I have a great new operation the court could order convicted spammers to face. We could remove the brain from the body, subject it to a high dose of radiation, surgically insert a bullet into the amygdala, and then replace the brain back into the head. Scientists predict average IQ scores of spammers to increase by 100% with this technique, up to a total of 4 IQ points! Slightly smarter than a peanut.
Hey, us Mac users get to make choices too you know
on
Build Your Own Mac
·
· Score: 2, Funny
The RIAA would rather not have computers exist, because that allows for trading of their precious songs. So by creating a virus that spreads through mp3 they're effectively cutting out a large amount of the piracy.
What's next for the RIAA? A virus on music CD's that is executed when played in computers. Obviously, allowing a CD to be played in a computer is the first step to it being pirated. Instead they'll allow it to play only in DRM CD players that will play 20 hours of music per license bought (each license will cost $20).
Please don't mod me down, I'm not trying to be flamebait, I'm being sarcastic:-)
Viruses that kill in 72 hours are much too deadly to be a real problem, no matter how infectious they may be. Take Ebola, for instance. Very deadly and very infectious, but it kills so rapidly (in less that a week) that it hardly has any time to spread. We simply don't see large outbreaks of Ebola because it kills its hosts too quickly. Now, HIV on the other hand, can take up to 30 years to kill its host while being spread around to every sexual partner. HIV, while less "deadly", is much more effective at spreading because those infected literally have years instead of three days to pass it around further. That's why we have large outbreaks of HIV but not Ebola.
Now, this virus in the book is way too deadly. Are we supposed to believe that a virus with a lethality rate of 3 days is going to be spread around the population like mad? Fat chance! People don't have sex that often in a 3 day time period (not even cybersex) so it wouldn't be able to spread effectively. And anyway, if somehow a large outbreak did manage to occur, everyone would just stop having sex for 3 days out of fear and then the virus would totally eliminate itself from the Earth.
This concepts in this book aren't believable. I won't be buying it.
Now if only computer manufacturers could make equipment even remotely this sturdy.
I have a Microsoft mouse that came with my new computer about two years ago. Since it's made out of nonreactive plastic it could likely survive for millions of years out in space.
Oh, whoops, I just read the article (what're the chances of that?). Although it would exist for a long time, it already lost its function a month after I bought it...
That was from a quote by JRRT. And it's a real word, listed in the Oxford English Dictionary as a variant of "pleasance". He did, recall, have a day job as a professor of mediaeval languages, and was an expert in old English and Norse languages. Be very sure before you try to correct him.
Remember those old games that had the "boss key"? Can we get a "cop key?" I.e. you're being pulled over, and in a split second you can switch away from the pr0n you were watching while driving to an innocuous looking map readout.
I forsee in five years World War III will start as a feud between warring organizations. IMPA, RIAA, and MPAA will start a colossal flame war online against each other that will result in full scale nuclear annihilation. I mean, if these people are capable of doing everything they claim, then what's a few nukes?!
Argh, who modded this funny? I wasn't joking! Here are the pics, as of 15:45 today. Seeing as how I'm so close, and seeing as how his phone isn't answering, I wouldn't mind hand delivering some well-reasoned arguments by the/. crowd. Hey, what's thirty minutes out of my time if it means a lifetime of privacy? Here's a pic Here's a pic Here's a pic Here's a pic Here's a pic Here's a pic Here's a pic
Later this afternoon I'm going to drive over to his house and take some pictures with my digital camera and put 'em on the web. So far we've got all of his info and even satellite pictures, but no actual pictures. And since I live so close I figure I might as well do what thousands of nerds in my position would do on their own. I'll be posting the link to the pics as a follow-up to this post as soon as I take them this afternoon.
Thank God For Google
on
Web Zeitgeist
·
· Score: 3, Funny
Seeing as how sex is #1, I'm glad that Google isn't giving up the huge amount of advertising bucks they're making by including ads from porn sites.
Is it "bit" or "bite"? It doesn't make much of a difference, it's just that one's past tense and one's not.
"I'll bite your new improved video card."
"I bit your new improved video card back when it was good."
> There is a finite probability that this will be modded up to 5.
Yes, the modding up to 5 did happen, but I wonder what was the probability of it quantum tunneling into the state "Funny"?
Are you certain it's the 100th anniversary? No, because of Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle... well, can you at least give me a probability that it is the 100th anniversary? Personally, I'm putting my money on it being the 102th anniversary, but that's just me.
I'm not surprised many scientists don't read all the papers they've cited. To be published in a reputable peer review journal, you have to cite other literature. And you have to cite lots of other literature. It's almost like back in high school when the English teacher says, "You must have ten sources." So the scientists do a quick search for vaguely relevant material, and judging by the abstract alone, choose whether to add it in to their cited sources list. That's just the way things are: some journals are hard to come by, and to get some articles you have you pay $20 online per 24 hour period. Now the abstracts are always free. Frankly, I don't blame the scientists. It just reinforces the importance of the abstract. As long as such an emphasis is placed on citing, I think a large emphasis should be placed on abstracts as well.
