With such elementary things as fire denied to them, it's doubtful that they could progress to any reasonable level.
Oh, I'm not so sure about that... if they are that intelligent, they'll probably be able to create some dry chambers in which fire can be lit, potentially after observing underwater volcanos and realising that really hot stuff seems to be possible in places that aren't wet. Granted, it's a bit of a leap, but I don't think it's an impossible evolution. A more fundamental problem is potentially their body shape. Fins are great for swimming (which is important in an aquatic environment, obviously), but they suck if you want to manipulate things and maybe use tools.
So, if I'm a citizen of the EU, I have to pay money to Microsoft to participate in my government?
Naw, you can just look at it in Openoffice or whatever. Hell, even Microsoft has free Word viewers floating around. And if you really object that much to even touching a.doc, you can mail it to one of those fancy document-converters and have it turned into a pdf...
Hate Microsoft (or the EU) all you want, but this is rather stupid as a reason.
Naw, it's much easier than you think. All of Physics can be expressed by just one equation, the Grand Unified Theory, the computation of which is accelerated by PhysX. The Grand Unified Theory was first discovered when programmers at Valve tried to optimise the physics engine of HL2. From the link:
Game Engine Software Engineer at Valve, Jose Garcia discovered the theory. "The game engine ran too slowly. I was assigned the job of speeding it up," he said. "I started out by combining some of the gravity equations with some of the other force equations and found it all started to fit together. After a day, I had fine-tuned the entire physics-animation functions down to four lines of code, which ran a bit faster," he added.
Six million people a year are estimated to download files illegally in the UK.
So, I guess that means the story headline could be changed into "UK Government to reduce ISP's customer base by 6 Million". Somehow I don't think that's gonna happen.
Why were they taking nude pictures of Hans Reiser from a distance small enough that it became possible for him to fart in the face of the officer?
Unless dear Hans has a very violent flatulence problem, there can't have been more than a few inches between face and venting hole and that's quite freaky, none the least because of the implied relative positions of the two. It also raises several disturbing questions at least a few of which contain the word 'goatse'.
They're subject to filling up, being shut off, being knocked about, crashing, etc
Well, filling up is kinda the point of the entire exercise, but you're right - being shut off, crashing, or being otherwise disconnected is enough of a problem to make this a non-starter. We're basically talking about a distributed filesystem in which subparts may fail without notice. I'm sure there are ways to minimise the problems this will create - you can for instance make sure that any one file is always completely located on one physical hard disk, so if that one goes down you're at least not left with half a file which may still be open in an editor somewhere. I guess you can also be clever with redundancy, so that say half the hard disks in your network can go down but you're still left with a working system (provided the right ones go down), but basically, because you cannot guarantee which hard disks will be up at any given time you also cannot guarantee that you're system won't break in horrible ways. Hence it's not practical unless you don't particularly care about which files are available at any given time as long as some are there. So basically, that means it'll be alright for porn and mp3s, neither of which you'd particularly want lying around in a corporate environment, but I fail to come up with applications that might actually be useful.
Besides, with hard disks these days being as cheap as they are, why not just buy another one if you do need more space? Do you even need more space? Or is this just trying to salvage something you can't really use in order to create a solution for a problem that doesn't really exist?
Exactly - that makes it actually quite an insidious submission, you know... not only will we have a little shoutfest over micro kernels, we can also start complaining about dupes again and in discussions like this, it's only a matter of time before someone puts a vi vs emacs spin on it, since we haven't had that shoutfest for a while either.
So, first I get an email from Amazon, telling me about their amazing new service called Riptopia. You send in your CDs in multiples of 100, you wait some days, you get the CDs back along with a few DVDs containing high quality rips complete with album art, correctly filled-in tags etc. For about $1 per CD. And my thought was, "well, how curious, I wonder what the RIAA would say to that".
Then I come to/. and it appears the RIAA is saying it wants 1.5 Million dollars per copied CD.
It almost makes me feel like they have a new money-making scheme:
Let people copy CDs on Riptopia
Get detailed lists of exactly what CDs have been copied for whom from Riptopia
Send out the bills
Profit!!!
Now, I'm sure I saw a guy handing out tinfoil hats running around here somewhere....
So I wonder... how long does it take to get 6500$'s equivalent in WoW gold? I.e. how many hours do you have to work for that money and how does that compare to a normal job? Are you earning like an executive or are you on minimum wage or less?
