With all these casemod stories, Slashdot is just trying to get a foothold in the nu-geek community -- the kind who was raised by Windows, is addicted helplessly to online gaming, always wears Slipknot t-shirts, always believes all the hardware and game hype that every crap hardware/gaming site out there says, and doesn't even know jack shit about coding, *nix, or computer science as they only care about spurious issues like ATI vs. Nvidia -- but they try to pass themselves off as a Linux hackers and anti-Microsoft rebels, and somehow gravitate towards slashdot after they run Linux for a week and give up on it.
Every single one of you knows who I'm talking about -- mostly college freshmen and high-schoolers who are nothing more than console gamers with top-of-the-line PC equipment that is only used as a forum posting, warez-downloading, gaming machine and not for anything remotely constructive or interesting.
They're the kind of people that glittery casemods attract, and they're the exact people slashdot should NOT cater to, as they're alienating their core audience. Slashdot should run less stories about casemods and more about phsyics breakthroughs, Linux standards, Microsoft's crimes, what's going on in Congress.
Out in California, there are mammoth junk yards of nothing but a century of airplanes gone to waste. Many are used for movies, stripped for spare parts, and so forth, but it's good that they're finally being used to provide shelter.
However, $300,000 is a bit steep, though it's a nice novelty item. Instead of selling them to the eccentric, the planes out in the junk yards of California should be given away converted into homeless shelters and low-income housing using the company's swivel technology.
I remember when it was the best...
on
Altavista Renewed
·
· Score: 5, Interesting
But after google, the only redeeming feature it had was babelfish -- and now google translates webpages better, too.
Altavista became way too bloated and way too commercial, and it will wither and die away within 5 years. Everything it does, google does, but without the sense of bloat or loading 200k webpages full of ads.
According to Sightings, it was to happen immediately due to something with planetary alignments -- though I know the last one was May 5, 2000 -- or some other cosmic phenomenon which would immediately accelerate the polar flip drastically.
I really miss that show, though they still play re-runs. I used to sit in front of the TV with a tinfoil hat on.
If the Pentagon actually did affiliate themselves with spyware programs, or create one of their own somehow, it would be able to collect all kinds of information on each and every person out there, even overseas.
The problem is that it would be detected and outed quickly, so it would have to have clandestine links to the Pentagon -- though that could be going on now -- plus it would need something akin to a supercomputer to make sense of all the data.
As I was getting bored by the sheer platitude of all these replies I got, which should be modded down as -1 (Redundant) instead of modding down this or the parent... but it still was a pretty good devil's advocate troll!
Thanks again for posting something moderatly interesting as opposed to all the sibling groupthink posts out there. As General Patton once said, "If everyone's thinking alike, then someone's not thinking."
Because much of what science says clearly contradicts the Godly truth of the Holy Bible. Atheistic scientists just theorize all day, and it's no wonder that they're subject to such scrutiny, as the Bible is the only book one needs for science.
For instance, the properties of light are not universal, rather, they did not go into effect until God created the first rainbow as a pact with humanity promising to never flood the Earth again and kill every living thing, according to Genesis 9:12-16.
The world is also flat, according to Matthew 4:8, as all the kingdoms of the world could be seen from one mountaintop. There are also four corners of the Earth, as noted by Isaiah 11:12.
Scientists can't explain where we came from -- only God can, and I leave it up to Him, not the miscalculations of secular scientists.
At best, solid state storage devices will be used to house the most critical, most heavily read data on the hard drive for certain particular uses only.
However, no one will ever go back to 2GB hard drives for the same prices as a 200GB hard drive, nor will anyone want to go that far back in proportion to Moore's law in the future in exchange for giving up their mechanical hard drives.
Trust me, when we have a terabyte of hard drive space for a few hundred dollars, people will use them -- movies still take up an average of 1GB apiece, and with digital convergence, everyone will want to stockpile them, as well as have every song they've ever wanted to hear stored safely on their hard drive.
I'm sorry, but racists, sexists, and homophobes are outright scum! If someone actively goes out of their way to tell people that 90% of the world's population should be enslaved or that the best thing they can do is kill someone because of their skin color, religion, ethnic background, immigration status, sexual orientation, disability, etc., they have forfeited their rights to free speech.
They deserve no rights to spread their violence-inducing propaganda against the most disadvantaged of society through sites such as Stormfront.
There is no positive aspect to hate speech, and many of its defenders are closet racists themselves. Those who would claim the supremeacy of "free speech" obviously believe that James Byrd or Matthew Shepard deserve no legal protection against racists and homophobes, and such vile hatemongers should be tolerated. Hate speech is an abuse of free speech and that people's lives are more important than the right of someone to publicly encourage others to target certain groups for a campaign of murder, rape, assault and terror.
