OK. That's interesting. First I've heard of it. I've been loudly requesting the MS method - give every coder an office. Being able to close the door would increase my productivity. I don't know how many times I'm interrupted on any given day. When you're in the middle of a tough programming problem, you don't want to lose your train of thought.
I wear headphones a lot. It helps, but it would be nice to have a door to close in addition. I think it will be interesting. I'm all for making things more 'equal'. I've been here about 8 months, and you can get used to the noise, but I still think it's detrimental to productivity. Perhaps you gain it back in people not being able to surf the web for hours at a time, since anyone can walk by and see your monitor.
The funny thing about that is, the division I'm working for is going to move to a new building this coming May. Evidently, the new policy is that no-one gets an office. No one. Not even the head muckety-muck. This is a division of about 500 people in a company that employs over 100,000 people.
Evidently, the perimeter of each floor will be all conference rooms of various sizes and if you need an office/privacy you snag one. Should be interesting. I wonder how many of the managers, who just love to check their voice mail on speaker phone while they read emails, will like this. I've heard a little bit of grumbling, but not a lot. Evidently, this is already policy at a couple of other sites within the company.
What If I take a picture of a random image and then stuff the message which was encrypted into the image. Voila undetectable.
Nope, you're missing the point. All normal images have common mathematical characteristics. I.e. a picture I take with my digital camera and one that you scan with a scanner, will exhibit common mathematical characteristics, differing from one that has had some sort of steganography applied to it. This way, if you intercept a random image and run the mathematical analysis on it, you can tell whether someone has fiddled with the bits. I don't know that this helps you determine what did the fiddling, but it would just be the first step in decrypting the hidden message. Although the article doesn't say specifically, I would think you could even detect random bit twiddling.
Zooko O'Whielacronx? Zooko O'Whielacronx? Other than Zaphod Beeblebrox that has to be the coolest name ever. How do I get one? That's awesome! (Is it Welsh, by any chance? I've always wanted to be a Welshman. I love it when there are 5 or 6 consonants in a row, and it looks totally unpronouncable, and then this fair-skinned beauty says it, and it's like music.)
I guess I'm rambling again. Must be off my meds. Miss Teschmacher!!
Actually, I don't know where Jimmy Hoffa is buried. I could find out, having mastered the power of telepathy. I just have to find the right person's mind to read. And, of course, I've only mastered the theory. Actual application has, so far, eluded me.
It's not very high on my list of priorities. First is unbuttoning the top blouse button on the well-endowed cutie sitting across from me with telekinesis. Second, is the next button. Third would be the button below that. But fourth, well that's all dependendent on whether it's a front-snap or back-snap bra. Fifth? Haven't got that far yet. Depending on how successful the first four are, it might have something to do with manual - uh, I mean mental - stimulation of my umm, privates, under my desk, with my hands in plain sight.
Might be hard to explain the stain, though. I'll put Hoffa down as a tentative sixth.
Let's see. It's changed by 1 part in 100,000 over the last 12 billion years. So, we're dating fossil remains from about 100 million years ago. Assuming the same error, we'd be off by (hmm... carry the five, move the three, divide by pi, ignore the remainder, add 1 for good measure, and we get) about 1000 years. Gosh, yes, we 'evolutionists' are worried.
I've uncovered the secret ingredients in the Colonel's spices and McDonald's Special Sauce. I figured out where Amelia Earhart has been all these years. I know whether or not the moon landings were faked, who shot Kennedy, and how many stones there are in the Washington Monument.
I have decrypted the secret code in the Bible, correlated it with the secret codes of the Baghavad Ghita, Talmud and Qur'an and now now the inner thoughts of all gods. I have unified field theory and quantum theory and will soon have a device that will bend all matter to my will.
I know the secrets of teleportation, telekinesis, telepathy, and how to get women to want me. I know the secrets of every three-letter agency in government, the Psychic Friends network, and the US Postal Service.
Unfortunately, due to the nature of the DMCA, I am unable to share my findings with others. I suppose I'll have to get on my FTL spaceship and find a more genial planet. Ta-ta!
I once saw some celebrity charity thing where they had a bunch of kids (seemed like they were about 7 years old) compete in a tug-of-war with Lou Ferrigno (The Hulk on the old TV shows.) They had Lou just stand still, holding the rope, while they kept adding kids. Guess how many kids it took? Only about 10. I was quite surprised. The obvious strength advantage of an ox over chickens might not be as big as you think.
