The biggest risk, by far, would come from panicked humans.
And I did mention ammo to deal with the few that get a hunger-inspired clue at the last minute.
Direct deaths will amount to 3% tops [...]
Does this mean that in your local area, you will be more of a threat than the flu? You seem very eager to shoot people, while others work to keep society going in your absence.
That's not such a bad idea... but: Put small packs of this stuff as the last layer in your bulletproof vest. If something gets through, it'll spread the gel around.
Also, you should know that on real RAID systems (real as in real fast) not all of the HD is used. This being the case, if it was worth getting that
system and you put 160 GB drives in the machine, I doubt that they would be formated at 160 GB. The access time that is saved by not using
the end of the drive is amazing.
It's also worth noting that you lose a lot of disk space by choosing RAID, simply due to parity. They're also not including a hot spare in the calculations.
In other news, the Automobile Association announced that it would be reviewing the terms of its contract with customers. Under discussion is clause 12a, which reads:
12.a. The AA shall guarantee vehicle recovery and repair no matter the location and environmental conditions.
An AA spokeperson said 'We will honour our existing contracts, but in future we may have to ask for an extra callout fee, depending on location.' The spokesperson refused to comment on the current state of NASA's account.
Geez, look at the toilet (seat) industry in Japan. There are so many types of toilets and seats available it will make your head spin, with heated seats, music, noisemakers, dryers, remote controls, etc.
I'm told that there's been a recent increase in death by toilet in Japan. Electrical toilets near a water supply don't go well together. I'd like to see that idea survive in a more litigation-happy country:)
And if someone forced you to take the jumper off because it had an indecent image on it, could you claim that they were breaking your protection device and can be sued under DMCA?
If a jumper is a protection device to stop people getting at data, then under UK law you could probably be imprisoned for not removing your clothing when a police officer asks you to...
So if one really wants to afford the plaintiffs the protection that they seek, I think I would only be able to wear my shirt in the privacy of my own home and must not go outdoors with it.
What if you wore a jumper over the t-shirt? Is that a form of steganography? Or would that just be considered smuggling?:)
To help keep their logs dry, they should purchase a log rack, or simply arrange the logs on top of a makeshift support system so that the logs do not directly contact the ground.
They should also be wary of the 'loghost', a terrible creature that eats away at your logs and stores vast quantities for food, thus making them all useless.
Hello, Lego is a kids toy, not some kind of magic prototyping tool for professional engineers. It seems that a lot of people here on/. are "engineer wannabes" who wish that they were able to do something practical, but cannot do anything apart from sys admin Linux boxes. All the time in the world spent playing with your plastic bricks won't change that, and it's sad to try really.
I agree with your point, in that lego is not suitable as a prototyping tool for the vast majority of applications. It's not sturdy enough, you can't tailor the pieces to a particular application.
That said, it does have another purpose, which I think is just as important: stimulating the imagination. While Lego might not be the ideal tool for building prototypes, it does offer a cheap and easy way of 'thinking out loud', and that can spark ideas for real designs of real machines. IMHO one of the major problems facing the various different engineering industries at the moment is that the working environment stifles creativity and imagination. If these people are using lego to break free of that, and start the creative process going, then all the best to them.
Is Lego. The company says so too. Its either Lego, or Logo bricks. Not Legos.
This discussion happens every time there's a lego story posted here... and noone ever changes their view. In some respects, it means that/. is getting more like news - threads start repeating, oldbies have seen it all, and the newbies ask the same questions. The trolls, oh, the trolls....
On a slightly more relevant note, How many Mindstorms kits have you folks found you need to make neat stuff? I just have one kit, and it's never enough, I end up needing more motors, more sensors, and more bricks... it may be cheap robotics, but to do anything really enjoyable with it you still need to expend a fair bit of money up front.
I know this comment was meant as a joke, but it has a serious answer: the reason you don't keep your valuables in a solid metal case that's handcuffed to you is: a: It's bloody obvious your valuables are in there b: You don't want anybody cutting your arm off to get it.
The internet has great potential for publication of statements, speeches and policies, while also allowing a far greater number of people to give political commentary. How would you view a trend of increased voter involvement, and how do you think it will affect the political process?
Re:If you like slave labour, go for it.
on
The GCHQ Challenge
·
· Score: 1
There is much, much more to initiative than looking through the HTML of various web pages, seeking encoded text.
There is much, much more to the intelligence business that flashes of initiative:) 90% of intelligence gathering is hard, but thorough slog through the available information sources. I think the test on their web site was quite well conceived, since it combines the investigative thoroughness required not to miss any clues, and the background and initiative to be able to spot the clues once you see them, and make sense of them.
