Oh ok, I didn't realize that. I figured a popular site like Slashdot would have no problem selling its ads.:-) Anyway, I earlier posted comments where I was guessing that it wouldn't give you more money (assuming you got $5 CPM for the ads), but I posted replies retracting those statements and am now considering donating a bit. Sorry for spreading any misinformation. (-:
Also, a tote bag you say? I know of the/. T-Shirts at think geek but a/. tote bag would be slick.
If you are at liberty to say, CmdrTaco, exactly how much money does Slashdot make from ads? If it makes $5 CPM (cost per thousand ads) then the $5 to eliminate the thousand ads doesn't give you much additional income. I was thinking about it this way because many people are giving you money to eliminate the thousand ads in the hope of helping out the site, but wouldn't it be a better way to help the site to just give to a tip jar in addition to giving you the ad revenue (and viewing ads is relatively painless, I might add)?
Does anybody else find it funny that on the case study links page, they give a link to download SimHealth. It leads to a defunct abandonware site but I think it makes a statement that a group like this considers abandonware ok to use. Just a bit of SimFood for thought...
Civilizations 3 is another great learning game. It gave me valuable life experience for the next time I have a 6000 year life span and an empire to build. When this occurs, I would like to be the Persians, because their special unit the Immortals will help me conquer competing civilizations. I also have learned that when I conquer foreign cities and they are unhappy, if I simply make them entertainers and they starve for a few turns, the city size decreases and they become happy again.
If a DoS would kill people, the people who initiate the DoS would be liable for murder. Guns enable people to kill people, but you don't see the gun manufacturers getting sued. Besides, most licenses state "Don't use this in mission critical operations!" Anyone who uses the software in such situations would be violating the license and using the software improperly. It is well known that there exist bugs in nearly every piece of software, and anyone who used it in critical missions would have to extensively test the software.
What? Why the hell would MS lobby AGAINST such a law? MS would be the only company that would be able to afford the lawyers & liability insurance premuims. Open Source would be the second casualty after the shareware folks.
But Microsoft produces extremely buggy software. It would be liable for worms and viruses affecting Windows and Outlook Express and MS Office and all their other (buggy) software. Even with high priced lawyers, with things like that with tons of proof you will be found guilty.
If the government decided that the group responsible for the product (who is responsible is, of course, another issue entirely) must pay damages caused by security flaws, these licenses aren't worth the bandwidth they're downloaded on. I think that was one of the implications of the arcicle.
I don't think we have to worry about the government passing legislation like this, there are enough Microsoft, Sun, Adobe, etc lobbyists and campaign donations to prevent this from happening. Money buys government, and something like this would cripple the software industry, which politicians are scared of doing. Microsoft gave $4.3 million and bought lotsa politicians, just imagine what all these companies together would do if the possibility of getting sued thousands of times came up.
You can't sue the builder of a house if the owner doesn't but locks and gets robbed and sodomized.
What are you saying?!?! Are you implying that if I receive bodily harm or a disease or genetic defect, or if I die, that I cannot sue God? Preposterous! It is time we stand up to these big bullies like Microsoft and God and force them to do everything perfectly!
I think the law should be modified so that people who discover holes in software and notify the company without doing damage should not be punished. On the other hand, people who deface websites do real damage. One of the problems though is that the companies say "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" and then extend it to "if it isn't hacked, don't secure it." I think it is a major problem that often companies are informed of holes in software but they don't fix it until the hole is out in public, and then say "oh! I didn't know about that!"
This is one good reason for open source software. If there is a bug, people will fix it. There isn't a financial incentive to ignore the bug until it causes real problems.
That's a little different. Software bugs cost money to fix. Car bugs kill people. The tobacco industry gets sued because they kill their own customers, but I don't think software companies do the same. Plus, if the software manufacturer is liable, and writes nearly perfect code, and then five years later somebody discovers a single bug and writes an exploit, who is liable? I say nobody is, the licenses always say that the software provider is not responsible.
Yes, now imagine if Linux Torvalds or the FreeBSD Foundation were liable for that same $2 Billion.
Exactly. Hence the BSD license. "Take this software and do what you want, it's not our fault!" Microsoft has similar license clauses as well that state that the person using the software agrees they aren't liable and that the maximum damages is $5, etc etc.
