Then I realized that given the makeup of/. (lots of "hard science" geeks)
heh. If only that were the case. The makeup of slashdot is computer nerds, who generally know very little about science, but think it's "cool". Just look at all the dumb jokes that get posted in every single science story. There aren't two cultures (science and the humanities), but three cultures, science, humanities, and technology. There's a little crossover between the sciences and technologies, with each group thinking they understand the other (but really don't).
I remember a time when one bunch of people would sell products and another bunch of people would repair them when they break.
And I remember a time when it was cheaper to fix things than it was to throw it away and buy a new one. I don't know about a washing machine, but who gets the TV or DVD player fixed when you can buy a new one for the same, or lower price? The only TV that anyone even bothers to fix is the ultra-wide screen or really expensive HD-TV.
Manufacturing has gotten much cheaper over the years, and with most things it's to the point where it's cheaper to make a whole new one than it is for a guy to spend a few hours and some parts replacing whats broken. Repair guys know this, so they don't bother with all the low end stuff. So who do I call if my Linux box is on the fritz? Believe it or not, there's lots of people you can call. Because the software is open there's a whole lot of people who understand it and can fix it.
That has a lot more to do with their being an economic need for people to fix linux machines and the fixing costing less than having someone replace the entire server from the ground up. The same is true for Windows (assuming it's not an OS problem).
Keep drinking that Microsoft Kool-Aid, it's nutritious and delicious!
I've used a lot of Microsoft products over the years, and most of them reach a stage where the only thing that changes is the layout of the menu. Something simply being "three major versions behind the curve" doesn't mean it's outdated or a dinosaur. Office is the perfect example here. Unfortunately we don't have a derogatory term for people that've bought into the whole "upgrading for the sake of upgrading" belief. If we did I would put that term squarely upon you. I'll suggest one. How about Upgrade Monkey?
Probbably the same people who made the thing, or possibly a 3rd company with a model like RedHat where they offer support. Honestly, how is this any different than other open source products? Support is available commercially, and on a DIY basis from the community.
I'm not a heavy office user, but like other people here I recall thinking that Office 97 was meeting my every need. Can some heavy user of Office 2003 tell me what the big wiz-bang features that it has that I'm missing in either Office97 or Open Office?
Honestly, the only thing Office has that I really miss in Open Office is Access. Access is a great program to interact with other databases with via ODBC drivers, and I've yet to see a good open source replacement.
I've heard from many scientists that you just can't do some research with robots. They fire a projectile into an asteroid and measure the debris and stuff with x-ray spectrometers, that's ok, but with people on mars they could dig a shaft 3 feet wide and take pictures of the evolution of mars. Try and build a robot that does that, with any likelihood of success.
I'm sure ignoring everything else you could get more science done with Astronauts than with robots. I don't think anyone would dispute that. But what about all the other science that's been done over the years with just robots and satelites? Look at all the science we've gotten with projects like the Hubble, or lesser known projects like Wmap Should we cancel projects like this to blow all our money on manned Mars exploration? That's really the question at hand here. I think you're going to get a hell of a lot more science per buck with small missions than spending a LOT of money mostly on getting a few humans to survive for a year or two on a Mars mission.
On top of everything else, I just like to see something exciting happening, some bookmark in the history of mankind in my lifetime, you know? It's another leap forward for mankind.
Well, I suggest you look at the science that Nasa has produced instead of looking at great media stories. While the moon landing certainly captured peoples imaginations, it didn't really produce that much science for all the money that went into it. Since then NASA has done a hell of a lot of great science. You honestly don't think all the massive amounts of gains in knowledge that NASA alone has been responsible for is a bookmark in history in your lifetime? Good god, we've still got two functional robots moving around on another planet! Just a few weeks ago it was revealed that comets aren't the dirty snowballs that we've been told they are since I can remember. We've got very solid evidence that there was once water on Mars. I think those are some pretty amazing discoveries, and that's just a few of them.
It sounds pretty cool, I'm just skeptical that it's going to be a good permanent solution. Maybe it does happen to work well being up for 10 years+, but it doesn't sound like it was designed to be used for that long a time period.
