I saw a quote once that said something to the effect of you can always tell a computer scientist's code because he won't have any comments: his variables are his comments (something like that, not sure of the exact words). While descriptive variable naming is important, excessive variable naming is annoying. For one thing, it's a lot easier to type no_acc_click() than it is MakeNotAccidentallyClickable(). Comments are necessary. When code does anything of even a slightly complex nature, there's no such thing as intuitive code. There will always be a need for comments in anything beyond the simplest programs. The best code is properly indented, case is consistent, variables have descriptive but not lenghty names (i is sufficient for an iteration variable, malloc is sufficient for a memory allocation function, etc.), a description at the beginning of the function of all expected uses and known bugs, and last but not least, comments of each change in the code, ChangeLog, and CVS logs.
Top ten signs someone was the inspiration for CBG:
1. Disagrees with everything (especially this article).
2. Spends all his time at Sci-Fi conventions.
3. Has ever used the phrase "oh, if only the real chicks went down this easily"
4. Complains to the actors about every single plot hole and discrepancy in every single episode of every single version of every single series.
5. Gets upset when someone gets lazy and only puts five signs when ten were advertized.
Whether you're just trolling under the bridge or you really believe that this was the WORST....ARTICLE....EVER, Lessig displays the attitude necessary to accomplish what nearly every Slashdot reader wants to.
Introversion has definitely shown that a game can be addictive without being flashy. Uplink certainly wins my vote, and I hope the moderators agree. Uplink rules! Gameplay is involving, (somewhat) complex, and requires at least basic thought processes (unlike FPS games, where you just use your brain stem and a few extremely low level functions from the rest of the brain). Uplink actually worked better in Linux than it did in Windows, even though it seems to have been coded and designed in Windows (I'm using a Voodoo 3, so that could be why...). My brother refuses to install Linux on his computer, so he can't play Uplink (he also has a Voodoo 3). He doesn't like it anyway, because it uses OpenGL and isn't 3D. He just doesn't understand what gameplay means.
X is the name of a particular specification for widely-compatible windowing-style grahpical user interfaces. 11 is the current version of the standard, revision 6.4 (5?), so X11R6.4 is the full name of the current version of the standard. There are numerous implementations of the X standard, each of which has its own quirkiness and features. Sun has OpenWindows (and I don't know why MS hasn't tried to sue them for that), SGI has Irix (not sure if they also call their X11 implementation Irix, but the OS itself is called Irix), XFree86 has.. well.. XFree86, there's also that commercial X server for Linux that's supposed to be so much better, I think there's an X server available for Windows NT,... It's a shame single letters can't be trademarked, otherwise The X Consortium (the governing body over the X standard) could've sued Microsoft over all this DirectX, Xbox, etc. nonsense.
Illustrator and Word are both generic terms. An illustrator is someone/something who illustrates. A word is a component in communication.
I think that all these K and G names seem almost amateur. Sure, it's cool to us geeks, since we know that the G in Gnotices is a reference to GNU and GNOME, or the K in.. yeah, but it just looks lame to an outsider.
That said, I like the name Kontour a lot better than Killustrator: Kill us, traitor!
Hahah. This is certainly an amusing post. Send me an e-mail (n1tr0g3n=at=gmx.net) some time and I'll send you a screen shot of all the games I've got that came with my Linux distribution. You know what? I even have Solitaire, Freecell, and Minesweeper (probably two different versions of each, one for Gnome and one for KDE).
Gaming is certainly an addiction. I recommend Uplink (posted here on/. a little while back). My brother won't touch it because it doesn't have blood, and the interface isn't in 3D, but I'd take Uplink over Quake 2 any day.
If anything, Linux comes with too much bundled software, causing it to load more slowly as the icons are drawn in the K menu (which is why I predominantly use Blackbox).
Your argument, while sound, lacks a few key points of information:
How much does it cost to maintain a Windows network?
How much does it cost to maintain a Linux network?
How many kids are going to notice that you switched the color of the borders around the browser they use to check their e-mail when they should be working?
