Einstein once wondered aloud whether "God had any choice" in creating the universe.In principle, strings can unite all the forces of nature, including gravity, in a single mathematical framework.
So what happens when God messes up on bounds checking, or memory allocation for strings?
Segmentation fault. Asteroid dumped *shudder*.
I guess we're lucky He decided to steer clear of pointers.
-- that would explain why the details of the world are the way they are and cannot be any other way
The answer is painfully obvious to those of us who have taken the red pill...or seen the Matrix.
Unfortunately no one can be told what the matrix is, you have to see it for yourself. It is the world that has been pulled over your eyes to blind you from the truth.
The world is the way it is, because you are made to think that it is the way it is.
Taxation has been used in the past to act as a deterrant against use (or abuse) of certain resources. Take alcohol, for instance, prohibitive prices will help reduce overall consumption of alcohol. But is that really the right solution? It may actually have a -ve impact....it may drive an alcoholic to stealing/etc to pay for his poison.
Moreover, tax on alcohol affects only those who (ab)use it. The tax on LANs ass the asholes in Florida propose would affect legitimate users as well as spammers, and other abusers. Why should people who use the resources wisely be taxed because of abusing actions of others.
Gianluca Insolvibile writes "I plead guilty: I have always admired Microsoft's COM architecture and the relative simplicity that allows you to reuse already installed components to create even complex programs. And I have always been fascinated by the distributed nature of DCOM.
Before making any knee-jerk comments regarding the post, take a moment to ponder over these pearls of wisdom from none other than the great Morpheus, which are very relevant in this context. Take heed and realize that the poster is but part of the system. Forgive him.
"Microsoft Windows is a system, Neo. That system is our enemy. But when you're inside, you look around and what do you see? Businessmen, Teachers, Lawyers, Carpenters...the very minds of the people we're trying to save. But until we do, these people are still a part of that system, and that makes them our enemy. You have to understand, most of these people are not ready to be unplugged from Windows. And many of them are so innerred, so hopelessly dependent on the system that they will that they will fight to protect it. Are you listening to me, Neo? Or were you laughing at the stupid MSN fairy again?"
"Universities have become much more open to corporate donations even when they have strings attached, and they are less likely today to assess the long-term impact of these donations on academic freedom,"
I think corporation donations are a boon to colleges. True, they may have strings attached, and in most cases they do, but the school also benefits from them. At a major engineering school at which I study, we have dedicated Intel and Apple labs, which were built using academic donations from the respective companies.
Just because we got a new Mac lab does not mean, the department did away with the UNIX machines. A new lab was built to accomodate the new machines, and as a result, students ended up with *more* choice and Freedom to choose the OS of their liking.
Setting up UNIX labs does not require a big investment from schools.Infact, any open source software can be set up without any major monetary investment.It's the proprietary software (Matlab for example) which costs a lot of money. If companies donate hardware and software required to run their proprietary software, they may be promoting their product, but the students surely end up with more freedom to choose the software they like, as long as the department is sensible about it, and not merely being sold out to the corporation.
Two things that annoy me are filling the gas tank and changing light bulbs. It's time we did alot less of both.
Another thing I find annoying is white light. I am sick and tired of white light. Who the heck needs white light at night. About 12 hours of white light a day is more than enough for me.
I, for one, would find the red/green light emitted by LEDs a welcome change.
This is a device that I've been playing with/testing - our sister (Yes, Virginia, they are owned by OSDN) site Thinkgeek sells them. Pretty cool device - reminds me of a XBox Media Player in terms of function, but with less soldering, and a keyboard. I'll be trying the Linux backend server - that would solve one of my major complaints, which is that the media server currently is Windows-only.
*clap *clap* -- Another wonderful, gramatically correct, hyphen/(parenthesis)-laden sentence from a/. (slashdot (Thinkgeek's sister site)) editor. I, (for one--ofcourse), thought he was talking about playing with his sister (or something )--but that was before before I managed to read it through.