Got any source for that? Cause as far as I can tell, you just made that up and it's bullshit (and not +5 Insightful, mods - way to check a claim before modding). The real beef (link in French, sorry) the Syndicat de la librairie française has with Amazon (and other online sellers) is twofold. By not charging delivery costs (In France and I think Germany, there is no minimum order for free delivery costs if you only buy books), they are
selling at a loss (vente à perte)
associating a free service with the sale (vente à prime)
Both of which are forbidden under French law (loi Lang). Amazon simply argues, that delivery merely an extension of the sale contract, aimed at actually bringing the goods to the customer, but apparently, the courts do not agree.
if you're not making money with the picture, there is no conflict
Typing without thinking again... that should read "if you're not publishing the picture, then...". You need model releases if you're publishing a picture of people for instance, whether you're making money or not. I'll leave it to a proper lawyer to explain whether there are differences, legally speaking, between merely publishing a picture or selling it.
Yeah, I was thinking the same. IANAAL, but I am pretty sure that a release is required for anything copyrighted in a picture if you want to make money of that picture. There probably are some fair use exceptions, dealing with things that happen to be captured by your picture but not its focus (like the Fiat 500 whizzing past the Colosseum as you took a picture), but in general, if you are trying to make money using someone elses copyrighted work, you need a release.
But this NOT the same as saying that Ford (in this case) owns the picture or even the copyright to it. They are both yours and if you're not making money with the picture, there is no conflict.
What exactly stops you from buying whatever laptop you want and installing Linux yourself? Given that you want a powerful laptop, wouldn't that be more consistent with your wishes than buying an Eee?
Heresy. Anything related to one of the sites which are lucky enough to earn their own link on the main page of/. is always/.-worthy.
Also, the concept that observing any property of the internet within the internet can affect that property is interesting. If the choice is between reflecting on that or finishing that bloody piece of code I'm writing, I'll take the former, even if it may ultimately be pointless;)
The thermostats referred to are connected to air conditioning
Thanks for the info, now it actually makes sense to me. Here I was, wondering how exactly turning the heating up would help with reducing electricity...
So I guess that does make the idea a lot more reasonable, although I would still rather feel that if your power grid can't always deal with the electricity demand, then it's the power grid that needs updating - on the other hand, this probably both cheaper and more enviromentally friendly.
That leaves the one concern then: hacking of the system, especially since this is wireless. If the idea is to turn air conditioning down to reduce the strain on the power grid, then bad guys can use the same system and turn the air conditioning up to crash the grid. And what does TFA say about the possibility of hacking?
That is not possible, said Nicole Tam, a spokeswoman for P.G.& E. who works with the pilot program in Stockton. Radio pages "are encrypted and encoded," Ms. Tam said
Yeah right, like that's ever stopped anyone. Also, what is the difference between encrypted and encoded?
Re:This Could Be The Worst Thing For KDE
on
KDE 4.0 Is Out
·
· Score: 5, Interesting
at the same time they are clearly advertising that the KDE 4.0 desktop is probably not ready for general use on most people's desktops.
No, they're not. The/. crowd knows about it because enough of us read kde-devel and all the flaming between devs on whether or not to release has come up in every KDE4-related story here.
But consider Joe Average, the non-technical guy who decides to ditch Windows in favour of Linux, since he's read a few good things about it and all that. Exactly the kind of user everyone feels Linux should be targetting if it is ever to achieve critical mass. Assume for the sake of the argument, that he installs Kubuntu. His current KDE version - and he is probably aware of it, or will find out very soon - is 3.5.8. Now he visits kubuntu.com. The site tells it in no uncertain terms that "KDE4 is the start of something amazing" and to "be free with KDE4".
If that's not enough to make him install KDE4 without second thought, he can visit kde.org and learn, again, to be free and that the " KDE Project Ships Fourth Major Version of cutting edge Free Software Desktop". He also learns that The KDE 4 Libraries have seen major improvements in almost all areas. and that the KDE 4 Desktop has gained some major new capabilities. and so on. Nowhere immediately obvious does it say that it is not, in fact, ready, feature complete or stable.
So, what happens to Joe Average? He installs KDE4, tries out a few things, finds it broken in several places, not working as expected in others and not configurable where he may want it to be configurable. Compared to WinXP, it will feel to him as a significant step backwards (probably more because of the brokenness than the lack of features compared to KDE3). In the end, he'll just go back to Windows because, clearly Linux isn't there yet.
Bottom line, this should have been a Beta and it should have clearly been advertised as such, not via comments on some mailing list but clearly visible within the main announcement.
Re:This Could Be The Worst Thing For KDE
on
KDE 4.0 Is Out
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
This should have been a KDE 3.9 release.
