It would be interesting to use this to try and find more digits in pi.
There's seems to be some confusion about the meaning of 'interesting'. What would possibly be changed by knowing a few more digits?
Until we're undertaking projects on the scale of a galaxy, we just don't need a more accurate definition of pi. You have a better chance of finding something interesting with seti@home. Just about any project would be a better use of your cpu.
Calculating pi to 8 trillion digits is just an incredibly geeky penis measuring contest. Sorry guys.
Why the hell do people keep modding these things funny? We get this same comment on every damn article; it's old and busted. It is not, and will never be, associated with any new hotness.
I just get annoyed when I hear a computer attack referred to as an effective terrorist strategy. I certainly could survive if my computer didn't turn on today; no terror here, just kind of disappointment. Perhaps something like this could be called a "bummer. oh well" attack.
It is an effective terrorist strategy as long as it gets them attention. Terrorists want people to pay attention to them and their problems. While killing people certainly works, causing widespread incovenience also gets them attention, without nearly as much threat of retaliation.
It would also make a nice front for the MPAA to extract some vigilante justice.
A quick search of their site paints them as extremely sympathetic to Microsoft. They advocated stopping litigation against Microsoft in the anti-trust hearings; the only concern they mention is that the legal battles costs the government money.
It turns out that the government actually spent several million dollars on this major case taking on one of the wealtiest corporations in the US! Who would've imagined such a thing!
CAGW also seems to believe that the entire notion of a microsoft monopoly is some sort of hoax
I understand your points, but here's some responses:
What will be the cost to convert existing documents to file formats that the new software can support?
This would probably be quite a pain, not because of anything linux lacks, but because windows locks people into closely-guarded file formats. Once completed, they'll be free to take their documents anywhere they want, using whatever software they like, and in the case of things like public records, they will be more accessible to the non-windows using public. At the least, I think the government should require that public documents are kept in an open format.
What will be the cost of supporting the new software, versus supporting the old? Shouldn't the people of Massachusetts be shown some figures before a decision is made?
Yes, they should generate some figures. However, I think we can all see that when most of your software is maintained for free, by people who want to create quality software rather than keep you on the upgrade cycle, it's going to cost less. Even if they spend twice as much on tech support, they're going to be saving lots of money.
While microsoft tends to stop supporting software after a couple of years, or at least charge you for a new version, the OSS community maintains software as long as there is interest. If need be, the government can maintain the open source software they're using. If all the money going to licensing fees was moved to funding development of open source software for government, we'd quickly have the needed software that could be used by all levels of government. From then on, we're saving tons of money everywhere you look.
Who's to say some support contractor won't come along and charge the government an arm and a leg for "advanced Unix experience," compared to what they'd pay to support Windows? I mean, it is the government, right? When did a contractor ever fleece the government?
This argument applies equally to any choice they make, so it isn't really important.
While discriminating against certain companies isn't a great thing to do, Microsoft has so much funding (bribe money) that this may be the only way to remove their hold. Sometimes you have to ram good ideas down peoples throats.
I wonder what they believe will protect their business from poaching of these ideas?
Copyright law perhaps?
It's not clear if their filesystem would be GLP'd by default or not. It'd be cool if they released it, but it would be understandable if they kept it to sell to corporations and governments. They provide a very valuable service for free, so if they can make some money licensing their filesystem, good for them. Perhaps they'd make it free for geeks to play with on their own 3-box 'clusters' while charging the people who actually have a use for it.
I kind of hope they are sending viruses. While some people (and some politicians) can be convinced that spam is OK, there's pretty much universal agreement that viruses are unacceptable and illegal. It may also get increased cooperation from spam-nests such as China in shutting spammers down.
This sounds like a good opportunity for movie theaters. If they scale this up to a full length movie, theaters will be able to provide an experience that simply won't be affordable for peoples homes for quite a while. Even if they released the movie on dvd the same day it went to theaters, people would want to see it in the theater.
I can believe that you find win2k easier to use, since most people are used to windows, and user friendliness is one area where MS really beats most open source stuff. Open Source projects should use firebird and thunderbird as role models for creating applications that people of any skill level can use.
If you took the time to learn about linux, there's a good chance you'd find it superior to windows, but I recognize that even if you did, that would require a substantial time investment.