Drink it. After a few moments you will begin to think that the place you've come to isn't maybe quite so strange and crazy after all.
This is a well known phenomenon. It usually happens to me during the first 15-20 mins of smoking pot or the like. The trick is to relax and fight off the paranoia. A beer or two helps at this stage, or smoke another joint or two.
After a while you're so baked that not only do you not find your new state of mind strange and crazy, but actually enjoy it for the rest of your trip. I could post a recipe for a really good joint here, but maybe I'll be able to submit a story about it next Sunday, when news is slow to come by on/.
I started working recently, and after 3 years in school, I'm suffering from pretty severe IM withdrawal symptoms. At school, I used to be up on Yahoo Messenger 24/7.
Ofcourse, Yahoo Messenger has some decent Unix versions, and also a rudimentary Java one. But I haven't been able to get any of them running on my Solaris box. They have a link for a non-root solaris installation, but it requires libgtk, which I've been unable to get running.
The Java messenger crashes everytime I receive a new message. Ofcourse I've heard of Trillian and other cross-service messengers, but I'm not sure I will be able to install them without root privelages,
Probably offtopic, but any help will be appreciated.
Let's face it. The root of the problem is that electricity isn't wireless. Consider the enormous infrastructure that goes into transmitting electrical energy over long distances.
Requiring a physical medium for electricity to travel on is also prone to failures along the medium. Take the oft discussed recent blackout for example, which for all you know was a result of overloaded circuits....circuits comprised of physical conductors.
Consider wireless electricity, assuming it's a feasible idea: This article seems to think it is. I also recall an earlier/. article about it. Wireless electricity would not only help remove ugly transmission wires, and make it easy to deliver, but may also boost reliability.
And then ofcourse, there's the Electricity over IP RFC which could be adapted to wireless networks.
I submitted a related story about another article on CNN today.
Apparently, Leonard Adleman of the University of Southern California used his DNA based computer to solve the travelling salesman problem by exploiting the predictability of how DNA interacts. "Adleman used his computer to solve the classic "traveling salesman" mathematical problem -- how a salesman can visit a given number of cities without passing through any city twice -- by exploiting the predictability of how DNA interacts. Adleman assigned each of seven cities a different strip of DNA, 20 molecules long, then dropped them into a stew of millions of more strips of DNA that naturally bonded with the "cities." That generated thousands of random paths, in much the same way that a computer can sift through random numbers to break a code. From this hodgepodge of connected DNA, Adleman eventually extracted a satisfactory solution -- a strand that led directly from the first city to the last, without retracing any steps. DNA computing was born".
Apparently, a single gram of DNA can store as much information as a trillion CDs.
Meantime, Fisher said many colleagues on the Anne Arundel County police force have found their own solution: They carry cell phones in case their radios go dead.
I would've thought emergency services always had some backup mechanisms in place to get back to the station in case of emergency.
Heck, I even thought the dash-cam that police cars are all supposed to have also relayed video back to a surveillance team back at HQ. Apparently it is not so. With risky, unpredictable work like emergency services at hand, I for one, am surprised they thought of fallback procedures only now.
I know transmitting live video from the surveillance cams is difficult, and multiple backup contact mechanisms would be expensive (cellphones, satellite phones et al), but then, I thought these guys would be the ones who deserve it most of all.
Each patient is equipped with a PDA-type electrocardiogram (ECG) monitoring device connected by a short-range wireless system to electrodes on his chest. Data is sent to his doctor via a built-in cell phone/ chip.
Can you hear my heart beat now *dub* *dub*
Can you hear it now. *dub* *dub*
Can you hear it now. *silence*... OH MY GOD THEY KILLED KENNY
YOU BAS...Naah, just lost the signal there for a while.
Li Xue, a spokeswoman for Kingsoft, told Reuters the government bought 50,000 copies of WPS software in 2002, but declined to give a value for the purchase.
