I enjoy the Battle Bots show, in spite of the cast. What I would really like to see is the following:
Fights to the Death! The points system in place is entirely too subjective. Many times a relatively unknown bot loses to a popular bot after having apparently soundly beaten the popular entrant. The judging is a sham.
Get rid of the hazards, or make them way more powerful. Many of them are simply lame and have no hope of damaging a bot.
Fire Pete the hammer op guy. He goes nuts on the hammer, repeatedly pounding bots after the driver has submitted. Or he does just the opposite, and takes it easy on the popular bots.
Lose the girl she is boring.
Better weapons. Build a better arena if you have too to protect the audience. Spinners are boring, wedges are incredibly boring. The innovation in bot design is stagnating. People simply go for the known effective design. If weapon restrictions were lifted, maybe we would see some innovation once again.
That's all. I will still watch the show, but there are many improvements that can still be made. The competition is even worse, ala' Robot Wars (the US version anyway) where the bots are piles of junk, the drivers spend most of the match crashing their bot into the arena walls because of a complete lack of driving skill, and the house bots decide almost every match.
"Governments are best served when they can select software from a broad range of products based on such considerations as value, total cost of ownership, feature set, performance and security."
Hmmm...maybe I am a bit biased, but to my ears that is an overwhelming nod of support to Open Source products. To paraphrase: "We stronly encourage the use of FreeBSD"
Unix developers conference or homeless shelter? You decide
At first glance, definitly a homeless shelter. However, upon second (and oh so sad) glance, I noticed the beer bottles on the table which are decidedly not allowed in most homeless shelters. With great shame I choose : Unix Developers Conference.
I am with you on the NS 4x era browsers issue. If you design with CSS there is a simple trick that will allow NS 4x users the ability to view the page cleanly though without any real formatting. Just use the "@import" method of loading your style sheets. NS 4x will totally ignore them, and thus render old school html pages, circa 1996. At least the page is completely viewable, just boring as can be.
At many companies, IT is dead. What is the point of having an IT department when you do not allow them to do their job or listen to their advice. If IT is dead for your company, rest assured your company will be joining them in the grave any day now.
The only reason to ever purchase one of those ad filled rags was on the rare occasion that you were looking for a new PC. Great deals were abundant in the ads, but with slow PC sales and more people doing pre-purchase research online their time is long since passed.
Summary of Events
on
H2K2 Wrapup
·
· Score: 5, Funny
Go to Hacking Convention
Connect laptop to spiffy free wireless network
Get Owned
In less than a minute
Spend rest of Convention denying the bad porn and pathetic love letters stolen from hard drive
Go Home
Format drive, re-install OS with patches this time
Search net to see if your bad porn and pathetic love letters have made it to Geocities yet
I for one do not use Linux so I can be an advocate of an OS and fuel the hype machine. Once you stop reacting to MS and start ignoring them you will understand. People are going to be just that, people. They will buy / use whatever they are told repeatedly is the best, what their friends use, what they are forced to use at work, etc. Let's not forget that most people do not care about an operating system!
So what do I do for the "cause"? I wear Linux t-shirts, I help friends who are interested in learning Linux (or any 'nix for that matter), and I go about my business with my OS of choice. Those who are interested enough to explore the world of Linux will, and many of them will stay. The ones you have to evangelize are a lost cause. You will never compete with the likes of MS for mindshare.
Because it is true...but wait! It is true because RH is by far the most common Linux one could hope to encounter on the net, especially in the hands of neophyte 'nix users. Any other distro that strives to knock RH out of the top spot should also be prepared to wear the most hacked crown. Does this mean that RH is really less secure than other Linux distros? Not in my experience it, it just happens to be very popular and thus a likely target. RH has produced some less than stellar distros in the past, but I would feel comfortable putting 7.2 or 7.3 up against any other offering available currently. That includes FreeBSD and OpenBSD as well. I run all of them for different reasons, and they all are vulnerable to attack to various degrees. Vulnerable is vulnerable, but I think popular tells the real story here.
It all comes down to mouse buttons! In my reasonably scientific explanation, the intelligence of computer users can be assumed as the follows: From lowest to highest intelligence:
One Mouse Button: example: your standard fare lowly Mac user.
Two Mouse Buttons: example: tragically 90 % of the population, exemplified by Windows users.
Three + Mouse Buttons: example: the uber elite of computing, most scientists, and your typical Unix user.
This article would have benefited greatly from a diagram or two. IDS behind the firewall? IDS in front of the firewall? Possibly they mentioned it, but I failed to find reference in the article. Myself, I prefer to keep the IDS behind the firewall as I only care about packets that get through. How do/.'ers deploy?
of the jury, I am just a simple caveman. Your "scientists" found me frozen in an ice flow and unthawed me. Your ways frighten and confuse me. When I read/. I wonder if little men are inside my screen writing messages to me. But there is one thing I do know, that picture of the skull is my dead brother!
The good news is that it is still acceptable to bugger little boys! Especially alter boys...mmmmmm alter boys. Seriously, the Catholic Church is in no position to impose their morals on anyone at this point.
Take a look at the 5K contest this year. The rules were relaxed a bit this time around, and in my totally random browsing of the entries I found that at least half of them do not work in my trusty Mozilla sans java, flash, etc. Disgusting, what used to be a contest to showcase novel design has become a wasteland of cheesy javascript and flash. Sadly, the 256b
contest seems to be going the same route. Check the first 5 entries, they are all IE only or require javascript. Web designers are sucking more and more latley. Learn proper CSS and stop designing broken pages.