Absolutely not - KDE4.0 is a completely new thing and therefore by definition not part of the KDE 3.x family. It coexists for now in parallel with KDE3, it is not sequential improvement.
No, the sad truth is, this should have been KDE4 Beta 1. It's not finished, it's been rushed out. I like KDE and I appreciate that KDE4 is going to be very cool eventually, but this is not the time. And rushing products out before they are finished, saying that the real stuff will turn up in the.1 release, well that kinda reminds me of another company, except they call the.1 release 'Service Pack 1'.
Again, let's be clear about this - KDE4 is gonna kick some ass eventually, but releasing it in its current state has been a big mistake.
Re:Configurable?
on
KDE 4.0 Is Out
·
· Score: 3, Informative
Well, I've been running KDE4 for about 10 Minutes now (writing this in it, in fact) and things I am missing so far (note that I may simply not have found yet) - and yes, I need them to work efficiently:
The ability to bind keyboard shortcuts to 'Desktop to the left/right/up/down' as well as 'move windows to the desktop to the left/right7up/down as I could under KDE3
The ability to get a list of all windows on all Desktops
The ability to resize the bottom panel to something smaller
The abillty to reorder the widgets in the bottom panel in a way other than removing them and then readding them where I want
Other things that I found insta-annoying:
My Desktop icons have become a jumbled mess on the left side of the screen
Moving them around somehow also MOVES the entire background (albeit in the opposite direction and to a lesser degree) - and I mean everything, icons, wallpaper and that plama thingy in the top right corner. WTF?
Font size for non-QT apps has somehow reduced to barely-readable
Things I insta-like:
Well... I do like the black taskbar, but I'd still rather set it to translucent.
Bottom line... yeah, nice work but it's simply not ready for proper usage. It feels and handles like a beta. I can't configure it so I can work efficiently in it and it's broken in places (I don't think I'm supposed to be able to shift my entire background out of the screen). Right, back to KDE3 for me now.
Your statement of the odds shows a clear misunderstanding of the reality.
Never attribute to misunderstanding to reality what can adequately be explained by repeated bashing of keys for effect. However - no offense intended, but your statement of exactly 100% is also misunderstanding reality. On top of my head, I can think of three scenarios where earth will never get hit by an asteroid without us actively preventing such an event:
Earth is destroyed through other means beforehand
The Universe runs out of rocks to fling at us
All asteroids are on trajectories that ensures they never collide with earth
And while these (especially No 3) seem pretty remote possibilites, the chance of the second point happening actually tends to 1 as time goes to infinity. I don't think the Universe is a perpetual motion device, so eventually there simply won't be anything flying around anymore. So no, the chance that we get hit by a rock from space from now on till the end of time is pretty high but not exactly 100%.
Here's why we should care. WHEN this happens it kills a significant proportion of the world's population or potentially even wipes us out.
I think I didn't make myself clear enough (should know better than post at 3am in the morning). Of all the things we should care about and that need fixing lest we be headed towards disaster, a rock from space is not very high on the priority list, that's all - and Joe Average does not need a wake-up call about it just yet. If one does come our way, yeah, we're screwed, that's true enough and of course it is preferential to avoid such an event. More so if it only wipes out a part of the population rather than the entire species. But, it's not like there's a thousand rocks heading towards us with impact absolutely imminent and everyone's just sitting around twiddling their thumbs. Rather, there is a small but non-zero probability that we'll be hit in 50 years or so and there are scientists working on this, thinking about what to do in such a case. So we are caring in a way that is commeasurate with the threat. Hence I don't see the need for a wake-up call.
A wake-up call to what, exactly? We're all gonna die burning asteroid death (maybe)?
See, I really don't get this argument. I can understand a wake-up call about how we're messing with nature so much it's gonna end in tears. I can understand wake-up calls about poverty, misery, illness, all these things in our world. These are things we can at least try to do something about and the more people actually do, the better they may get. Or not, that's a different debate, but the point is that the world is choke-full of things we all need a wake-up call for so we can start thinking if, perhaps, we can do something to help.
A wake-up call to a 1 in a 1000000000000000000000000000000 chance of a piece of rock hitting us? I couldn't care less, and even if I did care, there is nothing I can do about it.
I guess you could take it to a different level, be more philosophical about it... remind us of our own mortality as an individual or remind us that the entire species could become extinct. Even under that light, I simply don't see the point of your statement. I am fully aware that I'm gonna die someday and the probability that it'll be tomorrow in a car crash is higher than that it'll be by a rock from space, ever. I'm not particularly fussed about it. As far as the entire species is concerned, we get reminded of that every day when another animal becomes extinct and thanks to the global warming fuss, there's always someone insisting that it'll be us next. There's no need for a wake-up call from an asteroid in either case. I am thus really at a loss as to what exactly in your statement is +5 Insightful (which is not your doing, so don't take it as a personal attack).
