"But there's no reason why electronic mail cannot be better than snail mail in that respect. Make the "From:" field unspoofable!"
No. There's a valid reason behind that feature. I don't want to have to check a large number of accounts for incoming mail just because I use different mail servers to send email depending on where I'm located.
"I was gonna mention that... it was a very cool feature fairly well implemented. (Probably tongue-in-cheek, but still effective.)"
Not really... Whenever I wanted to play it, I'd just get my dad to answer the questions for me:-)
My dad never told me the objective, though. I realized it at about the same time as I started understanding what's so funny about finding virgins in St. Mary's girl school...
I also used to get my dad to type "Press don't push button" in SQ1, because I couldn't type fast enough and Roger would land safely.
Man, that was funny at the time... They don't make my sense of humor like they used to.
Unfortunately the RFC neglects to define what levels of evil the values of the 128-bit strength indicator maps to.
Therefore I, on behalf of the United Corp^H^H^H^H^H States government, submit that the top values should be reserved for the following:
2^127-n 4: Unpatriotic activity. 3: Terrorism. For up to date definition, see www.dhs.gov 2: Attempt to secure personal communication by encryption 1: Circumvention of copy protection mechanisms for purposes of piracy 0: Circumvention of copy protection mechanisms for purposes of "fair use"
Note that the last bit is reserved to indicate whether the packet originates from a foreign country.
Re:Somebody hang Tomothy by his toenails
on
Knoppix 3.2 Available
·
· Score: 2, Funny
"These distributed, multisource p2p apps are perfect for stuff like this."
Wanna bet 99% of the users don't bother with checksums? The words "massively parallel" and "r00t3d" aren't ones I'd like to see together in a sentence, thank you very much:-)
"Does $15 per month [emusic.com] sound like a bargain?"
It does, and I even signed up for emusic last year. However, after noticing that they only have about 5% of the music I want, I'm back to using p2p.
That said, if the labels ever stop their restrictive practices and actually allow potential distributors to distribute their music, I'll be right there signing up again.
Not to mention that "easier to read" almost inevitably means "more text". Which means spending more time reading the same material.
I'm encountering more and more situations where I'm basically thinking "goddamnit, give me a function reference and I'll understand this in an hour, don't make me read this bullshit for weeks"*. It's bothering the hell out of me.
The other option, "equal amount of text, less information" is just unthinkable...
*I'm not talking about programming.
Re:Who cares about decimal?
on
RMS Turns 50
·
· Score: 4, Funny
"Now 64th birthday, that might be interesting. But 50 has few interesting properties besides being half of 10^2."
64? Damn, I didn't realize he was that old, it's a wonder he's alive... It feels like he was 31 just yesterday!
"All the other kings said it were daft to build a castle in a swamp, but I built it anyway! It sank into the swamp. I built another one; it sank into the swamp too. I built a third one; it caught fire, fell over and then sank into the swamp. But the fourth one stayed up! And that's what you'll be getting, my lad - the strongest castle in these islands!"
Don't be so sure... Castle 4 will probably disappear too. But then, *then* you'll have Castle 5 -
"What I was trying to convey was that, with a trivial ammount of work MS could make *sure* the search would fail. Would probably take less then a week for a couple of their programmers to analyze the source and complete the job.
Yes, but it's too likely that knowledge of their tampering would leak. After that, it would be known that the key resides in the relatively small amount of space that's been checked. It would be trivial to go through it again using trusted systems and find the key that MS so graciously provided.
That's actually a valid point... If to anyone, this money should go to Microsoft. It's probably suffering huge losses* because of piracy. And what about all the shareware authors? Why aren't they compensated?
Oh, right, I forgot... Shareware authors don't have any powe^H^H^H^H money and MS actually has business sense. Go RIAA!
*where losses are the dynamic, RIAA-type losses. Like for example how I own the equivalent of 16 Pentium 100 class computers.
