My guess is that some enterprising RFID Entrepeneur got into the Old Boys Network and landed some massive contract. Here in Missouri we have s imilar situation - Within just a few months of the state mandating increased ethanol in all gasoline, the governor's brother was found to have invested a substantial amount of money in ethanol (Matt Blunt is governor if your curious, see here for info on the ethanol scandal). Their orwellian response was simply to state that "there is no conflict of interest here."
It would be nice to know who got the contract, what city they live in and what relationships they have with government.
I'd really like to see a peer-to-peer social networking site. Maybe you would broadcast a tarball of your page to your 1st-level friends or something? That would eliminate some of the problems with spam, security, and privacy. And then we don't have to worry about ads (or Rupert Murdoch for that matter) It would definitely be an interesting experiment.
Are you kidding? As soon as it supports the major Windows Apps without crashing, I'm switching. I'm still running Windows 2000 and I cringe at the thought of upgrading to XP, and Vista sounds even worse!
Priority #1 for Open Source Games: Make it easy to edit! I've tried to edit CrystalSpace, and it is a massive pain in the ass. If you make decent open source game engine that is easy to edit, the levels / adventures will show up eventually. Notice that there are quite a few different texture sets for Wargus/Freecraft - this is because all you have to do is edit the images! If you know of OSS games that are easy to edit, I'd love to hear about them.
Yes, there were witnesses, and they supported my story. In fact it was witnesses who were able to get his license plate for me. The guy confessed after he was arrested. Why would I post about something like this on Slashdot if I were in the wrong? Obviously you failed to comprehend the part where I clearly stated "I didn't". In that case I'll restate for clarity: "I didn't".
talk about what's really at issue, which is brand new, current, and popular music and movies?
We no longer need copyright to encourage people to create new music. There are almost ZERO barriers to entry when it comes to making a musical recording. 50 years ago, you needed an expensive studio, you had to pay people to work the equipment, etc. Now you just need an el cheapo computer and a cheap microphone from Radio Shack. Want some proof? How about the 2 million+ bands on myspace? Or how about searching google for some free music? You probably can't find any CreativeCommons music out there...
So we have the "brand new", "current" thing covered, but what about popular? Well if you define popular as "what's playing on commercial radio because of marketing budgets", then you're right - that is definitely in jeopardy. But if you define popularity as what people actually listen to, because they actually like it - I am 100% confident that there is enough free, decently-produced, well-written music out there to keep you busy for a very very long time.
But what about video you ask? Well video is just starting to boom with Google Video and YouTube and all the other new sites. But the fact remains: Copyright is no longer necessary as an incentive for musicians. That argument just doesn't hold water. And video is following quickly.
My company actually just started moving to virtual servers, and I'd love to hear more detailed arguments against running mission-critical stuff on virtual servers (this is the first negative i've heard!). Although you make some interesting points, you don't really mention any facts or make any real arguments - I'd love to hear someone elaborate on the negatives of virtualization.
Anyone know the URL that this phones home to? Why can't you just block it at the gateway? (apparently this bypasses the hosts file) I haven't been able to find the phone-home URL anywhere, and I'm not uber-cool enough to decipher all those packets using ethereal! (I tried running ethereal for 10 minutes, then searched for microsoft, but all i got was a bunch of WebDAV matches).
What would happen if people just started sharing lots of Windows CD-Keys? I mean, what if all the legitimate CD Keys were labeled as pirated? why wouldn't people start publishing CD Keys now to prevent this crap - if you own a copy of XP, and someone else is using your CD Key, Microsoft shouldn't be able to disable your machine. In fact I think if this happened to some large corporations the IT managers would probably insist that Microsoft remove the WGA functionality ASAP.
Add to this an always-on, all-sides video camera to document that it was the minivan that strayed into your lane, and it'll be even better.
I want a camera pointing out the driver side window so I can record all the inapproproate behavior that cops exhibit. Like the Picture of Eyes from yesterday, a little red light on a camera would probably go a long way towards making cops do the right thing (and say the right thing too!).
If you're wondering how I can be so anti-police, I recently got assaulted because some nutcase thought that I cut in line in front of him (I didn't - in fact I offered to let him go ahead of me). When the cops arrived, I explained what happened and the cop's reply was "Well, if you fuck somebody, you're gonna get fucked". American police are incredibly unprofessional, rude, racist, sexist, and of course there's the occasional beating too - the more cameras we have pointing at them (not us!) the better off we'll be.
While we're talking about media players, can somebody recommend a lightweight, open source media player for me? I'd really like to find one that has nice visualizations, FLAC support, support for streaming radio, and a decent id3 tag editor.
