Re:AMEX won't permit on-line pr0n purchases anymor
on
A Matter Of Trust?
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· Score: 1
More likely its a bit of ass-covering, since America's stolen card laws make the credit card company liable for most of the charges so long as the holder reports the stolen card quickly.
There's still a pretty big window where the thief can order up a bunch of guns, rack up a huge gambling debt, or, I guess, jack off to a bunch of pr0n. Likely, these companies are just saying "Hey, it's too financially risky, since these are common targets for stolen cards."
I say this after having two different credit cards shut off on different vacations, since I used them for gasoline purchases only on a large cross-country drive. All I had to do is call them and say "Yes, it's me, I drove from Texas to Michigan and bought gas along the way." Nothing about morality, and all about CYA.
While it's definitely uncool, at the same time you have consider that idSoftware is a fairly high-strung pressure cooker of personalities. At least, it would seem that way from all that I've seen of their history. I'm sure anyone who has worked there for any length of time is not hurting for money, and can probably find a decent job anywhere else based on their talents.
Your problems are likely not Athlon or KDE related.
It may instead have to do with what kernel you're running. Apparently, the later 2.3.XX kernels have VM performance issues, and Alan Cox's Diary hints that 2.2.15 also may have some issues. (I'd give an exact entry date, except that I can't seem to get to the site right now. It was sometime in the last week or two.) I looked at the SuSE USA website, and noticed that SuSE 6.4 comes with Kernel 2.2.14. I'm not sure if it has the same VM issues that Alan was referring to wrt. 2.2.15.
Interestingly, from what I remember reading in the Linux Kernel mailing list archives, the problems are worse on large-memory machines.
--Joe
PS. Why is it that nobody seems to be able to spell ATHLON correctly?
I forwarded a copy of the above post to Rob Malda, and he sent me a concise reply describing his view of how it's supposed to work. I think it's worthwhile to share his insights with the whole crew. With his permission, here's what he had to say:
Date: Wed, 31 May 2000 13:25:01 -0500 (EST) From: Rob Malda To: Joe Zbiciak Subject: Re: Moderator collision I don't think its a problem. I think moderators should moderate without even seeing the score of the comments they are moderating!
A + means someone thought it was valid. Score:2 means 2 people. Score:3 means 3 people.
Its not an absolute 'This comment is Score:2' its more like '2 people thought it was a valid comment'
So there you have it. Of course, that does raise the question of why we have the Overrated and Underrated moderation categories, but otherwise, I think I see his point.
At this time, it appears to have been rated back down to a 3. I think what happens is that moderators scan / read through posts, selecting particular posts to be moderated up or down. When they finally get to the end of the page, they click [Moderate]. When several moderators are actively viewing a story, you end up with multiple moderations pending for the same article. So, what should've received a +1 might get +2 or more of multiple moderators agreed that it deserved +1.
The problem is that the moderators don't get to see the other moderations being performed in parallel to their own moderation. Perhaps there's a solution. Slashdot could ask for confirmation in cases of "moderator collision."
For example, consider the following sequence of events:
Moderator A views comments
Moderator B views comments
Moderator A selects post #39 and post #42 to be moderated up.
Meanwhile, Moderator B selects post #42 and post #69 to be moderated up.
Moderator A clicks [Moderate], and both moderations are applied.
Moderator B clicks [Moderate]. What happens?
Currently, Slashdot will apply both moderations immediately. This results in article #42 receiving +2, when it may only deserve +1. It's neither Moderator's fault -- they've moderated past each other. Alternately, I propose that Slashdot, in this case, only apply the unique moderation immediately, and then ask for confirmation on Moderator B's moderation of #42. This is because Moderator B had no way of knowing that Moderator A moderated #42 up while he was still reading the posts. Let's assume all moderations are applied, and continue the example:
Moderator C now views the comments page, and sees all of Moderator A and Moderator B's moderations.
Moderator C selects #69 to be moderated up.