Re:Who has the balls to fly a computer-flown plane
on
Building the A380
·
· Score: 1
"Remember the Airbus that flew straight into the trees when the computer wouldn't let the pilot control it because it was too close to stalling?"
If the plane is so close to stalling that the computer won't accept pilot input, what do you think would've happened if it had? (hint: They would've hit the ground even earlier)
Besides, IIRC the problem was that the pilots accidentally made the plane think they were landing, or something else... But that's a different argument. (And I have no idea if I'm right)
Like so many other posters, I agree that DRM for internal company secrets etc. is actually beneficial, but what will happen if people start putting restrictions on everything by default because they're too lazy to change settings?
Suddenly, future historians will have lost everything from 21st century eating habits (people passing along recipies) to important governmental policies (president writes read-only letter to citizens, forgets to uncheck the "autodestruct after a year" box).
People would have to be very careful when choosing what to limit rights on, but somehow I doubt they will. These are the same people who open attachments that end in.jpg.vbs and end up hurting themselves, so what reason is there to assume that they would care about hurting someone else 500 years from now?
IIRC, you are correct. MS did put graphics stuff in the kernel, which does sacrifice stability for performance. But to be honest, XP as a desktop OS doesn't crash all that much anymore (although I admit it might vary between systems).
The biggest problem for me right now (and I use XP) is that I simply can't get it to do what I want it to do. Cygwin is a good aid, but MS could really help me a lot by making the base UI less targeted to novices. Of course, that's not going to happen, because novices need to use computers too, but I'm really excited about that rumored new MS console.
And no, Cringely isn't somewhat right. He implied that XP has a DOS-based kernel. That's just wrong, even if most kernels share some design characteristics.
"Yeah, Cringely is either incompetent or trolling for readers."
Yes he is, but he's just one person. What really saddens me is how pervasive this kind of thinking is. People who genuinely believe XP is based on DOS are a real threat to getting intelligent users to migrate.
When I was younger, I was originally turned off by the Mac platform because of all the ignorant users. It wasn't uncommon to hear them condescendingly say that Windows is based on DOS and Macs do true multitasking etc. And there I was, sitting in front of a box running a *preemptively* multitasking kernel (NT 4.0 at the time), thinking "there's no way I want to associate myself with these retards".
When I grew up, I realized how stupid I'd been and acknowledged that I didn't really hate Macs, but their users. Today I might even consider buying one because of OSX, but my earlier feelings show just how much a platform can be hurt by bigoted users.
Are we really supposed to take someone who says something like this seriously:
"Even today, you can still get to a C: prompt under Windows XP, which means a disk operating system is hiding there no matter what Microsoft wants us to believe."
Clearly the NT kernel is just a big lie, just like NASA never went to the moon. Thank you, Cringely, you have shown me the light!
And what the hell does he mean by "a disk operating system is hiding there"?? Please, someone, give him a non-disk operating system and see how far he gets after all his drives disappear.
Besides, it's not the NT kernel that's the problem, it's all the crap MS has put around it.
Re:how about a cell phone jammer?
on
GPS Jamming for $50
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
I am so sick of hearing about the benefits of cell phone jammers, I just had to respond to this.
What if they were legal? You could bring one to the movie theater, whee! Would you be happy? Perhaps, but only until you'd discover that someone thinks talking on the street is impolite. Or notice that a customer of your favorite bar doesn't like them.
If jammers were used commonly, the only place you'd be able to make calls without the fear of jamming would be from within your own home. Which kinda defeats their whole purpose, doesn't it?
Jammers are evil. Period.
Not to mention what I think of limiting the options of polite moviegoers just to deter impolite people. It is analogous to what the RIAA is doing to honest customers in order to fight piracy, and no one here seems to agree with that. Hypocrites...
2000km is nothing! Try going to college in Boston:-) Our "sauna" has a sign that forbids throwing water on the rocks (apparently it will be damaged... go figure) and people come into it in their excercise clothes (with shoes) to warm up (not that it's warm enough anyway).