And by the anti-MS people, what I meant is that I do disapprove of Microsoft's business practices, but I'm not some kind of anti-MS zealot. They illegally abused their monopoly and caused everybody to use an extremely buggy OS through shady business practices. What I mean is that I try to be unbiased and let the facts speak for themselves.
Yes, it is the software manufacturer's fault if they make buggy software and don't ever put a hold on new features to fix bugs. The customer is responsible for installing bugfixes, when released.
Still, they aren't legally responsible for the bugs. If you read most licenses, they say "this software is provided as is." Everybody makes mistakes and even though software creators should make more effort to stamp out bugs, no code of a certain level's complexity is perfect.
The important thing here that needs to happen is that businesses and consumers say "features are nice, but fix the bugs first." At the moment though, they say "features first! bugs aren't displayed on the box." They speak with their wallets by buying buggy software. I don't mean to be one of those typical anti-MS people (even though I dislike their software), but the fact is, they produced extremely buggy software and most people still bought it. That says something.
Oh, no! This situation was shown as "bad" in a movie! We must stop it from happening in real life!
I've thought about this long before movies like Gattaca came out. That was just a good example of what could potentially happen. If it is allowed, I'm sure it would be expensive, and only the rich countries would be able to afford it and there would be an extreme polarization of the classes. Rich people would get better genes and a new form of extreme aristocracy would be born. Meanwhile, people in the poor countries couldn't afford this.
There are two potential uses of genetic screening before giving birth, in my opinion.
1) Screen for potentially harmful diseases, such as Alzheimer's, and prevent them.
2) Test for other traits such as height and eye color, etc.
#1 is OK in my opinion, since it simply tries to prevent a person from having genetic conditions for their entire lives. #2 would be terrible if used, though, and could just create a bunch of Michael Jordans as babies. It does not save people's lives, it simply makes everyone else worse off in comparison, and is the type of thing used in Gattaca.
I think that designer babies are ok as far as eliminating disease but could hurt genetic diversity and cause genetic elitism if used to try to get the perfect baby.
There are probably a few things everyone can agree on, like Flash being worthless at best and extremely annoying most of the time.
I'd say that Flash is annoying at worst and useful at best. Admit it, you've seen some good uses of Flash in your lifetime. Flash is great for animation and for vector based graphics. Have you seen the Star Wars Gangsta Rap Flash animation? Hilarious! That unemployed guy used it for animations as well.
Flash can be great when used correctly. It should be used for animations on an animation based site. Flash intros and uses of Flash when there is no point for it are a waste of bandwidth and space, though.
That sure was slashdotted quickly, does anybody have a mirror? Somebody should write a program to refresh/. a lot and mirror pages in the new articles right when they are posted, before the/. effect hits, lol.
If you want a water cooling system but don't have a notebook, http://www.agaweb.com/coolcpu/ is a good place to start. I tried it out once and overclocked my system by over 50%.
Just don't get these things mad...
on
ULTra Robo-Taxi
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· Score: 2, Funny
Like the drug war! If you arrested everyone in the US who had committed a drug crime (including smalltime possession and use, the drug equiv of sharing a few Metallica files), you'd arrest an amount of people that equals the population of Texas, Arkensaw and Colorado.
Hey, what President Bush says he hasn't done at all since 1974 and won't comment on before then is nobody's business. Well ok, maybe he did sniff it a little bit, but he only did it when he was drunk.
Slashdot Mirror
Oh ok, I didn't realize that. I figured a popular site like Slashdot would have no problem selling its ads. :-) Anyway, I earlier posted comments where I was guessing that it wouldn't give you more money (assuming you got $5 CPM for the ads), but I posted replies retracting those statements and am now considering donating a bit. Sorry for spreading any misinformation. (-:
/. T-Shirts at think geek but a /. tote bag would be slick.
Also, a tote bag you say? I know of the
If you are at liberty to say, CmdrTaco, exactly how much money does Slashdot make from ads? If it makes $5 CPM (cost per thousand ads) then the $5 to eliminate the thousand ads doesn't give you much additional income. I was thinking about it this way because many people are giving you money to eliminate the thousand ads in the hope of helping out the site, but wouldn't it be a better way to help the site to just give to a tip jar in addition to giving you the ad revenue (and viewing ads is relatively painless, I might add)?
It's rather obvious who killed @Home if you just think about it...