Moderator C now clicks [Moderate]. What happens?
At this point, Slashdot will apply the moderation. Under my proposal, this would not change, as Moderator C did already see that #69 was moderated up before he selected it for moderation.
What I'm guessing would be necessary is an additional bit of state which says "This was the score that the post was viewed with at the time the Moderator selected it for moderation." If the article's current score is different than the score it was viewed with, ask for confirmation that the moderation be applied for that specific moderation. A series of radio buttons could be displayed for the affected articles: "Apply Moderation? [_] Yes [X] No".
I heard (someone please substantiate) that the Diet Mountain Dew does have caffeine in Canada, even though the regular does not. I got this tidbit from the alt.drugs.caffeine FAQ, though the copy I have is outdated. Here's a little chart from said FAQ that I used to keep on the wall in my cube at work:
I use a very simple, lightly ANSI-fied/etc/issue. It says, in red, blinking letters, "Go Away".
Plain, simple, effective.
Once upon a time, I put up a web simulation of my machine's login sequence. At the time, the machine was named Asylum. You can find the web simulation here, at my old college account. You can read more about the Asylum here. (It's fun, click the link.) Ahh the memories...
Furthermore, superluminal displays have been available for years. I have an
English "How-it- works" encyclopedia at home that has a picture of a blue glow generated by particles exiting a nulcear reactor core submerged in water. These particles exiting the core are travelling faster than c in water (dielectric constant of water is 76.7 -- Pozar "Microwave Engineering") That means that the speed of light through water is c*sqrt(76.7) = 34.3e6 m/sec!
First, I think you meant c / sqrt(76.7), which gives the number you quoted. The larger the dielectric constant, the slower electromagnetic radiation travels in the given medium.
Second, the article clearly states that they were comparing to c, the speed of light in a vacuum.
The article states that the backward wave propogated at approximately 300 time c, which is the speed of light in a vacuum.
The speed reported is for the backward wave, apparently. This is similar to how a traffic clot might propogate backwards through traffic even though the traffic itself is moving forwards, as the article points out.
Take a look sometimes how traffic responds to a sudden discontinuity in flow, such as a slow-poke or an accident. If it's near "saturation", the backward wave of clogged traffic moves very quickly, which is VERY similar to the phenomenon being reported. Notably, the more "saturated" the traffic, the quicker this "wave" moves. As the article indicates, the experiment was performed in a chamber that's designed to amplify light waves by saturating the cesium with energy from one source and then triggering the release of that energy with a different source at a particular frequency. In this case, the microwave involved is not releasing the saturated energy.
I'm sure the answer is simple: Nothing. Last time around, the JPEG group didn't define a file format, they defined a syntax for sending compressed image data. Later, people outside the JPEG group cobbled together JFIF (JPEG File Interchange Format) so that JPEG compressed streams could be encapsulated in files and shared.
What this implies is that the JPEG group isn't interested in designing file formats, it's interested in specifying the compression techniques for the data itself. The metadata (image dimensions, compression parameters, color space information, etc.) are not covered by the standard.
Elsewhere in the posts here, I saw some people mentioning metadata being specified by JPEG2K, which would imply that they're taking a step beyond specifying the compression techiniques and are also specifying the stuff that goes around them. However, if they're like alot of other standards, the compression bits will be considered "Normative" and part of the baseline standard, and the metadata bits will be considered "Informative" and in one of the Annexes (read: optional).
It only makes sense. If I have a digital still camera with a number of fixed image parameters and limited capacity, I might want to store my image data in JPEG2K format but omit most of the metadata (since it's redundant across all of my images). No problem. And it's still JPEG2K.
And that's the point. The standards committee compares only about compressing/decompressing the images -- they're not interested in how the images are communicated in a particular application. (At least, that was their attitude last time around.) Anyone have any hard info to the contrary?
