Frequently seeding/dev/urandom with/dev/random is a compromise.
That is interesting, how often is "frequently"? Can you increase randomness significantly by seeding from urandom, say, every 100 reads from random? Does this question even make sense?:)
I tried to google for more details, but my search terms returned a lot of noise.
Planting a flag somewhere has no real legal standing - it doesn't claim the moon for America, any more than the British claimed antartica for getting our flag to the pole first. There really is no reason for it other than national pride.
I agree that it doesn't really matter, but actually Scott and his men lost that race to a Norwegian team led by Roald Amundsen by about a month. Both parties performed great feats of exploration, unfortunately Scott and his team succumbed on the return trip due to unfortunate bad weather combined with some... strange planning on Scott's part.
Oh, you can *claim* it matters... but you'd better have the military to back it up. Land goes to whoever can hold it.
On-topic: If/when the Moon is colonised by multiple nations I'll be surprised if the existing treaties of peace and collaboration are not respected, similarly to the treaties regarding Antarctica. Disregarding the political fallout hostilities would cause for the offending party, it'll be impractical and counter-productive to wage a war on the moon for quite a while yet.
Wow, I only recently started delving into Sci-Fi stories. Never heard of this one but it sounds cool. Thanks for the post! (The most recent one I read is " Machines That Think: The Best Science Fiction Stories About Robots and Computers" A pretty good collection.)
Have Space Suit—Will Travel is OK, but a bit strange, like many of Heinlein's novels. If you haven't read anything else by him I would rather recommend Starship Troopers or The Moon is a Harsh Mistress for starters.
I haven't read the collection you mention, but I have read about half of the stories therein, most are good ones. While I'm here I can give you some completely unsolicited pointers: Stephen Baxter (Evolution, and Manifold books, which explore fundamental concepts of physics and cosmology), the novels of Iain M. Banks (the "M" is important, it's what he uses for SF works), and Eric Brown (for instance the collection Kéthani), for contemporary works. If you liked the Vinge story his novels are enjoyable as well, although not centered on AI.
For more classical/space opera stuff Asimov's Foundation series is nice, and pretty much all of his short stories come recommended. If you liked The Bicentennial Man you should check out his Robot series (titles on Wikipedia). Arthur C. Clarke has several brilliant classics: 2001 (and the other "year-titled" books), The Fountains of Paradise (explores space elevators) and the Rama series.
Of course those are just favourites of mine, YMMV. It's a daunting amount of SF out there, and a lot of it is crap, but it's immensely rewarding when you find something you really like.
If you or anyone else can recommend other stories based on my recommendations, go ahead:)
Conservatives want to conserve the status quo. If liberty is the status quo then the conservative position is pro-liberty. If communism is the status quo then the conservative position is pro-communism etc, etc.
The US at it's founding was radically pro-liberty, despite not extending that liberty to everyone. So a conservative can be pro-"the liberties we already have" and anti-"the liberties you want that we don't agree with".
As I understand it, conservative politic perspectives in the U.S. are closely tied to fundamentalist religious viewpoints, which in turn leads to mass suggestion and holier-than-thou politicians becoming successful. It's curious to note that while none of your politicians will officially condone pornography, you are still one of the largest producers of porn in the world.
Utah buys a lot of it (I had some difficulties finding a good source due to noise from mormons trying to explain it away). But let's perpetuate the myth that we give a damn about denying gay marriage, because that's what voters want. That's what they chat with their neighbours about, they'll vote according to who is most adamant about those issues because that's what important in a nation. Yours is a strange society.
PS due to a faulty 'm' key i almost wrote "ass suggestion" above. It'd probably have been appropriate in some manner.
Let me stress again that this was not because he was a progressive. But the actions themselves do qualify as being progressive.
To continue your "Hitler-geared-for-war" theme: After WW1 Germany had heavy restrictions on production of hardware for military applications, but Hitler was very clever in constructing a civilian infrastructure which could be used for military purposes as well.
He made the "People's Car" a reality (Volkswagen), a cheap, reliable car which was accessible to a great many Germans who previously couldn't afford a car. This was in order to be able to appropriate the (hopefully) ubiquitus Volkswagens for troop transport in the next war.
He also succeeded in pushing a network of high-quality roads on which to drive those cars, which is still one of the best sets of roads you'll find anywhere in the world. Today they're rated for speeds upwards of 300 km/h, and have no blanket speed limits whatsoever. I've been a passenger in a Mercedes <some powerful sedan model> on those roads at 260 km/h, it was as comfortable as a train. A buddy rode his Honda VFR 750 (top speed 240 km/h) flat out there, and couldn't use the fast lane because of higher speed traffic.
