Back in '87 in my assembly language class, which was on some ancient DEC machine (Think it was a PDP 11-03 or something,) our instructor gave us all a sheet with the bootstrap code we had to type in, in octal, to make the system jump to the OS instructions on our 8" floppy disks. He showed us how to use a table in our assembly language book to convert assembly code to machine code by hand. If all you're looking at is a slab of iron (Arrhn!) that's where you start! It's a little intimidating imagining having to start with nothing but a table of opcodes and a slab of raw iron that you can enter bits into somehow. I'd think you'd want a basic program loader, so you could save the assembler that you carve out of opcodes. Once you have your assembler stored on disk, you can write your initial C compiler (Not the standard library mind you, just the compiler!) At some point along the way, you compile EMACS.
Sounds like what I did around 1985 on a Data General Nova, except the bootstrap was to a paper tape which we punched to contain the code that read Block 0 from the disk and then jumped to it. I seem to recall no backspace on the tape punch, but that was a long time ago. It may have let you edit input before punching.
Treason is the only crime spelled out in the US Constitution. It has an exact definition, exact requirements, and limits to the punishment allow. The writers wanted to make sure that there would no "son of a traitor" punishment for people found guilty of crimes against the Crown. You can't be found guilty of treason for being a "subversive", or for hating your government, or for speaking against it, etc. If you could there would have been a lot of traitors during the Vietnam War and, regardless of your opinion of the "righteousness" of the actions and motives of those in the anti-war movement, they weren't "traitors".
Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort. No Person shall be convicted of Treason unless on the Testimony of two Witnesses to the same overt Act, or on Confession in open Court. The Congress shall have Power to declare the Punishment of Treason, but no Attainder of Treason shall work Corruption of Blood, or Forfeiture except during the Life of the Person attainted.
If you do that it MUST conform to fire code. There have been more than one incident of foam fires at clubs killings masses of people, both here in the US and in other countries. All it takes is one spark.
When I was a kid in the 70's I had a clubhouse with a trap door entry in the floor that was insulated with foam. It caught fire and instantly filled with black smoke. If I hadn't punched out the window I'd have suffocated and died. I never would have found the trap door and opened it before blacking out.
Always thought he was overrated, but nonetheless I still think this is BS. I've always believed in separating the artist from the art. And I honestly don't give a rat's ass about the politics or social views of any given writer. Applying litmus tests like this is just the kind of thing that can come back and bite you in the ass if you're not careful. After all, you never know when YOUR views may become the unpopular ones.
Expect a campaign against the Ender's Game movie to try to hurt it at the box office.
Remember that "popular speech" isn't the speech that requires protection.
If you're reading/writing to the pagefile more than just a very little, you're running the performance equivalent of a 200MHz Pentium 686. Not kidding. People seem to think swap is a thing that happens a lot; it isn't. You know how you have 16GB of RAM and you're like 1.2GB into swap somehow? That's 1.2GB of program initialization crap and other cruft that NEVER GETS TOUCHED and was paged out.
Computers don't work by churning the hard disk a lot.
Swap happens a lot on my work laptop, configured with 32-bit Windows XP so that it's 4 GB RAM can't be usefully expanded. Chrome with Gmail and Google Calendar running in it grabs a crap load of RAM and doesn't give it back. Add Outlook for work email and some Hummingbird Exceed Xterm windows and my HD light never stops blinking. God forbid that I need to fire up Visual Studio. It's a damned grind fest.
Time to start numbering each and every boring slashdot joke. Then we can save so much time by typing 6...18...42!1! And imagine how many jokes we can pack into our SIGs! Boy there are going to be some fun times ahead. We are all so smart. So very smart. So repetitively smart. Did I mention how smart we all are?
Your comparing letting the temporary Bush tax cuts expire to the maximum tax rate of the 1950s? How many blows to the head does it take before your brain accepts that as a logical argument?
The "temporary Bush Tax Cuts" were in place for longer than the rates they replaced.
Well, we could make this a bit more like the actual scenario.
Actually, it's like having a house at the end of a largely unused alley with the door standing open, only you don't know it. Would you rather: a) A random person pops in, make copies of all your private mail and computer files, then maybe tells you about it. b) You take the chance that someone randomly finds your open door.
How about making it really realistic?
You have a door on the house secured with a faulty lock. The lock looks like it's secure but if you know what you're doing it's trivial to open.