When I was in high school, my school had 6 or so labs of Windows 98 boxen. In especially the writing lab, during any given 90 minute class period there would be at least 5 or 6 BSOD's. There had to be a semi-admin in each room, plus one overworked guy over the whole school. I recall hearing numerous discussions about threats from the SPA to shut down the school's computers if they couldn't produce a license for each computer, etc. Viruses were a major problem as well. They had some insane security system set up using Novell Netware, and because Windows 9x is inherently r00ted the moment you install it, there are bound to be places they missed (and there were, trust me -- I know). There were many a day when my buddies and I would play Starcraft instead of work, simply because we could. In a Linux system, you need a third of the people, and they can administer each computer from a remote location. Most of the school's admin's time was spent running from one end of the maze-like structure to the other. Tools like ssh, and even basic UNIX security principles (with a more granular system such as SELinux even better) would've saved a lot of time and money. Even though a Linux admin costs more money usually, they need fewer of them.
Heheh, it's amusing that you have to insert a disclaimer at the end of your message. Personally I'd take the word of a programmer over that of a PR agent any day, especially an ISP's PR agent.
If this is anything like Sprint's wireless service, it's not a short-range wireless, unless 35 miles is considered short. Whatever protocol they're using, it seems quite resilient to load (as many as a third of the houses around here might be using it) and interference (the dish was covered in snow for a few days, and I didn't notice any problems, although I have a perfect line of sight to the tower 30 miles from here -- that's right, a perfect 30 mile long line of sight).
As for the possibility of satellite internet, there's no way to do it and have latency lower than 500ms (as pointed out by someone else), until we can transmit using subspace or torsion fields or something like that...
I live out in the boonies in Utah (Syracuse). I also have Sprint wireless, which happens to run over Earthlink's networks IIRC. It works excellently. I live 30 miles from the tower, and I get up to 600 or 700 KB/s download from fast or multiple sites, and 19KB upload. On a pget (see man lftp) from kernel.org, speeds are usually around 500KB during any time of day. There used to be occasional problems (500ms+ latency during peak hours once every few days), but now they are solved. My ping time to time-nw.nist.gov (which is hosted in Redmond, Washington, by you know who) is 41ms average in the middle of the night, and 50ms average during peak hours. Sourceforge is 61ms average. It sounds like they're using the same antenna system Sprint is, except that Sprint had a box in the house. Fixed wireless has been really great for me because I'm too far away to get DSL, Cable, ISDN, or even a 56k modem connection (26.4k is my max), and you can be up to 35 miles from the tower.
So, in summary, Sprint fixed wireless rocks (for me) in the bandwidth, tech support (they have live operators in the middle of the night with short wait times during outages), and latency arenas, and Earthlink probably will as well.
Yeah, with a cluster of those I can find out that 15 is 5*3 in less time than ever!
On the other hand, theoretically speaking, if you could create even a single general purpose quantum computer, that doesn't degrade after so many calculations, and can interface quickly and easily to other systems, you could do some serious damage (or good) with that. Cure any disease, crack any encryption (DNA or "God's encryption" included), design a virus to wipe out a particular race, family, or even person,...
The possibilities are both frightening and exciting at once.
Re:Cyber-Terrorist Training Tool?
on
Uplink
·
· Score: 1
That's funny, I always thought that "RTFM you F-in piece of S* moron" was the traditional way of learning to hack. Reading text files and Phrack and 2600 and the System V manual. Then, setting up a variety of systems in your house/apartment/warehouse with various operating systems and testing your skills on them, off the network, and then try to catch yourself by doing things a normal system administrator would do. This is how I learned to be a sysadmin, by building computers and trying to hack them, then fixing the ways that I did it.
If anything, this game should teach people to be better administrators, not better hackers.
There's an old saying that goes something like this: "Make something only a fool can use and only a fool will want to use it." So, there has to be more than one choice, but not at the expense of compatibility (for example, the package managers of various distributions which I shall not proclaim or disdain since I left my asbestos suit at home). I want to be able to run Windows software on Linux, because I play a lot of older games, so even if all software houses switch over to Linux there's still a lot of software out there that won't be "obsolete" for many years. Starcraft is one title that comes to mind.
