btw, I've read the other comments, and most of the others suggested (especially cuckoo's egg, and hackers) should be read first, but The Hacker Crackdown is also an interesting historical examination of a short period and is available free online. Just make sure you read hackers and the cuckoo's egg first:)
Are saying that Gore *did* win but you have no problem with GWB being president? Are you mad?
Gore did not win. But he received the most votes (after an unofficial recount by news organizations). The recount, however, took around 8 months and had no guarantee of being unbiased or accurate.
The winner was decided by the number of votes that stood after several recounts. The democrats wanted a recount of several (heavily democrat) counties, republicans took 'em to court saying it was unconstitutional, supreme court agreed, and Gore basically ran out of time. He conceded. He realized that it would be better for the country to concede than hold the country in suspense for another four months.
At any rate, it was really a technological problem, not a fundamental problem with our democracy. We are going to great lengths to fix our technology before the next elections:)
Please repeat this, its stunning
Americans very much consider this a war. It is not unusual to consider assassination of foreign officials during times of war. Saddam tried on bush. We've had prohibitions on it that the CIA occasionally violates. There's been consideration of lifting the prohibition.
hereby propose Bill SN101; "Americans Shot on Sight Act" for first reading.
Legal precedent holds in the U.S. that the rights specified in the Constitution sometimes do not apply to non-citizens, _especially_ when they are actually in a foreign country. For example, the FBI recently hacked into a russian computer to gather evidence before they had a warrant. That would get the case thrown out in the U.S., but the judge ruled it was ok because the computer and operator had no constitutional protections in russia. When the data was brought back, a warrant was needed to look at it, because it was in the U.S.
What are you talking about? You cannot simply walk away from treaties?
Who is this great empire of war-mongering foreigners you are trying to 'defend' yourself against?
Because many countries that sponsor terrorists may have cbrn capabilities and will probably have missiles that reach the U.S. in 10 or 20 years. Normal deterrence (MAD) does not work for many of these nations, because Saddam Hussein, for example, does not seem to care if we kill all of his citizens. It would save him a lot of work. Upholding treaties kind of pales in comparison to the thought of that.
(p.s. : cbrn is chemical-biological-radiological-nuclear, MAD is mutual assured destruction)
in a democratic country that no longer bothers to count the votes
The problem wasn't that the votes were not counted. The problem was that they were counted over, and over, and over again. Even if the supreme court had allowed a several county recount bush still would have won. If the democrats had asked for an entire state recount and got it (which seemed like a bad idea at the time) Gore would have won. However, when it's so close, it's more important that somebody win sooner rather the right person 6 months after the election.
is planing to do away with
trials, replacing them by tribunals.
Heh, but not for U.S. citizens. Only for alleged terrorists in a certain situation. Since 90% of americans probably think shooting them on sight is our the idea, a trial at all is pretty good.
Meanwhile the Bush admin. has declared that it will unilaterally withdraw from any agreements it finds to be inconvenient
First of all, the bush administration seems less likely to do this now that international support is more necessary for the war in afghanistan. Secondly, no countries ever follow treaties if it doesn't suit them. If any other country had the money lying around to develop an ABM system you bet your asteroids they would (except maybe switzerland).
I actually think that another system is a good idea, because american GPS systems are such a great military target, and redundancy is good. I just dislike half-informed country bashing.
e.g. example walkmans have increased our social isolation.
You could say that. You could also say that it finally provided an alternate avenue for those of us who had always preferred listening to music to always talking to people.
I think casual social interaction is overrated. All the extroverts decided it was important and nobody spoke up to disagree. I am personally satisfied with a few friends and the spiral of downward moderation I receive on/.
Across every industry, the same thing is happening (or has already happened). For the most part, the upstarts that thought they could conquer the brick-and-mortars by being on the internet first have failed.
The brick-and-mortars that do the same thing but could afford to lose lots of money on the internet initially have survived. Commercial open source will survive, but pursued more by the old guard (like IBM, Apple, Sun, etc.).