Given a choice between having software that can be remotely turned off on any pretext a licensor might wish to cite, and having stable software which legally cannot be taken from them, which would a prudent business choose? One imagines the latter.
You would hope so, wouldn't you? You'd be wrong. In any large company, the majority of software purchases are not made for technical or financial reasons, they are made for political reasons. The software to buy is decided on by going for the software house that offers the best incentives to the *person* (not the company!) buying the software. I've experienced this a great deal, as I'm sure many people here have. $500,000 per-licence software bought without consultation or review by the people who will be using it, without review by the people who understand the requirements, but bought by someone who has the budget and the authority to make people use it and to cut off the alternatives.
Only small companies and small groups make good decisions. Larger companies merely stumble along with the momentum created by many stupid decisions. If this law is passed, then the companies will respond not by changing their vendor, but by implementing more auditing, more processes and more forms to be completed. This is the nature of a medium/large company.
Life is fundamentally a moral, hence religious, issue.
You seem to be implying that there can be no morals without religion. A person's religion can define what their morals are, but doesn't define whether or not they actually have morals. IME, a religious person of any level of learning is either a philosopher, or only able to reiterate the static teachings of their own group. Hence, it would be more sensible to seek the advice of a large sample of ethics philosophers; the religious viewpoint would naturally be included by the people consulted who were religious, yet a more balanced perspective would be achieved overall because of the wider sampling taken of people who specialise in this subject.
In addition, if they are interested in getting opinions as to whether they should continue or not, they should also consider taking a poll of laypeople. To single out a particular group for questioning, simply because of religion, is either displaying the prejudices of the people involved in the research, or is a crude PR move.
They are things a Deity would be interested in (if the Deity is not amoral, obviously) hence they are religious issues.
They are not *solely* religious issues, however. Might I ask: In the event that the subject of artificially creating life is not mentioned in religious texts, won't the response the researchers get simply be the private view of the person they ask, and not be representative of the "Will of God", or the rest of their religious group?
Everything gets abused by someone somewhere along the line. And when it comes to life itself, it is something that should be very carefully considered first.
I agree completely. The ethics of what they are wishing to do is not the whole picture - imho they should also be questioning people in other fields to examine the possible physical effects of such a new life form.
Which Chinese language will they be using? The website doesn't say. It'll most likely be Mandarin or Cantonese, I think.
The website also doesn't address conceptual issues with translation - a language isn't just about syntax, it's about semantics. As a simple example, a German asking "Wie spaet ist es?" would have their sentence translated as "How late is it?" - it'll take a few seconds for an English speaker to work out they're asking the time. I'm sure there are a vast number of such colloquialisms in each language, and finding a common way of representing all the concepts people wish to communicate is a very hard task. Would it not be simpler for the people themselves to learn a language, and so everybody knows what colloquialisms and concepts the listener will be using.
I know, Esperanto. Or Loglan. *sigh* These projects haven't worked before, so past experience predicts a poor performance of this one. It's good to see they're making the effort, though.
Kudos to Jane's. It's not only good that they asked for comments, and are taking note of what they received, but also that they're offering to reward those whose contributions are being published. Has anyone published an article in this way before? It's the first of its kind that I've encountered. I wonder what threshold Johan J Ingles-le Nobel had his preferences set to, or whether the comments were summarised for him.
Several points about the method come to mind. Firstly, how are they intending to honour payment to people who made particular points or comments, when their points may be rephrased (and hence made unrecognisable, even if the point is still understandable) for editorial reasons, or when several people may have made the same point?
Hmm, I remember articles a while back about how to properly distribute books, essays and monologues electronically, and still receive payment for them. It's a shame this method can't be used more frequently - it relies too much on simple honesty.
Can an article still have coherency, and a clear point, when the person collating all the points may not have as much expertise in the subject area as those that submitted the information? It's not easy to create a coherent article if the subject isn't your own, even if you have a series of excellent references. I'm not knocking the people at Jane's, I just see it as a difficult task to form the mass of/. comments into a single article that would fit in magazine format.
Slashdot Mirror
The biggest risk, by far, would come from panicked humans.
And I did mention ammo to deal with the few that get a hunger-inspired clue at the last minute.
Direct deaths will amount to 3% tops [...]
Does this mean that in your local area, you will be more of a threat than the flu? You seem very eager to shoot people, while others work to keep society going in your absence.
That's not such a bad idea... but: Put small packs of this stuff as the last layer in your bulletproof vest. If something gets through, it'll spread the gel around.
Also, you should know that on real RAID systems (real as in real fast) not all of the HD is used. This being the case, if it was worth getting that system and you put 160 GB drives in the machine, I doubt that they would be formated at 160 GB. The access time that is saved by not using the end of the drive is amazing.