BTW, I have told my neighbor about his open garage door after dark. I went to his front door and rang his door bell. I didn't go into his house through his garage.
The closest analogy is the spirit of the law vs the letter of the law...
Hackers generally obey the letter of the law, that is they are only making a computer do what it was programmed to do. Wether that programming was intentional, or the result of a bug comes down to the spirit in which the program was written.
A similar scenario is the law... There are many loopholes (ie bugs) in the law which allow people to legally perform acts which were never intended by the people who wrote those laws.
No, the hacker isn't obeying either the spirit or the letter of a law that prohibits unauthorized access to a computer system or network. He's exploiting weakness in systems to, at the very least trespass. If he breaks in, does no damage (and yes, copying business data to sell or release publicly is damage), and notifies the company then it's questionable that he should be prosecuted.
Instead of your lawyer analogy though, a much better one is a burglar who, using the weaknesses inherent in a mechanical lock, picks said lock and then enters your house, makes copies of all of your credit cards and papers/data (and destroys them if he wants to be malicious), posts hidden cameras throughout your house, and sabotages the lock on the back door or window so that he has easier access in the future.
No ad hominem meant. It was supposed to be a light-hearted joke but everyone's so sensitive these days that everything's offensive to someone. And I'll be 50 this year so get off my lawn.
So when they actually do something, that is the time to catch them. Basic principle of justice - you can't punish someone for something they haven't done yet.
They are being accused of doing something now. It's called predatory pricing. It's illegal for a business with a dominate position to routinely sell a product under cost in order to drive competitors out of the market (or keep them from entering).
Now, whether it should be is a topic for a different argument about economic systems.
In Europe, from what I understand, anti-trust laws are meant to protect competitors and here they're meant to protect consumers. As the linked page above says, since it's consumers that are supposed to be protected and not rivals, there's a high bar to winning these complaints.
This will separate those who are really interested in the environment from those interested in promoting the Green Industry.
Those who are interested in the environment would be delighted if this scales and is economical enough to replace existing coal plants. For those who are just interested in promoting Green Industry this scaling and being economical is their worst nightmare.
So wait....they're complaining that this "monopoly" is keeping the prices high or low? If it's keeping the high, I don't see how other retailers can be driven out of business. If it's keeping prices low...then it's good for the customer!
I thought anti monopoly laws were meant to protect consumers and not competition as the recent dropping of the probe against Google showed.
I guess you're too young to remember how Microsoft "abused its monopoly" by bundling Internet Explorer with the OS for free. This eventually helped lead to the demise of Netscape Navigator.
Theoretically, a company large enough to eat the losses can price a product below a competitor's costs until the competitor leaves the business and then raise prices to make up the loses. It rarely works that well.
Non-military government contracting, such as Orion.
Dual-use technologies, such as active flight controls for commercial aircraft. Algorithms to drive the flight control surfaces of aircraft have both civilian and military purposes and is ITAR/EAR controlled.
Thus, the term “dual use” includes those goods and/or services that could fall into the category of “defense articles,” but that arise from or are based upon commercial/civilian goods and services. However, successfully classifying your item as “dual-use” is only the first step in determining whether or not you will need an export license from the U.S. Department of Commerce, Bureau of Industry and Security (“BIS”), in order to export your item from the U.S.
More on Dual Use, includes some examples. FYI, don't try to export any "anti-gravity suits".
(1) Military Versus Commercial Products . The ITAR was developed originally to regulate military products and services. However, these controls also cover many products that are commercial in nature. Many of these items were developed originally for military purposes but have evolved into mainstream commercial products – in the electronics, navigation, computer security, maritime, aviation and other industries. Today it is often very difficult to determine if a product is subject to ITAR, and this presents a challenge for business executives. However it is important to understand this distinction, especially for firms that provide products and services to government customers, to avoid costly legal violations.
I'm not a Ron Paul advocate (even though he's right in some areas), but is it hypocrisy to use the system in place to right what you believe to be a wrong, even if you would prefer and are working toward a different system?
If someone had a reason unrelated to Ron Paul the Politician and Public Figure to register the name RonPaul.com then there would be no question that they owned it. Ron Paul's followers, who are supposedly (I've never visited it so I'm assuming) using RonPaul.com to spread the ideas of Ron Paul, get what would appear to be his official endorsement by the use of his name. This is definitely not unrelated to Ron Paul as they are implying that they are speaking for him. If there were a third-party AlGore.com that purported to explain the philosophy of Al Gore the politician and activist. I'm sure that Al Gore would have issues with that.