I'm still using winamp 2.72 because I've never found anything that compares (although Snackamp is pretty slick for dealing with my 20,000 song mp3 collection).
In the 1980's, my mother taught an aerobics class for senior citizens. she would get 5-10 students in a class. she made her own tapes by copying the ones that she checked out at the library. after a few years of doing this, she finally got a cease & desist order from one of these songwriters groups. they ordered her to stop playing the songs in front in 10 senior citizens! what a bunch of douchebags. the songwriters groups, that is - not the senior citizens.
This is really exciting but the prospect of swarms of any kind of robot is a bit scary - hopefully designers will build in a simple, easily exploitable flaw so that an out-of-control swarm could be easily deactivated.
taking a grand from SCO doesn't have to cost you your integrity. there's no commit to do any development is there? just go through the training. sleep through it even! or is there some fine print that i missed?
agreed. if this were simply a professional affair - everyday business - it would be considered unprofessional. but in this case the guy might have been quite insulted!
I agree with what you're saying - and I think the first thing that we as a culture need to do is accept that substances can be used to our advantage - for both practical and recreational purposes. And our use of substances is going to become more and more prevalent with time - they are simply too powerful, too useful not to take advantage of them.
Once we agree that substances can be used in a positive way - and that they are almost necessary in modern society - we need to take rational steps to try to curb usage without using force. Right now we punish punish people for becoming addicted to substances that almost necessarily invoke addiction - even while our mass media culture constantly promotes images of beer, weight loss drugs, purple pills, sedatives, pain relievers, and antidepressants. How can we punish people for using one substance when we are constantly bombarded with imagery promoting substance use as positive?
Even worse, our police spend millions of dollars on worthless programs like D.A.R.E. - with almost no hope of success - and which have tragically ended in some children ratting out their parents for smoking pot (didn't we hate the Russians for that kind of behavior during the cold war?). We desperately need rational policies towards drugs - both recreational and practical - to end the terrible hipocrisy that's going on in our country.
Someone needs to write a virus that looks exactly like the Microsoft Genuine dialogs - that would make it tough for Microsoft to pull this sort of thing off...
"it is unreasonable to alter terms and conditions after a song has been sold."
Wow - we Americans are so used to unreasonable contracts, bullshit fine print and the like that it is absolutely amazing to see this kind of language used in defense of consumers. If we had laws like this here in the states it would be devastating to the economy - because our entire economy is based on these kinds of unreasonable contracts. Imagine what would happen if our government actually defended us against corporate malfeasance and greed!
I've had probably more than 40 crashes since the update a few days ago. Just downloaded 1.5.0.3, will be reinstalling immediately. I just don't have the time to sit around troubleshooting this sort of thing.
I hope you people all understand that books, magazines, and newspapers are just as dangerous - anyone can publish private information using these technologies!
Come on, this is absurd. If anything this article underscores the need for privacy laws - but the privacy implications of the semantic web are hardly any more significant than any other publishing method.
while this is a lovely story, i shudder to think about what will happen when government corruption and corporate malfeasance have access to thousands of these kinds of robots. the failsafe is that most current robots are controlled by humans. what happens when a disgruntled employee has access to control mechanisms? what happens when military robots, funded by enormous global megacorporations, fall into the wrong hands? how will we human sdefend ourselves? i know it sounds very "tinfoil hat" right now, but we are witnessing the beginning of some very scary shit right now with all the NSA, CIA, Guantanamo Bay, Iraq/Afghanistan, video medical diagnosis, duke cunningham, torture-is-ok-if-they're-terrorists politics that we've seen lately. adding in such a powerful level of automation has some very uncool ramifications that we need to stop pre-emptively.
...google, not yahoo, not cnn, not msnbc, not flickr, not myspace, not even our sacred slashdot...
The sites listed have high search-engine results not because of standard SEO tactics, but because they have a broad userbase, good marketing, and solid reputations. Myspace could put every piece of text in 5 nested tables surrounded by every deprecated tag they could find and still have great search engine results.
On the other hand, if a new site conforms to an existing standard, chances are that any robot will have an easier time parsing through the site, an easier time figuring out the relationships between pieces of information, etc. No this has not been proven yet as far as I know.
As far as improved usability, a really well-coded site that conforms to modern standards can be easily modified by user stylesheets (more easily than an old-style webpage that mixes style & content). So yes, building a webpage to the standard is quite likely to have usability benefits. Even if nobody takes advantage of this capability, the benefits still exist.
The point that so many standards zealots are trying to get at here is that when the majority of websites are built properly using stylesheets for design & layout, tools to modify those websites will probably become more common. Imagine having a single stylesheet that you could apply to *all* the websites that you visit! This would have enormous benefit to users with disabilities. Even a mild disability like poor eyesight could be helped enormously by the ability to apply larger font sizes across all the sites you visit.