If your task is just plowing a field, and you just had your standard plows, perhaps oxen would be the best solution. Have you ever tried hitching a bunch of chickens to a bunch of mini-plows? Might be worth a shot. Depending on how big a field, you could easily hire someone else to plow it for you and pay them in a couple of dozen chickens. Or rent a tractor for the price of some chickens.
Overall, if my life didn't depend on getting that field plowed, I might choose the chickens just to see if I could come up with an innovative solution to the problem. It would be more fun than walking behind some oxen, breaking my back. Reminds me of the canonical story of the student given the task of measuring the height of a building with no tools other than a barometer. Seems like the more intellectually interesting solutions would come out of using the chickens.
To sum it up, tilling a field with oxen sounds boring. Trying to achieve the same result with a 1000 chickens sound like fun (for a day or two, anyway.) Then, on to the next project. You want me to do what with a million monkeys?
My point was that chess is uninteresting (to me) because it's a problem that can be solved by speed alone. If you have a computer fast enough to look at all the possible moves, for 20 or 30 moves ahead, I believe the algorithms we have right now would beat any human player. Of course, at that point, you would have algorithmic improvements by testing one computer vs another.
There's a whole bunch of stuff that we haven't developed algorithms for. If we had a TeraHertz computer with an ExaByte of memory, you still wouldn't be able to do things like Natural Language recognition, analyzing a picture (or a video feed), intelligent AI that ferrets out all the info you want from the internet and filters out all the stuff you don't. Things like that. I don't think those kinds of things will come out of chess playing.
I created a simple chess playing algorithm years ago. Analyzed some others. If it's understandable to me, it ain't cutting edge research. I have a definition of art: If I can do it, it's not art. Mona Lisa, art. Ode to Joy, art. Blown up picture of a Campbell's soup can, not art. By the same reasoning, chess playing algorithm, not art. How to get a computer to understand what I'm saying, art.:)
Look, we're all geeks here. We understand computers. Chess can be won by pure computing power alone. A semi-good algorithm with enough speed to look 10 moves ahead - every possible combination - will win over a human being. Maybe it's 12 moves. Maybe 15. Doesn't matter. Enough cycles per second and you don't have to have a very good algorithm.
There are so many things we humans can do that we haven't even begun to figure out how to make computers able to do. True intelligence in computers is a long way off.
Me: "Hey, computer, last night at the club I was at, there was this really hot chick with red leather pants, get her number for me."
Computer: "There were 3 ladies with red leather pants at the club last night. Which one should I search for?"
Me: "The one with black hair, sitting at the bar, drinking some red slushy drink with two of those tiny little straws, looking like she wanted me real bad."
Computer: "Oh, that one. Not really your type, but I'll see what I can do."
Imagine what that computer has to be able to do. Scan through the video of the club; identify individual people; correlate the image from the video with images from other cameras; find out where she lives or works from that (likely work - less privacy there); somehow get from there to her phone number. (I don't know how - if you get here home address, you can just hack into a utility company's database. If at work, hack into their phone list. Get her name from an audio feed somewhere. Doesn't matter.)
That's the kind of things we should be working on. Because I really need that phone number.
I have a 32" waist.. there isn't any room left on my belt for more junk
That's freaking hilarious. One of the few times having a large waist comes in handy. Fat people rule! I just bought some Pilsner Urquel yesterday. Soon, I will be able to carry everything I own on my belt.
As paranoid conspiracy theories go, that's a pretty good one. Well done.
I kept thinking that my next PC was going to come from a major manufacturer, with Linux loaded, to help the statistics gatherers. Who else major is selling Linux PC's? IBM? Compaq? Gateway?
And more off-topic conspiracy theories: Anyone noticed the proliferation of Smart-tag and Pop-under/over stories. I think we're in for a sea change in our web browsing experiences. Remember when Wired ran the big 'PUSH!' issue? (What happened to Pointcast? Are they still around?) I think we're shortly going to see a whole bunch of pushy-type things going on. Re-configuring your browser, changing your home page, pop-up windows all over the place.
Might be a selling point for alternative browsers. If the Mozilla coders were to get on the ball and make some easy pre-emptive changes and then tell the world, I could see some big time adoption. It's got to be quick, though. After a while, you just get used to it. When I first came to the US (from Germany), commercials during TV programs annoyed me. Then I got used to it. (Still bothers me when I think about it.)
Gotta get to the annoyed user just as he's getting tired of all the crap on his screen. "Tired of these Pop-Up Ads? Tired of not being in control of your browsing experience? Mozilla's the answer. Easy configuration. We'll even show you how to never see on-line ads again. All for... Free!" Of course, you'd best do it via a pop-up ad.:)
OK, I'm rambling. Ate too much for lunch. -- Alex Johns
Are you a BOFH?