I think you're really missing a very large point about what the government is for, and what private industry is for. Private industry is really great at putting money in forseeable goals where profit can be made. It's really bad at funding basic research in areas where there's no clear profit to be made. It's also really bad at developing anything that benefits everyone as a whole, but can't be charged for. 100 years ago what corporation would have wanted to fund some patent clerk who didn't even do any experiments and just wanted to think about the nature of light? But yet now our entire view of the Universe is different, and many of the devices you use every day rely upon an understanding of relativity.
The problem (as far as a corporation is concerned) is that in science you don't always know what you're going to find out before you find it out. Weird problems in one area can lead to huge advances of knowledge in something that's completely unrelated. That's why it's best for the government to continue funding this basic research, since it's the people that're going to eventually benefit from it, or maybe never benefit from it. What corporation wants to fund experiments counting the number of Neutrinos (very weakly interacting particles that have no forseeable practical applications) that come from the sun? No corporation in their right mind is the answer. They'll never make back money invested in it. But yet that very experiment has led to big developments in the understanding of particle physics. We now know that neutrinos have mass, and oscillate between the different types of them. And even this knowledge has no practical applications of it at all. Might it someday? Maybe, then again maybe not.
Really, the big problem with a Mars mission is you're going to waste a lot of money on one big project that could produce a LOT more scientific results if used in 100 other small projects. You'll probbably gain some technology along the way, but what do we really expect to gain scientifically from a manned Mars mission? Maybe we'll find life on Mars, and learn more about planetary geology. Is that worth scrapping all the other smaller missions? I don't think so.
What worries me about the manned Mars mission is the vast majority of the money is going to go to private industry to develop technology only suited to going to Mars. That's great if you think Science is just about making the world like Star Trek, but it isn't so good if you think science is about learning things about our universe. Don't get me wrong, I think the manned missions have some importance. I just don't think that importance overshadows the science that Nasa (and really hardly anyone else) produces.
Every day Slashdot gets closer to looking like it's April fools day every day. This is not a serious story and should never have made it to slashdot. The next article I expect to read is about a lunatic who's done "scientific testing" to determine which tin foil hat arrangement is more effective "shiny side up" or "shiny side down" in blocking out the goverment mind control rays.
And was this a permanent solution that can withstand wind, ice loading, rain, etc? Since it's crank up, I'm guessing it was designed for temporary use in good weather conditions.
My girlfriend lives on a dairy farm, and this isn't entirely true.
Dairy farms aren't what the original poster was referring to. The problem is that many farmers add antibiotics to the feed of say chickens because it increases either the growth rate, or the eventual size (I forget which) of the chickens. By doing this you create a wonderfull environment for antiobiotic resistant strains of these bugs to appear in the food supply.
I would prefer we got rid of all those stupid anti-bacterial dish soaps and hand soaps. Antibacterial soap is redundant, it's already SOAP for chrissake, and it contributes to exactly the situation described by the grandparent post.
I'd agree that anti-bacterial soap is just stupid and serves no purpose other than marketing to obsessive-compulsive people. But they really aren't the same thing as an antibiotic. Anything, including bleach or acid can be anti-bacterial. I don't know that anyone has shown that bacteria that develop resistance to the stuff in anti-bacterial soap also develops resistance to anti-biotics.
Actually, I think port-scanning is a wee bit closer to turning the doorknobs on all exterior doors (but not opening them and going through), pushing the windowsills, and knocking on the walls looking for hidden doors.
Kind of a bad analogy, since port scanning doesn't involve trespassing on someones land. Also portscanning doesn't actually reveal unlocked points of entry, like turning a doornob or pushing on a windowsill would. The analogy of say using a telescope, or an IR camera to reveal hidden doors or windows from a public vantage point is quite a good one. Both are suspicious, but not illegal. The tools to do so are available, but not invasive.
Considering how many times my servers actually get hack attempts against the ssh port per day, I'd say port scanning is really one of the most minor problems on the internet. SANS is completely over-reacting here. The internet is public. Trying to connect to a port is a normal thing to do for an internet computer. This kind of assessment isn't new. War Dialing is more than 20 years old (and arguably more intrusive than port scanning), and I've never heard of anyone being prosecuted for simply making a lot of phone calls (but never to the same number twice).