However, I don't want an idiot interface. With Windows, the initial learning curve is supposed to be really easy, but once you want to start moving on to more advanced topics it's like e^xponential increase (notice I say supposed -- the initial learning curve of any GUI system is essentially equal). There would need to be a way for idiots to start out with the system (and honestly, what idiot is going to install a new OS? We need the OEMs), but they should be encouraged to learn (without intimidating them), not babied into a corner like Windows and AOL seem to try to do. There also needs to be a way to use the system in a more advanced mode, or something like that. I need a CLI to work efficiently. I don't use file managers very frequently. I prefer the likes of cp, mv, rm, grep, find, etc.
So the best system would really be two systems. One for idiots, which progresses on to the second system, which is for experienced (or "hardened," if you prefer) users, developers, and admins.
In reply to this post's grandparent: it has an uptime of 5 days because that's when they installed the new box.
So instead of knocking the product because of its predecessors, you're suggesting we use a more valid reason?
How about security: every time Microsoft releases a bug fix, they introduce a new bug.
Not to mention "Behind the scenes" black magic: whenever my proxy sends an ident request to a Windows box, the box responds with a request for http://windowsupdate.microsoft.com/ident.cab -- filling up the server's/var overnight, before I could do something to fix the problem.
Let's not forget their plans for world domination. I must admit that the Linux community wants world domination too, but it would be an open domination, where anybody can change the source code (then patent it in some obscure country [or the US] and make a billion dollars).
But the world isn't all bad. All these stories about narrowing rights and such can be kind of depressing. I'd like to see Slashdot (and Slashdotters) post more of the non-depressing stuff. There's a lot of good out there too.
There is one problem with your statement. Software patents do not (usually) contain machine readable source code, but instead a flow chart and an English description of a particular algorithm. Since processes (or algorithms) are defined as patentable, there would be no impact on software patents by a free speech ruling.
This probably goes without saying, but don't use those bulk CDs you can get for $10 for 100 discs. Usually, they have no protective layer over the aluminum (allowing you to scratch or rub off the reflective coating, and also making it easier for bacteria to damage the disc -- I've had both happen to semi-critical backups made on cheap CDs. I've learned my lesson.), and the bottom 10-15 discs are often useless because the metal flakes off one disc and permanently deposits onto the disc above it. Personally I've had the best success with my Samsung 8x drive using Circuit City labelled discs. Different drive brands probably work best with different media, but I'd say that it's probably safe to buy the 50 packs from major stores for most CD players. Heck, even my cheap bulk CDs are readable in every CD player I've tried them in.
... I may be wrong, but wasn't the move from gold to silver/aluminum supposed to be a step up in quality, since gold is less reflective?
FYI, I think my bulk CDs report that they are made by CMC/CMG magnetics.
Not to mention that this has been on Linux for quite some time now. DirectFB supports translucent windows, as do a few other things (including KDE3, as mentioned previously). It's not terribly useful yet, as this would require rethinking much of the way people design GUIs, but some day in the future this could prove to be quite useful, especially in virtual reality environments.
Mandrake no longer uses Partition Magic, but rather DiskDrake. DiskDrake is similar in interface and function to PartitionMagic, but it runs on Linux within the Mandrake Installer. I believe it is based on libparted. GNU Parted might work on PPC Linux, but I'm not sure. Also, there is Norton Utilities for Macintosh (which is absolutely nothing like NU for Windoze). I've heard it's very useful for recovering data, doing partitioning, etc.
Anyway, I think this (SuSE 7.3 on PPC) is another small advancement for Linux that, among all the other small advancements, will slowly but surely take Linux to the top of the OS food chain. Now if only we could get major vendors to ship dual-boot systems...
This has been said many times before, but yes. The Playstation does have a MIPS-based CPU. It uses the mipsel instruction set (iirc) to be exact. PS-One's CPU is 33MHz, while the PS2's CPU is 297MHz. Numerous MIPS emulators exist, as do numerous PS-One emulators. The main challenge in emluating a Playstation is probably the sound and graphics processors. The PS2 GFX/CPU/sound system, called the Emotion Engine, is really a collection of different stock SGI CPUs, with a little Sony tweaking, all wrapped up into one. MIPS CPUs are faster than x86 CPUs of two or three times the clock speed, which is why the PlayStation2 at 297MHz is faster than the X-Box at 733MHz.
