Hint- ask, next time. I don't care if it's editors or story submitters, if the site doesn't seem like it'll take it(ie, it's not a big-fish site), or if it's a nonprofit, ask first.
This ain't "news for nerds", it's "linkage with discussion", and it is pretty embarassing that slashdot STILL doesn't bother to do jack about the problem, simply hiding behind a few pathetic excuses in the FAQ about it being "too complex", whcih is complete bullshit; look at how complex the comment rating system is...but keeping a mirror in sync is rocket science? Hogwash! Robbing sites of statistics? Find me a site admin who would rather keep his/her 'statistics' than keep his/her site running. Absolute hogwash. Copyright? That's why you bloody well get off your editor's chair and ask them first.
The more truthful answer is, they(and OSDN) can't afford the bandwidth either- and have absolutely zero interest in spending any time dealing with the headaches they cause, probably because slashdot is so low-margin. I applaud the first person that sues for damages, because slashdot has acknowledged the problem(and its results), for one. It'd teach some livin-in-fairy-land nerds some hard-knocks-of-real-life lessons.
That's like saying "jumping off a cliff is not the most intelligent thing to do." NFS is easily the LEAST secure option of ANY filesharing system.
NFS is only appropriate on a 100% secured(physical and network-level) network. If anyone/someone can plug in, forget it. If anyone has root on ANY system or there are ANY non-unix systems, forget it. If ANY system is physically accessible and can be booted off, say, a CDROM, forget it. The only major security tool at your disposal is access by IP, which is pathetic. Oh, and you can block root access.
Even though you can block root access for some/all clients, it's still massively insecure, and this remains NFS's greatest problem. You have zero way of authenticating a system. NFS is like a store where you could walk in, pick up any item you wanted, and say "I'm Joe Shmoe, bill me for this!" and they'd say "Right-o!" without even looking at you. All systems with the right IPs are explicitly trusted, and their user/permissions setups are also explicitly trusted.
NFS is a pretty good performer, especially when tuned right and on a non-broken client(which linux is VERY far from.) However, its entire security model is in dire need of a complete overhaul. There needs to be a way to authenticate hosts, for one, more similar to WinNT's domain setup, which is actually incredibly intelligent(aside from the weak LANMAN encryption.) The administrative functionality in NFS can't compare to the features that have been available to MacOS and Windows administrators for over a decade, and it's purely embarassing.
Either that, or AFS/Coda need to get a lot more documentation and (for Coda)implementation fixes. The unix world desperately needs a good filesharing system...
the cool thing from an AI perspective is that 'once the humans flip the switch, the robots are on their own.'
How else do you hold an "AI robot" contest? Humans mucking about with the things is called cheating. If they get disabled or whatnot, of COURSE they should be left alone.
I hate robot/AI contests which are dumbed down- watch a robot 'soccer' match, and often you'll see volunteers putting robots back on the right course when they've boxed themselves into a corner and such...like the programmers/designers shouldn't have to be 'troubled' by such things as getting trapped by two walls, or all the contestants have such miserably designed/programmed robots that they fail left and right.. Everyone wants to work on the "chase the ball" routine, but nobody wants to work on the un-sexy, nuts-and-bolts, "keep from smacking the wall and staying there" routine.
In the real world, there are no magical hands that pick you up and flip you around and set you going with a pat on the CPU...and what every robotics person calls "simplifying the problem", I call "cheating". This constant cheating has led to a field which is incapable, still, of dealing with the simplest problems but can solve these wonderful complex ones. The result is a lot of electromechanical garbage that's simply unuseable in anything even remotely resembling the real world.
closed source or not, the fact is that the NVIDIA drivers on Linux are as good or better that it's win* counterparts
It's a unified driver. Has been for a LONG time. Obviously the kernel hooks etc are different for Windows versus Linux, but the rest of the code is all the same. Claiming the "linux drivers are better" is clueless linux zealotry(sp?)
I just read the article quickly- there's absolutely nothing about a UV light.
That is a regular FL bulb, and though the slashdot story seems to suggest/imply it, the light itself is not being used in any way/shape/form for data transmission/reception. This is simply "toss a small AP inside a tupperware bowl and add a FL light." Wow, what brilliance(pardon the pun.)
I see this as solving a problem that doesn't exist- it takes an electrician all of 15 minutes to add a plug off an existing junction box if you want the AP up high by your lights, and with 802.11g, you can cover an entire cafe from practically any wall socket in the place.
Continuing with the "truly a stupid idea" bit, FL tube bulbs like that get VERY hot(almost as hot as a regular bulb). Cooping one up in a tupperware bowl is a damn fine way to start a fire, or at least kill both components- probably the AP first; if it's electronics don't give out, the transformer's thermal fuse will(that's if it has one- many cheap transformers don't, and will happily melt down, short when the insultation melts, and start a fire.)
The UL would die laughing at anyone who even tried to submit it for testing...
so to sum up your rant, i have no idea what they did or how they accomplished it, so therefore it must be illegal.
The Mplayer team is completely, totally, illegally distributing Quicktime(and WMP, and Real, and...) DLLs- no licenses, no nothin'. I'd be amazed if the licenses prohibited linking to the libraries, but I'd be willing to bet they do prohibit unauthorized(and especially the "partial, license-less" kind of unauthorized) distribution. I was NOT speaking of the xine team- go read the post again.
So it's okay to beat up the 'bad guys' like Apple and Microsoft, but get pissed when someone violates the slightest part of the GPL?
"btw screw you apple and microsoft for not providing media players for linux"
Says the PFY as he fires up MPlayer(having downloaded the illegally-distributed Windows DLLs from the mplayer authors) to watch The Matrix trailer. I seem to be saying this a lot on slashdot lately, but, get a grip!
