What a terrific quality control idea. Finally an innovation out of Redmond that has nothing to do with licensing, marketing, or increased profit margin.
After all, there's no way they could have the "black box" record whether or not you have a duplicate license key. Hmmm....
But we know that spying on users is not the purpose of the "black box". Right?
Maybe they'll release the source for the "black box". Then all we have to do is recompile Windows and....
It's getting really difficult to believe what I'm supposed to.
While I agree that "the love of money is the root of all kinds of evil", and that I'd rather drink after an environmentalist than an industrialist, I have grown not to trust anyone's expressed motives.
Certainly, some environmentalists have financial motives but the majority do not.
It's not the financial motivation of environmentalists that is the problem, but their reflexive devotion to the cause. Many truly believe that disaster is impending, or even that we're currently living through it. An overlapping set are drawn to the movement because they get emotional mileage from striving for a Great Purpose. It's the thing that lends importance to their lives, and they cling to it with everything they've got.
When scientists are concerned about global climate change, they are publishing these warnings in the hope of drawing attention to what they genuinely perceive as a serious problem. Ditto for polution concerns, supplies of natural resources, biological diversity and ecosystem damage. These are FACTS.
Facts, perhaps, but the question is the degree of the problem and the overall impact of the solution.
TFA draws a line between scientific and emotional environmentalism, but there is certainly some overlap. As you state it, "when scientists are concerned about global climate change...." An otherwise keenly analytical scientist with an emotional leaning to environmentalism studies the environmental aspect of a topic and finds that a disaster is impending.
Scientists also know on some level that the more sensational or controversial a finding the more their name gets around. Grants come in, articles are published, books are written, and careers are made.
We all have our biases, and we all are working an angle.
That idea is scary. Who does the assessing? What if they're wrong? You owe tax on a billion-dollar idea that in reality is worthless.
Or what if they're right and you have a billion-dollar idea? You won't have the money to both pay the tax and develop your idea into a practical product. You'll end up selling your idea to some IP hoarder.
But the biggest problem is the Orwellian creepiness of it. Taxing thoughts!
Yet for some reason, the geeks in charge of bringing us this can't seem to get their acts together.
Work on FOSS doesn't get assigned by the Kremlin. Rather than complain, get off your tail and do something about it.
If you can't program, learn. If that seems daunting, find an installer that almost works and ask the maintainers why such-and-such happens when you do so-and-so.
It's a misconception that only the most talented are able to contribute. If you send in a bug complaint, you have helped whether you do anything else to help fix it or not.
I don't consider the activity of developing, testing, maintaining, and advocating FOSS and open systems to be "selfless".
It's how I pay for the stuff I get. I owe Linus for Linux, Tridge for SAMBA, RMS for GCC, etc. There's no accounting, to be sure, but that's how I think of it.
I want to have several terminals running 'tail -f' on my log files, each turned so I can just see the shape of the output and maybe read it a litle. This gives me more information than just that some file changed - I can see a little bit of the info without having to know the details.
I want to be able to leave my log files in a little group and look at them when I want to go look at them.
I want to have several processes running on a particular machine and leave that group in a little village while I go look at other things. Alternatively, several processes related to a particular task (e.g., editor, compiler, test files) all grouped in a village, independent of which machine they're on.
Splitting a screen into two vertical halves, or using two monitors, allows for true 3D.
There are LED screens coming out soon (I think) with the pixels laid out on a fanfold or accordion arrangement, such that your right and left eyes see only one side of the fold. In other words,
(left)..(right)
./\/\/\/\/\/\/\
The left eye sees only the "/" characters, and the right eye sees only the "\" characters. With the correct video driver and X server, you could have realistic 3D on commodity hardware.
I want to be able to grab an edge of a window and push that edge out of the way, with the window aspect changing according to how far I push it. Grab the left border and move it right, and the contents of the window compresses (e.g., making the text look skinny).
I want to be have a large virtual desktop which I can zoom out away from to show groups of screen objects (windows, icons, local backdrops, etc.), and zoom in on to show the objects close up. The objects should not all be in the same plane, so when I zoom in on one set of object I can still see ("far off") other tiny sets of objects. One effect of that would be to allow hiearchical groups of objects.
I want to take a group of objects and wrap them in a box, which I can label arbitrarily. The box should have variable opacity, perhaps password security, and should respond to signals (it should be a process).
I don't want to have to use a pointing device. If necessary, I'd rather use a subvocal microphone/sensor, keyboard mouse driver, eyeglasses, or a chin strap than a mouse, touch pad, trackball, or nipple.
I want a video driver / X server that outputs stereovision to two displays (or two halves of a single display).
And I want it to be Free.
To answer the obvious retort: every time I get started learning X programming, my feeble little brain starts to hurt. Kudos to you wizards out there who grok X.
I guess I have to move. It's been nice living here in the basement, but Mom isn't getting any younger and complains about fixing breakfast now.
Oh, but wait -- there are still reruns! I've still got the original series on VHS and TNG on DVD!
Still, it'll be harder to lure chicks down here without a new episode coming on.
Every document should focus on its audience, which in the case of a design document changes over time. Its goal should be to get the reader up to speed on the target program or system, with as little self-aggrandizing fluff as possible. Keep it simple, and work from the top/outside to the bottom/inside.