Unfortunately, these problems are always better solved by stronger search engines. Even though it is several orders of magnitude harder for a search engine to figure out that those things aren't important, it's several orders of magnitude easier to get google to do it than it is to convince 10 million web page maintainers to do it.
I hope they can do it, although someone needs to beat the engineer that though not using a standard dvd was a good idea over the head with several SNES machines. what
moron in engineering or management thought it was a good idea to not have a feature that everyone else has?
First off, Nintendo is very careful to make money off everything they do... so, if Sony sells 100 million PS2s (losing $ on consoles but making it on games), and Nintendo sells 25 million gamecubes (making $ on consoles and games), they both make the same amount of money.
Secondly, (I have to say this because everybody criticizes the gamecube for this) the gamecube is mostly targeted towards little kids, who don't really care that much about whether or not they have a dvd player. They care about Pokemon. Nintendo will battle in the older demographic but are unlikely to dominate except among hardcore fans of their systems and games (like me:) ).
Third, the gamecube is really really tiny and I'm not sure if they could have fit everything in with full size dvd's:)
Finally, since it's $100 cheaper than the other consoles at the moment, you can go out and buy a totally separate dvd player with that money.:)
Why do we assume that math is the best way to impress extra terrestrials? If it impressed _us_ it would be incorporated into a reality show or a saturday morning teen sitcom.
I think the ultimate endeavor of human achievement is Truckzilla. A truck that can eat other trucks and breathes fire. I can see the aliens talking to each other... "Sir, the terrans are too primitive for us to contact... all we can receive are long numbers and primitive drawings... Wait! It seems they have finally developed a truck that breathes fire and can eat other trucks! It's the only true measure of a sophisticated civilization."
actually, I misread the article... the guy posted twice and I only read his first post, even though the/. article said to read his second post. So, I'm not an idiot, just mildly incompetent.
What technophobic hubris! It's almost too good to be true.
It was supposed to be tongue-in-cheek, but I can't tell if you are agreeing with my cheekiness or disagreeing with my feigned luddism (which probably is not a real word).
At any rate, thank you for being one of the few people here to agree with me.
The true solution to avoiding applications of technologies we don't like is to ignore and discourage the development of the technologies that make said (unliked) application possible. Then we will all be happy.
I'm sometimes saddened that many/. readers are libertarians first and geeks second.
I have worked on a system that was air-gapped for security reasons. You had to jump through hoops to bring in any software, and the process was so painful that it was rarely done.
We survived, but we didn't have as many neat tools as would be nice. We were just kind of used to it and homebrewed simple things or made do with what we had.
On the other hand, going to that sort of system from a more open system would probably damage morale, a problem not encountered by a system that's been closed since its inception.
I always thought mirrored contacts would be cool for sports or driving. No worrying about damaging or dropping your eyewear, no frames to cloud your peripheral vision.:)
btw, I've searched a few times on the internet for them, and never found any:(
There are open source games. But if you go to gamespy, games domain (etc.) and read about the newest, hottest games out there, none of them are open source.
Why not? Probably because it isn't profitable. Presumably you could run a MMOG (Massively Multiplayer Online Game, for the uninitiated) with open source clients profitably, but since nobody has done it yet, it probably isn't that great of an idea (it would facilitate reverse-engineering to create alternate servers, for one).
My point is that software markets exist where open-source has yet to find a profitable business model. And if you're in one of those, you can't write (or in some cases, use) open source software.
We have a guy who works at my job who is amazing. I am a software developer and he is one of the systems guys who does system admin type stuff. He won an award a few months ago based on his contributions to his organization and is basically a junior chief engineer.
However, the man is an idiot. He's tempermental, and solves some problems quickly but others not at all (and never answers forms of communication if he isn't going to help). He is also in a position where developers frequently need his help to be able to do their job (we're required to go through him).
Despite his technical brilliance, I don't think that any developer here would rather have him than somebody with 100th of his talent who was easier to work with. If they need help, we have plenty of non-quirky expertise and can always call tech support from various vendors. It's better to have reliable good help than spotty expert help.
