being offended by) dupes, then perhaps you should just avoid threads with names like "It's dupe-a-licious"."
Mmmmhmmm. Except almost every god damn comment in this thread is "dupe!!!!!!!!!! bitchbitchbitchbitchbitchbitch!" I'm whining about excessive dupe bitching, not bitching about dupes. What's irritating about it is every comment bitching about dupes is serving an ad. Basically, the people against dupes are begging Slashdot to post them. Dumb fucks.
"so you picked an odd target for your rant"
I didn't pick your comment as a target because I checked everybody's posting history and thought yours was the one to blast first. I picked yours because of your ridiculous overreaction to the dupe.
"With dupes like this, if I truly want to get involved in the discussion, I might have to carry it out in two different places, with different participants, etc. And the discussion won't be quite as good. That's all."
Unlikely and unlikely. If your motivation for being anti-dupe was about having 'good discussion', then I would expect that it wouldn't matter if a dupe happened or not. If your 'that is all' reasoning were really true, I wouldn't expect you to threaten to leave Slashdot.
Of course I can only speculate, but I think your real reason for bitching about dupes lies somewhere in between trying to make an 'insightful' post and annoyance at... well actually I don't get what's so annoying about dupes. Unless, of course, you're watching Slashdot a little too much and you are offended that they haven't entertained you with something 'new'. Honestly, just skip the damn story if it's not interesting.
Slashdotters sure get noisy for the most frivilous of reasons. They're like Star Trek fans. It's really fucking obnoxious.
"Pretty damn soon, my reaction is going to be to stop reading slashdot."
If you're so in tune with Slashdot that a.) You can spot dupes so easily and b.) it offends you so much, then I agree with your solution. Probably not for the same reasons, though.
"But in this case, the poster hasn't said anything about preventing people from using headphones to listen to his audio. His emphasis on one-way copying mechanisms suggests that keeping his audio private isn't a goal at all, he just wants to make sure no one copies the files themselves."
He very cleary mentioned an access password. You're right, he wasn't all that clear. Presumably, though, he wants to lock it like people lock their cell phones.
"As for the original poster, I'd say try to switch to a job where people don't tend to access your hardware without permission, or failing that, ask for a desk drawer with a lock on it."
Eh. It's easier to just spend a couple hundred bucks on a music player he's more comfortable with. Cell phones have this feature, why not music players? Perfectly legitimate question. If anything, he might simply want to discourage his workers from playing with his toys. I had a coworker that had an interesting solution to that problem. He kept a rubberband gun in his office.
Did he shoot people with it? Nah. What would happen is people would walk into his office, pick up the gun, then fire off a few shots. After they put it down, they'd ask what the gun is for. He'd then explain that the gun was there as a study on human behaviour. He mentioned some of the statistics. "It's interesting how many people shoot that thing at other people." From there, people would ask permission before picking his stuff up. Heh.
"Take it with you" is not a solution. At best it's a good practice. Seriously, if that's all it took, then pickpockets would be out of a job.
As for why he'd want to do that, it's simple: Lots of music players offer recording capabilities. Some people actually put those to good use. I used to have a PocketPC. One of the things I did with it was I recorded voice notes for story ideas. Those are ideas I don't want others getting ahold of. I can see using music players with record capabilities being used in the same way. For some people, this really is an interesting question.
Honestly guys, I don't know why these knee-jerk 'answers' are so 'informative'.
"For those who didn't get the parent joke, it's based off a 1984 film called Gremlins, where a young boy receives a cute gremlin named 'Gizmo' as a Christmas gift. The catch was that if the gremlin touched water, it could multiply, and also, if you fed it after midnight it would transform into a malicious little a-hole of a creature."
Note all the lame-ass joke recyclers out there: The reason why this joke is funny is that the main baddie in that movie was named 'Stripe'. Skype... Stripe. Now that you know this, you are NOT allowed to make this joke every time the word 'Gizmo' is used in an article.
"Nice illusion of security....wonder how many people will fall for it."
Depends on what kind of thief we're talking about. I shouldn't have to go into that kind of detail, though. Just because one can semi-easily get around it doesn't mean it's worthless. I mean, that'd be like saying "Welp, why bother locking the door? They'll just break the window."
Let's talk about reality for a moment: It has been widely known, for DECADES, how to avoid leaving fingerprints at the scene of a crime. Despite being basically beaten over the head with the knowledge of how to do this, people are still busted with fingerprints every single day.