As an aside, last time I checked, the moon was covered in craters of all sizes, I'm pretty sure I can see some of them just by looking out of the window. And I'm sure they're not just painted on.
Slashdot Mirror
A more fundamental problem is potentially their body shape. Fins are great for swimming (which is important in an aquatic environment, obviously), but they suck if you want to manipulate things and maybe use tools.
Hate Microsoft (or the EU) all you want, but this is rather stupid as a reason.
Why were they taking nude pictures of Hans Reiser from a distance small enough that it became possible for him to fart in the face of the officer?
Unless dear Hans has a very violent flatulence problem, there can't have been more than a few inches between face and venting hole and that's quite freaky, none the least because of the implied relative positions of the two. It also raises several disturbing questions at least a few of which contain the word 'goatse'.
Disturbing.
Besides, with hard disks these days being as cheap as they are, why not just buy another one if you do need more space? Do you even need more space? Or is this just trying to salvage something you can't really use in order to create a solution for a problem that doesn't really exist?
Wouldn't pleading the 5th just make them confiscate your laptop instead?
Raindrops keep falling on my head....
But it can't rain all the time!
Exactly - that makes it actually quite an insidious submission, you know... not only will we have a little shoutfest over micro kernels, we can also start complaining about dupes again and in discussions like this, it's only a matter of time before someone puts a vi vs emacs spin on it, since we haven't had that shoutfest for a while either.
:)
Not two, but three birds with one stone
Then I come to
It almost makes me feel like they have a new money-making scheme:
- Let people copy CDs on Riptopia
- Get detailed lists of exactly what CDs have been copied for whom from Riptopia
- Send out the bills
- Profit!!!
Now, I'm sure I saw a guy handing out tinfoil hats running around here somewhere....So I wonder... how long does it take to get 6500$'s equivalent in WoW gold? I.e. how many hours do you have to work for that money and how does that compare to a normal job? Are you earning like an executive or are you on minimum wage or less?
The real beef (link in French, sorry) the Syndicat de la librairie française has with Amazon (and other online sellers) is twofold. By not charging delivery costs (In France and I think Germany, there is no minimum order for free delivery costs if you only buy books), they are
Both of which are forbidden under French law (loi Lang). Amazon simply argues, that delivery merely an extension of the sale contract, aimed at actually bringing the goods to the customer, but apparently, the courts do not agree.
Although the second teaser might get delayed.
Yeah, I was thinking the same. IANAAL, but I am pretty sure that a release is required for anything copyrighted in a picture if you want to make money of that picture. There probably are some fair use exceptions, dealing with things that happen to be captured by your picture but not its focus (like the Fiat 500 whizzing past the Colosseum as you took a picture), but in general, if you are trying to make money using someone elses copyrighted work, you need a release.
But this NOT the same as saying that Ford (in this case) owns the picture or even the copyright to it. They are both yours and if you're not making money with the picture, there is no conflict.
What exactly stops you from buying whatever laptop you want and installing Linux yourself? Given that you want a powerful laptop, wouldn't that be more consistent with your wishes than buying an Eee?
Heresy. Anything related to one of the sites which are lucky enough to earn their own link on the main page of /. is always /.-worthy.
;)
Also, the concept that observing any property of the internet within the internet can affect that property is interesting. If the choice is between reflecting on that or finishing that bloody piece of code I'm writing, I'll take the former, even if it may ultimately be pointless
Yes, of course. Please let me rephrase the question: How does "encrypted and encoded" improve over "encrypted"?
:)
I'm just trying to make fun of press-release-speak trying to make us believe that "encrypted AND encoded" somehow ensures superiour security
So I guess that does make the idea a lot more reasonable, although I would still rather feel that if your power grid can't always deal with the electricity demand, then it's the power grid that needs updating - on the other hand, this probably both cheaper and more enviromentally friendly.
That leaves the one concern then: hacking of the system, especially since this is wireless. If the idea is to turn air conditioning down to reduce the strain on the power grid, then bad guys can use the same system and turn the air conditioning up to crash the grid. And what does TFA say about the possibility of hacking?Yeah right, like that's ever stopped anyone. Also, what is the difference between encrypted and encoded?