ANSI dictates that main must return int or equivalent type, and must accept either zero or two arguments. (In the latter case we have the familiar argc and argv arguments, and the standard has something to say about those too.) ANSI does note that a common extension is to permit a third argument (typically envp), but such an argument is implementation defined.
IRC, in most cases the cache only mirrors what's in the main memory, so it wouldn't be a problem.
That's only half true. The cache holds a copy of what should be in RAM. There are two possible common scenarios:
If you have a write through cache, then whenever the CPU writes something, it updates both the cache and memory immediately. Older 486s sported that sort of cache. Some are switchable.
If you have a write back cache (just about every modern machine falls into this category), writes will stay in the cache until some other cache/bus traffic causes the results to be written to memory.
The latter form of cache performs alot better, for a couple reasons. First, writes to memory are slow and a write-through cache doesn't hide them. Second, alot of writes are redundant or can be combined with other nearby writes and a write-back cache serves as a filtering and combining mechanism. The drawback is that the cache has a different picture of memory than the external memory has.
Anyway, the way you do "recovery" is to checkpoint the OSes state every so often (like, say, every timer tick when you do a task switch). You can save all the registers, flush the cache, and checkpoint off to the OUM. The device issue you mentioned is solved in a similar manner to APM, I'd imagine (not that I know the solution, but I'm saying it's a familiar problem that's already being attacked).
The distinction is probably very similar to FORMAT/Q (QuickFormat -- just rewrite the FAT), and FORMAT/U (unconditional format). The former rewrites just the FAT table, with the presumption that the media has not grown any defects. The latter reformats the entire media, thereby "Refreshing" the sector boundaries (if a floppy) and possibly identifying any grown defects.
In the case of a CD-RW, I'd imagine performing a full-blank gives you a marginal increase in recording quality (ie. you're more likely to get a good, clean "burn" subsequently), and it may possibly identify defects (such as scratches) during the erase. Not sure.
We already have 7, count'em SEVEN FIRST POSTS! I wonder if IBM's including a 64-way First Post server with their NUMA boxes...
--Joe --
News Flash: Most OSes support Cut and Paste!
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AtheOS
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· Score: 2
That's probably the only reason I still program in windows, BECAUSE I CAN CUT AND PASTE FROM MY WEB BROWSER AND TEXT EDITOR! Yay, programs can talk to each other. Now, wouldn't that be nice?
You say that as if Cut & Paste are the sole province of MS Windows. You know, you can do that under half a dozen other OSes as well... including MacOS, BeOS, Linux, Solaris, *BSD, etc. etc. etc.... (In fact, it's easier on the X based systems as you don't need ANY keypresses on the keyboard. Left mouse button to highlight, middle mouse button to paste. You do have a three button mouse, right?;-)
(have you ever tried to set Netscape to notify you when a cookie is being set? How many minutes did it take before you turned that off?)
I have my browser configured that way right now and it's not too much of a hassle. On some sites its a PITA, but then I just find someplace else to browse. I refuse to simply "give in" to cookies.
You don't have to send the ones with pretty pictures. A pack of 5"x7" cards from the local store would do just fine. And, they'd be a damn sight cheeper if everyone used them for mail instead of envelopes and stationery.
--Joe
PS. Stationary means not moving, and stationery is the paper you write letters on.
Actually, I was referring to the techniques in this article, which seem focused on removing a few extra joules from your CPU so you can go from, say, 600MHz to 650MHz. That's far less of a jump.
Just when you thought overclocking had gone far enough, some one comes along to prove you completely wrong.:-)
While not an overclocker myself, I have to admire the lengths to which people will go to pursue an extra few MHz... (Never mind that actual system performance on non-Quake-3 workloads won't feel ANY different, and you'll feel like you're in a sauna if you're in the same room as the machine....);-)
Most people here want better search engines. Forget that. That's a crowded arena.
I'd like smart web prefetching and advertisement filtering. Basically, I'd like my browser to figure out which links I'm most likely to follow on a page and start prefetching those links. I'd also like it to block content which I'm not interested (but still leave a tag so that I can 'correct' it if it's overzealous).
