Interesting that you mention travelling to Mars as one alternative. Besides the point that I don't see how my CPU cycles could ever help travelling to Mars, I also don't see why it should be more useful than SETI@home.
Also your following comment reads quite interesting in that respect:
I remember seeing the movie "Contact" and I was totally disgusted by the concept. It's really a few people's dreaming building on everyone else's money.
What is manned Mars travel other than a few people's dreaming building on everyone else's money? In contrast to SETI@home where you decide if you want to spend some money (in form of CPU cycles) to the project.
Well, your failure signatures database is obviously incomplete. Other possible failure modes are:
- Does not even start (e.g. you forgot to compile it, or didn't give an absolute pathname and it's not in your PATH) - Does start, but doesn't find a required DSO (e.g. libc.so) - Does start, outputs "Hello world", and then additionally outputs something else - Does output just "Hello world", but needs half an hour to do so - Does start and outputs "Hello world", but doesn't ever end (enters infinite loop)
If the product is too difficult to use, no one will use it, and their revenues will crumble as well.
But otherwise, that's a basic conflict of all profit oriented processes. For example, the longer your products last, the less you will sell. So why should you produce durable products? Also, given that your doctor only earns something from you as long as you're ill, where's his incentive to make you healthy?
Note that selling proprietary software licenses also leads to the same problem, just in another way: You do want people to buy the next version as well. People won't buy the next version if they are completely satisfied with the current one. Therefore you don't really want them to be completely satisfied with the current version.
Well, if you want something in a Free Software program which the developers are not genuinely interested in, you can just hire someone to do it. Free Software doesn't mean all work has to be done for free, it just means the result is free. Note that exactly the freedom of the software ensures a free market for potential developers: Everyone who has the abilities can improve the code, because he can get at the existing source. For proprietary code, the original vendor has an effective monopoly on that code.
Of course as soon as the phisher has your password for the first portal, he can find out your user preferences and present you with the same colors etc. Indeed, he could even have his server act as a proxy, so you indeed access the real site, except indirectly through the phisher's computer, so it can log all your passwords/PINs.
Of course, all those Windows users will have no clue how to use the three C shells:-)
Ok, here's how to do it: Select one of the shells. Type "wipe ass" and press Enter. The rest is automatic. So why are there three C shells? Well, redundancy, of course. It would be a shitty experience if one of the shells fails when you need it, and there's no replacement...
They could have recordings of Miami Vice, Morse, Ironside or some other policey programme on just for the irony. America's dumbest criminal would be perfect:)
Actually the software has only to become as intelligent as the users should have been. After that, we can disconnect the users from the net and let the software handle their online stuff.:-)
Hmmmm... thinking along those lines, the phishing site could just be a proxy forwarding everything to the legitimate site and back, but just storing the interesting data like passwords.
Moreover personalized web pages can only start after you logged in (because only then the server will know whose personalized look it shall display). But at that time, you already have typed your password or PIN.
By switching protocols in the US as well? If MS isn't willing to offer the "EU protocols" in the US as well, I'm sure there will be other companies who are willing to do it... Of course it wouldn't help MS a little bit; instead it would make customers unhappy with MS and much more likely to look at non-MS solutions also in other areas.
Let's face one little truth. Going on OUR evolutionary path, we MUST proceed with caution into space. We should avoid seeking out other races until we can approach them with confidence.
You're right: We should not make any contact to aliens before we're damn sure that we will be the winners of the following interstellar war:-)
Maybe we should invent thinking@home, an AI project which invents good projects to throw your distributed CPU cycles at. However, if it is intelligent enough, it will figure out that it should recommend running itself: Everything else would effectively be suicide of the AI:-)
Indeed, they will soon find out that the one-dimensionality of strings is just an approximation, because indeed, the fundamental constituents of the universe are Spaghetti, which have a finite volume despite looking like one-dimensional strings when not looking too close.