What's a LART?
Do you find yourself calling the people who use your system users or lusers more often? Why? [The answer will tell you the amount of experience.]
How many accounts have you cancelled? ["More than I can remember" is a good answer.]
When a user asks for more space in their account, what is the proper response? ["Halve their space", or "Delete half their files" are both proper responses.]
Was your last boss afraid of you? [If no, not a real sysadmin]
Does the sight of blood frighten you? Annoy you? Excite you? [The latter 2 are preferable.]
Would you mind helping to man the 'help desk'? [If yes, not a real sysadmin.]
Is Customer Service your #1 priority? [If yes, not a good candidate.]
Quick, the server is down. Give me your top 3 reasons. [Sunspots, solar flares, earth's magnetic field are all valid responses.]
I used to sysadmin. Had to give it up due to high blood pressure. Now I program and give my System Administrator fits. I'm not sure if I'm gaining or losing Karma.:) [The cosmic kind. Not the/. kind.]
Harlan Ellison has a cool story about this. He always had provisions in his contracts to ensure there would be no advertising in any of his books. Sometime in the 60's or 70's, some publisher got the right to reprint one of Ellison's books and they stuck one of those cigarette advertising pages into the middle of it.
If you're unfamiliar with this, go to a used book store, browse through some sci-fi paperbacks published in the late 60's or sometime in the 70's (I forget exactly when) and flip through them. If they have this advertising, it will stick out. It'll be heavier stock paper in the middle of the book, part of the binding just like all the other pages. You can't take it out without messing up the book. Cigarette ads, mostly. Lame, very lame.
Anyway, Harlan relates the story that he was really pissed off about this, and asked the publisher to stop doing this, multiple times. (And Harlan can rant and rave with the best of them. Crotchety is an understatement.) Publisher won't budge. So, to move the story along, Harlan has a lot of fans. One of his fans came up to him one day (or mailed him the story, or something) and told him what he'd done.
As the publisher was leaving work one day, the fan fell in step next to him. Started talking. "Your name is . You live at . Your wife's name is . Your childrens' names are . They go to school at . If you don't stop putting advertising in Harlan's books, bad things will happen." Takes a right at the next corner and is never seen again. Further printing of Harlan's books (with this publisher, at least) have no advertising.
Harlan relates this as a true story. Couldn't condone it, but applauded it.:)
Any fans of/. that want to take up the cause?:) NetSol should give you a place to start. Not that I'm condoning violence, you understand. You are responsible for your own actions. -- Alex Johns
'Slashdot Post of the Year' Awards
on
Pulse Jet Go-kart
·
· Score: 2
Forget the Darwin Awards. This is my nominee for 'Slashdot Post of the Year.' We do have such a thing, don't we Rob? -- Alex Johns
Hmmm, I have the original edition. I don't see a question 47. Question 16, the last one, is the only one rated 50 that I see: 'Are there infinitely many Mersenne primes?'
Intuitively, I would say yes. I can't prove it. I don't know that anyone has.
Knuth does say, in the 'Notes on the Exercises', that a 50 is a research problem that hasn't been solved yet. As his example he uses Fermat's last theorem. Of course, the book is copyright 1969. Don't know if he's corrected that in the latest edition. No reason to buy the new one, I'm not finished with this one yet! -- Alex Johns
Do the Stanford sleep test...hold a spoon or loud toy out over the floor while sitting down. Have a timer or clock nearby. Close your eyes. If you fall asleep, you will hear the object hit the floor.
I was in the US Navy, in Nuclear Power School in Orlando. Basically, your job was to go to school 8 hours a day. Reactor Physics, Heat Transfer and Fluid Flow, Electrical Theory, Mechanical Theory, etc. Some classes were boring and others were extremely boring. This was recognized as a problem and there was plenty of caffeine on hand to combat this. For some instructors, no amount of caffeine was enough. In those cases, you just went ahead and stood up at the back of the room when they walked in.:) (There was at least one time when someone hit the floor. Did I mention that some of this stuff was BORING!?)
Anyway, a good friend of mine, Pat Doyen (Hi, Pat. Are you on here?) tried this: Rest your elbow on your desk, holding a penny between thumb and index finger. When you fall asleep, the penny drops on the desk, you wake up, pick up the penny, elbow back on desk. Unfortunately, the first class he tried this in was so boring that the 6th or so drop in as many minutes caused the instructor to forbid any further use of this sleep remedy.
