No seriously, look at the porn industry.
There's more free porn than you could throw a stick at, but there are still pay sites and I presume they do quite well (or not too bad).
There's not that much porn on Kazaa and that that is is more freek show than porn!
Porn is the uncrowned king of distributed media.
Maybe the RIAA and MPAA should swtich to porn grove and when hary meet sally.
I would say it's a lot easier to produce porn than music (or games). All you need to do is to hire a couple of chicks (and maybe one guy - if you can't find one willing to work for free), a digital camera and a web site. Get them fscking once a day (1-2 hours of work) and have new content daily. Increase your staff and get even more new content every single day!
Ammiano also said Segway's campaign rubbed officials the wrong way.
"Segway didn't help themselves by hiring very expensive lobbyists," he said. "I think that backfired on them, too."
New Hampshire-based Segway hired lobbying firms but has made no contributions to any public officials or candidates, said Matt Dailida, the company's director of state government affairs.
It looks like a revenge. How dare they try to pass a law (that would increase their profit) without give some money to the politics? That's how Corporated States of America works.
It's a matter of money. U.S. is buying talent for ages, from science to sports. How many USA athletes in last Olympic Games was not born in U.S.? You may say they were from poor countries and would not have the needed funding to develop their skills, but in the end they were not from USA. Period.
The same goes for IT. How many IT slashdotters living in U.S. are not born in the USA, or work with someone that is not? With all that HB-1 visas and the like?
I mean, in the long run, what happens when you keep buying brains and muscles from elsewhere? Other countries are going to get better generation after generation, and unless the foreigns got laid in US, the new citizens will not affect the U.S. gene pool at all. They generate revenue in the short term, but unlike a retired stallion, there's nothing else if they go back home after a while. Sad but true.
It may be not enough to say just Amazon, once it's a jungle, not a country. The facts depicted in the story took place in Guyana. Amazon jungle spreads along several countries, including Peru, Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia and Ecuador.
Britney's Guide to Semiconductor Physics
on
Google's new toys
·
· Score: 5, Funny
When I tried search for webquotes about Britney Spears, the following site appeared:
"It is a little known fact, that Ms Spears is an expert in semiconductor physics. Not content with just singing and acting, in the following pages, she will guide you in the fundamentals of the vital laser components that have made it possible to hear her super music in a digital format."
If I had any mod points, I would mod the parent up as "Funny", considering it as a joke (well, I think it is). The text could be something like:
One guy to a friend: - In doing family research I found out that my grandfather died at Auschwitz concentration camp...
After the friend express his condolences, he adds:
- It seems he got very drunk one night and fell out of his guard tower.
Re:IE4/Netscape 4 only
on
Earth as Art
·
· Score: 2, Informative
My Netscape 7 did not worked either. According the source code, the page was made with Jedit 4.1.0 for Macintosh. But this may work:
Anyway, the only real need for fancy and non-standard browser features is the "thumbnail browser". All the photos are in ordinary HTML files in format XXX_l.html (XXX is a zero-padded number):
After a few hours of charging the battery, we were ready for our first test -- a routine in which the ER1 recognizes its box and moves toward it. My ER1 immediately recognized the box but instead of driving toward it, it backed away as though it had been abused at the factory. (Turns out the camera pointed in the wrong direction. The test worked fine after I adjusted it.)
As many slashdotters, I have several e-mail accounts. One of them, in a major ISP, occurs to have as username my first name (it was available at the time, I'm not so young). Well, this one is simply trashed, with 100+ spams per day. The spammers are making listings of name@isp.com at random, trying several 'name' combinations (like john, johnb, bjohn, and so on). Then repeat all the list for each major ISP and voilá, a enourmous list is created. After a few rounds of spam you know which ones are valid.
It is old news and I have it in my HD since Sep 30. When I see this kind of "news" and compare it to my own list of rejected posts, the only conclusion is that the editors are actually random number generators.
I have two little girls, 7 and 4. They use both Linux and Windows, and now I think it is time to teach them (well, at least the older) some programming skills. Logo was the first thing that came to mind, but hey, it's not for the real world! I would like to ask to my fellow/.ers: what language should she learn?. Should it be Java or C++? Maybe Perl or PHP?
