I think it's about time ISP's started charging for each e-mail both sent and received, somewhat like stamps.
Charge for each email received? Doesn't that hurt the wrong people? I understand how charging a tiny amount for each email sent would alleviate the spam problem, but wouldn't charging the receiver just make matters worse?
I wonder where they'll draw the line of `unsolicited email'. Which mails fall under this category ? For mails like `RRApply for a online mortgage loan 247', it is clear, but if I send a mail to somebody, and this person doesn't like me, can he accuse me for sending unsolicited email ?
1. The use of automated calling systems without human intervention (automatic calling machines), facsimile machines (fax) or electronic mail for the purposes of direct marketing may only be allowed in respect of subscribers who have given their prior consent.
If you send a personal email to someone, this certainly doesn't qualify as "automated calling systems". Mass email would, I guess.
it is obvious that it is a deliberate effort by Linux fanatics
I've always viewed discussions of this kind as some sort of miscommunication, rather than as a conspiracy by microsoft haters. The problem is, and probably always will be, that one has to distinguish between "Linux for Nerds" and "Linux for the Masses". The latter includes KDE or Gnome, OpenOffice, multimedia tools, and many more applications that anybody would ever install on his Windows machine, or ever use for that matter. Certainly there is lot of bloat.
Strictly speaking, though, KDE and Gnome are not Linux. They are applications that run on top of Linux. Hence you should accuse the applications of bloat, not Linux itself.
What the "Linux on a 486 PC" advocates are saying is that the Linux kernel itself is very compact, and that it is cleanly separated from any GUI. So the knowledgeable user (i.e. the Linux Nerd) can put together his own collection of apps, and his preferred lightweight window manager, to create an entirely unbloated distribution that will run just fine on old machines.
Obviously this miscommunication is partly the fault of the Linux enthusiasts. Linux advocates have to learn that Joe User will never bother to understand the difference between the GUI and the underlying kernel. And I don't blame him for being a non-nerd. It is the responsibility of the Linux community to put this kind of statements into a language that can easily be understood by non-technical people.
But if you decry those people as Linux fanatics, you are clearly overreacting. One can either discuss those issues matter-of-factly, or one can start a flame war.
They can do whatever they want. I personally don't care. If there's a machine that's controled in this fashion, I won't buy it. It's really that simple.
No Sales == No Production
No Production == Bad Idea
Bad Idea == Bag It.
While I have a lot of sympathy for your statements (I certainly wouldn't buy any of these machines either), unfortunately that's not how reality works. Microsoft does not care whether *you* are going to buy their PC. Microsoft cares whether Joe Clueless User is going to buy it. At the time J.C. User makes his purchasing decision, he is still uncorrupted by any ideas about installing other operating systems. Only afterwards he hears about Linux from a friend. And discovers it won't install without a lot of hardware tweaking. Oh well, too bad. J.C. User is certainly not going through all this trouble, especially since his current operating system works just fine.
Build a faraday cage into your house if you're that worried about it. It shouldn't be that hard.
Or even better (and much cheaper): Wear a Faraday cage as a hat! And don't worry about people giving you funny looks on the street. They are just ignorant fools.
Your debating skills are phenomenal. My point was that it doesn't make sense to compare microwave radiation to the low frequency radiation from power lines. And despite what you are saying, this point remains valid.
Light is a SHITLOAD higher frequency that microwave radiationa and I have high-powered light sources on all around me whenever I'm awake and I don't have cancer yet.
As you are certainly aware of, light gets absorbed by the outermost layer of your skin, which is a remarkably resilient organ.
I definitely would not feel comfortable having direct sunlight shining on my internal organs, particularly on my brain tissue.
Certain wavelengths may be dangerous, you wouldn't want to use anything that's going to excite any cells, or important molecules. If no matter in your body happens to resonate at the particular wavelength in question, then you are 100% transparent and the waves will simply pass harmlessly through you.
There's a huge variation of chemical compounds in our bodies. And it is naive to assume that our biochemistry is completely understood. What if any "unimportant" molecules we excite with the radiation turn out to be not so unimportant after all? And if I recall my undergraduate physics correctly, the absorption rate varies as 1/(f-f0)^2, where f and f0 are radiation frequency and resonance frequency, respectively. Hence even a little away from the resonance peaks, there is still significant absorption. Given the huge variety of resonance frequencies in cell tissue, I doubt it is possible to find a frequency with virtually zero absorption.
