Completely unintentionally, I've learned two interesting things this morning:
1. People are far too concerned about one person's off-handed comments about GM foods, and
2. "NO FRANKENFOODS!", which I completely made up, is a really good meme.;)
Apologies for starting the off-topicstorm...
People will always, always try to break any kind of restrictive system placed on hardware they've paid for the privilege of owning. As long as we can purchase our own computer and take it back to our own home to hack away at it for as long as we like, there'll be people breaking operating system restrictions (or, indeed, a BIOS checksum to ensure you're only running windows -_- ).
It's nearly impossible (today, at least, and only as far as I know) to completely legislate electronics as complex as a microprocessor. As long as a restriction is a matter of getting a machine to voluntarily forego an action it's capable of (such as choosing not to play an unauthorized MP3) rather than not giving the machine the capability in the first place, there will be ways around it. This has been the basis of most software "cracking" for decades and will continue to be the case for the foreseeable future.
There may not be harmful effects but then again there might be catastrophic effects. Therefore it is wiser not to risk modifying the genetic structure the nature has spent billions of years perfecting.
You're completely correct, but I'm referring specifically to scaremongers with little practical knowledge for whom the words "genetic engineering" conjures up images of Jurassic Park and other such generic doomsday messages of man interfering with nature.
Which isn't to say I'm at all in favour of a system that non-selectively bombards peoples' personal items with "the radioactive equivalent of 825 million chest X-rays". Frankly it scares the hell out of me. I just tend to be annoyed by uninformed panic in all its forms.:D
I can see this being a really big deal to the type of people who'll have conniptions over anything sciencey and scary-sounding... you know, the same ones who lobby against genetically-engineered foods with signs like "NO FRANKENFOODS!".
"And now they're putting radiation in our mail! Where will the madness end?"
These tend to be the same people who are afraid of microwave ovens...
On the more realistic side of things, though, I can see that being a real problem for all sorts of electronics. It's not really the sort of endurance test they're put through in QA.
That's true, but ReiserFS has the obscure hackish charm to it, whereas HFS+ is just another boring, corporate-designed filesystem with a standard implementation platform.;)
I can only speak for myself, but I'd rather be wasting my time for kicks than using it intelligently on a project that bored me.
Which might explain why I haven't found a new job yet...
As far as Apple goes, they've done a fairly good job of documenting HFS+. The main problem seems to be that despite the information available about it, HFS+ is just not a very fun filesystem to write code for, and at the moment nobody's being offered any money to do it.
Basically, freelance kernelspace hackers would rather mess with, say, ReiserFS than put a lot of time and effort into a rather obfuscated filesystem which they don't see becoming mainstream any time soon.
That's always been the Linux Advocacy Paradox, hasn't it... Microsoft has their "New Windows Whateverthehell Makes What You Do Even Faster, Easier, and More Orgasmic!", and we have "WHY THE HELL WOULD YOU USE WINDOWS?! IT IS SO DUMB AND HAS TEH BUGS. YOU SHOULD USE LINUX!! HERE HAVE A REDHAT CD IT IS FOR DUMB PEOPLE LIKE YOU WHO USES WINDOWS AND IS DUMB. OKAY NOW GO USE LINUX GO!"
The obvious problem with modding a laptop is their precise, small-scale, highly-crammed and extremely uptight design. There's not a whole lot of space between the case and its innards (on most models, adding, say, a light beneath the keyboard would be all but a lost cause).
As sexy as it would be to throw a few high-intensity white LED chasers around the monitor or something (ooh!), you'd have to consider that in the interest of maximizing battery life the voltages used inside the computer are extremely precise and arbitrarily adding more current sinks (even little ones, like LED's) may cause random, distressing lossage at the component level. In particular, the LCD is driven by current stepped up to thousands of volts, so waver it by a few millivolts and by the time the difference hits the display it'll have been multiplied about a hundred times by the transformer; how sensitive LCD's are to this kind of fun, I have no idea. Anyone? Bueller?
My better judgement says to use stickers and not break a $3,000 machine, but the geek in me can't help wondering what it would look like to replace the LED in the IRda port with a high-intensity blue Nichia.:D
Well, you could always run Apache with root privileges. ^-^
Those of you who'd be inclined to think that this is a god-awful idea purely because of the insane myriad of vulnerabilities it opens up should conside how, within a week or so of applying this fix, all your other problems would seem pretty insignificant.