Electronic voting has been used since 1996
on
Indecision 2002
·
· Score: 2, Informative
The system has been used gradually in Brazil. This year's presidential elections were 100% electronic. You can even try a simulator (Java Applet) with fake candidates (one of them is Carmen Miranda):
The results were known within hours. The code is digitally signed, and the parties were allowed to check the source code. There is no wires, the device generates a diskette that is encrypted and signed before being sent to TSE. Some cities was experimenting a printer attached to extra security.
I always wonder about articles like this. Who is worse, the people who abuse privileges/freedoms, or the people who limit the privileges/freedoms to curb the abuse.
Actually, this is the classic left-wing / right-wing dilemma. The right-wing defends the freedom above the equality (thus allowing abuse), and the left-wing defends the equality (thus reducing privileges). Of course it is not an all-or-nothing situation: think about it like a pair of connected sliders. When you increase the freedom (privileges) you end up reducing equality, and vice-versa.
It's up to you (as group of people) to choose between the two, or which one you care most. The history has shown that is impossible to get both at highest levels. Recommended reading:
Left and Right: The Significance of a Political Distinction
Norberto Bobbio
Translated and introduced by Allan Cameron
University of Chicago Press, Chicago, IL, 1996
124 pages ISBN 0-226-06246-5 (pb) Google search
Here in Brazil we use a run-off system, like France and many other countries. It have the advantage of narrow the choice to 2 candidates if none of them reach 50% + 1 in the first round. The minnows may only delay a result, never change it.
In the other hand, the congress elections use the proportionality principle. The number of votes is divided by the number of chairs, and it is the "electoral coefficient" (e.g., 180,000 votes). All the votes are grouped by party (it is possible to vote in the party, or in a candidate from that party). After the elections, each party earns a number of chairs that are distributed in order of votes to its candidates.
With this system, if a candidate makes 1,000,000 votes and the coefficient is 200,000 votes, it brings in another 4 candidates from its party, regardless of their votes. It happened this year in São Paulo, where Enéas Carneiro got over 1.5 million votes and the second place was almost a million votes behind. Enéas elected another 5 or 6 fellows, and one of them became a congressman with less than 300 votes.
I think the main issue is: Dumont's device was a plane as we know today, with takeoff, flying and landing. Wright's device was not able to takeoff with its own means, needing external support.
Carmack himself feels that his real innovations peaked with Quake in 1996. Everything since, he says, is essentially refining a theme. Return to Castle Wolfenstein, in fact, was based on the Quake III engine, with much of the level and game logic development work being done by an outside company.
"There were critical points in the evolution of this stuff," Carmack says, "getting into first person at all, then getting into arbitrary 3-D, and then getting into hardware acceleration....But the critical goals have been met. There's still infinite refinement that we can do on all these different things, but...we can build an arbitrary representational world at some level of fidelity. We can be improving our fidelity and our special effects and all that. But we have the fundamental tools necessary to be doing games that are a simulation of the world."
Nethack is more than enough for this trip. And about its UI, it is like reading a book: your imagination fills the gaps. In this case, I hope his trip have no connections, because he will miss it all...
My suggestion is create a large group of little robots with bags (this would make them light and easy to put in orbit - a shuttle's cargo bay full of them could make wonders). They may have arms to grab things, or just catch the debris with the bag (like a butterfly collector). With the bag full they would return to a manned depot (ISS?), empty it and go back to work. The debris could be recycled by humans in a junkyard manner.
The bags could have a simple mechanical one-way opening, to avoid inertia to make things scape. The main criteria of (automatic?) selection would be the size, since most of the junk in orbit is small, and the main problem is this - big things are more likely to be avoided by spaceships.
1) write a program that generate a almost-random password based on a triple set of one string plus two numbers (all passed by cmd line), making sure it will generate always the same password for the same input trio.
2) the string is the server's name, the two numbers are month and year
3) put the running copy of the program (all the other are offline backups) in that old P133 notebook and keep it UNPLUGGED hidden in the rack, between some switches and routers
I actually used it to change monthly the root/admin password for dozens of servers. Each one has its own, unique password.