So lets not go around propagating half truths, OK?
Let's not go around oversimplifying things either, OK?
Sorry buddy, but 3cm reaches a little too far into my brain. And I certainly don't want any radiation that is powerful enough to act as a power supply absorbed by my brain tissue, even if only a small part gets absorbed.
As for your comparison with visible light: all light gets absorbed exclusively in the outer layer of the skin, and our skin is a remarkably robust organ. I certainly wouldn't feel comfortable with direct sunlight on my intestines or my brain tissue either.
We are talking about microwave radiation here, not about power lines! The radiation emitted from power lines is in the 50-Hz range, while microwaves are in the GHz (1E9 Hz) range. Naturally, the higher the frequency, the more damage the radiation can do (this is elementary quantum mechanics: the energy of a photon is given by planck's constant times the frequency). Comparing microwaves to power lines therefore does not make sense at all.
I recall reading, a while back, an article about a "microwave cannon" planned by the military. Supposedly it's effect is to raise the temperature of the enemy soldiers' brain tissue by a few degrees, which renders them unconcious. I could imagine that the energy needed to power a light bulb could have a similar effect on your brain, albeit weaker. But it might still make you feel uncoordinated and "feverish".
On the other hand, I'd love to have a microwave power supply for my laptop:-)
Re:Good but...
on
Mini-Box M-100
·
· Score: 2, Informative
From the website:
M-100-A configuration (add $150)
256Mb PC133 RAM
128Mb CompactFlash with Embedded Linux
40Gb 2.5" IBM drive
Zimbabwe has always been one of the largest food exporters in Africa. A large part of their market is the EU and other countries that have strict rules on import on GM food. If any of the imported grain had been replanted in Zimbabwe, it would have been a disaster for the countries food export as they would have faced severe restrictions on export to a wide range of countries.
I just want to add that Zimbabwe had another very good (and at the same time sad, sad) reason to refuse the genetically modified crops: Patent issues.
Yes, genetically modified crops can be, and are, patented. If some of the GM grain accidentially makes its way into the Zimbabwean agriculture, the farmers that produce and sell these "contaminated" crops would be patent infringers according to the World Trade Organization, and hence could possibly be subject to criminal prosecution and be forced to pay damages (a case like this has actually occured in Canada!. Needless to say, this could be disastrous for an economy as weak as the Zimbabwean.
This is yet another example where Western patent laws may possibly wreak havoc on third-world countries, or prevent some relief measures (see also: generic AIDS drugs in Africa)
The problem here is actually not of having an energy source, but of having a supply of an utilizeable propellant on the moon. As everybody here certainly knows, water is not a source of energy. In order to break water into Oxygen and Hydrogen you have to invest the same amount of energy that you will get back later when they recombine. That energy could conceivably come from solar cells (since the weather's always sunny up there), or maybe from a nuclear reactor on the moon.
On the other hand, due to Newton's third law, the only way of accelerating a spacecraft is by propelling a certain amount of mass in the opposite direction. This is the real big problem of space travel, since energy could also conceivably be generated by an on-board nuclear reactor (at least in principle; I'm sure the safety issues would be overwhelming).
So water has the huge advantage of being an energy storage medium (decomposed into Hydrogen and Oxygen, that is) which at the same time functions as a propellant! It certainly doesn't get much more convenient than that...
The earth slowing down is the best thing that has happened in the last few hundred millenia! I, for one, cherish the extra seconds of sleep I get in the morning, and nobody - not even you - are gonna take them away from me!
If anything, I suggest we use your idea to slow down earth by an extra hour per day or so...
Let's have a poll: How long, do slashdot readers think, would the perfect day be? I'd vote for 26 hours.
This is the best news I've heard in a very long time! I'm sure I'm not the only one who thinks that both day and night are way too short. How long do we have to wait until the day will be 25 hours? Aaaahh... I'm looking forward to that extra hour of sleep!
"I created it in OpenOffice and brought it into PowerPoint," he explained, as the class laughed at at him.
Hmm... this seems to suggest that PowerPoint is just not ready yet for OpenOffice.
