"Scientists have been having problems in predicting the behavior of Quantum Dots"
Couldn't they use the random number generator that sees into the future to predict the behavior of quantum dots? It was posted in Slashdot's Science section without the Funny Foot icon so it must be valid, just like the tsunami creatures. (Seriously, how can we not be sceptical about anything posted on Slashdot these days? When I read this headline the first thing I did was checking out on Google and Randi.org if quantum dots aren't just another new quack pseudoscience, and before I managed to verify their validity I had no time to read the article in question. Isn't there something wrong with a news source when the first thing I do is a research before I can trust anything I read? Isn't that a job of editors to verify their sources before posting stories? I just don't get it.)
This was not an "identity theft." A theft is an unauthorised taking or use of someone else's property with the intent to permanently deprive the owner or the person with rightful possession of that property or its use. Here, no one was deprived of her identity so it was not a theft. It was impersonation. This mistake may seem innocent but the problem is that if we frivolously use the words "theft" and "stealing" in such an irresponsible way, we are more likely to let the newspeak like "intellectual property" and "software piracy" slip under the radar. Editors, please correct that error in the story. Let us not take part in the corporate brainwashing. We should be more responsible than that if we don't want to be mindless tools of the "everything is property, doing anything is theft" propaganda.
We have already managed to get rid of the ugly case and now we can also get rid of the ugly OS. Those Macs start to look as an interesting option. But seriously, I love Macs because they represent cheerfulness and lighthearted excitement, they are merry, bright and lively, they have vivid and joyful style. Isn't changing the case to PC ATX and installing Debian on a Mac essentially removing all of its gayness? What's the point?
It's interesting that the year following a strong earthquake or tsunami is usually slightly warmer than average. I wonder what will people do when thanks to foolishly burning oil and coal we will have no polar ice and ozone keeping us cool. Isn't it time to use hydrogen as fuel? Hydrogen + oxygen = pure water. Simple as that. Is there any other reason than shady business in the middle east that stops us from using clean and cheap energy today? Is it more profitable for certain people to start wars and control oil than to do something good for the entire humanity? I blame people who vote for immoral politicians. In democracy people can have exactly the government they want. So I ask: why do people want wars? Why do people want the greenhouse effect? This is something I seriously cannot understand.
So as far as I can tell, you pay a monthly fee to "rent" your music.
I understand DRM is evil but at least I own the digital files I download off of iTunes.
Even more importantly, "Napster's service uses Microsoft's Janus technology to enable DRM protected music files." If iPod was going to use Janus, would it have to change its name to iAnus? I think this Napster campaign is just FUD. There are more important problems with Apple to be concerned about than this. For example, did you know that "Apple Computers promote Godless Darwinism and Communism"? You can read the entire article by Dr. Richard Paley (a teacher of Divinity and Theobiology at Fellowship University) here. A true eye opener. The real important question is, should such subliminal propaganda be legal? (Disclaimer: iANAL)
See this report from 1999: "We live in extraordinary economic times here in the U.S. and this success could ignite a whole new cycle of economic prosperity. We must first, however, take a hard look at what is occurring at Microsoft. Microsoft is a great company with terrific employees. Sadly, many of these brilliant people have been blinded by the stock price and unable to see that Microsoft is also the key architect of the greatest financial pyramid scheme this century. It is not uncommon for participants in pyramid schemes to lose their emotional bearings. My close friends who work at Microsoft are particularly upset over my work and it is possible that even Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer do not realize the implications of their financial practices." Read more here and here (search for Microsoft). I have been writing about it for years only to be completely ignored, now everyone is surprised but this is in fact nothing new for anyone who has bothered to analyse financial frauds of Redmond. This is really fascinating stuff.
If you are fortunate enough
on
Happy Darwin Day!
·
· Score: 3, Funny
You might even win a Darwin Award! Which I wish you all, Happy Darwin Day!