Linux has half a percent of the desktop market. Apple, with MacOS, has something like 4-5%, I think? Maybe 8% tops? Why exactly -should- Apple give a hoot about Linux? They're not THAT big a company, and they're busy as hell(have you stopped to think about how many software products they now produce? OSX, OSX Server, Quicktime Streaming Server, Quicktime, iTunes, iPhoto, iMovie and Final Cut Pro, iDVD and DVD Studio Pro, iCal/iSync...the list is ENORMOUS.) They don't, quite frankly, have the time to screw around with, essentially, something that can't even be called "competition"(Apple's products have always represented the complete antithesis of Linux - coherence, ease of use, simplicity, elegance...)
I've owned Macs for years, and no-official-quicktime-or-wmp-player doesn't bother me. Why? Because there are clever(if sometimes annoying) people out there who figure out how to do it themselves. While Apple hasn't released a player, their normally vicious legal department has, by its lack of action, practically applauded mplayer for using the quicktime-for-windows DLLs. Apple's not gonna look a gift horse in the mouth, basically. They get their cake(quicktime support on linux for those who really want it) and they get to eat it too(nothing to develop, maintain, or even support). Besides, the DLLs are getting used the same way a Windows application would use them- about the only thing Apple could get the mplayer guys on would be distributing the DLLs alone and without license.
You say, "oh, but Apple just doesn't care enough". Apple cares about lots of little things, including people making themes that look like Aqua. Their legal department has no qualms about making a mountain out of a molehill if something displeases them(this is actually one of the things I hate about Apple the most- their legal department head is a total psycho-policy-bitch, completely the wrong thing for a cute-and-cuddly computer company. Lady, get a job at MS or something, you may be making a hit in the legal world, but you're pissing off thousands of Apple customers and techies with every move you make.)
Huh? The content isn't the point. It's the device serving it. So, unless those mirrors are runnin' on Sega Dreamcasts, the novelty is gone.
JHU used to have an ancient Mac IIcx(not even a IIci) running MacBSD, about the only thing it ever did(I think) was serve up a picture of the Cruise Basselope, which, for a slow-as-molassis MacBSD box, kinda makes for an appropriate mascot.
Get a grip
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ScavHunt211
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· Score: 3, Insightful
A "mobius stripper"? Why is it always with the nerdy population that we find such blatant sexism and a desire to exploit women?
Why is it always with the feminists that we find such blatant cluelessness and absolutely ZERO sense of humor?
Like the people who bitched about the NASA thing, get a grip! This is the group that put a breeder reactor on last year's list. They're JOKES, nobody seriously expects people to do a lot of the items; they're there for laughs. Go on. Read the damn list, it's hillarious.
Are you people still wondering why no women want to enter the fields of engineering or computer science? It's a hostile environment, plain and simple, and you assholes are the cause.
Isn't it funny how the people who bitch the loudest about stereotypes, never hesistate to use 'em themselves? Your statement is about as true as "all girls like frilly dresses, dolls, and playing dress-up, and hate math." You've just blanket-labelled the CS and engineering profession as male pigs.
Most CS/Engineering types I knew in college were practically -scared- of women, not beer-guzzling chauvenist pigs. They were some of the nicest, most intelligent, well-balanced people I knew, and a number of them were involved in long-term relationships with rather indepentent, intelligent women. Pick someone else to vent your "I hate the world" rage on, please.
PS, you're still using a written-by-male-pigs spell-check, otherwise your post would have spelled womyn correctly, right?
Re:Sexist.
on
ScavHunt211
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· Score: 4, Insightful
A "mobius stripper"? Why is it always with the nerdy population that we find such blatant sexism and a desire to exploit women?
Why is it always with the feminists that we find such blatant cluelessness and absolutely ZERO sense of humor?
Like the people who bitched about the NASA thing, get a grip! This is the group that put a breeder reactor on last year's list. They're JOKES, nobody seriously expects people to do it. Go on. Read the damn list, it's hillarious.
Are you people still wondering why no women want to enter the fields of engineering or computer science? It's a hostile environment, plain and simple, and you assholes are the cause.
Isn't it funny how the people who bitch the loudest about stereotypes, never hesistate to use 'em themselves? Your statement is about as true as "all girls like frilly dresses, dolls, and playing dress-up, and hate math." I've also seen the same women who complain about men treating them like 'sex objects', oogle at a guy in tight jeans. Get a grip, it's called sexual attraction, and it's natural in BOTH sexes.
By the way, most CS/Engineering types I knew in college were -scared- of women, not beer-guzzling chauvenist pigs. They were some of the nicest, most intelligent, well-balanced people I knew. Pick someone else to vent your "I hate the world" rage on, please.
PS, you're still using a written-by-male-pigs spell-check, otherwise your post would have spelled womyn correctly!
Except that processors don't just give up the ship randomly(well, except in VERY rare circumstanecs)- drives do it all the time; it's almost expected. I don't give a crap about another 20GB or $20 off, I want a hard drive that won't turn itself into a paperweight after a year or two. If I'm going to own the drive for 5 years, what's another $20?
SMART was an improvement, but most OS's(linux included) don't even recognize SMART info out of the box. Even if you've got the SMART utilities installed and the kernel modules etc,/var/log/messages is so noisy, I mostly ignore it- same for Win2k boxes, Event Manager is full of TONS of crap(thank god it has filtering, but still...) If SMART were to be useful, the HD would beep at you, or blink its LED, or the OS would annoy you with popup messages so you knew, "oh shit, I gotta back up my stuff to somewhere else, NOW!"