Words may not hurt, but when people begin acting on the words of hate speech spreading like cancer on the internet, then the damage is done. Free speech shouldn't endanger people's lives. One can't yell "Fire!" in a crowded theatre, because people will probably get hurt trying to get out.
Hate speech acts in the same way - by trying to make certain kinds of people seem less than human and by glorifying violent acts against them - it's just a matter of time before a follower or supporter of a hate group puts words into action.
That uses all CPU resources of a cluster, and leap 10 years into the future?
The AI would use genetic algorithms, the sound would have every echo and diffusion effect possible, the graphics would use real-time raytracing, and the level count would be as extreme poly as possible. Simply spare nothing when it comes to CPU power, and just let it fly.
Just use nothing but outright raw CPU power to render the whole thing.
It's proprietary, closed-source, dirt slow, written in Java, inaccurate, and prone to nasty debug screens.
Take a look at slashdot, livejournal, and everything2 -- everything works like clockwork. I think the open source community could, and should, write better code for this.
While it's great that Linux has excellent multithreading support, it's a shame, however, that many programmers do not take advantage of multi-threading in their programs.
The worst example of this was the Quake I source code, which was used for many games, including Half-Life. The code was not multi-threaded, and the network code sat idle while everything else drew -- adding about 20ms of lag, unless you cut the frame rate down to about 15 or so.
The problem wasn't fixed in Half-Life -- the most popular multiplayer game of all time -- until sometime in 2000. We can only imagine how many other programs are not taking full advantage of multithreading.
At least Europe won't have any dimensional analysis problems with not converting English measurements to metric, like NASA did with their Mars Climate Orbiter a few years ago!
Be careful... Computers are a deadly fire hazard!
on
How Looks Your Geekroom?
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· Score: 5, Interesting
One of my computer science professors, whom I will not name, had a collection much similar to that in his shed -- it was something like 30 lousy computers with monitors, all from the 386/486 era, that he had absolutely no use for and just had to have.
Then, on a stormy night, the ungrounded shed was hit by lightning, and it caught fire. While he was asleep, the computers began melting under the heat and released some very toxic gas -- which blew through the neighborhood, and killed the professor's dog along with a few other animals, and made a few residents hospital-bound.
Because of it, he was sued for quite a hefty bit, though he avoided jail -- so rethink stockpiling all those useless computers for itself, and give them away to charity.
One thing I hate is the "skinning" of everything, particularly media players. It was popular for mainstream kids software, and it worked okay there; but for everything else, the standard GUI (preferrably written with something nice like WxWindows) should be the only thing that is used. If I see something with colorful, bubbly bitmaps on the gui, I probably won't use it.
What is intuitive to us is what is standard -- adding new buttons with new pictures, new dials, and other things in a single instance interface only confuses everyone. Even if some of the properties are inefficient, regular GUI standards are the way to go.
Everything is like that...
on
Net Vegas
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
Everywhere you go -- from Walmart, to Disneyland, to stadiums, to McDonalds, even to some carwashes -- everything is monitored and networked.
All cash registers in almost every supermarket, as well as any store (blockbuster, petsmart, etc) that cards you, is tracking everything you do through a network, and is usually accompanied by an impressive array of security cameras to boot.
It's not just risky gambling operations run by the mob -- it's your friendly neighborhood megastore that implements all the technology, too.
It's used as the neutron-absorbing material in a closed heat-exchange loop, and a 1m thick blanket of molten lithium is needed to capture 100% of the neutrons, and for just about everything else, too.
Fusion reactors should be our goal!
on
Tidal Power a Reality
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
Isn't it strange that the publisher of Penthouse (Bob Guccione) is the only celebrity to ever endorse nuclear fusion, which is the only viable solution we are ever going to have to our insatiable lust for energy?
Funding for nuclear fusion is scarce, probably due to energy companies' opposition to anything that could possibly mean free energy. Creating a miniature star with potentially unlimited power -- it can generate as much power as it is fed water to spin turbines -- doesn't sound good to the multi-trillion dollar oil, gas, and coal cartels.
The process for creating a fusion reactor has been mapped out since the 1970s -- however, it would require the equivalent of 7 fission reactors to start the reaction before it can sustain itself, and materials including a very large 3-foot thick shield of lithium.
Nuclear fusion could still be done more easily and cheaper than space-based energy projects.
Slashdot Mirror
The Origin 3900 is cooled with a Bryant Air Conditioning coil and condenser system.