What I don't understand is why he didn't exert ownership over the site the first time he heard of it, unless it was to keep it independent so that he wasn't responsible for what was said there. Perhaps now that he's retired he wants to use the site as his mouthpiece, but he never should have implicitly approved of them by letting them operate for so long.
I just found that my vanity website (basically a bookmark page I've had for several years) shares the name of a preacher. If I were to use the website to start "speaking for him" there might be some issues with that.
Easy to fix. If you want to access someone's WiFi, you log into the proxy server on that network.
This token may be sent via email, SMS, or determined from the comptuer's MAC address. From there, the WiFi host is protected, but they can still track down the person trying to view the Little Lacy Surprise Pageant.
That gets the charges dropped, after you've been perp walked and spent legal fees that you will not get back. Good luck collecting any judgement from the actual perp, who's now broke-ass from his own legal fees and massive felony fines.
And good luck erasing all traces of the online media coverage of your arrest from a Google search. Funny, that, how the media routinely covers arrests of all sorts but kind of forgets the boring parts of charges being dropped (and that the arrest happened is factual so anyone at anytime can point it out).
Very low risk of any of that actually happening, but if it does the you're screwed. I'll pass.
In general, though, the reason this movement will fail is the same reason why people want it to work. Selfishness. The same person that says "I would like to have wifi without paying for it when I am somewhere not home" has already said "I don't want to pay for my own 3g/data plan so I can have network access when I am not home". That same attitude would result in "why should I pay for network at home if I can get it free from my neighbor".
In the final result, everyone who wants free wifi wherever they go will be the ones who are least likely to provide free wifi to others, and that means the entire system is a self-fulfilling failure.
You mean, "from each according to his means, to each according to his needs" doesn't work?
Take a look at Gandhi for other side of the coin. Violent people tend to focus on violent solutions. "When you have a hammer, all problems start to look like nails".
"Among the many misdeeds of the British rule in India, history will look upon the act of depriving a whole nation of arms, as the blackest."
By the way, what where Exxon and BP's reported profits last year?
Annual 2012 reports not out yet in most part so these are quarterlies.
* signifies Dow Jones Industrial Average component.
Apple's profit margin was 26.67%. Google's was 22.20%. *Intel's was 22.13%. *JPMorgan Chase's was 21.97%. *McDonald's was 19.85%. *Coca-Cola's was 18.48%. *Cisco's was 17.90%. *American Express' was 17.12%. *Pfizer's was 15.58%. *IBM's was 15.53%. *3M's was 14.89% *Microsoft's was 14.21%. *Walt Disney's was 13.44%. Ford's 3rd quarter profit margin was 13.35%. *Johnson & Johnson's was 12.90%. *Proctor & Gamble's was 12.72%. *Travelers' was 10.87%. *Chevron's was 10.70%. *Exxon's 3rd quarter profit margin was 10.40%. *Catapillar's was 9.74%. *GE's was 9.39%. *United Technologies Corp's was 7.57%. *Bank of America's was 6.75%. *Merck's was 6.58%. *DuPont's was 6.07%. *Home Depot's was 5.91%. *Boeing's 3rd quarter profit margin was 5.47% *UnitedHealth Group's was 5.14%. BP's 3rd quarter profit margin was 4.75%. *Wal-Mart's was 3.57%. Pulte Homes' was 3.57%. *AT&T's was 3.49%. *Verizon's was 2.70%. *Alcoa's was 0.81%. *Hewlett-Packards was -10.51%.
This a long line because for some reason SlashDot is saying that "Your comment has too few characters per line (currently 20.4)" but I don't know the minimum and why is there a minimum require when a person may be wanting to report facts and I have to keep typing because now it's 25.7 per line which still isn't enough nor is 27.3 characters per line so I must keep typing yet more meaningless stuff here in an attempt to get even more characters per line because even 30.4 characters per line are not enough so even more typing typing typing (where are the infinite number of monkeys when you need them?) because 33.1 characters per line still isn't enough so row, row, row your boat while buying the stairway to heaven as 35.5 characters per line are still not enough and "you seem a decent fellow I hate to kill you" " you seem a decent fellow I hate to die" and 38.2 characters per line are still not enough "we'll never survive" "nonsense. you only say that because no one ever has" and finally
Slashdot Mirror
Back in '87 in my assembly language class, which was on some ancient DEC machine (Think it was a PDP 11-03 or something,) our instructor gave us all a sheet with the bootstrap code we had to type in, in octal, to make the system jump to the OS instructions on our 8" floppy disks. He showed us how to use a table in our assembly language book to convert assembly code to machine code by hand. If all you're looking at is a slab of iron (Arrhn!) that's where you start! It's a little intimidating imagining having to start with nothing but a table of opcodes and a slab of raw iron that you can enter bits into somehow. I'd think you'd want a basic program loader, so you could save the assembler that you carve out of opcodes. Once you have your assembler stored on disk, you can write your initial C compiler (Not the standard library mind you, just the compiler!) At some point along the way, you compile EMACS.