Of course, in addition to gaining the affection of the German people, Hitler's goal was to use those roads for military traffic in the oncoming war.
TL;DR: He did a lot of progressive things for non-progressive reasons, as my parent states.
There are no liberal democrats, only democrats slightly less conservative than the average republican.
According to Norwegian standards, and I believe to the standards of most western social democratic nations, both your dominant parties are *far* right - as in the corporatism aspect of fascism, sprinkled with a very unhealthy dose of religion. Good thing that your insane laws don't apply to us... Oh, wait. Damnit, we're screwed.
It's long past time to face facts: the Earth is getting hotter, and to deny it is an exercise in fantasy.
Nobody is denying that it got like 0.2 degrees hotter in the past 10 years, it's the fact that some people seem to be making the leap between it getting hotter and humans not trading enough carbon credits, now that is an exercise in fantasy.
Roy Spencer seems to be popping up in a lot of denier posts, being one of the few deniers (of man-made gw) among those who should actually have a clue. However, he's also a signatory to this curious statement, which contains such gems as:
We believe Earth and its ecosystems—created by God’s intelligent design and infinite power and sustained by His faithful providence —are robust, resilient, self-regulating, and self-correcting, admirably suited for human flourishing, and displaying His glory. Earth’s climate system is no exception. Recent global warming is one of many natural cycles of warming and cooling in geologic history.
This in itself doesn't invalidate his science, but it does mean that he's cast his lot with a bunch of pretty anti-scientific people, and has a decidedly non-scientific basis for his approach to science. That said, his "science" is also... controversial, to say the least, to the point that a journal editor-in-chief relinquished his position after having published a flawed article of his.
All this makes me very skeptical to anything claimed by this personnage, apart from the fact that his findings seem to be demolished by the scientific community he claims to be a part of. His credibility also suffers from his being a creationist who also seeks to deny or invalidate huge areas of well-established science. In short, he comes across as a scientific crook, and you guys come across as pretty desperate for constantly referring to him.
I'm not a climate scientist, but neither am I an automobile engineer, and I still put my faith in those who are everytime I ride a car. I wouldn't, however, trust a car designed by the lone crazy-ass engineer who claims that everyone else is doing it wrong, that brakes in cars are just for wimps, and that God should cater to everyone's braking needs.
You realize that data that is corrupted can be restored just as if it was deleted, right?
Not if the corrupted data seems legit, and has been mixed up with legitimate data over time. Say, sensor data from a processing plant. Your backups would contain the same corrupted data, you can't trust it, nor can you resample it, and it's effectively lost. People might have made bad decisions based on that data, and it can be a huge mess to tidy up. Mr. Smith got his +5 Insightful for a reason.
Probably because most people who frequent Slashdot is perfectly aware of the issues concerning SOPA/PIPA. The Wikipedia protest will reach a different demographic where the level of awareness is much lower.
Well, it is only the English version of Wikipedia. Which means that non-English speakers in the US (Spanish for example) are unaffected, but English speakers outside the US are stuck.
Actually, I use the English version when I'm not looking up stuff specific to Norway, as the articles are more comprehensive. I'll feel this blackout, although I'm capable of using the Spanish wiki as well.
I still think this is a wonderful statement for Wikipedia to make, and I support them fully in doing it.
49 out of 50 times, you're correct. However, this bill started receiving coverage in national news outlets, and not just tech-related ones. Granted, some of what was covered wasn't quite accurate, but at least it was getting some national media coverage on the "this is bad" side of things.
(My emphasis). This is very scary, if true. Even in Norway the largest newspapers publish articles extremely critical to SOPA, this is partly because your draconian corporate-ordered laws will have a direct impact on the rest of the world as well. What's more, US corporations will not step back from abusing the diplomatic system for their own ends, and they will probably employ it to impose similar laws in other countries.
If your general public is not even aware that your politicians is going down this path, you guys need to fucking wake up. The current plutocracy is bad enough for you in the first place, but please don't drag the rest of us down with you. While this setback of SOPA is good, we're not exactly trustful that you guys won't do something similarly crazy in the near future (PIPA, for instance, also seems overly broad).
It seems like the system you describe would lead to more power in elections going to incumbents, because they are already better known than challengers, and to the news media, because they publish their views without it being "advertising".
Any indications of this in Norway? Do incumbents win in a much higher percentage than challengers? Do the candidates that the media favors tend to do much better?
