Autoprobing is like gambling. Take any game where you bet a certain amount of money, and get back twice what you bet, if you win, or nothing, if you lose.
On Linux, it's like betting a fixed amount of money. You might win, you might lose, but it shouldn't take too long to recover your losses if you do lose.
On Windows 9x it's like the "doubling" gambling system, where you keep betting twice what you lost in the last round until you win. You'll probably end up a little bit ahead, but you just might hit that one in 2^x chance and lose everything. --
That's ridiculous. Just imagine how many domains would have to go down. The Internet would be a mess. And it shuns the hobbyists that the Internet was intended for in the first place.
I think a better idea is something like this: $20 per 2 years for the first domain you or your business owns. $40 per 2 years for the second. Every subsequent domain is double the cost. If you sell or disable a domain, it is still considered as part of the doubling until its 2 years are up. This would make cybersquatting prohibitively expensive, while making domains available to hobbyists.
There's probably all kinds of loopholes in that. Oh well, it's just a hypothetical idea. Due to the nature of competition, it won't happen anyway. --
i was very often the person who was called upon to fix windows computers
Please note that the X consortium requests that we not use the term "X-Windows". Their preferred naming *blam* aaargh. --
Re:MS Net Computer and what it would do to servers
on
New Microsoft Strategy
·
· Score: 1
My god how many more times are you going to correct them?
Yeah, the X consortium wants us to say "X Window System, Version 11", RMS wants us to say "GNU/Linux", those guys who define the SI want us to say "kibibyte", and the feminists want us to say "wimmin". You'll notice that the majority of people don't. Language evolves to simplify conversation, and efforts to reverse it will never go over well.
Compare the following two sentences. See which one is easier to say, makes more sense, and makes me sound like less of an idiot.
"I'm running X-Windows on Linux, which is using a 6 gigabyte partition, but that doesn't seem to interest any women." "I'm running X Window System, Version 11 on GNU/Linux, which is using a 6 gibibyte partition, but that doesn't seem to interest any wimmin. And by the way, I won't be going to your big New Year's party, because the millennium obviously doesn't start until 2001." --
That one word wasn't too informative. Are you saying Caldera will take over if Red Hat becomes too evil (I think Mandrake would be in the best position for this), or providing it as an example of a "suck" distro? (From my experiences with Caldera, I'm inclined to believe the latter.) --
Hehe. That page would be funny, if it weren't so disappointing. Since Linux is already running on Motorola 68000 processors, and the TI-89 has enough memory to hold a kernel in its archive space, I'd think Linux would be pretty viable. But that "KDE 89" page doesn't look like something that would run on a calculator... let's see here... it looks like a screenshot of a smallish KDE window, changed to grayscale (they claim it's 4-color but I can see a lot more shades than that), and with the window contents replaced by an incredibly lousy-looking ls listing. The second screenshot is quite obviously the first screenshot with different stuff pasted over the title and window contents. And they missed by a pixel or two when they pasted in the text. They can't even make up their mind about whether it would run a Linux kernel, or just pretend to do so while running the crash-a-minute Doors OS. (Remember that there's no permanent storage. Calculator crashes are BAD.) I think they should have stuck with "WinOS". At least there would be some Windows users who were gullible enough to fall for that.
That wouldn't matter for the TI-89 or 92, though, since they use a Motorola processor anyway. But connecting to the internet... wow. I'll have to find out more about that.
And I still think it should be possible to put Linux on an 89. --
Yeah? Well, I didn't have a modem OR floppy disks! I had to write down all the bits on paper! I went through 42 pencils doing it! But it was FUN, I tell ya! You whippersnappers with your CD burners all have it too easy! Where'd I put my cane? --
Of course, as the price of a decent machine drops, big corporations like Microsoft[1] and Intel will do their damnedest to redefine "decent".
Just like the commercials running now are convincing people that they need a Pentium III to browse the web, in 2004 Intel will be hyping their Pentium 7 or whatever, while Windows[2] 2004 will require a 3 GHz processor so it can replace your desktop with full-motion commercials in Microsoft's video format. And the bumbling morons will buy it. Plus anyone who hasn't already had experience with computers isn't going to be able to put together a computer that is simply "decent"; the only choice would be whatever Dell (or whoever) is selling for $1000. And anyone who feels the urge to get a used computer would be discouraged by the aforementioned commercials.