But consider Joe Average, the non-technical guy who decides to ditch Windows in favour of Linux, since he's read a few good things about it and all that. Exactly the kind of user everyone feels Linux should be targetting if it is ever to achieve critical mass. Assume for the sake of the argument, that he installs Kubuntu. His current KDE version - and he is probably aware of it, or will find out very soon - is 3.5.8. Now he visits kubuntu.com. The site tells it in no uncertain terms that "KDE4 is the start of something amazing" and to "be free with KDE4".
If that's not enough to make him install KDE4 without second thought, he can visit kde.org and learn, again, to be free and that the " KDE Project Ships Fourth Major Version of cutting edge Free Software Desktop". He also learns that The KDE 4 Libraries have seen major improvements in almost all areas. and that the KDE 4 Desktop has gained some major new capabilities. and so on. Nowhere immediately obvious does it say that it is not, in fact, ready, feature complete or stable.
So, what happens to Joe Average? He installs KDE4, tries out a few things, finds it broken in several places, not working as expected in others and not configurable where he may want it to be configurable. Compared to WinXP, it will feel to him as a significant step backwards (probably more because of the brokenness than the lack of features compared to KDE3). In the end, he'll just go back to Windows because, clearly Linux isn't there yet.
Bottom line, this should have been a Beta and it should have clearly been advertised as such, not via comments on some mailing list but clearly visible within the main announcement.
No, the sad truth is, this should have been KDE4 Beta 1. It's not finished, it's been rushed out. I like KDE and I appreciate that KDE4 is going to be very cool eventually, but this is not the time. And rushing products out before they are finished, saying that the real stuff will turn up in the
Again, let's be clear about this - KDE4 is gonna kick some ass eventually, but releasing it in its current state has been a big mistake.
Other things that I found insta-annoying:
Things I insta-like:
Bottom line... yeah, nice work but it's simply not ready for proper usage. It feels and handles like a beta. I can't configure it so I can work efficiently in it and it's broken in places (I don't think I'm supposed to be able to shift my entire background out of the screen). Right, back to KDE3 for me now.
- Earth is destroyed through other means beforehand
- The Universe runs out of rocks to fling at us
- All asteroids are on trajectories that ensures they never collide with earth
And while these (especially No 3) seem pretty remote possibilites, the chance of the second point happening actually tends to 1 as time goes to infinity. I don't think the Universe is a perpetual motion device, so eventually there simply won't be anything flying around anymore. So no, the chance that we get hit by a rock from space from now on till the end of time is pretty high but not exactly 100%.I think I didn't make myself clear enough (should know better than post at 3am in the morning). Of all the things we should care about and that need fixing lest we be headed towards disaster, a rock from space is not very high on the priority list, that's all - and Joe Average does not need a wake-up call about it just yet. If one does come our way, yeah, we're screwed, that's true enough and of course it is preferential to avoid such an event. More so if it only wipes out a part of the population rather than the entire species. But, it's not like there's a thousand rocks heading towards us with impact absolutely imminent and everyone's just sitting around twiddling their thumbs. Rather, there is a small but non-zero probability that we'll be hit in 50 years or so and there are scientists working on this, thinking about what to do in such a case. So we are caring in a way that is commeasurate with the threat. Hence I don't see the need for a wake-up call.A wake-up call to what, exactly? We're all gonna die burning asteroid death (maybe)?
See, I really don't get this argument. I can understand a wake-up call about how we're messing with nature so much it's gonna end in tears. I can understand wake-up calls about poverty, misery, illness, all these things in our world. These are things we can at least try to do something about and the more people actually do, the better they may get. Or not, that's a different debate, but the point is that the world is choke-full of things we all need a wake-up call for so we can start thinking if, perhaps, we can do something to help.
A wake-up call to a 1 in a 1000000000000000000000000000000 chance of a piece of rock hitting us? I couldn't care less, and even if I did care, there is nothing I can do about it.
I guess you could take it to a different level, be more philosophical about it... remind us of our own mortality as an individual or remind us that the entire species could become extinct. Even under that light, I simply don't see the point of your statement. I am fully aware that I'm gonna die someday and the probability that it'll be tomorrow in a car crash is higher than that it'll be by a rock from space, ever. I'm not particularly fussed about it. As far as the entire species is concerned, we get reminded of that every day when another animal becomes extinct and thanks to the global warming fuss, there's always someone insisting that it'll be us next. There's no need for a wake-up call from an asteroid in either case. I am thus really at a loss as to what exactly in your statement is +5 Insightful (which is not your doing, so don't take it as a personal attack).
As an aside, last time I checked, the moon was covered in craters of all sizes, I'm pretty sure I can see some of them just by looking out of the window. And I'm sure they're not just painted on.