This is exactly why I bought a Mac. Because I understand the underlying nature of the operating system. I know what is and isn't on the thing. I know what DRM is installed on the thing. And I know that by purchasing the hardware I am granted a license to run the Operating System. And I don't need to worry about apple disabling my computer down the road. I'm sure someone will point me at the tyrannical and cyncial nature of OS X's Eula as well (And yes I know about the broad ranging data sharing) but the fact is, these agreements have so far crossed the line that I doubt any of it will remain enforcable in a court of law.
I'd install Linux on the thing, except Microsoft has its hooks into that as well, at least according to its lawyers.
I own one of these beauties. It's parked next to my Phantom game console. I even have Duke Nukem Forever running between them on my 25 TB/s wireless network.
It really depends on the frequency and the area and what equipment they are brining to bear on you. Higher frequency transmissions are somewhat easier to track directionally then lower frequencies (at least in typical RF range). A high end doppler detector and a non moving target would take as little as 2 one second transmissions to triangulate your location within a reasonable degree of accuracy. Of course, it all depends on the location and the skill of the person using the equipment.
I could track down an Emergency Locator Transmitter that was going off within about 30 minutes using nothing more then a handheld aviation radio once I had picked it up. I could probably half that time with a reasonable direction finder, and half it again with a good doppler unit. But every now and then you get ones that are in screwy locations and they take hours or even days (Had one that was crushed into a mountain of aluminum cans - THAT took forever), but for the purpose of locatating a downed aircraft, I wouldn't need to locate the beacon exactly. I'd just need to get within a couple hundred yards, and that can be done just about instantaneously.
Not quite true. If it interferes with the military or government it will be the NTIA that comes knocking on your door as they have jurisdiction over those frequencies.
1. Submit Link to slashdot with your webserver hosting a lot of large video files supporting the link.
2. Have link approved (Note - duplicate any story just posted is probably the best way to get approval and lots of people crying dupe)
3. Learn what caused the webserver to melt and how long it took to melt.
4. Fix the problem that caused step #3
5. Repeat 1-4 until server doesn't melt.
6. Congrats! You've learned how to host a high demand web server.
Once again, we the people of the world, are confusing the law of probability and the law of averages.
What we have here is a string of 1s on the 0 or 1 random binary generator. Just because the average is.5 doesn't mean long strings of 1's don't happen.
The fact that the redskins have "predicted" the presidential election for the last 60 years is nothing more then an interesting coincidence and has no more basis in reality then saying it raining on election day somewhere had the same effect (And if you look you'll find such a place I'm sure).
I was once told that if there are 30 million license plates in a state, the odds of seeing a certain license plate are one in 30 million. Since the license plate I was looking at on the car ahead of me was distinct I was experiencing a one in 30 million event, just like everyone else driving down the road with a car ahead of them.
Its not hard to bend statistics people.
Sorry, but I disagree on VIKI acting on evolution. VIKI acted because she came to the logical conclusion that the only way to ensure no harm came to humans was to take control away from the humans. The long term maximization of the first law became the driving force for VIKI, and that was Asimov's point in the book (and a lot of his books are based on cases of the laws becoming flexible). The first law isn't broken as much as VIKI realizes that it is an impossible set of instructions to follow. Take the first law, and imagine the robot is now in a room with two people with guns pointed at their head and set to fire in a set amount of time. It can only save one. Through its action a human being will come to harm, so while the robot can minimize its violation of the first law by not allowing two people to die, it can't eliminate it because the robot must choose that a human will die. VIKI simply takes this concept to the next level because of the size of what she controls. Its one of those concepts that you can sit down and wrap your mind around for a few hours and play with.
Thanks, I just spit soda all over my monitor. Now I need to go to the local best buy and get a new one. Wait... the local circuit city.. erp, can't buy from there either... hmm comp usa, nope. Damn. Guess I'm down to one working monitor. I can't buy from anyone anymore.
It is going to be mounted on military aircraft.