We do have some quirky geniuses here that I do like, by the way (they're my heroes). It's just that they are quirky geniuses who also happen to be non-vindictive and responsible.
Tech zealot linux-head deletes windows (tech zealot windows-head would do same thing to linux) and makes the author mad.
Since the linux desktop is behind, it will always be behind.
Since linux on the server is behind, more work should be exerted to catch up.
Unfortunately, I think the desktop is the passenger train of the golden age of railroads. You don't do it because it brings in the cash money. It's a mindshare thing. How else can you explain microsoft's now-dominance in the server market? They didn't do it by ignoring user-friendliness, that's for sure.
2000. The article was written a year to year-and-a-half ago. Don't know if that makes much of a difference, but if they were a little behind the times and it's a year and a half old, well, they are talking about ancient times.
The government has been shown to come down on the side of "big business" time and time and time again.
Well, it's the DOJ's job to defend laws that people attack. That's just the way government works. If a corporation sued the government the DOJ would still defend the government.
Now, passing the DMCA was due to business pressure on congress (I'm sure). But to argue that the DOJ is in the lap of big business because they are defending existing laws is absurd.
Yeah, at my college too... since the smarter students were bound to help the smarter (often non-major) students in CS classes, our profs legalized it as long as the assistee mentioned in their prologue the students that had helped them.
Other than that, I've found profs have a supernatural ability to detect who has written what code. In one case a prof not only determined that I and a (rather intelligent) friend had the same code, but that he had copied off of me rather than vice versa.
Plus, being one of the smarter students helping other people out drastically increases your own abilities. And cheating is rare because wholesale copying will be noticed, while anything less just requires an acknowledgement in the homework.
And, btw, many of the helpees (including myself) are now very adept programmers. At least I keep telling myself I am.
There seem to be many many arguments based on the idea that face printing is not currently accurate.
Unfortunately, this is a horribly flawed argument. It is possible to recognize faces. Humans can do it. Computers can be taught to do what humans can do. They're called "Expert Systems" and covered in any intro AI course. Using computer inadequacy arguments gets us in the habit of adhering to these beliefs years after they have become outdated.
Never, ever, ever base arguments on the idea that computers are fundamentally unable to perform some task well (especially if they are doing a decent job of it at the current time). People that say those things almost always look like dolts several years later, unless they are already accomplished experts in the field.
Basically, having some mathematical theory that proves the inability of computers to perform a task is a good reason to say it can't be done. To decide that computers can't do something because you think that it would be hard is not.
Slashdot Mirror
btw, I've read the other comments, and most of the others suggested (especially cuckoo's egg, and hackers) should be read first, but The Hacker Crackdown is also an interesting historical examination of a short period and is available free online. Just make sure you read hackers and the cuckoo's egg first :)
Gore did not win. But he received the most votes (after an unofficial recount by news organizations). The recount, however, took around 8 months and had no guarantee of being unbiased or accurate.
The winner was decided by the number of votes that stood after several recounts. The democrats wanted a recount of several (heavily democrat) counties, republicans took 'em to court saying it was unconstitutional, supreme court agreed, and Gore basically ran out of time. He conceded. He realized that it would be better for the country to concede than hold the country in suspense for another four months.
At any rate, it was really a technological problem, not a fundamental problem with our democracy. We are going to great lengths to fix our technology before the next elections :)
Please repeat this, its stunning
Americans very much consider this a war. It is not unusual to consider assassination of foreign officials during times of war. Saddam tried on bush. We've had prohibitions on it that the CIA occasionally violates. There's been consideration of lifting the prohibition.
hereby propose Bill SN101; "Americans Shot on Sight Act" for first reading.
Legal precedent holds in the U.S. that the rights specified in the Constitution sometimes do not apply to non-citizens, _especially_ when they are actually in a foreign country. For example, the FBI recently hacked into a russian computer to gather evidence before they had a warrant. That would get the case thrown out in the U.S., but the judge ruled it was ok because the computer and operator had no constitutional protections in russia. When the data was brought back, a warrant was needed to look at it, because it was in the U.S.