Condidering the fact that getting a PhD in CS and EE is fairly easy these days, we should expect a lot of idiotic "methods and aparatii" from those new kids. Then couple of frivolous lawsuits against small corporations as a testing ground and finally against free software will follow during the next decades (probably some easy target, ala bnetd, so people will boycott Microsoft for few ours and then start buying new products, like with Blizzard) but it will result in very bad PR and counterclaims from IBM so the practice will probably be terminated after two (three at most) low-priority lawsuits from the top levels of the management, those new kids will get fired and everything will go back to normal. It will be certainly interesting to watch, but devastating to the US industry which will obviously benefit EU who will rather choose progress than software patents. It will mean stronger domination of Microsoft in the US and weaker in Europe. That of course means that it is a good time to buy stock of SuSE and Mandrake, and sell Red Hat.
Ford Security Chief Says Ford Safer Than Lexus. Film at 11.
Seriously, do we have to post here every single lie said by Micro$oft? If so, then could we at least have an option to moderate such articles as -1, Troll?
Do we really have to advertise search engine spammers on the Slashdot front page? People like this who only want to exploit the search engine rating systems for their own advantage are the reason of high prices and low effectiveness of on-line advertising. I hope Google will ban this scam website from its results altogether and not waste a single penny on them. Do we really want an important searches to return thousands upon thousands of irrelevant results that are nothing more than a lists of links to other lists of links, ad nauseam? It's already nearly impossible to search for pornography, but at least no one searching for pornography needs help. People who search for asbestos are usually not the ones who want to buy some asbestos, but actually those who suffer from asbestosis. What next? Hijacking the search results of people who look for cancer treatment just to immorally squeeze few bucks from them and force greedy lawyer advertisements upon their throats? This is just disgusting. I am really disappointed that such a link has been posted on Slashdot.
This is a great day for both free software and open source movements. Hopefully Omaha will serve us well as a great example to follow and soon other banks will jump on the bandwagon. I know that I am much more likely to give my money to people who choose their software intelligently and I am sure that I am not alone. GNU/Linux and *BSD variants are certainly the best bets in such an environment. In the name of the Slashdot community, kudos for Omaha! Another question is: what RDBMs are they using for their critical data? Isn't it time for The Industry to finally move from the legacy DB2, Sybase, Oracle and Interbase, to PostgresSQL? This seems like a logical step after converting to Linux. But one step at a time. Let's be patient and hopeful.
That is a very good question, I don't know why has it been moderated as off-topic. Naturally it is useless to compare MySQL performance to MySQL performance ignoring any other options. (It is essentially the same tactic Micro$oft is doing all the time! Do we really want to parrot them?) First of all, there are MySQL gotchas and PostgreSQL gotchas, so you have to know whether the particular glitches are acceptable for you before you decide to use either RDBMS. Understanding the relational algebra,
set theory and predicate calculus is essential to understand what the relational model is all about. Lack of this knowledge often leads to confusing tuples with OOP-style objects and other stupidity, so you will save a lot of time learning it first.
Now, the performance. Generally speaking MySQL is faster for a heavy load of simple read-only queries (like Slashdot) while PostgreSQL is faster for complex read-write queries (like a bank). Once you turn on the ACID support in MySQL it is no longer so fast, and it can really crawl because of row or even table (sic!) locking, a mistake avoided for decades by any advanced database. Here is another comparison. See also this recent thread on Slashdot. One of the best comparisons of Oracle, MySQL and PostgreSQL was done by the Computer division of Fermilab (Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory), this is a must-read.
There is a lot to read about it if you need more comarisons, but the general rule of thumb is that if you want lots of very simple read-only and very few read-write queries when the integrity of your data is not critical, you should probably choose MySQL. When you need that (or better) speed but the data is critical and you need ACID transactions which would severly slow down MySQL, try SQLite, the easiest choice there is, especially using Perl where you don't even need to install it (but just like with every other database, there are
SQLite gotchas too, you need to be aware of them). If you need full ANSI SQL compatibility, ACID transactions, scalability and your data integrity is important, you should probably choose Oracle or PostgreSQL.
There are also licensing issues.
Oracle is proprietary. MySQL is GPL so you need to pay if you want to use it in any non-GPL software. PostgreSQL is released under a free-for-all BSD license. SQLite is public domain.
As you can see, there is no one-size-fits-all database. Every one has its strengths and weaknesses. The correct choice is a matter of trade-offs and finding out which database is optimal for your particular niche. Good luck.