You could do that, but like the other responder I think it's going to be a poor replacement for a real ticket tracking system. Why use a crappy form->email system when someone else has already created a fully functional system that's been designed for future expansion in mind?
No, I'm saying this is in no way comparable to revealing your information to the Republican party, which is under no such restrictions. That was the original subject of the discussion, remember?
The IRS is limited in what it can reveal about your tax information. See here for more information. The republican party is under no such restrictions.
I'd have to disagree here. The point of a form to fill out is to elicit more detailed responses from the ticket submitters. All too often if you only have the free-form of an email people won't give enough details of the problem to be able to start finding a solution. If you have fields like "what do you expect to happen", "what error messages, if any do you get?", "what do you do to replicate the problem?", "how urgent is a solution needed?", etc asks people many of the questions you're ultimately going to need the answer to solve the problem.
Remember, the people who are submitting job tickets aren't necessarily problem solvers, so they don't know what kind of information you're going to need to fix a problem. A little guidance of a form can go a long way to make the system more useable for everyone.
The allies used a variety of codes, but the one I find most interesting was used for high level communications, and called sigsaly. It was a one time pad voice encryption system that digitized voice in realtime. It was quite bulky,expensive, and cumbersome to operate so it was only used for high level communications between Churchill and Rosevelt, high level generals, etc. It was never broken by the Germans, and is in fact mathematically unbreakable.
chances are they're not all that interested in buying something that's advertised.
Oh I disagree. Advertising doesn't work on a completely rational level. One of the goals of advertising is simple familiarity. I.e. when you're look at the supermarket of different brands of Salsa to buy , the advertised product it isn't strange and foreign. Another goal of advertising is association. If an advertiser can associate the product with something good, you'll be more likely to buy it.
People buy the product? Not everything is a dot com business model you know. I think the plan is pretty smart. It got some free advertising on Slashdot. Maybe other companies will start hiding things (like details for entering a sweepstakes) in commercials.
That can work for some people, but there's quite a few people that want to do more than email, web browsing, and IM. My dad has a digital camera, likes printing up business cards and other printshop kind of things, and works with geneaology. Accomplishing all those things in Linux isn't going to be easy.
I have switched him over to Firefox and Thunderbird, and he seems quite happy with those. I don't plan on switching him to linux since Windows 2000 does just about everything he really needs.
Yeah, but if you don't live in Utah, are you going to tell the people of Utah that they're not allowed nor entitled to censor themselves if they want to?
As a citizen of the United States that still has a first amendment, yes, I'm quite prepared to tell some people of Utah that they can't censor other people in Utah. If one individual wants to censor themself (whatever that means) that's entirely different.
I know you're trying to make a point that one form of content is about the same as another. But really there are people out their that would completely agree with your ideas. It's this same attitude that puts some neo-nazi guy in jail in Austria for making a speech 16 years ago that the holocaust didn't happen. Some people truly believe that ideas themselves are dangerous, and need to be controlled. A scary thought in a country who was founded in direct opposition to this idea.
1. If you're not in Utah, don't worry. This isn't going to affect you. So pipe down already and focus on preventing it in your own backyard.
I don't know that that's necessarily true. Much as I'd like it too, Utah doesn't live in a vacuum with respect to the rest of the United States. Sucessful legislation in one state percolates into the other states. Stupid crap like this only emboldens the pro-censorship people. Also, video game manufacturers might try to change content so they'll be able to sell in Utah. I doubt they'd bother for such a small state like Utah, but if this kind of thing spreads that could easily be the case.
I don't know if it will pass in Utah, as I know little about politics their. But my hope is if it did, the Federal courts would knock down the law fairly quickly.
You're comparing two completely different things. Other continents were perfectly ready for more human inhabitants (that is if you ignore the natives). Other planets are lifeless inhospitable wastelands. That's quite a big difference. Terraforming you say? Maybe some day, but for the foreseeable future, and certainly everyone that's alive today it's a pipedream. Even Antarctica is a more inhabitable place than Mars. It's useless to dream about something that might take place in another 500 years.
We should be concentrating on things that can actually be done, and have a reason to do so. Space elevators, sub-orbital transportation, and maybe even mars explorations are all attainable goals that have significant benefits. Establishing colonies on Mars and being "multi-planetary" is not.
