This is 100% false. A requirement is something that you must do. Not everyone must do this, therefore it is not a requirement. Internet Explorer users don't have to install Flash, it comes installed "out of the box". Additionally, it comes bundled in Windows XP. In a year's time, this will become a non-issue for any normal Internet user, if it isn't already.
Admittedly, some older and less up to date software requires Flash to be downloaded. But I've never known Slashdot to be the place to stand in the way of progress, nor a place where we consider technical hurdles to be insurmountable.
Jakob Nielsen has always perplexed me. I remember reading Flash: 99% Bad and being totally confused. If Flash is so "bad", why does everyone use it? Slashdot just linked to the flash-enabled iSee project by Applied Autonomy today, and no one complained.
One of Nielsen's famous complaints is that every web site should be compatible with the "Back" button - this is absurd, not even Slashdot is compatible with the Back button. Try posting a comment, hitting Preview, and then hitting back - Slashdot erases the contents of your comment window.
Admittedly, some of his ideas are very good. We DO need a way to deliver rich web content to dialup users, and right now a 100K web page is the wrong way to do that. Some of his other ideas - banning Flash for example - make less sense.
And why the obsession with this "any browser" business. Let's face the facts: some versions of Netscape 4 don't render Style Sheets at ALL. Their miserable failure of an attempt to implement CSS was noble but it just didn't work out. If I publish a browser with the ability to read nothing but the letter "Q", do you need to rewrite slashdot to be compatible with me? Of course, this is an absurd argument, but it cuts directly to the point: it's OK for web sites to prefer browsers that are more standards compliant. Slashdot, for instance, gets over 85% of its' hits from Internet Explorer - for good reason.
Anyway, Nielsen is certainly a vast improvement over "HTML for Dummies" and let's hope he gets past his own reactionism and continues to provide a valuable resource to the Web Design community.
"Industry experts said the suit by ABC owner Walt Disney, CBS owner Viacom and NBC owner General Electric"
Well there it is; their chips are on the table. The same manufacturers who own a controlling stake in Tivo and Microsoft's DVR are using the straw man of "high speed digital piracy" to try to maintain their death grip on the way television is distributed.
The fanatical devotion of these companies is amazing; look at the lengths that Hughes has gone to to shut down all 12 of the DirectTV hackers who are "pirating" the satellite signal that Hughes is shining through their houses. Here we have the same concept, large corporations trying to control what consumers do with the radiation that is being beamed through the walls of private property. It's not just insulting, it's absurd.
And let's look at the players here. Viacom, owner of MTV, the most "liberal" espousing network in existence turns out to be managed by conservative, nearly fascist "intellectual property" zealots. Disney, well, their CEO Michael Eisner - and please don't take this the wrong way - but this is just another example of why money is green. Another jew trying to pick it before it's ripe. And finally General Electric, the pioneer of corporate dominance.
Yes sir, a real winners circle right there. I just hope the consumers get enough of these on the market before the product is destroyed that there will at least be an outcry, like there was with Napster.
Remember that California hasn't passed the UCITA, the law which Maryland and Virginia ratified last year. This makes all consumers subject to all provisions of software licenses, whether they be shrinkwrap licenses or licenses you agree to by visiting a web page. This is, at best, a precedent for the citizens of California. But since California has tried out-of-state citizens (in the DeCSS case), Maryland can just as easily try out-out-state California residents for violating the UCITA.
For clarification, I've attached this flowchart which demonstrates the relationship between the corporations of America (Adobe, Sony, the RIAA, the WTO, etc.) and the people of America. The people are represented at the bottom; the Corporations at the top.
Please, don't keep thinking you can step out of line.
Dear Ed,
It's clear to almost everyone that your lawsuit was nothing but an attempt to set up the RIAA. The RIAA has been nothing if not exceptionally clear about the fact that they never intended nor attempted to suppress anyone's research.
My question is: Why? What was your actual motiviation? Were you just trying to cause a ruckus, or were you attempting to further some political agenda?
Germany's preoccupation with masking some sites via DNS manipulation is diverting Germany and the rest of its' Reich (the European Union) from its' true issue and its' true destiny.
What Europe needs is a speedy socialist search engine supported as a public service by taxing capital. A search engine devoid of advertising will always be faster than any commercial rival, giving the EU a competitive edge over Israel and its American colony (the so-called "United States of America") that can't be beat. The European Union should take all necessary steps to establish a socialized operating system (Linux is already well on its' way) and communications network as well, and subsidize the distribution of nifty new Eurocomputers to all its citizens every year or two. These measures, in combination with the superiority in public health, sanity and morale that already exists, should guarantee European dominance of the global economy and the eventual triumph of benign welfare state rationalism over all the rival crackpot capitalistic supernaturalist militaristic monstrosities which now infest less civilized areas of the world
I think we all know the real problem with this idea of "moon mining": flooding the market with cheap, mechanically produced gemstones, allowing multinationals to reap an absurd profit by selling short. As many of you know, the "moon" is a myth.