The best gamers are those who spend most of their time playing games so almost by definition they lack certain interpersonal communication and writing skills. This is nothing new. Great football players are not the best sport reporters either. Great politicians are not the best journalists. Not because of their inevitable bias or the lack of insight but because an expert in one field is not necessarily an expert in another. As the story goes, there is no jack of all trades.
Their license allows anyone to use and improve the technique as long as improvements are shared with everyone, à la open source.
This is foolish. They should have released it under a free license for anyone except those who deny the same right to use their bio-patents. Otherwise certain scums are able to use this technique while not being forced to change their behaviour, hurting the industry, hurting the farmers, hurting the scientific progress, with no consequences. A perfect license should be useful for cross-licensing with proprietary patents portfolios but sadly this one while being certainly great in spirit is just too weak in its current form to achieve this goal. In the real world of patent sharks we need to fight a little bit harder.
When you are buying a lot of expensive hardware, calculate the exact cost of that extended warranty and put the same amount of money on an special account. When you buy another hardware, do the same. Then, when anything breaks, pay for it with the money you saved. Most likely than not there will be enough money left to go to disco or whatever kids do these days and you will be glad that you haven't wasted that money on the extended warranty in the first place. Usually it is even less expensive to hire a full time support guy for that money provided you are going to pay more money for said warranty than a full time support guy would cost. This is just like any kind of insurance, most of people pay more than they get.
that the people tirelessly campaigning for the renewal of Battlestar Galactica have finally won, but "religious issues"? Is that really necessary in science fiction?
to stop using proprietary software. There are a lot of amazing free software game projects that need our support (like e.g. WorldForge) that not only allow but in fact encourage hacking. Proprietary crap is good for uneducated people who want to have a one-size-fits-all black box. For thinking people who want to learn by tinkering, free software is the way to go.
Of course I can't resist the chance to ask Slashdot for their take on the issue, so here it is: Do you think the traditional music album is dying out because of advances in technology?
Slashdot Mirror
"Scientists have been having problems in predicting the behavior of Quantum Dots"
Couldn't they use the random number generator that sees into the future to predict the behavior of quantum dots? It was posted in Slashdot's Science section without the Funny Foot icon so it must be valid, just like the tsunami creatures. (Seriously, how can we not be sceptical about anything posted on Slashdot these days? When I read this headline the first thing I did was checking out on Google and Randi.org if quantum dots aren't just another new quack pseudoscience, and before I managed to verify their validity I had no time to read the article in question. Isn't there something wrong with a news source when the first thing I do is a research before I can trust anything I read? Isn't that a job of editors to verify their sources before posting stories? I just don't get it.)
This was not an "identity theft." A theft is an unauthorised taking or use of someone else's property with the intent to permanently deprive the owner or the person with rightful possession of that property or its use. Here, no one was deprived of her identity so it was not a theft. It was impersonation. This mistake may seem innocent but the problem is that if we frivolously use the words "theft" and "stealing" in such an irresponsible way, we are more likely to let the newspeak like "intellectual property" and "software piracy" slip under the radar. Editors, please correct that error in the story. Let us not take part in the corporate brainwashing. We should be more responsible than that if we don't want to be mindless tools of the "everything is property, doing anything is theft" propaganda.
We have already managed to get rid of the ugly case and now we can also get rid of the ugly OS. Those Macs start to look as an interesting option. But seriously, I love Macs because they represent cheerfulness and lighthearted excitement, they are merry, bright and lively, they have vivid and joyful style. Isn't changing the case to PC ATX and installing Debian on a Mac essentially removing all of its gayness? What's the point?
It's interesting that the year following a strong earthquake or tsunami is usually slightly warmer than average. I wonder what will people do when thanks to foolishly burning oil and coal we will have no polar ice and ozone keeping us cool. Isn't it time to use hydrogen as fuel? Hydrogen + oxygen = pure water. Simple as that. Is there any other reason than shady business in the middle east that stops us from using clean and cheap energy today? Is it more profitable for certain people to start wars and control oil than to do something good for the entire humanity? I blame people who vote for immoral politicians. In democracy people can have exactly the government they want. So I ask: why do people want wars? Why do people want the greenhouse effect? This is something I seriously cannot understand.