I imagine he wasn't the first to do this. Anybody do this in college? Anyway, it was pretty funny at the time. -- Alex Johns
Again, whoa. On of the first two prepositional phrases has to go. The rest of the sentence is terrible and should be srapped.
There's a law about this. Something like: "Any post that's a spelling flame is certain to have a spelling mistake in it." Can't find the reference. Of course, Jon is supposed to be a professional writer. Makes you realize just how important an editor and/or proofreader is. (My wife edits stuff. It's not as easy as it sounds. You've either got a knack for it or you don't.)
Wayne and Garth, computer geeks, in an MS dominated world. (In some twisted alternate reality.)
Wayne: "Hi, everyone. Today, we're gonna make a cheap 1TB file server"
Garth: "That's right. We're going to be using the new Windows XP OS."
Wayne: "Yes, Apple's stuff is too proprietary. MS is the open alternative."
Both: "MS rules. Apple sucks. MS rules. Apple sucks."
Wayne: "Alright, that was cool. Anyway, we've got an Intel chip {ed note: No AMD, either}, some RAM, case, power supply. We've just got one drive hooked up to see if this thing will boot."
Garth: (Turns on power) "Alright Wayne, I'm installing XP. It will take a while. Commercials?"
Wayne: "Yeah, we'll be right back."
{Commercials}
Wayne: "Alright, we're back. Had to call MS to register, but we're up. Everything looks good. It's a little slow, so we're going to add some memory while we add drives."
{Time passes}
Garth: "OK. Well, XP says that we need to re-register. Commercial?"
Wayne: "Alright."
{Commercial}
Wayne: "Well, the nice lady at MS chastised us for changing our system, but she let us off with a warning." {W&G both laugh} "Anyway, we've got a new registration code and we're well on our way to 1 TeraByte of storage!"
Both: "Woohoo! MS Rules. MS Rules."
Garth: "Alright, so we're up to 256 MB of RAM, 200GB of hard disk space. We'll add a new controller, add some more memory since this thing still seems a little slow and we'll be right back."
{Time does its thing}
Wayne: "OK, we're back. Had to call MS again. They were a little peeved this time." {Shoots Garth a knowing look and both kind of chuckle} "Anyway, they were gracious enough to let us have another registration code. Thanks, Bill." {Laughs}
Garth: "Yeah, and someone called and wanted to know why we need 1TB of storage."
Wayne: "Yeah, like that's not obvious. Between us and all our friends, we've been to every major rock concert in a 500 mile radius of Chicage for about 10 years now."
Garth: {Whispering, looking furtively around} "And, even though nobody knows..."
Both: {Yelling in glee} "We've taped every show."
Wayne: "Thousands and thousands of hours of rock. We're going to rip 'em all - Hey, Garth, 'Rip em all', is that a Metallica album?"
Garth: {chuckles} "Good one, Wayne. Good one."
Wayne: "Thanks. Anyway, we're going to rip 'em all, catalog 'em, rate 'em, and listen to 'em until we get sick of 'em."
Garth: "OK Wayne. Things look good. It's still a little slow. Maybe a faster chip and some more RAM. Perhaps we should've gone SCSI. It should be alright for just serving MP3's, though."
Wayne: "OK. We'll be right back."
{Time, again}
Garth: "We're back. Wayne's getting some water. He got a little hoarse begging MS for another activation code. For a minute, it looked like we weren't going to get it, but Wayne talked 'em out of one. Here he is now."
Wayne: "Thanks, Garth. It's alright, just some red tape. No problems. MS rules!"
Garth: {Sounding not so sure} "Yeah, MS rules!"
Wayne: "OK, Garth what do we have?"
Garth: "We got a faster chip, we're up to 512MB of RAM, and..." {drumroll} "...we've got 1 TeraByte of storage!!"
Wayne: "Alright, Garth. Party on. Are we ready to serve up some MP3's?"
Garth: "No. I think we're going to need to up the RAM again, this thing is still slow. Also," {Laughs ruefully} "We don't have a network card yet. No sound card, either."
Wayne: {laughs too} "Alright then, Garth. Down one more time and this will be it. Right?"
Garth: "Sure thing, Wayne."
{The commercial break seems to last forever.}
Wayne: "Sorry we took so long. We ummm... ran into a slight snag. It appears that MS won't give us any more access codes for 6 months."
