Hey, I'm all for taking risks - calculated risks, where I have done what I can to mitigate those risks to the best of my ability. But there is a big difference between "OK, we have an aircraft that will be operating at 100% design spec to get you into space. If we exceed that by more than 10% you are toast, but we calculate the actual requirements to be about 99% +/- 5%, so you are in good shape" and "Well, yes there is a big crack in the window, but a little duct tape and some Superglue should hold together, we think, maybe, if we are lucky. Bon Voyage!"
Yes, this "there must be no incidents, no loss of life, no injuries" mindset - what are we, Pierson's Puppeteers?
But when we have a KNOWN FAILURE MODE, one that has already claimed the lives of one shuttle crew, and a second shuttle is showing that same failure mode, and the mindset is "Well, we'll just send them to the ISS, rig the shuttle with a remote control, and if the tiles get cracked we'll bring the shuttle down on remote and bring the crew back on Russian ships" - that is not merely "taking a risk", that is "taking an insane, unneeded risk."
The early Atlas had no insulation and needed to be fueled in the final minutes of the countdown. Clearly a problem.
I ain't quite a rocket scientist, so maybe the answer is obvious to others, but why is that a problem?
Because of the volume of fuel that would have be transferred to the shuttle - compare filling a moped (the Atlas) and a Peterbuilt tractor unit (the Shuttle). It is not hard to fill a moped in a few minutes, filling the Peterbuilt takes quite a bit longer. Meanwhile, fuel is evaporating, leaking, and filling the launch area with a flammable mix of hydrogen and oxygen, AND water is condensing on the fuel tanks, freezing, and turning into nice hard chunks suitable for breaking things, like, say, fragile heat-resistant tiles.
Does anybody at NASA have a working memory? Don't they remember the results of the Challenger inquest, wherein plenty of evidence of engineers saying "DON'T LAUNCH! BAAAAD!" was ignored?
I fear we may very well get a "fourth to remember", and NOT in a good way! It is all very well for a bottlerocket to explode in flight, NOT A MANNED SHIP!
I fear that NASA is going to launch, come hell or high water, and damned be the consequences.
A simple question, to show the state of the internet in general with regards to IPv6:
Can you get Slashdot over a pure IPv6 connection? That is to say, send an IPv6 datagram, with an IPv6 header, all the way from some computer at some location on the Internet backbone, and have an IPv6 datagram, with an IPv6 header, arrive in the network stack of http://slashdot.org?
Bridging from IPv6 to IPv4, so that an IPv4 packet arrives at the server is not allowed.
It would be very interesting to see this merger go thru... could mean good things for gamers:-)
I think you mean "...could mean good things for Windows gamers."
While I don't particularly like nVidia's way of doing drivers for Linux, at least they WORK. I cannot install the ATI drivers for my video card because ATI hasn't kept up with the development in Xorg 7.x, and the Free driver really isn't worth much.
From my perspective, an ATI/AMD merger could be good, IF AMD opens up more of the programming specs for the ATI graphics chips (NOTE: NOT the driver source - the SPECS, as in "To enable texture fill, set register $foo bit $bar to 1.")
However, the more likely result will be even more closed, proprietary, Microsoft® Windows® Vista® DRM only hardware.
A pity - I rather like AMD's processors, but with the way things are going, I may want my next machine to be an Intel - while their graphics chips aren't great, they are much better supported under X.
And for those of you Windows® Fanboies who will say "Suxxors 2 B joo! Run Windows!" - you run what you choose to run, I shall choose to run what I run. BTW - say HI to all the Russian and Taiwanese spammers for me, and make sure you keep their^Wyour computer running.
I cannot understand why the company would want to hold onto the Ethereal trademark if the development of the project is moving to a new name. A trademark is, by definition, a MARK that you are TRADING under, so unless they are planning on continuing the project (a fork), there is no value to the mark.
So the only thing that makes sense to me is that they plan on forking the project and continuing the development - which really would not make sense, as the odds are such a move would be viewed with great disdain by the community, and in all likelihood the project will be outstripped by the new Wireshark project.
I don't see the motivation for HD radio right now - the receivers are WAY to expensive for what you get.
If you are in your car, you won't be able to tell the difference between HD Radio and plain-old FM Multiplex (unless your car is so well soundproofed that it poses a danger to everyone else on the road because you cannot hear horns/emergency vehicles/etc.)
If you are at home, for the cost of an HD setup you can get a HELL of a lot of music, or listen to sat radio.
Now, *IF* they were *replacing* radio stations with a pure digital block, then I could begin to see the advantage.