It's also worth noting that you lose a lot of disk space by choosing RAID, simply due to parity. They're also not including a hot spare in the calculations.
S.In other news, the Automobile Association announced that it would be reviewing the terms of its contract with customers. Under discussion is clause 12a, which reads:
12.a. The AA shall guarantee vehicle recovery and repair no matter the location and environmental conditions.An AA spokeperson said 'We will honour our existing contracts, but in future we may have to ask for an extra callout fee, depending on location.' The spokesperson refused to comment on the current state of NASA's account.
Geez, look at the toilet (seat) industry in Japan. There are so many types of toilets and seats available it will make your head spin, with heated seats, music, noisemakers, dryers, remote controls, etc.
I'm told that there's been a recent increase in death by toilet in Japan. Electrical toilets near a water supply don't go well together. I'd like to see that idea survive in a more litigation-happy country :)
And if someone forced you to take the jumper off because it had an indecent image on it, could you claim that they were breaking your protection device and can be sued under DMCA?
If a jumper is a protection device to stop people getting at data, then under UK law you could probably be imprisoned for not removing your clothing when a police officer asks you to...
So if one really wants to afford the plaintiffs the protection that they seek, I think I would only be able to wear my shirt in the privacy of my own home and must not go outdoors with it.
What if you wore a jumper over the t-shirt? Is that a form of steganography? Or would that just be considered smuggling? :)
To help keep their logs dry, they should purchase a log rack, or simply arrange the logs on top of a makeshift support system so that the logs do not directly contact the ground.
They should also be wary of the 'loghost', a terrible creature that eats away at your logs and stores vast quantities for food, thus making them all useless.
The legal age for buying alcohol here in the UK is 18, so yea, those guys are just a little too young to be getting drunk at 17 ;).
Buying alcohol, yes. Drinking alcohol, no. IIRC, there's no minimum age requirement for actually drinking the stuff in the UK.
I could be seriously misremembering, though, as I've never paid too much attention to that part of the law :)
So what about us in the rest of the world? For a Danish company, they should at least deliver to Europe, too.
Imagine the ping times you could get with this sucker! ;-)
There'd be High Ping Bastards, Low Ping Bastards, and Preemptive Ping Bastards...
What sort of bandwidth can you get by transmitting down cesium-based fibre at 300 times the speed of light? ;)
Hello, Lego is a kids toy, not some kind of magic prototyping tool for professional engineers. It seems that a lot of people here on /. are "engineer wannabes" who wish that they were able to do something practical, but cannot do anything apart from sys admin Linux boxes. All the time in the world spent playing with your plastic bricks won't change that, and it's sad to try really.
I agree with your point, in that lego is not suitable as a prototyping tool for the vast majority of applications. It's not sturdy enough, you can't tailor the pieces to a particular application.
That said, it does have another purpose, which I think is just as important: stimulating the imagination. While Lego might not be the ideal tool for building prototypes, it does offer a cheap and easy way of 'thinking out loud', and that can spark ideas for real designs of real machines. IMHO one of the major problems facing the various different engineering industries at the moment is that the working environment stifles creativity and imagination. If these people are using lego to break free of that, and start the creative process going, then all the best to them.
Is Lego. The company says so too. Its either Lego, or Logo bricks. Not Legos.
This discussion happens every time there's a lego story posted here... and noone ever changes their view. In some respects, it means that /. is getting more like news - threads start repeating, oldbies have seen it all, and the newbies ask the same questions. The trolls, oh, the trolls....
On a slightly more relevant note, How many Mindstorms kits have you folks found you need to make neat stuff? I just have one kit, and it's never enough, I end up needing more motors, more sensors, and more bricks... it may be cheap robotics, but to do anything really enjoyable with it you still need to expend a fair bit of money up front.
I know this comment was meant as a joke, but it has a serious answer: the reason you don't keep your valuables in a solid metal case that's handcuffed to you is:
a: It's bloody obvious your valuables are in there
b: You don't want anybody cutting your arm off to get it.
We need 640,000 bugs! After all, 640k should be enough for anybody...
The internet has great potential for publication of statements, speeches and policies, while also allowing a far greater number of people to give political commentary. How would you view a trend of increased voter involvement, and how do you think it will affect the political process?
There is much, much more to initiative than looking through the HTML of various web pages, seeking encoded text.
There is much, much more to the intelligence business that flashes of initiative :) 90% of intelligence gathering is hard, but thorough slog through the available information sources. I think the test on their web site was quite well conceived, since it combines the investigative thoroughness required not to miss any clues, and the background and initiative to be able to spot the clues once you see them, and make sense of them.