The idea (relating to gulf war I terms that we can all recall) is to put one of these over saudi arabia and have it shoot down the scuds coming out of iraq 300 miles away. It would rely primarily on burning a hole through the propellant casing of the missile causing an explosion. You then rely on things like the patriots to hit anything that gets through.
Wrong Wrong Wrong Wrong and WRONG.
The SCO license in addition to being non-refundable is also totally revocable at any time at SCO's leisure. So, say in the unlikely case that SCO wins this lawsuit (note - you don't win patent lawsuits against big blue) SCO revokes all previously sold licenses and announces that the new fee is $1000 per CPU. Now, not only are the rest of us screwed, but those who paid the extortion fee are just as screwed as the rest of us our.
Claiming it protects the customers is BS. There is no protection in the license to prevent SCO from just saying "nevermind".
For real fun, call them up up really fast twice, and conference the calls together. Then put your own phone on mute. I recommend you do this out of a large PBX where they'll never actually trace it back to you.
Not that I've actually done that (cough cough).
Oh what the hell, yes I did and it was hilarious.
If you bought SCO Unix you've supported this company. Whether willingly or not you bought into the Enron of the computer world. As such you should go down with them or get off the sinking ship.
I'm sorry but when 30-40 other Linux groups out there have been helping the FSF and Open Source in general, there is no reason whatsoever to continue supporting the bastard child of the organization. If your a sysadmin running SCO, it sucks being you. The boat you're on has Titanic written on the bow. At least you can see the iceberg and get on some other cruise line. You've got plenty of notice to get your systems moved off SCO now while the getting is good. If you don't then 'You Loose, You Get Nothing, Good Day Sir'.
There is nothing in the world that says the OSS community needs to be on this insane high moral ground, especially when SCO is writhing around at the very bottom of the heap. To take the moral high ground against SCO doesn't exactly require much more than a step stool. And remember, the OS movement is no longer about the users alone, but about all the companies that keep it thriving. If one of those companies violates the trust of the Open Source community, let the open source community bitch slap them back.
I've got 5 red hat network subscriptions for the computers here at work. I'll be buying my one for the home machine tonight.
Seriously, if there was a worth cause this is it. Its good to see someone is standing up to the FUD that SCO has been spewing out of Utah (I figured the mormons would have kicked SCO out by now). I am very surprised it was Red Hat going solo and not with IBM, but I'm sure IBM won't be far behind. Plus Red Hat has more to loose in this then IBM. If IBM looses this suit they buy SCO, but who knows what IBM would do to all the other non-AIX *nixes out there. I know they've been linux friendly in the past, but Big Blue also won't hesitate to make a buck where a buck can be made.
An Apple is a PC just as much as an IBM/Wintel/x86 based computer is. Last I looked PC stood for Personal Computer and last time I checked, that's what apple made. Of course my acronyms could be out of date, but then again you could be claiming your computer is faster by turning off hyperthreading on mine. Not that Apple would ever do anything like that...
how would you warchalk this link? I mean, besides the technical difficulties of writing on water. Do you put a really REALLY large ear on the ground near the antenna?
In all seriousness, this is quite an impressive feat, especially using a highly crowded spectrum. I am curious though how it handles atmospheric interference. Over 72 miles the beam width on this thing must be miniscule and I would think any atmospheric disturbance would send the link crashing. Then again, I've never passed 802.11b traffic more than 2 or 3 miles.
* and will be out of a job tomorrow.*
Actually he just won't be responding to e-mail anymore. Odds are MUCH better that he'll be heading up the CD Copyright department. Its obvious that his attitude, regardless of rudeness, represents the direction that the major record labels are moving toward.
Slashdot Mirror
This is exactly why I bought a Mac. Because I understand the underlying nature of the operating system. I know what is and isn't on the thing. I know what DRM is installed on the thing. And I know that by purchasing the hardware I am granted a license to run the Operating System. And I don't need to worry about apple disabling my computer down the road. I'm sure someone will point me at the tyrannical and cyncial nature of OS X's Eula as well (And yes I know about the broad ranging data sharing) but the fact is, these agreements have so far crossed the line that I doubt any of it will remain enforcable in a court of law. I'd install Linux on the thing, except Microsoft has its hooks into that as well, at least according to its lawyers.