I'm sure somebody somewhere said "Gee, all you'd have to do is wear gloves."
"That's all good and fine, but do I really _want_ a bittorrent client embedded in my browser?"
Whoah whoah whoah, not so fast there. First you should consider whether or not you really want to ask that question. You wouldn't want to jump in with both feet deciding on whether or not you should mull over such a complex issue!
Yeesh. Faux wisdom is an obnoxious trait for a geek.
"I predict a swarm of FireFox BT plug-ins within the next two weeks."
I predict that in a month (err year?) Internet Explorer will support it and everybody will cry "that's not innovation!" and claime FireFox invented it.
Re:In terms of desktop, OSX Linux Windows
on
Longhorn Preview
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· Score: 1
Not the same thing as what's going into Longhorn. I would recommend you watch video of it in action.
Yeah, because eye candy is all Longhorn is offering.
I swear I'm the only Slsahdotter that actually watched the keynote video about Longhorn. Everybody else just picked up a screenshot and started cracking lame jokes and making broad observations.
I have a similar story to tell. My dad's eyesight is growing weak. He runs his computer at 800 by 600 just to make it semi-readable. He's tried increasing the DPI but Windows (well.. maybe it's the apps..) doesn't deal well with it.
"Right, but what of the new 'features' are gunna make you upgrade to this must have new version?"
For me, it's Longhorn's vector-based approach to the UI. While everybody's busy giggling and snorting at the 'eye-candy' at Longhorn, the reality is you'll be able to use it on monitors with > 3,000 pixels in width without having to use a microscope to read the text. You'll be able to resize windows etc to suit your needs. I also really enjoy the idea of using the system's GPU to offload the graphical stuff. Almost like having another processor in your machine.
I'm amazed that all the M$ bias around here has blinded everybody to this little detail that's going to be a big fucking deal in the not-too-distant future. Certainly Linux is going to have its own implementation of this feature set. Everybody'll be waving their arms and cheering then.
Re:Finally catching up with Apple...
on
Longhorn Preview
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· Score: 5, Insightful
"Finally catching up with Apple in 3 to 5 more years."
Linux: Finally catching up to Windows... in 3 to 5 more years!!!!
(note: If you're about to mod that as troll, lighten up.)
"Can you imagine what would happen to a business which turned away 10 percent of their customer at the door? Sorry you can't coem in here, we don't like the color of your shoes."
Well, since we're going to the extreme of using woefully inadequate metaphors: What they did is more like putting up a billboard on the highway where pedestrians in a certain part of town can't see it. You can still call them or see other ads floating around, but let's pitchfork them over that one less-than-informative billboard. There's karma at stake!!!
Slashdot Mirror
"With 2B people to feed, China has much more pressing issues that saving the Earth from comets."
That's the problem, iddn't it? They can't afford to be hit by a comet, either. Well roundedness/diversity can be a good thing. Consider the USA's space program. Suppose it never happened, would the USA be the same for it? Maybe they want to cover their butts and spark a little technological innovation to boot.
"This project is a cover for military operations in space. Maybe they're researching how to divert a planetoid into the Earth, potentially more powerful than any nuclear weapon."
Err maybe. The way I see it, though, this sort of weapon has the same drawbacks as a nuclear weapon. It's not like they're going to use it against their enemies without it being traced back to them. If they managed to drop a comet on somebody, from a consequences point of view they'd be in just as much shit as they would be if they had fired a nuclear weapon. Worse, it'd take a hell of a lot longer to get the ball rolling, not to mention the dangerous consequences of a small mistake. What would stop the USA or any other government from responding with nuclear weapons if China pulled a stunt like that? Truth be told, I have trouble imagining that the impact of a comet wouldn't rock their boat, anyway. If it hit the water, for example, well just think about that. If a big enough comet hit to kick a lot of dust into the air, well they wouldn't be fond of that, either. Maybe I'm just incredibly naieve about how useful of weapon a comet diversion would be, but IMHO this theory just seems too far-fetched.
An alternative explanation is that China's vasteness makes the concept of a comet or asteroidal impact a bit scary. (At least on a statistical level.) Perhaps they're worried about their own territory. They might even be trying to improve their global image. "We're trying to save the planet here!"
Anyway, I can speculate all day about it. I'm not trying to say you're wrong. I'm just not sure I suspect you're right.