Li Nux, a spokesperson for Kingsoft told Reuters the government bought 50,000 copies of WPS software in 2002, but declined to give a value for the purchase.
I propose she change her last name to Nux, good for business. But in the long haul, Nix may be better....more names to choose from for the kids: Sco Yu Nix come here, you deserve a good spanking for that you naughty boy..take that *slap**slap*.
Using an ordinary online search engine and a random selection of keywords, Byers was able to find more than 100,000 Word documents including business documents and individual resumes.
No really, what IS the big deal? So supposedly, he did an online search, and did some text-extraction from Word docs, which Google helpfully does for you anyway, and came up with some "secrets" which were published online anyway, thus contradicting the term itself. Google also indexes PDF, DOC, PPT and many other formats anyway.
Moreover, if the information was indexed, it was either put online intentionally (either because it wasn't secret data, or out of malicious intent), or unintentionally. The latter case was probably because of poor sysadmining/webmastering, which isn't a big secret anyway.
Sorry for the sorry rant, but it's yet another friday evening with nothing to do.
Computing is more important than any other part of our work. If we don't do this, people simply
won't be willing--or able--to take advantage of all the other great work we do.
Breathing is more important to us than any other activity. If we don't breathe, we will die.
Students therefore should not assume that their college or university will accept liability for them or provide them with legal representation.
I've been thinkin' abuut droping out of colege for the past 9 ears. This really doez it, and I mean REALLY. I hereby quit school in furm protest against RAA, DMCA, and all that stuff. *hic*
I don't know if he really did something wrong...but Taliban!=Al Queda. The US supplied arms to the Taliban too, against the Soviets: See this article. He may or may not be wrong, but I just wish all the people around would stop their kneejerk/racist comments
[snip]
During the Cold War in the 1980s, billions in weaponry and military training was funneled by the CIA, through Pakistan, to the Afghans fighting against the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan.
Out of that CIA-backed resistance emerged the Taliban, which today controls most of Afghanistan and the sprawling terrorist enterprise controlled by Osama bin Laden, whom the Taliban is believed to be harboring.
[/snip]
RFC2549 a suitable alternative?
on
Replacing SMTP?
·
· Score: 1, Funny
With all the loopholes in the current SMTP specification,is it possible for the Slashdot collective to come up with another one?
To start with, I would suggest a detailed look at RFC 2549.
The Standard for the Transmission of IP Datagrams on Avian Carriers described therein is fairly broad and could prove a feasible alternative to current email delivery mechanisms, specifically SMTP.
The reason I think it hasn't taken off since 1999 is that it proposes to completely replace IPv4 (like IPv6). Maybe it would be easier to first phaseout SMTP over IPv4 for now, rather than the whole IP layer.
Slashdot Mirror
So what happens when God messes up on bounds checking, or memory allocation for strings?
Segmentation fault. Asteroid dumped *shudder*.
I guess we're lucky He decided to steer clear of pointers.
The answer is painfully obvious to those of us who have taken the red pill...or seen the Matrix.
Unfortunately no one can be told what the matrix is, you have to see it for yourself. It is the world that has been pulled over your eyes to blind you from the truth.
The world is the way it is, because you are made to think that it is the way it is.
Moreover, tax on alcohol affects only those who (ab)use it. The tax on LANs ass the asholes in Florida propose would affect legitimate users as well as spammers, and other abusers. Why should people who use the resources wisely be taxed because of abusing actions of others.
Just my $0.02 worth in LAN taxes.
His server certainly died sooner that I expected.
Before making any knee-jerk comments regarding the post, take a moment to ponder over these pearls of wisdom from none other than the great Morpheus, which are very relevant in this context. Take heed and realize that the poster is but part of the system. Forgive him.
"Microsoft Windows is a system, Neo. That system is our enemy. But when you're inside, you look around and what do you see? Businessmen, Teachers, Lawyers, Carpenters...the very minds of the people we're trying to save. But until we do, these people are still a part of that system, and that makes them our enemy. You have to understand, most of these people are not ready to be unplugged from Windows. And many of them are so innerred, so hopelessly dependent on the system that they will that they will fight to protect it. Are you listening to me, Neo? Or were you laughing at the stupid MSN fairy again?"