Slashdot Mirror
Then I realized that given the makeup of
heh. If only that were the case. The makeup of slashdot is computer nerds, who generally know very little about science, but think it's "cool". Just look at all the dumb jokes that get posted in every single science story. There aren't two cultures (science and the humanities), but three cultures, science, humanities, and technology. There's a little crossover between the sciences and technologies, with each group thinking they understand the other (but really don't).
I remember a time when one bunch of people would sell products and another bunch of people would repair them when they break.
And I remember a time when it was cheaper to fix things than it was to throw it away and buy a new one. I don't know about a washing machine, but who gets the TV or DVD player fixed when you can buy a new one for the same, or lower price? The only TV that anyone even bothers to fix is the ultra-wide screen or really expensive HD-TV.
Manufacturing has gotten much cheaper over the years, and with most things it's to the point where it's cheaper to make a whole new one than it is for a guy to spend a few hours and some parts replacing whats broken. Repair guys know this, so they don't bother with all the low end stuff.
So who do I call if my Linux box is on the fritz? Believe it or not, there's lots of people you can call. Because the software is open there's a whole lot of people who understand it and can fix it.
That has a lot more to do with their being an economic need for people to fix linux machines and the fixing costing less than having someone replace the entire server from the ground up. The same is true for Windows (assuming it's not an OS problem).
Keep drinking that Microsoft Kool-Aid, it's nutritious and delicious!
I've used a lot of Microsoft products over the years, and most of them reach a stage where the only thing that changes is the layout of the menu. Something simply being "three major versions behind the curve" doesn't mean it's outdated or a dinosaur. Office is the perfect example here. Unfortunately we don't have a derogatory term for people that've bought into the whole "upgrading for the sake of upgrading" belief. If we did I would put that term squarely upon you. I'll suggest one. How about Upgrade Monkey?
So who do you call when the thing breaks?
Probbably the same people who made the thing, or possibly a 3rd company with a model like RedHat where they offer support. Honestly, how is this any different than other open source products? Support is available commercially, and on a DIY basis from the community.
I'm not a heavy office user, but like other people here I recall thinking that Office 97 was meeting my every need. Can some heavy user of Office 2003 tell me what the big wiz-bang features that it has that I'm missing in either Office97 or Open Office?
Honestly, the only thing Office has that I really miss in Open Office is Access. Access is a great program to interact with other databases with via ODBC drivers, and I've yet to see a good open source replacement.
I've heard from many scientists that you just can't do some research with robots. They fire a projectile into an asteroid and measure the debris and stuff with x-ray spectrometers, that's ok, but with people on mars they could dig a shaft 3 feet wide and take pictures of the evolution of mars. Try and build a robot that does that, with any likelihood of success.
I'm sure ignoring everything else you could get more science done with Astronauts than with robots. I don't think anyone would dispute that. But what about all the other science that's been done over the years with just robots and satelites? Look at all the science we've gotten with projects like the Hubble, or lesser known projects like Wmap Should we cancel projects like this to blow all our money on manned Mars exploration? That's really the question at hand here. I think you're going to get a hell of a lot more science per buck with small missions than spending a LOT of money mostly on getting a few humans to survive for a year or two on a Mars mission.
On top of everything else, I just like to see something exciting happening, some bookmark in the history of mankind in my lifetime, you know? It's another leap forward for mankind.
Well, I suggest you look at the science that Nasa has produced instead of looking at great media stories. While the moon landing certainly captured peoples imaginations, it didn't really produce that much science for all the money that went into it. Since then NASA has done a hell of a lot of great science. You honestly don't think all the massive amounts of gains in knowledge that NASA alone has been responsible for is a bookmark in history in your lifetime? Good god, we've still got two functional robots moving around on another planet! Just a few weeks ago it was revealed that comets aren't the dirty snowballs that we've been told they are since I can remember. We've got very solid evidence that there was once water on Mars. I think those are some pretty amazing discoveries, and that's just a few of them.
It sounds pretty cool, I'm just skeptical that it's going to be a good permanent solution. Maybe it does happen to work well being up for 10 years+, but it doesn't sound like it was designed to be used for that long a time period.