Sounds like what I did around 1985 on a Data General Nova, except the bootstrap was to a paper tape which we punched to contain the code that read Block 0 from the disk and then jumped to it. I seem to recall no backspace on the tape punch, but that was a long time ago. It may have let you edit input before punching.
Treason is the only crime spelled out in the US Constitution. It has an exact definition, exact requirements, and limits to the punishment allow. The writers wanted to make sure that there would no "son of a traitor" punishment for people found guilty of crimes against the Crown. You can't be found guilty of treason for being a "subversive", or for hating your government, or for speaking against it, etc. If you could there would have been a lot of traitors during the Vietnam War and, regardless of your opinion of the "righteousness" of the actions and motives of those in the anti-war movement, they weren't "traitors".
Section 3: Treason
Lots of comments about foam.
If you do that it MUST conform to fire code. There have been more than one incident of foam fires at clubs killings masses of people, both here in the US and in other countries. All it takes is one spark.
When I was a kid in the 70's I had a clubhouse with a trap door entry in the floor that was insulated with foam. It caught fire and instantly filled with black smoke. If I hadn't punched out the window I'd have suffocated and died. I never would have found the trap door and opened it before blacking out.
Fire codes are for a reason.
Always thought he was overrated, but nonetheless I still think this is BS. I've always believed in separating the artist from the art. And I honestly don't give a rat's ass about the politics or social views of any given writer. Applying litmus tests like this is just the kind of thing that can come back and bite you in the ass if you're not careful. After all, you never know when YOUR views may become the unpopular ones.
Expect a campaign against the Ender's Game movie to try to hurt it at the box office.
Remember that "popular speech" isn't the speech that requires protection.
If you're reading/writing to the pagefile more than just a very little, you're running the performance equivalent of a 200MHz Pentium 686. Not kidding. People seem to think swap is a thing that happens a lot; it isn't. You know how you have 16GB of RAM and you're like 1.2GB into swap somehow? That's 1.2GB of program initialization crap and other cruft that NEVER GETS TOUCHED and was paged out.
Computers don't work by churning the hard disk a lot.
Swap happens a lot on my work laptop, configured with 32-bit Windows XP so that it's 4 GB RAM can't be usefully expanded. Chrome with Gmail and Google Calendar running in it grabs a crap load of RAM and doesn't give it back. Add Outlook for work email and some Hummingbird Exceed Xterm windows and my HD light never stops blinking. God forbid that I need to fire up Visual Studio. It's a damned grind fest.
Time to start numbering each and every boring slashdot joke. Then we can save so much time by typing 6...18...42!1! And imagine how many jokes we can pack into our SIGs! Boy there are going to be some fun times ahead. We are all so smart. So very smart. So repetitively smart. Did I mention how smart we all are?
It's still in the delivery.
Saint Jobs said. QED.
I like my Optimus G and my Nexus 7.
No leadership. Well, that explains Half Life 3.
Your comparing letting the temporary Bush tax cuts expire to the maximum tax rate of the 1950s? How many blows to the head does it take before your brain accepts that as a logical argument?
The "temporary Bush Tax Cuts" were in place for longer than the rates they replaced.
I know right. The grocery store had a sale on cheese last week, and then today the sale ended.
So that means the grocery store just hit me with a 30% price increase on cheese!
Nevermind that it was exactly the same price it's been all year, except for the sale last week.
So, until the max tax rate exceeds the 92% it was in the early 1950's then taxes haven't gone up?
Well, we could make this a bit more like the actual scenario.
Actually, it's like having a house at the end of a largely unused alley with the door standing open, only you don't know it. Would you rather:
a) A random person pops in, make copies of all your private mail and computer files, then maybe tells you about it.
b) You take the chance that someone randomly finds your open door.