Essentially, a combination Squid + Junkbuster, only proactive.
That, and the fact that it's labeling a group of people independent of what label they would choose for themselves. Labeling, branding, whatever, when it's MANDATORY is WRONG. If I choose to call myself a pornographer, that's one thing. But if I'm an artist who deals in nudes and someone else labels me as a pornographer, what am I to do?
The idea is well intentioned but fatally flawed. This strikes me as yet another well intentioned effort to pave that superhighway to hell.
Slashdot Mirror
More likely its a bit of ass-covering, since America's stolen card laws make the credit card company liable for most of the charges so long as the holder reports the stolen card quickly.
There's still a pretty big window where the thief can order up a bunch of guns, rack up a huge gambling debt, or, I guess, jack off to a bunch of pr0n. Likely, these companies are just saying "Hey, it's too financially risky, since these are common targets for stolen cards."
I say this after having two different credit cards shut off on different vacations, since I used them for gasoline purchases only on a large cross-country drive. All I had to do is call them and say "Yes, it's me, I drove from Texas to Michigan and bought gas along the way." Nothing about morality, and all about CYA.
--Joe--
PayPal
--Joe--
While it's definitely uncool, at the same time you have consider that idSoftware is a fairly high-strung pressure cooker of personalities. At least, it would seem that way from all that I've seen of their history. I'm sure anyone who has worked there for any length of time is not hurting for money, and can probably find a decent job anywhere else based on their talents.
--Joe--
Your problems are likely not Athlon or KDE related.
It may instead have to do with what kernel you're running. Apparently, the later 2.3.XX kernels have VM performance issues, and Alan Cox's Diary hints that 2.2.15 also may have some issues. (I'd give an exact entry date, except that I can't seem to get to the site right now. It was sometime in the last week or two.) I looked at the SuSE USA website, and noticed that SuSE 6.4 comes with Kernel 2.2.14. I'm not sure if it has the same VM issues that Alan was referring to wrt. 2.2.15.
Interestingly, from what I remember reading in the Linux Kernel mailing list archives, the problems are worse on large-memory machines.
--JoePS. Why is it that nobody seems to be able to spell A T H L O N correctly?
--
I forwarded a copy of the above post to Rob Malda, and he sent me a concise reply describing his view of how it's supposed to work. I think it's worthwhile to share his insights with the whole crew. With his permission, here's what he had to say:
So there you have it. Of course, that does raise the question of why we have the Overrated and Underrated moderation categories, but otherwise, I think I see his point.
--Joe--
At this time, it appears to have been rated back down to a 3. I think what happens is that moderators scan / read through posts, selecting particular posts to be moderated up or down. When they finally get to the end of the page, they click [Moderate]. When several moderators are actively viewing a story, you end up with multiple moderations pending for the same article. So, what should've received a +1 might get +2 or more of multiple moderators agreed that it deserved +1.
The problem is that the moderators don't get to see the other moderations being performed in parallel to their own moderation. Perhaps there's a solution. Slashdot could ask for confirmation in cases of "moderator collision."
For example, consider the following sequence of events:
Currently, Slashdot will apply both moderations immediately. This results in article #42 receiving +2, when it may only deserve +1. It's neither Moderator's fault -- they've moderated past each other. Alternately, I propose that Slashdot, in this case, only apply the unique moderation immediately, and then ask for confirmation on Moderator B's moderation of #42. This is because Moderator B had no way of knowing that Moderator A moderated #42 up while he was still reading the posts. Let's assume all moderations are applied, and continue the example:
At this point, Slashdot will apply the moderation. Under my proposal, this would not change, as Moderator C did already see that #69 was moderated up before he selected it for moderation.