But I fear this will be just like HDTV - the broadcasters will use it to transmit FIVE TIMES THE COMMERCIALS! not actually transmit really good content.
Now, *if* auto makers start shipping HD radio in cars by default (or at least as part of the top of the line radio systems)....
What, no mention of the Teton Dam Flood of 1976? Destroyed Sugar City, royally screwed up Rexburg, didn't do Idaho Falls a lot of good, fscked up a bunch of farmers.
Sorry, but that disaster killed more people and cost more money by far than many of the items on this list.
Of course, having lived through it personally I am a bit biased.
I'd given up on/.'s moderation system a long time ago - if you look over my posting history you'd notice a reduction in the number of posts per unit time, precisely because of things like this. With the metamoderation system rewarding poor moderation and punishing good moderation, the moderator "pool" looks rather like the "pool" at the end of my neighbor's septic line.
Oh well - my goal of communicating my opinion to the submitter of the story was achieved (and thanks for the response, BTW).
I fear that your business is not long for this world. My reasoning is this: You are considering spending a large chunk of change for a domain name from a cybersquatter, rather than striking out to find an unused name you can register for a percent of the money. Given that ALL small businesses starting out are cash-strapped, the fact that you are willing to waste your limited money in this fashion makes me doubt you will spend your other money wisely. The fact that you then turned to Slashdot for advice on this would tend to confirm the hypothesis that you are not really thinking coldly and rationally enough to found a successful business.
I don't want to sound harsh, but I do think you really need to step back and reconsider your plans - perhaps you can locate a local college where you might get a dispassionate third party to help fix you a nice big bowl of Reality Checks.
I've watched too many businesses fail because the founders, while having the best of intentions, made bad decisions because they were not willing to face the harsh, unpleasant facts.
Please - do prove me wrong. Be successful, and when you are successful, feel free to email me and say "Boooya! In your FACE Wowbagger!" If you can be successful you will have earned the right to do so, and I will congratulate you.
But if you keep doing things like seriously considering spending $1500, or even $100 on a domain name when you are just starting out - I don't expect that email.
Warning: "serious" is overloaded in this context: "serious games"
Found 2 possible classes:
"Serious::Game" in namespace "Croteam" "Serious::Game" in namespace "adjective"
Didn't anybody else think <voice="Serious Sam">"Cool - Croateam are doing more Serious games - let's get our Serious Bombs and go kick some serious ass!"</voice>
This does bring up a possible new (future) feature for slash - allow logged-in users to specify their own CSS URL, to be served instead of the standards.
Video-game based movies suck for the same reason that most fan fiction sucks.
Consider: If I have a great deal of creativity and imagination, I am going to write my own damn story!. I am not going to set my story in some video game I played, or some TV show I watched - I am going to make up my own world.
So almost by definition any screenwriter who is basing his story on a video game lacks imagination.
Now, if I am a director who is *good*, am I going to pick a screenplay by some hack who was inspired by some video game, or am I going to pick a good screenplay by somebody with imagination and creativity?
You are selecting from the bottom of the barrel, twice - and you are surprised that the movie sucks?
Or it could be 4) "ANGST.....IN......SPAAAAAAAACE!"
a la The O.C., or Beverly Hills 90210 or....
Excuse me - had to go throw up.
Anyway. It could be the angst of a bunch of youngsters wondering if their next mistake will kill someone, start a war, or worst of all, embarrass them.
Of course this very conveniently overlooks the age difference between Kirk and Spock, the different maturation rates of humans vs. Vulcans, the different paths each took through Starfleet,....
This is just more Paramount milking the Star Dreck franchise for all that it is worth, and more.
It's a DAMN SHAME that they didn't allow Enterprise (when it finally got good) to continue to explore the founding of the Federation.
Obviously, what we need is a voice recognition algorithm with Phonetic Punctuation support built in.
Of course, we will have to extend it - Victor Borge didn't have sounds for #, < or > - but I'm sure we can come up with something.
Of course, some programming languages will be better than others - Ada will sound almost normal (other than having to bark out all the words in your best Drill Instructor parade voice), while Perl.... you'll need a good sock on the mike to keep the spit out, and people will think you have Tourette's.
We can put it to good use like.coop,.cat,.biz,.arpa,.aero,.info,.jobs,.mobi,.museum,.name,.pro,.travel, and.int.
Excuse me, but while I agree with 92% of your examples,.arpa is used any time you do a reverse DNS lookup - so it is VERY useful.