I own one of these beauties. It's parked next to my Phantom game console. I even have Duke Nukem Forever running between them on my 25 TB/s wireless network.
It really depends on the frequency and the area and what equipment they are brining to bear on you. Higher frequency transmissions are somewhat easier to track directionally then lower frequencies (at least in typical RF range). A high end doppler detector and a non moving target would take as little as 2 one second transmissions to triangulate your location within a reasonable degree of accuracy. Of course, it all depends on the location and the skill of the person using the equipment. I could track down an Emergency Locator Transmitter that was going off within about 30 minutes using nothing more then a handheld aviation radio once I had picked it up. I could probably half that time with a reasonable direction finder, and half it again with a good doppler unit. But every now and then you get ones that are in screwy locations and they take hours or even days (Had one that was crushed into a mountain of aluminum cans - THAT took forever), but for the purpose of locatating a downed aircraft, I wouldn't need to locate the beacon exactly. I'd just need to get within a couple hundred yards, and that can be done just about instantaneously.
Not quite true. If it interferes with the military or government it will be the NTIA that comes knocking on your door as they have jurisdiction over those frequencies.
About a week ago, an "Ask Slashdot" featured a question on high performance web serving. Now we know why.
its only Profit if the webserver is for a Pr0n site.
1. Submit Link to slashdot with your webserver hosting a lot of large video files supporting the link.
2. Have link approved (Note - duplicate any story just posted is probably the best way to get approval and lots of people crying dupe)
3. Learn what caused the webserver to melt and how long it took to melt.
4. Fix the problem that caused step #3
5. Repeat 1-4 until server doesn't melt.
6. Congrats! You've learned how to host a high demand web server.
Once again, we the people of the world, are confusing the law of probability and the law of averages. What we have here is a string of 1s on the 0 or 1 random binary generator. Just because the average is .5 doesn't mean long strings of 1's don't happen.
The fact that the redskins have "predicted" the presidential election for the last 60 years is nothing more then an interesting coincidence and has no more basis in reality then saying it raining on election day somewhere had the same effect (And if you look you'll find such a place I'm sure).
I was once told that if there are 30 million license plates in a state, the odds of seeing a certain license plate are one in 30 million. Since the license plate I was looking at on the car ahead of me was distinct I was experiencing a one in 30 million event, just like everyone else driving down the road with a car ahead of them.
Its not hard to bend statistics people.
Ok, no offense, but beanie-babies and erotica? There are some newsgroups that just shouldn't exist.
Sorry, but I disagree on VIKI acting on evolution. VIKI acted because she came to the logical conclusion that the only way to ensure no harm came to humans was to take control away from the humans. The long term maximization of the first law became the driving force for VIKI, and that was Asimov's point in the book (and a lot of his books are based on cases of the laws becoming flexible). The first law isn't broken as much as VIKI realizes that it is an impossible set of instructions to follow. Take the first law, and imagine the robot is now in a room with two people with guns pointed at their head and set to fire in a set amount of time. It can only save one. Through its action a human being will come to harm, so while the robot can minimize its violation of the first law by not allowing two people to die, it can't eliminate it because the robot must choose that a human will die. VIKI simply takes this concept to the next level because of the size of what she controls. Its one of those concepts that you can sit down and wrap your mind around for a few hours and play with.
Thanks, I just spit soda all over my monitor. Now I need to go to the local best buy and get a new one. Wait... the local circuit city.. erp, can't buy from there either... hmm comp usa, nope. Damn. Guess I'm down to one working monitor. I can't buy from anyone anymore.
It is going to be mounted on military aircraft. The idea (relating to gulf war I terms that we can all recall) is to put one of these over saudi arabia and have it shoot down the scuds coming out of iraq 300 miles away. It would rely primarily on burning a hole through the propellant casing of the missile causing an explosion. You then rely on things like the patriots to hit anything that gets through.
