I concur, it has been a long time since a piece of software has impressed me as much as this one does, I feel a strong need for a palmtop with a good screen and GPS now.
"The Slashdot effect" is commonly mislabeled as a god level D-enial O-f S-ervice effect. * Where tens of thousands of computer nerds suddenly prompted to some new (read: recently rehashed) idea (and they are addicted to this constant stream of morsel sized data bites worse than any heroin victim) all try and access the data at once and bring sites to their knees, then cut off their heads and sacrifice the blood to Xanthon god of Bandwidth.
In reality I propose the unsettling idea that the Slashdot effect is far more terrible... not merely a DOS attack it is in fact when tens of thousands of people suddenly lose the ability to think for themselves!
They form a group consciousness (Like the Republi-Cons and the Demo-Crats, no individual thought just a mass consciousness, indeed who is to say these two variant and ever warring mind sets did not evolve from the same barren world? A concept I will explore in more depth another time) which always seems to say/write the same things...
Beowulf cluster it!
"If ones cool 10 is 10 TIMES as cool oh yeah."
Microsoft is Evil, Bill Gates is the incarnation of Evil.
Linux is Good, Linux is the SOURCE OF ALL GOOD, the universes soul function is the evolution of Linux and hastening it is the Torvalds! a demi-deity!
RIAA are scum! Even the artists hate them! They should all be subjected to the torture of 40 days, forced to walk across rock salt with the skin flayed from their naked feet and... etc. They have no right to come after file sharers. They don't pay artists! They are hypocrites and even worse they employ STATISTICIANS!
TIA (total information awareness) = END OF WORLD. It is against the constitution!
Standard line referenced... "They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."- Benjamin Franklin
Most recently SCO are repugnant vile, scum licking litigators with no product to back their claim to existence! The US patent system is broken!
And a few other things besides.
Mostly (admittedly) the group think is if not always exactly on the mark, close.
What disturbs me though, is the *commonality* in thought, the ever present repetition.
Almost a reflection of politics, most people aren't motivated to vote (POST) but those few who do are really passionate and outspoken, and thus we develop wide ranging ideological schisms.
Consequently I will address a SMALL number of thoughts that may run counter to SLASHDOT group think. I have erected PSYCHIC iron wall discipline to deal with the backlash...
Number One.
The RIAA.
The RIAA might be scumbags, but every person who uses Kazaa to download their songs needs to stop pretending like they aren't committing a crime. They ARE. They know they are, or they should know they are. The idea that being able to listen to the song from your mp3 will inspire you to go buy the cd is a ludicrous smokescreen for most of the nerd-tech-geeks I have met. I can't even guess how many people I know with PC juke boxes filled with 20, 30, 40 gigabytes of mp3's or more, one mentioned 120 gigs. They don't BUY the cds- to do that would take the GNP of a third world nation. And if they do come across something they like, they'll burn it to a cd - with new cd players it isn't even necessary to convert from mp3 format, or they can get one of the memory laden mp3 players. Every year their capacity goes up and the price goes down... every year the incentive to get a cd fades a bit more.
Does this make it right for the RIAA to go after a few unlucky bastards and make examples of them? Not really. But it's an old strategy to hang the skeletons of criminals at the gates of the city as a warning, and it can be quite effective.
What I find remarkable (and I know you want to know it!) is that everyone derides the RIAA while at the same time slaking up the product they provide. At this point comp. tech in the sound field lets a hobbyist match a studio. Don't want to pay for your music? Then make your own, and download the works of independent artists. Don't insin
R. Orin Hatch of the Senate Judiciary Committee wants a system installed in computers that will warn copyright abusers (people who download mp3's) two times, and then destroy their computers.
Quotes from Senator Hatch, "If that's the only way, then I'm all for destroying their machines. If you have a few hundred thousand of those, I think people would realize"...
"There's no excuse for anyone violating copyright laws," Hatch said.
Now as you can imagine, there are a lot of people who are pretty upset with the idea. They are all yelling and screaming, but I am smiling.
I for one applaud Mr. Hatch! These are exactly the kinds of laws I hope he can get passed.
He has my staunch support!