It amazes me that so many allegedly "educated" people have fallen so quickly and so hard for a fraudulent fabrication of such laughable proportions. The very idea that a gigantic ball of rock happens to orbit our planet, showing itself in neat, four-week cycles -- with the same side facing us all the time -- is ludicrous. Furthermore, it is an insult to common sense and a damnable affront to intellectual honesty and integrity. That people actually believe it is evidence that the liberals have wrested the last vestiges of control of our public school system from decent, God-fearing Americans (as if any further evidence was needed! Daddy's Roommate? God Almighty!)
Documentaries such as Enemy of the State have accurately portrayed the elaborate, byzantine network of surveillance satellites that the liberals have sent into space to spy on law-abiding Americans. Equipped with technology developed by Handgun Control, Inc., these satellites have the ability to detect firearms from hundreds of kilometers up. That's right, neighbors.. the next time you're out in the backyard exercising your Second Amendment rights, the liberals will see it! These satellites are sensitive enough to tell the difference between a Colt.45 and a.38 Special! And when they detect you with a firearm, their computers cross-reference the address to figure out your name, and then an enormous database housed at Berkeley is updated with information about you.
Of course, this all works fine during the day, but what about at night? Even the liberals can't control the rotation of the Earth to prevent nightfall from setting in (only Joshua was able to ask for that particular favor!) That's where the "moon" comes in. Powered by nuclear reactors, the "moon" is nothing more than an enormous balloon, emitting trillions of candlepower of gun-revealing light. Piloted by key members of the liberal community, the "moon" is strategically moved across the country, pointing out those who dare to make use of their God-given rights at night!
Yes, I know this probably sounds paranoid and preposterous, but consider this. Despite what the revisionist historians tell you, there is no mention of the "moon" anywhere in literature or historical documents -- anywhere -- before 1950. That is when it was initially launched. When President Josef Kennedy, at the State of the Union address, proclaimed "We choose to go to the moon", he may as well have said "We choose to go to the weather balloon." The subsequent faking of a "moon" landing on national TV was the first step in a long history of the erosion of our constitutional rights by leftists in this country. No longer can we hide from our government when the sun goes down.
y T: Sorry, it's a duplicate. The lashing has begun.
Tim, thanks for letting us know that this is a duplicate story. We're still all excited about the improved relay times that this will enable; for a lot of us it means that when we play Quake on Russian servers, someday we'll actually be able to see the rocket that hit us. Kind of like your Slashback feature, this will let us discuss what we've learned about this topic in the last few days.
I think, however, that as far as the lashing goes, that's a little TMI. What you guys do behind closed doors is, really, your own business.
The face of war has changed. We don't fight countries; we fight for the hearts and minds of the world. The most important fight we have right now is the fight to convince the Arab world that our cause is just. And we are losing badly.
The way we can win is not through applying the tried-and-true formula of demonizing our enemies, but through compassion and humanitarian relief. Where we used to drop bombs, we need to rebuild.
Enter the timely release of "Castle Wolfenstein", in which one gun-toting American saves the world by killing everyone. And when I say that we are teaching children to "demonize our enemies", I am being completely literal. That's a screenshot from the game, showing Nazis as inhuman monsters.
Perhaps there was a time and a place for this game. In my opinion, that time was over September 10th. If it had to be released, couldn't it have waited at least until Christmas? Must we celebrate the birth of christ by giving children a game which teaches them to dehumanize their enemies and mow them down?
Enough already. Castle Wolfenstein: good game, wrong time.
Everyone here is all upset because the X-Box runs Windows. Well, guess what. So did the much-beloved Dreamcast. When the Dreamcast came out, I didn't hear anyone moaning and groaning about Microsoft trying to take over the gaming world. What's different this time? So Microsoft is "making" the X-box: so what. That's just outsourced hardware. The Dreamcast ran WinCE and it eventually ran Linux, we can expect the same from the X-box, as well as the upcoming NetBSD port.
Operating system is hardly the most important consideration with regard to the X-Box. All consoles are sold at a loss, so if Microsoft decides to start selling outsourced hardware at a loss that runs Linux, that's pretty much a victory for us right there.
That said I think it's obvious to everyone in the industry that the X-Box is by far and away the most technically advanced console ever built. With nearly five times the polygon fill rate of a PS2 and 5 times the MHz of comparable Sega systems, this thing puts the wimpy PowerMac-wannabe "GameCube" to shame.