No, at least not due to lack of exposure. It tends to end up that way, but that's more a reflection of the public's continuing opinions. Over a couple of elections we usually have significant change. The media is also a lot more neutral over here. We have around eight parties across the spectrum which are more or less influential, they all get decent exposure in public debates and other fora. We started out with only two, way back when, but new parties which catered to different groups cropped up, and they are *real* alternatives, our government usually consists a coalition of parties. Both major American parties would be considered far right on the spectrum here, btw.
As Eivind said we have no political TV ads, but's that just part of what's good. The government is the major source for parties' campaign funds, private contributions are subject to full disclosure. Besides, any suspicion that a company or group tried to buy laws or decisions, like the insanity you have going on in the United States, would've caused a huge public outcry.
So:
* All parties can get a reasonable exposure. The bigger ones have more resources, but any citizen who is the least bit interested will easily be aware of most parties' stance on the major subjects.
* You can't "force feed" your party line on a particular issue at the public by throwing endless money at TV ads (which, as well as expensive, are also very effective). Other types of ads are allowed, but editorial exposure, positive and negative, has great impact as well. The media generally doesn't take directly part in, or have very staunch positions on, political issues.
* Buying laws is essentially impossible, any party or politician suspected of doing this would fall sharply in public opinion. It would be decried as corruption. Economically supporting a party whose views favour your situation is OK, trying to buy specific advantageous laws by lobbying is not
* Many voters are not necessarily loyal, and will vote for a different party according to a running evaluation of behaviour and stances on issues. Some parties like our Christian Democratic Party have a majority of life-long and loyal voters, but the political picture is generally very fluid. This forces voters to keep informed about current issues in order to make a good decision, and enough voter do so that the parties must continually defend their standpoints.
I'm not in any way an expert on Norwegian politics (and this post ended up rambling a bit more than I intended), anyone who knows more and wants to correct/expound on/ridicule this post is welcome to it:)
True. I'm obviously not a native speaker. I would spell "tyre", because that's what I learned in school. I would probably say "trunk" instead of "boot", because I've read that more often in other settings, and heard it in movies. It makes perfect sense to me:)
The ghostery plug-in also gives a satisfying smackdown to numerous scripty page warts and barnacles-with-ears.
Seconded. It's currently blocking two trackers and three social network plugins (which are probably trackers as well) on Slashdot. It will also block many third-party discussion plugins like Facebook comments under articles at online newspapers, which may or may not be regarded as a benefit according to your view. I personally find that discussions under news articles are seldom constructive. Before some smartass jokes about me reading Slashdot comments, that's a different case entirely:)
That's not a question, it's not like we get to actually choose who to vote for. It's like you coming over to my house for dinner and I offer you your choice of tripe or haggis. Which is the better choice?
Easy choice. Haggis is quite tasty, tripe... not so much. So, haggis:)
Woah... I didn't say or imply that MongoDB is meant to be derogatory, nor do I find it offensive myself. I intended to explain to my parent post why my grandparent (probably) found it offensive. I also noted that I was sure his implication about the name being deliberately offensive was wrong. I sometimes find that some people (grandparent?) really go out of their way to be offended by whichever coincidence, your post might be better suited as a reply to the topmost post in this thread?
The reason why I picked up on it is that most Norwegians recognise the word as derogatory and extremely rude, even though polite society ignores and rightfully looks down upon it (to steal your phrase). As in English, it's a word you'll find in some sociolects, or maybe hear from a schoolyard bully. I found the Urban Dictionary reference by googling the word, I probably should have qualified the link with "in some variants of english" or somesuch, but I was really only looking for an explanation of that particular meaning in English.
Mongo is slang for huge or big. Its like a Blazing Saddles reference to a character named Mongo; whereby it was stated, if you shoot him, you'll just make him mad. Beyond that, I'm not sure what's offensive about it.
Its a "big, bad ass database." What's so offensive?
In my language, and apparently in English as well, "mongo" is a rude slang term for people with Down syndrome. Although I chuckled when I first read about MongoDB it's obvious that those who chose the name didn't know about this. Disclaimer: Neither I nor any sensible person I know would ever use this slur.
Most websites don't store your password, just a hash of it. When you enter the password, it hashes what you just entered then compares the hashes. Reverse engineering the password when you only have the hash isn't trivial.
Yes, that would be smart. In reality, too many sites can mail you your current password on request. They're obviously storing it in plain text unless they brute force the hash for every request. Besides, it only takes one bad apple at one site to get your password. And if a malicious party get your email password with which they can request new ones from everywhere, you're screwed. So, at least use a unique and damn strong password for your online mail.
On a side note acquaintances often use one single password everywhere, which they cherish like it's their long lost son and never change. That's a recipe for disaster. When I point this out they usually thank me by calling me paranoid:)
I'll stick to the traditional method of using third party tools.
