I was waiting for someone to point out that having your information on a WHOIS may not be such a good thing if you're running a website that may be the target of persecution: Pro-Choice, Islam, Homosexual, Justin Timberlake Fansite, etc.
To decide that since we aren't quite ready to send someone to Mars and then bring them back home we will instead just do what we can at the moment and send someone to die on Mars is idiotic in the extreme.
We can't guarantee that when you drive your car down the road that you won't get in an accident and be killed, but I'm sure you do this anyway. How is this any different? Innumerous things in life involve voluntary and/or calculated risk.
The lives lost during manned space missions in the last 40 or so years are unfortunate, but c'mon, the astronauts know the risks involved and are willing to take them. If the general public didn't react with such outrage at these unfortunate events, perhaps NASA would be able to push forward at a faster pace by taking more risks and not end up in a scenario like you propose.
I'm sure NASA tries to make space travel as safe as possible, but they can't think of everything. Take a look at how safety is improved in almost everything else in life: the designers can only take things so far at the beginning; the incremental improvements are dependent upon learning from experience. Given this, since the ability to refine the safety of space travel is partially dependent on the amount of space travel completed, we can't expect the safety of space travel to improve unless we get out there and do it.
Yes, people could torture you for the key, but let's look at what would probably be the most common use (and the one that's being marketed by ABIT): obscuring P2P downloads.
I can't speak for any other country but the one I reside in, the USA, but I'm pretty sure "torture" is going to be out of the question. In any case, I beleive that the Fifth Amendement protects me from divulging the key. Is that not true?
I do the same (burn two or more copies), but what you should also do is check the CDs for errors after they're burned. And I'm not talking about just verifying that the file can be read and is bit-for-bit the same as the source -- you should scan the disc for C1 and C2 errors. This functionality is provided in one of Nero's utilties, for example (listed as a "surface scan"). Nero will identify blocks that are "damaged" (have C1 errors but are recoverable using C2 error correction) and "unreadable" (not recoverable because they have C2 errors). Ones that have C2 errors would fail the simple bit-for-bit test, but my practice is to re-burn any disk that has any C1 ("damaged") errors. Yeah, the disc is readable, but those C1 blocks are closer to being unreadable than a error-free block.
The effective float would actually be much longer than that for a manufacturer's rebate, as you're not usually purchasing the item directly from the manufacturer. The manufacturer will have floated the rebate for the amount of time it takes you to buy the item once it's been sold to your store, plus the amount of time before you get your act together and submit the rebate (You did get it postmarked by the time we stated, didn't you? No? So sorry, we're keeping your rebate), plus the time it takes the post office to get the rebate to the fulfillment center, PLUS the 6-8 weeks it takes them to get the check to you. Of course, they could find some problem with the rebate, which adds time to their float while you resubmit your copies of the rebate materials... (You DID make copies, didn't you? You didn't? The float doesn't matter at this point, we're keeping your money...)
I guess the consolation is that short-term interest rates are currently miniscule, so they're not generating THAT much revenue from float. As stated by many other posters, the main profit is made from the (majority of) people who forget to send in the rebate or who we can get away with denying.
Free World Dialup has been called "Napster for Phones." It's a free service aimed at developing Internet telephony as a mainstream alternative to the public switched telephone network.
WTF?!? Is anything that does not pass through a "normal" distribution channel now comparable with Napster? Other than using a computer network, how is VOIP anything like Napster?
It seems like journalists love to compare things with Napster just to give those things an slight taint of naughtiness.
Are Slashdotters (as a whole) pro- or anti- war?
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Strike on Iraq
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· Score: 1
The ratio of pro-war to anti-war posts that get modded up (or down) would be an interesting barometer of the./ community's overall attitude towards the United States actions in Iraq. Anyone care to write that script to calculate it and post the results?
I'm just glad it's not a text-to-PHEROMONE system. I'd hate to get turned on every time I try to check my flight status. Although, I guess pr0n sites could take advantage of that kind of technology...
When you do the math and analyze the situation there is really only one explanation for all the effort being made on Iraq: Saddam is a dangerous dictator which intelligence information indicates is a threat to the world and to the United States. No other explanation, regardless of how cynical you are, makes sense.