I had an ancient 4GB Digital drive I got second-hand, in the early 90's; it was already several years old when I got my hands on it, so it was probably pre-90's. It weighed a ton, took up the full space of a 3.5" drive bay, and even had its own little suspension system. I abused that thing to hell and back, carrying it in bookbags, cooking it when the fan on the external case died...the whole nine yards. I think I low-level formatted it a dozen times(something you're not supposed to do often on SCSI drives, supposedly). It only finally gave up the ship around '99, when it spent a couple months cooking itself to death hooked up "temporarily" to a machine I forgot about.
Meanwhile, I've lost two quantum drives(one laptop, one Ultra2 3.5") and my athlon's Maxtor drive is making funny noises every once in a while. None of them were more than 2, 3 years old TOPS. WTF? The excuse seems to be that consumers don't need the reliability corporate users 'demand'.
Home users users have, at the very least, equal needs as business users, because while businesses need to keep going 24x7, they often have backups, clusters, RAID units, etc. Most home users don't have any of their data backed up, RAID is practically unheard of among the jane-and-bob computer users, and of course no clustering.
By the way, how can a chip in your car make the engine blow up?
Theoretically, especially on a turbocharged vehicle, it's very easy- too much boost and the engine won't take the strain. On normally aspirated engines, it's tougher, but not impossible- engines don't like to be run lean, for example; you can burn exhaust valves.
In practice, engines grenade from(in order) a)human stupidity(ignoring the apporpiately named "idiot lights") and b)component failure- either sensor, actuator, or regular old mechanical devices.
The ECU itself rarely, if ever, fails, unless it was very poorly designed. As for the ECUs going nuts, the favorite example is the Audi 5000, except that it was pedal placement(Audis had pedals in -slightly- different positions from US cars) and stupid users(hitting the wrong pedal), not the ECU(which was one of the first to feature a computer-controlled idle, and hence attracted the wrath of countless luddites who predicted death+destruction, and then screamed "told you so!" when it turned out to be something else entirely.)
I live 30 minutes from Boston, smack inbetween the 495 and 128 technology corridors. Eastern MA, for years, has been the Silicon Valley of the east- a LOT of old-school companies were here, and a number of companies are still firmly planted in Boston, Worcester, Framingham/Natick, Burlington...
...but I have ONE choice in cable, and last I checked, DSL wasn't being sold in my area by Bell- they don't offer DSL anywhere there's cablemodem access, because(gasp!) they don't want to compete. I think they may have started offering DSL now(they CO has been wired for DSL for many, many years), but the prices are absurd and there's a 96kbit upload cap. Yes, you read right, 96kbit! How am I supposed to upload cute photos to grandma, or "my files" they've always got some business-person-type harking about, for work, at 96kbit?
In lower/mid-westchester 2 years ago, I had 1.5mbit/768 for about $70/mo, and my choice of providers(I went with Speakeasy and paid a little more per month.) I was quite far from NYC, and Westchester doesn't have nearly the technology industry that most of eastern MA has.
Remember that MacBidouille has a history of inaccurate rumors... remember their AMD rumor earlier this year. Check out their rating at www.macrumors.com
Yeah, cause, you know, those MacRumors guys are real grounded. Fact is, almost the entire crowd of Macintosh rumormongers NEVER get it right. There's usually the slimmest glimmer of commonality between what they claim, and what actually happens.
Remember the "definative" pictures of a new "Apple PDA", supposedly sitting on someone's desk at Apple, that turned out to be a complete hoax? Apple buying up a music company? The list goes on. These guys take a sniff of one little piece of info(like, maybe Apple execs meeting with music industry execs) and spin it into the most preposterous fiction(Apple buying a dying music company, supposedly for its wares). Instead of looking at their track record, everyone just keeps paying attention to them...which is stupid, because their dreaming is always more grand than the rabbit Steve pulls out of the top hat.
Fact is, the AMD rumors were the result of a numbskull who decided to get some free publicity through lying-by-omission-of-detail(summary: "Are you talking to Apple?" "We'll have to get back to you on whether we are allowed to talk about how we're talking to Apple.")
I have no interest of having this on my cable system.
I have no interest in watching a fat, stupid, Marilyn-wannabe parade around whining, wasting away her dead sugardaddy's money...but you don't see me bitchin' about getting E!, now do you? I hate rap/hip-hop/most of the crap on MTV. The Home Channel bores me to death. Travel channel- eh. The ABC/Disney "family" channels make me want to puke within 5 seconds of accidentally switching to them. Don't get me started about the tractor pulls and Shooter's World on OLN.
That's why smart people invented a feature that lets you delete/add channels from your TV's set of channels it scans through when you hit up/down.
That's also why you pay specificially for some channels(gasp! What a concept!) If you don't want the Anime channel, then don't bubmit your zip code, don't effin' buy it...and if it comes with the standard package(highly unlikely), deprogram it from your TV...kay?
The FTC also made the insightful discovery that most spam is fraudulent in some fashion.
Duuuh. That's because nobody selling something legitimate wants the negative side effects of spam- mainly, the disgust it causes. Hell hath no fury like a consumer who's just been spammed for a product; they'll probably, even out of spite, go for your competition, if they just so happen to be in the market for your item. Remember those stupid little remote control cars? They learned the hard way that spam didn't work; retailers reported a backlash from the spam, people coming up to them and chewing out -the store employees- for the spam other resellers were sending.
Andy Deck has reinvented classic literature with Bardcode which will stream the entire works of Shakespeare to you as barcodes.