Agreed. I unlocked my Desire after having it for three months, and I did a bit of research before doing it. While there were a few steps involved (Unrevoked and then s-off IIRC, each with a concise list of necessary actions), the process was simple and straight forward. They even had an idiot-proof Linux-based bootable iso which did most of the the work for you. The few cases of real brickings I read about involved bad USB cables or people yanking their phones during bootloader flash, which will always end badly no matter what. Even if the process gave me some moments of unrest while my device was unresponsive for far too long it was recoverable with a hard reboot and repeating a few steps.
The features I originally wanted was ability to sync clock by NTP, root-enabled ssh server, and buying paid apps from the market since that was not available in my country by normal means. Some time later I switched to CyanogenMod and never looked back.
About sshd: this is off-topic, but this guy deserves a plug, he helped me out when I couldn't buy from the market: If you need a ssh/scp/sftp-capable server for your phone (works without root if you only need to manipulate userland files), I can heartily recommend quicksshd. Brilliant little app, works over 3G, and the dev was cool enough to mail me an unrestricted apk for sideloading purposes even prior to paying him:)
as might putting it in Earth's orbit, but located on the opposite side of the sun from us.
Nitpick: actually L3 is unstable, and anything placed there would need station-keeping. It might also be visible from Earth due to the Jupiter/Sun barycentre being located above the surface of the Sun.
I found nothing to "just work" with 512M of RAM for a while (I upgraded a while ago).
Once Flash, and Web-browsing were in the mix, it just wasn't enough.
(My ephasis). That's just it, you can usually upgrade ram. I can buy 8GB of ram for my desktop for less than the cost of a tank of gas for my motorcycle. At that point it's just not worth it to skimp on ram. You can upgrade most laptops with very little expenditures as well, even if you don't have an extra slot you can replace the existing modules.
There are of course lots of valid reasons why you can't/won't upgrade by just buying ram (if you have maxed out RAM capacity on an otherwise working computer a new one would set you back quite a bit), but then there are plenty of lightweight alternatives if you just want to get shit done and can live without the bling. You probably wouldn't expect your 512MB machine to run newer games either.
I believe that developers of modern DEs don't spend a lot of time optimising for memory-starved situations. That is completely reasonable as it's a fringe use case nowadays. Again, for the users that find themselves in this bind, you have LXDE and others which offer a lot more bang for the MB without impeding serious use.
Slightly OT, but as many reading this probably care about ebook prices: Try the legal search engine in the open source Calibre. Besides being arguably the best library management software available it's got a comparison search (called Get Books in the toolbar) which is the most comprehensive I've seen. It'll provide hits from a lot of different stores, but you can configure which ones. Or, if you're comfortable with liberating your legally bought books from their DRM shackles, I heard of this guy called Apprentice Alf who can help you, in which case your choice of store and DRM scheme doesn't matter all that much:)
If you're on Linux I recommend the binary install of Calibre as most distros have old-to-archaic versions in their repos.
Seriously, what did people think ticketmaster's business model was?
You would think that it is to provide an optional sales service for convenience that people would choose to pay for, and you'd be wrong. While the email option is convenient, it turns out that they demand exclusive deals with venues, so that you have to pay their "ticket fee" when buying at the door as well. Mind you, ticketmaster has *nothing* to do with door sales except for receiving their racket money (source: a good buddy works at one of these venues), and you don't even get a ticket. Venues still announce cover charge without the fees.
As I see it, if there's no way you can avoid paying the fee even at the doors it's hard to claim that they're tied up to a cost for a service. When I get a goddamn rubber stamp at the entrance in exchange for cash, I don't expect to have to pay a fee to some third party. Ticketmaster don't even do anything to inhibit illegal ticket scalping - which would have been a nice service, and real added value for all concertgoers. If they did I'd be less annoyed with paying their fee.
You know what you're supposed to do when you find a phone, right?
cheekyboy is a dickwad and a thief. But, if you find a phone, don't give it to the police. They will probably do nothing. The two times I've found phones I've texted someone ("Dad") in the contact list, explaining the situation and how the owner can meet me in person. One of the times I even got a very nice finder's fee from the obviously well-off owner. The other one was a crappy phone which belonged to a student, so I declined the offered (nominal) compensation.
Both people were surprised and happy. It cost me very little effort, and I hope that someone will do the same for me if I should ever lose my phone.
Slashdot Mirror
Frequently seeding /dev/urandom with /dev/random is a compromise.