How is that OEMs have so completely become Microsoft's whipping post? They are nothing more than MS's distribution channel. It would seem that OEMs would have some say in what they ship would it not? Unless MS declares that Win2K is no longer available for purchase, why can't vendors ship what their customers want? Ugh, no more MS posts today please, they are ruining my coffee.
Why not try some music that the artists want you to listen to freely? Enough with the commercial sludge out there, seek out some local music and hear it live the way it was meant to be heard. Go with friends, have some drinks, and stop feeding the huge corporate machines out there.
Something loud and clicky will do. Bonus points for a lack of Windows keys and super nifty email and internet buttons. IBM, Zeos, and old Keytronics rock.
Slashdot Mirror
Yeah, no one like the US Army.
That's all. I will still watch the show, but there are many improvements that can still be made. The competition is even worse, ala' Robot Wars (the US version anyway) where the bots are piles of junk, the drivers spend most of the match crashing their bot into the arena walls because of a complete lack of driving skill, and the house bots decide almost every match.
Make a link like this: Slashdot
Hmmm...maybe I am a bit biased, but to my ears that is an overwhelming nod of support to Open Source products. To paraphrase: "We stronly encourage the use of FreeBSD"
Unix developers conference or homeless shelter? You decide
At first glance, definitly a homeless shelter. However, upon second (and oh so sad) glance, I noticed the beer bottles on the table which are decidedly not allowed in most homeless shelters. With great shame I choose : Unix Developers Conference.
I am with you on the NS 4x era browsers issue. If you design with CSS there is a simple trick that will allow NS 4x users the ability to view the page cleanly though without any real formatting. Just use the "@import" method of loading your style sheets. NS 4x will totally ignore them, and thus render old school html pages, circa 1996. At least the page is completely viewable, just boring as can be.
At many companies, IT is dead. What is the point of having an IT department when you do not allow them to do their job or listen to their advice. If IT is dead for your company, rest assured your company will be joining them in the grave any day now.
The only reason to ever purchase one of those ad filled rags was on the rare occasion that you were looking for a new PC. Great deals were abundant in the ads, but with slow PC sales and more people doing pre-purchase research online their time is long since passed.
I for one do not use Linux so I can be an advocate of an OS and fuel the hype machine. Once you stop reacting to MS and start ignoring them you will understand. People are going to be just that, people. They will buy / use whatever they are told repeatedly is the best, what their friends use, what they are forced to use at work, etc. Let's not forget that most people do not care about an operating system!
So what do I do for the "cause"? I wear Linux t-shirts, I help friends who are interested in learning Linux (or any 'nix for that matter), and I go about my business with my OS of choice. Those who are interested enough to explore the world of Linux will, and many of them will stay. The ones you have to evangelize are a lost cause. You will never compete with the likes of MS for mindshare.
The SR71 Blackbird first flew in 1964 and is still the fastest plane in the sky. Publicly at least.
We can only fear them. The Simplified Theory is beginning to leak light. I blame you and your logic bomb of a query.
You are the Rain Man. You have also deposited a fly in the creamy soup of the Simplified Theory. Another shattered theory down the drown.
Because it is true...but wait! It is true because RH is by far the most common Linux one could hope to encounter on the net, especially in the hands of neophyte 'nix users. Any other distro that strives to knock RH out of the top spot should also be prepared to wear the most hacked crown. Does this mean that RH is really less secure than other Linux distros? Not in my experience it, it just happens to be very popular and thus a likely target. RH has produced some less than stellar distros in the past, but I would feel comfortable putting 7.2 or 7.3 up against any other offering available currently. That includes FreeBSD and OpenBSD as well. I run all of them for different reasons, and they all are vulnerable to attack to various degrees. Vulnerable is vulnerable, but I think popular tells the real story here.
From lowest to highest intelligence:
This article would have benefited greatly from a diagram or two. IDS behind the firewall? IDS in front of the firewall? Possibly they mentioned it, but I failed to find reference in the article. Myself, I prefer to keep the IDS behind the firewall as I only care about packets that get through. How do /.'ers deploy?
of the jury, I am just a simple caveman. Your "scientists" found me frozen in an ice flow and unthawed me. /. I wonder if little men are inside my screen writing messages to me.
Your ways frighten and confuse me. When I read
But there is one thing I do know, that picture of the skull is my dead brother!
The good news is that it is still acceptable to bugger little boys! Especially alter boys...mmmmmm alter boys.
Seriously, the Catholic Church is in no position to impose their morals on anyone at this point.
Take a look at the 5K contest this year. The rules were relaxed a bit this time around, and in my totally random browsing of the entries I found that at least half of them do not work in my trusty Mozilla sans java, flash, etc. Disgusting, what used to be a contest to showcase novel design has become a wasteland of cheesy javascript and flash.
Sadly, the 256b contest seems to be going the same route. Check the first 5 entries, they are all IE only or require javascript.
Web designers are sucking more and more latley. Learn proper CSS and stop designing broken pages.
How is that OEMs have so completely become Microsoft's whipping post? They are nothing more than MS's distribution channel. It would seem that OEMs would have some say in what they ship would it not? Unless MS declares that Win2K is no longer available for purchase, why can't vendors ship what their customers want? Ugh, no more MS posts today please, they are ruining my coffee.
Why not try some music that the artists want you to listen to freely? Enough with the commercial sludge out there, seek out some local music and hear it live the way it was meant to be heard. Go with friends, have some drinks, and stop feeding the huge corporate machines out there.
Something loud and clicky will do. Bonus points for a lack of Windows keys and super nifty email and internet buttons. IBM, Zeos, and old Keytronics rock.
If I wanted to play with .NET, I would be running Windows right now. I'm not. I don't.