That's an insightful explanation, but IMO the benchmark is then only valid is the operating systems people use make the same allowances for the different chips.
One thing that doesn't seen to have been investigated is the permutations of the test - marking an Intel chip as a VIA, etc. If the differences are the same drop in performance as the improvement in marking a VIA as an Intel then your explanation has effectively been disproved.
The "intolerable" argument seems like a stretch to me (to say the least). The guy isn't facing the death penalty and U.S. prisons (especially the minimum security ones, where this guy will probably end up) are at least as good as UK ones.
I think not, for someone accused of (amongst other things) obtaining secrets that might have been "useful to an enemy", "causing the US military district of Washington became inoperable" and specifying that it "occurred immediately after 9/11", I don't think he'll have it easy.
He'll have to be in solitary for his own protection.
sitting up all night thinking about jail and about being arse-fucked. An American jail. And remember, according to them I was making Washington inoperable 'immediately after September 11'. I'm having all these visions of... " Gary puts on a redneck prisoner voice, "'What you doing attacking our country, boy?
Gary was kept in a police station overnight. Then the Americans offered him a deal, via his British solicitor. "They said, 'If you incur the cost of the whole extradition process, be a good boy, come over here, we'll give you three or four years, rather than the whole sentence.' I said, 'OK, give me that in writing.' They said, 'Oh no, we can't do that.' So they were offering a secret trial, no right of appeal on the outcome, no comment to the newspapers, and nothing in writing. My solicitor, doing her job, advised me to take it, and when I said no, she was very, 'Ooh, they're going to come down heavy.'"
In a further twist, it has emerged that a crucial file containing details of the early meetings with the US prosecutors, at which the offers were apparently made, has gone missing from the office of McKinnon's solicitor. A laptop holding details of the same meetings was stolen from the car of one of his barristers.
Does anyone else think that "999" is too easy to hit accidentally? I wonder how many of these false calls were just little kids punching the numbers to play "music" or someone using the Dilbert random number generator [random.org]. I think the USA's 911 is a better compromise.
You have to remember that the number was arrived at in the old dial telephone days.
It's very difficult to change something like the emergency services number. We can also use the European wide emergency number (121 is it? can't remember) but I'd guess that 99% of UK emergency calls are made to 999.
Incidentally, 999 was chosen in preference to 111 (the original choice) because the 111 signal could be triggered by the telephone wires touching an earthed object (like a tree branch), or so I once heard.
If the dirty conservative capitalists at the insurance companies are willing to cut me a break, that must mean it's really safer for me to ride in.
Or that the panels for your Trailblazer are cheaper than for the Cavalier. Repair costs have as much to do with insurance costs as the likelihood of an accident.
MS still uses it for their stuff - but when they first started it - the idea was that your passport login would be accepted everywhere..
that didn't happen - and it wasn't going to happen.
I could be wrong, but I thought that you could log into at least Amazon with a MS PassPort. I did have one when I was an MSDN subscriber and haven't used it in years, so this could have changed. Or I could have imagined it...
In common with (I suspect) a lot of Slashdotters, I started out on computers in the Spectrum/CBM64/BBC days when you had to program, in BASIC, to get anything done and that's what got me going.
I stayed in computers, eventually doing a Computer Studied degree and worked for several years as a programmer for an IT consultancy company, using C++, Visual Basic, Java and C#. In the end (about five years ago) it seemed that all there was in "programming" was SQL. Now I'm not knocking database developers, but that didn't float my boat, so I moved into business analysis.
It seems that now, the majority of big programming is done off-shore, in India for the most part.
I'd suggest something web-oriented to get someone interested, but maybe teaching the basics of variables, looping, procedure calls and such-like in something like C++ or (dare I say it) Visual Basic would be a good place to start.
Cuba is similar - Give 'em YouTube, uncensored Google, porn, Wikipedia...
Exactly. give them what Jerry Pournelle calls "weapons of cultural mass destruction" and let those weapons do their job. Within a few years, either the Cuban government will lighten up, or the people will throw them out when they realize how much better their lives could be.
I note you left "streaming reality TV" off your quoted list.
I imagine most people would prefer a repressive communist regime to streaming reality TV.
Really? I am not sure about that, it would effectively be telling them to to not use what was available to them. Should we also deny access to color? I understand the need to write tight code, but not sure putting the equivalent of shackles on a sprinter makes sense.
Yeah, but runners sometime train with weights on to build strength. When they remove them their speed improves.
Well, it's fairly common practice to submit a huge list of "wants" whether your list is business requirements, suggestions for law makers or what you want for Christmas.
Put a few obviously silly items on the list and the ones you really want probably look a bit more plausible. I in no way advocate what they are asking for, but the way they are asking could be considered pretty smart.