That is interesting, how often is "frequently"? Can you increase randomness significantly by seeding from urandom, say, every 100 reads from random? Does this question even make sense? :)
I tried to google for more details, but my search terms returned a lot of noise.
Planting a flag somewhere has no real legal standing - it doesn't claim the moon for America, any more than the British claimed antartica for getting our flag to the pole first. There really is no reason for it other than national pride.
I agree that it doesn't really matter, but actually Scott and his men lost that race to a Norwegian team led by Roald Amundsen by about a month. Both parties performed great feats of exploration, unfortunately Scott and his team succumbed on the return trip due to unfortunate bad weather combined with some... strange planning on Scott's part.
Oh, you can *claim* it matters... but you'd better have the military to back it up. Land goes to whoever can hold it.
Alternatively, you can claim some real estate that no-one else is crazy enough to want :)
On-topic: If/when the Moon is colonised by multiple nations I'll be surprised if the existing treaties of peace and collaboration are not respected, similarly to the treaties regarding Antarctica. Disregarding the political fallout hostilities would cause for the offending party, it'll be impractical and counter-productive to wage a war on the moon for quite a while yet.
Wow, I only recently started delving into Sci-Fi stories. Never heard of this one but it sounds cool. Thanks for the post! (The most recent one I read is "
Machines That Think: The Best Science Fiction Stories About Robots and Computers" A pretty good collection.)
Have Space Suit—Will Travel is OK, but a bit strange, like many of Heinlein's novels. If you haven't read anything else by him I would rather recommend Starship Troopers or The Moon is a Harsh Mistress for starters.
I haven't read the collection you mention, but I have read about half of the stories therein, most are good ones. While I'm here I can give you some completely unsolicited pointers: Stephen Baxter (Evolution, and Manifold books, which explore fundamental concepts of physics and cosmology), the novels of Iain M. Banks (the "M" is important, it's what he uses for SF works), and Eric Brown (for instance the collection Kéthani), for contemporary works. If you liked the Vinge story his novels are enjoyable as well, although not centered on AI.
For more classical/space opera stuff Asimov's Foundation series is nice, and pretty much all of his short stories come recommended. If you liked The Bicentennial Man you should check out his Robot series (titles on Wikipedia). Arthur C. Clarke has several brilliant classics: 2001 (and the other "year-titled" books), The Fountains of Paradise (explores space elevators) and the Rama series.
Of course those are just favourites of mine, YMMV. It's a daunting amount of SF out there, and a lot of it is crap, but it's immensely rewarding when you find something you really like.
If you or anyone else can recommend other stories based on my recommendations, go ahead :)
Conservatives want to conserve the status quo. If liberty is the status quo then the conservative position is pro-liberty. If communism is the status quo then the conservative position is pro-communism etc, etc.
The US at it's founding was radically pro-liberty, despite not extending that liberty to everyone. So a conservative can be pro-"the liberties we already have" and anti-"the liberties you want that we don't agree with".
As I understand it, conservative politic perspectives in the U.S. are closely tied to fundamentalist religious viewpoints, which in turn leads to mass suggestion and holier-than-thou politicians becoming successful. It's curious to note that while none of your politicians will officially condone pornography, you are still one of the largest producers of porn in the world.
Utah buys a lot of it (I had some difficulties finding a good source due to noise from mormons trying to explain it away). But let's perpetuate the myth that we give a damn about denying gay marriage, because that's what voters want. That's what they chat with their neighbours about, they'll vote according to who is most adamant about those issues because that's what important in a nation. Yours is a strange society.
PS due to a faulty 'm' key i almost wrote "ass suggestion" above. It'd probably have been appropriate in some manner.
Let me stress again that this was not because he was a progressive. But the actions themselves do qualify as being progressive.
To continue your "Hitler-geared-for-war" theme: After WW1 Germany had heavy restrictions on production of hardware for military applications, but Hitler was very clever in constructing a civilian infrastructure which could be used for military purposes as well.
He made the "People's Car" a reality (Volkswagen), a cheap, reliable car which was accessible to a great many Germans who previously couldn't afford a car. This was in order to be able to appropriate the (hopefully) ubiquitus Volkswagens for troop transport in the next war.
He also succeeded in pushing a network of high-quality roads on which to drive those cars, which is still one of the best sets of roads you'll find anywhere in the world. Today they're rated for speeds upwards of 300 km/h, and have no blanket speed limits whatsoever. I've been a passenger in a Mercedes <some powerful sedan model> on those roads at 260 km/h, it was as comfortable as a train. A buddy rode his Honda VFR 750 (top speed 240 km/h) flat out there, and couldn't use the fast lane because of higher speed traffic.