[1] Oops, this is Slashdot. I obviously meant to say "Macro$loth". [2] "Lo$edo$e" --
No, no, you have to be more specific (and technical-sounding) than that. I believe that software patents have to include a hardware implementation, so here goes:
File a patent for "Method For Obtaining a Patent On A Blatantly Obvious Software Mechanism". The hardware setup that would be described in the patent is:
A TRS-80 computer (for simplicity's sake)
A disk drive and BASIC cartridge attached to the TRS-80
A 5-1/4" disk in the disk drive, upon which the following bits are encoded: 10 PRINT "HELLO WORLD"
A patent application form, entitled "Method For Displaying A Generic Greeting On A Computer Screen".
Now, keep the second form, because you don't actually have to demonstrate your method. Send in the first form, and presto, no more stupid patents. --
If you do not have the need for any CGI, or your CGI needs are minimal, you may not even want to use your own machine. You may be best off just getting a web access account -- you know, the kind of think you get with many dial-up accounts, though with better service and the capability for more bandwidth.
Read the post again. He wants to use the machine inside the sculpture as the web server. It'd defeat the purpose to host it somewhere else. --
It seems to me that he wasn't speaking in any person at all. He wasn't referring to himself in the third person, because he didn't refer to himself. --
There's a lot of insightful stuff in Alpha Centauri. If you just want to play the game, you can skip over the information screens or disable them entirely, but I've been reading/listening to all of them. Some are depressing, some are enlightening, and some are really funny. SMAC would pass as a decent sci-fi novel if it wasn't a computer game. --
That reminded me - I see that someone's come out with a C compiler for the TI-89, called TI-GCC... And the TI-89 has enough archive memory to hold a Linux kernel. So how long do you think it'll be before someone ports Linux to the TI-89?
That'd make my calculator so much cooler. The 89 is already closer to a computer than a calculator, so it's too bad it's got such a clunky OS. --
You think that's weird. In a hotel I was at in May, Channel 11 constantly showed... a TRS-80 Basic prompt.
It must have been for one of those hotel information channels, and the computer got reset... I can see how it would be kinda useful to use a computer that's designed to output to a TV, but a TRS-80? In Basic?
Actually, it wouldn't especially surprise me if TRS-80s were used in other places, judging from the horrible graphics those channels usually have.
I'm evaluating the Insightful, not the Interesting, right? Right. The one at the top in parentheses is only the latest moderation, not necessarily the one you're asked to judge. If I think it deserves a 5, but not Insightful, do I criticize the moderation? Yes. Though if you're just being nitpicky (like you think it should have been "Interesting"), I'd say you should leave it in the middle. If I think it deserves Insightful, but not a 5, do I criticize the moderation? Read the top of the metamoderation page. You're not supposed to metamoderate the score, just the single moderation. Which moderation gave it the 5, the Interesting or the Insightful? Well, according to the instructions, it shouldn't matter. I agree that there could be a comment that should have been moderated up, but not when it was already at 4... however, remember that two moderators might hit the page at the same time. Could there be anything geekier than this convoluted system? Remember what people were saying about Mn moderation and the Slashdot RPG?:) CmdrTaco continues to do a fantastic job of giving us what we want, and we all appreciate it tremendously. I concur. --
You don't metamoderate based on the score you think a comment deserves. You are asked about a single moderation (like "Insightful" or "Overrated"), and you judge whether that moderation was fair or unfair. --
It happens all the time. In fact, the average person can have about seven cognitive threads at once. For example, about 10 seconds ago I was thinking about what I just wrote, thinking about what I was going to write, kneading a ball of Sculpey in my fingers (for no real reason) and thinking about what it felt like, and noticing the sound my computer's fan is making. That's 4 right there.
Slashdot Mirror
From his description of the installation, it seems that it WAS in fact Caldera 1.3. And yes, that's a real version.
--
makes you wonder what happens if mae-east gets destroyed by some natural (or unnatural) disaster.
oh how much we depend on these plastic boxes!
The most likely disaster would be a car driving into it. It's in a parking garage, after all.
--
Autoprobing is like gambling. Take any game where you bet a certain amount of money, and get back twice what you bet, if you win, or nothing, if you lose.