"Does your state have a driver's manual?(that, of course, you must read to get your licence?) Where do you live, so that I can stay the hell away?"
Wow, you really missed the point. My state does have a driver's manual. But guess what? That's not how I learned to drive. You dont' learn how to drive by reading a book. You learn how to drive through practice. We're not all "John Does" like you apparently are: we can't just pick up a book and become an expert. I, at least, not some experience and practice first.
Face it, a book just doesn't cut it. Nobody should be required to pick up a manual and read through hundreds of pages before they're able to use something. That's the main difference between products that fail and products that succeed. It all hinges on the usability and intuitiveness of what you're dealing with. What is needed is a really good "teaching Linux" distro. It installs automatically and flawlessly, and it first boots up into a tutorial that the user can go through while exploring the system and learning the ins and outs. Obviously you'd want to keep root access away from the newbie user until they get more adjusted.
You can't expect someone to read a whole book and just "get it". You need to acclimatize people in gradually. This is one of the reasons Windows is successful and Linux isn't, for the most part: ease of use. Windows just works. To get a Linux install to my satisfaction took over 100 hours. Most people simply don't have that kind of patience.
How many LoC's is this latest version of Pi? I don't care about how many gigabytes of data this would be. I just want to know how many Library of Congresses I could fill by writing out every single digit in neatly ordered books.
By the way, isn't it conceivable that maybe somewhere along the way they got a digit wrong? Computers aren't perfect. Magnetism can and does cause things to go awry. Imagine if one of the digits is slightly off, and it threw off scientific progress for centuries. Yeah, that would suck, we'd aim at Alpha Centauri and miss because the 682nd billionth digit is off by one.
Slashdot Mirror
For being the scond person to understand the meaning of the word "ironic".
I have a great new operation the court could order convicted spammers to face. We could remove the brain from the body, subject it to a high dose of radiation, surgically insert a bullet into the amygdala, and then replace the brain back into the head. Scientists predict average IQ scores of spammers to increase by 100% with this technique, up to a total of 4 IQ points! Slightly smarter than a peanut.
We get to choose between five fruity colors!
IN SOVIET RUSSIA ...
You fuck over the MPAA with unoriginal sequels they know won't be good but are going to see anyway.
The RIAA would rather not have computers exist, because that allows for trading of their precious songs. So by creating a virus that spreads through mp3 they're effectively cutting out a large amount of the piracy.
:-)
What's next for the RIAA? A virus on music CD's that is executed when played in computers. Obviously, allowing a CD to be played in a computer is the first step to it being pirated. Instead they'll allow it to play only in DRM CD players that will play 20 hours of music per license bought (each license will cost $20).
Please don't mod me down, I'm not trying to be flamebait, I'm being sarcastic
Viruses that kill in 72 hours are much too deadly to be a real problem, no matter how infectious they may be. Take Ebola, for instance. Very deadly and very infectious, but it kills so rapidly (in less that a week) that it hardly has any time to spread. We simply don't see large outbreaks of Ebola because it kills its hosts too quickly. Now, HIV on the other hand, can take up to 30 years to kill its host while being spread around to every sexual partner. HIV, while less "deadly", is much more effective at spreading because those infected literally have years instead of three days to pass it around further. That's why we have large outbreaks of HIV but not Ebola.
Now, this virus in the book is way too deadly. Are we supposed to believe that a virus with a lethality rate of 3 days is going to be spread around the population like mad? Fat chance! People don't have sex that often in a 3 day time period (not even cybersex) so it wouldn't be able to spread effectively. And anyway, if somehow a large outbreak did manage to occur, everyone would just stop having sex for 3 days out of fear and then the virus would totally eliminate itself from the Earth.
This concepts in this book aren't believable. I won't be buying it.
Now if only computer manufacturers could make equipment even remotely this sturdy.
...
I have a Microsoft mouse that came with my new computer about two years ago. Since it's made out of nonreactive plastic it could likely survive for millions of years out in space.
Oh, whoops, I just read the article (what're the chances of that?). Although it would exist for a long time, it already lost its function a month after I bought it
Can somebody explain to me what in the hell is .NET?!?! I still don't get it! Is it an ISP, a programming language, a network, what ... ?!
That was from a quote by JRRT. And it's a real word, listed in the Oxford English Dictionary as a variant of "pleasance". He did, recall, have a day job as a professor of mediaeval languages, and was an expert in old English and Norse languages. Be very sure before you try to correct him.
Hey, you spelled "medieval" incorrectly.