Man what I wouldn't give for one of those SAABs right now...
Muuten, jos joku Bostonissa asuva suomalainen sattuu lukemaan tämän, niin olisin kiinnostunut kunnon saunan löytämisestä.
"\"... if only we could all learn to masturbate to our imaginations.\"
We can, but our imaginations can't keep up with demand."
What are you guys talking about? I know you're joking, but seriously... I find my imagination a lot better than any type of porn. Sure, it's good for actuating the initial required release of hormones, but after that, closing my eyes is always much more satisfying.
Disclaimer: If you are my mother, any other type of relative, or a potential future employer, you are hereby prohibited from viewing this post. Violations will be prosecuted under the DMCA.
"Infact, it might even be better for them, as they won't have to carry their retail operations."
Yes, and if the recording industry understood the internet, they wouldn't have to carry their retail operations! I'm too cynical to see big oil taking the risk of completely changing their product.
I wonder if we'll get a law banning personal water/hydrogen extractors if someone ever invents them...:-)
Whenever you pay for an MPAA-distributed movie, you're supporting them, no matter how you get it. Therefore not supporting them implies illegal means. The only 100% moral way to boycott is to not watch the movies at all.
"These companies have spent billions brainwashing us to think that we actually want these things. The new evolutionary strength is going be people's ability to filter out media and advertising. Wise Up."
I somewhat agree with you, but not totally. I'll admit that a lot of the popularity of some movies and music is almost entirely due to marketing, but to be fair they do come out with something worthwhile every now and then. I would hate to have to miss out on those things just because I believe all popularity is due to brainwashing.
Hell, I'm probably going to go see Star Trek: Nemesis for a third time soon, and anyone telling me I like it because I'm deluded will have to answer to my bearded version:-)
Slashdot Mirror
Indeed. Sorry for my stupidity.
Yes, but what if I want to cancel one of those accounts...
"But there's no reason why electronic mail cannot be better than snail mail in that respect. Make the "From:" field unspoofable!"
No. There's a valid reason behind that feature. I don't want to have to check a large number of accounts for incoming mail just because I use different mail servers to send email depending on where I'm located.
"I was gonna mention that... it was a very cool feature fairly well implemented. (Probably tongue-in-cheek, but still effective.)"
Not really... Whenever I wanted to play it, I'd just get my dad to answer the questions for me :-)
My dad never told me the objective, though. I realized it at about the same time as I started understanding what's so funny about finding virgins in St. Mary's girl school...
I also used to get my dad to type "Press don't push button" in SQ1, because I couldn't type fast enough and Roger would land safely.
Man, that was funny at the time... They don't make my sense of humor like they used to.
Unfortunately the RFC neglects to define what levels of evil the values of the 128-bit strength indicator maps to.
Therefore I, on behalf of the United Corp^H^H^H^H^H States government, submit that the top values should be reserved for the following:
2^127-n
4: Unpatriotic activity.
3: Terrorism. For up to date definition, see www.dhs.gov
2: Attempt to secure personal communication by encryption
1: Circumvention of copy protection mechanisms for purposes of piracy
0: Circumvention of copy protection mechanisms for purposes of "fair use"
Note that the last bit is reserved to indicate whether the packet originates from a foreign country.
"These distributed, multisource p2p apps are perfect for stuff like this."
Wanna bet 99% of the users don't bother with checksums? The words "massively parallel" and "r00t3d" aren't ones I'd like to see together in a sentence, thank you very much :-)
"Does $15 per month [emusic.com] sound like a bargain?"
It does, and I even signed up for emusic last year. However, after noticing that they only have about 5% of the music I want, I'm back to using p2p.
That said, if the labels ever stop their restrictive practices and actually allow potential distributors to distribute their music, I'll be right there signing up again.
Before:
Step 1: Want MP3
Step 2: Buy CD
Step 3: Have MP3
After:
Step 1: Want MP3
Step 2: ???