You're argument about stability, however, is just completely unbelievable. I really don't think people who use windows exclusively really know what stability is. The longest I've seen win2k stay up is 8 days, and win xp 12 days. Windows is getting slowly better, but it's nothing compared to the months and years that linux runs. Application errors don't take down linux, only upgrading the kernel requires a reboot (and I'm sure some/.er will find a way to avoid it then), and there are virtually no linux viruses.
Linux is not immune to flaws, but patches are released quickly, they work, and they don't routinely break other parts of the system.
You can run an office mail server on a 486 with linux, while you need far newer hardware just to run windows.
There are valid reasons for certain people to choose windows over linux, but stability is not one of them.
That's not insightful; that's obvious, redundant, and unnecessary. When modding, think about why someone else would want to read a comment. If you can't think of a reason, don't mod it up.
Hopefully this experiment means that the people feigning humility with their "humanity can't have that much effect on the world" crap will have to shut up now. Unlike years and months, weekdays are completely arbitrary, so either humans are effecting the environment, or it's a billion to one coincidence.
Well, let's just look at where the question is being asked. Anyone else feel silly convincing other/.ers of the importance of the internet?
Of course, the internet is only useful to people that want to know things, buy things, or discuss things. And there's the boobies.
Re:A bit of wordplay here
on
Plasma Comes Alive
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
I agree they're stretching quite a bit. For one, communication isn't happening unless some action is taken (or considered) in response to a message. Vibrating is not an intelligent or even an instinctual response; it's a basic physical property.
the high temperature needed to form doesn't seem like a major issue since at the very least volcanos and geysers could provide such an environment.
The plasma bubbles are interesting, but they don't seem to have even a wild guess about how they could have led to more typical forms of life.
Re:ynlo gcramblins eht tirsf dna tasl setterl
on
Can You Raed Tihs?
·
· Score: 1
oddly just switching the first and last letter gives a definite impression of the entire word being backwards.
At first it's surprising how easily it can be read, but when the first and last letter are locked, words with 3 letters or less remain the same, and 4 is only two options. That means you'll usually have enough obvious words to determine the context, which narrows down the possibilities for the other words.
One of my computers has an easy-to-bump power button, so I added an 'arming' toggle switch to disable it and the reset button. Because it was in my dorm room, I also added a switch for the LEDs on the front and one for the speaker. so there's 3 toggle switches in a 5 1/4 bay. I'm sure I could do better if I worked at it a little.
If this country has decided it's ok to sue a 12 year old who, without knowing it, committed a trivial crime which only hurts big record execs by depriving them of a few dollars, I'm outta here.
If only rape or abuse were bad for someone's business model, we could get these companies doing something useful for society. Do we really want to fill up our prisons with people that downloaded music? Prison is for people that pose a threat to others; File sharing is just a step above jay walking on the list of prison-worthy offenses.
If it is within a person's rights to resell a song they downloaded, then I expect Apple would be legally required to make it possible for users to do so. They don't have to make it easy, and they might be able to charge for it, but the possibility would have to exist.
Your bookseller analogy doesn't work. Apple making it impossible for people to resell songs is more akin to a bookstore that provides long term rentals, or simply doesn't let you take the book out of the store.
Even if Apple is just designed to satisfy customers without committing to anything, at least we know they understand what customers want, which puts them ahead of many companies. Apple seems to have a decent respect for consumers, at least compared to its competitors.
I haven't googled the numbers, but I expect you're right, though it's unfortunate that the government has allowed this to happen.
If we assume that the basic function of government is to provide things that everyone (>90%) of people need or want, but cannot reasonably provide for themselves (law enforcement, water, sewer, roads, etc...), perhaps the government should have taken over the phone system years ago, and the internet infrastructure now.
Having multiple companies fighting over their lines mainly screws the customers. Just give everyone free in-country calling paid for by taxes.
The difference is that VoIP is transmitted just like all other internet traffic. They would effectively be charging people for using their section of the internet, which would be a disaster for the freedom and openess which has defined the internet.
Lawmakers need to remember why these fees were put in place to begin with. They're not just taxing calls for fun. (some of) the fees associated with normal phone calls are to compensate phone companies that had invested a great deal of money creating the infrastructure of the telephone system. This doesn't (or shouldn't) apply to the internet because the government created most of the infrastructure of the internet.
