These technologies are interesting, but the problem of spam should be solved at the source. Why should we waste our time, money, CPU and drive space trying to outwit spam with clever software? As has been said before, if you filter spam at the inbox, a lot of resources have already been wasted by the time it arrives.
Spam is anti-social behavior - a perversion of technology to make a quick buck. It's a cancer, and we should try to kill it. If you try to fight it any other way, you will constantly be playing catch-up, as the spammers have technology on their side too.
Students and professors should take advantage of the Apple education discount. I am working on my M.S. part time, and that was enough to qualify apparently, as my $69 Jaguar shipped yesterday.
I heard something on the radio a few days ago (NPR I think) where someone from ActiveBuddy said they killed SmarterChild because they are a small company and didn't have the resources to run it any more.
Maybe too many people were using it and it was using too much bandwidth?
Our only hope in beating things like the DMCA is to use technology. Continuing to fight in the courts and in government is fighting on the enemy's turf, where he is strongest.
Our strength is technology. Efforts should be devoted to making laws like the DMCA technologically irrelevant or unenforceable, instead of spending time and money trying to work within a corrupt system that corporations defined and corporations control.
Further, if you fight with something universal, like technology, your efforts will help combat this type of thing throughout the world, and not just in the United States.
We will never win at their game. The only way is to make them play at ours.
How do you respond to people who say that things like ALICE are not "real" AI, they are simply parlor tricks, and they give us no further insight into the working of the brain or the nature of intelligence?
I recently went back to school to get my M.S. in Computer Science and the book A Transition to Advanced Mathematics helped me get back up to speed after not doing any serious math for a while. It gave me the solid foundation I need to get through the difficult math ahead.
It starts out with basic logic, moves on to various proof methods, then to set theory, induction, relations, functions, groups.
This material is to a person who studies mathematics as learning how to read is to a person who studies literature,
I saw a great Turing quote somewhere that I can't remember, but it said something to the effect of "Programming can never be boring, because you can always automate the repetitive, tedious parts." And if your attempt at automation proves too easy, you can automate the automation. Isn't this what the essence of computing is?
There will always be new challenges in programming if the programmer chooses to challenge himself.
On my new iBook, I have tried Mozilla, Chimera, IE, and OmniWeb.
I just installed Mozilla 1.0RC1 yesterday, and I have been using that for my main browser, and it seems nice and fast and stable. It's not as nicely integrated with OS itself as IE, but that's a small price to play. I'd really like to see Apple devoting some resources to make it the default browser in OS X and more seemlessly integrating it. By this I mean having it get all the mime/type application associations right, and making the key bindings more consistent with other OS X applications.
Chimera seemed painfully slow, but then again it's in the early stages of development.
I really liked Omniweb, it renders pages beautifully and I particularly liked the default fonts. It seems very light and fast. However it's not free, and displays some nagging "Register Me" messages which was enough to turn me off to it.
I'm definitely sticking with Mozilla. Oh and if any Mozilla people are reading, you should change the icon for the OS X version to the red dinosaur, which would look way cooler in the dock than the "M".
People always forget that the vast majority of software out there running in the real world is highly customized for a specific business to handle their own business rules. It's not shrink-wrapped commercial software. The software itself is not the product. Although open source tools will be used for these solutions, I don't think there is any way open source software can replace this software completely. There is a limit on the degree to which software can be generalized.
There will always be a need for companies to have paid programmers because software is, well, complicated. They will always need people that they pay, that they directly control, to serve in this consulting role. When open source will win is when programmers have a large variety of good open source tools that we can use to craft these custom solutions and modify them throughout their life.
I hope the next release of Redhat includes Python 2.something as the default. It was a pain having to have python and python2 rpms installed simultaneously, and Python 1.5.2 is getting pretty old.
I don't see any other distributions moving electronic information security to a higher magnitude and claiming "international/national-standard-based national-level secure operating system kicked off".
Scariest thing on the site? From the "About Us" page:
The company will continue to develop a modern management pattern we call the "Red Flag Way."
Software liability would be a disaster for free software, right? Okay, everyone wants Microsoft to have to pay for Nimda/CodeRed/Melissa/ILOVEYOU, but I don't suspect that the authors of Sourceforge (for example) would want to be liable for someone losing his code due to a buffer overflow. Schneier is right on many things, but he is 100% wrong on this one.
Wouldn't something like parts 11 and 12 of the GPL prevent liability?