I learned about this guy during my Computer Studies degree course. Really interesting chap, it's amazing how few people have heard of LEO compared to Colossus... but then I guess that an accounting computer for a chain of cafes is a lot less interesting than WW2 code breaking!
Interesting (sort of) related fact - the Lyons Tea Houses which were a fixture of pretty much every English town became Wimpey, the British burger chain, now confined to run down shopping centres. And another (on a roll here): The Angel, Islington from the British Monopoly board, was a Lyons Tea House.
Slashdot Mirror
That's an insightful explanation, but IMO the benchmark is then only valid is the operating systems people use make the same allowances for the different chips.
One thing that doesn't seen to have been investigated is the permutations of the test - marking an Intel chip as a VIA, etc. If the differences are the same drop in performance as the improvement in marking a VIA as an Intel then your explanation has effectively been disproved.
If anyone can come up with a better explanation I'd be interested to hear it.
That is probably the oddest article summary I've ever seen here.
Reads like a promo for the new X Files movie.
Oh yeah! Thanks. I meant "earlier this month three years ago!".
Anyway, what you doing not only RTFAing, but following up on subsequent links? That's hardly in the spirit of this place!
I think not, for someone accused of (amongst other things) obtaining secrets that might have been "useful to an enemy", "causing the US military district of Washington became inoperable" and specifying that it "occurred immediately after 9/11", I don't think he'll have it easy.
He'll have to be in solitary for his own protection.
In his own words from http://www.guardian.co.uk/theguardian/2005/jul/09/weekend7.weekend2:
Not quite true.
From http://www.guardian.co.uk/theguardian/2005/jul/09/weekend7.weekend2:
Also, from http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/jul/27/internationalcrime.hacking...
There's a rather good interview with Gary McKinnon on the Guardian's web site from earlier this month.
Provides quite an insight into what he did, why he says he did it and his mental state.
Wonder if he was a /. poster. Wouldn't surprise me.
60 or 70 years - close enough for a 42 year old!
You have to remember that the number was arrived at in the old dial telephone days.
It's very difficult to change something like the emergency services number. We can also use the European wide emergency number (121 is it? can't remember) but I'd guess that 99% of UK emergency calls are made to 999.
Incidentally, 999 was chosen in preference to 111 (the original choice) because the 111 signal could be triggered by the telephone wires touching an earthed object (like a tree branch), or so I once heard.
If you truly believed that why did you not post as AC?
Or that the panels for your Trailblazer are cheaper than for the Cavalier. Repair costs have as much to do with insurance costs as the likelihood of an accident.
and was filed from a Caribbean island.
I could be wrong, but I thought that you could log into at least Amazon with a MS PassPort. I did have one when I was an MSDN subscriber and haven't used it in years, so this could have changed. Or I could have imagined it...
If he believes that the Mayor is going to be reconfiguring the routers he certainly is a nutjob!
In common with (I suspect) a lot of Slashdotters, I started out on computers in the Spectrum/CBM64/BBC days when you had to program, in BASIC, to get anything done and that's what got me going.
I stayed in computers, eventually doing a Computer Studied degree and worked for several years as a programmer for an IT consultancy company, using C++, Visual Basic, Java and C#. In the end (about five years ago) it seemed that all there was in "programming" was SQL. Now I'm not knocking database developers, but that didn't float my boat, so I moved into business analysis.
It seems that now, the majority of big programming is done off-shore, in India for the most part.
I'd suggest something web-oriented to get someone interested, but maybe teaching the basics of variables, looping, procedure calls and such-like in something like C++ or (dare I say it) Visual Basic would be a good place to start.
An Apple I.
just my 66 cents worth.
I note you left "streaming reality TV" off your quoted list.
I imagine most people would prefer a repressive communist regime to streaming reality TV.
Yeah, but runners sometime train with weights on to build strength. When they remove them their speed improves.
Quite right. 52nd maybe. The UK is the 51st.
Cool. I thought it was just me who did that.
Finally, I'm not alone. Want to start a newsletter?
OK, next question, calculate the speed of light in the dark.
(hint: will be easier with an LED calculator than an LCD one)
The real question is, will it blend?
Well, it's fairly common practice to submit a huge list of "wants" whether your list is business requirements, suggestions for law makers or what you want for Christmas.
Put a few obviously silly items on the list and the ones you really want probably look a bit more plausible. I in no way advocate what they are asking for, but the way they are asking could be considered pretty smart.
I learned about this guy during my Computer Studies degree course. Really interesting chap, it's amazing how few people have heard of LEO compared to Colossus... but then I guess that an accounting computer for a chain of cafes is a lot less interesting than WW2 code breaking!
Interesting (sort of) related fact - the Lyons Tea Houses which were a fixture of pretty much every English town became Wimpey, the British burger chain, now confined to run down shopping centres. And another (on a roll here): The Angel, Islington from the British Monopoly board, was a Lyons Tea House.