As for the disassembler question, if it in fact simply dumped MIPS instructions of hobbyists programs there would be no way for Sony to pursue legal action because the MIPS/mipsel instruction set is open. However, if the tool could be used to reverse-engineer games written for the console, Sony could have grounds for a lawsuit.
DNA is not comprised of cells, nor are cells comprised of DNA. DNA is short for deoxyribonucleic acid, as everybody knows. DNA is simply a molecule formed from four different base molecules that have a tendency to bond together in a spiral fashion. DNA is not alive, nor does it magically spring into life. It's simply one type of amino acid. Amino acids are found in lots of places. Arguing that DNA is a lifeform is like arguing that sugar or a cake recipe is a cake. Life on earth just happens to use DNA as design instructions for how to build itself.
"I don't mean to get off on a rant here," but I can't find anything intelligible in your post. No offense.
The Internet already has a phone directory called the DNS. It translates a so-called easy-to-remember name into a difficult IP address. Adding another layer will not help. Besides, there is an additional flaw with one of your ponts. Domain names cannot exceed 23 characters, which would force people to have either 20, 21, 22, or 23 character domain names, and that could be considered discrimination against slow typists(somehow). Plus, we have search engines and web crawlers and web indices like Google, Altavista, Lycos, Yahoo, etc to help you find what you're looking for. The real problem is not that people are getting confused, but that companies are either overly protective of their "ever important" brand name (I'd never heard of Vigundy Unifarcical before this article), or are afraid that their products really do suck and therefore would lose business because of various suckage sites.
The only true solution would be to eliminate money in the world and move to a non-magic-fish-based economy. Ideally, we'd all be practicing Utopian Socialism, but unfortunately people are inherently greedy and can't practice such a system without trying to take advantage of each other.
Yes, I said guitary amplifiers, meaning amplifiers used for guitar-like, or therefore "guitary" purposes. Tube amps just sound so sweet! I love analog synths too.
Anyway... OT!
Perhaps you missed the part where it says these are $30000 photomultiplier tubes. It would take an incredibly huge number of neutrinos emitting blue streaks to register on a CCD. These tubes are insanely sensetive to light I would assume, perhaps capable of detecting very small numbers of photons. Vacuum tubes are actually quite good for a number of things.. CRTs, vacuum fluorescent displays, guitary amplifiers... Plus, did it say they were vacuum tubes?
What this means to Joe Sixpack is that he's gonna have to wait for another year before he can swallow an antigravity pill to make his butt less sore from sitting on the same chair for 15 hours a day watching football. But seriously folks, is there any reason why your average Joe can't be interested in science? Why is it that science is so revolting? Perhaps its because in school our children are being taught (not by teachers, but by coaches and other students, and the mere fact that each sport individually receives three times as much money as music or physics at the average high school) that to be smart is to be stupid, and that to be stupid is to be cool. One study (sorry, don't have specific details) estimated that there could be as many as 2000 gifted individuals of the elementary-high school age in my state that are likely to never reach their full potential because of poor education limiting their opportunity to grow. Imagine where society would be if we spent half the money we're spending on this war on gifted education instead. We'd likely have a cure for cancer, AIDS, what have you. Wow, I really strayed from my Joe Sixpack joke topic!
Slashdot Mirror
I saw a quote once that said something to the effect of you can always tell a computer scientist's code because he won't have any comments: his variables are his comments (something like that, not sure of the exact words). While descriptive variable naming is important, excessive variable naming is annoying. For one thing, it's a lot easier to type no_acc_click() than it is MakeNotAccidentallyClickable(). Comments are necessary. When code does anything of even a slightly complex nature, there's no such thing as intuitive code. There will always be a need for comments in anything beyond the simplest programs. The best code is properly indented, case is consistent, variables have descriptive but not lenghty names (i is sufficient for an iteration variable, malloc is sufficient for a memory allocation function, etc.), a description at the beginning of the function of all expected uses and known bugs, and last but not least, comments of each change in the code, ChangeLog, and CVS logs.
