Exunckly! My thoughts eaxctly. There are already lots of dedicated programs for chatting to other people in real time. I use them regularly myself to speak to friends in the US (I'm in the UK). But the thought of having people knowing when I'm at my machine (well, actually when I have the program running - just because its running doesn't mean I'm at the keyboard) really doesn't appeal to me. During working hours I don't have the time to talk to friends every five minutes, and at home I can't afford to due to the phone bills.
I've found this wonderful new technology. Its called email. It allows you to send a message to a person, and they can reply to it too. Unfortunately it's completely open and every program works pretty much the same.
Why on earth do people need these things? What is wrong with an email. If you need to contact someone really quickly, why not use that other piece of incredibly useful technology. We call it a phone.
I think what they're trying to do here is stop kids from being slaughtered by someone who's gone over the edge. In principle, this is an entirely sensible thing to do. Prevention is better than cure. You can't bring back the dead, but maybe you can stop them from being cannon-fodder in the first place.
Yes, they're going about it the wrong way. Yes, not all geeks are gun-toting nutcases (I've never held a real gun in my life, much less fired one), but they are trying to save lives. Complete freedom for everyone just leads to anarchy.
What we need to do is steer them in the right direction. If we get angry and start causing problems, it's only going to strengthen their belief that geeks should be crushed at the earliest opportunity.
Yes, you are correct. But that all depends on us being able to get a nuke up there, finding the correct position, and not blowing it into lots of city-crushing sized chunks when it goes off. Given NASA's recent problems with caluclating orbits, I won't say I'd be a hundred percent convinced of its success. But I guess it's our best option, for now.
Of course, if we had warp field technology, we could just wrap a low level warp bubble around it and shove it out the way with a pea shooter. Or we could ask Q to change the gravitational constant of the universe;)
Some people think of this as a waste of money, but we are the first species to get to the point where we can prevent our own (eventual) cosmic reset button from being set.
I guess that all depends on the size of the object coming in our direction. If its large enough, there's very little we can do except put our heads bewteen our legs and kiss our arses goodbye;)
But you are right, it is a sensible thing to spend money on. We might just be able to buy ourselves some time to find a solution, if we spot things early enough.
The Corel distribution is for those people who hate to be told how to do things by their kids. You know, the kinda people who have trouble setting their video recorder. At least now they can tell their kids they're not allowed to use it..;)
You have to remember, this is a comercial company trying to make money. Sure, you can make money from GPL'd software, but its not as easy. Open source is never going to take over everywhere, least of all games, where there is so much money to be made.
I agree. We all make mistakes sometimes. It often takes guts to own up to it, especially to the net in general. What I would like to see from/. is less US bias. Perhaps there should be more non-US folks posting stories. Here in the UK nothing much gets posted until mid afternoon. There surely must be something interesting to us europeans submitted once in a while. Is this too much to ask?
I think here in the UK the chances of winning the lottery are 1 in 14 million something (is this right?) So for DCypher you'd get worse odds, and end up winning a pretty pathetic some of money in comparison. Hardly a gamblers dream win, is it?;)
I really don't see the reasoning behind cracking these encryption routines. Surely we know that by throwing enough computing power at it, we'll get there eventually. So why bother with it? What does it actually achieve? This isn't flamebait. I'm generally interested in why people want to do something like this.
I'm a fan of SETI, since it's an attempt to discover something new. If you believe in the possibility of extra-terrestrial life or not, surely from a scientific standpoint, SETI is a far more worthwile use of computing power, isn't it?
Portable submillimeter wormhole generators and personal parallel universe transmitters suffer badly with tachyon fields and wierd energy like thingies. I thought everyone knew this. Mind you, you could try reversing the polarity. That fixes most things...;)
But, for you to see her death as a good thing because it could advance your personal cause, sounds a little selfish and cold-hearted to me.
I'm only human. If you wish to see me as selfish and cold-hearted, so be it. I do not wish the poor woman dead, but if South Park were to dissappear because of it, I'd be the first to cheer.
Just because you object to something, doesn't mean you have any right to try and remove it.
Um, yes, it does. Please don't think I'm trying to start a flame war here, but that statement is wrong. If I watch something on television, and I find it offends me in some way, then I have every right to complain. At least, I do here in th UK.
I'm not saying this is the case for South Park. It doesn't offend me, I just find it unwatchable. But I have every right to have to say that I think its a pile of pants and should be removed and replaced by something better, just as much as you have the right to say it's really cool and we want more.
To paraphrase you, just because you object to my opinion, doesn't mean its wrong...
With the greatest respect to her family and friends, I wish this *would* kill off South Park. I think its a terrible show. But then I seem to be in the minority here.
All these viruses that take advantage of holes in MS products, are they being written just for the sake of writing a virus (a stupid occupation if ever I heard one) or are they specifically targetting MS products in order to speed up their downfall? It can't be doing the MS PR engine a lot of good to have to continously fix these "little glitches"...
You're right, I am missing out on it. But as you say, many people aren't even gamers. That probably includes me. Hacking code til the middle of the night has always held my interest far longer than a game ever could.
Slashdot Mirror
Think of it as the mobile phone compared to the land line that is IRC
I wouldn't know, since I've never used IRC. But there are alternatives...
So use a chat program. They are used for chatting, are they not?