Customs has been advised that the servers did not contain personal, business-related or national security information.
Really? Then what the hell were they for?
They say
"They would have personal internal email accounts, probably the passwords for those accounts, and any information harboured within them.
hmm. 'personal email' sounds like personal information, and probably business and security related too. But then say:
The Australian Customs Service has admitted the security blunder, but told customs officers in an email that no sensitive operational information was lost.
So I guess they're just using their mainframes to advertise penis enlargement pills
"Customs officers use the accounts to communicate volumes of sensitive operational material and intelligence to each other, including information from other agencies such as AFP and ASIO. This would be at risk."
All that is true, but the guys is obviously still a spaz because he felt the need to shut off the computer after tinkering in the BIOS caused the license screen to disappear.
He obviously didn't agree to it by changing the BIOS, but it did allow the computer to start without accepting the license. Problem solved.
Slashdot Mirror
There's seems to be some confusion about the meaning of 'interesting'. What would possibly be changed by knowing a few more digits?
Until we're undertaking projects on the scale of a galaxy, we just don't need a more accurate definition of pi. You have a better chance of finding something interesting with seti@home. Just about any project would be a better use of your cpu.
Calculating pi to 8 trillion digits is just an incredibly geeky penis measuring contest. Sorry guys.
Why the hell do people keep modding these things funny? We get this same comment on every damn article; it's old and busted. It is not, and will never be, associated with any new hotness.
It's ironic that the dorkiest discussion ever held on slashdot is about not using a computer. ;-)
It is an effective terrorist strategy as long as it gets them attention. Terrorists want people to pay attention to them and their problems. While killing people certainly works, causing widespread incovenience also gets them attention, without nearly as much threat of retaliation.
It would also make a nice front for the MPAA to extract some vigilante justice.
Statistically, someone has probably put their head through their monitor as the result of a computer crash. Head trauma, maybe whiplash...
It turns out that the government actually spent several million dollars on this major case taking on one of the wealtiest corporations in the US! Who would've imagined such a thing!
CAGW also seems to believe that the entire notion of a microsoft monopoly is some sort of hoax
See also:
CAGW CHEERS MICROSOFT VERDICT
Nice work. by far the best use of the soviet russia gag in quite a while.
What will be the cost to convert existing documents to file formats that the new software can support?
This would probably be quite a pain, not because of anything linux lacks, but because windows locks people into closely-guarded file formats. Once completed, they'll be free to take their documents anywhere they want, using whatever software they like, and in the case of things like public records, they will be more accessible to the non-windows using public. At the least, I think the government should require that public documents are kept in an open format.
What will be the cost of supporting the new software, versus supporting the old? Shouldn't the people of Massachusetts be shown some figures before a decision is made?
Yes, they should generate some figures. However, I think we can all see that when most of your software is maintained for free, by people who want to create quality software rather than keep you on the upgrade cycle, it's going to cost less. Even if they spend twice as much on tech support, they're going to be saving lots of money.
While microsoft tends to stop supporting software after a couple of years, or at least charge you for a new version, the OSS community maintains software as long as there is interest. If need be, the government can maintain the open source software they're using. If all the money going to licensing fees was moved to funding development of open source software for government, we'd quickly have the needed software that could be used by all levels of government. From then on, we're saving tons of money everywhere you look.
Who's to say some support contractor won't come along and charge the government an arm and a leg for "advanced Unix experience," compared to what they'd pay to support Windows? I mean, it is the government, right? When did a contractor ever fleece the government?
This argument applies equally to any choice they make, so it isn't really important.
While discriminating against certain companies isn't a great thing to do, Microsoft has so much funding (bribe money) that this may be the only way to remove their hold. Sometimes you have to ram good ideas down peoples throats.
Copyright law perhaps?
It's not clear if their filesystem would be GLP'd by default or not. It'd be cool if they released it, but it would be understandable if they kept it to sell to corporations and governments. They provide a very valuable service for free, so if they can make some money licensing their filesystem, good for them. Perhaps they'd make it free for geeks to play with on their own 3-box 'clusters' while charging the people who actually have a use for it.
I kind of hope they are sending viruses. While some people (and some politicians) can be convinced that spam is OK, there's pretty much universal agreement that viruses are unacceptable and illegal. It may also get increased cooperation from spam-nests such as China in shutting spammers down.