Displaying documents 1-20 of total 2825 found.
1. SCO | Company | History of SCO
Plans for the next weekly Pot-Party
Displaying documents 1-20 of total 2951 found.
We think we rock big time
Displaying documents 1-20 of total 1116 found.
nya nya nya nya take that suckers
Displaying documents 1-20 of total 1586 found.
Why shit and waste it when you can burp and taste it.
I think corporation donations are a boon to colleges. True, they may have strings attached, and in most cases they do, but the school also benefits from them. At a major engineering school at which I study, we have dedicated Intel and Apple labs, which were built using academic donations from the respective companies.
Just because we got a new Mac lab does not mean, the department did away with the UNIX machines. A new lab was built to accomodate the new machines, and as a result, students ended up with *more* choice and Freedom to choose the OS of their liking.
Setting up UNIX labs does not require a big investment from schools.Infact, any open source software can be set up without any major monetary investment.It's the proprietary software (Matlab for example) which costs a lot of money. If companies donate hardware and software required to run their proprietary software, they may be promoting their product, but the students surely end up with more freedom to choose the software they like, as long as the department is sensible about it, and not merely being sold out to the corporation.
Stream : SoBIG.main : /. poll)
Revision : 6.0
Code to be released : Pending Approval
Target Release Date : Sept 9, 2003
Proposed fixes
1. Enhance subject line generator.
(Incorporate statistics from
2. Enhance performance.
3. Incorporate "increase penis length" email.
4. Fix critical product change requests
5. Add string confirming soBIG refers to
average penis size of development team.
Another thing I find annoying is white light. I am sick and tired of white light. Who the heck needs white light at night. About 12 hours of white light a day is more than enough for me.
I, for one, would find the red/green light emitted by LEDs a welcome change.
*clap *clap* -- Another wonderful, gramatically correct, hyphen/(parenthesis)-laden sentence from a /. (slashdot (Thinkgeek's sister site)) editor. I, (for one--ofcourse), thought he was talking about playing with his sister (or something )--but that was before before I managed to read it through.
Yes with a probability of 0.5 No with a probability of 0.5
This is a well known phenomenon. It usually happens to me during the first 15-20 mins of smoking pot or the like. The trick is to relax and fight off the paranoia. A beer or two helps at this stage, or smoke another joint or two.
After a while you're so baked that not only do you not find your new state of mind strange and crazy, but actually enjoy it for the rest of your trip. I could post a recipe for a really good joint here, but maybe I'll be able to submit a story about it next Sunday, when news is slow to come by on /.
I started working recently, and after 3 years in school, I'm suffering from pretty severe IM withdrawal symptoms. At school, I used to be up on Yahoo Messenger 24/7.
Ofcourse, Yahoo Messenger has some decent Unix versions, and also a rudimentary Java one. But I haven't been able to get any of them running on my Solaris box. They have a link for a non-root solaris installation, but it requires libgtk, which I've been unable to get running.
The Java messenger crashes everytime I receive a new message. Ofcourse I've heard of Trillian and other cross-service messengers, but I'm not sure I will be able to install them without root privelages,
Probably offtopic, but any help will be appreciated.
From a grateful IM addict.
Requiring a physical medium for electricity to travel on is also prone to failures along the medium. Take the oft discussed recent blackout for example, which for all you know was a result of overloaded circuits....circuits comprised of physical conductors.
Consider wireless electricity, assuming it's a feasible idea: This article seems to think it is. I also recall an earlier /. article about it. Wireless electricity would not only help remove ugly transmission wires, and make it easy to deliver, but may also boost reliability.
And then ofcourse, there's the Electricity over IP RFC which could be adapted to wireless networks.