Thats because it was 9 figures including the decimal point and stuff there after. Thats a whole two orders of magnitude of exaggeration.
Wrong Wrong Wrong Wrong and WRONG. The SCO license in addition to being non-refundable is also totally revocable at any time at SCO's leisure. So, say in the unlikely case that SCO wins this lawsuit (note - you don't win patent lawsuits against big blue) SCO revokes all previously sold licenses and announces that the new fee is $1000 per CPU. Now, not only are the rest of us screwed, but those who paid the extortion fee are just as screwed as the rest of us our. Claiming it protects the customers is BS. There is no protection in the license to prevent SCO from just saying "nevermind".
For real fun, call them up up really fast twice, and conference the calls together. Then put your own phone on mute. I recommend you do this out of a large PBX where they'll never actually trace it back to you. Not that I've actually done that (cough cough). Oh what the hell, yes I did and it was hilarious.
Bullsh*t.
If you bought SCO Unix you've supported this company. Whether willingly or not you bought into the Enron of the computer world. As such you should go down with them or get off the sinking ship.
I'm sorry but when 30-40 other Linux groups out there have been helping the FSF and Open Source in general, there is no reason whatsoever to continue supporting the bastard child of the organization. If your a sysadmin running SCO, it sucks being you. The boat you're on has Titanic written on the bow. At least you can see the iceberg and get on some other cruise line. You've got plenty of notice to get your systems moved off SCO now while the getting is good. If you don't then 'You Loose, You Get Nothing, Good Day Sir'.
There is nothing in the world that says the OSS community needs to be on this insane high moral ground, especially when SCO is writhing around at the very bottom of the heap. To take the moral high ground against SCO doesn't exactly require much more than a step stool. And remember, the OS movement is no longer about the users alone, but about all the companies that keep it thriving. If one of those companies violates the trust of the Open Source community, let the open source community bitch slap them back.
I've got 5 red hat network subscriptions for the computers here at work. I'll be buying my one for the home machine tonight. Seriously, if there was a worth cause this is it. Its good to see someone is standing up to the FUD that SCO has been spewing out of Utah (I figured the mormons would have kicked SCO out by now). I am very surprised it was Red Hat going solo and not with IBM, but I'm sure IBM won't be far behind. Plus Red Hat has more to loose in this then IBM. If IBM looses this suit they buy SCO, but who knows what IBM would do to all the other non-AIX *nixes out there. I know they've been linux friendly in the past, but Big Blue also won't hesitate to make a buck where a buck can be made.
1. Post the same story as yesterday about SCO 2. ????? 3. Profit
An Apple is a PC just as much as an IBM/Wintel/x86 based computer is. Last I looked PC stood for Personal Computer and last time I checked, that's what apple made. Of course my acronyms could be out of date, but then again you could be claiming your computer is faster by turning off hyperthreading on mine. Not that Apple would ever do anything like that...
Funniest Slashdot Comment ..... Ever
-comicbook guy
Lisa, you will obey the laws of thermodynamics in my house.
Only if you pay me the royalties on my patent definining an unvention ;)
how would you warchalk this link? I mean, besides the technical difficulties of writing on water. Do you put a really REALLY large ear on the ground near the antenna? In all seriousness, this is quite an impressive feat, especially using a highly crowded spectrum. I am curious though how it handles atmospheric interference. Over 72 miles the beam width on this thing must be miniscule and I would think any atmospheric disturbance would send the link crashing. Then again, I've never passed 802.11b traffic more than 2 or 3 miles.
* and will be out of a job tomorrow.* Actually he just won't be responding to e-mail anymore. Odds are MUCH better that he'll be heading up the CD Copyright department. Its obvious that his attitude, regardless of rudeness, represents the direction that the major record labels are moving toward.
Actually, its Alderaan
(Mod +1 useless geek knowledge)