> Replace "Babelfish" with "human" the next time you're arguing with a creationist though, and watch their head explode.
We're small and leechlike, some of us are yellowish, we may be the oddest thing in the Universe, but there's no way you're slipping something like "mind-bogglingly useful" past me. Nuh-uh.
Keep the duped credits from Star Wars Galaxies out of it.
MMORPGs are great economic simulators. You can tell when a credit dupe appears because overnight, prices on items/resources whose quantities are fixed will skyrocket. The best defense against credit dupes is to accumulate loot whose value is unlikely to diminish.
> > Trust me, if you can't eat it, f*ck it, or drive it, you don't NEED it.
> >That won't help a bit. You can still end up spending a LOT of money following this advice.
Yeah. I ran fsck on a mounted filesystem once, too.
> Why is it that politicians seem to do everything in their power to undermine public
confidence in the election process?
Because the people that think logically about the security implications of electoral processes are also the ones who think logically when presented with political arguments.
Such people are (a) a small voting bloc, and (b) do not vote as a bloc. On a votes-per-dollar basis, it's vastly more efficient to rally the party faithful and pander to the rest of the swing vote (who are easily swayed by emotional arguments) than to try and gain the votes of people who read Applied Cryptography for fun (who will probably split their votes 50/50 anyways).
The most humane way to remain in power (greatest good for the greatest number of people, including the wildcards) is therefore simply to discredit the election process. The wildcards will cease to vote (and more importantly, cease whining about it), and in so doing, will cease to be a problem. Other nations faced with this problem have simply exterminated that segment of the population.
As part of that wildcard segment, I'm actually rather thankful for it. Not only do I not have to worry about being targeted for extermination, it also means that during election season, I don't have to choose a candidate. I can spend my time on what's important, namely figuring out which sectors of the economy will get more pork under each election scenario, watching the polls, and placing my bets appropriately during the run-up to voting day.
Even if you do happen to prefer one candidate over the other by a wide enough margin to cast a vote, always remember to adjust your portfolio so that you win, even if your candidate doesn't.
> Basic definitions:
>Subcritical reactor - fission reaction rate is declining over time
>Critical reactor - fission reaction rate is constant over time, self-sustaining chain reaction has been achieved
>Supercritical reactor - fission reaction rate is increasing over time
And the fourth:
Prompt critical reactor - Hey, did you just see the whole office turn blue for a second? Oh... shit.
> One day, nuclear power may help kill hundreds of thousands. If events spiral out of control after that day, it could help kill hundreds of millions.
Although what you say is true (and you didn't mention any environmental issues), I find it funny that the strongest opponents of nuclear power tend to be the strongest believers in "the greenhouse effect".
As in, "one day, the Greenhouse effect may turn the planet into Venus, killing all of us". But heaven forbid we use the only scalable (sorry, wind isn't scalable, and solar doesn't scale at our present level of technology) form of power generation that produces zero greenhouse emissions.:)
For the record, my enviro-credentials: I don't believe that human activity is sufficient to account for recent global warming, especially when compared to variations in solar output. I do believe that nuclear power is a safer and less environmentally-detrimental alternative to fossil fuels, because it scales up, and reduces our reliance on foreign sources of oil. And yes, I would freely/willingly/gladly buy a house next door to, and downwind of, any nuclear generating station in North America.
> > His work on the last couple movies has been outstanding. I hope he keeps directing them himself. May the force be with him! > >
On Slashdot, it's hard to distinguish if you're a bitter, sarcastic viewer and a die-hard, intensely loyal George Lucas fanboy when you talk like that.
> Garrison Keillor was discussing his recent on-show conversion to become a Republican. (roughly paraphrased he said) "Back when I was a democrat and would say something political, I would get letters from Republicans telling me exactly how I was wrong and exactly what they thought of me. Now that I've switched parties, I now get 'hurt' letters from Democrats who are 'hurt' and 'saddened' by my new points of view. I can deal with 'hurt' letters!"
People in a positive mood such as happiness were shown under experimental conditions to have relatively unreliable memories, and show poorer judgement and critical thinking skills.
By contrast, those who experienced a negative mood such as sadness were shown to provide more reliable eyewitnesses accounts and exercise superior thinking and communication skills.
[...]
In a second experiment, researchers put different subjects in a positive or negative mood state and asked them to write down an argument in favour of a particular proposition.
When their arguments were analysed for their quality and persuasiveness, subjects in a negative mood were shown to be far more effective in their critical thinking and communication skills.