Apparently, Leonard Adleman of the University of Southern California used his DNA based computer to solve the travelling salesman problem by exploiting the predictability of how DNA interacts. "Adleman used his computer to solve the classic "traveling salesman" mathematical problem -- how a salesman can visit a given number of cities without passing through any city twice -- by exploiting the predictability of how DNA interacts. Adleman assigned each of seven cities a different strip of DNA, 20 molecules long, then dropped them into a stew of millions of more strips of DNA that naturally bonded with the "cities." That generated thousands of random paths, in much the same way that a computer can sift through random numbers to break a code. From this hodgepodge of connected DNA, Adleman eventually extracted a satisfactory solution -- a strand that led directly from the first city to the last, without retracing any steps. DNA computing was born".
Apparently, a single gram of DNA can store as much information as a trillion CDs.
I would've thought emergency services always had some backup mechanisms in place to get back to the station in case of emergency.
Heck, I even thought the dash-cam that police cars are all supposed to have also relayed video back to a surveillance team back at HQ. Apparently it is not so. With risky, unpredictable work like emergency services at hand, I for one, am surprised they thought of fallback procedures only now.
I know transmitting live video from the surveillance cams is difficult, and multiple backup contact mechanisms would be expensive (cellphones, satellite phones et al), but then, I thought these guys would be the ones who deserve it most of all.
Can you hear my heart beat now *dub* *dub*
Can you hear it now. *dub* *dub*
Can you hear it now. *silence*... OH MY GOD THEY KILLED KENNY
YOU BAS...Naah, just lost the signal there for a while.
Li Nux, a spokesperson for Kingsoft told Reuters the government bought 50,000 copies of WPS software in 2002, but declined to give a value for the purchase.
I propose she change her last name to Nux, good for business. But in the long haul, Nix may be better....more names to choose from for the kids: Sco Yu Nix come here, you deserve a good spanking for that you naughty boy..take that *slap**slap*.
No really, what IS the big deal? So supposedly, he did an online search, and did some text-extraction from Word docs, which Google helpfully does for you anyway, and came up with some "secrets" which were published online anyway, thus contradicting the term itself. Google also indexes PDF, DOC, PPT and many other formats anyway.
Moreover, if the information was indexed, it was either put online intentionally (either because it wasn't secret data, or out of malicious intent), or unintentionally. The latter case was probably because of poor sysadmining/webmastering, which isn't a big secret anyway.
Sorry for the sorry rant, but it's yet another friday evening with nothing to do.
Breathing is more important to us than any other activity. If we don't breathe, we will die.
Is that a Sony Clie in your pocket, or aren't you really happy to see me?
I'd rather go in for something heavier and bulkier when chicks're around.
Three Snort Books Reviewed
More /. headlines
Microsoft code at fault for half of all Windows Crashes. Bill Gates at an all time high.
Darl McBride OD's on pot, lands in hospital.
I've been thinkin' abuut droping out of colege for the past 9 ears. This really doez it, and I mean REALLY. I hereby quit school in furm protest against RAA, DMCA, and all that stuff.
*hic*
[snip]
During the Cold War in the 1980s, billions in weaponry and military training was funneled by the CIA, through Pakistan, to the Afghans fighting against the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan.
Out of that CIA-backed resistance emerged the Taliban, which today controls most of Afghanistan and the sprawling terrorist enterprise controlled by Osama bin Laden, whom the Taliban is believed to be harboring.
[/snip]
With all the loopholes in the current SMTP specification,is it possible for the Slashdot collective to come up with another one?
To start with, I would suggest a detailed look at RFC 2549.
The Standard for the Transmission of IP Datagrams on Avian Carriers described therein is fairly broad and could prove a feasible alternative to current email delivery mechanisms, specifically SMTP.
The reason I think it hasn't taken off since 1999 is that it proposes to completely replace IPv4 (like IPv6). Maybe it would be easier to first phaseout SMTP over IPv4 for now, rather than the whole IP layer.