Step 3: No profit!
Way to go RIAA...
(Not to mention that I don't even want the music on landfill-type media. Sell me MP3s online and I'll pay, goddamnit!)
Not to mention that "easier to read" almost inevitably means "more text". Which means spending more time reading the same material.
I'm encountering more and more situations where I'm basically thinking "goddamnit, give me a function reference and I'll understand this in an hour, don't make me read this bullshit for weeks"*. It's bothering the hell out of me.
The other option, "equal amount of text, less information" is just unthinkable...
*I'm not talking about programming.
"Now 64th birthday, that might be interesting. But 50 has few interesting properties besides being half of 10^2."
64? Damn, I didn't realize he was that old, it's a wonder he's alive... It feels like he was 31 just yesterday!
"All the other kings said it were daft to build a castle in a swamp, but I built it anyway! It sank into the swamp. I built another one; it sank into the swamp too. I built a third one; it caught fire, fell over and then sank into the swamp. But the fourth one stayed up! And that's what you'll be getting, my lad - the strongest castle in these islands!"
Don't be so sure... Castle 4 will probably disappear too. But then, *then* you'll have Castle 5 -
The last best hope for housing!
Kill me now...
"What I was trying to convey was that, with a trivial ammount of work MS could make *sure* the search would fail. Would probably take less then a week for a couple of their programmers to analyze the source and complete the job.
Yes, but it's too likely that knowledge of their tampering would leak. After that, it would be known that the key resides in the relatively small amount of space that's been checked. It would be trivial to go through it again using trusted systems and find the key that MS so graciously provided.
That's actually a valid point... If to anyone, this money should go to Microsoft. It's probably suffering huge losses* because of piracy. And what about all the shareware authors? Why aren't they compensated?
Oh, right, I forgot... Shareware authors don't have any powe^H^H^H^H money and MS actually has business sense. Go RIAA!
*where losses are the dynamic, RIAA-type losses. Like for example how I own the equivalent of 16 Pentium 100 class computers.
"Remember the Airbus that flew straight into the trees when the computer wouldn't let the pilot control it because it was too close to stalling?"
If the plane is so close to stalling that the computer won't accept pilot input, what do you think would've happened if it had? (hint: They would've hit the ground even earlier)
Besides, IIRC the problem was that the pilots accidentally made the plane think they were landing, or something else... But that's a different argument. (And I have no idea if I'm right)
Like so many other posters, I agree that DRM for internal company secrets etc. is actually beneficial, but what will happen if people start putting restrictions on everything by default because they're too lazy to change settings?
Suddenly, future historians will have lost everything from 21st century eating habits (people passing along recipies) to important governmental policies (president writes read-only letter to citizens, forgets to uncheck the "autodestruct after a year" box).
People would have to be very careful when choosing what to limit rights on, but somehow I doubt they will. These are the same people who open attachments that end in .jpg.vbs and end up hurting themselves, so what reason is there to assume that they would care about hurting someone else 500 years from now?
"I hope that every parent who has kids in Finland in day care sends them to the head office of this organisation."
And what's next, sending our kids to hell so they can bother satan? ...I think I'll pass :-)
Not that I have kids... (Partly because I'm 20, but mostly because I post on slashdot.)
IIRC, you are correct. MS did put graphics stuff in the kernel, which does sacrifice stability for performance. But to be honest, XP as a desktop OS doesn't crash all that much anymore (although I admit it might vary between systems).
The biggest problem for me right now (and I use XP) is that I simply can't get it to do what I want it to do. Cygwin is a good aid, but MS could really help me a lot by making the base UI less targeted to novices. Of course, that's not going to happen, because novices need to use computers too, but I'm really excited about that rumored new MS console.
And no, Cringely isn't somewhat right. He implied that XP has a DOS-based kernel. That's just wrong, even if most kernels share some design characteristics.
"Yeah, Cringely is either incompetent or trolling for readers."