Top ten signs someone was the inspiration for CBG:
1. Disagrees with everything (especially this article).
2. Spends all his time at Sci-Fi conventions.
3. Has ever used the phrase "oh, if only the real chicks went down this easily"
4. Complains to the actors about every single plot hole and discrepancy in every single episode of every single version of every single series.
5. Gets upset when someone gets lazy and only puts five signs when ten were advertized.
Whether you're just trolling under the bridge or you really believe that this was the WORST....ARTICLE....EVER, Lessig displays the attitude necessary to accomplish what nearly every Slashdot reader wants to.
Introversion has definitely shown that a game can be addictive without being flashy. Uplink certainly wins my vote, and I hope the moderators agree. Uplink rules! Gameplay is involving, (somewhat) complex, and requires at least basic thought processes (unlike FPS games, where you just use your brain stem and a few extremely low level functions from the rest of the brain). Uplink actually worked better in Linux than it did in Windows, even though it seems to have been coded and designed in Windows (I'm using a Voodoo 3, so that could be why...). My brother refuses to install Linux on his computer, so he can't play Uplink (he also has a Voodoo 3). He doesn't like it anyway, because it uses OpenGL and isn't 3D. He just doesn't understand what gameplay means.
Uplink's the way to go, man!
X is the name of a particular specification for widely-compatible windowing-style grahpical user interfaces. 11 is the current version of the standard, revision 6.4 (5?), so X11R6.4 is the full name of the current version of the standard. There are numerous implementations of the X standard, each of which has its own quirkiness and features. Sun has OpenWindows (and I don't know why MS hasn't tried to sue them for that), SGI has Irix (not sure if they also call their X11 implementation Irix, but the OS itself is called Irix), XFree86 has .. well .. XFree86, there's also that commercial X server for Linux that's supposed to be so much better, I think there's an X server available for Windows NT, ... It's a shame single letters can't be trademarked, otherwise The X Consortium (the governing body over the X standard) could've sued Microsoft over all this DirectX, Xbox, etc. nonsense.
Illustrator and Word are both generic terms. An illustrator is someone/something who illustrates. A word is a component in communication.
.. yeah, but it just looks lame to an outsider.
I think that all these K and G names seem almost amateur. Sure, it's cool to us geeks, since we know that the G in Gnotices is a reference to GNU and GNOME, or the K in
That said, I like the name Kontour a lot better than Killustrator: Kill us, traitor!
Lindex, as in Rolodex, Index, Dexter's Laboratory (oh wait..)...
Hahah. This is certainly an amusing post. Send me an e-mail (n1tr0g3n=at=gmx.net) some time and I'll send you a screen shot of all the games I've got that came with my Linux distribution. You know what? I even have Solitaire, Freecell, and Minesweeper (probably two different versions of each, one for Gnome and one for KDE).
/. a little while back). My brother won't touch it because it doesn't have blood, and the interface isn't in 3D, but I'd take Uplink over Quake 2 any day.
Gaming is certainly an addiction. I recommend Uplink (posted here on
If anything, Linux comes with too much bundled software, causing it to load more slowly as the icons are drawn in the K menu (which is why I predominantly use Blackbox).
When I was in high school, my school had 6 or so labs of Windows 98 boxen. In especially the writing lab, during any given 90 minute class period there would be at least 5 or 6 BSOD's. There had to be a semi-admin in each room, plus one overworked guy over the whole school. I recall hearing numerous discussions about threats from the SPA to shut down the school's computers if they couldn't produce a license for each computer, etc. Viruses were a major problem as well. They had some insane security system set up using Novell Netware, and because Windows 9x is inherently r00ted the moment you install it, there are bound to be places they missed (and there were, trust me -- I know). There were many a day when my buddies and I would play Starcraft instead of work, simply because we could. In a Linux system, you need a third of the people, and they can administer each computer from a remote location. Most of the school's admin's time was spent running from one end of the maze-like structure to the other. Tools like ssh, and even basic UNIX security principles (with a more granular system such as SELinux even better) would've saved a lot of time and money. Even though a Linux admin costs more money usually, they need fewer of them.