Link: http://www.iwc.ch/collections/collection/complicat ions/gc-en.asp
- Production limited to 50 watches per year
- Mechanical movement
- Self-winding
- Chronograph
- Minute repeater
- Perpetual calendar
- Four-digit year display
- Perpetual moon phase display
- Small seconds with stop function
- 659 parts
- Screw-in crown
- Crown-activated rapid calendar advance
- Convex sapphire glass
- Case diameter 42,2 mm
Quote:
"One of the world's most complex wristwatches gets the energy it needs to display the time automatically from the movements of the arm. The chronograph records times up to twelve hours to an accuracy of one-eighth of a second. The calendar is mechanically programmed for the next 500 years. The minute repeater chimes out the time in hours, quarters and minutes whenever you wish."
Its plain Xbox advertising disguised as article. Xbox is too new and hav too few titles to even be cited in an article like this, but it manages to get not only cited, but shown as good! "The best sky/water/island ever...".
We have here some keyboards with extra keys named Power, Wake and Sleep. Some engineers managed to remove them, and use as indicators:
- How will this project run?
(throw the ripped keys)
Power (face up), Wake (face up), Sleep (face down): this means that nobody will sleep again, and will keep awake with Power drinks...
Slashdot Mirror
Yeah, and you would be a very rich vegetable.
The same goes for IT. How many IT slashdotters living in U.S. are not born in the USA, or work with someone that is not? With all that HB-1 visas and the like?
I mean, in the long run, what happens when you keep buying brains and muscles from elsewhere? Other countries are going to get better generation after generation, and unless the foreigns got laid in US, the new citizens will not affect the U.S. gene pool at all. They generate revenue in the short term, but unlike a retired stallion, there's nothing else if they go back home after a while. Sad but true.
It may be not enough to say just Amazon, once it's a jungle, not a country. The facts depicted in the story took place in Guyana. Amazon jungle spreads along several countries, including Peru, Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia and Ecuador.
Britney's Guide to Semiconductor Physics
From the site:
P.S. Checkout the author's page as well...
I wish I had a sig.
My Netscape 7 did not worked either. According the source code, the page was made with Jedit 4.1.0 for Macintosh. But this may work:
http://home.fujifilm.com/efa/pi/indexNN.html
Anyway, the only real need for fancy and non-standard browser features is the "thumbnail browser". All the photos are in ordinary HTML files in format XXX_l.html (XXX is a zero-padded number):
Storm over Amazonian rain forest - Brazil
Alex.http://home.fujifilm.com/efa/photo/137_l.html
As many slashdotters, I have several e-mail accounts. One of them, in a major ISP, occurs to have as username my first name (it was available at the time, I'm not so young). Well, this one is simply trashed, with 100+ spams per day. The spammers are making listings of name@isp.com at random, trying several 'name' combinations (like john, johnb, bjohn, and so on). Then repeat all the list for each major ISP and voilá, a enourmous list is created. After a few rounds of spam you know which ones are valid.
It is old news and I have it in my HD since Sep 30. When I see this kind of "news" and compare it to my own list of rejected posts, the only conclusion is that the editors are actually random number generators.
I have two little girls, 7 and 4. They use both Linux and Windows, and now I think it is time to teach them (well, at least the older) some programming skills. Logo was the first thing that came to mind, but hey, it's not for the real world! I would like to ask to my fellow /.ers: what language should she learn?. Should it be Java or C++? Maybe Perl or PHP?
http://www.tse.gov.br/eleicoes/eleicoes2002/
The results were known within hours. The code is digitally signed, and the parties were allowed to check the source code. There is no wires, the device generates a diskette that is encrypted and signed before being sent to TSE. Some cities was experimenting a printer attached to extra security.
Diebold voting terminals
Brazil's vote - fast but fiddly
That should be nice dangling from my home-theather rack... my wife would love to see that.
Actually, this is the classic left-wing / right-wing dilemma. The right-wing defends the freedom above the equality (thus allowing abuse), and the left-wing defends the equality (thus reducing privileges). Of course it is not an all-or-nothing situation: think about it like a pair of connected sliders. When you increase the freedom (privileges) you end up reducing equality, and vice-versa.