If you'd rather be happy than correct, you're more likely to vote Democrat. (G'wan, relax in the safety of your own delusions, rather than confront reality, ya hippie freaks!)
"The finding makes sense in evolutionary terms," says Professor Forgas. "Animals that are wary of their environment are more likely to perceive threats to their survival.
If you'd rather be correct than happy, you're more likely to vote Republican. Because you don't get to be CEO of Intel without knowing that "Only the paranoid survive!" (What a shocking display of greed and insensitivity, where's his compassion, won't somebody please think of the chillllllllldrun!)
Looks like the stereotypes for both parties hold true. And the stereotypes are valid for a reason -- a person's choice of Party doesn't make their brain work a certain way... their brain merely predisposes them towards joining a certain Party.
(Of course, when I'm elected Emperor, I'll advance humanity by deeming my opponents mentally-ill. And as an exercise in compassion, I'll even help them get better. W00t!)
> Smart washcloths will make sure they clean everywhere, including behind their ears.
A Smart Washcloth looks at 2015: "NO, dear GOD NO, what the FUCK did I do to deserve this miserable existence? PLEASE, for the love of the BIG COTTON BALL IN THE SKY, please KILL ME NOW!"
> Get the facts straight. Nixon TRIED to use the IRS to pester his foes.
>
Clinton is the one who succeeded in using the IRS.
OK, so for those of us keeping score, the IRS is a Democratic institution, and TSA's now a Republican institution. Vote accordingly in November as to who you'd prefer to be harassed by.
And before any of you pollyannas pops up with the obligatory third-rate moralistic whinge about how no politician should have the right to use his the power to make life miserable for his opponents, remember the words of the future Governor of Kahleefornya, when asked "What is good in life?"
To crush your enemies, see them driven before you, and to hear the lamentation of their women.
And Ted? Lay off the sauce, man. Drive your enemies, not your women, and drive them before you, not into the river. And "thump-thump-thump" on the roof of the car followed by "glug-glug-glug" does not strictly qualify as a "lamentation".
No wonder they won't let him on the plane. In the event of a water landing, he'd use his date as a flotation device instead of the seat cushion. Oh, wait, that was the other Kennedy upper-class twit of the year entrant. Never mind.
> I have a question for slashdot... can I use your polls for scientific research? Will my request result in slashdot removing their polls section? What kind of a crazy assed reaction is this? Why not just put a disclaimer up on the page that says, not scientific.
Well, you can't for Slashdot, because the poll page is pretty clear about it, but that reminds me.
"Can I use Google Zeitgeist for scientific research?"
Yes................. 82% 7122 / 82%<BR> No.... 18% 1560 / 18% <BR> Only if you give CowboyNeal 100,000 shares of GOOG . 0.1% / 1 / 0.1%
Don't complain about lack of options. Most people are only after for pictures of the latest RIAA pop star's tits. Those are the breaks.
Feel free to Google for something else if you're feeling creative. I'd strongly suggest grepping "goatse" out of the past Zeitgeist logs first.
It's a good thing that Google Zeitgeist isn't wildly inaccurate. Rounding errors, User-Agent spoofers, dynamic IPs, proxies. If you're using these numbers to decide whether to invest in our IPO, you're behaving at least as rationally as anybody else is in this market.
So if you're using Google Zeitgeist, I'd say go nuts, but only as long as every image search query returns a picture of that squirrel from Fark.
> All that needs to be done is to abolish property and the state (which is the ruling elite's machine to protect their property), and the rest will take care of itself.
Sounds great. Tell ya what - you go first. I'll hold onto your property while you're busy on that abolish-the-state thing.
> And once the majority of the people are not coerced to wage slavery or unemployment (as under capitalism) and have most of their time off to do what they want to do in addition to what little is needed to produce the basic essentials of life, everyone will be much better off.
Yes, we went over this. Neither of us are wage slaves, and during my free time, I hold onto your property. And you go and abolish the state.
> And to make people work, no oppression machinery like the state is needed, just social pressure.
So what are you waiting for? Gimme your stuff! What are you, some kinda chicken?:)
> Rights are not something that you are "given" by those in power (like a gift), or something that you have to "earn" or "win". The truth is exactly the opposite: Human rights are derived from human nature. We are *born* with rights, because it is human nature that gives us those rights, not government. We have evolved as unique, thinking individuals, but at the same time we have evolved to work together in groups for mutual benefit.
Excuse me, but WTF d00d?
Rights are set forth in laws. Those in power are born to it, or lobby for it, and like the tribe's betas for a Silverback, we vote to show our approval.