Slashdot Mirror
Also your following comment reads quite interesting in that respect:
What is manned Mars travel other than a few people's dreaming building on everyone else's money? In contrast to SETI@home where you decide if you want to spend some money (in form of CPU cycles) to the project.
Well, your failure signatures database is obviously incomplete. Other possible failure modes are:
- Does not even start (e.g. you forgot to compile it, or didn't give an absolute pathname and it's not in your PATH)
- Does start, but doesn't find a required DSO (e.g. libc.so)
- Does start, outputs "Hello world", and then additionally outputs something else
- Does output just "Hello world", but needs half an hour to do so
- Does start and outputs "Hello world", but doesn't ever end (enters infinite loop)
If the product is too difficult to use, no one will use it, and their revenues will crumble as well.
But otherwise, that's a basic conflict of all profit oriented processes. For example, the longer your products last, the less you will sell. So why should you produce durable products? Also, given that your doctor only earns something from you as long as you're ill, where's his incentive to make you healthy?
Note that selling proprietary software licenses also leads to the same problem, just in another way: You do want people to buy the next version as well. People won't buy the next version if they are completely satisfied with the current one. Therefore you don't really want them to be completely satisfied with the current version.
Well, if you want something in a Free Software program which the developers are not genuinely interested in, you can just hire someone to do it. Free Software doesn't mean all work has to be done for free, it just means the result is free. Note that exactly the freedom of the software ensures a free market for potential developers: Everyone who has the abilities can improve the code, because he can get at the existing source. For proprietary code, the original vendor has an effective monopoly on that code.
Of course as soon as the phisher has your password for the first portal, he can find out your user preferences and present you with the same colors etc. Indeed, he could even have his server act as a proxy, so you indeed access the real site, except indirectly through the phisher's computer, so it can log all your passwords/PINs.
So 9/11 was just a trick to make people pay more?
Of course, all those Windows users will have no clue how to use the three C shells :-)
...
Ok, here's how to do it:
Select one of the shells. Type "wipe ass" and press Enter. The rest is automatic.
So why are there three C shells? Well, redundancy, of course. It would be a shitty experience if one of the shells fails when you need it, and there's no replacement
But wouldn't that give him trouble with the MPAA?
Actually the software has only to become as intelligent as the users should have been. After that, we can disconnect the users from the net and let the software handle their online stuff. :-)
Hmmmm ... thinking along those lines, the phishing site could just be a proxy forwarding everything to the legitimate site and back, but just storing the interesting data like passwords.
Moreover personalized web pages can only start after you logged in (because only then the server will know whose personalized look it shall display). But at that time, you already have typed your password or PIN.
By switching protocols in the US as well? If MS isn't willing to offer the "EU protocols" in the US as well, I'm sure there will be other companies who are willing to do it ...
Of course it wouldn't help MS a little bit; instead it would make customers unhappy with MS and much more likely to look at non-MS solutions also in other areas.
For example running a spelling/grammar checker?
You're right: We should not make any contact to aliens before we're damn sure that we will be the winners of the following interstellar war
Maybe we should invent thinking@home, an AI project which invents good projects to throw your distributed CPU cycles at. :-)
However, if it is intelligent enough, it will figure out that it should recommend running itself: Everything else would effectively be suicide of the AI
And the Schrödinger Cat experiment is to write code which might be either Perl or PHP, but you don't know until you actually run it?
Maybe try "How can I use Emacs packages on vi?"
Indeed, they will soon find out that the one-dimensionality of strings is just an approximation, because indeed, the fundamental constituents of the universe are Spaghetti, which have a finite volume despite looking like one-dimensional strings when not looking too close.
I'm sure it's encoded somewhere in the digit string of pi.
Maybe they forgot to analyse strategies for catching the passed balls?
That's why they demand more "digital literacy". They hope they might finally get it.
Of course, everyone should have the ability to run his own internet! :-)
Not to mention that what you are currently reading is the best comment ever made on Slashdot :-)
A crashed computer is also incredibly stable. It usually will not crash again until the next reboot.
Well, they could just have said: "It's the most secure Windows operating system." Which might even be true.