Yes he is, but he's just one person. What really saddens me is how pervasive this kind of thinking is. People who genuinely believe XP is based on DOS are a real threat to getting intelligent users to migrate.
When I was younger, I was originally turned off by the Mac platform because of all the ignorant users. It wasn't uncommon to hear them condescendingly say that Windows is based on DOS and Macs do true multitasking etc. And there I was, sitting in front of a box running a *preemptively* multitasking kernel (NT 4.0 at the time), thinking "there's no way I want to associate myself with these retards".
When I grew up, I realized how stupid I'd been and acknowledged that I didn't really hate Macs, but their users. Today I might even consider buying one because of OSX, but my earlier feelings show just how much a platform can be hurt by bigoted users.
Are we really supposed to take someone who says something like this seriously:
"Even today, you can still get to a C: prompt under Windows XP, which means a disk operating system is hiding there no matter what Microsoft wants us to believe."
Clearly the NT kernel is just a big lie, just like NASA never went to the moon. Thank you, Cringely, you have shown me the light!
And what the hell does he mean by "a disk operating system is hiding there"?? Please, someone, give him a non-disk operating system and see how far he gets after all his drives disappear.
Besides, it's not the NT kernel that's the problem, it's all the crap MS has put around it.
I am so sick of hearing about the benefits of cell phone jammers, I just had to respond to this.
What if they were legal? You could bring one to the movie theater, whee! Would you be happy? Perhaps, but only until you'd discover that someone thinks talking on the street is impolite. Or notice that a customer of your favorite bar doesn't like them.
If jammers were used commonly, the only place you'd be able to make calls without the fear of jamming would be from within your own home. Which kinda defeats their whole purpose, doesn't it?
Jammers are evil. Period.
Not to mention what I think of limiting the options of polite moviegoers just to deter impolite people. It is analogous to what the RIAA is doing to honest customers in order to fight piracy, and no one here seems to agree with that. Hypocrites...
2000km is nothing! Try going to college in Boston :-) Our "sauna" has a sign that forbids throwing water on the rocks (apparently it will be damaged... go figure) and people come into it in their excercise clothes (with shoes) to warm up (not that it's warm enough anyway).
Man what I wouldn't give for one of those SAABs right now...
Muuten, jos joku Bostonissa asuva suomalainen sattuu lukemaan tämän, niin olisin kiinnostunut kunnon saunan löytämisestä.
"\"... if only we could all learn to masturbate to our imaginations.\"
We can, but our imaginations can't keep up with demand."
What are you guys talking about? I know you're joking, but seriously... I find my imagination a lot better than any type of porn. Sure, it's good for actuating the initial required release of hormones, but after that, closing my eyes is always much more satisfying.
Disclaimer: If you are my mother, any other type of relative, or a potential future employer, you are hereby prohibited from viewing this post. Violations will be prosecuted under the DMCA.
"Infact, it might even be better for them, as they won't have to carry their retail operations."
Yes, and if the recording industry understood the internet, they wouldn't have to carry their retail operations! I'm too cynical to see big oil taking the risk of completely changing their product.
I wonder if we'll get a law banning personal water/hydrogen extractors if someone ever invents them... :-)
Whenever you pay for an MPAA-distributed movie, you're supporting them, no matter how you get it. Therefore not supporting them implies illegal means. The only 100% moral way to boycott is to not watch the movies at all.
"These companies have spent billions brainwashing us to think that we actually want these things. The new evolutionary strength is going be people's ability to filter out media and advertising. Wise Up."
I somewhat agree with you, but not totally. I'll admit that a lot of the popularity of some movies and music is almost entirely due to marketing, but to be fair they do come out with something worthwhile every now and then. I would hate to have to miss out on those things just because I believe all popularity is due to brainwashing.
Hell, I'm probably going to go see Star Trek: Nemesis for a third time soon, and anyone telling me I like it because I'm deluded will have to answer to my bearded version :-)
Although that would make him GoodNTUser, hmm...