I would sign up, but I run my own email server and haven't given out a real email address in years (I use aliases to forward all my email to the real account). I haven't seen SPAM in 2 or 3 years.
Slashdot Mirror
Are there any good Xen tutorials out there for amateurs? I'd love to play with it but it seems like it's over my head.
My guess is that some enterprising RFID Entrepeneur got into the Old Boys Network and landed some massive contract. Here in Missouri we have s imilar situation - Within just a few months of the state mandating increased ethanol in all gasoline, the governor's brother was found to have invested a substantial amount of money in ethanol (Matt Blunt is governor if your curious, see here for info on the ethanol scandal). Their orwellian response was simply to state that "there is no conflict of interest here."
It would be nice to know who got the contract, what city they live in and what relationships they have with government.
I'd really like to see a peer-to-peer social networking site. Maybe you would broadcast a tarball of your page to your 1st-level friends or something? That would eliminate some of the problems with spam, security, and privacy. And then we don't have to worry about ads (or Rupert Murdoch for that matter) It would definitely be an interesting experiment.
Are you kidding? As soon as it supports the major Windows Apps without crashing, I'm switching. I'm still running Windows 2000 and I cringe at the thought of upgrading to XP, and Vista sounds even worse!
Priority #1 for Open Source Games: Make it easy to edit! I've tried to edit CrystalSpace, and it is a massive pain in the ass. If you make decent open source game engine that is easy to edit, the levels / adventures will show up eventually. Notice that there are quite a few different texture sets for Wargus/Freecraft - this is because all you have to do is edit the images! If you know of OSS games that are easy to edit, I'd love to hear about them.
Yes, there were witnesses, and they supported my story. In fact it was witnesses who were able to get his license plate for me. The guy confessed after he was arrested. Why would I post about something like this on Slashdot if I were in the wrong? Obviously you failed to comprehend the part where I clearly stated "I didn't". In that case I'll restate for clarity: "I didn't".
So we have the "brand new", "current" thing covered, but what about popular? Well if you define popular as "what's playing on commercial radio because of marketing budgets", then you're right - that is definitely in jeopardy. But if you define popularity as what people actually listen to, because they actually like it - I am 100% confident that there is enough free, decently-produced, well-written music out there to keep you busy for a very very long time.
But what about video you ask? Well video is just starting to boom with Google Video and YouTube and all the other new sites. But the fact remains: Copyright is no longer necessary as an incentive for musicians. That argument just doesn't hold water. And video is following quickly.
My company actually just started moving to virtual servers, and I'd love to hear more detailed arguments against running mission-critical stuff on virtual servers (this is the first negative i've heard!). Although you make some interesting points, you don't really mention any facts or make any real arguments - I'd love to hear someone elaborate on the negatives of virtualization.
Anyone know the URL that this phones home to? Why can't you just block it at the gateway? (apparently this bypasses the hosts file) I haven't been able to find the phone-home URL anywhere, and I'm not uber-cool enough to decipher all those packets using ethereal! (I tried running ethereal for 10 minutes, then searched for microsoft, but all i got was a bunch of WebDAV matches).
What would happen if people just started sharing lots of Windows CD-Keys? I mean, what if all the legitimate CD Keys were labeled as pirated? why wouldn't people start publishing CD Keys now to prevent this crap - if you own a copy of XP, and someone else is using your CD Key, Microsoft shouldn't be able to disable your machine. In fact I think if this happened to some large corporations the IT managers would probably insist that Microsoft remove the WGA functionality ASAP.
If you're wondering how I can be so anti-police, I recently got assaulted because some nutcase thought that I cut in line in front of him (I didn't - in fact I offered to let him go ahead of me). When the cops arrived, I explained what happened and the cop's reply was "Well, if you fuck somebody, you're gonna get fucked". American police are incredibly unprofessional, rude, racist, sexist, and of course there's the occasional beating too - the more cameras we have pointing at them (not us!) the better off we'll be.
While we're talking about media players, can somebody recommend a lightweight, open source media player for me? I'd really like to find one that has nice visualizations, FLAC support, support for streaming radio, and a decent id3 tag editor.
I'm still using winamp 2.72 because I've never found anything that compares (although Snackamp is pretty slick for dealing with my 20,000 song mp3 collection).
In the 1980's, my mother taught an aerobics class for senior citizens. she would get 5-10 students in a class. she made her own tapes by copying the ones that she checked out at the library. after a few years of doing this, she finally got a cease & desist order from one of these songwriters groups. they ordered her to stop playing the songs in front in 10 senior citizens! what a bunch of douchebags. the songwriters groups, that is - not the senior citizens.