12. IN NO EVENT UNLESS REQUIRED BY APPLICABLE LAW OR AGREED TO IN WRITING
WILL ANY COPYRIGHT HOLDER, OR ANY OTHER PARTY WHO MAY MODIFY AND/OR
REDISTRIBUTE THE PROGRAM AS PERMITTED ABOVE, BE LIABLE TO YOU FOR DAMAGES,
INCLUDING ANY GENERAL, SPECIAL, INCIDENTAL OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES ARISING
OUT OF THE USE OR INABILITY TO USE THE PROGRAM...
Wouldn't all software producers, both open source and proprietary just put verbage in the EULA that would absolve them of all liability? Don't they already put such verbage in most software licenses?
Go ahead - keep Outlook users from reading your mail. Write in L337 if you want and keep people over the age of 17 from reading your mail. Heck, write in Swedish! Do you suppose my desire to read your deathless prose will make me learn Swedish?
I dont think the effort required to switch mail user agents is equivalent to the effort required to learn another language (especially Swedish).
> Oh sure. Wouldn't it be great to get LaTeX files
> as email attachments!? Those files are SO
> attractively formatted [sarcasm].
Umm I wasn't really suggesting sending around LaTeX email attachments. That's ridiculous. I was suggesting LaTeX as a tool for creating documents. To distribute them, you convert to PDF or Postscript, or convert them to HTML and put them on a web site.
can easily be generated programmatically and it's scriptable (do database query, programmatically generate LaTeX, run through LaTeX, dvips, and get beautiful printed report)
plain text fits in with UNIX philosophy, can easily be scripted, hooked up to other powerful tools (make, perl, sed, awk, emacs, etc.)
can be truly version controlled with CVS because it's plain text (can do diffs)
compresses nicely with gzip to take up minimal space
can convert to almost any format you want (HTML, DVI, PS, PDF, etc.)
lots of third party packages
looks 100 times more professional and slick when printed than Word
Re:Didn't they learn their lesson the last time ??
on
In Line for Episode II
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· Score: 1
Or maybe they are N'Sync, waiting to see themselves.
Spending all that time and money in school to become a marine biologist, and then spreading the word that marine biologists never have sex seems like a very inefficient form of denial.
If you can't afford hookers, there's always alast resort.
Re:I hate nationally syndicated stupidity
on
Gift Card Hacking
·
· Score: 1
I used to intern at a company that made magnetic stripe card readers and writers, as well as all kinds of barcode readers. We used to run various cards through them just to see what the data on the stripe looked like. A guy I knew copied the data from his super market shopper's club card into a blank white card with no markings, and then went to the store and used it, assuring the cashier that it would work, and it did.
The magnetic stripe that worries me the most is the one on my New York State driver's license, especially when they ID you for buying alcohol and they slide it through some kind of reader. Anyone know what data is on that stripe?
Slashdot Mirror
These technologies are interesting, but the problem of spam should be solved at the source. Why should we waste our time, money, CPU and drive space trying to outwit spam with clever software? As has been said before, if you filter spam at the inbox, a lot of resources have already been wasted by the time it arrives.
Spam is anti-social behavior - a perversion of technology to make a quick buck. It's a cancer, and we should try to kill it. If you try to fight it any other way, you will constantly be playing catch-up, as the spammers have technology on their side too.
Why don't you try clicking your own link, Mr. Garrison?
uh that was kind of the joke.
States plan to use the extra revenue to try and buy Slashdot editors a copy of Strunk and White, so they're grammar will be better then it is now.
Never do this if you ever plan on outsmarting anyone. It kills brain cells at twice the rate that huffing paint does.
Bing bong bing ... The more you know ... (Tm)
Who needs web-based email?
Toolkit for doing things that you aren't supposed to do at work:
SSH to Linux box at home and "screen -r -d".
The best thing is it's all text, so it's indistinguishable from actual work to most people. And it's all encrypted.
Students and professors should take advantage of the Apple education discount. I am working on my M.S. part time, and that was enough to qualify apparently, as my $69 Jaguar shipped yesterday.
I heard something on the radio a few days ago (NPR I think) where someone from ActiveBuddy said they killed SmarterChild because they are a small company and didn't have the resources to run it any more.
Maybe too many people were using it and it was using too much bandwidth?
The feature I want most is bug 78104 (same numbers rearranged). For me, this will be the end of banner ads forever (including the ones on slashdot).
Please vote for this one. This message paid for by friends of Mozilla bug 78104.
Our only hope in beating things like the DMCA is to use technology. Continuing to fight in the courts and in government is fighting on the enemy's turf, where he is strongest.