Don't let your prejudices blind you. The X-Box is an impressive piece of hardware - once everyone starts using them as Linux web servers you'll stop bitching.
The smallpox virus, with only a few thousand base pairs of DNA, could wipe out nearly half the world's population, 2.5 billion people, if released. And that's a virus that doesn't even have intelligence!
Now we're talking about creating DNA-based computers. Has anyone even stopped to think about this? What happens if someone runs a neural network or similarly advanced artificial intelligence on one of these computers? What happens if one of them becomes even slightly self-aware?
That's right, an intelligent virus; a downright apocalypse. Armageddon. We'd just be food for the next life form.
Honestly, I think these "scientists" would create a bomb to destroy the Universe given the opportunity, just to see if they could do it. There's no reason to mess with the designs of our Creator like this. I'm not condemning all biosciences, just the projects that endanger all of Humanity- Viral Genetic Engineering, Human Cloning, and now Sentient Virii.
Attention! Now that this treaty has been signed into law, keep in mind that it is very important that you never forget your passwords. If you forget your password, and it is required for a terrorist investigation, you can be arrested for failure to disclose your password. Please be extremely careful with all your passwords, never EVER forget them.
Specfically:
- If you have Alzheimers, do not use any computer system that requires a password.
- If you write software, make sure that any time you ask a user to create a password, you inform them that they could be imprisoned for life in a foreign country if they forget it.
- If you have to remember multiple passwords, repeat them to yourself 100 times every night, before you go to sleep.
Please follow these tips to keep everyone safe & free from terrorism!
The absolute best part about this is that you can get two Dreamcasts for $100. Anyone who has ever player VOOT for the Dreamcast knows that there's pretty much no console based multiplayer game that has ever gotten within miles of being as good as this game. With game prices falling, now's the chance to put together a head-to-head system that will still be playable and extremely enjoyable 10 years from now when the console is both dead and obsolete.
Don't believe me? The game is THAT good. I still play Lode Runner, and I'll be playing Virtual On ten years from now.
No, it's the Chinese government's way of life. The people don't exactly have a choice.
The people may not have a choice, but be careful when you say that the Chinese people don't support what the government is doing. There are a billion Chinese people. Telling a Chinese girl that she's "one in a million" is like telling her that there are 1,000 girls that look just like her.
When half a million students go downtown and shout angry slogans and act up, that's one half of one percent of one percent of their population. That's an insignifigant little piece of dirt. And believe it or not, a good majority of that billion people, the truly "Silent Majority" in China, watched those kids get run over by tanks with the same satisfaction we reserve for watching the Klu Klux Klan get pegged with glass bottles on T.V.
China is extremely conservative. That's what happens when your survive the Chinese Cultural Revolution, when young people rose up, took control, killed all the skilled doctors, lawyers and artisans, and ran loose across the countryside committing mass murder. The Chinese people on the whole have had enough radical change for two lifetimes. They are a product of their history, just like us.
A lot of Chinese Americans I know roll their eyes when they hear about the "Concert(s) for Tibetan Freedom". Held in stadiums on the very land from which we marched millions of Native Americans across the Trail of Tears to their death, it seems to them to be at best hypocritical and at worst pure vanity on our part to assume that the Chinese government is so very different from our own.
Be careful throwing stones on behalf of the Chinese. They are a proud and strong culture, they outnumber us, they have seen wars so terrible that our country can only imagine. They have had tiny revolutions that lasted longer than our entire country has been in existence.
I'm not approving the action; I'm saying you should weigh your opinion and your ignorance together carefully first.
The Chinese government did this, to a lesser degree, in July, shutting down 2000 internet cafes. They'll continue to do this, as public anonymous entrance points to the internet are much harder to track and discipline; the user is usually long gone by the time you examine the logs.
There's a great quote from this article:
a Web site published opinions expressed by Communist Party leaders that excoriated the effects of "online heroin" on its masses, particularly on its youth
If the Internet is "online heroin", slashdot is "an online jet-powered crackpipe burning a two ton ball of primo Detriot crack, laced with LSD, PCP, Ecstasy, and some weird shit we've never seen before".
They shouldn't be busting on the new show so much. Sure, it's Americanized, removing every hint of high cuisine and majesty that made the show what it was.
But Shatner will clasp his hands together and deliver crushing two handed blows to the losing chef. So it can't be all bad.