You're making the exact same mistake the 'n****r' poster makes (and, I guess we've both been trolled). You're equating one lone AC with the community of/. I grew up in Georgia and it's the same with the average redneck. See in the paper that a black man has hurt someone (or cut them off in traffic or whatever) and they automatically condemn all black people. Don't judge/. by all the Trolls, AC's, flamers, idiots, script kiddies. If you read long enough, you'll figure out how to get the good info and learn to ignore the idiots. Just my opinion. -- Alex Johns
Hey, hey, hey.... PDP-11's most emphatically do NOT suck. Perhaps the best computer I've ever computed on. That thing's a legend. Just like you don't knock a '68 Hemi 'Cuda. Or a nice pair of broken in Levi's. Or the memory of that first real kiss under the bleachers... What were we talking about?
Slashdot Mirror
OK. That's interesting. First I've heard of it. I've been loudly requesting the MS method - give every coder an office. Being able to close the door would increase my productivity. I don't know how many times I'm interrupted on any given day. When you're in the middle of a tough programming problem, you don't want to lose your train of thought.
I wear headphones a lot. It helps, but it would be nice to have a door to close in addition. I think it will be interesting. I'm all for making things more 'equal'. I've been here about 8 months, and you can get used to the noise, but I still think it's detrimental to productivity. Perhaps you gain it back in people not being able to surf the web for hours at a time, since anyone can walk by and see your monitor.
The funny thing about that is, the division I'm working for is going to move to a new building this coming May. Evidently, the new policy is that no-one gets an office. No one. Not even the head muckety-muck. This is a division of about 500 people in a company that employs over 100,000 people.
Evidently, the perimeter of each floor will be all conference rooms of various sizes and if you need an office/privacy you snag one. Should be interesting. I wonder how many of the managers, who just love to check their voice mail on speaker phone while they read emails, will like this. I've heard a little bit of grumbling, but not a lot. Evidently, this is already policy at a couple of other sites within the company.
Zooko O'Whielacronx? Zooko O'Whielacronx? Other than Zaphod Beeblebrox that has to be the coolest name ever. How do I get one? That's awesome! (Is it Welsh, by any chance? I've always wanted to be a Welshman. I love it when there are 5 or 6 consonants in a row, and it looks totally unpronouncable, and then this fair-skinned beauty says it, and it's like music.)
I guess I'm rambling again. Must be off my meds. Miss Teschmacher!!
Actually, I don't know where Jimmy Hoffa is buried. I could find out, having mastered the power of telepathy. I just have to find the right person's mind to read. And, of course, I've only mastered the theory. Actual application has, so far, eluded me.
It's not very high on my list of priorities. First is unbuttoning the top blouse button on the well-endowed cutie sitting across from me with telekinesis. Second, is the next button. Third would be the button below that. But fourth, well that's all dependendent on whether it's a front-snap or back-snap bra. Fifth? Haven't got that far yet. Depending on how successful the first four are, it might have something to do with manual - uh, I mean mental - stimulation of my umm, privates, under my desk, with my hands in plain sight.
Might be hard to explain the stain, though. I'll put Hoffa down as a tentative sixth.
Let's see. It's changed by 1 part in 100,000 over the last 12 billion years. So, we're dating fossil remains from about 100 million years ago. Assuming the same error, we'd be off by (hmm... carry the five, move the three, divide by pi, ignore the remainder, add 1 for good measure, and we get) about 1000 years. Gosh, yes, we 'evolutionists' are worried.
I've uncovered the secret ingredients in the Colonel's spices and McDonald's Special Sauce. I figured out where Amelia Earhart has been all these years. I know whether or not the moon landings were faked, who shot Kennedy, and how many stones there are in the Washington Monument.
I have decrypted the secret code in the Bible, correlated it with the secret codes of the Baghavad Ghita, Talmud and Qur'an and now now the inner thoughts of all gods. I have unified field theory and quantum theory and will soon have a device that will bend all matter to my will.
I know the secrets of teleportation, telekinesis, telepathy, and how to get women to want me. I know the secrets of every three-letter agency in government, the Psychic Friends network, and the US Postal Service.
Unfortunately, due to the nature of the DMCA, I am unable to share my findings with others. I suppose I'll have to get on my FTL spaceship and find a more genial planet. Ta-ta!
I once saw some celebrity charity thing where they had a bunch of kids (seemed like they were about 7 years old) compete in a tug-of-war with Lou Ferrigno (The Hulk on the old TV shows.) They had Lou just stand still, holding the rope, while they kept adding kids. Guess how many kids it took? Only about 10. I was quite surprised. The obvious strength advantage of an ox over chickens might not be as big as you think.