What are you talking about? You cannot simply walk away from treaties?
Who is this great empire of war-mongering foreigners you are trying to 'defend' yourself against?
Because many countries that sponsor terrorists may have cbrn capabilities and will probably have missiles that reach the U.S. in 10 or 20 years. Normal deterrence (MAD) does not work for many of these nations, because Saddam Hussein, for example, does not seem to care if we kill all of his citizens. It would save him a lot of work. Upholding treaties kind of pales in comparison to the thought of that.
(p.s. : cbrn is chemical-biological-radiological-nuclear, MAD is mutual assured destruction)
The problem wasn't that the votes were not counted. The problem was that they were counted over, and over, and over again. Even if the supreme court had allowed a several county recount bush still would have won. If the democrats had asked for an entire state recount and got it (which seemed like a bad idea at the time) Gore would have won. However, when it's so close, it's more important that somebody win sooner rather the right person 6 months after the election.
is planing to do away with trials, replacing them by tribunals.
Heh, but not for U.S. citizens. Only for alleged terrorists in a certain situation. Since 90% of americans probably think shooting them on sight is our the idea, a trial at all is pretty good.
Meanwhile the Bush admin. has declared that it will unilaterally withdraw from any agreements it finds to be inconvenient
First of all, the bush administration seems less likely to do this now that international support is more necessary for the war in afghanistan. Secondly, no countries ever follow treaties if it doesn't suit them. If any other country had the money lying around to develop an ABM system you bet your asteroids they would (except maybe switzerland).
I actually think that another system is a good idea, because american GPS systems are such a great military target, and redundancy is good. I just dislike half-informed country bashing.
e.g. example walkmans have increased our social isolation.
You could say that. You could also say that it finally provided an alternate avenue for those of us who had always preferred listening to music to always talking to people.
I think casual social interaction is overrated. All the extroverts decided it was important and nobody spoke up to disagree. I am personally satisfied with a few friends and the spiral of downward moderation I receive on /.
The brick-and-mortars that do the same thing but could afford to lose lots of money on the internet initially have survived. Commercial open source will survive, but pursued more by the old guard (like IBM, Apple, Sun, etc.).
Unfortunately, these problems are always better solved by stronger search engines. Even though it is several orders of magnitude harder for a search engine to figure out that those things aren't important, it's several orders of magnitude easier to get google to do it than it is to convince 10 million web page maintainers to do it.
Think bush wants another separate internet for _unclassified_ government stuff. That doesn't exist yet.
First off, Nintendo is very careful to make money off everything they do ... so, if Sony sells 100 million PS2s (losing $ on consoles but making it on games), and Nintendo sells 25 million gamecubes (making $ on consoles and games), they both make the same amount of money.
Secondly, (I have to say this because everybody criticizes the gamecube for this) the gamecube is mostly targeted towards little kids, who don't really care that much about whether or not they have a dvd player. They care about Pokemon. Nintendo will battle in the older demographic but are unlikely to dominate except among hardcore fans of their systems and games (like me :) ).
Third, the gamecube is really really tiny and I'm not sure if they could have fit everything in with full size dvd's :)
Finally, since it's $100 cheaper than the other consoles at the moment, you can go out and buy a totally separate dvd player with that money. :)
I think the ultimate endeavor of human achievement is Truckzilla. A truck that can eat other trucks and breathes fire. I can see the aliens talking to each other ... "Sir, the terrans are too primitive for us to contact ... all we can receive are long numbers and primitive drawings ... Wait! It seems they have finally developed a truck that breathes fire and can eat other trucks! It's the only true measure of a sophisticated civilization."
actually, I misread the article ... the guy posted twice and I only read his first post, even though the /. article said to read his second post. So, I'm not an idiot, just mildly incompetent.
although now that I look farther down on the linuxgames page, I can see that his comment is exactly (or nearly) the same as his /. comment. Ne'er mind.
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=23108&cid=2491 410
It was supposed to be tongue-in-cheek, but I can't tell if you are agreeing with my cheekiness or disagreeing with my feigned luddism (which probably is not a real word).