Heheh, it's amusing that you have to insert a disclaimer at the end of your message. Personally I'd take the word of a programmer over that of a PR agent any day, especially an ISP's PR agent.
If this is anything like Sprint's wireless service, it's not a short-range wireless, unless 35 miles is considered short. Whatever protocol they're using, it seems quite resilient to load (as many as a third of the houses around here might be using it) and interference (the dish was covered in snow for a few days, and I didn't notice any problems, although I have a perfect line of sight to the tower 30 miles from here -- that's right, a perfect 30 mile long line of sight).
As for the possibility of satellite internet, there's no way to do it and have latency lower than 500ms (as pointed out by someone else), until we can transmit using subspace or torsion fields or something like that...
I live out in the boonies in Utah (Syracuse). I also have Sprint wireless, which happens to run over Earthlink's networks IIRC. It works excellently. I live 30 miles from the tower, and I get up to 600 or 700 KB/s download from fast or multiple sites, and 19KB upload. On a pget (see man lftp) from kernel.org, speeds are usually around 500KB during any time of day. There used to be occasional problems (500ms+ latency during peak hours once every few days), but now they are solved. My ping time to time-nw.nist.gov (which is hosted in Redmond, Washington, by you know who) is 41ms average in the middle of the night, and 50ms average during peak hours. Sourceforge is 61ms average. It sounds like they're using the same antenna system Sprint is, except that Sprint had a box in the house. Fixed wireless has been really great for me because I'm too far away to get DSL, Cable, ISDN, or even a 56k modem connection (26.4k is my max), and you can be up to 35 miles from the tower.
So, in summary, Sprint fixed wireless rocks (for me) in the bandwidth, tech support (they have live operators in the middle of the night with short wait times during outages), and latency arenas, and Earthlink probably will as well.
Yeah, with a cluster of those I can find out that 15 is 5*3 in less time than ever!
...
On the other hand, theoretically speaking, if you could create even a single general purpose quantum computer, that doesn't degrade after so many calculations, and can interface quickly and easily to other systems, you could do some serious damage (or good) with that. Cure any disease, crack any encryption (DNA or "God's encryption" included), design a virus to wipe out a particular race, family, or even person,
The possibilities are both frightening and exciting at once.
That's funny, I always thought that "RTFM you F-in piece of S* moron" was the traditional way of learning to hack. Reading text files and Phrack and 2600 and the System V manual. Then, setting up a variety of systems in your house/apartment/warehouse with various operating systems and testing your skills on them, off the network, and then try to catch yourself by doing things a normal system administrator would do. This is how I learned to be a sysadmin, by building computers and trying to hack them, then fixing the ways that I did it.
If anything, this game should teach people to be better administrators, not better hackers.
There's an old saying that goes something like this: "Make something only a fool can use and only a fool will want to use it." So, there has to be more than one choice, but not at the expense of compatibility (for example, the package managers of various distributions which I shall not proclaim or disdain since I left my asbestos suit at home). I want to be able to run Windows software on Linux, because I play a lot of older games, so even if all software houses switch over to Linux there's still a lot of software out there that won't be "obsolete" for many years. Starcraft is one title that comes to mind.
However, I don't want an idiot interface. With Windows, the initial learning curve is supposed to be really easy, but once you want to start moving on to more advanced topics it's like e^xponential increase (notice I say supposed -- the initial learning curve of any GUI system is essentially equal). There would need to be a way for idiots to start out with the system (and honestly, what idiot is going to install a new OS? We need the OEMs), but they should be encouraged to learn (without intimidating them), not babied into a corner like Windows and AOL seem to try to do. There also needs to be a way to use the system in a more advanced mode, or something like that. I need a CLI to work efficiently. I don't use file managers very frequently. I prefer the likes of cp, mv, rm, grep, find, etc.
So the best system would really be two systems. One for idiots, which progresses on to the second system, which is for experienced (or "hardened," if you prefer) users, developers, and admins.
In reply to this post's grandparent: it has an uptime of 5 days because that's when they installed the new box.
/var overnight, before I could do something to fix the problem.
So instead of knocking the product because of its predecessors, you're suggesting we use a more valid reason?