I think you're really missing a very large point about what the government is for, and what private industry is for. Private industry is really great at putting money in forseeable goals where profit can be made. It's really bad at funding basic research in areas where there's no clear profit to be made. It's also really bad at developing anything that benefits everyone as a whole, but can't be charged for. 100 years ago what corporation would have wanted to fund some patent clerk who didn't even do any experiments and just wanted to think about the nature of light? But yet now our entire view of the Universe is different, and many of the devices you use every day rely upon an understanding of relativity.
The problem (as far as a corporation is concerned) is that in science you don't always know what you're going to find out before you find it out. Weird problems in one area can lead to huge advances of knowledge in something that's completely unrelated. That's why it's best for the government to continue funding this basic research, since it's the people that're going to eventually benefit from it, or maybe never benefit from it. What corporation wants to fund experiments counting the number of Neutrinos (very weakly interacting particles that have no forseeable practical applications) that come from the sun? No corporation in their right mind is the answer. They'll never make back money invested in it. But yet that very experiment has led to big developments in the understanding of particle physics. We now know that neutrinos have mass, and oscillate between the different types of them. And even this knowledge has no practical applications of it at all. Might it someday? Maybe, then again maybe not.
Really, the big problem with a Mars mission is you're going to waste a lot of money on one big project that could produce a LOT more scientific results if used in 100 other small projects. You'll probbably gain some technology along the way, but what do we really expect to gain scientifically from a manned Mars mission? Maybe we'll find life on Mars, and learn more about planetary geology. Is that worth scrapping all the other smaller missions? I don't think so.
What worries me about the manned Mars mission is the vast majority of the money is going to go to private industry to develop technology only suited to going to Mars. That's great if you think Science is just about making the world like Star Trek, but it isn't so good if you think science is about learning things about our universe. Don't get me wrong, I think the manned missions have some importance. I just don't think that importance overshadows the science that Nasa (and really hardly anyone else) produces.
Every day Slashdot gets closer to looking like it's April fools day every day. This is not a serious story and should never have made it to slashdot. The next article I expect to read is about a lunatic who's done "scientific testing" to determine which tin foil hat arrangement is more effective "shiny side up" or "shiny side down" in blocking out the goverment mind control rays.
And was this a permanent solution that can withstand wind, ice loading, rain, etc? Since it's crank up, I'm guessing it was designed for temporary use in good weather conditions.
My girlfriend lives on a dairy farm, and this isn't entirely true.
Dairy farms aren't what the original poster was referring to. The problem is that many farmers add antibiotics to the feed of say chickens because it increases either the growth rate, or the eventual size (I forget which) of the chickens. By doing this you create a wonderfull environment for antiobiotic resistant strains of these bugs to appear in the food supply.
I would prefer we got rid of all those stupid anti-bacterial dish soaps and hand soaps. Antibacterial soap is redundant, it's already SOAP for chrissake, and it contributes to exactly the situation described by the grandparent post.
I'd agree that anti-bacterial soap is just stupid and serves no purpose other than marketing to obsessive-compulsive people. But they really aren't the same thing as an antibiotic. Anything, including bleach or acid can be anti-bacterial. I don't know that anyone has shown that bacteria that develop resistance to the stuff in anti-bacterial soap also develops resistance to anti-biotics.
Actually, I think port-scanning is a wee bit closer to turning the doorknobs on all exterior doors (but not opening them and going through), pushing the windowsills, and knocking on the walls looking for hidden doors.
Kind of a bad analogy, since port scanning doesn't involve trespassing on someones land. Also portscanning doesn't actually reveal unlocked points of entry, like turning a doornob or pushing on a windowsill would. The analogy of say using a telescope, or an IR camera to reveal hidden doors or windows from a public vantage point is quite a good one. Both are suspicious, but not illegal. The tools to do so are available, but not invasive.
Considering how many times my servers actually get hack attempts against the ssh port per day, I'd say port scanning is really one of the most minor problems on the internet. SANS is completely over-reacting here. The internet is public. Trying to connect to a port is a normal thing to do for an internet computer. This kind of assessment isn't new. War Dialing is more than 20 years old (and arguably more intrusive than port scanning), and I've never heard of anyone being prosecuted for simply making a lot of phone calls (but never to the same number twice).