Isn't this just their way of saying they still have no clue how to implement a tax on Internet sales and make it enforcable? The state of Maryland, for example, imposes a %10 use tax on any goods purchased via the Internet or mail order from out of state in order to "level the playing field" with local Maryland businesses. I know quite a few people in Maryland who owe thousands in "use tax", which requires you to police yourself and send it in at the end of the year, because they have never paid it and don't know it exists. The state picks a few hundred people each year to "audit" for use tax, and they usually get hit with so much back use tax fines that they collapse under the financial load and declare personal bankruptcy. Imagine owing 10% on anything you've ever ordered from out of state, for as far back as the state can get ahold of financial records, plus interest and fines. Ya.
If this is how the states are taxing the Internet, you can imagine how well the Feds would do. They're probably looking at the dismal failures of the states and waiting for a successful model to emerge.
The New Yorker's The Demon in the Freezer is mirrored at Cryptome, and is an excellent online read about smallpox; it takes about half an hour. And it is truly disturbing.
If you only read a few parts, read two things:
- the part where Russian scientists warn western observers that "your vaccines won't protect you" against the Soviet's new breed of smallpox.
- the part about insect poxviruses, which turn caterpillars into pure crytstallized virus.
Blech. I hope we have the courage as a nation to go ahead and make the vaccine, in mass quantities, the same way it used to be made. The main objection raised in the article is that "by today's standards" cow puss is an unacceptable vaccine. Hopefully "today's standards" are that life without a vaccine is unacceptable. But that's just my opinion.
That guy on the bus who plays Quake on his notebook computer just got ten times as annoying!
Seriously though, how do you recharge a fuel cell. The howstuffworks article covers hydrogen fuel cells which you recharge by... inserting more hydrogen. They also make water, bad for notebooks. This prototype looks like a sealed system and being billed as a replacement for Li-Ion, which means it's rechargeable and doesn't leak. "Carbon nanotubes" are very cool but there's nearly no mention of an application to new forms of fuel cells in the literature. This press release is great but... where's the science?
I just read the article, and the big unanswered question is: WHAT are you going to mine?
Taylor explained that work should focus on the "unusual economics" of planetary ores, including the relationship of lunar and Martian development to each other.
Unusual economics is a good euphimism for "ungodly expensive", especially in transport costs. Whatever we're mining, it would have to be extremely valuable per ounce, right?
Aggregate will be an important resource on both the Moon and Mars. Here on Earth, it is the most mined material in the United States, at some 2.3 billion tons a year. It is used for roads, concrete, bridges, roofing materials, and glass
Aggregate? Not Iridium, Gold, Plutonium, Scandium, or "rare earth" metals so expensive we haven't even heard of them? AGGREGATE? Rock?
I'm sorry, I don't buy it. Space travel costs are in the billions of dollars per ton right now. A metric ton of aggregate crap... you can mine out of my back yard.
What are your thoughts about threads? Specifically, do you support Linus's "Context of Execution" generality with clone() or are you going to focus more on plain POSIX pthreads compliance?
Any chance of Alan Cox's multi-threaded post-mortem debugging patch which dumps multiple core files for each lightweight process (LWP) making it into the kernel? How about support for post mortem debugging of multithreaded core files in general (right now there is zero support).
Any rants about threading as a general topic would work.
I am fascinated by the parallels between the life of John Harrison and Charles Babbage.
Both men spent their entire lives fighting the British Royal Academy; both worked into their 80s locked in a struggle to create a device deemed "impossible to build". The only difference is that Harrison did succeed in building his device and changing the world; Babbage merely came tantalizingly close. Anyone interested in the story of Babbage should also check out the story of Harrison, told in a very short award winning paperback called Longitude by Dava Sobel.
You don't have to buy it from Amazon - your local library should have it - but the link was convenient.
Unlike HP's excellent and unparalleled line of RPN calculators, perhaps these minicomputers actually do belong on the scapheap. I lost my 48sx in college and I'm brokenhearted that I can't replace it.
this [survey] is backed up by an actual survey by the National Cable and Telecommunications Association.
-Slashback
Goes to show, in a large group of people you can probably find at least some who fit nearly any premise. As always, question the source;)
-Timothy
Well, OK, let's question the source. the National Cable & Telecommmunications Assosciation is "is the principal trade association of the cable television industry in the United States". So basically, they're the RIAA of the cable industry. And they just published a survey that says that consumers are subscribing to broadband in mass quantitites.
Ok, I question the source. This is like Shell Oil publishing a study that concludes that burning gasoline provides valuable fertilizer for wetlands. Why give PR machines free press?
Slashdot Mirror
It requires you to have a Flash plug-in.
This is 100% false. A requirement is something that you must do. Not everyone must do this, therefore it is not a requirement. Internet Explorer users don't have to install Flash, it comes installed "out of the box". Additionally, it comes bundled in Windows XP. In a year's time, this will become a non-issue for any normal Internet user, if it isn't already.