This is really exciting but the prospect of swarms of any kind of robot is a bit scary - hopefully designers will build in a simple, easily exploitable flaw so that an out-of-control swarm could be easily deactivated.
taking a grand from SCO doesn't have to cost you your integrity. there's no commit to do any development is there? just go through the training. sleep through it even! or is there some fine print that i missed?
http://www.anothersky.org.nyud.net:8090/
agreed. if this were simply a professional affair - everyday business - it would be considered unprofessional. but in this case the guy might have been quite insulted!
I agree with what you're saying - and I think the first thing that we as a culture need to do is accept that substances can be used to our advantage - for both practical and recreational purposes. And our use of substances is going to become more and more prevalent with time - they are simply too powerful, too useful not to take advantage of them.
Once we agree that substances can be used in a positive way - and that they are almost necessary in modern society - we need to take rational steps to try to curb usage without using force. Right now we punish punish people for becoming addicted to substances that almost necessarily invoke addiction - even while our mass media culture constantly promotes images of beer, weight loss drugs, purple pills, sedatives, pain relievers, and antidepressants. How can we punish people for using one substance when we are constantly bombarded with imagery promoting substance use as positive?
Even worse, our police spend millions of dollars on worthless programs like D.A.R.E. - with almost no hope of success - and which have tragically ended in some children ratting out their parents for smoking pot (didn't we hate the Russians for that kind of behavior during the cold war?). We desperately need rational policies towards drugs - both recreational and practical - to end the terrible hipocrisy that's going on in our country.
Someone needs to write a virus that looks exactly like the Microsoft Genuine dialogs - that would make it tough for Microsoft to pull this sort of thing off...
"it is unreasonable to alter terms and conditions after a song has been sold." Wow - we Americans are so used to unreasonable contracts, bullshit fine print and the like that it is absolutely amazing to see this kind of language used in defense of consumers. If we had laws like this here in the states it would be devastating to the economy - because our entire economy is based on these kinds of unreasonable contracts. Imagine what would happen if our government actually defended us against corporate malfeasance and greed!
I've had probably more than 40 crashes since the update a few days ago. Just downloaded 1.5.0.3, will be reinstalling immediately. I just don't have the time to sit around troubleshooting this sort of thing.
I hope you people all understand that books, magazines, and newspapers are just as dangerous - anyone can publish private information using these technologies!
Come on, this is absurd. If anything this article underscores the need for privacy laws - but the privacy implications of the semantic web are hardly any more significant than any other publishing method.
while this is a lovely story, i shudder to think about what will happen when government corruption and corporate malfeasance have access to thousands of these kinds of robots. the failsafe is that most current robots are controlled by humans. what happens when a disgruntled employee has access to control mechanisms? what happens when military robots, funded by enormous global megacorporations, fall into the wrong hands? how will we human sdefend ourselves? i know it sounds very "tinfoil hat" right now, but we are witnessing the beginning of some very scary shit right now with all the NSA, CIA, Guantanamo Bay, Iraq/Afghanistan, video medical diagnosis, duke cunningham, torture-is-ok-if-they're-terrorists politics that we've seen lately. adding in such a powerful level of automation has some very uncool ramifications that we need to stop pre-emptively.
...google, not yahoo, not cnn, not msnbc, not flickr, not myspace, not even our sacred slashdot...
The sites listed have high search-engine results not because of standard SEO tactics, but because they have a broad userbase, good marketing, and solid reputations. Myspace could put every piece of text in 5 nested tables surrounded by every deprecated tag they could find and still have great search engine results.
On the other hand, if a new site conforms to an existing standard, chances are that any robot will have an easier time parsing through the site, an easier time figuring out the relationships between pieces of information, etc. No this has not been proven yet as far as I know.
As far as improved usability, a really well-coded site that conforms to modern standards can be easily modified by user stylesheets (more easily than an old-style webpage that mixes style & content). So yes, building a webpage to the standard is quite likely to have usability benefits. Even if nobody takes advantage of this capability, the benefits still exist.
The point that so many standards zealots are trying to get at here is that when the majority of websites are built properly using stylesheets for design & layout, tools to modify those websites will probably become more common. Imagine having a single stylesheet that you could apply to *all* the websites that you visit! This would have enormous benefit to users with disabilities. Even a mild disability like poor eyesight could be helped enormously by the ability to apply larger font sizes across all the sites you visit.
I would sign up, but I run my own email server and haven't given out a real email address in years (I use aliases to forward all my email to the real account). I haven't seen SPAM in 2 or 3 years.