The only rights we are born with, or evolved with is the right to thump our chests in approval (or rage) for the Silverbacks we like (or who come from the opposing tribe), and to try to scrabble out a bit of advantage for ourselves when the Silverbacks aren't paying too much attention.
> We are born free, and from there our rights can only be limited.
We are born to our position in society, and from there we have only the rights our leaders see fit to grant us. Next thing you know, you'll be spouting poppycock like "all mans are equal", provably untrue by even the most cursory observation.
P.S. Whatever it is you've been smoking, lay off it for a bit. The silverbacks of both tribes disapprove.
> That was one of my issues. First for privacy reasons, they decided to only sample randomly by turning the device off and on for short periods. Then, because it's easier for them, privacy gets tossed and they record the entire day, and sample randomly from that.
What's the difference? Either way, all you'll end up with is a bunch of MP3s of people saying "Fuck!" and "Goddamnit!" and "Aaw, shit!"...
> For example, I recently received the following emails that suggest Wired's decision is accurate: > >
'im working on something alredy, so go stuff yourself and get back to browsing the internet'
You must be making those examples. The postliterate generation would strip out the extraneous articles, punctuation, and "y"s, render ing the sentence as follows:
'im working on somthing alredy go stuff urself n get bck 2 browse internet'
Now that that's cleared up, you may now resuming weeping for the future.
> On a side note, my company has had Windows 98 PCs on the open internet, no firewall, no updates (a few have IE5.5 SP2), and no antivirus running for years (restarted nightly now, they were just running and only restarted when they locked up or the power flickered) and they don't have any adware crap on them simply because they aren't used to browse the internet / check emails. This may be the exception to the rule, however:)
My 98SE gaming box is in the same boat. I configured it once ("Custom" install without IIS/Outleak, manually kill NetBIOS over TCP/IP and anything to do with "sharing" before it even gets plugged in), threw in a few beloved utilities (and an ancient Netscape and an ancient Eudora, neither of which use the IE rendering engine), a software "firewall" to see what (if anything) dares to phone home, and Ghosted it. That image was the basis for all my gaming boxen. (One box, three motherboards.)
Then a set of mobo/chipset and video/sound card drivers, and another Ghosting. That's the basis for "the current gaming box" and a good restore point.
The Ghost image goes on a 2GB partition. The Apps go on the rest of the drive.
Six years, never a virus nor spyware. And yeah, I check. I see a whole lotta exploited 2K/XP boxes out there, though. Oh, right, they have tons of services that can't be disabled out of the box. Meantime, the 98SE gaming rig... runs nothing, listens to nothing, and gets 0wn3d by nothing.
Is 98SE a real OS? With uptimes measured in days/weeks, fuck, no. Is 98SE stable enough for a (non-online) gaming rig? With uptimes measured in days/weeks, yes.
I can see an argument for moving to XP for users willing to regularly patch the thing, and with a hardware firewall, and who install their games as Administrator but run them as a nonprivileged user, and who are playing online games.
If one of those four things isn't true, there's no real benefit (security-wise) either way. If you're running as Administrator, and your online game client gets remotely h4x0r3d through some new game-specific exploit, your box is 0wned whether it was running 98SE or XP.
> With MPAA on one side and Microsoft on the other, I just don't know who to cheer for.
Coming this summer to theaters:
MPAA v MSFT: Whoever wins, we lose
Re:DOOM3 MMORPG already done.
on
Life After Doom
·
· Score: 1
> Sounds like you have no clue what a MMORPG is. But when did that stop a slashdotter from posting?
Sounds like you've never played a MMORPG. Or gotten the in-game DOOM3 mail for the high score on Super Turbo Turkey Puncher 3.
Grinding STTP3 took me about 5 minmutes. If STTP3 had been designed by a MMORPG designer, the special email wouldn't have come at 25,000 points. More like 25,000,000 points.
Slashdot Mirror
We're small and leechlike, some of us are yellowish, we may be the oddest thing in the Universe, but there's no way you're slipping something like "mind-bogglingly useful" past me. Nuh-uh.
>
>"No, they wont!"
Keep the duped credits from Star Wars Galaxies out of it.
MMORPGs are great economic simulators. You can tell when a credit dupe appears because overnight, prices on items/resources whose quantities are fixed will skyrocket. The best defense against credit dupes is to accumulate loot whose value is unlikely to diminish.
If I had a million coconuts, I'll tell you what I'd do. Ginger and Mary Ann.
>
>It's not all that bad. Think of the plus side: free porn.
>
>With duct tape.