All contact info in one place - FOR TELEMARKETERS
on
Is It Time For .tel?
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
Yes, so I can have FirstnameLastname.tel, with my telephone number, so the telemarketing scum can associate my name with my number and bother me.
Yes, that sounds like a GREAT idea - I think I'll also put my social security number, my alarm codes, a Google maps link to my house, a picture of my house key, and my bank account numbers up there as well.
Look, if my company wants to set up a contact page they can set up a web page under their already existing domain name. If I want a contact page, I can set it up under my already existing personal web space. What does a new TLD add to this?
Now, *IF* they were talking about a new transport class (like http:// and ftp://) for encapsulating telephone numbers, such that a link to tel://8675309 would get me Jenny on the line, that *might* be useful.
But hell - I haven't even signed up for MYCALL@arrl.net to avoid being spammed by any asshole who scrapes my callsign (and I already have this one jackass who has done exactly that - he scraped my callsign and now he keeps adding me to stupid services like plaxo and the like, even though I've told this tool quite sharply that I don't want him bothering me.)
Isn't this against the Computer trespass law? Couldn't a complaint be filed with the FBI?
Unfortunately, this is how most big companies operate: they get scadloads of letters/emails/faxes a day saying "Stop doing $thing" - most of which are groundless or otherwise BS (e.g. "Stop raping our planet" - not exactly actionable).
So, in order to filter the BS from the rest, they take the attitude of "Unless we see something official and legal we ignore you."
Now, in this case, while the admin of the affected system has contacted DLinks's lawyers, he has not done so in a fashion that says "I am serious. I am official."
Now, if suddenly Special Agent Jones of the FBI shows up at DLink HQ and says "I am here about this complaint that you are in violation of the Computer Trespass act" - then shit will happen.
I wonder, how long will it take for our government to realize that most of us take our rights pretty damn seriously....
When in fact most of us actually DO take our rights seriously - seriously enough to make the government suffer the consequences when they capriciously violate our rights, e.g. by voting them out.
As long as they continue to get away with violating our rights with no meaningful consequences, then they can safely conclude that most of us do NOT, in fact, take our rights seriously.
Slashdot Mirror
Hey, I'm all for taking risks - calculated risks, where I have done what I can to mitigate those risks to the best of my ability. But there is a big difference between "OK, we have an aircraft that will be operating at 100% design spec to get you into space. If we exceed that by more than 10% you are toast, but we calculate the actual requirements to be about 99% +/- 5%, so you are in good shape" and "Well, yes there is a big crack in the window, but a little duct tape and some Superglue should hold together, we think, maybe, if we are lucky. Bon Voyage!"
Yes, this "there must be no incidents, no loss of life, no injuries" mindset - what are we, Pierson's Puppeteers?
But when we have a KNOWN FAILURE MODE, one that has already claimed the lives of one shuttle crew, and a second shuttle is showing that same failure mode, and the mindset is "Well, we'll just send them to the ISS, rig the shuttle with a remote control, and if the tiles get cracked we'll bring the shuttle down on remote and bring the crew back on Russian ships" - that is not merely "taking a risk", that is "taking an insane, unneeded risk."
Because of the volume of fuel that would have be transferred to the shuttle - compare filling a moped (the Atlas) and a Peterbuilt tractor unit (the Shuttle). It is not hard to fill a moped in a few minutes, filling the Peterbuilt takes quite a bit longer. Meanwhile, fuel is evaporating, leaking, and filling the launch area with a flammable mix of hydrogen and oxygen, AND water is condensing on the fuel tanks, freezing, and turning into nice hard chunks suitable for breaking things, like, say, fragile heat-resistant tiles.
Does anybody at NASA have a working memory? Don't they remember the results of the Challenger inquest, wherein plenty of evidence of engineers saying "DON'T LAUNCH! BAAAAD!" was ignored?
I fear we may very well get a "fourth to remember", and NOT in a good way! It is all very well for a bottlerocket to explode in flight, NOT A MANNED SHIP!
I fear that NASA is going to launch, come hell or high water, and damned be the consequences.
A simple question, to show the state of the internet in general with regards to IPv6:
Can you get Slashdot over a pure IPv6 connection? That is to say, send an IPv6 datagram, with an IPv6 header, all the way from some computer at some location on the Internet backbone, and have an IPv6 datagram, with an IPv6 header, arrive in the network stack of http://slashdot.org?
Bridging from IPv6 to IPv4, so that an IPv4 packet arrives at the server is not allowed.
Now, tell me again: are we ready for IPv6?
This is a trivially true statement, for certain values of "the industry".