With all these casemod stories, Slashdot is just trying to get a foothold in the nu-geek community -- the kind who was raised by Windows, is addicted helplessly to online gaming, always wears Slipknot t-shirts, always believes all the hardware and game hype that every crap hardware/gaming site out there says, and doesn't even know jack shit about coding, *nix, or computer science as they only care about spurious issues like ATI vs. Nvidia -- but they try to pass themselves off as a Linux hackers and anti-Microsoft rebels, and somehow gravitate towards slashdot after they run Linux for a week and give up on it.
Every single one of you knows who I'm talking about -- mostly college freshmen and high-schoolers who are nothing more than console gamers with top-of-the-line PC equipment that is only used as a forum posting, warez-downloading, gaming machine and not for anything remotely constructive or interesting.
They're the kind of people that glittery casemods attract, and they're the exact people slashdot should NOT cater to, as they're alienating their core audience. Slashdot should run less stories about casemods and more about phsyics breakthroughs, Linux standards, Microsoft's crimes, what's going on in Congress.
Out in California, there are mammoth junk yards of nothing but a century of airplanes gone to waste. Many are used for movies, stripped for spare parts, and so forth, but it's good that they're finally being used to provide shelter.
However, $300,000 is a bit steep, though it's a nice novelty item. Instead of selling them to the eccentric, the planes out in the junk yards of California should be given away converted into homeless shelters and low-income housing using the company's swivel technology.
Disney's version wasn't an eyeball -- it was a talking testicle!
This suit is frivolous!
The official site is down, but a google cache is up:
: http://www.linuxbase.org/+lsby&hl=en&ie=UT F-8
http://216.239.51.100/search?q=cache:NdbQq65bnTcJ
But after google, the only redeeming feature it had was babelfish -- and now google translates webpages better, too.
Altavista became way too bloated and way too commercial, and it will wither and die away within 5 years. Everything it does, google does, but without the sense of bloat or loading 200k webpages full of ads.
Stargate was an all right movie, but SG-1 just extrapolates it too far.
According to Sightings, it was to happen immediately due to something with planetary alignments -- though I know the last one was May 5, 2000 -- or some other cosmic phenomenon which would immediately accelerate the polar flip drastically.
I really miss that show, though they still play re-runs. I used to sit in front of the TV with a tinfoil hat on.
The date for the flip will be 5/5/2005, according to Sightings.
If the Pentagon actually did affiliate themselves with spyware programs, or create one of their own somehow, it would be able to collect all kinds of information on each and every person out there, even overseas.
The problem is that it would be detected and outed quickly, so it would have to have clandestine links to the Pentagon -- though that could be going on now -- plus it would need something akin to a supercomputer to make sense of all the data.
As I was getting bored by the sheer platitude of all these replies I got, which should be modded down as -1 (Redundant) instead of modding down this or the parent... but it still was a pretty good devil's advocate troll!
Thanks again for posting something moderatly interesting as opposed to all the sibling groupthink posts out there. As General Patton once said, "If everyone's thinking alike, then someone's not thinking."
Because much of what science says clearly contradicts the Godly truth of the Holy Bible. Atheistic scientists just theorize all day, and it's no wonder that they're subject to such scrutiny, as the Bible is the only book one needs for science.
For instance, the properties of light are not universal, rather, they did not go into effect until God created the first rainbow as a pact with humanity promising to never flood the Earth again and kill every living thing, according to Genesis 9:12-16.
The world is also flat, according to Matthew 4:8, as all the kingdoms of the world could be seen from one mountaintop. There are also four corners of the Earth, as noted by Isaiah 11:12.
Scientists can't explain where we came from -- only God can, and I leave it up to Him, not the miscalculations of secular scientists.
At best, solid state storage devices will be used to house the most critical, most heavily read data on the hard drive for certain particular uses only.
However, no one will ever go back to 2GB hard drives for the same prices as a 200GB hard drive, nor will anyone want to go that far back in proportion to Moore's law in the future in exchange for giving up their mechanical hard drives.
Trust me, when we have a terabyte of hard drive space for a few hundred dollars, people will use them -- movies still take up an average of 1GB apiece, and with digital convergence, everyone will want to stockpile them, as well as have every song they've ever wanted to hear stored safely on their hard drive.
I'm sorry, but racists, sexists, and homophobes are outright scum! If someone actively goes out of their way to tell people that 90% of the world's population should be enslaved or that the best thing they can do is kill someone because of their skin color, religion, ethnic background, immigration status, sexual orientation, disability, etc., they have forfeited their rights to free speech.
They deserve no rights to spread their violence-inducing propaganda against the most disadvantaged of society through sites such as Stormfront.