>You won't be able to get in or out, but that's the price you pay for security.
No. That's just what Ridge wants you to believe. Real security comes from tinfoil.
(College, incidentally, is the perfect time for this sort of thing.)
>
>That won't help a bit. You can still end up spending a LOT of money following this advice.
Yeah. I ran fsck on a mounted filesystem once, too.
Because the people that think logically about the security implications of electoral processes are also the ones who think logically when presented with political arguments.
Such people are (a) a small voting bloc, and (b) do not vote as a bloc. On a votes-per-dollar basis, it's vastly more efficient to rally the party faithful and pander to the rest of the swing vote (who are easily swayed by emotional arguments) than to try and gain the votes of people who read Applied Cryptography for fun (who will probably split their votes 50/50 anyways).
The most humane way to remain in power (greatest good for the greatest number of people, including the wildcards) is therefore simply to discredit the election process. The wildcards will cease to vote (and more importantly, cease whining about it), and in so doing, will cease to be a problem. Other nations faced with this problem have simply exterminated that segment of the population.
As part of that wildcard segment, I'm actually rather thankful for it. Not only do I not have to worry about being targeted for extermination, it also means that during election season, I don't have to choose a candidate. I can spend my time on what's important, namely figuring out which sectors of the economy will get more pork under each election scenario, watching the polls, and placing my bets appropriately during the run-up to voting day.
Even if you do happen to prefer one candidate over the other by a wide enough margin to cast a vote, always remember to adjust your portfolio so that you win, even if your candidate doesn't.
>Subcritical reactor - fission reaction rate is declining over time
>Critical reactor - fission reaction rate is constant over time, self-sustaining chain reaction has been achieved
>Supercritical reactor - fission reaction rate is increasing over time
And the fourth:
Prompt critical reactor - Hey, did you just see the whole office turn blue for a second? Oh... shit.
Although what you say is true (and you didn't mention any environmental issues), I find it funny that the strongest opponents of nuclear power tend to be the strongest believers in "the greenhouse effect".
As in, "one day, the Greenhouse effect may turn the planet into Venus, killing all of us". But heaven forbid we use the only scalable (sorry, wind isn't scalable, and solar doesn't scale at our present level of technology) form of power generation that produces zero greenhouse emissions. :)
For the record, my enviro-credentials: I don't believe that human activity is sufficient to account for recent global warming, especially when compared to variations in solar output. I do believe that nuclear power is a safer and less environmentally-detrimental alternative to fossil fuels, because it scales up, and reduces our reliance on foreign sources of oil. And yes, I would freely/willingly/gladly buy a house next door to, and downwind of, any nuclear generating station in North America.
> Virtual GF: "Please deposit 25 cents."
Cheaper than marriage. ("Find a woman you hate, then buy her a house!")
>
> On Slashdot, it's hard to distinguish if you're a bitter, sarcastic viewer and a die-hard, intensely loyal George Lucas fanboy when you talk like that.
From an upcoming paper in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology: People in negative mood states think more logically.
From the URL:
If you'd rather be happy than correct, you're more likely to vote Democrat. (G'wan, relax in the safety of your own delusions, rather than confront reality, ya hippie freaks!)
If you'd rather be correct than happy, you're more likely to vote Republican. Because you don't get to be CEO of Intel without knowing that "Only the paranoid survive!" (What a shocking display of greed and insensitivity, where's his compassion, won't somebody please think of the chillllllllldrun!)
Looks like the stereotypes for both parties hold true. And the stereotypes are valid for a reason -- a person's choice of Party doesn't make their brain work a certain way... their brain merely predisposes them towards joining a certain Party.
(Of course, when I'm elected Emperor, I'll advance humanity by deeming my opponents mentally-ill. And as an exercise in compassion, I'll even help them get better. W00t!)
A Smart Washcloth looks at 2015: "NO, dear GOD NO, what the FUCK did I do to deserve this miserable existence? PLEASE, for the love of the BIG COTTON BALL IN THE SKY, please KILL ME NOW!"
> Clinton is the one who succeeded in using the IRS.
OK, so for those of us keeping score, the IRS is a Democratic institution, and TSA's now a Republican institution. Vote accordingly in November as to who you'd prefer to be harassed by.
And before any of you pollyannas pops up with the obligatory third-rate moralistic whinge about how no politician should have the right to use his the power to make life miserable for his opponents, remember the words of the future Governor of Kahleefornya, when asked "What is good in life?" To crush your enemies, see them driven before you, and to hear the lamentation of their women.