You know, I'm completely fed up with shit getting dressed up as art. Paint thrown at a canvas- it's just paint, thrown at a canvas. A bathroom sink, dragged out of a dump, is just a effin' sink, dragged out of a dump. I've seen both gussied up as "art", and it's not- it's a no-good, washed out artist, who couldn't think up something creative, got desperate to put the meal on the table...so they went "random", and dressed it up as creative; someone was stupid enough to fall for it(or they're hero-worshipping), and everyone else outright pretends, or convinces themselves to see something in it, all because they don't want to feel stupid. Random is not creative. Random is not unique, in the sense of unique = valuable; it's just unique.
Streaming the entire works of Shakespear as barcodes is just streaming the text of a book as a barcode. It has no creativity; it adds nothing to the original work; it serves no purpose; it cannot be appreciated or celebrated, and there would be no difference between using Shakespear or the latest copy of TPenthouse, as far as any observer could tell.
I'm an electronics engineering tech, and I used to work for Boeing. I've seen how the 'black boxes' are put together, and how they're installed in the jets. They're heavily shielded against stray interference, both by their own grounded metal housing and by the fact that every single non-coaxial wire going into the thing goes through at least a bypass capacitor, if not the cap and a ferrite bead, before it ever hits its destination.
Well, if you're so smart, you've porbably also seen that gosh golly gee, those avionics are quite often attached to (gasp!) antennas for picking up (gasp!) radio transmissions.
Pilots are cautious for a reason- the FCC's testing of devices is not sufficient for close-range use with avionics. My father(a pilot, small single engine planes) explained it quite simply. He have no idea if a laptop will cause any of the avionics to malfunction. Maybe it doesn't...but say maybe it causes the VHF direction finder to go a little askew. After an couple hour's flight time, you find yourself way off course. Given that planes just can't pull over to gas up, getting off-course can be a major problem.
Show me independently-verified lab results that a CD player (or anything else in the cellphone or PDA category) can freak out fully functional and properly installed avionics, and I will cheerfully STFU
Oh, I see, devices "will not cause interference unless proven otherwise"? Unlike our legal system, everything that goes into a plane has to PROVE it meets FAA standards. We don't just throw shit into an airplane's equipment 'roster' and then wait for some "independent lab" to test them.
The problem is three-fold: a)you have no idea what's going to come onto the plane. There are hundreds of thousands of different electronic devices. b)you have no idea what avionics systems are in the plane c)you have no idea how the device will get used(and RF emissions from a laptop alone can vary on processor/ram activity, screen brightness, peripheral activity...) d)nobody has done even basic studies to see what general kinds of equipment cause interference.
Yeah, and anyone who takes their under-warranty low power, fuel efficient car and replaces the radiator with an unapproved aftermarket part, and replaces the coolant with something that doesn't meet manufacturer requirements, probably won't get warranty service, either!
Actually, your example is true. Japanese automakers will not warranty engines that have had silicate-based antifreeze put in them. German cars typically don't allow phosphate-based coolant.
Why? Because silicates cause increased wear on moving parts, like water pumps. Water pumps are very often driven by the timing belt. When the water pump seizes, it usually shreds the belt in a matter of seconds, and if the engine is an interference type(ie, the path of pistons and valves overlap, but never hit because of the timing), then you'll bend/snap valves, or worse.
Phosphates don't react well to water with mineral content(US coolant makers claim it's only a european-water problem, that the US doesn't have "high mineral content" in its water, which is bullshit), aren't friendly with aluminum engine components/radiators, and like silicates, they work by coating all the metal with the stuff(on the theory that, if a metal that can rust is covered by phosphates or silicates, it won't rust.)
I use the proper coolant that was recommended by my car's manufacturer- it's german-made, and doesn't contain either phosphates or silicates. I've actually seen better operation(less noise from the water pump, for one) since I switched.
The reality is that if you substitute coolants, and your engine overheats because of it- you're shit out of luck. That said, the manufacturer has to prove(to a certain extent) that your coolant switch caused the problem(which could be as simple as "see this pump? It seized because you used crap coolant.") Auto manufacturers can't just declare the whole vehicle's warranty invalid because, say, you install a non-OEM air filter.
Maybe it's just me, but computer manufacturers have clung to the "open the case, void the warranty" bullshit. Some invalidate the warranty because you installed, say, a network or faxmodem card. That's bull- just like auto companies, they should be forced to prove the non-OEM component caused the failure.
Artists like Brittney, who have 1 hit and then poop out 12 extra tracks to fill a 11$ CD, will now only get 1$ income.
Yes- but how many more teenage girls are going to buy that $1 song, since, after all, it's only $1? Go read a basic economics book.
Don't forget that US children are a HUGE market, but one that's not very easy to access- they often need someone to cart 'em around, they don't have credit cards, etc. If Apple wants to be really slick, they'll figure out a way to let parents drop some money into a.Mac account, ie prepaid; that way, mom/dad don't have to worry about Jenny draining their savings going nuts with iTunes' store.
If made-up artists want to sell as much as they do now, the overall quality will have to increase
Overall quality will have to increase, but not for the reason you cite. Now that little Jenny doesn't blow her entire allowance on one CD, she can afford to(gasp!) check out other artists, and be a fan of more than just one person/group. "Cost of entry" for a new artist or style of music is very cheap.
Record companies never really figured it out- by making CDs so expensive, they locked kids into one musician/group, and when that group goes into the trashcan popularity-wise...the record company has to come up with something new really quick.
I think a big reason file-swapping was/is popular has to do with people wanting to check out new music. Now they get previews on almost any song they want(try before you buy, major argument behind P2P music swapping) and they can only buy what they want.