More seriously, though, document portability between different office suites is, of course, one of the nastiest problems to tackle. Especially if one suite uses closed, proprietary file formats. But from what I've heard from other people (I haven't used MS Office since Office 97) those problems also occur frequently if you transfer your documents between different versions of Office. Now does this mean MS Office is not yet ready for MS Office?
This is meant to be an honest question, not a flame: What's the point of running Linux on your Xbox? Linux runs fine on a PC. Is it just the "because we can" factor, or are there any really useful things you can do with Linux on an Xbox that you can't do on a PC?
I'm wondering why this does not happen more often!? This seems to be a really big deal for Microsoft, but naively I would think that such keys are leaked to the internet every day. Or are these keys usually heavily guarded as "company secrets"? Are there stiff fines imposed on the companies if their assigned key becomes public knowledge?
And don't forget about the opportunities: If you accidentially harm yourself with McDonald's food, you can sue them for millions of dollars. Try that with Mom and Pop's burger joint!
Slashdot Mirror
In an ordinary Linux distro, is it possible to change the superuser's name as well? If so, can someone tell us how to do that?
Charge for each email received? Doesn't that hurt the wrong people? I understand how charging a tiny amount for each email sent would alleviate the spam problem, but wouldn't charging the receiver just make matters worse?
Colin Powell comes up and whispers something into G.W. Bush's ear.
Bush, unaware that his microphone is still on: "What do you mean, South Korea? There's more than one Korea?"
I certainly agree with you. My points were made in response to the parent comment, not to the article itself.
I've always viewed discussions of this kind as some sort of miscommunication, rather than as a conspiracy by microsoft haters. The problem is, and probably always will be, that one has to distinguish between "Linux for Nerds" and "Linux for the Masses". The latter includes KDE or Gnome, OpenOffice, multimedia tools, and many more applications that anybody would ever install on his Windows machine, or ever use for that matter. Certainly there is lot of bloat.
Strictly speaking, though, KDE and Gnome are not Linux. They are applications that run on top of Linux. Hence you should accuse the applications of bloat, not Linux itself.
What the "Linux on a 486 PC" advocates are saying is that the Linux kernel itself is very compact, and that it is cleanly separated from any GUI. So the knowledgeable user (i.e. the Linux Nerd) can put together his own collection of apps, and his preferred lightweight window manager, to create an entirely unbloated distribution that will run just fine on old machines.
Obviously this miscommunication is partly the fault of the Linux enthusiasts. Linux advocates have to learn that Joe User will never bother to understand the difference between the GUI and the underlying kernel. And I don't blame him for being a non-nerd. It is the responsibility of the Linux community to put this kind of statements into a language that can easily be understood by non-technical people.
But if you decry those people as Linux fanatics, you are clearly overreacting. One can either discuss those issues matter-of-factly, or one can start a flame war.
No Sales == No Production
No Production == Bad Idea
Bad Idea == Bag It.
While I have a lot of sympathy for your statements (I certainly wouldn't buy any of these machines either), unfortunately that's not how reality works. Microsoft does not care whether *you* are going to buy their PC. Microsoft cares whether Joe Clueless User is going to buy it. At the time J.C. User makes his purchasing decision, he is still uncorrupted by any ideas about installing other operating systems. Only afterwards he hears about Linux from a friend. And discovers it won't install without a lot of hardware tweaking. Oh well, too bad. J.C. User is certainly not going through all this trouble, especially since his current operating system works just fine.
It wor
Or even better (and much cheaper): Wear a Faraday cage as a hat! And don't worry about people giving you funny looks on the street. They are just ignorant fools.
Hmmm... maybe I should patent this idea!?
Your debating skills are phenomenal. My point was that it doesn't make sense to compare microwave radiation to the low frequency radiation from power lines. And despite what you are saying, this point remains valid.
Light is a SHITLOAD higher frequency that microwave radiationa and I have high-powered light sources on all around me whenever I'm awake and I don't have cancer yet.
As you are certainly aware of, light gets absorbed by the outermost layer of your skin, which is a remarkably resilient organ. I definitely would not feel comfortable having direct sunlight shining on my internal organs, particularly on my brain tissue.
Certain wavelengths may be dangerous, you wouldn't want to use anything that's going to excite any cells, or important molecules. If no matter in your body happens to resonate at the particular wavelength in question, then you are 100% transparent and the waves will simply pass harmlessly through you.