If your task is just plowing a field, and you just had your standard plows, perhaps oxen would be the best solution. Have you ever tried hitching a bunch of chickens to a bunch of mini-plows? Might be worth a shot. Depending on how big a field, you could easily hire someone else to plow it for you and pay them in a couple of dozen chickens. Or rent a tractor for the price of some chickens.
Overall, if my life didn't depend on getting that field plowed, I might choose the chickens just to see if I could come up with an innovative solution to the problem. It would be more fun than walking behind some oxen, breaking my back. Reminds me of the canonical story of the student given the task of measuring the height of a building with no tools other than a barometer. Seems like the more intellectually interesting solutions would come out of using the chickens.
To sum it up, tilling a field with oxen sounds boring. Trying to achieve the same result with a 1000 chickens sound like fun (for a day or two, anyway.) Then, on to the next project. You want me to do what with a million monkeys?
Sorry, I was out yesterday.
:)
My point was that chess is uninteresting (to me) because it's a problem that can be solved by speed alone. If you have a computer fast enough to look at all the possible moves, for 20 or 30 moves ahead, I believe the algorithms we have right now would beat any human player. Of course, at that point, you would have algorithmic improvements by testing one computer vs another.
There's a whole bunch of stuff that we haven't developed algorithms for. If we had a TeraHertz computer with an ExaByte of memory, you still wouldn't be able to do things like Natural Language recognition, analyzing a picture (or a video feed), intelligent AI that ferrets out all the info you want from the internet and filters out all the stuff you don't. Things like that. I don't think those kinds of things will come out of chess playing.
I created a simple chess playing algorithm years ago. Analyzed some others. If it's understandable to me, it ain't cutting edge research. I have a definition of art: If I can do it, it's not art. Mona Lisa, art. Ode to Joy, art. Blown up picture of a Campbell's soup can, not art. By the same reasoning, chess playing algorithm, not art. How to get a computer to understand what I'm saying, art.
This is all IMO, of course.
Look, we're all geeks here. We understand computers. Chess can be won by pure computing power alone. A semi-good algorithm with enough speed to look 10 moves ahead - every possible combination - will win over a human being. Maybe it's 12 moves. Maybe 15. Doesn't matter. Enough cycles per second and you don't have to have a very good algorithm.
There are so many things we humans can do that we haven't even begun to figure out how to make computers able to do. True intelligence in computers is a long way off.
Me: "Hey, computer, last night at the club I was at, there was this really hot chick with red leather pants, get her number for me."
Computer: "There were 3 ladies with red leather pants at the club last night. Which one should I search for?"
Me: "The one with black hair, sitting at the bar, drinking some red slushy drink with two of those tiny little straws, looking like she wanted me real bad."
Computer: "Oh, that one. Not really your type, but I'll see what I can do."
Imagine what that computer has to be able to do. Scan through the video of the club; identify individual people; correlate the image from the video with images from other cameras; find out where she lives or works from that (likely work - less privacy there); somehow get from there to her phone number. (I don't know how - if you get here home address, you can just hack into a utility company's database. If at work, hack into their phone list. Get her name from an audio feed somewhere. Doesn't matter.)
That's the kind of things we should be working on. Because I really need that phone number.
As paranoid conspiracy theories go, that's a pretty good one. Well done.
:)
I kept thinking that my next PC was going to come from a major manufacturer, with Linux loaded, to help the statistics gatherers. Who else major is selling Linux PC's? IBM? Compaq? Gateway?
And more off-topic conspiracy theories: Anyone noticed the proliferation of Smart-tag and Pop-under/over stories. I think we're in for a sea change in our web browsing experiences. Remember when Wired ran the big 'PUSH!' issue? (What happened to Pointcast? Are they still around?) I think we're shortly going to see a whole bunch of pushy-type things going on. Re-configuring your browser, changing your home page, pop-up windows all over the place.
Might be a selling point for alternative browsers. If the Mozilla coders were to get on the ball and make some easy pre-emptive changes and then tell the world, I could see some big time adoption. It's got to be quick, though. After a while, you just get used to it. When I first came to the US (from Germany), commercials during TV programs annoyed me. Then I got used to it. (Still bothers me when I think about it.)
Gotta get to the annoyed user just as he's getting tired of all the crap on his screen. "Tired of these Pop-Up Ads? Tired of not being in control of your browsing experience? Mozilla's the answer. Easy configuration. We'll even show you how to never see on-line ads again. All for... Free!" Of course, you'd best do it via a pop-up ad.