I can't believe your comment got modded 4/insightful...there should be a new mod category, "knee-jerk-reaction". Your premise was right, but the reasoning was pretty weak.
Seems like the Jedi faith is making significant headway in the USA
The "Jedi faith"...
(pardon while I recover from my laughing fit)
...could probably gain some credibility and new members if they cloned a couple kids. New membership would come, of course, mostly from the cloning, since I doubt "Jedi faith" members reproduce, and not due to "spiritual beliefs".
On the plus side, we'd also finally have real legislation against cloning, mighty fast!
How do you know her email address was even sold? Ever have a Hotmail address? It doesn't come because it's sold, the spam comes because of the brute force spam attacks on it.
I know it's hard, but try and read through my entire post, and note this particular point I specifically mentioned:
"it had a very unusual account name(with numbers in it, too)- no dictionary atttack hit this one"
Next time, read the entire comment, okay? Shame on those of you who moderated him up; he didn't even bother to read the whole comment.
Slashdot Mirror
Hint- ask, next time. I don't care if it's editors or story submitters, if the site doesn't seem like it'll take it(ie, it's not a big-fish site), or if it's a nonprofit, ask first.
This ain't "news for nerds", it's "linkage with discussion", and it is pretty embarassing that slashdot STILL doesn't bother to do jack about the problem, simply hiding behind a few pathetic excuses in the FAQ about it being "too complex", whcih is complete bullshit; look at how complex the comment rating system is...but keeping a mirror in sync is rocket science? Hogwash! Robbing sites of statistics? Find me a site admin who would rather keep his/her 'statistics' than keep his/her site running. Absolute hogwash. Copyright? That's why you bloody well get off your editor's chair and ask them first.
The more truthful answer is, they(and OSDN) can't afford the bandwidth either- and have absolutely zero interest in spending any time dealing with the headaches they cause, probably because slashdot is so low-margin. I applaud the first person that sues for damages, because slashdot has acknowledged the problem(and its results), for one. It'd teach some livin-in-fairy-land nerds some hard-knocks-of-real-life lessons.
That's like saying "jumping off a cliff is not the most intelligent thing to do." NFS is easily the LEAST secure option of ANY filesharing system.
NFS is only appropriate on a 100% secured(physical and network-level) network. If anyone/someone can plug in, forget it. If anyone has root on ANY system or there are ANY non-unix systems, forget it. If ANY system is physically accessible and can be booted off, say, a CDROM, forget it. The only major security tool at your disposal is access by IP, which is pathetic. Oh, and you can block root access.
Even though you can block root access for some/all clients, it's still massively insecure, and this remains NFS's greatest problem. You have zero way of authenticating a system. NFS is like a store where you could walk in, pick up any item you wanted, and say "I'm Joe Shmoe, bill me for this!" and they'd say "Right-o!" without even looking at you. All systems with the right IPs are explicitly trusted, and their user/permissions setups are also explicitly trusted.
NFS is a pretty good performer, especially when tuned right and on a non-broken client(which linux is VERY far from.) However, its entire security model is in dire need of a complete overhaul. There needs to be a way to authenticate hosts, for one, more similar to WinNT's domain setup, which is actually incredibly intelligent(aside from the weak LANMAN encryption.) The administrative functionality in NFS can't compare to the features that have been available to MacOS and Windows administrators for over a decade, and it's purely embarassing.
Either that, or AFS/Coda need to get a lot more documentation and (for Coda)implementation fixes. The unix world desperately needs a good filesharing system...
How else do you hold an "AI robot" contest? Humans mucking about with the things is called cheating. If they get disabled or whatnot, of COURSE they should be left alone.
I hate robot/AI contests which are dumbed down- watch a robot 'soccer' match, and often you'll see volunteers putting robots back on the right course when they've boxed themselves into a corner and such...like the programmers/designers shouldn't have to be 'troubled' by such things as getting trapped by two walls, or all the contestants have such miserably designed/programmed robots that they fail left and right.. Everyone wants to work on the "chase the ball" routine, but nobody wants to work on the un-sexy, nuts-and-bolts, "keep from smacking the wall and staying there" routine.
In the real world, there are no magical hands that pick you up and flip you around and set you going with a pat on the CPU...and what every robotics person calls "simplifying the problem", I call "cheating". This constant cheating has led to a field which is incapable, still, of dealing with the simplest problems but can solve these wonderful complex ones. The result is a lot of electromechanical garbage that's simply unuseable in anything even remotely resembling the real world.
So this means DVD-R, DVD+R, Blue1DVD-R, Blue1DVD+R, Blue2DVD-R, Blue2DVD+R?
What exactly -is- the difference between +/-R, anyway? Same question for the two blue 'standards'?
It's a unified driver. Has been for a LONG time. Obviously the kernel hooks etc are different for Windows versus Linux, but the rest of the code is all the same. Claiming the "linux drivers are better" is clueless linux zealotry(sp?)
No, all 6.666666666666666666666 people.
I just read the article quickly- there's absolutely nothing about a UV light.
That is a regular FL bulb, and though the slashdot story seems to suggest/imply it, the light itself is not being used in any way/shape/form for data transmission/reception. This is simply "toss a small AP inside a tupperware bowl and add a FL light." Wow, what brilliance(pardon the pun.)
I see this as solving a problem that doesn't exist- it takes an electrician all of 15 minutes to add a plug off an existing junction box if you want the AP up high by your lights, and with 802.11g, you can cover an entire cafe from practically any wall socket in the place.