I also think cars should warn you twice before you drive faster than the speed limit and then just shut off... forever. This will cause there to be fewer cars on the road, less cars means less pollution and fewer traffic jams Phones used in movie theaters should warn you once, and then stop working, which will lead to lower numbers of brain cancers. J-walkers should get two warnings and then have their legs amputated (that will teach them) thus reducing the need for rubber (for shoes) and saving from exploitation South American rubber tree sap harvesters. In fact I think it would be a good idea to lace the worlds drug supplies with poison rather than spending so much money in the obviously unwinnable war on drugs! Then we can sit back relax, and let it resolve itself.
Now as all it will take is one script kiddie to write a program that accesses the RIAA backdoor computer kill function and start wiping out all the american desktop pc's (zap, zap, zap) some of you may find Mr. Hatch's position to be poorly thought out. Nothing could be more untrue. We can hardly blame this potentiality on a lack of forethought with regards to Mr. Hatch, to not implement these features merely because they will be abused would be like limiting the availability of handguns just because they "might" be used by criminals- ridiculous!
Of course Mr. Hatch will decry the hacking should it occur, and will probably find a way to use the words "domestic-terrorists" somehow, but everyone will know whose wonderful idea it was to make computers with a kill switch and they will all bless him! For you see though the outrage will ripple across America as hardware that cost several thousand dollars simply stops working, though Mr. Hatch will become the focal point of (even more) scorn, and people will be forced to buy new computers every couple of days.(... isn't that good for the economy after all? Why settle for the natural inclination of the home user to upgrade every few years, when we can do forced upgrades all the time!) though they will curse and revile his name they will all have eggs on their faces when it's Hatch's magical kill switches that save us all from OMNI-sentient-Cyberian 9000, the ultra-networked Uber-AI. Why the moment it starts passing data around its nodes on how to most efficiently wipe out humanity the kill switches will presume large file sharing activity means illegal copyright violations and a cascade of kill switch activations will spread node to node like a deadly computer cancer saving us all from destruction beneath the heel of our robot masters!
Slashdot Mirror
I concur, it has been a long time since a piece of software has impressed me as much as this one does, I feel a strong need for a palmtop with a good screen and GPS now.
I need 400 PS3's to make one of these.
Who wants to help me start a fundraiser?
Piggyback your flatrate Vo/IP onto your flatrate IP over 3G, yes, you can always dream... *Chuckles* Then again, give it a few years...
Exactly.
Comments should be informative... but all I can think to write is. BWAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHHHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAH. IBM to SCO. -"There can be, Only One."
"The Slashdot effect" is commonly mislabeled as a god level D-enial O-f S-ervice effect. * Where tens of thousands of computer nerds suddenly prompted to some new (read: recently rehashed) idea (and they are addicted to this constant stream of morsel sized data bites worse than any heroin victim) all try and access the data at once and bring sites to their knees, then cut off their heads and sacrifice the blood to Xanthon god of Bandwidth. In reality I propose the unsettling idea that the Slashdot effect is far more terrible... not merely a DOS attack it is in fact when tens of thousands of people suddenly lose the ability to think for themselves! They form a group consciousness (Like the Republi-Cons and the Demo-Crats, no individual thought just a mass consciousness, indeed who is to say these two variant and ever warring mind sets did not evolve from the same barren world? A concept I will explore in more depth another time) which always seems to say/write the same things ...
Beowulf cluster it!
"If ones cool 10 is 10 TIMES as cool oh yeah."
Microsoft is Evil, Bill Gates is the incarnation of Evil.
Linux is Good, Linux is the SOURCE OF ALL GOOD, the universes soul function is the evolution of Linux and hastening it is the Torvalds! a demi-deity!
RIAA are scum! Even the artists hate them! They should all be subjected to the torture of 40 days, forced to walk across rock salt with the skin flayed from their naked feet and ... etc. They have no right to come after file sharers. They don't pay artists! They are hypocrites and even worse they employ STATISTICIANS!
TIA (total information awareness) = END OF WORLD. It is against the constitution!
Standard line referenced... "They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."- Benjamin Franklin
Most recently SCO are repugnant vile, scum licking litigators with no product to back their claim to existence! The US patent system is broken!
And a few other things besides.
Mostly (admittedly) the group think is if not always exactly on the mark, close.
What disturbs me though, is the *commonality* in thought, the ever present repetition.