Admittedly, some older and less up to date software requires Flash to be downloaded. But I've never known Slashdot to be the place to stand in the way of progress, nor a place where we consider technical hurdles to be insurmountable.
Jakob Nielsen has always perplexed me. I remember reading Flash: 99% Bad and being totally confused. If Flash is so "bad", why does everyone use it? Slashdot just linked to the flash-enabled iSee project by Applied Autonomy today, and no one complained.
One of Nielsen's famous complaints is that every web site should be compatible with the "Back" button - this is absurd, not even Slashdot is compatible with the Back button. Try posting a comment, hitting Preview, and then hitting back - Slashdot erases the contents of your comment window.
Admittedly, some of his ideas are very good. We DO need a way to deliver rich web content to dialup users, and right now a 100K web page is the wrong way to do that. Some of his other ideas - banning Flash for example - make less sense.
And why the obsession with this "any browser" business. Let's face the facts: some versions of Netscape 4 don't render Style Sheets at ALL. Their miserable failure of an attempt to implement CSS was noble but it just didn't work out. If I publish a browser with the ability to read nothing but the letter "Q", do you need to rewrite slashdot to be compatible with me? Of course, this is an absurd argument, but it cuts directly to the point: it's OK for web sites to prefer browsers that are more standards compliant. Slashdot, for instance, gets over 85% of its' hits from Internet Explorer - for good reason.
Anyway, Nielsen is certainly a vast improvement over "HTML for Dummies" and let's hope he gets past his own reactionism and continues to provide a valuable resource to the Web Design community.
"Industry experts said the suit by ABC owner Walt Disney, CBS owner Viacom and NBC owner General Electric"
Well there it is; their chips are on the table. The same manufacturers who own a controlling stake in Tivo and Microsoft's DVR are using the straw man of "high speed digital piracy" to try to maintain their death grip on the way television is distributed.
The fanatical devotion of these companies is amazing; look at the lengths that Hughes has gone to to shut down all 12 of the DirectTV hackers who are "pirating" the satellite signal that Hughes is shining through their houses. Here we have the same concept, large corporations trying to control what consumers do with the radiation that is being beamed through the walls of private property. It's not just insulting, it's absurd.
And let's look at the players here. Viacom, owner of MTV, the most "liberal" espousing network in existence turns out to be managed by conservative, nearly fascist "intellectual property" zealots. Disney, well, their CEO Michael Eisner - and please don't take this the wrong way - but this is just another example of why money is green. Another jew trying to pick it before it's ripe. And finally General Electric, the pioneer of corporate dominance.
Yes sir, a real winners circle right there. I just hope the consumers get enough of these on the market before the product is destroyed that there will at least be an outcry, like there was with Napster.
Remember that California hasn't passed the UCITA, the law which Maryland and Virginia ratified last year. This makes all consumers subject to all provisions of software licenses, whether they be shrinkwrap licenses or licenses you agree to by visiting a web page. This is, at best, a precedent for the citizens of California. But since California has tried out-of-state citizens (in the DeCSS case), Maryland can just as easily try out-out-state California residents for violating the UCITA.
For clarification, I've attached this flowchart which demonstrates the relationship between the corporations of America (Adobe, Sony, the RIAA, the WTO, etc.) and the people of America. The people are represented at the bottom; the Corporations at the top.
Please, don't keep thinking you can step out of line.
Dear Ed,
It's clear to almost everyone that your lawsuit was nothing but an attempt to set up the RIAA. The RIAA has been nothing if not exceptionally clear about the fact that they never intended nor attempted to suppress anyone's research.
My question is: Why? What was your actual motiviation? Were you just trying to cause a ruckus, or were you attempting to further some political agenda?
Germany's preoccupation with masking some sites via DNS manipulation is diverting Germany and the rest of its' Reich (the European Union) from its' true issue and its' true destiny.
What Europe needs is a speedy socialist search engine supported as a public service by taxing capital. A search engine devoid of advertising will always be faster than any commercial rival, giving the EU a competitive edge over Israel and its American colony (the so-called "United States of America") that can't be beat. The European Union should take all necessary steps to establish a socialized operating system (Linux is already well on its' way) and communications network as well, and subsidize the distribution of nifty new Eurocomputers to all its citizens every year or two. These measures, in combination with the superiority in public health, sanity and morale that already exists, should guarantee European dominance of the global economy and the eventual triumph of benign welfare state rationalism over all the rival crackpot capitalistic supernaturalist militaristic monstrosities which now infest less civilized areas of the world
It amazes me that so many allegedly "educated" people have fallen so quickly and so hard for a fraudulent fabrication of such laughable proportions. The very idea that a gigantic ball of rock happens to orbit our planet, showing itself in neat, four-week cycles -- with the same side facing us all the time -- is ludicrous. Furthermore, it is an insult to common sense and a damnable affront to intellectual honesty and integrity. That people actually believe it is evidence that the liberals have wrested the last vestiges of control of our public school system from decent, God-fearing Americans (as if any further evidence was needed! Daddy's Roommate? God Almighty!)