"How can it be your ISDN line number? It's eight digits."
Checksum, duh.
" Replace it with a non-duped story that's actually interesting and Slashdot will make as much or more in ad-revenue."
Or place both since duping is considerably easier.
"I personally am glad there is substantial complaining about dupes. Maybe if there is enough of it the so-called editors will begin to pay attention."
For every noisy bitch, there's an ad served. All Slashdot has to do is print a dupe and the ad counter will start rolling. Do you really think the editors are going to care more about people bitching, or ad revenue?
It isn't as much fun, nor does it earn as much karma, but if you IGNORE THE FUCKING DUPES they'll GO AWAY.
" If you're so offended by people pointing out (and being offended by) dupes, then perhaps you should just avoid threads with names like "It's dupe-a-licious"."
Mmmmhmmm. Except almost every god damn comment in this thread is "dupe!!!!!!!!!! bitchbitchbitchbitchbitchbitch!" I'm whining about excessive dupe bitching, not bitching about dupes. What's irritating about it is every comment bitching about dupes is serving an ad. Basically, the people against dupes are begging Slashdot to post them. Dumb fucks.
"so you picked an odd target for your rant"
I didn't pick your comment as a target because I checked everybody's posting history and thought yours was the one to blast first. I picked yours because of your ridiculous overreaction to the dupe.
"With dupes like this, if I truly want to get involved in the discussion, I might have to carry it out in two different places, with different participants, etc. And the discussion won't be quite as good. That's all."
Unlikely and unlikely. If your motivation for being anti-dupe was about having 'good discussion', then I would expect that it wouldn't matter if a dupe happened or not. If your 'that is all' reasoning were really true, I wouldn't expect you to threaten to leave Slashdot.
Of course I can only speculate, but I think your real reason for bitching about dupes lies somewhere in between trying to make an 'insightful' post and annoyance at... well actually I don't get what's so annoying about dupes. Unless, of course, you're watching Slashdot a little too much and you are offended that they haven't entertained you with something 'new'. Honestly, just skip the damn story if it's not interesting.
Slashdotters sure get noisy for the most frivilous of reasons. They're like Star Trek fans. It's really fucking obnoxious.
"Pretty damn soon, my reaction is going to be to stop reading slashdot."
If you're so in tune with Slashdot that a.) You can spot dupes so easily and b.) it offends you so much, then I agree with your solution. Probably not for the same reasons, though.
Oops...
:)
Sorry I jumped on ya about it. Guess I'm a hypocrit. Hehe.
"But in this case, the poster hasn't said anything about preventing people from using headphones to listen to his audio. His emphasis on one-way copying mechanisms suggests that keeping his audio private isn't a goal at all, he just wants to make sure no one copies the files themselves."
He very cleary mentioned an access password. You're right, he wasn't all that clear. Presumably, though, he wants to lock it like people lock their cell phones.
"As for the original poster, I'd say try to switch to a job where people don't tend to access your hardware without permission, or failing that, ask for a desk drawer with a lock on it."
Eh. It's easier to just spend a couple hundred bucks on a music player he's more comfortable with. Cell phones have this feature, why not music players? Perfectly legitimate question. If anything, he might simply want to discourage his workers from playing with his toys. I had a coworker that had an interesting solution to that problem. He kept a rubberband gun in his office.
Did he shoot people with it? Nah. What would happen is people would walk into his office, pick up the gun, then fire off a few shots. After they put it down, they'd ask what the gun is for. He'd then explain that the gun was there as a study on human behaviour. He mentioned some of the statistics. "It's interesting how many people shoot that thing at other people." From there, people would ask permission before picking his stuff up. Heh.
"Take it with you" is not a solution. At best it's a good practice. Seriously, if that's all it took, then pickpockets would be out of a job.
As for why he'd want to do that, it's simple: Lots of music players offer recording capabilities. Some people actually put those to good use. I used to have a PocketPC. One of the things I did with it was I recorded voice notes for story ideas. Those are ideas I don't want others getting ahold of. I can see using music players with record capabilities being used in the same way. For some people, this really is an interesting question.
Honestly guys, I don't know why these knee-jerk 'answers' are so 'informative'.
"3. The FBI has more requests for fingerprint checks than they can handle, so you're at the tail end of a long line."
So... lemme see if I understand this: Fingerprints aren't in use, but there's along line to get data from them.