There's a huge variation of chemical compounds in our bodies. And it is naive to assume that our biochemistry is completely understood. What if any "unimportant" molecules we excite with the radiation turn out to be not so unimportant after all? And if I recall my undergraduate physics correctly, the absorption rate varies as 1/(f-f0)^2, where f and f0 are radiation frequency and resonance frequency, respectively. Hence even a little away from the resonance peaks, there is still significant absorption. Given the huge variety of resonance frequencies in cell tissue, I doubt it is possible to find a frequency with virtually zero absorption.
So lets not go around propagating half truths, OK?
Let's not go around oversimplifying things either, OK?
Let's all hide in the dark!
absorption by water spikes at 3 cm
Sorry buddy, but 3cm reaches a little too far into my brain. And I certainly don't want any radiation that is powerful enough to act as a power supply absorbed by my brain tissue, even if only a small part gets absorbed.
As for your comparison with visible light: all light gets absorbed exclusively in the outer layer of the skin, and our skin is a remarkably robust organ. I certainly wouldn't feel comfortable with direct sunlight on my intestines or my brain tissue either.
I recall reading, a while back, an article about a "microwave cannon" planned by the military. Supposedly it's effect is to raise the temperature of the enemy soldiers' brain tissue by a few degrees, which renders them unconcious. I could imagine that the energy needed to power a light bulb could have a similar effect on your brain, albeit weaker. But it might still make you feel uncoordinated and "feverish".
On the other hand, I'd love to have a microwave power supply for my laptop :-)
But, quite seriously, it might be a good idea to file lawsuits against people that allow bullets to end up in the wrong hands.
Err... hello, this is Slashdot!
I just want to add that Zimbabwe had another very good (and at the same time sad, sad) reason to refuse the genetically modified crops: Patent issues.
Yes, genetically modified crops can be, and are, patented. If some of the GM grain accidentially makes its way into the Zimbabwean agriculture, the farmers that produce and sell these "contaminated" crops would be patent infringers according to the World Trade Organization, and hence could possibly be subject to criminal prosecution and be forced to pay damages (a case like this has actually occured in Canada!. Needless to say, this could be disastrous for an economy as weak as the Zimbabwean.
This is yet another example where Western patent laws may possibly wreak havoc on third-world countries, or prevent some relief measures (see also: generic AIDS drugs in Africa)
On the other hand, due to Newton's third law, the only way of accelerating a spacecraft is by propelling a certain amount of mass in the opposite direction. This is the real big problem of space travel, since energy could also conceivably be generated by an on-board nuclear reactor (at least in principle; I'm sure the safety issues would be overwhelming).
So water has the huge advantage of being an energy storage medium (decomposed into Hydrogen and Oxygen, that is) which at the same time functions as a propellant! It certainly doesn't get much more convenient than that...
If anything, I suggest we use your idea to slow down earth by an extra hour per day or so...
Let's have a poll: How long, do slashdot readers think, would the perfect day be? I'd vote for 26 hours.
This is the best news I've heard in a very long time! I'm sure I'm not the only one who thinks that both day and night are way too short. How long do we have to wait until the day will be 25 hours? Aaaahh... I'm looking forward to that extra hour of sleep!
Hmm... this seems to suggest that PowerPoint is just not ready yet for OpenOffice.
More seriously, though, document portability between different office suites is, of course, one of the nastiest problems to tackle. Especially if one suite uses closed, proprietary file formats. But from what I've heard from other people (I haven't used MS Office since Office 97) those problems also occur frequently if you transfer your documents between different versions of Office. Now does this mean MS Office is not yet ready for MS Office?
This is meant to be an honest question, not a flame: What's the point of running Linux on your Xbox? Linux runs fine on a PC. Is it just the "because we can" factor, or are there any really useful things you can do with Linux on an Xbox that you can't do on a PC?
I'm wondering why this does not happen more often!? This seems to be a really big deal for Microsoft, but naively I would think that such keys are leaked to the internet every day. Or are these keys usually heavily guarded as "company secrets"? Are there stiff fines imposed on the companies if their assigned key becomes public knowledge?
( |c++> + |c--> ) / sqrt(2)
And don't forget about the opportunities: If you accidentially harm yourself with McDonald's food, you can sue them for millions of dollars. Try that with Mom and Pop's burger joint!