Of course, in addition to gaining the affection of the German people, Hitler's goal was to use those roads for military traffic in the oncoming war.
TL;DR: He did a lot of progressive things for non-progressive reasons, as my parent states.
There are no liberal democrats, only democrats slightly less conservative than the average republican.
According to Norwegian standards, and I believe to the standards of most western social democratic nations, both your dominant parties are *far* right - as in the corporatism aspect of fascism, sprinkled with a very unhealthy dose of religion. Good thing that your insane laws don't apply to us... Oh, wait. Damnit, we're screwed.
It's long past time to face facts: the Earth is getting hotter, and to deny it is an exercise in fantasy.
Nobody is denying that it got like 0.2 degrees hotter in the past 10 years, it's the fact that some people seem to be making the leap between it getting hotter and humans not trading enough carbon credits, now that is an exercise in fantasy.
Roy Spencer seems to be popping up in a lot of denier posts, being one of the few deniers (of man-made gw) among those who should actually have a clue. However, he's also a signatory to this curious statement, which contains such gems as:
We believe Earth and its ecosystems—created by God’s intelligent design and infinite power and sustained by His faithful providence —are robust, resilient, self-regulating, and self-correcting, admirably suited for human flourishing, and displaying His glory. Earth’s climate system is no exception. Recent global warming is one of many natural cycles of warming and cooling in geologic history.
This in itself doesn't invalidate his science, but it does mean that he's cast his lot with a bunch of pretty anti-scientific people, and has a decidedly non-scientific basis for his approach to science. That said, his "science" is also... controversial, to say the least, to the point that a journal editor-in-chief relinquished his position after having published a flawed article of his.
All this makes me very skeptical to anything claimed by this personnage, apart from the fact that his findings seem to be demolished by the scientific community he claims to be a part of. His credibility also suffers from his being a creationist who also seeks to deny or invalidate huge areas of well-established science. In short, he comes across as a scientific crook, and you guys come across as pretty desperate for constantly referring to him.
I'm not a climate scientist, but neither am I an automobile engineer, and I still put my faith in those who are everytime I ride a car. I wouldn't, however, trust a car designed by the lone crazy-ass engineer who claims that everyone else is doing it wrong, that brakes in cars are just for wimps, and that God should cater to everyone's braking needs.
* Man Eating Duck dons asbestos underwear *
You realize that data that is corrupted can be restored just as if it was deleted, right?
Not if the corrupted data seems legit, and has been mixed up with legitimate data over time. Say, sensor data from a processing plant. Your backups would contain the same corrupted data, you can't trust it, nor can you resample it, and it's effectively lost. People might have made bad decisions based on that data, and it can be a huge mess to tidy up. Mr. Smith got his +5 Insightful for a reason.
Joining in on this effort?
Probably because most people who frequent Slashdot is perfectly aware of the issues concerning SOPA/PIPA. The Wikipedia protest will reach a different demographic where the level of awareness is much lower.
Well, it is only the English version of Wikipedia. Which means that non-English speakers in the US (Spanish for example) are unaffected, but English speakers outside the US are stuck.
Actually, I use the English version when I'm not looking up stuff specific to Norway, as the articles are more comprehensive. I'll feel this blackout, although I'm capable of using the Spanish wiki as well.
I still think this is a wonderful statement for Wikipedia to make, and I support them fully in doing it.
Most people still have no idea what SOPA is
49 out of 50 times, you're correct. However, this bill started receiving coverage in national news outlets, and not just tech-related ones. Granted, some of what was covered wasn't quite accurate, but at least it was getting some national media coverage on the "this is bad" side of things.
(My emphasis). This is very scary, if true. Even in Norway the largest newspapers publish articles extremely critical to SOPA, this is partly because your draconian corporate-ordered laws will have a direct impact on the rest of the world as well. What's more, US corporations will not step back from abusing the diplomatic system for their own ends, and they will probably employ it to impose similar laws in other countries.
If your general public is not even aware that your politicians is going down this path, you guys need to fucking wake up. The current plutocracy is bad enough for you in the first place, but please don't drag the rest of us down with you. While this setback of SOPA is good, we're not exactly trustful that you guys won't do something similarly crazy in the near future (PIPA, for instance, also seems overly broad).
this one: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rockall
Rockall is a neat place, I haven't heard of it before. Thanks!
It seems like the system you describe would lead to more power in elections going to incumbents, because they are already better known than challengers, and to the news media, because they publish their views without it being "advertising".
Any indications of this in Norway? Do incumbents win in a much higher percentage than challengers? Do the candidates that the media favors tend to do much better?