You could do that, but like the other responder I think it's going to be a poor replacement for a real ticket tracking system. Why use a crappy form->email system when someone else has already created a fully functional system that's been designed for future expansion in mind?
No, I'm saying this is in no way comparable to revealing your information to the Republican party, which is under no such restrictions. That was the original subject of the discussion, remember?
The IRS is limited in what it can reveal about your tax information. See here for more information. The republican party is under no such restrictions.
I'd have to disagree here. The point of a form to fill out is to elicit more detailed responses from the ticket submitters. All too often if you only have the free-form of an email people won't give enough details of the problem to be able to start finding a solution. If you have fields like "what do you expect to happen", "what error messages, if any do you get?", "what do you do to replicate the problem?", "how urgent is a solution needed?", etc asks people many of the questions you're ultimately going to need the answer to solve the problem.
Remember, the people who are submitting job tickets aren't necessarily problem solvers, so they don't know what kind of information you're going to need to fix a problem. A little guidance of a form can go a long way to make the system more useable for everyone.
The allies used a variety of codes, but the one I find most interesting was used for high level communications, and called sigsaly. It was a one time pad voice encryption system that digitized voice in realtime. It was quite bulky,expensive, and cumbersome to operate so it was only used for high level communications between Churchill and Rosevelt, high level generals, etc. It was never broken by the Germans, and is in fact mathematically unbreakable.
chances are they're not all that interested in buying something that's advertised.
Oh I disagree. Advertising doesn't work on a completely rational level. One of the goals of advertising is simple familiarity. I.e. when you're look at the supermarket of different brands of Salsa to buy , the advertised product it isn't strange and foreign. Another goal of advertising is association. If an advertiser can associate the product with something good, you'll be more likely to buy it.
5. ???
People buy the product? Not everything is a dot com business model you know. I think the plan is pretty smart. It got some free advertising on Slashdot. Maybe other companies will start hiding things (like details for entering a sweepstakes) in commercials.
That can work for some people, but there's quite a few people that want to do more than email, web browsing, and IM. My dad has a digital camera, likes printing up business cards and other printshop kind of things, and works with geneaology. Accomplishing all those things in Linux isn't going to be easy.
I have switched him over to Firefox and Thunderbird, and he seems quite happy with those. I don't plan on switching him to linux since Windows 2000 does just about everything he really needs.
Yeah, but if you don't live in Utah, are you going to tell the people of Utah that they're not allowed nor entitled to censor themselves if they want to?
As a citizen of the United States that still has a first amendment, yes, I'm quite prepared to tell some people of Utah that they can't censor other people in Utah. If one individual wants to censor themself (whatever that means) that's entirely different.
I know you're trying to make a point that one form of content is about the same as another. But really there are people out their that would completely agree with your ideas. It's this same attitude that puts some neo-nazi guy in jail in Austria for making a speech 16 years ago that the holocaust didn't happen. Some people truly believe that ideas themselves are dangerous, and need to be controlled. A scary thought in a country who was founded in direct opposition to this idea.
1. If you're not in Utah, don't worry. This isn't going to affect you. So pipe down already and focus on preventing it in your own backyard.
I don't know that that's necessarily true. Much as I'd like it too, Utah doesn't live in a vacuum with respect to the rest of the United States. Sucessful legislation in one state percolates into the other states. Stupid crap like this only emboldens the pro-censorship people. Also, video game manufacturers might try to change content so they'll be able to sell in Utah. I doubt they'd bother for such a small state like Utah, but if this kind of thing spreads that could easily be the case.
I don't know if it will pass in Utah, as I know little about politics their. But my hope is if it did, the Federal courts would knock down the law fairly quickly.
You're comparing two completely different things. Other continents were perfectly ready for more human inhabitants (that is if you ignore the natives). Other planets are lifeless inhospitable wastelands. That's quite a big difference. Terraforming you say? Maybe some day, but for the foreseeable future, and certainly everyone that's alive today it's a pipedream. Even Antarctica is a more inhabitable place than Mars. It's useless to dream about something that might take place in another 500 years.
We should be concentrating on things that can actually be done, and have a reason to do so. Space elevators, sub-orbital transportation, and maybe even mars explorations are all attainable goals that have significant benefits. Establishing colonies on Mars and being "multi-planetary" is not.