Documentaries such as Enemy of the State have accurately portrayed the elaborate, byzantine network of surveillance satellites that the liberals have sent into space to spy on law-abiding Americans. Equipped with technology developed by Handgun Control, Inc., these satellites have the ability to detect firearms from hundreds of kilometers up. That's right, neighbors .. the next time you're out in the backyard exercising your Second Amendment rights, the liberals will see it! These satellites are sensitive enough to tell the difference between a Colt .45 and a .38 Special! And when they detect you with a firearm, their computers cross-reference the address to figure out your name, and then an enormous database housed at Berkeley is updated with information about you.
Of course, this all works fine during the day, but what about at night? Even the liberals can't control the rotation of the Earth to prevent nightfall from setting in (only Joshua was able to ask for that particular favor!) That's where the "moon" comes in. Powered by nuclear reactors, the "moon" is nothing more than an enormous balloon, emitting trillions of candlepower of gun-revealing light. Piloted by key members of the liberal community, the "moon" is strategically moved across the country, pointing out those who dare to make use of their God-given rights at night!
Yes, I know this probably sounds paranoid and preposterous, but consider this. Despite what the revisionist historians tell you, there is no mention of the "moon" anywhere in literature or historical documents -- anywhere -- before 1950. That is when it was initially launched. When President Josef Kennedy, at the State of the Union address, proclaimed "We choose to go to the moon", he may as well have said "We choose to go to the weather balloon." The subsequent faking of a "moon" landing on national TV was the first step in a long history of the erosion of our constitutional rights by leftists in this country. No longer can we hide from our government when the sun goes down.
y T: Sorry, it's a duplicate. The lashing has begun.
Tim, thanks for letting us know that this is a duplicate story. We're still all excited about the improved relay times that this will enable; for a lot of us it means that when we play Quake on Russian servers, someday we'll actually be able to see the rocket that hit us. Kind of like your Slashback feature, this will let us discuss what we've learned about this topic in the last few days.
I think, however, that as far as the lashing goes, that's a little TMI. What you guys do behind closed doors is, really, your own business.
Isn't this exactly what we don't need right now?
The face of war has changed. We don't fight countries; we fight for the hearts and minds of the world. The most important fight we have right now is the fight to convince the Arab world that our cause is just. And we are losing badly.
The way we can win is not through applying the tried-and-true formula of demonizing our enemies, but through compassion and humanitarian relief. Where we used to drop bombs, we need to rebuild.
Enter the timely release of "Castle Wolfenstein", in which one gun-toting American saves the world by killing everyone. And when I say that we are teaching children to "demonize our enemies", I am being completely literal. That's a screenshot from the game, showing Nazis as inhuman monsters.
Perhaps there was a time and a place for this game. In my opinion, that time was over September 10th. If it had to be released, couldn't it have waited at least until Christmas? Must we celebrate the birth of christ by giving children a game which teaches them to dehumanize their enemies and mow them down?
Enough already. Castle Wolfenstein: good game, wrong time.
Everyone here is all upset because the X-Box runs Windows. Well, guess what. So did the much-beloved Dreamcast. When the Dreamcast came out, I didn't hear anyone moaning and groaning about Microsoft trying to take over the gaming world. What's different this time? So Microsoft is "making" the X-box: so what. That's just outsourced hardware. The Dreamcast ran WinCE and it eventually ran Linux, we can expect the same from the X-box, as well as the upcoming NetBSD port.
Operating system is hardly the most important consideration with regard to the X-Box. All consoles are sold at a loss, so if Microsoft decides to start selling outsourced hardware at a loss that runs Linux, that's pretty much a victory for us right there.
That said I think it's obvious to everyone in the industry that the X-Box is by far and away the most technically advanced console ever built. With nearly five times the polygon fill rate of a PS2 and 5 times the MHz of comparable Sega systems, this thing puts the wimpy PowerMac-wannabe "GameCube" to shame.
Don't let your prejudices blind you. The X-Box is an impressive piece of hardware - once everyone starts using them as Linux web servers you'll stop bitching.