At any rate, thank you for being one of the few people here to agree with me.
The true solution to avoiding applications of technologies we don't like is to ignore and discourage the development of the technologies that make said (unliked) application possible. Then we will all be happy.
/. readers are libertarians first and geeks second.
I'm sometimes saddened that many
I have worked on a system that was air-gapped for security reasons. You had to jump through hoops to bring in any software, and the process was so painful that it was rarely done.
We survived, but we didn't have as many neat tools as would be nice. We were just kind of used to it and homebrewed simple things or made do with what we had.
On the other hand, going to that sort of system from a more open system would probably damage morale, a problem not encountered by a system that's been closed since its inception.
I always thought mirrored contacts would be cool for sports or driving. No worrying about damaging or dropping your eyewear, no frames to cloud your peripheral vision. :)
:(
btw, I've searched a few times on the internet for them, and never found any
There are open source games. But if you go to gamespy, games domain (etc.) and read about the newest, hottest games out there, none of them are open source.
Why not? Probably because it isn't profitable. Presumably you could run a MMOG (Massively Multiplayer Online Game, for the uninitiated) with open source clients profitably, but since nobody has done it yet, it probably isn't that great of an idea (it would facilitate reverse-engineering to create alternate servers, for one).
My point is that software markets exist where open-source has yet to find a profitable business model. And if you're in one of those, you can't write (or in some cases, use) open source software.
However, the man is an idiot. He's tempermental, and solves some problems quickly but others not at all (and never answers forms of communication if he isn't going to help). He is also in a position where developers frequently need his help to be able to do their job (we're required to go through him).
Despite his technical brilliance, I don't think that any developer here would rather have him than somebody with 100th of his talent who was easier to work with. If they need help, we have plenty of non-quirky expertise and can always call tech support from various vendors. It's better to have reliable good help than spotty expert help.
We do have some quirky geniuses here that I do like, by the way (they're my heroes). It's just that they are quirky geniuses who also happen to be non-vindictive and responsible.
Unfortunately, I think the desktop is the passenger train of the golden age of railroads. You don't do it because it brings in the cash money. It's a mindshare thing. How else can you explain microsoft's now-dominance in the server market? They didn't do it by ignoring user-friendliness, that's for sure.
Not to mention that it looks kind of one-sided (the department of emergency services representing the govt?)
2000. The article was written a year to year-and-a-half ago. Don't know if that makes much of a difference, but if they were a little behind the times and it's a year and a half old, well, they are talking about ancient times.
Well, it's the DOJ's job to defend laws that people attack. That's just the way government works. If a corporation sued the government the DOJ would still defend the government.
Now, passing the DMCA was due to business pressure on congress (I'm sure). But to argue that the DOJ is in the lap of big business because they are defending existing laws is absurd.
I just always thought it would be cool to be a tech lobbyist. How did you get your job?
Other than that, I've found profs have a supernatural ability to detect who has written what code. In one case a prof not only determined that I and a (rather intelligent) friend had the same code, but that he had copied off of me rather than vice versa.
Plus, being one of the smarter students helping other people out drastically increases your own abilities. And cheating is rare because wholesale copying will be noticed, while anything less just requires an acknowledgement in the homework.
And, btw, many of the helpees (including myself) are now very adept programmers. At least I keep telling myself I am.
Unfortunately, this is a horribly flawed argument. It is possible to recognize faces. Humans can do it. Computers can be taught to do what humans can do. They're called "Expert Systems" and covered in any intro AI course. Using computer inadequacy arguments gets us in the habit of adhering to these beliefs years after they have become outdated.
Never, ever, ever base arguments on the idea that computers are fundamentally unable to perform some task well (especially if they are doing a decent job of it at the current time). People that say those things almost always look like dolts several years later, unless they are already accomplished experts in the field.
Basically, having some mathematical theory that proves the inability of computers to perform a task is a good reason to say it can't be done. To decide that computers can't do something because you think that it would be hard is not.