:= "Microsoft Operating Systems". .....
That is: "the industry"
Oh, you actually thought "the industry" might mean something else? Silly human.
OK, what distro? What kernel? Give me details, because I know that I cannot get the fglrx drivers to work under FC Rawhide.
I think you mean "...could mean good things for Windows gamers."
While I don't particularly like nVidia's way of doing drivers for Linux, at least they WORK. I cannot install the ATI drivers for my video card because ATI hasn't kept up with the development in Xorg 7.x, and the Free driver really isn't worth much.
From my perspective, an ATI/AMD merger could be good, IF AMD opens up more of the programming specs for the ATI graphics chips (NOTE: NOT the driver source - the SPECS , as in "To enable texture fill, set register $foo bit $bar to 1.")
However, the more likely result will be even more closed, proprietary, Microsoft® Windows® Vista® DRM only hardware.
A pity - I rather like AMD's processors, but with the way things are going, I may want my next machine to be an Intel - while their graphics chips aren't great, they are much better supported under X.
And for those of you Windows® Fanboies who will say "Suxxors 2 B joo! Run Windows!" - you run what you choose to run, I shall choose to run what I run. BTW - say HI to all the Russian and Taiwanese spammers for me, and make sure you keep their^Wyour computer running.
I cannot understand why the company would want to hold onto the Ethereal trademark if the development of the project is moving to a new name. A trademark is, by definition, a MARK that you are TRADING under, so unless they are planning on continuing the project (a fork), there is no value to the mark.
So the only thing that makes sense to me is that they plan on forking the project and continuing the development - which really would not make sense, as the odds are such a move would be viewed with great disdain by the community, and in all likelihood the project will be outstripped by the new Wireshark project.
I don't see the motivation for HD radio right now - the receivers are WAY to expensive for what you get.
If you are in your car, you won't be able to tell the difference between HD Radio and plain-old FM Multiplex (unless your car is so well soundproofed that it poses a danger to everyone else on the road because you cannot hear horns/emergency vehicles/etc.)
If you are at home, for the cost of an HD setup you can get a HELL of a lot of music, or listen to sat radio.
Now, *IF* they were *replacing* radio stations with a pure digital block, then I could begin to see the advantage.
But I fear this will be just like HDTV - the broadcasters will use it to transmit FIVE TIMES THE COMMERCIALS! not actually transmit really good content.
Now, *if* auto makers start shipping HD radio in cars by default (or at least as part of the top of the line radio systems)....
What, no mention of the Teton Dam Flood of 1976? Destroyed Sugar City, royally screwed up Rexburg, didn't do Idaho Falls a lot of good, fscked up a bunch of farmers.
Sorry, but that disaster killed more people and cost more money by far than many of the items on this list.
Of course, having lived through it personally I am a bit biased.
I'd given up on /.'s moderation system a long time ago - if you look over my posting history you'd notice a reduction in the number of posts per unit time, precisely because of things like this. With the metamoderation system rewarding poor moderation and punishing good moderation, the moderator "pool" looks rather like the "pool" at the end of my neighbor's septic line.
Oh well - my goal of communicating my opinion to the submitter of the story was achieved (and thanks for the response, BTW).
I fear that your business is not long for this world. My reasoning is this: You are considering spending a large chunk of change for a domain name from a cybersquatter, rather than striking out to find an unused name you can register for a percent of the money. Given that ALL small businesses starting out are cash-strapped, the fact that you are willing to waste your limited money in this fashion makes me doubt you will spend your other money wisely. The fact that you then turned to Slashdot for advice on this would tend to confirm the hypothesis that you are not really thinking coldly and rationally enough to found a successful business.
I don't want to sound harsh, but I do think you really need to step back and reconsider your plans - perhaps you can locate a local college where you might get a dispassionate third party to help fix you a nice big bowl of Reality Checks.
I've watched too many businesses fail because the founders, while having the best of intentions, made bad decisions because they were not willing to face the harsh, unpleasant facts.
Please - do prove me wrong. Be successful, and when you are successful, feel free to email me and say "Boooya! In your FACE Wowbagger!" If you can be successful you will have earned the right to do so, and I will congratulate you.
But if you keep doing things like seriously considering spending $1500, or even $100 on a domain name when you are just starting out - I don't expect that email.
Warning: "serious" is overloaded in this context:
"serious games"
Found 2 possible classes:
"Serious::Game" in namespace "Croteam"
"Serious::Game" in namespace "adjective"
Didn't anybody else think <voice="Serious Sam">"Cool - Croateam are doing more Serious games - let's get our Serious Bombs and go kick some serious ass!"</voice>
Yes, and yes. They are clueless, and they are cheap.
