I'm not whining about how bad everything is. But you have to watch and point out flaws to keep a system running. Ohh, and that's also true for computers I suppose;)
> Say someone phones in a stabbing. Is it wrong for the police to stop a man standing around on the street soaked in blood holding a knife and ask him for ID?
No, of course not. But I doubt that he was soaked in blood and swung a knife:) I just think it is not uncommon to go out for a walk. Apparently, in his area, this is not the case. If it is not the worst weather that hinders people from doing that, what else? Of course, because I don't know the exact circumstances, it may well be that something made him look suspicious for very real reasons.
Heh, you got off lightly for committing this crime:...Doing a walk at night...
Seriously, I sometimes think that these events show how non-free people are. Not to blame the authorities for anything here, and not to exaggerate this, but if it is suspicious to go out at night, something is wrong. It is this fear of being linked to a criminal in any way that makes people more and more conforming, close-minded and easily controllable.
Because there are several posts that ask how to get into Linux kernel development, I would also ask here (a bit OT): How to get into GCC development, especially backends? GCC is also an amazing feat of software and creating custom backends would make many experiments possible (porting to old architectures, porting to virtual machines, c++ on virtual machines) etc.
Yes, the anonymous storage on your PC is a problem for many people. I also do not want to support the most disgusting people by giving storage to them for free.
But, anyway, you have to make a very important distinction between freenet and the real world:
Freenet transfers information. Rape nad Murder *always* happen in reality. IMHO, there should go the power of law enforcement.
Interesting how the opinion is splitted into two halfs "cell phone yes/no". And slashdot seems to be the place in the with the highest share of libertarians...
ACK. Capitalism as a religion. And, if you, parent poster, are a free-thought, free-dom and probably free-software loving individual, you should also respect other people's opinion and not disregard them as being wrong. C'mon, the world is just not that simple.
Re:Spirit not that impressive...?
on
News from Mars
·
· Score: 1
This is one of the coolest things about slashdot. To look at and respond to comments from "nerd VIPs" like you! No, really, I'm currently checking the marsrovers website several times a day. Very cool stuff!
Isn't it somewhat worthless to further increase and increase and increase the amount of advertisements? I mean, I, like everyone, know all the big companies and their most important products. So, they have informed me about their products.
But the problem is that *most* advertising nowadays doesn't inform people but instead is produced because the bandwidth for advertisements (in TV, radio, internet, whatever) is too big. IMHO, a company produces advertisements because otherwise it would lose customers because of other companies advertising.
Not that there are martians, but it reminds me of artist's renderings of martian desert at 320x200, 4bpp:)
Re:Could have been worse in Q4 2003. Couldn't it?
on
The Future of Security
·
· Score: 1
If you draw analogies to the biological virii, this need not to happen. By killing it's hosts (say reformatting the HDs), it reduces the probability that it can spread out to other animals/humans (say the virus died with the blanking of the HD).
Or, in other words: 1. a virus that does too much harm to computers will be discovered early/will not spread effectively 2. a virus that spreads effectively will be discovered early because there are more people who see the actions of the virus.
> we'd been putting up reactors on spacecrafts for
> years and years
Not exactly true. These are RTGs (radio thermal generators) and they produce electricity out of the heat which the radioactive decay of certain elements provides.
A reactor is a completely different thing. In a reactor, you put uranium/plutonium until it reaches a certain threshold and a chain reaction begins. You have to control the chain reaction by some means, else you'll get your nuclear meltdown...
Actually, a reactor which goes critical only after being in an orbit around a distant planet would be safer than these RTGs. If you use e.g. u-235 as the fuel (only slightly radioactive), it would be no big deal if the reactor evaporates in the atmosphere. (Not so for the highly radioactive RTGs) The reactor would only get highly radioactive after getting critical.
Well, although I'm a moderate support of nuclear energy and am also interested in nuclear powered space travel, nuclear power is not black and white. Some *educated* pros/cons about fission:
- There are reactors which are only critical because a certain neutron reflector exists (meltdown=>meltdown of reflector=>end of reaction). The mass of U/Pu in these reactors is below the critical threshold. - Fission ALWAYS generated lots of neutrons which makes material radioactive. The surrounding materials, not the fuel itself! - The fuel itself gets highly radioactive waste, rapidly declining to moderately radioactive waste in a few years (but still highly toxic). This moderately active waste needs MUCH time (10^4-10^5 y) to become essentially non-toxic if dispersed.
Maybe that's a flamebait, but IMHO the gnome masters got a bit arrogant lately. I still use gnome, and I'll stick to it if it doesn't get worse. We'll see.