How about making it really realistic?
You have a door on the house secured with a faulty lock. The lock looks like it's secure but if you know what you're doing it's trivial to open.
BTW, I have told my neighbor about his open garage door after dark. I went to his front door and rang his door bell. I didn't go into his house through his garage.
The closest analogy is the spirit of the law vs the letter of the law...
Hackers generally obey the letter of the law, that is they are only making a computer do what it was programmed to do. Wether that programming was intentional, or the result of a bug comes down to the spirit in which the program was written.
A similar scenario is the law... There are many loopholes (ie bugs) in the law which allow people to legally perform acts which were never intended by the people who wrote those laws.
No, the hacker isn't obeying either the spirit or the letter of a law that prohibits unauthorized access to a computer system or network. He's exploiting weakness in systems to, at the very least trespass. If he breaks in, does no damage (and yes, copying business data to sell or release publicly is damage), and notifies the company then it's questionable that he should be prosecuted.
Instead of your lawyer analogy though, a much better one is a burglar who, using the weaknesses inherent in a mechanical lock, picks said lock and then enters your house, makes copies of all of your credit cards and papers/data (and destroys them if he wants to be malicious), posts hidden cameras throughout your house, and sabotages the lock on the back door or window so that he has easier access in the future.
No ad hominem meant. It was supposed to be a light-hearted joke but everyone's so sensitive these days that everything's offensive to someone. And I'll be 50 this year so get off my lawn.
So when they actually do something, that is the time to catch them. Basic principle of justice - you can't punish someone for something they haven't done yet.
They are being accused of doing something now. It's called predatory pricing. It's illegal for a business with a dominate position to routinely sell a product under cost in order to drive competitors out of the market (or keep them from entering).
Now, whether it should be is a topic for a different argument about economic systems.
In Europe, from what I understand, anti-trust laws are meant to protect competitors and here they're meant to protect consumers. As the linked page above says, since it's consumers that are supposed to be protected and not rivals, there's a high bar to winning these complaints.
This will separate those who are really interested in the environment from those interested in promoting the Green Industry.
Those who are interested in the environment would be delighted if this scales and is economical enough to replace existing coal plants. For those who are just interested in promoting Green Industry this scaling and being economical is their worst nightmare.
So wait....they're complaining that this "monopoly" is keeping the prices high or low? If it's keeping the high, I don't see how other retailers can be driven out of business. If it's keeping prices low...then it's good for the customer!
I thought anti monopoly laws were meant to protect consumers and not competition as the recent dropping of the probe against Google showed.
I guess you're too young to remember how Microsoft "abused its monopoly" by bundling Internet Explorer with the OS for free. This eventually helped lead to the demise of Netscape Navigator.
Theoretically, a company large enough to eat the losses can price a product below a competitor's costs until the competitor leaves the business and then raise prices to make up the loses. It rarely works that well.
Or just a unemployed Kid with way too much time...
Who is committing a felony.
Export-controlled areas like:
Non-military government contracting, such as Orion.
Dual-use technologies, such as active flight controls for commercial aircraft. Algorithms to drive the flight control surfaces of aircraft have both civilian and military purposes and is ITAR/EAR controlled.
More on Dual Use, includes some examples. FYI, don't try to export any "anti-gravity suits".
I'm sure that most of the population in the 60s and 70s thought we'd had bases on the moon by 2001. That was twelve years ago.
Didn't the nuclear waste dump on the moon knock it out of orbit on September 13, 1999? All those poor people on Moonbase Alpha...
I'm not a Ron Paul advocate (even though he's right in some areas), but is it hypocrisy to use the system in place to right what you believe to be a wrong, even if you would prefer and are working toward a different system?
If someone had a reason unrelated to Ron Paul the Politician and Public Figure to register the name RonPaul.com then there would be no question that they owned it. Ron Paul's followers, who are supposedly (I've never visited it so I'm assuming) using RonPaul.com to spread the ideas of Ron Paul, get what would appear to be his official endorsement by the use of his name. This is definitely not unrelated to Ron Paul as they are implying that they are speaking for him. If there were a third-party AlGore.com that purported to explain the philosophy of Al Gore the politician and activist. I'm sure that Al Gore would have issues with that.
What I don't understand is why he didn't exert ownership over the site the first time he heard of it, unless it was to keep it independent so that he wasn't responsible for what was said there. Perhaps now that he's retired he wants to use the site as his mouthpiece, but he never should have implicitly approved of them by letting them operate for so long.