That is why pool.ntp.org was created - to provide a pool of NTP servers that these bozos can use without hammering anybody's server too badly.
That way, I could go to my prefs, set my CSS to be http://www.example.com/my.css, and then slash would send meas the last stylesheet of any page served to me.
Video-game based movies suck for the same reason that most fan fiction sucks.
Consider: If I have a great deal of creativity and imagination, I am going to write my own damn story!. I am not going to set my story in some video game I played, or some TV show I watched - I am going to make up my own world.
So almost by definition any screenwriter who is basing his story on a video game lacks imagination.
Now, if I am a director who is *good*, am I going to pick a screenplay by some hack who was inspired by some video game, or am I going to pick a good screenplay by somebody with imagination and creativity?
You are selecting from the bottom of the barrel, twice - and you are surprised that the movie sucks?
Or it could be
....
....
4) "ANGST.....IN......SPAAAAAAAACE!"
a la The O.C., or Beverly Hills 90210 or
Excuse me - had to go throw up.
Anyway. It could be the angst of a bunch of youngsters wondering if their next mistake will kill someone, start a war, or worst of all, embarrass them.
Of course this very conveniently overlooks the age difference between Kirk and Spock, the different maturation rates of humans vs. Vulcans, the different paths each took through Starfleet,
This is just more Paramount milking the Star Dreck franchise for all that it is worth, and more.
It's a DAMN SHAME that they didn't allow Enterprise (when it finally got good) to continue to explore the founding of the Federation.
Obviously, what we need is a voice recognition algorithm with Phonetic Punctuation support built in.
Of course, we will have to extend it - Victor Borge didn't have sounds for #, < or > - but I'm sure we can come up with something.
Of course, some programming languages will be better than others - Ada will sound almost normal (other than having to bark out all the words in your best Drill Instructor parade voice), while Perl.... you'll need a good sock on the mike to keep the spit out, and people will think you have Tourette's.
Excuse me, but while I agree with 92% of your examples,
Yes, so I can have FirstnameLastname.tel, with my telephone number, so the telemarketing scum can associate my name with my number and bother me.
Yes, that sounds like a GREAT idea - I think I'll also put my social security number, my alarm codes, a Google maps link to my house, a picture of my house key, and my bank account numbers up there as well.
Look, if my company wants to set up a contact page they can set up a web page under their already existing domain name. If I want a contact page, I can set it up under my already existing personal web space. What does a new TLD add to this?
Now, *IF* they were talking about a new transport class (like http:// and ftp://) for encapsulating telephone numbers, such that a link to tel://8675309 would get me Jenny on the line, that *might* be useful.
But hell - I haven't even signed up for MYCALL@arrl.net to avoid being spammed by any asshole who scrapes my callsign (and I already have this one jackass who has done exactly that - he scraped my callsign and now he keeps adding me to stupid services like plaxo and the like, even though I've told this tool quite sharply that I don't want him bothering me.)
There is a much easier way to block 99% of the typosquatters - they have a very small number of IP addresses they park their domains on.
Block those IP addresses, block the squatters.
Check it out for yourself - fire up your favorite DNS query tool, and plug in some typos.
The offending company is in the US - the crime is being committed in the US against a server in Denmark.
As I said above - Call the FBI. Lodge a complaint of criminal computer trespass - they are using your service in violation of your TOS.
DLink will pay attention when a Special Agent shows up.
Isn't this against the Computer trespass law? Couldn't a complaint be filed with the FBI?
Unfortunately, this is how most big companies operate: they get scadloads of letters/emails/faxes a day saying "Stop doing $thing" - most of which are groundless or otherwise BS (e.g. "Stop raping our planet" - not exactly actionable).
So, in order to filter the BS from the rest, they take the attitude of "Unless we see something official and legal we ignore you."
Now, in this case, while the admin of the affected system has contacted DLinks's lawyers, he has not done so in a fashion that says "I am serious. I am official."
Now, if suddenly Special Agent Jones of the FBI shows up at DLink HQ and says "I am here about this complaint that you are in violation of the Computer Trespass act" - then shit will happen.
When in fact most of us actually DO take our rights seriously - seriously enough to make the government suffer the consequences when they capriciously violate our rights, e.g. by voting them out.
As long as they continue to get away with violating our rights with no meaningful consequences, then they can safely conclude that most of us do NOT, in fact, take our rights seriously.