Given a choice between having software that can be remotely turned off on any pretext a licensor might wish to cite, and having stable software which legally cannot be taken from them, which would a prudent business choose? One imagines the latter.
You would hope so, wouldn't you? You'd be wrong. In any large company, the majority of software purchases are not made for technical or financial reasons, they are made for political reasons. The software to buy is decided on by going for the software house that offers the best incentives to the *person* (not the company!) buying the software. I've experienced this a great deal, as I'm sure many people here have. $500,000 per-licence software bought without consultation or review by the people who will be using it, without review by the people who understand the requirements, but bought by someone who has the budget and the authority to make people use it and to cut off the alternatives.
Only small companies and small groups make good decisions. Larger companies merely stumble along with the momentum created by many stupid decisions. If this law is passed, then the companies will respond not by changing their vendor, but by implementing more auditing, more processes and more forms to be completed. This is the nature of a medium/large company.
Maybe I'm missing something, but if Quake 1's source code is only just being released, then what's here?
http://bluesnews.g ameaholic.com/idgames.d/idstuff/quake2/source/
Now, the files look quite small, but what are they if not the Quake 2 source code?
Simon.Life is fundamentally a moral, hence religious, issue.
You seem to be implying that there can be no morals without religion. A person's religion can define what their morals are, but doesn't define whether or not they actually have morals. IME, a religious person of any level of learning is either a philosopher, or only able to reiterate the static teachings of their own group. Hence, it would be more sensible to seek the advice of a large sample of ethics philosophers; the religious viewpoint would naturally be included by the people consulted who were religious, yet a more balanced perspective would be achieved overall because of the wider sampling taken of people who specialise in this subject.
In addition, if they are interested in getting opinions as to whether they should continue or not, they should also consider taking a poll of laypeople. To single out a particular group for questioning, simply because of religion, is either displaying the prejudices of the people involved in the research, or is a crude PR move.
They are things a Deity would be interested in (if the Deity is not amoral, obviously) hence they are religious issues.
They are not *solely* religious issues, however. Might I ask: In the event that the subject of artificially creating life is not mentioned in religious texts, won't the response the researchers get simply be the private view of the person they ask, and not be representative of the "Will of God", or the rest of their religious group?
Everything gets abused by someone somewhere along the line. And when it comes to life itself, it is something that should be very carefully considered first.
I agree completely. The ethics of what they are wishing to do is not the whole picture - imho they should also be questioning people in other fields to examine the possible physical effects of such a new life form.
Simon.
Which Chinese language will they be using? The website doesn't say. It'll most likely be Mandarin or Cantonese, I think.
The website also doesn't address conceptual issues with translation - a language isn't just about syntax, it's about semantics. As a simple example, a German asking "Wie spaet ist es?" would have their sentence translated as "How late is it?" - it'll take a few seconds for an English speaker to work out they're asking the time. I'm sure there are a vast number of such colloquialisms in each language, and finding a common way of representing all the concepts people wish to communicate is a very hard task. Would it not be simpler for the people themselves to learn a language, and so everybody knows what colloquialisms and concepts the listener will be using.
I know, Esperanto. Or Loglan. *sigh* These projects haven't worked before, so past experience predicts a poor performance of this one. It's good to see they're making the effort, though.
S.Oops, my bad. It seemed unavailable when I first tried to visit there, so I searched for a similar page on their site.
S.is found here... http://www.mysql.com/crash-me-choose.htmy
That page doesn't seem to be available. The closest match is:
S.http://www.mysql.com/crash-me.html
Which seems to contain the information.
Kudos to Jane's. It's not only good that they asked for comments, and are taking note of what they received, but also that they're offering to reward those whose contributions are being published. Has anyone published an article in this way before? It's the first of its kind that I've encountered. I wonder what threshold Johan J Ingles-le Nobel had his preferences set to, or whether the comments were summarised for him.
Several points about the method come to mind. Firstly, how are they intending to honour payment to people who made particular points or comments, when their points may be rephrased (and hence made unrecognisable, even if the point is still understandable) for editorial reasons, or when several people may have made the same point?
Hmm, I remember articles a while back about how to properly distribute books, essays and monologues electronically, and still receive payment for them. It's a shame this method can't be used more frequently - it relies too much on simple honesty.
Can an article still have coherency, and a clear point, when the person collating all the points may not have as much expertise in the subject area as those that submitted the information? It's not easy to create a coherent article if the subject isn't your own, even if you have a series of excellent references. I'm not knocking the people at Jane's, I just see it as a difficult task to form the mass of /. comments into a single article that would fit in magazine format.
Good effort.
S.