Continuing with the "truly a stupid idea" bit, FL tube bulbs like that get VERY hot(almost as hot as a regular bulb). Cooping one up in a tupperware bowl is a damn fine way to start a fire, or at least kill both components- probably the AP first; if it's electronics don't give out, the transformer's thermal fuse will(that's if it has one- many cheap transformers don't, and will happily melt down, short when the insultation melts, and start a fire.) The UL would die laughing at anyone who even tried to submit it for testing...
The Mplayer team is completely, totally, illegally distributing Quicktime(and WMP, and Real, and...) DLLs- no licenses, no nothin'. I'd be amazed if the licenses prohibited linking to the libraries, but I'd be willing to bet they do prohibit unauthorized(and especially the "partial, license-less" kind of unauthorized) distribution. I was NOT speaking of the xine team- go read the post again.
So it's okay to beat up the 'bad guys' like Apple and Microsoft, but get pissed when someone violates the slightest part of the GPL?
Says the PFY as he fires up MPlayer(having downloaded the illegally-distributed Windows DLLs from the mplayer authors) to watch The Matrix trailer. I seem to be saying this a lot on slashdot lately, but, get a grip!
Linux has half a percent of the desktop market. Apple, with MacOS, has something like 4-5%, I think? Maybe 8% tops? Why exactly -should- Apple give a hoot about Linux? They're not THAT big a company, and they're busy as hell(have you stopped to think about how many software products they now produce? OSX, OSX Server, Quicktime Streaming Server, Quicktime, iTunes, iPhoto, iMovie and Final Cut Pro, iDVD and DVD Studio Pro, iCal/iSync...the list is ENORMOUS.) They don't, quite frankly, have the time to screw around with, essentially, something that can't even be called "competition"(Apple's products have always represented the complete antithesis of Linux - coherence, ease of use, simplicity, elegance...)
I've owned Macs for years, and no-official-quicktime-or-wmp-player doesn't bother me. Why? Because there are clever(if sometimes annoying) people out there who figure out how to do it themselves. While Apple hasn't released a player, their normally vicious legal department has, by its lack of action, practically applauded mplayer for using the quicktime-for-windows DLLs. Apple's not gonna look a gift horse in the mouth, basically. They get their cake(quicktime support on linux for those who really want it) and they get to eat it too(nothing to develop, maintain, or even support). Besides, the DLLs are getting used the same way a Windows application would use them- about the only thing Apple could get the mplayer guys on would be distributing the DLLs alone and without license.
You say, "oh, but Apple just doesn't care enough". Apple cares about lots of little things, including people making themes that look like Aqua. Their legal department has no qualms about making a mountain out of a molehill if something displeases them(this is actually one of the things I hate about Apple the most- their legal department head is a total psycho-policy-bitch, completely the wrong thing for a cute-and-cuddly computer company. Lady, get a job at MS or something, you may be making a hit in the legal world, but you're pissing off thousands of Apple customers and techies with every move you make.)
Huh? The content isn't the point. It's the device serving it. So, unless those mirrors are runnin' on Sega Dreamcasts, the novelty is gone.
JHU used to have an ancient Mac IIcx(not even a IIci) running MacBSD, about the only thing it ever did(I think) was serve up a picture of the Cruise Basselope, which, for a slow-as-molassis MacBSD box, kinda makes for an appropriate mascot.
How appropriate- MI6's Agent 006 was a traitor.
I like my filesystems shaken up, not stirred.
Why is it always with the feminists that we find such blatant cluelessness and absolutely ZERO sense of humor?
Like the people who bitched about the NASA thing, get a grip! This is the group that put a breeder reactor on last year's list. They're JOKES, nobody seriously expects people to do a lot of the items; they're there for laughs. Go on. Read the damn list, it's hillarious.
Are you people still wondering why no women want to enter the fields of engineering or computer science? It's a hostile environment, plain and simple, and you assholes are the cause.
Isn't it funny how the people who bitch the loudest about stereotypes, never hesistate to use 'em themselves? Your statement is about as true as "all girls like frilly dresses, dolls, and playing dress-up, and hate math." You've just blanket-labelled the CS and engineering profession as male pigs.
Most CS/Engineering types I knew in college were practically -scared- of women, not beer-guzzling chauvenist pigs. They were some of the nicest, most intelligent, well-balanced people I knew, and a number of them were involved in long-term relationships with rather indepentent, intelligent women. Pick someone else to vent your "I hate the world" rage on, please.
PS, you're still using a written-by-male-pigs spell-check, otherwise your post would have spelled womyn correctly, right?
Why is it always with the feminists that we find such blatant cluelessness and absolutely ZERO sense of humor?
Like the people who bitched about the NASA thing, get a grip! This is the group that put a breeder reactor on last year's list. They're JOKES, nobody seriously expects people to do it. Go on. Read the damn list, it's hillarious.
Are you people still wondering why no women want to enter the fields of engineering or computer science? It's a hostile environment, plain and simple, and you assholes are the cause.
Isn't it funny how the people who bitch the loudest about stereotypes, never hesistate to use 'em themselves? Your statement is about as true as "all girls like frilly dresses, dolls, and playing dress-up, and hate math." I've also seen the same women who complain about men treating them like 'sex objects', oogle at a guy in tight jeans. Get a grip, it's called sexual attraction, and it's natural in BOTH sexes.
By the way, most CS/Engineering types I knew in college were -scared- of women, not beer-guzzling chauvenist pigs. They were some of the nicest, most intelligent, well-balanced people I knew. Pick someone else to vent your "I hate the world" rage on, please.
PS, you're still using a written-by-male-pigs spell-check, otherwise your post would have spelled womyn correctly!