I just found that my vanity website (basically a bookmark page I've had for several years) shares the name of a preacher. If I were to use the website to start "speaking for him" there might be some issues with that.
All just my opinion.
correcthorsebatterystaple. It's a perfectly long, easy to remember password. Just, nobody use it other than me, ok?
Ha! Mine's even better:
c0rrecthorsebatterystaple
But will it run Crysis?
Easy to fix. If you want to access someone's WiFi, you log into the proxy server on that network.
This token may be sent via email, SMS, or determined from the comptuer's MAC address. From there, the WiFi host is protected, but they can still track down the person trying to view the Little Lacy Surprise Pageant.
That gets the charges dropped, after you've been perp walked and spent legal fees that you will not get back. Good luck collecting any judgement from the actual perp, who's now broke-ass from his own legal fees and massive felony fines.
And good luck erasing all traces of the online media coverage of your arrest from a Google search. Funny, that, how the media routinely covers arrests of all sorts but kind of forgets the boring parts of charges being dropped (and that the arrest happened is factual so anyone at anytime can point it out).
Very low risk of any of that actually happening, but if it does the you're screwed. I'll pass.
In general, though, the reason this movement will fail is the same reason why people want it to work. Selfishness. The same person that says "I would like to have wifi without paying for it when I am somewhere not home" has already said "I don't want to pay for my own 3g/data plan so I can have network access when I am not home". That same attitude would result in "why should I pay for network at home if I can get it free from my neighbor".
In the final result, everyone who wants free wifi wherever they go will be the ones who are least likely to provide free wifi to others, and that means the entire system is a self-fulfilling failure.
You mean, "from each according to his means, to each according to his needs" doesn't work?
Take a look at Gandhi for other side of the coin. Violent people tend to focus on violent solutions. "When you have a hammer, all problems start to look like nails".
"Among the many misdeeds of the British rule in India, history will look upon the act of depriving a whole nation of arms, as the blackest."
-- Mahatma Gandhi
By the way, what where Exxon and BP's reported profits last year?
Annual 2012 reports not out yet in most part so these are quarterlies.
* signifies Dow Jones Industrial Average component.
Apple's profit margin was 26.67%.
Google's was 22.20%.
*Intel's was 22.13%.
*JPMorgan Chase's was 21.97%.
*McDonald's was 19.85%.
*Coca-Cola's was 18.48%.
*Cisco's was 17.90%.
*American Express' was 17.12%.
*Pfizer's was 15.58%.
*IBM's was 15.53%.
*3M's was 14.89%
*Microsoft's was 14.21%.
*Walt Disney's was 13.44%.
Ford's 3rd quarter profit margin was 13.35%.
*Johnson & Johnson's was 12.90%.
*Proctor & Gamble's was 12.72%.
*Travelers' was 10.87%.
*Chevron's was 10.70%.
*Exxon's 3rd quarter profit margin was 10.40%.
*Catapillar's was 9.74%.
*GE's was 9.39%.
*United Technologies Corp's was 7.57%.
*Bank of America's was 6.75%.
*Merck's was 6.58%.
*DuPont's was 6.07%.
*Home Depot's was 5.91%.
*Boeing's 3rd quarter profit margin was 5.47%
*UnitedHealth Group's was 5.14%.
BP's 3rd quarter profit margin was 4.75%.
*Wal-Mart's was 3.57%.
Pulte Homes' was 3.57%.
*AT&T's was 3.49%.
*Verizon's was 2.70%.
*Alcoa's was 0.81%.
*Hewlett-Packards was -10.51%.
This a long line because for some reason SlashDot is saying that "Your comment has too few characters per line (currently 20.4)" but I don't know the minimum and why is there a minimum require when a person may be wanting to report facts and I have to keep typing because now it's 25.7 per line which still isn't enough nor is 27.3 characters per line so I must keep typing yet more meaningless stuff here in an attempt to get even more characters per line because even 30.4 characters per line are not enough so even more typing typing typing (where are the infinite number of monkeys when you need them?) because 33.1 characters per line still isn't enough so row, row, row your boat while buying the stairway to heaven as 35.5 characters per line are still not enough and "you seem a decent fellow I hate to kill you" " you seem a decent fellow I hate to die" and 38.2 characters per line are still not enough "we'll never survive" "nonsense. you only say that because no one ever has" and finally