Exunckly! My thoughts eaxctly. There are already lots of dedicated programs for chatting to other people in real time. I use them regularly myself to speak to friends in the US (I'm in the UK). But the thought of having people knowing when I'm at my machine (well, actually when I have the program running - just because its running doesn't mean I'm at the keyboard) really doesn't appeal to me. During working hours I don't have the time to talk to friends every five minutes, and at home I can't afford to due to the phone bills.
I've found this wonderful new technology. Its called email. It allows you to send a message to a person, and they can reply to it too. Unfortunately it's completely open and every program works pretty much the same.
Why on earth do people need these things? What is wrong with an email. If you need to contact someone really quickly, why not use that other piece of incredibly useful technology. We call it a phone.
Red Dwarf's "Backwards" episode covers this in more detail. :-)
Rimmer: Where's Cat?
Lister: He just... in the bushes... you know...
Lister: We've got to stop him!
A most amusing scene! =)
I think what they're trying to do here is stop kids from being slaughtered by someone who's gone over the edge. In principle, this is an entirely sensible thing to do. Prevention is better than cure. You can't bring back the dead, but maybe you can stop them from being cannon-fodder in the first place.
Yes, they're going about it the wrong way. Yes, not all geeks are gun-toting nutcases (I've never held a real gun in my life, much less fired one), but they are trying to save lives. Complete freedom for everyone just leads to anarchy.
What we need to do is steer them in the right direction. If we get angry and start causing problems, it's only going to strengthen their belief that geeks should be crushed at the earliest opportunity.
Yes, you are correct. But that all depends on us being able to get a nuke up there, finding the correct position, and not blowing it into lots of city-crushing sized chunks when it goes off. Given NASA's recent problems with caluclating orbits, I won't say I'd be a hundred percent convinced of its success. But I guess it's our best option, for now.
;)
Of course, if we had warp field technology, we could just wrap a low level warp bubble around it and shove it out the way with a pea shooter. Or we could ask Q to change the gravitational constant of the universe
Some people think of this as a waste of money, but we are the first species to get to the point where we can prevent our own (eventual) cosmic reset button from being set.
;)
I guess that all depends on the size of the object coming in our direction. If its large enough, there's very little we can do except put our heads bewteen our legs and kiss our arses goodbye
But you are right, it is a sensible thing to spend money on. We might just be able to buy ourselves some time to find a solution, if we spot things early enough.
A waste of money?! I hope you'll take that back when they inform you you have aproximately 2 years before a large rock flattens your house.
Sounds like almost all governements. At least they're doing something now. How many other countries are? Not many, AFAIK.
The Corel distribution is for those people who hate to be told how to do things by their kids. You know, the kinda people who have trouble setting their video recorder. At least now they can tell their kids they're not allowed to use it.. ;)
Did you read the article? It's already mentioned.
You have to remember, this is a comercial company trying to make money. Sure, you can make money from GPL'd software, but its not as easy. Open source is never going to take over everywhere, least of all games, where there is so much money to be made.
I agree. We all make mistakes sometimes. It often takes guts to own up to it, especially to the net in general. What I would like to see from /. is less US bias. Perhaps there should be more non-US folks posting stories. Here in the UK nothing much gets posted until mid afternoon. There surely must be something interesting to us europeans submitted once in a while. Is this too much to ask?
I think here in the UK the chances of winning the lottery are 1 in 14 million something (is this right?) So for DCypher you'd get worse odds, and end up winning a pretty pathetic some of money in comparison. Hardly a gamblers dream win, is it? ;)
Care to qualify that remark? Why is it garbage?
Okay, so anyone know what the odds are?
I really don't see the reasoning behind cracking these encryption routines. Surely we know that by throwing enough computing power at it, we'll get there eventually. So why bother with it? What does it actually achieve? This isn't flamebait. I'm generally interested in why people want to do something like this.
I'm a fan of SETI, since it's an attempt to discover something new. If you believe in the possibility of extra-terrestrial life or not, surely from a scientific standpoint, SETI is a far more worthwile use of computing power, isn't it?
Portable submillimeter wormhole generators and personal parallel universe transmitters suffer badly with tachyon fields and wierd energy like thingies. I thought everyone knew this. Mind you, you could try reversing the polarity. That fixes most things... ;)
But, for you to see her death as a good thing because it could advance your personal cause, sounds a little selfish and cold-hearted to me.
I'm only human. If you wish to see me as selfish and cold-hearted, so be it. I do not wish the poor woman dead, but if South Park were to dissappear because of it, I'd be the first to cheer.
Just because you object to something, doesn't mean you have any right to try and remove it.
Um, yes, it does. Please don't think I'm trying to start a flame war here, but that statement is wrong. If I watch something on television, and I find it offends me in some way, then I have every right to complain. At least, I do here in th UK.
I'm not saying this is the case for South Park. It doesn't offend me, I just find it unwatchable. But I have every right to have to say that I think its a pile of pants and should be removed and replaced by something better, just as much as you have the right to say it's really cool and we want more.
To paraphrase you, just because you object to my opinion, doesn't mean its wrong...
Of course the show will go on without her.
With the greatest respect to her family and friends, I wish this *would* kill off South Park. I think its a terrible show. But then I seem to be in the minority here.
All these viruses that take advantage of holes in MS products, are they being written just for the sake of writing a virus (a stupid occupation if ever I heard one) or are they specifically targetting MS products in order to speed up their downfall? It can't be doing the MS PR engine a lot of good to have to continously fix these "little glitches"...
You're right, I am missing out on it. But as you say, many people aren't even gamers. That probably includes me. Hacking code til the middle of the night has always held my interest far longer than a game ever could.
Who are you calling common? ;)