Remember those old games that had the "boss key"? Can we get a "cop key?" I.e. you're being pulled over, and in a split second you can switch away from the pr0n you were watching while driving to an innocuous looking map readout.
Let's boycott, starting with LoTR: The Two Towers. I'm not ready to see Ents walk.
Ah screw it, who am I kidding?!
Maybe an additional way to help support your favorite artists is to steal their music, then donate to them anonymously...
...
An even better way is to steal their CDs from stores and then donate to them anonymously
"Honey, the internet crashed in the middle of my online shopping!"
"Just click that re-connect icon I set up for you on the desktop."
"No, I mean it CRASHED! An 18-meter spherical blimp just crash-landed in the backyard!"
I forsee in five years World War III will start as a feud between warring organizations. IMPA, RIAA, and MPAA will start a colossal flame war online against each other that will result in full scale nuclear annihilation. I mean, if these people are capable of doing everything they claim, then what's a few nukes?!
Argh, who modded this funny? I wasn't joking! Here are the pics, as of 15:45 today. Seeing as how I'm so close, and seeing as how his phone isn't answering, I wouldn't mind hand delivering some well-reasoned arguments by the /. crowd. Hey, what's thirty minutes out of my time if it means a lifetime of privacy?
Here's a pic
Here's a pic
Here's a pic
Here's a pic
Here's a pic
Here's a pic
Here's a pic
Later this afternoon I'm going to drive over to his house and take some pictures with my digital camera and put 'em on the web. So far we've got all of his info and even satellite pictures, but no actual pictures. And since I live so close I figure I might as well do what thousands of nerds in my position would do on their own. I'll be posting the link to the pics as a follow-up to this post as soon as I take them this afternoon.
Seeing as how sex is #1, I'm glad that Google isn't giving up the huge amount of advertising bucks they're making by including ads from porn sites.
Is it "bit" or "bite"? It doesn't make much of a difference, it's just that one's past tense and one's not. "I'll bite your new improved video card." "I bit your new improved video card back when it was good."
> There is a finite probability that this will be modded up to 5. Yes, the modding up to 5 did happen, but I wonder what was the probability of it quantum tunneling into the state "Funny"?
Are you certain it's the 100th anniversary? No, because of Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle ... well, can you at least give me a probability that it is the 100th anniversary? Personally, I'm putting my money on it being the 102th anniversary, but that's just me.
I'm not surprised many scientists don't read all the papers they've cited. To be published in a reputable peer review journal, you have to cite other literature. And you have to cite lots of other literature. It's almost like back in high school when the English teacher says, "You must have ten sources." So the scientists do a quick search for vaguely relevant material, and judging by the abstract alone, choose whether to add it in to their cited sources list. That's just the way things are: some journals are hard to come by, and to get some articles you have you pay $20 online per 24 hour period. Now the abstracts are always free. Frankly, I don't blame the scientists. It just reinforces the importance of the abstract. As long as such an emphasis is placed on citing, I think a large emphasis should be placed on abstracts as well.
It forgot to show the text of the wedding invitations that the "crew" received ahead of the wedding. They went something like this ...
"Your invited to the weding of Rob and Kathlen Malda. Please keep all coments on-topic. Thanks you."
"Does your state have a driver's manual?(that, of course, you must read to get your licence?) Where do you live, so that I can stay the hell away?" Wow, you really missed the point. My state does have a driver's manual. But guess what? That's not how I learned to drive. You dont' learn how to drive by reading a book. You learn how to drive through practice. We're not all "John Does" like you apparently are: we can't just pick up a book and become an expert. I, at least, not some experience and practice first.
Face it, a book just doesn't cut it. Nobody should be required to pick up a manual and read through hundreds of pages before they're able to use something. That's the main difference between products that fail and products that succeed. It all hinges on the usability and intuitiveness of what you're dealing with. What is needed is a really good "teaching Linux" distro. It installs automatically and flawlessly, and it first boots up into a tutorial that the user can go through while exploring the system and learning the ins and outs. Obviously you'd want to keep root access away from the newbie user until they get more adjusted. You can't expect someone to read a whole book and just "get it". You need to acclimatize people in gradually. This is one of the reasons Windows is successful and Linux isn't, for the most part: ease of use. Windows just works. To get a Linux install to my satisfaction took over 100 hours. Most people simply don't have that kind of patience.
How many LoC's is this latest version of Pi? I don't care about how many gigabytes of data this would be. I just want to know how many Library of Congresses I could fill by writing out every single digit in neatly ordered books. By the way, isn't it conceivable that maybe somewhere along the way they got a digit wrong? Computers aren't perfect. Magnetism can and does cause things to go awry. Imagine if one of the digits is slightly off, and it threw off scientific progress for centuries. Yeah, that would suck, we'd aim at Alpha Centauri and miss because the 682nd billionth digit is off by one.