On Linux, it's like betting a fixed amount of money. You might win, you might lose, but it shouldn't take too long to recover your losses if you do lose.
On Windows 9x it's like the "doubling" gambling system, where you keep betting twice what you lost in the last round until you win. You'll probably end up a little bit ahead, but you just might hit that one in 2^x chance and lose everything.
--
That's ridiculous. Just imagine how many domains would have to go down. The Internet would be a mess. And it shuns the hobbyists that the Internet was intended for in the first place.
I think a better idea is something like this: $20 per 2 years for the first domain you or your business owns. $40 per 2 years for the second. Every subsequent domain is double the cost. If you sell or disable a domain, it is still considered as part of the doubling until its 2 years are up. This would make cybersquatting prohibitively expensive, while making domains available to hobbyists.
There's probably all kinds of loopholes in that. Oh well, it's just a hypothetical idea. Due to the nature of competition, it won't happen anyway.
--
Thank you for that bit of sanity. Most of the other posts in this article seem to be along these lines:
"eBay should just deal with it, the Web is supposed to be free" or something like that. Yes, but bandwidth isn't free.
"eBay should stop advertising." It's kinda hard to stop when they never did it in the first place.
"First Post."
"It's just like..." (flawed analogy follows)
--
Nice rant about advertising. Too bad eBay doesn't have ads.
--
i was very often the person who was called upon to fix windows computers
Please note that the X consortium requests that we not use the term "X-Windows". Their preferred naming *blam* aaargh.
--
My god how many more times are you going to correct them?
Yeah, the X consortium wants us to say "X Window System, Version 11", RMS wants us to say "GNU/Linux", those guys who define the SI want us to say "kibibyte", and the feminists want us to say "wimmin". You'll notice that the majority of people don't. Language evolves to simplify conversation, and efforts to reverse it will never go over well.
Compare the following two sentences. See which one is easier to say, makes more sense, and makes me sound like less of an idiot.
"I'm running X-Windows on Linux, which is using a 6 gigabyte partition, but that doesn't seem to interest any women."
"I'm running X Window System, Version 11 on GNU/Linux, which is using a 6 gibibyte partition, but that doesn't seem to interest any wimmin. And by the way, I won't be going to your big New Year's party, because the millennium obviously doesn't start until 2001."
--
Microsoft sure is embracing and extending... not only do they make computers go down, now they can do it to the stock market too!
I wonder how long it'll be before Microsoft calls this bunch of regurgitated ideas an "innovation", or whether they already have.
--
That one word wasn't too informative. Are you saying Caldera will take over if Red Hat becomes too evil (I think Mandrake would be in the best position for this), or providing it as an example of a "suck" distro? (From my experiences with Caldera, I'm inclined to believe the latter.)
--
Hehe. That page would be funny, if it weren't so disappointing. Since Linux is already running on Motorola 68000 processors, and the TI-89 has enough memory to hold a kernel in its archive space, I'd think Linux would be pretty viable. But that "KDE 89" page doesn't look like something that would run on a calculator... let's see here... it looks like a screenshot of a smallish KDE window, changed to grayscale (they claim it's 4-color but I can see a lot more shades than that), and with the window contents replaced by an incredibly lousy-looking ls listing. The second screenshot is quite obviously the first screenshot with different stuff pasted over the title and window contents. And they missed by a pixel or two when they pasted in the text.
They can't even make up their mind about whether it would run a Linux kernel, or just pretend to do so while running the crash-a-minute Doors OS. (Remember that there's no permanent storage. Calculator crashes are BAD.)
I think they should have stuck with "WinOS". At least there would be some Windows users who were gullible enough to fall for that.
--
That wouldn't matter for the TI-89 or 92, though, since they use a Motorola processor anyway. But connecting to the internet... wow. I'll have to find out more about that.
And I still think it should be possible to put Linux on an 89.
--
I'd take the thing about chatbots a little farther, and say that many AOLers would fail the Turing Test.
--
Yeah? Well, I didn't have a modem OR floppy disks! I had to write down all the bits on paper! I went through 42 pencils doing it! But it was FUN, I tell ya! You whippersnappers with your CD burners all have it too easy! Where'd I put my cane?
--
Of course, as the price of a decent machine drops, big corporations like Microsoft[1] and Intel will do their damnedest to redefine "decent".