Granted, the distro tree is a lot more desktop-oriented than it deserves to be, seeing as it makes such a decent server distribution. Just pick and choose your packages carefully and you can make it anything you want. (Hey, it's even got a sane "package" implementation.) It takes well to having bits and pieces added onto it (although doing so does tend to break down your ability to manage it as a "distribution" per se).
At any rate, it's a simple, highly-customizable, all-purpose distribution, and it doesn't boot to a GUI after install. I use it for everything from a 486 with 8 megs of RAM to serve a mailing list, to a P3 with 512 megs as a pseudo-desktop network dealie. What more could you ask? ... I think I forgot my original point.
Look over there!
Winston Churchill repeatedly asked his countrymen for brutal sacrifices in World War II. In the new kind of American war, political leaders ask citizens only to keep shopping and traveling.
Not to play the alarmist (or that smug, irritating guy at every party who insists on talking ominously about political issues he doesn't understand), but isn't that almost exactly what Hitler told the German populace in World War 2? He was afraid that if people had to make sacrifices for his war, it would lose popular support.
In that case it the rationale was propaganda for a questionable cause, rather than super-sophisticated war-drones.
So renewable energy sources will always require more energy to be put into them than you get back out. But in that case, it doesn't matter, does it? We use such an insignificantly tiny amount of the energy coming off the sun that throwing some more solar collectors into orbit isn't going to negatively effect our current thermodynamic economy in any appreciable way whatsoever. Now, if we'd built a big ol' whopping dyson sphere around the sun collecting 100% of its energy, the shadow cast by the satellite would cause an actual energy trade-off... a negative one, due to the energy lost in firing that big ol' laser and everything.
But, um, we don't have a big ol' whopping dyson sphere. We're just tapping into an energy source we're using pathetically little of right now.
So, screw thermodynamics.:D
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I gotta tell you, I'd never buy a playstation for just the games. But I'd buy one that I could use to run games AND a mature operating system.
:D
Well, you do know what this means:
Hunt!
Or perhaps someone could write a DeCSS program that would run under it:-)
;)
The PS2 already plays DVD's. Maybe someone could do a DeCSS "port" that uses the tables and functions already built into the firmware.
The first-ever twenty-byte DeCSS binary. Heh.
Unless the glove don't fit.
Completely unintentionally, I've learned two interesting things this morning: 1. People are far too concerned about one person's off-handed comments about GM foods, and 2. "NO FRANKENFOODS!", which I completely made up, is a really good meme. ;)
Apologies for starting the off-topicstorm...
People will always, always try to break any kind of restrictive system placed on hardware they've paid for the privilege of owning. As long as we can purchase our own computer and take it back to our own home to hack away at it for as long as we like, there'll be people breaking operating system restrictions (or, indeed, a BIOS checksum to ensure you're only running windows -_- ).
It's nearly impossible (today, at least, and only as far as I know) to completely legislate electronics as complex as a microprocessor. As long as a restriction is a matter of getting a machine to voluntarily forego an action it's capable of (such as choosing not to play an unauthorized MP3) rather than not giving the machine the capability in the first place, there will be ways around it. This has been the basis of most software "cracking" for decades and will continue to be the case for the foreseeable future.
Man, don't I sound important. ^-^
There may not be harmful effects but then again there might be catastrophic effects. Therefore it is wiser not to risk modifying the genetic structure the nature has spent billions of years perfecting. You're completely correct, but I'm referring specifically to scaremongers with little practical knowledge for whom the words "genetic engineering" conjures up images of Jurassic Park and other such generic doomsday messages of man interfering with nature. Which isn't to say I'm at all in favour of a system that non-selectively bombards peoples' personal items with "the radioactive equivalent of 825 million chest X-rays". Frankly it scares the hell out of me. I just tend to be annoyed by uninformed panic in all its forms. :D
This could kill a lot more than five people, depending on your definition of "mail-order bride". :/
I can see this being a really big deal to the type of people who'll have conniptions over anything sciencey and scary-sounding... you know, the same ones who lobby against genetically-engineered foods with signs like "NO FRANKENFOODS!".
"And now they're putting radiation in our mail! Where will the madness end?"
These tend to be the same people who are afraid of microwave ovens...