How about security: every time Microsoft releases a bug fix, they introduce a new bug.
Not to mention "Behind the scenes" black magic: whenever my proxy sends an ident request to a Windows box, the box responds with a request for http://windowsupdate.microsoft.com/ident.cab -- filling up the server's
Let's not forget their plans for world domination. I must admit that the Linux community wants world domination too, but it would be an open domination, where anybody can change the source code (then patent it in some obscure country [or the US] and make a billion dollars).
But the world isn't all bad. All these stories about narrowing rights and such can be kind of depressing. I'd like to see Slashdot (and Slashdotters) post more of the non-depressing stuff. There's a lot of good out there too.
There is one problem with your statement. Software patents do not (usually) contain machine readable source code, but instead a flow chart and an English description of a particular algorithm. Since processes (or algorithms) are defined as patentable, there would be no impact on software patents by a free speech ruling.
... I may be wrong, but wasn't the move from gold to silver/aluminum supposed to be a step up in quality, since gold is less reflective?
FYI, I think my bulk CDs report that they are made by CMC/CMG magnetics.
Not to mention that this has been on Linux for quite some time now. DirectFB supports translucent windows, as do a few other things (including KDE3, as mentioned previously). It's not terribly useful yet, as this would require rethinking much of the way people design GUIs, but some day in the future this could prove to be quite useful, especially in virtual reality environments.
Anyway, I think this (SuSE 7.3 on PPC) is another small advancement for Linux that, among all the other small advancements, will slowly but surely take Linux to the top of the OS food chain. Now if only we could get major vendors to ship dual-boot systems...
As for the disassembler question, if it in fact simply dumped MIPS instructions of hobbyists programs there would be no way for Sony to pursue legal action because the MIPS/mipsel instruction set is open. However, if the tool could be used to reverse-engineer games written for the console, Sony could have grounds for a lawsuit.
DNA is not comprised of cells, nor are cells comprised of DNA. DNA is short for deoxyribonucleic acid, as everybody knows. DNA is simply a molecule formed from four different base molecules that have a tendency to bond together in a spiral fashion. DNA is not alive, nor does it magically spring into life. It's simply one type of amino acid. Amino acids are found in lots of places. Arguing that DNA is a lifeform is like arguing that sugar or a cake recipe is a cake. Life on earth just happens to use DNA as design instructions for how to build itself.
"I don't mean to get off on a rant here," but I can't find anything intelligible in your post. No offense.
The only true solution would be to eliminate money in the world and move to a non-magic-fish-based economy. Ideally, we'd all be practicing Utopian Socialism, but unfortunately people are inherently greedy and can't practice such a system without trying to take advantage of each other.
Yes, I said guitary amplifiers, meaning amplifiers used for guitar-like, or therefore "guitary" purposes. Tube amps just sound so sweet! I love analog synths too.
Anyway... OT!
Perhaps you missed the part where it says these are $30000 photomultiplier tubes. It would take an incredibly huge number of neutrinos emitting blue streaks to register on a CCD. These tubes are insanely sensetive to light I would assume, perhaps capable of detecting very small numbers of photons. Vacuum tubes are actually quite good for a number of things.. CRTs, vacuum fluorescent displays, guitary amplifiers... Plus, did it say they were vacuum tubes?
..whatever..
What this means to Joe Sixpack is that he's gonna have to wait for another year before he can swallow an antigravity pill to make his butt less sore from sitting on the same chair for 15 hours a day watching football. But seriously folks, is there any reason why your average Joe can't be interested in science? Why is it that science is so revolting? Perhaps its because in school our children are being taught (not by teachers, but by coaches and other students, and the mere fact that each sport individually receives three times as much money as music or physics at the average high school) that to be smart is to be stupid, and that to be stupid is to be cool. One study (sorry, don't have specific details) estimated that there could be as many as 2000 gifted individuals of the elementary-high school age in my state that are likely to never reach their full potential because of poor education limiting their opportunity to grow. Imagine where society would be if we spent half the money we're spending on this war on gifted education instead. We'd likely have a cure for cancer, AIDS, what have you. Wow, I really strayed from my Joe Sixpack joke topic!
Etre, ou n'etre pas?