Just like the commercials running now are convincing people that they need a Pentium III to browse the web, in 2004 Intel will be hyping their Pentium 7 or whatever, while Windows[2] 2004 will require a 3 GHz processor so it can replace your desktop with full-motion commercials in Microsoft's video format. And the bumbling morons will buy it. Plus anyone who hasn't already had experience with computers isn't going to be able to put together a computer that is simply "decent"; the only choice would be whatever Dell (or whoever) is selling for $1000. And anyone who feels the urge to get a used computer would be discouraged by the aforementioned commercials.
[1] Oops, this is Slashdot. I obviously meant to say "Macro$loth".
[2] "Lo$edo$e"
--
File a patent for "Method For Obtaining a Patent On A Blatantly Obvious Software Mechanism". The hardware setup that would be described in the patent is:
- A TRS-80 computer (for simplicity's sake)
- A disk drive and BASIC cartridge attached to the TRS-80
- A 5-1/4" disk in the disk drive, upon which the following bits are encoded: 10 PRINT "HELLO WORLD"
- A patent application form, entitled "Method For Displaying A Generic Greeting On A Computer Screen".
Now, keep the second form, because you don't actually have to demonstrate your method. Send in the first form, and presto, no more stupid patents.--
The TI-89 is actually powered by a Motorola.
--
If you do not have the need for any CGI, or your CGI needs are minimal, you may not even want to use your own machine. You may be best off just getting a web access account -- you know, the kind of think you get with many dial-up accounts, though with better service and the capability for more bandwidth.
Read the post again. He wants to use the machine inside the sculpture as the web server. It'd defeat the purpose to host it somewhere else.
--
It seems to me that he wasn't speaking in any person at all. He wasn't referring to himself in the third person, because he didn't refer to himself.
--
There's a lot of insightful stuff in Alpha Centauri. If you just want to play the game, you can skip over the information screens or disable them entirely, but I've been reading/listening to all of them. Some are depressing, some are enlightening, and some are really funny.
SMAC would pass as a decent sci-fi novel if it wasn't a computer game.
--
That reminded me - I see that someone's come out with a C compiler for the TI-89, called TI-GCC... And the TI-89 has enough archive memory to hold a Linux kernel. So how long do you think it'll be before someone ports Linux to the TI-89?
That'd make my calculator so much cooler. The 89 is already closer to a computer than a calculator, so it's too bad it's got such a clunky OS.
--
You think that's weird. In a hotel I was at in May, Channel 11 constantly showed... a TRS-80 Basic prompt.
It must have been for one of those hotel information channels, and the computer got reset... I can see how it would be kinda useful to use a computer that's designed to output to a TV, but a TRS-80? In Basic?
Actually, it wouldn't especially surprise me if TRS-80s were used in other places, judging from the horrible graphics those channels usually have.
--
I'm evaluating the Insightful, not the Interesting, right? :)
Right. The one at the top in parentheses is only the latest moderation, not necessarily the one you're asked to judge.
If I think it deserves a 5, but not Insightful, do I criticize the moderation?
Yes. Though if you're just being nitpicky (like you think it should have been "Interesting"), I'd say you should leave it in the middle.
If I think it deserves Insightful, but not a 5, do I criticize the moderation?
Read the top of the metamoderation page. You're not supposed to metamoderate the score, just the single moderation.
Which moderation gave it the 5, the Interesting or the Insightful?
Well, according to the instructions, it shouldn't matter. I agree that there could be a comment that should have been moderated up, but not when it was already at 4... however, remember that two moderators might hit the page at the same time.
Could there be anything geekier than this convoluted system?
Remember what people were saying about Mn moderation and the Slashdot RPG?
CmdrTaco continues to do a fantastic job of giving us what we want, and we all appreciate it tremendously.
I concur.
--
You don't metamoderate based on the score you think a comment deserves. You are asked about a single moderation (like "Insightful" or "Overrated"), and you judge whether that moderation was fair or unfair.
--
It happens all the time. In fact, the average person can have about seven cognitive threads at once.
For example, about 10 seconds ago I was thinking about what I just wrote, thinking about what I was going to write, kneading a ball of Sculpey in my fingers (for no real reason) and thinking about what it felt like, and noticing the sound my computer's fan is making. That's 4 right there.
--