No, at least not due to lack of exposure. It tends to end up that way, but that's more a reflection of the public's continuing opinions. Over a couple of elections we usually have significant change. The media is also a lot more neutral over here. We have around eight parties across the spectrum which are more or less influential, they all get decent exposure in public debates and other fora. We started out with only two, way back when, but new parties which catered to different groups cropped up, and they are *real* alternatives, our government usually consists a coalition of parties. Both major American parties would be considered far right on the spectrum here, btw.
As Eivind said we have no political TV ads, but's that just part of what's good. The government is the major source for parties' campaign funds, private contributions are subject to full disclosure. Besides, any suspicion that a company or group tried to buy laws or decisions, like the insanity you have going on in the United States, would've caused a huge public outcry.
So:
* All parties can get a reasonable exposure. The bigger ones have more resources, but any citizen who is the least bit interested will easily be aware of most parties' stance on the major subjects.
* You can't "force feed" your party line on a particular issue at the public by throwing endless money at TV ads (which, as well as expensive, are also very effective). Other types of ads are allowed, but editorial exposure, positive and negative, has great impact as well. The media generally doesn't take directly part in, or have very staunch positions on, political issues.
* Buying laws is essentially impossible, any party or politician suspected of doing this would fall sharply in public opinion. It would be decried as corruption. Economically supporting a party whose views favour your situation is OK, trying to buy specific advantageous laws by lobbying is not
* Many voters are not necessarily loyal, and will vote for a different party according to a running evaluation of behaviour and stances on issues. Some parties like our Christian Democratic Party have a majority of life-long and loyal voters, but the political picture is generally very fluid. This forces voters to keep informed about current issues in order to make a good decision, and enough voter do so that the parties must continually defend their standpoints.
I'm not in any way an expert on Norwegian politics (and this post ended up rambling a bit more than I intended), anyone who knows more and wants to correct/expound on/ridicule this post is welcome to it :)
Welcome to the interwebs, you must be new here.
True. I'm obviously not a native speaker. I would spell "tyre", because that's what I learned in school. I would probably say "trunk" instead of "boot", because I've read that more often in other settings, and heard it in movies. It makes perfect sense to me :)
The ghostery plug-in also gives a satisfying smackdown to numerous scripty page warts and barnacles-with-ears.
Seconded. It's currently blocking two trackers and three social network plugins (which are probably trackers as well) on Slashdot. It will also block many third-party discussion plugins like Facebook comments under articles at online newspapers, which may or may not be regarded as a benefit according to your view. I personally find that discussions under news articles are seldom constructive. Before some smartass jokes about me reading Slashdot comments, that's a different case entirely :)
That's not a question, it's not like we get to actually choose who to vote for. It's like you coming over to my house for dinner and I offer you your choice of tripe or haggis. Which is the better choice?
Easy choice. Haggis is quite tasty, tripe... not so much. So, haggis :)
Woah... I didn't say or imply that MongoDB is meant to be derogatory, nor do I find it offensive myself. I intended to explain to my parent post why my grandparent (probably) found it offensive. I also noted that I was sure his implication about the name being deliberately offensive was wrong. I sometimes find that some people (grandparent?) really go out of their way to be offended by whichever coincidence, your post might be better suited as a reply to the topmost post in this thread?
The reason why I picked up on it is that most Norwegians recognise the word as derogatory and extremely rude, even though polite society ignores and rightfully looks down upon it (to steal your phrase). As in English, it's a word you'll find in some sociolects, or maybe hear from a schoolyard bully. I found the Urban Dictionary reference by googling the word, I probably should have qualified the link with "in some variants of english" or somesuch, but I was really only looking for an explanation of that particular meaning in English.
Peace?
Mongo is slang for huge or big. Its like a Blazing Saddles reference to a character named Mongo; whereby it was stated, if you shoot him, you'll just make him mad. Beyond that, I'm not sure what's offensive about it.
Its a "big, bad ass database." What's so offensive?
In my language, and apparently in English as well, "mongo" is a rude slang term for people with Down syndrome. Although I chuckled when I first read about MongoDB it's obvious that those who chose the name didn't know about this. Disclaimer: Neither I nor any sensible person I know would ever use this slur.
Most websites don't store your password, just a hash of it. When you enter the password, it hashes what you just entered then compares the hashes. Reverse engineering the password when you only have the hash isn't trivial.
Yes, that would be smart. In reality, too many sites can mail you your current password on request. They're obviously storing it in plain text unless they brute force the hash for every request. Besides, it only takes one bad apple at one site to get your password. And if a malicious party get your email password with which they can request new ones from everywhere, you're screwed. So, at least use a unique and damn strong password for your online mail.