The smallpox virus, with only a few thousand base pairs of DNA, could wipe out nearly half the world's population, 2.5 billion people, if released. And that's a virus that doesn't even have intelligence!
Now we're talking about creating DNA-based computers. Has anyone even stopped to think about this? What happens if someone runs a neural network or similarly advanced artificial intelligence on one of these computers? What happens if one of them becomes even slightly self-aware?
That's right, an intelligent virus; a downright apocalypse. Armageddon. We'd just be food for the next life form.
Honestly, I think these "scientists" would create a bomb to destroy the Universe given the opportunity, just to see if they could do it. There's no reason to mess with the designs of our Creator like this. I'm not condemning all biosciences, just the projects that endanger all of Humanity- Viral Genetic Engineering, Human Cloning, and now Sentient Virii.
I don't even know why I read the news anymore.
Attention! Now that this treaty has been signed into law, keep in mind that it is very important that you never forget your passwords. If you forget your password, and it is required for a terrorist investigation, you can be arrested for failure to disclose your password. Please be extremely careful with all your passwords, never EVER forget them.
Specfically:
- If you have Alzheimers, do not use any computer system that requires a password.
- If you write software, make sure that any time you ask a user to create a password, you inform them that they could be imprisoned for life in a foreign country if they forget it.
- If you have to remember multiple passwords, repeat them to yourself 100 times every night, before you go to sleep.
Please follow these tips to keep everyone safe & free from terrorism!
The absolute best part about this is that you can get two Dreamcasts for $100. Anyone who has ever player VOOT for the Dreamcast knows that there's pretty much no console based multiplayer game that has ever gotten within miles of being as good as this game. With game prices falling, now's the chance to put together a head-to-head system that will still be playable and extremely enjoyable 10 years from now when the console is both dead and obsolete.
Don't believe me? The game is THAT good. I still play Lode Runner, and I'll be playing Virtual On ten years from now.
No, it's the Chinese government's way of life. The people don't exactly have a choice.
The people may not have a choice, but be careful when you say that the Chinese people don't support what the government is doing. There are a billion Chinese people. Telling a Chinese girl that she's "one in a million" is like telling her that there are 1,000 girls that look just like her.
When half a million students go downtown and shout angry slogans and act up, that's one half of one percent of one percent of their population. That's an insignifigant little piece of dirt. And believe it or not, a good majority of that billion people, the truly "Silent Majority" in China, watched those kids get run over by tanks with the same satisfaction we reserve for watching the Klu Klux Klan get pegged with glass bottles on T.V.
China is extremely conservative. That's what happens when your survive the Chinese Cultural Revolution, when young people rose up, took control, killed all the skilled doctors, lawyers and artisans, and ran loose across the countryside committing mass murder. The Chinese people on the whole have had enough radical change for two lifetimes. They are a product of their history, just like us.
A lot of Chinese Americans I know roll their eyes when they hear about the "Concert(s) for Tibetan Freedom". Held in stadiums on the very land from which we marched millions of Native Americans across the Trail of Tears to their death, it seems to them to be at best hypocritical and at worst pure vanity on our part to assume that the Chinese government is so very different from our own.
Be careful throwing stones on behalf of the Chinese. They are a proud and strong culture, they outnumber us, they have seen wars so terrible that our country can only imagine. They have had tiny revolutions that lasted longer than our entire country has been in existence.
I'm not approving the action; I'm saying you should weigh your opinion and your ignorance together carefully first.
The Chinese government did this, to a lesser degree, in July, shutting down 2000 internet cafes. They'll continue to do this, as public anonymous entrance points to the internet are much harder to track and discipline; the user is usually long gone by the time you examine the logs.
There's a great quote from this article:
a Web site published opinions expressed by Communist Party leaders that excoriated the effects of "online heroin" on its masses, particularly on its youth
If the Internet is "online heroin", slashdot is "an online jet-powered crackpipe burning a two ton ball of primo Detriot crack, laced with LSD, PCP, Ecstasy, and some weird shit we've never seen before".
Taking a look at Gridcomputing, it's pretty clear to see that Grid Computing is actually... Distributed Computing. There's no new concept here - so why the new name? It doesn't make sense until you read the sound bite: "I believe grid computing will revolutionize the way we compute".
Yes, if you can't invent an idea, rename it, and maybe you'll get some credit. What the hell, it's worked before.
Oh well. More power to them. It looks like a great opportunity for the world to learn that Linux is a powerful tool.
They shouldn't be busting on the new show so much. Sure, it's Americanized, removing every hint of high cuisine and majesty that made the show what it was.
But Shatner will clasp his hands together and deliver crushing two handed blows to the losing chef. So it can't be all bad.
Right?