It's up to you (as group of people) to choose between the two, or which one you care most. The history has shown that is impossible to get both at highest levels. Recommended reading:
Left and Right: The Significance of a Political Distinction
Norberto Bobbio
Translated and introduced by Allan Cameron
University of Chicago Press, Chicago, IL, 1996
124 pages ISBN 0-226-06246-5 (pb)
Google search
In the other hand, the congress elections use the proportionality principle. The number of votes is divided by the number of chairs, and it is the "electoral coefficient" (e.g., 180,000 votes). All the votes are grouped by party (it is possible to vote in the party, or in a candidate from that party). After the elections, each party earns a number of chairs that are distributed in order of votes to its candidates.
With this system, if a candidate makes 1,000,000 votes and the coefficient is 200,000 votes, it brings in another 4 candidates from its party, regardless of their votes. It happened this year in São Paulo, where Enéas Carneiro got over 1.5 million votes and the second place was almost a million votes behind. Enéas elected another 5 or 6 fellows, and one of them became a congressman with less than 300 votes.
I think the main issue is: Dumont's device was a plane as we know today, with takeoff, flying and landing. Wright's device was not able to takeoff with its own means, needing external support.
Carmack himself feels that his real innovations peaked with Quake in 1996. Everything since, he says, is essentially refining a theme. Return to Castle Wolfenstein, in fact, was based on the Quake III engine, with much of the level and game logic development work being done by an outside company.
"There were critical points in the evolution of this stuff," Carmack says, "getting into first person at all, then getting into arbitrary 3-D, and then getting into hardware acceleration....But the critical goals have been met. There's still infinite refinement that we can do on all these different things, but...we can build an arbitrary representational world at some level of fidelity. We can be improving our fidelity and our special effects and all that. But we have the fundamental tools necessary to be doing games that are a simulation of the world."
Nethack is more than enough for this trip. And about its UI, it is like reading a book: your imagination fills the gaps. In this case, I hope his trip have no connections, because he will miss it all...
My suggestion is create a large group of little robots with bags (this would make them light and easy to put in orbit - a shuttle's cargo bay full of them could make wonders). They may have arms to grab things, or just catch the debris with the bag (like a butterfly collector). With the bag full they would return to a manned depot (ISS?), empty it and go back to work. The debris could be recycled by humans in a junkyard manner.
The bags could have a simple mechanical one-way opening, to avoid inertia to make things scape. The main criteria of (automatic?) selection would be the size, since most of the junk in orbit is small, and the main problem is this - big things are more likely to be avoided by spaceships.
Alex.
Actually, I use it... as the name of my company: bw("Alexsander") = "Rednasxela". After minor adjusts (removing S & A), it becames Rednaxel.
1) write a program that generate a almost-random password based on a triple set of one string plus two numbers (all passed by cmd line), making sure it will generate always the same password for the same input trio.
2) the string is the server's name, the two numbers are month and year
3) put the running copy of the program (all the other are offline backups) in that old P133 notebook and keep it UNPLUGGED hidden in the rack, between some switches and routers
I actually used it to change monthly the root/admin password for dozens of servers. Each one has its own, unique password.
Link: http://www.iwc.ch/collections/collection/complicat ions/gc-en.asp
- Production limited to 50 watches per year
- Mechanical movement
- Self-winding
- Chronograph
- Minute repeater
- Perpetual calendar
- Four-digit year display
- Perpetual moon phase display
- Small seconds with stop function
- 659 parts
- Screw-in crown
- Crown-activated rapid calendar advance
- Convex sapphire glass
- Case diameter 42,2 mm
Quote:
"One of the world's most complex wristwatches gets the energy it needs to display the time automatically from the movements of the arm. The chronograph records times up to twelve hours to an accuracy of one-eighth of a second. The calendar is mechanically programmed for the next 500 years. The minute repeater chimes out the time in hours, quarters and minutes whenever you wish."
Its plain Xbox advertising disguised as article. Xbox is too new and hav too few titles to even be cited in an article like this, but it manages to get not only cited, but shown as good! "The best sky/water/island ever...".
- How will this project run?
(throw the ripped keys)
Power (face up), Wake (face up), Sleep (face down): this means that nobody will sleep again, and will keep awake with Power drinks...