And Ted? Lay off the sauce, man. Drive your enemies, not your women, and drive them before you, not into the river. And "thump-thump-thump" on the roof of the car followed by "glug-glug-glug" does not strictly qualify as a "lamentation".
No wonder they won't let him on the plane. In the event of a water landing, he'd use his date as a flotation device instead of the seat cushion. Oh, wait, that was the other Kennedy upper-class twit of the year entrant. Never mind.
Well, you can't for Slashdot, because the poll page is pretty clear about it, but that reminds me.
So if you're using Google Zeitgeist, I'd say go nuts, but only as long as every image search query returns a picture of that squirrel from Fark.
Sounds great. Tell ya what - you go first. I'll hold onto your property while you're busy on that abolish-the-state thing.
> And once the majority of the people are not coerced to wage slavery or unemployment (as under capitalism) and have most of their time off to do what they want to do in addition to what little is needed to produce the basic essentials of life, everyone will be much better off.
Yes, we went over this. Neither of us are wage slaves, and during my free time, I hold onto your property. And you go and abolish the state.
> And to make people work, no oppression machinery like the state is needed, just social pressure.
So what are you waiting for? Gimme your stuff! What are you, some kinda chicken? :)
> > Oh come now, don't get Kerried away...
> I've Nader heard such wild speculation!
Why, that's Bandari... Randbarik... Bradkarn... oh, fuggit.
Excuse me, but WTF d00d?
Rights are set forth in laws. Those in power are born to it, or lobby for it, and like the tribe's betas for a Silverback, we vote to show our approval.
The only rights we are born with, or evolved with is the right to thump our chests in approval (or rage) for the Silverbacks we like (or who come from the opposing tribe), and to try to scrabble out a bit of advantage for ourselves when the Silverbacks aren't paying too much attention.
> We are born free, and from there our rights can only be limited.
We are born to our position in society, and from there we have only the rights our leaders see fit to grant us. Next thing you know, you'll be spouting poppycock like "all mans are equal", provably untrue by even the most cursory observation.
P.S. Whatever it is you've been smoking, lay off it for a bit. The silverbacks of both tribes disapprove.
What's the difference? Either way, all you'll end up with is a bunch of MP3s of people saying "Fuck!" and "Goddamnit!" and "Aaw, shit!"...
Hell, no! That's what cell phones are for!
>
> 'im working on something alredy, so go stuff yourself and get back to browsing the internet'
You must be making those examples. The postliterate generation would strip out the extraneous articles, punctuation, and "y"s, render ing the sentence as follows:
'im working on somthing alredy go stuff urself n get bck 2 browse internet'
Now that that's cleared up, you may now resuming weeping for the future.
My 98SE gaming box is in the same boat. I configured it once ("Custom" install without IIS/Outleak, manually kill NetBIOS over TCP/IP and anything to do with "sharing" before it even gets plugged in), threw in a few beloved utilities (and an ancient Netscape and an ancient Eudora, neither of which use the IE rendering engine), a software "firewall" to see what (if anything) dares to phone home, and Ghosted it. That image was the basis for all my gaming boxen. (One box, three motherboards.)
Then a set of mobo/chipset and video/sound card drivers, and another Ghosting. That's the basis for "the current gaming box" and a good restore point.
The Ghost image goes on a 2GB partition. The Apps go on the rest of the drive.
Six years, never a virus nor spyware. And yeah, I check. I see a whole lotta exploited 2K/XP boxes out there, though. Oh, right, they have tons of services that can't be disabled out of the box. Meantime, the 98SE gaming rig... runs nothing, listens to nothing, and gets 0wn3d by nothing.
Is 98SE a real OS? With uptimes measured in days/weeks, fuck, no. Is 98SE stable enough for a (non-online) gaming rig? With uptimes measured in days/weeks, yes.
I can see an argument for moving to XP for users willing to regularly patch the thing, and with a hardware firewall, and who install their games as Administrator but run them as a nonprivileged user, and who are playing online games.
If one of those four things isn't true, there's no real benefit (security-wise) either way. If you're running as Administrator, and your online game client gets remotely h4x0r3d through some new game-specific exploit, your box is 0wned whether it was running 98SE or XP.
Coming this summer to theaters:
MPAA v MSFT: Whoever wins, we lose
Sounds like you've never played a MMORPG. Or gotten the in-game DOOM3 mail for the high score on Super Turbo Turkey Puncher 3.
Grinding STTP3 took me about 5 minmutes. If STTP3 had been designed by a MMORPG designer, the special email wouldn't have come at 25,000 points. More like 25,000,000 points.