"For those who didn't get the parent joke, it's based off a 1984 film called Gremlins, where a young boy receives a cute gremlin named 'Gizmo' as a Christmas gift. The catch was that if the gremlin touched water, it could multiply, and also, if you fed it after midnight it would transform into a malicious little a-hole of a creature."
Note all the lame-ass joke recyclers out there: The reason why this joke is funny is that the main baddie in that movie was named 'Stripe'. Skype... Stripe. Now that you know this, you are NOT allowed to make this joke every time the word 'Gizmo' is used in an article.
"Nice illusion of security....wonder how many people will fall for it."
Depends on what kind of thief we're talking about.
I shouldn't have to go into that kind of detail, though. Just because one can semi-easily get around it doesn't mean it's worthless. I mean, that'd be like saying "Welp, why bother locking the door? They'll just break the window."
Let's talk about reality for a moment: It has been widely known, for DECADES, how to avoid leaving fingerprints at the scene of a crime. Despite being basically beaten over the head with the knowledge of how to do this, people are still busted with fingerprints every single day.
I'm sure somebody somewhere said "Gee, all you'd have to do is wear gloves."
"That's all good and fine, but do I really _want_ a bittorrent client embedded in my browser?"
Whoah whoah whoah, not so fast there. First you should consider whether or not you really want to ask that question. You wouldn't want to jump in with both feet deciding on whether or not you should mull over such a complex issue!
Yeesh. Faux wisdom is an obnoxious trait for a geek.
"I predict a swarm of FireFox BT plug-ins within the next two weeks."
I predict that in a month (err year?) Internet Explorer will support it and everybody will cry "that's not innovation!" and claime FireFox invented it.
Not the same thing as what's going into Longhorn. I would recommend you watch video of it in action.
" But the original Mario Brothers in high(er)-definition? I don't see that as a "revolution" in anything other than deceptive marketing."
Seeing as how Nintendo hasn't stated what the 'revolution' is, how can you call the marketing deceptive?
"... only to get extra "eye-candy"
Yeah, because eye candy is all Longhorn is offering.
I swear I'm the only Slsahdotter that actually watched the keynote video about Longhorn. Everybody else just picked up a screenshot and started cracking lame jokes and making broad observations.
"Well, OK, I was kidding."
I'm sorry, man. I shoulda picked up on that.
I have a similar story to tell. My dad's eyesight is growing weak. He runs his computer at 800 by 600 just to make it semi-readable. He's tried increasing the DPI but Windows (well.. maybe it's the apps..) doesn't deal well with it.
"Longhorn will have resizable windows? OMG! Where do I sign up?"
Fine, rescalable. I didn't realize that I had to be so specific when talking to 'smart people'.
"Just increase the DPI."
That makes text bigger. It doesn't make graphics bigger. On top of that, developers often don't make their button widths to 'scale'.
"Right, but what of the new 'features' are gunna make you upgrade to this must have new version?"
For me, it's Longhorn's vector-based approach to the UI. While everybody's busy giggling and snorting at the 'eye-candy' at Longhorn, the reality is you'll be able to use it on monitors with > 3,000 pixels in width without having to use a microscope to read the text. You'll be able to resize windows etc to suit your needs. I also really enjoy the idea of using the system's GPU to offload the graphical stuff. Almost like having another processor in your machine.
I'm amazed that all the M$ bias around here has blinded everybody to this little detail that's going to be a big fucking deal in the not-too-distant future. Certainly Linux is going to have its own implementation of this feature set. Everybody'll be waving their arms and cheering then.
"Finally catching up with Apple in 3 to 5 more years."
Linux: Finally catching up to Windows... in 3 to 5 more years!!!!
(note: If you're about to mod that as troll, lighten up.)
"Can you imagine what would happen to a business which turned away 10 percent of their customer at the door? Sorry you can't coem in here, we don't like the color of your shoes."
Well, since we're going to the extreme of using woefully inadequate metaphors: What they did is more like putting up a billboard on the highway where pedestrians in a certain part of town can't see it. You can still call them or see other ads floating around, but let's pitchfork them over that one less-than-informative billboard. There's karma at stake!!!
"It may run Linux ...but the video on the site requires Windows Media Player 9."
Pity that only 100 million people will be able to click the link and have it instantly play. Bastards.
"Yes, but, does it run Linux?"
1998 called, the copyright on this joke hasn't expired yet.