Almost a reflection of politics, most people aren't motivated to vote (POST) but those few who do are really passionate and outspoken, and thus we develop wide ranging ideological schisms.
Consequently I will address a SMALL number of thoughts that may run counter to SLASHDOT group think. I have erected PSYCHIC iron wall discipline to deal with the backlash...
Number One.
The RIAA.
The RIAA might be scumbags, but every person who uses Kazaa to download their songs needs to stop pretending like they aren't committing a crime. They ARE. They know they are, or they should know they are. The idea that being able to listen to the song from your mp3 will inspire you to go buy the cd is a ludicrous smokescreen for most of the nerd-tech-geeks I have met. I can't even guess how many people I know with PC juke boxes filled with 20, 30, 40 gigabytes of mp3's or more, one mentioned 120 gigs. They don't BUY the cds- to do that would take the GNP of a third world nation. And if they do come across something they like, they'll burn it to a cd - with new cd players it isn't even necessary to convert from mp3 format, or they can get one of the memory laden mp3 players. Every year their capacity goes up and the price goes down... every year the incentive to get a cd fades a bit more.
Does this make it right for the RIAA to go after a few unlucky bastards and make examples of them? Not really. But it's an old strategy to hang the skeletons of criminals at the gates of the city as a warning, and it can be quite effective.
What I find remarkable (and I know you want to know it!) is that everyone derides the RIAA while at the same time slaking up the product they provide. At this point comp. tech in the sound field lets a hobbyist match a studio. Don't want to pay for your music? Then make your own, and download the works of independent artists. Don't insin
Indeed. -Codexwriter
R. Orin Hatch of the Senate Judiciary Committee wants a system installed in computers that will warn copyright abusers (people who download mp3's) two times, and then destroy their computers.
...
Quotes from Senator Hatch, "If that's the only way, then I'm all for destroying their machines. If you have a few hundred thousand of those, I think people would realize"
"There's no excuse for anyone violating copyright laws," Hatch said.
Now as you can imagine, there are a lot of people who are pretty upset with the idea. They are all yelling and screaming, but I am smiling.
I for one applaud Mr. Hatch! These are exactly the kinds of laws I hope he can get passed.
He has my staunch support!
I also think cars should warn you twice before you drive faster than the speed limit and then just shut off... forever. This will cause there to be fewer cars on the road, less cars means less pollution and fewer traffic jams Phones used in movie theaters should warn you once, and then stop working, which will lead to lower numbers of brain cancers. J-walkers should get two warnings and then have their legs amputated (that will teach them) thus reducing the need for rubber (for shoes) and saving from exploitation South American rubber tree sap harvesters. In fact I think it would be a good idea to lace the worlds drug supplies with poison rather than spending so much money in the obviously unwinnable war on drugs! Then we can sit back relax, and let it resolve itself.
Now as all it will take is one script kiddie to write a program that accesses the RIAA backdoor computer kill function and start wiping out all the american desktop pc's (zap, zap, zap) some of you may find Mr. Hatch's position to be poorly thought out. Nothing could be more untrue. We can hardly blame this potentiality on a lack of forethought with regards to Mr. Hatch, to not implement these features merely because they will be abused would be like limiting the availability of handguns just because they "might" be used by criminals- ridiculous!
Of course Mr. Hatch will decry the hacking should it occur, and will probably find a way to use the words "domestic-terrorists" somehow, but everyone will know whose wonderful idea it was to make computers with a kill switch and they will all bless him! For you see though the outrage will ripple across America as hardware that cost several thousand dollars simply stops working, though Mr. Hatch will become the focal point of (even more) scorn, and people will be forced to buy new computers every couple of days.(... isn't that good for the economy after all? Why settle for the natural inclination of the home user to upgrade every few years, when we can do forced upgrades all the time!) though they will curse and revile his name they will all have eggs on their faces when it's Hatch's magical kill switches that save us all from OMNI-sentient-Cyberian 9000, the ultra-networked Uber-AI. Why the moment it starts passing data around its nodes on how to most efficiently wipe out humanity the kill switches will presume large file sharing activity means illegal copyright violations and a cascade of kill switch activations will spread node to node like a deadly computer cancer saving us all from destruction beneath the heel of our robot masters!
-Codexwriter