What I'm guessing would be necessary is an additional bit of state which says "This was the score that the post was viewed with at the time the Moderator selected it for moderation." If the article's current score is different than the score it was viewed with, ask for confirmation that the moderation be applied for that specific moderation. A series of radio buttons could be displayed for the affected articles: "Apply Moderation? [_] Yes [X] No".
Thoughts?
--Joe--
I heard (someone please substantiate) that the Diet Mountain Dew does have caffeine in Canada, even though the regular does not. I got this tidbit from the alt.drugs.caffeine FAQ, though the copy I have is outdated. Here's a little chart from said FAQ that I used to keep on the wall in my cube at work:
TheChemistryofCaffeineandrelatedproducts1.Howmuchcaffeineistherein[drink/food/pill]?
Accordingtothe NationalSoftDrink Association,thefollowingis
thecaffeine contentinmgsper12 ozcanofsoda:
Notice that they included a note about Mt. Dew in Canada, but not Diet Mt. Dew... Anyway, I hope this helps!
--Joe--
I use a very simple, lightly ANSI-fied /etc/issue. It says, in red, blinking letters, "Go Away".
Plain, simple, effective.
Once upon a time, I put up a web simulation of my machine's login sequence. At the time, the machine was named Asylum. You can find the web simulation here, at my old college account. You can read more about the Asylum here. (It's fun, click the link.) Ahh the memories...
--Joe--
First, I think you meant c / sqrt(76.7), which gives the number you quoted. The larger the dielectric constant, the slower electromagnetic radiation travels in the given medium.
Second, the article clearly states that they were comparing to c , the speed of light in a vacuum.
--Joe--
Wow, that was a cool link! And I'd have to say that it agrees with my observations somewhat.
Thanks!
--Joe--
This has nothing to do with bandwidth and everything to do with latency. Imagine the ping times you could get with this sucker! ;-)
--Joe--
The article states that the backward wave propogated at approximately 300 time c , which is the speed of light in a vacuum.
The speed reported is for the backward wave, apparently. This is similar to how a traffic clot might propogate backwards through traffic even though the traffic itself is moving forwards, as the article points out.
Take a look sometimes how traffic responds to a sudden discontinuity in flow, such as a slow-poke or an accident. If it's near "saturation", the backward wave of clogged traffic moves very quickly, which is VERY similar to the phenomenon being reported. Notably, the more "saturated" the traffic, the quicker this "wave" moves. As the article indicates, the experiment was performed in a chamber that's designed to amplify light waves by saturating the cesium with energy from one source and then triggering the release of that energy with a different source at a particular frequency. In this case, the microwave involved is not releasing the saturated energy.
--Joe--
I'm sure the answer is simple: Nothing. Last time around, the JPEG group didn't define a file format, they defined a syntax for sending compressed image data. Later, people outside the JPEG group cobbled together JFIF (JPEG File Interchange Format) so that JPEG compressed streams could be encapsulated in files and shared.
What this implies is that the JPEG group isn't interested in designing file formats, it's interested in specifying the compression techniques for the data itself. The metadata (image dimensions, compression parameters, color space information, etc.) are not covered by the standard.
Elsewhere in the posts here, I saw some people mentioning metadata being specified by JPEG2K, which would imply that they're taking a step beyond specifying the compression techiniques and are also specifying the stuff that goes around them. However, if they're like alot of other standards, the compression bits will be considered "Normative" and part of the baseline standard, and the metadata bits will be considered "Informative" and in one of the Annexes (read: optional).
It only makes sense. If I have a digital still camera with a number of fixed image parameters and limited capacity, I might want to store my image data in JPEG2K format but omit most of the metadata (since it's redundant across all of my images). No problem. And it's still JPEG2K.
And that's the point. The standards committee compares only about compressing/decompressing the images -- they're not interested in how the images are communicated in a particular application. (At least, that was their attitude last time around.) Anyone have any hard info to the contrary?