And how exactly is a country thousands of miles away with no intercontinental missiles and no ties to domestic terrorism a threat to the United States? Practically all of the world (except for Britain and the US) see no impetus to invade Iraq; are you saying that they are the ones that are delusional and that Dubya is the only one who is not? I think not. The US firmly believes in the concept of trial by jury -- it takes a majority decision to determine guilt. But Bush doesn't care what anyone else thinks. He wants to skip the jury and convict anyway. Why don't our country's internal values apply to how we conduct ourselves in world affairs? That's just sad.
Larry Page: "Lucas Pereira: 'You idiots, you spelled [Googol] wrong!' But this was good, because google.com was available and googol.com was not. Now most people spell 'Googol' 'Google', so it worked out OK in the end."
It's time to sic the Google lawyers on googol.com for "brand confusion", or whatever they're calling it these days.
I wonder though how much kWH of electricity all of the unused floppy drives in the world draw while they're sitting idle. If it's significant, methinks that's a good environmental reason to drop the floppy.
I'm not factoring in the environmental impact of manufacturing floppy drives, the added shipping weight, etc., etc. I'm assuming that the manufacture of the replacements -- CDRs, USB drives, Zip Disks, and so on -- generate the same impact.
Re:dead before it was online
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Sim-Dud?
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· Score: 1
Nope, never played it; the concept holds no appeal to me.
Although, I played a fair amount of Sim City back in the day. I always wondered how a city planner would do at that game (or <<insert name of your diety here>> would do at Sim Earth, for that matter...)
Slashdot Mirror
I was waiting for someone to point out that having your information on a WHOIS may not be such a good thing if you're running a website that may be the target of persecution: Pro-Choice, Islam, Homosexual, Justin Timberlake Fansite, etc.
I share the same pet peeves; my latest pet peeve is the use of apostrophe's on words that aren't posessive. I see these thing's all over the place.
The lives lost during manned space missions in the last 40 or so years are unfortunate, but c'mon, the astronauts know the risks involved and are willing to take them. If the general public didn't react with such outrage at these unfortunate events, perhaps NASA would be able to push forward at a faster pace by taking more risks and not end up in a scenario like you propose.
I'm sure NASA tries to make space travel as safe as possible, but they can't think of everything. Take a look at how safety is improved in almost everything else in life: the designers can only take things so far at the beginning; the incremental improvements are dependent upon learning from experience. Given this, since the ability to refine the safety of space travel is partially dependent on the amount of space travel completed, we can't expect the safety of space travel to improve unless we get out there and do it.
I can't speak for any other country but the one I reside in, the USA, but I'm pretty sure "torture" is going to be out of the question. In any case, I beleive that the Fifth Amendement protects me from divulging the key. Is that not true?
That's my logic, at least.
I guess the consolation is that short-term interest rates are currently miniscule, so they're not generating THAT much revenue from float. As stated by many other posters, the main profit is made from the (majority of) people who forget to send in the rebate or who we can get away with denying.
You mean those nude pictures of Anna Kournikova and Jennifer Garner engaged in a lesbian tryst aren't real?!?
WTF?!? Is anything that does not pass through a "normal" distribution channel now comparable with Napster? Other than using a computer network, how is VOIP anything like Napster?
It seems like journalists love to compare things with Napster just to give those things an slight taint of naughtiness.
The ratio of pro-war to anti-war posts that get modded up (or down) would be an interesting barometer of the ./ community's overall attitude towards the United States actions in Iraq. Anyone care to write that script to calculate it and post the results?
I'm just glad it's not a text-to-PHEROMONE system. I'd hate to get turned on every time I try to check my flight status. Although, I guess pr0n sites could take advantage of that kind of technology...
And how exactly is a country thousands of miles away with no intercontinental missiles and no ties to domestic terrorism a threat to the United States? Practically all of the world (except for Britain and the US) see no impetus to invade Iraq; are you saying that they are the ones that are delusional and that Dubya is the only one who is not? I think not. The US firmly believes in the concept of trial by jury -- it takes a majority decision to determine guilt. But Bush doesn't care what anyone else thinks. He wants to skip the jury and convict anyway. Why don't our country's internal values apply to how we conduct ourselves in world affairs? That's just sad.
I'm not factoring in the environmental impact of manufacturing floppy drives, the added shipping weight, etc., etc. I'm assuming that the manufacture of the replacements -- CDRs, USB drives, Zip Disks, and so on -- generate the same impact.
Although, I played a fair amount of Sim City back in the day. I always wondered how a city planner would do at that game (or <<insert name of your diety here>> would do at Sim Earth, for that matter...)