On the more realistic side of things, though, I can see that being a real problem for all sorts of electronics. It's not really the sort of endurance test they're put through in QA.
That's true, but ReiserFS has the obscure hackish charm to it, whereas HFS+ is just another boring, corporate-designed filesystem with a standard implementation platform. ;)
I can only speak for myself, but I'd rather be wasting my time for kicks than using it intelligently on a project that bored me.
Which might explain why I haven't found a new job yet...
As far as Apple goes, they've done a fairly good job of documenting HFS+. The main problem seems to be that despite the information available about it, HFS+ is just not a very fun filesystem to write code for, and at the moment nobody's being offered any money to do it.
Basically, freelance kernelspace hackers would rather mess with, say, ReiserFS than put a lot of time and effort into a rather obfuscated filesystem which they don't see becoming mainstream any time soon.
That's always been the Linux Advocacy Paradox, hasn't it... Microsoft has their "New Windows Whateverthehell Makes What You Do Even Faster, Easier, and More Orgasmic!", and we have "WHY THE HELL WOULD YOU USE WINDOWS?! IT IS SO DUMB AND HAS TEH BUGS. YOU SHOULD USE LINUX!! HERE HAVE A REDHAT CD IT IS FOR DUMB PEOPLE LIKE YOU WHO USES WINDOWS AND IS DUMB. OKAY NOW GO USE LINUX GO!"
:D
The fact is that you catch more flies with honey.
Aw well. The Linux way is more fun.
The obvious problem with modding a laptop is their precise, small-scale, highly-crammed and extremely uptight design. There's not a whole lot of space between the case and its innards (on most models, adding, say, a light beneath the keyboard would be all but a lost cause).
:D
As sexy as it would be to throw a few high-intensity white LED chasers around the monitor or something (ooh!), you'd have to consider that in the interest of maximizing battery life the voltages used inside the computer are extremely precise and arbitrarily adding more current sinks (even little ones, like LED's) may cause random, distressing lossage at the component level. In particular, the LCD is driven by current stepped up to thousands of volts, so waver it by a few millivolts and by the time the difference hits the display it'll have been multiplied about a hundred times by the transformer; how sensitive LCD's are to this kind of fun, I have no idea. Anyone? Bueller?
My better judgement says to use stickers and not break a $3,000 machine, but the geek in me can't help wondering what it would look like to replace the LED in the IRda port with a high-intensity blue Nichia.
Well, you could always run Apache with root privileges. ^-^
Those of you who'd be inclined to think that this is a god-awful idea purely because of the insane myriad of vulnerabilities it opens up should conside how, within a week or so of applying this fix, all your other problems would seem pretty insignificant.
It works, honest!
This is why I use Slackware. :D
... I think I forgot my original point.
Granted, the distro tree is a lot more desktop-oriented than it deserves to be, seeing as it makes such a decent server distribution. Just pick and choose your packages carefully and you can make it anything you want. (Hey, it's even got a sane "package" implementation.) It takes well to having bits and pieces added onto it (although doing so does tend to break down your ability to manage it as a "distribution" per se).
At any rate, it's a simple, highly-customizable, all-purpose distribution, and it doesn't boot to a GUI after install. I use it for everything from a 486 with 8 megs of RAM to serve a mailing list, to a P3 with 512 megs as a pseudo-desktop network dealie. What more could you ask?
Look over there!
Not to play the alarmist (or that smug, irritating guy at every party who insists on talking ominously about political issues he doesn't understand), but isn't that almost exactly what Hitler told the German populace in World War 2? He was afraid that if people had to make sacrifices for his war, it would lose popular support.
In that case it the rationale was propaganda for a questionable cause, rather than super-sophisticated war-drones.
Hrmf.
So renewable energy sources will always require more energy to be put into them than you get back out. But in that case, it doesn't matter, does it? We use such an insignificantly tiny amount of the energy coming off the sun that throwing some more solar collectors into orbit isn't going to negatively effect our current thermodynamic economy in any appreciable way whatsoever. Now, if we'd built a big ol' whopping dyson sphere around the sun collecting 100% of its energy, the shadow cast by the satellite would cause an actual energy trade-off... a negative one, due to the energy lost in firing that big ol' laser and everything. But, um, we don't have a big ol' whopping dyson sphere. We're just tapping into an energy source we're using pathetically little of right now. So, screw thermodynamics. :D