Even more importantly, "Napster's service uses Microsoft's Janus technology to enable DRM protected music files." If iPod was going to use Janus, would it have to change its name to iAnus? I think this Napster campaign is just FUD. There are more important problems with Apple to be concerned about than this. For example, did you know that "Apple Computers promote Godless Darwinism and Communism"? You can read the entire article by Dr. Richard Paley (a teacher of Divinity and Theobiology at Fellowship University) here. A true eye opener. The real important question is, should such subliminal propaganda be legal? (Disclaimer: iANAL)
See this report from 1999: "We live in extraordinary economic times here in the U.S. and this success could ignite a whole new cycle of economic prosperity. We must first, however, take a hard look at what is occurring at Microsoft. Microsoft is a great company with terrific employees. Sadly, many of these brilliant people have been blinded by the stock price and unable to see that Microsoft is also the key architect of the greatest financial pyramid scheme this century. It is not uncommon for participants in pyramid schemes to lose their emotional bearings. My close friends who work at Microsoft are particularly upset over my work and it is possible that even Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer do not realize the implications of their financial practices." Read more here and here (search for Microsoft). I have been writing about it for years only to be completely ignored, now everyone is surprised but this is in fact nothing new for anyone who has bothered to analyse financial frauds of Redmond. This is really fascinating stuff.
You might even win a Darwin Award! Which I wish you all, Happy Darwin Day!
Condidering the fact that getting a PhD in CS and EE is fairly easy these days, we should expect a lot of idiotic "methods and aparatii" from those new kids. Then couple of frivolous lawsuits against small corporations as a testing ground and finally against free software will follow during the next decades (probably some easy target, ala bnetd, so people will boycott Microsoft for few ours and then start buying new products, like with Blizzard) but it will result in very bad PR and counterclaims from IBM so the practice will probably be terminated after two (three at most) low-priority lawsuits from the top levels of the management, those new kids will get fired and everything will go back to normal. It will be certainly interesting to watch, but devastating to the US industry which will obviously benefit EU who will rather choose progress than software patents. It will mean stronger domination of Microsoft in the US and weaker in Europe. That of course means that it is a good time to buy stock of SuSE and Mandrake, and sell Red Hat.
That my Linux license is worthless?
What about two-finger clicking first?
Are those images real or fake? Before anyone posts some proof I will remain skeptical. Slashdot is known for posting lies about tsunami.
Ford Security Chief Says Ford Safer Than Lexus. Film at 11.
Seriously, do we have to post here every single lie said by Micro$oft? If so, then could we at least have an option to moderate such articles as -1, Troll?
Do we really have to advertise search engine spammers on the Slashdot front page? People like this who only want to exploit the search engine rating systems for their own advantage are the reason of high prices and low effectiveness of on-line advertising. I hope Google will ban this scam website from its results altogether and not waste a single penny on them. Do we really want an important searches to return thousands upon thousands of irrelevant results that are nothing more than a lists of links to other lists of links, ad nauseam? It's already nearly impossible to search for pornography, but at least no one searching for pornography needs help. People who search for asbestos are usually not the ones who want to buy some asbestos, but actually those who suffer from asbestosis. What next? Hijacking the search results of people who look for cancer treatment just to immorally squeeze few bucks from them and force greedy lawyer advertisements upon their throats? This is just disgusting. I am really disappointed that such a link has been posted on Slashdot.
This is a great day for both free software and open source movements. Hopefully Omaha will serve us well as a great example to follow and soon other banks will jump on the bandwagon. I know that I am much more likely to give my money to people who choose their software intelligently and I am sure that I am not alone. GNU/Linux and *BSD variants are certainly the best bets in such an environment. In the name of the Slashdot community, kudos for Omaha! Another question is: what RDBMs are they using for their critical data? Isn't it time for The Industry to finally move from the legacy DB2, Sybase, Oracle and Interbase, to PostgresSQL? This seems like a logical step after converting to Linux. But one step at a time. Let's be patient and hopeful.
That is a very good question, I don't know why has it been moderated as off-topic. Naturally it is useless to compare MySQL performance to MySQL performance ignoring any other options. (It is essentially the same tactic Micro$oft is doing all the time! Do we really want to parrot them?) First of all, there are MySQL gotchas and PostgreSQL gotchas, so you have to know whether the particular glitches are acceptable for you before you decide to use either RDBMS. Understanding the relational algebra, set theory and predicate calculus is essential to understand what the relational model is all about. Lack of this knowledge often leads to confusing tuples with OOP-style objects and other stupidity, so you will save a lot of time learning it first.