--Joe--
ANSI dictates that main must return int or equivalent type, and must accept either zero or two arguments. (In the latter case we have the familiar argc and argv arguments, and the standard has something to say about those too.) ANSI does note that a common extension is to permit a third argument (typically envp), but such an argument is implementation defined.
--Joe--
That's only half true. The cache holds a copy of what should be in RAM. There are two possible common scenarios:
The latter form of cache performs alot better, for a couple reasons. First, writes to memory are slow and a write-through cache doesn't hide them. Second, alot of writes are redundant or can be combined with other nearby writes and a write-back cache serves as a filtering and combining mechanism. The drawback is that the cache has a different picture of memory than the external memory has.
Anyway, the way you do "recovery" is to checkpoint the OSes state every so often (like, say, every timer tick when you do a task switch). You can save all the registers, flush the cache, and checkpoint off to the OUM. The device issue you mentioned is solved in a similar manner to APM, I'd imagine (not that I know the solution, but I'm saying it's a familiar problem that's already being attacked).
--Joe--
The distinction is probably very similar to FORMAT /Q (QuickFormat -- just rewrite the FAT), and FORMAT /U (unconditional format). The former rewrites just the FAT table, with the presumption that the media has not grown any defects. The latter reformats the entire media, thereby "Refreshing" the sector boundaries (if a floppy) and possibly identifying any grown defects.
In the case of a CD-RW, I'd imagine performing a full-blank gives you a marginal increase in recording quality (ie. you're more likely to get a good, clean "burn" subsequently), and it may possibly identify defects (such as scratches) during the erase. Not sure.
--Joe--
We already have 7, count'em SEVEN FIRST POSTS! I wonder if IBM's including a 64-way First Post server with their NUMA boxes...
--Joe--
You say that as if Cut & Paste are the sole province of MS Windows. You know, you can do that under half a dozen other OSes as well... including MacOS, BeOS, Linux, Solaris, *BSD, etc. etc. etc.... (In fact, it's easier on the X based systems as you don't need ANY keypresses on the keyboard. Left mouse button to highlight, middle mouse button to paste. You do have a three button mouse, right? ;-)
--Joe--
I have my browser configured that way right now and it's not too much of a hassle. On some sites its a PITA, but then I just find someplace else to browse. I refuse to simply "give in" to cookies.
--Joe--
So any word on SMP, then? That's what I'm really holding out for.
--Joe--
You don't have to send the ones with pretty pictures. A pack of 5"x7" cards from the local store would do just fine. And, they'd be a damn sight cheeper if everyone used them for mail instead of envelopes and stationery.
--JoePS. Stationary means not moving, and stationery is the paper you write letters on.
--
Actually, I was referring to the techniques in this article, which seem focused on removing a few extra joules from your CPU so you can go from, say, 600MHz to 650MHz. That's far less of a jump.
--Joe--
Just when you thought overclocking had gone far enough, some one comes along to prove you completely wrong. :-)
While not an overclocker myself, I have to admire the lengths to which people will go to pursue an extra few MHz... (Never mind that actual system performance on non-Quake-3 workloads won't feel ANY different, and you'll feel like you're in a sauna if you're in the same room as the machine....) ;-)
--Joe--
Most people here want better search engines. Forget that. That's a crowded arena.
I'd like smart web prefetching and advertisement filtering. Basically, I'd like my browser to figure out which links I'm most likely to follow on a page and start prefetching those links. I'd also like it to block content which I'm not interested (but still leave a tag so that I can 'correct' it if it's overzealous).
Essentially, a combination Squid + Junkbuster, only proactive.
--Joe--
That, and the fact that it's labeling a group of people independent of what label they would choose for themselves. Labeling, branding, whatever, when it's MANDATORY is WRONG. If I choose to call myself a pornographer, that's one thing. But if I'm an artist who deals in nudes and someone else labels me as a pornographer, what am I to do?
The idea is well intentioned but fatally flawed. This strikes me as yet another well intentioned effort to pave that superhighway to hell.
--Joe--