This sounds like a good opportunity for movie theaters. If they scale this up to a full length movie, theaters will be able to provide an experience that simply won't be affordable for peoples homes for quite a while. Even if they released the movie on dvd the same day it went to theaters, people would want to see it in the theater.
If you took the time to learn about linux, there's a good chance you'd find it superior to windows, but I recognize that even if you did, that would require a substantial time investment.
You're argument about stability, however, is just completely unbelievable. I really don't think people who use windows exclusively really know what stability is. The longest I've seen win2k stay up is 8 days, and win xp 12 days. Windows is getting slowly better, but it's nothing compared to the months and years that linux runs. Application errors don't take down linux, only upgrading the kernel requires a reboot (and I'm sure some /.er will find a way to avoid it then), and there are virtually no linux viruses.
Linux is not immune to flaws, but patches are released quickly, they work, and they don't routinely break other parts of the system.
You can run an office mail server on a 486 with linux, while you need far newer hardware just to run windows.
There are valid reasons for certain people to choose windows over linux, but stability is not one of them.
Hopefully this experiment means that the people feigning humility with their "humanity can't have that much effect on the world" crap will have to shut up now. Unlike years and months, weekdays are completely arbitrary, so either humans are effecting the environment, or it's a billion to one coincidence.
Of course, the internet is only useful to people that want to know things, buy things, or discuss things. And there's the boobies.
the high temperature needed to form doesn't seem like a major issue since at the very least volcanos and geysers could provide such an environment.
The plasma bubbles are interesting, but they don't seem to have even a wild guess about how they could have led to more typical forms of life.
At first it's surprising how easily it can be read, but when the first and last letter are locked, words with 3 letters or less remain the same, and 4 is only two options. That means you'll usually have enough obvious words to determine the context, which narrows down the possibilities for the other words.
One of my computers has an easy-to-bump power button, so I added an 'arming' toggle switch to disable it and the reset button. Because it was in my dorm room, I also added a switch for the LEDs on the front and one for the speaker. so there's 3 toggle switches in a 5 1/4 bay. I'm sure I could do better if I worked at it a little.
If only rape or abuse were bad for someone's business model, we could get these companies doing something useful for society. Do we really want to fill up our prisons with people that downloaded music? Prison is for people that pose a threat to others; File sharing is just a step above jay walking on the list of prison-worthy offenses.
Your bookseller analogy doesn't work. Apple making it impossible for people to resell songs is more akin to a bookstore that provides long term rentals, or simply doesn't let you take the book out of the store.
Even if Apple is just designed to satisfy customers without committing to anything, at least we know they understand what customers want, which puts them ahead of many companies. Apple seems to have a decent respect for consumers, at least compared to its competitors.
That's only like $0.02 a month; these people are interested in the bigger taxes which simply aren't relevent to VoIP
If we assume that the basic function of government is to provide things that everyone (>90%) of people need or want, but cannot reasonably provide for themselves (law enforcement, water, sewer, roads, etc...), perhaps the government should have taken over the phone system years ago, and the internet infrastructure now.
Having multiple companies fighting over their lines mainly screws the customers. Just give everyone free in-country calling paid for by taxes.
Lawmakers need to remember why these fees were put in place to begin with. They're not just taxing calls for fun. (some of) the fees associated with normal phone calls are to compensate phone companies that had invested a great deal of money creating the infrastructure of the telephone system. This doesn't (or shouldn't) apply to the internet because the government created most of the infrastructure of the internet.
I forget the rest, but the Australian government ends up looking like a bunch of tools
Really? Then what the hell were they for?
They say
"They would have personal internal email accounts, probably the passwords for those accounts, and any information harboured within them.
hmm. 'personal email' sounds like personal information, and probably business and security related too. But then say:
The Australian Customs Service has admitted the security blunder, but told customs officers in an email that no sensitive operational information was lost.
So I guess they're just using their mainframes to advertise penis enlargement pills
"Customs officers use the accounts to communicate volumes of sensitive operational material and intelligence to each other, including information from other agencies such as AFP and ASIO. This would be at risk."
I give up.
He obviously didn't agree to it by changing the BIOS, but it did allow the computer to start without accepting the license. Problem solved.