Isn't this just their way of saying they still have no clue how to implement a tax on Internet sales and make it enforcable? The state of Maryland, for example, imposes a %10 use tax on any goods purchased via the Internet or mail order from out of state in order to "level the playing field" with local Maryland businesses. I know quite a few people in Maryland who owe thousands in "use tax", which requires you to police yourself and send it in at the end of the year, because they have never paid it and don't know it exists. The state picks a few hundred people each year to "audit" for use tax, and they usually get hit with so much back use tax fines that they collapse under the financial load and declare personal bankruptcy. Imagine owing 10% on anything you've ever ordered from out of state, for as far back as the state can get ahold of financial records, plus interest and fines. Ya.
If this is how the states are taxing the Internet, you can imagine how well the Feds would do. They're probably looking at the dismal failures of the states and waiting for a successful model to emerge.
The New Yorker's The Demon in the Freezer is mirrored at Cryptome, and is an excellent online read about smallpox; it takes about half an hour. And it is truly disturbing.
If you only read a few parts, read two things:
- the part where Russian scientists warn western observers that "your vaccines won't protect you" against the Soviet's new breed of smallpox.
- the part about insect poxviruses, which turn caterpillars into pure crytstallized virus.
Blech. I hope we have the courage as a nation to go ahead and make the vaccine, in mass quantities, the same way it used to be made. The main objection raised in the article is that "by today's standards" cow puss is an unacceptable vaccine. Hopefully "today's standards" are that life without a vaccine is unacceptable. But that's just my opinion.
That guy on the bus who plays Quake on his notebook computer just got ten times as annoying!
Seriously though, how do you recharge a fuel cell. The howstuffworks article covers hydrogen fuel cells which you recharge by... inserting more hydrogen. They also make water, bad for notebooks. This prototype looks like a sealed system and being billed as a replacement for Li-Ion, which means it's rechargeable and doesn't leak. "Carbon nanotubes" are very cool but there's nearly no mention of an application to new forms of fuel cells in the literature. This press release is great but... where's the science?
Just curious.
I just read the article, and the big unanswered question is: WHAT are you going to mine?
Taylor explained that work should focus on the "unusual economics" of planetary ores, including the relationship of lunar and Martian development to each other.
Unusual economics is a good euphimism for "ungodly expensive", especially in transport costs. Whatever we're mining, it would have to be extremely valuable per ounce, right?
Aggregate will be an important resource on both the Moon and Mars. Here on Earth, it is the most mined material in the United States, at some 2.3 billion tons a year. It is used for roads, concrete, bridges, roofing materials, and glass
Aggregate? Not Iridium, Gold, Plutonium, Scandium, or "rare earth" metals so expensive we haven't even heard of them? AGGREGATE? Rock?
I'm sorry, I don't buy it. Space travel costs are in the billions of dollars per ton right now. A metric ton of aggregate crap... you can mine out of my back yard.
I must be missing something.
What are your thoughts about threads? Specifically, do you support Linus's "Context of Execution" generality with clone() or are you going to focus more on plain POSIX pthreads compliance?
Any chance of Alan Cox's multi-threaded post-mortem debugging patch which dumps multiple core files for each lightweight process (LWP) making it into the kernel? How about support for post mortem debugging of multithreaded core files in general (right now there is zero support).
Any rants about threading as a general topic would work.
I am fascinated by the parallels between the life of John Harrison and Charles Babbage.
Both men spent their entire lives fighting the British Royal Academy; both worked into their 80s locked in a struggle to create a device deemed "impossible to build". The only difference is that Harrison did succeed in building his device and changing the world; Babbage merely came tantalizingly close. Anyone interested in the story of Babbage should also check out the story of Harrison, told in a very short award winning paperback called Longitude by Dava Sobel.
You don't have to buy it from Amazon - your local library should have it - but the link was convenient.
HP3000's look like this.
Unlike HP's excellent and unparalleled line of RPN calculators, perhaps these minicomputers actually do belong on the scapheap. I lost my 48sx in college and I'm brokenhearted that I can't replace it.
this [survey] is backed up by an actual survey by the National Cable and Telecommunications Association.
;)
-Slashback
Goes to show, in a large group of people you can probably find at least some who fit nearly any premise. As always, question the source
-Timothy
Well, OK, let's question the source. the National Cable & Telecommmunications Assosciation is "is the principal trade association of the cable television industry in the United States". So basically, they're the RIAA of the cable industry. And they just published a survey that says that consumers are subscribing to broadband in mass quantitites.
Ok, I question the source. This is like Shell Oil publishing a study that concludes that burning gasoline provides valuable fertilizer for wetlands. Why give PR machines free press?