On a side note acquaintances often use one single password everywhere, which they cherish like it's their long lost son and never change. That's a recipe for disaster. When I point this out they usually thank me by calling me paranoid :)
I'll stick to the traditional method of using third party tools.
Agreed. I unlocked my Desire after having it for three months, and I did a bit of research before doing it. While there were a few steps involved (Unrevoked and then s-off IIRC, each with a concise list of necessary actions), the process was simple and straight forward. They even had an idiot-proof Linux-based bootable iso which did most of the the work for you. The few cases of real brickings I read about involved bad USB cables or people yanking their phones during bootloader flash, which will always end badly no matter what. Even if the process gave me some moments of unrest while my device was unresponsive for far too long it was recoverable with a hard reboot and repeating a few steps.
The features I originally wanted was ability to sync clock by NTP, root-enabled ssh server, and buying paid apps from the market since that was not available in my country by normal means. Some time later I switched to CyanogenMod and never looked back.
About sshd: this is off-topic, but this guy deserves a plug, he helped me out when I couldn't buy from the market: If you need a ssh/scp/sftp-capable server for your phone (works without root if you only need to manipulate userland files), I can heartily recommend quicksshd. Brilliant little app, works over 3G, and the dev was cool enough to mail me an unrestricted apk for sideloading purposes even prior to paying him :)
as might putting it in Earth's orbit, but located on the opposite side of the sun from us.
Nitpick: actually L3 is unstable, and anything placed there would need station-keeping. It might also be visible from Earth due to the Jupiter/Sun barycentre being located above the surface of the Sun.
I found nothing to "just work" with 512M of RAM for a while (I upgraded a while ago).
Once Flash, and Web-browsing were in the mix, it just wasn't enough.
(My ephasis). That's just it, you can usually upgrade ram. I can buy 8GB of ram for my desktop for less than the cost of a tank of gas for my motorcycle. At that point it's just not worth it to skimp on ram. You can upgrade most laptops with very little expenditures as well, even if you don't have an extra slot you can replace the existing modules.
There are of course lots of valid reasons why you can't/won't upgrade by just buying ram (if you have maxed out RAM capacity on an otherwise working computer a new one would set you back quite a bit), but then there are plenty of lightweight alternatives if you just want to get shit done and can live without the bling. You probably wouldn't expect your 512MB machine to run newer games either.
I believe that developers of modern DEs don't spend a lot of time optimising for memory-starved situations. That is completely reasonable as it's a fringe use case nowadays. Again, for the users that find themselves in this bind, you have LXDE and others which offer a lot more bang for the MB without impeding serious use.
Slightly OT, but as many reading this probably care about ebook prices: Try the legal search engine in the open source Calibre. Besides being arguably the best library management software available it's got a comparison search (called Get Books in the toolbar) which is the most comprehensive I've seen. It'll provide hits from a lot of different stores, but you can configure which ones. Or, if you're comfortable with liberating your legally bought books from their DRM shackles, I heard of this guy called Apprentice Alf who can help you, in which case your choice of store and DRM scheme doesn't matter all that much :)
If you're on Linux I recommend the binary install of Calibre as most distros have old-to-archaic versions in their repos.
Just about exactly what I was going to post.
Seriously, what did people think ticketmaster's business model was?
You would think that it is to provide an optional sales service for convenience that people would choose to pay for, and you'd be wrong. While the email option is convenient, it turns out that they demand exclusive deals with venues, so that you have to pay their "ticket fee" when buying at the door as well. Mind you, ticketmaster has *nothing* to do with door sales except for receiving their racket money (source: a good buddy works at one of these venues), and you don't even get a ticket. Venues still announce cover charge without the fees.
As I see it, if there's no way you can avoid paying the fee even at the doors it's hard to claim that they're tied up to a cost for a service. When I get a goddamn rubber stamp at the entrance in exchange for cash, I don't expect to have to pay a fee to some third party. Ticketmaster don't even do anything to inhibit illegal ticket scalping - which would have been a nice service, and real added value for all concertgoers. If they did I'd be less annoyed with paying their fee.
You know what you're supposed to do when you find a phone, right?
cheekyboy is a dickwad and a thief. But, if you find a phone, don't give it to the police. They will probably do nothing. The two times I've found phones I've texted someone ("Dad") in the contact list, explaining the situation and how the owner can meet me in person. One of the times I even got a very nice finder's fee from the obviously well-off owner. The other one was a crappy phone which belonged to a student, so I declined the offered (nominal) compensation.
Both people were surprised and happy. It cost me very little effort, and I hope that someone will do the same for me if I should ever lose my phone.