Now, the performance. Generally speaking MySQL is faster for a heavy load of simple read-only queries (like Slashdot) while PostgreSQL is faster for complex read-write queries (like a bank). Once you turn on the ACID support in MySQL it is no longer so fast, and it can really crawl because of row or even table (sic!) locking, a mistake avoided for decades by any advanced database. Here is another comparison. See also this recent thread on Slashdot. One of the best comparisons of Oracle, MySQL and PostgreSQL was done by the Computer division of Fermilab (Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory), this is a must-read.
There is a lot to read about it if you need more comarisons, but the general rule of thumb is that if you want lots of very simple read-only and very few read-write queries when the integrity of your data is not critical, you should probably choose MySQL. When you need that (or better) speed but the data is critical and you need ACID transactions which would severly slow down MySQL, try SQLite, the easiest choice there is, especially using Perl where you don't even need to install it (but just like with every other database, there are SQLite gotchas too, you need to be aware of them). If you need full ANSI SQL compatibility, ACID transactions, scalability and your data integrity is important, you should probably choose Oracle or PostgreSQL. There are also licensing issues. Oracle is proprietary. MySQL is GPL so you need to pay if you want to use it in any non-GPL software. PostgreSQL is released under a free-for-all BSD license. SQLite is public domain.
As you can see, there is no one-size-fits-all database. Every one has its strengths and weaknesses. The correct choice is a matter of trade-offs and finding out which database is optimal for your particular niche. Good luck.
Are they the same people who wrote Ubiword?
The best gamers are those who spend most of their time playing games so almost by definition they lack certain interpersonal communication and writing skills. This is nothing new. Great football players are not the best sport reporters either. Great politicians are not the best journalists. Not because of their inevitable bias or the lack of insight but because an expert in one field is not necessarily an expert in another. As the story goes, there is no jack of all trades.
Google doesn't seem to have stopped yet. Are they going to?
Their license allows anyone to use and improve the technique as long as improvements are shared with everyone, à la open source.
This is foolish. They should have released it under a free license for anyone except those who deny the same right to use their bio-patents. Otherwise certain scums are able to use this technique while not being forced to change their behaviour, hurting the industry, hurting the farmers, hurting the scientific progress, with no consequences. A perfect license should be useful for cross-licensing with proprietary patents portfolios but sadly this one while being certainly great in spirit is just too weak in its current form to achieve this goal. In the real world of patent sharks we need to fight a little bit harder.
I though we were still boycotting Blizzard for what they did to our friends. What have they done that they are good again?
When you are buying a lot of expensive hardware, calculate the exact cost of that extended warranty and put the same amount of money on an special account. When you buy another hardware, do the same. Then, when anything breaks, pay for it with the money you saved. Most likely than not there will be enough money left to go to disco or whatever kids do these days and you will be glad that you haven't wasted that money on the extended warranty in the first place. Usually it is even less expensive to hire a full time support guy for that money provided you are going to pay more money for said warranty than a full time support guy would cost. This is just like any kind of insurance, most of people pay more than they get.
that the people tirelessly campaigning for the renewal of Battlestar Galactica have finally won, but "religious issues"? Is that really necessary in science fiction?
to stop using proprietary software. There are a lot of amazing free software game projects that need our support (like e.g. WorldForge) that not only allow but in fact encourage hacking. Proprietary crap is good for uneducated people who want to have a one-size-fits-all black box. For thinking people who want to learn by tinkering, free software is the way to go.
Let my clarify the short answer from my first post. I think that thanks to technology, the album is better than ever. Today you can buy a cheap computer for professional music mastering, and publish your album even if only three people in the world will buy it (or even publish hundreds of albums, with a new album every two days, or... you get the idea). Is the vinyl dead? Of course not. CD is not going anywhere either.
(Sidenote: why on Earth has Slashcode started to change dashes to double hyphens?)
Of course I can't resist the chance to ask Slashdot for their take on the issue, so here it is: Do you think the traditional music album is dying out because of advances in technology?
No.