Except that processors don't just give up the ship randomly(well, except in VERY rare circumstanecs)- drives do it all the time; it's almost expected. I don't give a crap about another 20GB or $20 off, I want a hard drive that won't turn itself into a paperweight after a year or two. If I'm going to own the drive for 5 years, what's another $20?
SMART was an improvement, but most OS's(linux included) don't even recognize SMART info out of the box. Even if you've got the SMART utilities installed and the kernel modules etc, /var/log/messages is so noisy, I mostly ignore it- same for Win2k boxes, Event Manager is full of TONS of crap(thank god it has filtering, but still...) If SMART were to be useful, the HD would beep at you, or blink its LED, or the OS would annoy you with popup messages so you knew, "oh shit, I gotta back up my stuff to somewhere else, NOW!"
I had an ancient 4GB Digital drive I got second-hand, in the early 90's; it was already several years old when I got my hands on it, so it was probably pre-90's. It weighed a ton, took up the full space of a 3.5" drive bay, and even had its own little suspension system. I abused that thing to hell and back, carrying it in bookbags, cooking it when the fan on the external case died...the whole nine yards. I think I low-level formatted it a dozen times(something you're not supposed to do often on SCSI drives, supposedly). It only finally gave up the ship around '99, when it spent a couple months cooking itself to death hooked up "temporarily" to a machine I forgot about.
Meanwhile, I've lost two quantum drives(one laptop, one Ultra2 3.5") and my athlon's Maxtor drive is making funny noises every once in a while. None of them were more than 2, 3 years old TOPS. WTF? The excuse seems to be that consumers don't need the reliability corporate users 'demand'.
Home users users have, at the very least, equal needs as business users, because while businesses need to keep going 24x7, they often have backups, clusters, RAID units, etc. Most home users don't have any of their data backed up, RAID is practically unheard of among the jane-and-bob computer users, and of course no clustering.
Theoretically, especially on a turbocharged vehicle, it's very easy- too much boost and the engine won't take the strain. On normally aspirated engines, it's tougher, but not impossible- engines don't like to be run lean, for example; you can burn exhaust valves.
In practice, engines grenade from(in order) a)human stupidity(ignoring the apporpiately named "idiot lights") and b)component failure- either sensor, actuator, or regular old mechanical devices.
The ECU itself rarely, if ever, fails, unless it was very poorly designed. As for the ECUs going nuts, the favorite example is the Audi 5000, except that it was pedal placement(Audis had pedals in -slightly- different positions from US cars) and stupid users(hitting the wrong pedal), not the ECU(which was one of the first to feature a computer-controlled idle, and hence attracted the wrath of countless luddites who predicted death+destruction, and then screamed "told you so!" when it turned out to be something else entirely.)
...but I have ONE choice in cable, and last I checked, DSL wasn't being sold in my area by Bell- they don't offer DSL anywhere there's cablemodem access, because(gasp!) they don't want to compete. I think they may have started offering DSL now(they CO has been wired for DSL for many, many years), but the prices are absurd and there's a 96kbit upload cap. Yes, you read right, 96kbit! How am I supposed to upload cute photos to grandma, or "my files" they've always got some business-person-type harking about, for work, at 96kbit?
In lower/mid-westchester 2 years ago, I had 1.5mbit/768 for about $70/mo, and my choice of providers(I went with Speakeasy and paid a little more per month.) I was quite far from NYC, and Westchester doesn't have nearly the technology industry that most of eastern MA has.
Yeah, cause, you know, those MacRumors guys are real grounded. Fact is, almost the entire crowd of Macintosh rumormongers NEVER get it right. There's usually the slimmest glimmer of commonality between what they claim, and what actually happens.
Remember the "definative" pictures of a new "Apple PDA", supposedly sitting on someone's desk at Apple, that turned out to be a complete hoax? Apple buying up a music company? The list goes on. These guys take a sniff of one little piece of info(like, maybe Apple execs meeting with music industry execs) and spin it into the most preposterous fiction(Apple buying a dying music company, supposedly for its wares). Instead of looking at their track record, everyone just keeps paying attention to them...which is stupid, because their dreaming is always more grand than the rabbit Steve pulls out of the top hat.
Fact is, the AMD rumors were the result of a numbskull who decided to get some free publicity through lying-by-omission-of-detail(summary: "Are you talking to Apple?" "We'll have to get back to you on whether we are allowed to talk about how we're talking to Apple.")
I have no interest in watching a fat, stupid, Marilyn-wannabe parade around whining, wasting away her dead sugardaddy's money...but you don't see me bitchin' about getting E!, now do you? I hate rap/hip-hop/most of the crap on MTV. The Home Channel bores me to death. Travel channel- eh. The ABC/Disney "family" channels make me want to puke within 5 seconds of accidentally switching to them. Don't get me started about the tractor pulls and Shooter's World on OLN.
That's why smart people invented a feature that lets you delete/add channels from your TV's set of channels it scans through when you hit up/down.
That's also why you pay specificially for some channels(gasp! What a concept!) If you don't want the Anime channel, then don't bubmit your zip code, don't effin' buy it...and if it comes with the standard package(highly unlikely), deprogram it from your TV...kay?
Duuuh. That's because nobody selling something legitimate wants the negative side effects of spam- mainly, the disgust it causes. Hell hath no fury like a consumer who's just been spammed for a product; they'll probably, even out of spite, go for your competition, if they just so happen to be in the market for your item. Remember those stupid little remote control cars? They learned the hard way that spam didn't work; retailers reported a backlash from the spam, people coming up to them and chewing out -the store employees- for the spam other resellers were sending.