They removed the "cancel" button from all of the setting dialogs.
They removed many configurations options, no possibility to enable the "expert" mode somewhere. There is no such thing.
Metacity (the new and for me only working windowmanager) lacks even an "always-on-top" option for windows. You've to patch that in by some obscure patch in the bugzilla of metacity. To not confuse the average joe with an X without a WM, they made it even quite an aggressive application. There's this well-known command line "killall metacity ; killall metacity ; killall metacity ; sawfish&" to force a replace with another window-manager.
Quite annoying. Both, GNOME and influenced by that also GTK will lose the more experienced users, that probably includes many good OSS developers if they do not listen to feedback. I'm already thinking about switching back to KDE (where I was a few years ago).
It only requires an expensive contract with your ISP because it is considered "nonstandard" and they often have to change their routers to support it. I hope that IPv6 will include multicasting functionality from the beginning, for every host. Multicasting is not a "SHOULD" requirement in IPv6, it's a "MUST".
Regarding the single point of control: If you do radio broadcasting on the net, it's like radio broadcasting into the air. Then, there will always be some hierarchy in the protocol, if it's P2P or MC.
Regarding the censorship argument: First of all, the society should support and enable free speech. P2P to circumvent it should only be a temporary measure or you would use P2P for anonymity/privacy reasons. If you do not want anonymity (are e.g. proud of your radio programme) and it is not made illegal by some industry cartel, why should you want to do less effiecient P2P? Here, MC would be the choice.
I hope my relatively poor english doesn't obscure the main points of my post:)
Yes, P2P has good uses. But your mentioned Video/Audio streaming for the masses can be accomplished in an even better way:
MULTICASTING!
This is completely ignored by today's networking people. Somehow, P2P got buzzword status and now noone thinks of multicasting any more. But it has been invented just for efficient 1 to n distribution of data.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm not whining about how bad everything is. But you have to watch and point out flaws to keep a system running. Ohh, and that's also true for computers I suppose ;)
> Say someone phones in a stabbing. Is it wrong for the police to stop a man standing around on the street soaked in blood holding a knife and ask him for ID?
:)
No, of course not. But I doubt that he was soaked in blood and swung a knife
I just think it is not uncommon to go out for a walk. Apparently, in his area, this is not the case. If it is not the worst weather that hinders people from doing that, what else?
Of course, because I don't know the exact circumstances, it may well be that something made him look suspicious for very real reasons.
Heh, you got off lightly for committing this crime: ...Doing a walk at night...
Seriously, I sometimes think that these events show how non-free people are. Not to blame the authorities for anything here, and not to exaggerate this, but if it is suspicious to go out at night, something is wrong. It is this fear of being linked to a criminal in any way that makes people more and more conforming, close-minded and easily controllable.
... the company which brought us such amazing games
as
- Maniac Mansion
- Zak McKracken
- Monkey Island
i.e. all the *really* good games of the 80s and early nineties. For me, they are much more important than Star Wars.
Because there are several posts that ask how to get into Linux kernel development, I would also ask here (a bit OT): How to get into GCC development, especially backends?
GCC is also an amazing feat of software and creating custom backends would make many experiments possible (porting to old architectures, porting to virtual machines, c++ on virtual machines) etc.
Amazing. Yes, I already knew that one never finishes learning emacs :)
Ok, but freenet needs persistent nodes to function properly. If not your, then some other computer has to provide part of it's hdd.
Yes, and don't forget the final newline GCC needs in all source files. :)
We are using GCC aren't we?!
Yes, but where is the OSS/FS community if there's only old software/available/usable/legal?
Yes, the anonymous storage on your PC is a problem for many people. I also do not want to support the most disgusting people by giving storage to them for free.
But, anyway, you have to make a very important distinction between freenet and the real world:
Freenet transfers information. Rape nad Murder *always* happen in reality. IMHO, there should go the power of law enforcement.
Does one have to choose the lesser evil?!
Interesting how the opinion is splitted into two halfs "cell phone yes/no". And slashdot seems to be the place in the with the highest share of libertarians...
So, what is freedom? Speaking? Silence?
Well, 180mHz, i.e. 180 mill-hertz should even make debugging realtime programs with a simple voltmeter possible :)
Well, speaking of choices... ... YOU you have the choice to run linux or some other, proprietary OS. There is already such a thing, called windows.
The GPL is about choice, indeed. But if you allow binary-only drivers, you degrade the GPL licensed linux kernel to a BSD one.
ACK. Capitalism as a religion. And, if you, parent poster, are a free-thought, free-dom and probably free-software loving individual, you should also respect other people's opinion and not disregard them as being wrong.