Our strength is technology. Efforts should be devoted to making laws like the DMCA technologically irrelevant or unenforceable, instead of spending time and money trying to work within a corrupt system that corporations defined and corporations control.
Further, if you fight with something universal, like technology, your efforts will help combat this type of thing throughout the world, and not just in the United States.
We will never win at their game. The only way is to make them play at ours.
How do you respond to people who say that things like ALICE are not "real" AI, they are simply parlor tricks, and they give us no further insight into the working of the brain or the nature of intelligence?
I recently went back to school to get my M.S. in Computer Science and the book A Transition to Advanced Mathematics helped me get back up to speed after not doing any serious math for a while. It gave me the solid foundation I need to get through the difficult math ahead.
It starts out with basic logic, moves on to various proof methods, then to set theory, induction, relations, functions, groups.
This material is to a person who studies mathematics as learning how to read is to a person who studies literature,
Finally a problem to go along with the national ID card solution!
We are saved!
I saw a great Turing quote somewhere that I can't remember, but it said something to the effect of "Programming can never be boring, because you can always automate the repetitive, tedious parts." And if your attempt at automation proves too easy, you can automate the automation. Isn't this what the essence of computing is?
There will always be new challenges in programming if the programmer chooses to challenge himself.
On my new iBook, I have tried Mozilla, Chimera, IE, and OmniWeb.
I just installed Mozilla 1.0RC1 yesterday, and I have been using that for my main browser, and it seems nice and fast and stable. It's not as nicely integrated with OS itself as IE, but that's a small price to play. I'd really like to see Apple devoting some resources to make it the default browser in OS X and more seemlessly integrating it. By this I mean having it get all the mime/type application associations right, and making the key bindings more consistent with other OS X applications.
Chimera seemed painfully slow, but then again it's in the early stages of development.
I really liked Omniweb, it renders pages beautifully and I particularly liked the default fonts. It seems very light and fast. However it's not free, and displays some nagging "Register Me" messages which was enough to turn me off to it.
I'm definitely sticking with Mozilla. Oh and if any Mozilla people are reading, you should change the icon for the OS X version to the red dinosaur, which would look way cooler in the dock than the "M".
People always forget that the vast majority of software out there running in the real world is highly customized for a specific business to handle their own business rules. It's not shrink-wrapped commercial software. The software itself is not the product. Although open source tools will be used for these solutions, I don't think there is any way open source software can replace this software completely. There is a limit on the degree to which software can be generalized.
There will always be a need for companies to have paid programmers because software is, well, complicated. They will always need people that they pay, that they directly control, to serve in this consulting role. When open source will win is when programmers have a large variety of good open source tools that we can use to craft these custom solutions and modify them throughout their life.
I hope the next release of Redhat includes Python 2.something as the default. It was a pain having to have python and python2 rpms installed simultaneously, and Python 1.5.2 is getting pretty old.
Why is Redflag "much ridiculed"?
I don't see any other distributions moving electronic information security to a higher magnitude and claiming "international/national-standard-based national-level secure operating system kicked off".
Scariest thing on the site? From the "About Us" page:
Wouldn't something like parts 11 and 12 of the GPL prevent liability?
Wouldn't all software producers, both open source and proprietary just put verbage in the EULA that would absolve them of all liability? Don't they already put such verbage in most software licenses?
I dont think the effort required to switch mail user agents is equivalent to the effort required to learn another language (especially Swedish).
> So now they just pretend it never happened.
They love the Cox.
> Oh sure. Wouldn't it be great to get LaTeX files
> as email attachments!? Those files are SO
> attractively formatted [sarcasm].
Umm I wasn't really suggesting sending around LaTeX email attachments. That's ridiculous. I was suggesting LaTeX as a tool for creating documents. To distribute them, you convert to PDF or Postscript, or convert them to HTML and put them on a web site.
Use LaTeX!
Or maybe they are N'Sync, waiting to see themselves.
Spending all that time and money in school to become a marine biologist, and then spreading the word that marine biologists never have sex seems like a very inefficient form of denial.
If you can't afford hookers, there's always alast resort.
I used to intern at a company that made magnetic stripe card readers and writers, as well as all kinds of barcode readers. We used to run various cards through them just to see what the data on the stripe looked like. A guy I knew copied the data from his super market shopper's club card into a blank white card with no markings, and then went to the store and used it, assuring the cashier that it would work, and it did.
The magnetic stripe that worries me the most is the one on my New York State driver's license, especially when they ID you for buying alcohol and they slide it through some kind of reader. Anyone know what data is on that stripe?