OK, I'm rambling. Ate too much for lunch.
--
Alex Johns
Who would be the meta-moderator?
Are you a BOFH?
:) [The cosmic kind. Not the /. kind.]
What's a LART?
Do you find yourself calling the people who use your system users or lusers more often? Why? [The answer will tell you the amount of experience.]
How many accounts have you cancelled? ["More than I can remember" is a good answer.]
When a user asks for more space in their account, what is the proper response? ["Halve their space", or "Delete half their files" are both proper responses.]
Was your last boss afraid of you? [If no, not a real sysadmin]
Does the sight of blood frighten you? Annoy you? Excite you? [The latter 2 are preferable.]
Would you mind helping to man the 'help desk'? [If yes, not a real sysadmin.]
Is Customer Service your #1 priority? [If yes, not a good candidate.]
Quick, the server is down. Give me your top 3 reasons. [Sunspots, solar flares, earth's magnetic field are all valid responses.]
I used to sysadmin. Had to give it up due to high blood pressure. Now I program and give my System Administrator fits. I'm not sure if I'm gaining or losing Karma.
Harlan Ellison has a cool story about this. He always had provisions in his contracts to ensure there would be no advertising in any of his books. Sometime in the 60's or 70's, some publisher got the right to reprint one of Ellison's books and they stuck one of those cigarette advertising pages into the middle of it.
:)
/. that want to take up the cause? :) NetSol should give you a place to start. Not that I'm condoning violence, you understand. You are responsible for your own actions.
If you're unfamiliar with this, go to a used book store, browse through some sci-fi paperbacks published in the late 60's or sometime in the 70's (I forget exactly when) and flip through them. If they have this advertising, it will stick out. It'll be heavier stock paper in the middle of the book, part of the binding just like all the other pages. You can't take it out without messing up the book. Cigarette ads, mostly. Lame, very lame.
Anyway, Harlan relates the story that he was really pissed off about this, and asked the publisher to stop doing this, multiple times. (And Harlan can rant and rave with the best of them. Crotchety is an understatement.) Publisher won't budge. So, to move the story along, Harlan has a lot of fans. One of his fans came up to him one day (or mailed him the story, or something) and told him what he'd done.
As the publisher was leaving work one day, the fan fell in step next to him. Started talking. "Your name is . You live at . Your wife's name is . Your childrens' names are . They go to school at . If you don't stop putting advertising in Harlan's books, bad things will happen." Takes a right at the next corner and is never seen again. Further printing of Harlan's books (with this publisher, at least) have no advertising.
Harlan relates this as a true story. Couldn't condone it, but applauded it.
Any fans of
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Alex Johns
Forget the Darwin Awards. This is my nominee for 'Slashdot Post of the Year.' We do have such a thing, don't we Rob?
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Alex Johns
Hmmm, I have the original edition. I don't see a question 47. Question 16, the last one, is the only one rated 50 that I see: 'Are there infinitely many Mersenne primes?'
Intuitively, I would say yes. I can't prove it. I don't know that anyone has.
Knuth does say, in the 'Notes on the Exercises', that a 50 is a research problem that hasn't been solved yet. As his example he uses Fermat's last theorem. Of course, the book is copyright 1969. Don't know if he's corrected that in the latest edition. No reason to buy the new one, I'm not finished with this one yet!
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Alex Johns
Anyway, a good friend of mine, Pat Doyen (Hi, Pat. Are you on here?) tried this: Rest your elbow on your desk, holding a penny between thumb and index finger. When you fall asleep, the penny drops on the desk, you wake up, pick up the penny, elbow back on desk. Unfortunately, the first class he tried this in was so boring that the 6th or so drop in as many minutes caused the instructor to forbid any further use of this sleep remedy.
I imagine he wasn't the first to do this. Anybody do this in college? Anyway, it was pretty funny at the time.
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Alex Johns
Jargon file entry for spelling flame.
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Alex Johns
Wayne and Garth, computer geeks, in an MS dominated world. (In some twisted alternate reality.)
Wayne: "Hi, everyone. Today, we're gonna make a cheap 1TB file server"
Garth: "That's right. We're going to be using the new Windows XP OS."
Wayne: "Yes, Apple's stuff is too proprietary. MS is the open alternative."
Both: "MS rules. Apple sucks. MS rules. Apple sucks."
Wayne: "Alright, that was cool. Anyway, we've got an Intel chip {ed note: No AMD, either}, some RAM, case, power supply. We've just got one drive hooked up to see if this thing will boot."