C'mon, the world is just not that simple.
[test post]
This is one of the coolest things about slashdot. To look at and respond to comments from "nerd VIPs" like you!
No, really, I'm currently checking the marsrovers website several times a day. Very cool stuff!
Isn't it somewhat worthless to further increase and increase and increase the amount of advertisements?
I mean, I, like everyone, know all the big companies and their most important products.
So, they have informed me about their products.
But the problem is that *most* advertising nowadays doesn't inform people but instead is produced because the bandwidth for advertisements (in TV, radio, internet, whatever) is too big. IMHO, a company produces advertisements because otherwise it would lose customers because of other companies advertising.
Where is this good for society? I don't get it...
...reminds me of one good old computer game:
:)
Zak McKracken.
Not that there are martians, but it reminds me of artist's renderings of martian desert at 320x200, 4bpp
If you draw analogies to the biological virii, this need not to happen. By killing it's hosts (say reformatting the HDs), it reduces the probability that it can spread out to other animals/humans (say the virus died with the blanking of the HD).
Or, in other words:
1. a virus that does too much harm to computers will be discovered early/will not spread effectively
2. a virus that spreads effectively will be discovered early because there are more people who see the actions of the virus.
> we'd been putting up reactors on spacecrafts for > years and years Not exactly true. These are RTGs (radio thermal generators) and they produce electricity out of the heat which the radioactive decay of certain elements provides. A reactor is a completely different thing. In a reactor, you put uranium/plutonium until it reaches a certain threshold and a chain reaction begins. You have to control the chain reaction by some means, else you'll get your nuclear meltdown... Actually, a reactor which goes critical only after being in an orbit around a distant planet would be safer than these RTGs. If you use e.g. u-235 as the fuel (only slightly radioactive), it would be no big deal if the reactor evaporates in the atmosphere. (Not so for the highly radioactive RTGs) The reactor would only get highly radioactive after getting critical.
Well, although I'm a moderate support of nuclear energy and am also interested in nuclear powered space travel, nuclear power is not black and white. Some *educated* pros/cons about fission:
- There are reactors which are only critical because a certain neutron reflector exists (meltdown=>meltdown of reflector=>end of reaction). The mass of U/Pu in these reactors is below the critical threshold.
- Fission ALWAYS generated lots of neutrons which makes material radioactive. The surrounding materials, not the fuel itself!
- The fuel itself gets highly radioactive waste, rapidly declining to moderately radioactive waste in a few years (but still highly toxic). This moderately active waste needs MUCH time (10^4-10^5 y) to become essentially non-toxic if dispersed.
Maybe that's a flamebait, but IMHO the gnome masters got a bit arrogant lately. I still use gnome, and I'll stick to it if it doesn't get worse. We'll see.
They removed the "cancel" button from all of the setting dialogs.
They removed many configurations options, no possibility to enable the "expert" mode somewhere. There is no such thing.
Metacity (the new and for me only working windowmanager) lacks even an "always-on-top" option for windows. You've to patch that in by some obscure patch in the bugzilla of metacity. To not confuse the average joe with an X without a WM, they made it even quite an aggressive application. There's this well-known command line "killall metacity ; killall metacity ; killall metacity ; sawfish&" to force a replace with another window-manager.
Quite annoying. Both, GNOME and influenced by that also GTK will lose the more experienced users, that probably includes many good OSS developers if they do not listen to feedback. I'm already thinking about switching back to KDE (where I was a few years ago).
It only requires an expensive contract with your ISP because it is considered "nonstandard" and they often have to change their routers to support it.
:)
I hope that IPv6 will include multicasting functionality from the beginning, for every host. Multicasting is not a "SHOULD" requirement in IPv6, it's a "MUST".
Regarding the single point of control: If you do radio broadcasting on the net, it's like radio broadcasting into the air. Then, there will always be some hierarchy in the protocol, if it's P2P or MC.
Regarding the censorship argument: First of all, the society should support and enable free speech. P2P to circumvent it should only be a temporary measure or you would use P2P for anonymity/privacy reasons. If you do not want anonymity (are e.g. proud of your radio programme) and it is not made illegal by some industry cartel, why should you want to do less effiecient P2P? Here, MC would be the choice.
I hope my relatively poor english doesn't obscure the main points of my post
Yes, P2P has good uses. But your mentioned Video/Audio streaming for the masses can be accomplished in an even better way:
MULTICASTING!
This is completely ignored by today's networking people.
Somehow, P2P got buzzword status and now noone thinks of multicasting any more. But it has been invented just for efficient 1 to n distribution of data.
Hopefully, with IPv6, multicast will spread.