There is no positive aspect to hate speech, and many of its defenders are closet racists themselves. Those who would claim the supremeacy of "free speech" obviously believe that James Byrd or Matthew Shepard deserve no legal protection against racists and homophobes, and such vile hatemongers should be tolerated. Hate speech is an abuse of free speech and that people's lives are more important than the right of someone to publicly encourage others to target certain groups for a campaign of murder, rape, assault and terror.
Words may not hurt, but when people begin acting on the words of hate speech spreading like cancer on the internet, then the damage is done. Free speech shouldn't endanger people's lives. One can't yell "Fire!" in a crowded theatre, because people will probably get hurt trying to get out.
Hate speech acts in the same way - by trying to make certain kinds of people seem less than human and by glorifying violent acts against them - it's just a matter of time before a follower or supporter of a hate group puts words into action.
That uses all CPU resources of a cluster, and leap 10 years into the future?
The AI would use genetic algorithms, the sound would have every echo and diffusion effect possible, the graphics would use real-time raytracing, and the level count would be as extreme poly as possible. Simply spare nothing when it comes to CPU power, and just let it fly.
Just use nothing but outright raw CPU power to render the whole thing.
It's proprietary, closed-source, dirt slow, written in Java, inaccurate, and prone to nasty debug screens.
Take a look at slashdot, livejournal, and everything2 -- everything works like clockwork. I think the open source community could, and should, write better code for this.
Send the code for that Half-Life project to the creators of the Tenebrae engine, and you will be highly revered.
Half-Life (or better yet, Counter-Strike) with Doom III graphics would just own.
http://tenebrae.sourceforge.net
While it's great that Linux has excellent multithreading support, it's a shame, however, that many programmers do not take advantage of multi-threading in their programs.
The worst example of this was the Quake I source code, which was used for many games, including Half-Life. The code was not multi-threaded, and the network code sat idle while everything else drew -- adding about 20ms of lag, unless you cut the frame rate down to about 15 or so.
The problem wasn't fixed in Half-Life -- the most popular multiplayer game of all time -- until sometime in 2000. We can only imagine how many other programs are not taking full advantage of multithreading.
At least Europe won't have any dimensional analysis problems with not converting English measurements to metric, like NASA did with their Mars Climate Orbiter a few years ago!
One of my computer science professors, whom I will not name, had a collection much similar to that in his shed -- it was something like 30 lousy computers with monitors, all from the 386/486 era, that he had absolutely no use for and just had to have.
Then, on a stormy night, the ungrounded shed was hit by lightning, and it caught fire. While he was asleep, the computers began melting under the heat and released some very toxic gas -- which blew through the neighborhood, and killed the professor's dog along with a few other animals, and made a few residents hospital-bound.
Because of it, he was sued for quite a hefty bit, though he avoided jail -- so rethink stockpiling all those useless computers for itself, and give them away to charity.
Sexist.
One thing I hate is the "skinning" of everything, particularly media players. It was popular for mainstream kids software, and it worked okay there; but for everything else, the standard GUI (preferrably written with something nice like WxWindows) should be the only thing that is used. If I see something with colorful, bubbly bitmaps on the gui, I probably won't use it.
What is intuitive to us is what is standard -- adding new buttons with new pictures, new dials, and other things in a single instance interface only confuses everyone. Even if some of the properties are inefficient, regular GUI standards are the way to go.
Everywhere you go -- from Walmart, to Disneyland, to stadiums, to McDonalds, even to some carwashes -- everything is monitored and networked.
All cash registers in almost every supermarket, as well as any store (blockbuster, petsmart, etc) that cards you, is tracking everything you do through a network, and is usually accompanied by an impressive array of security cameras to boot.
It's not just risky gambling operations run by the mob -- it's your friendly neighborhood megastore that implements all the technology, too.
http://www.sciencemuseum.org.uk/on-line/fusion/rea ctors.asp
It's used as the neutron-absorbing material in a closed heat-exchange loop, and a 1m thick blanket of molten lithium is needed to capture 100% of the neutrons, and for just about everything else, too.
Isn't it strange that the publisher of Penthouse (Bob Guccione) is the only celebrity to ever endorse nuclear fusion, which is the only viable solution we are ever going to have to our insatiable lust for energy?
Funding for nuclear fusion is scarce, probably due to energy companies' opposition to anything that could possibly mean free energy. Creating a miniature star with potentially unlimited power -- it can generate as much power as it is fed water to spin turbines -- doesn't sound good to the multi-trillion dollar oil, gas, and coal cartels.
The process for creating a fusion reactor has been mapped out since the 1970s -- however, it would require the equivalent of 7 fission reactors to start the reaction before it can sustain itself, and materials including a very large 3-foot thick shield of lithium.
Nuclear fusion could still be done more easily and cheaper than space-based energy projects.