You know, I'm completely fed up with shit getting dressed up as art. Paint thrown at a canvas- it's just paint, thrown at a canvas. A bathroom sink, dragged out of a dump, is just a effin' sink, dragged out of a dump. I've seen both gussied up as "art", and it's not- it's a no-good, washed out artist, who couldn't think up something creative, got desperate to put the meal on the table...so they went "random", and dressed it up as creative; someone was stupid enough to fall for it(or they're hero-worshipping), and everyone else outright pretends, or convinces themselves to see something in it, all because they don't want to feel stupid. Random is not creative. Random is not unique, in the sense of unique = valuable; it's just unique.
Streaming the entire works of Shakespear as barcodes is just streaming the text of a book as a barcode. It has no creativity; it adds nothing to the original work; it serves no purpose; it cannot be appreciated or celebrated, and there would be no difference between using Shakespear or the latest copy of TPenthouse, as far as any observer could tell.
Well, if you're so smart, you've porbably also seen that gosh golly gee, those avionics are quite often attached to (gasp!) antennas for picking up (gasp!) radio transmissions.
Pilots are cautious for a reason- the FCC's testing of devices is not sufficient for close-range use with avionics. My father(a pilot, small single engine planes) explained it quite simply. He have no idea if a laptop will cause any of the avionics to malfunction. Maybe it doesn't...but say maybe it causes the VHF direction finder to go a little askew. After an couple hour's flight time, you find yourself way off course. Given that planes just can't pull over to gas up, getting off-course can be a major problem.
Show me independently-verified lab results that a CD player (or anything else in the cellphone or PDA category) can freak out fully functional and properly installed avionics, and I will cheerfully STFU
Oh, I see, devices "will not cause interference unless proven otherwise"? Unlike our legal system, everything that goes into a plane has to PROVE it meets FAA standards. We don't just throw shit into an airplane's equipment 'roster' and then wait for some "independent lab" to test them.
The problem is three-fold: a)you have no idea what's going to come onto the plane. There are hundreds of thousands of different electronic devices. b)you have no idea what avionics systems are in the plane c)you have no idea how the device will get used(and RF emissions from a laptop alone can vary on processor/ram activity, screen brightness, peripheral activity...) d)nobody has done even basic studies to see what general kinds of equipment cause interference.
Actually, your example is true. Japanese automakers will not warranty engines that have had silicate-based antifreeze put in them. German cars typically don't allow phosphate-based coolant.
Why? Because silicates cause increased wear on moving parts, like water pumps. Water pumps are very often driven by the timing belt. When the water pump seizes, it usually shreds the belt in a matter of seconds, and if the engine is an interference type(ie, the path of pistons and valves overlap, but never hit because of the timing), then you'll bend/snap valves, or worse.
Phosphates don't react well to water with mineral content(US coolant makers claim it's only a european-water problem, that the US doesn't have "high mineral content" in its water, which is bullshit), aren't friendly with aluminum engine components/radiators, and like silicates, they work by coating all the metal with the stuff(on the theory that, if a metal that can rust is covered by phosphates or silicates, it won't rust.)
I use the proper coolant that was recommended by my car's manufacturer- it's german-made, and doesn't contain either phosphates or silicates. I've actually seen better operation(less noise from the water pump, for one) since I switched.
The reality is that if you substitute coolants, and your engine overheats because of it- you're shit out of luck. That said, the manufacturer has to prove(to a certain extent) that your coolant switch caused the problem(which could be as simple as "see this pump? It seized because you used crap coolant.") Auto manufacturers can't just declare the whole vehicle's warranty invalid because, say, you install a non-OEM air filter.
Maybe it's just me, but computer manufacturers have clung to the "open the case, void the warranty" bullshit. Some invalidate the warranty because you installed, say, a network or faxmodem card. That's bull- just like auto companies, they should be forced to prove the non-OEM component caused the failure.
Yes- but how many more teenage girls are going to buy that $1 song, since, after all, it's only $1? Go read a basic economics book.
Don't forget that US children are a HUGE market, but one that's not very easy to access- they often need someone to cart 'em around, they don't have credit cards, etc. If Apple wants to be really slick, they'll figure out a way to let parents drop some money into a .Mac account, ie prepaid; that way, mom/dad don't have to worry about Jenny draining their savings going nuts with iTunes' store.
If made-up artists want to sell as much as they do now, the overall quality will have to increase
Overall quality will have to increase, but not for the reason you cite. Now that little Jenny doesn't blow her entire allowance on one CD, she can afford to(gasp!) check out other artists, and be a fan of more than just one person/group. "Cost of entry" for a new artist or style of music is very cheap.
Record companies never really figured it out- by making CDs so expensive, they locked kids into one musician/group, and when that group goes into the trashcan popularity-wise...the record company has to come up with something new really quick.
I think a big reason file-swapping was/is popular has to do with people wanting to check out new music. Now they get previews on almost any song they want(try before you buy, major argument behind P2P music swapping) and they can only buy what they want.
I can't believe your comment got modded 4/insightful...there should be a new mod category, "knee-jerk-reaction". Your premise was right, but the reasoning was pretty weak.
The "Jedi faith"...
(pardon while I recover from my laughing fit)
...could probably gain some credibility and new members if they cloned a couple kids. New membership would come, of course, mostly from the cloning, since I doubt "Jedi faith" members reproduce, and not due to "spiritual beliefs".
On the plus side, we'd also finally have real legislation against cloning, mighty fast!
I know it's hard, but try and read through my entire post, and note this particular point I specifically mentioned:
"it had a very unusual account name(with numbers in it, too)- no dictionary atttack hit this one"
Next time, read the entire comment, okay? Shame on those of you who moderated him up; he didn't even bother to read the whole comment.