It was Colonel Mustard with a candle in the library. Duh.
Does anybody else find it funny that on the case study links page, they give a link to download SimHealth. It leads to a defunct abandonware site but I think it makes a statement that a group like this considers abandonware ok to use. Just a bit of SimFood for thought...
Civilizations 3 is another great learning game. It gave me valuable life experience for the next time I have a 6000 year life span and an empire to build. When this occurs, I would like to be the Persians, because their special unit the Immortals will help me conquer competing civilizations. I also have learned that when I conquer foreign cities and they are unhappy, if I simply make them entertainers and they starve for a few turns, the city size decreases and they become happy again.
If a DoS would kill people, the people who initiate the DoS would be liable for murder. Guns enable people to kill people, but you don't see the gun manufacturers getting sued. Besides, most licenses state "Don't use this in mission critical operations!" Anyone who uses the software in such situations would be violating the license and using the software improperly. It is well known that there exist bugs in nearly every piece of software, and anyone who used it in critical missions would have to extensively test the software.
Right where it says 00, that's the year. So, with Microsoft collapsing six months from 12/13/00, I guess it will collapse by June 2001! Great!
I think the law should be modified so that people who discover holes in software and notify the company without doing damage should not be punished. On the other hand, people who deface websites do real damage. One of the problems though is that the companies say "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" and then extend it to "if it isn't hacked, don't secure it." I think it is a major problem that often companies are informed of holes in software but they don't fix it until the hole is out in public, and then say "oh! I didn't know about that!"
This is one good reason for open source software. If there is a bug, people will fix it. There isn't a financial incentive to ignore the bug until it causes real problems.
That's a little different. Software bugs cost money to fix. Car bugs kill people. The tobacco industry gets sued because they kill their own customers, but I don't think software companies do the same. Plus, if the software manufacturer is liable, and writes nearly perfect code, and then five years later somebody discovers a single bug and writes an exploit, who is liable? I say nobody is, the licenses always say that the software provider is not responsible.
And by the anti-MS people, what I meant is that I do disapprove of Microsoft's business practices, but I'm not some kind of anti-MS zealot. They illegally abused their monopoly and caused everybody to use an extremely buggy OS through shady business practices. What I mean is that I try to be unbiased and let the facts speak for themselves.
Yes, it is the software manufacturer's fault if they make buggy software and don't ever put a hold on new features to fix bugs. The customer is responsible for installing bugfixes, when released.
Still, they aren't legally responsible for the bugs. If you read most licenses, they say "this software is provided as is." Everybody makes mistakes and even though software creators should make more effort to stamp out bugs, no code of a certain level's complexity is perfect.
The important thing here that needs to happen is that businesses and consumers say "features are nice, but fix the bugs first." At the moment though, they say "features first! bugs aren't displayed on the box." They speak with their wallets by buying buggy software. I don't mean to be one of those typical anti-MS people (even though I dislike their software), but the fact is, they produced extremely buggy software and most people still bought it. That says something.
We draw the line at wiping out diseases that are potentially harmful.
There are two potential uses of genetic screening before giving birth, in my opinion.
1) Screen for potentially harmful diseases, such as Alzheimer's, and prevent them.
2) Test for other traits such as height and eye color, etc.
#1 is OK in my opinion, since it simply tries to prevent a person from having genetic conditions for their entire lives. #2 would be terrible if used, though, and could just create a bunch of Michael Jordans as babies. It does not save people's lives, it simply makes everyone else worse off in comparison, and is the type of thing used in Gattaca.
I think that designer babies are ok as far as eliminating disease but could hurt genetic diversity and cause genetic elitism if used to try to get the perfect baby.
Flash can be great when used correctly. It should be used for animations on an animation based site. Flash intros and uses of Flash when there is no point for it are a waste of bandwidth and space, though.
But those tags don't work in every browser.
Yeah, Bernard Shifman sent out like ten million resumes via email and is still unemployed! Go figure, an unemployed spammer!
That sure was slashdotted quickly, does anybody have a mirror? Somebody should write a program to refresh /. a lot and mirror pages in the new articles right when they are posted, before the /. effect hits, lol.
If you want a water cooling system but don't have a notebook, http://www.agaweb.com/coolcpu/ is a good place to start. I tried it out once and overclocked my system by over 50%.
...because I hear they have lots of road rage.