Garth: (Turns on power) "Alright Wayne, I'm installing XP. It will take a while. Commercials?"
Wayne: "Yeah, we'll be right back."
{Commercials}
Wayne: "Alright, we're back. Had to call MS to register, but we're up. Everything looks good. It's a little slow, so we're going to add some memory while we add drives."
{Time passes}
Garth: "OK. Well, XP says that we need to re-register. Commercial?"
Wayne: "Alright."
{Commercial}
Wayne: "Well, the nice lady at MS chastised us for changing our system, but she let us off with a warning." {W&G both laugh} "Anyway, we've got a new registration code and we're well on our way to 1 TeraByte of storage!"
Both: "Woohoo! MS Rules. MS Rules."
Garth: "Alright, so we're up to 256 MB of RAM, 200GB of hard disk space. We'll add a new controller, add some more memory since this thing still seems a little slow and we'll be right back."
{Time does its thing}
Wayne: "OK, we're back. Had to call MS again. They were a little peeved this time." {Shoots Garth a knowing look and both kind of chuckle} "Anyway, they were gracious enough to let us have another registration code. Thanks, Bill." {Laughs}
Garth: "Yeah, and someone called and wanted to know why we need 1TB of storage."
Wayne: "Yeah, like that's not obvious. Between us and all our friends, we've been to every major rock concert in a 500 mile radius of Chicage for about 10 years now."
Garth: {Whispering, looking furtively around} "And, even though nobody knows..."
Both: {Yelling in glee} "We've taped every show."
Wayne: "Thousands and thousands of hours of rock. We're going to rip 'em all - Hey, Garth, 'Rip em all', is that a Metallica album?"
Garth: {chuckles} "Good one, Wayne. Good one."
Wayne: "Thanks. Anyway, we're going to rip 'em all, catalog 'em, rate 'em, and listen to 'em until we get sick of 'em."
Garth: "OK Wayne. Things look good. It's still a little slow. Maybe a faster chip and some more RAM. Perhaps we should've gone SCSI. It should be alright for just serving MP3's, though."
Wayne: "OK. We'll be right back."
{Time, again}
Garth: "We're back. Wayne's getting some water. He got a little hoarse begging MS for another activation code. For a minute, it looked like we weren't going to get it, but Wayne talked 'em out of one. Here he is now."
Wayne: "Thanks, Garth. It's alright, just some red tape. No problems. MS rules!"
Garth: {Sounding not so sure} "Yeah, MS rules!"
Wayne: "OK, Garth what do we have?"
Garth: "We got a faster chip, we're up to 512MB of RAM, and..." {drumroll} "...we've got 1 TeraByte of storage!!"
Wayne: "Alright, Garth. Party on. Are we ready to serve up some MP3's?"
Garth: "No. I think we're going to need to up the RAM again, this thing is still slow. Also," {Laughs ruefully} "We don't have a network card yet. No sound card, either."
Wayne: {laughs too} "Alright then, Garth. Down one more time and this will be it. Right?"
Garth: "Sure thing, Wayne."
{The commercial break seems to last forever.}
Wayne: "Sorry we took so long. We ummm... ran into a slight snag. It appears that MS won't give us any more access codes for 6 months."
Garth: "Bummer, dude!"
You're making the exact same mistake the 'n****r' poster makes (and, I guess we've both been trolled). You're equating one lone AC with the community of /. I grew up in Georgia and it's the same with the average redneck. See in the paper that a black man has hurt someone (or cut them off in traffic or whatever) and they automatically condemn all black people. Don't judge /. by all the Trolls, AC's, flamers, idiots, script kiddies. If you read long enough, you'll figure out how to get the good info and learn to ignore the idiots. Just my opinion.
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Alex Johns
Hey, hey, hey.... PDP-11's most emphatically do NOT suck. Perhaps the best computer I've ever computed on. That thing's a legend. Just like you don't knock a '68 Hemi 'Cuda. Or a nice pair of broken in Levi's. Or the memory of that first real kiss under the bleachers... What were we talking about?
:)
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Alex Johns
If you've noticed that Patsy/Terry Gilliam is not represented, here's an answer: http://www.aftimes.com/ask.ran.shtml
Basically, there will be a Series 2. Might see Tim and some of the rest then.
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Alex Johns
I always thought it was 'Zoot'.
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Alex Johns
Yes, it's still 'Stuff that Matters', but it's stuff that matters to only a very small, select set of people. Probably doesn't include you and me.
Nothing to see here. Move along.
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Alex Johns