It should always give an overview of the program, telling what each chunk does. It should also tell how the program does what it does in terms of the chunks of the program, but not the details of how each chunk should do what it does. It should tell how the chunks relate to accompish the task.
At first, the design document should specify the boundaries of each chunk of the program or system being developed, along with the data to be exchanged at the borders.
As time goes on, and the work progresses, the design document should be changed to reflect the current status, as if there were no work completed. The goal is to zero in on the completed program, not to have it expand out of control, so you have to watch that.
When handled properly, the finished program and the finished design document make a better finished product. When handled incorrectly, you have either unimplemented or undocumented features, two classes of bugs that are particularly annoying for the end user.
The bugs that are uglier are like that because a few genes here and there changed....Duh!
I don't think it's obvious at all that the DNA changed. What is obvious is that the ugly bugs survived better sometimes and the pretty ones survived better other times. The genes for being a pretty bug were still there, either in a surviving minority or as recessives.
I don't believe mutation during the 80 years studied caused the changes observed in the bugs. Claiming that seems like headline-grabbing to me.
Co-ops are also more in the spirit of the Internet. In the Old Days, nearby sites which each had expensive connections would create inexpensive local links so that local traffic didn't go out over the backbone. Larger ISPs still do that, under certain conditions.
It oughta be this way (and when I am King, so will it be):
Johnny has a broadband cable connection. He also has a local WiFi network so he can use his laptop wherever he wants.
Johnny's WiFi signal reaches his neighbor Susie's house. Susie also has a WiFi network, and a broadband DSL connection with a different company.
Johnny and Suzie get together and agree to include each other's WiFi routers in their routing tables. When either Johnny's cable or Susie's DSL is unusable, their TCP/IP software automatically routes their traffic through the WiFi connection to the other network.
Now suppose Pat wants to connect to the Internet, but doesn't want cable TV and doesn't like that the DSL provider insists on bundling local POTS and long distance phone service with the DSL connection. Pat pays the JSDotNet Cooperative some fee, and they let him piggyback their connection. If Pat had a broadband cell phone connection, the JSDotNet Cooperative could use it as yet another alternate route.
The trouble with that scheme is that typically consumer broadband services won't allow you to share your connection, even though it would potentially benefit them if their customers had secondary routes.
The only wildcard is if these blokes in Britain have figured out how to make a gozillion* itty-bitty diamonds all grow exactly the same. My guess is they haven't, but they'll take the venture money to prove you can't.
* For those of you in Great Britain, a gozillion is a thousand gajillion:-)
Slashdot Mirror
That's because of the four Rolls-Royce engines. Everybody knows a Rolls is more quiet than a Corvette.
* ducks *
What a terrific quality control idea. Finally an innovation out of Redmond that has nothing to do with licensing, marketing, or increased profit margin.
....
After all, there's no way they could have the "black box" record whether or not you have a duplicate license key. Hmmm....
But we know that spying on users is not the purpose of the "black box". Right?
Maybe they'll release the source for the "black box". Then all we have to do is recompile Windows and
It's getting really difficult to believe what I'm supposed to.
More specifically, who is the target audience, and what is the intended message for them?
I was just wondering whether "nipple joystick" was one word or two.
While I agree that "the love of money is the root of all kinds of evil", and that I'd rather drink after an environmentalist than an industrialist, I have grown not to trust anyone's expressed motives.
It's not the financial motivation of environmentalists that is the problem, but their reflexive devotion to the cause. Many truly believe that disaster is impending, or even that we're currently living through it. An overlapping set are drawn to the movement because they get emotional mileage from striving for a Great Purpose. It's the thing that lends importance to their lives, and they cling to it with everything they've got.
Facts, perhaps, but the question is the degree of the problem and the overall impact of the solution.
TFA draws a line between scientific and emotional environmentalism, but there is certainly some overlap. As you state it, "when scientists are concerned about global climate change ...." An otherwise keenly analytical scientist with an emotional leaning to environmentalism studies the environmental aspect of a topic and finds that a disaster is impending.
Scientists also know on some level that the more sensational or controversial a finding the more their name gets around. Grants come in, articles are published, books are written, and careers are made.
We all have our biases, and we all are working an angle.
I meant no banners on Yahoo!. Sorry for the thinko.
Oh, yeah. After training AdBlock once or twice, I haven't seen a banner ad on Slashdot.
I forgot they even had them.
> If we have our ideas assesed and taxed
That idea is scary. Who does the assessing? What if they're wrong? You owe tax on a billion-dollar idea that in reality is worthless.
Or what if they're right and you have a billion-dollar idea? You won't have the money to both pay the tax and develop your idea into a practical product. You'll end up selling your idea to some IP hoarder.
But the biggest problem is the Orwellian creepiness of it. Taxing thoughts!
>We Need to create an Intellectual Property Tax.
So you and I will be even less able to compete with the big companies.
No thanks.
Work on FOSS doesn't get assigned by the Kremlin. Rather than complain, get off your tail and do something about it.
If you can't program, learn. If that seems daunting, find an installer that almost works and ask the maintainers why such-and-such happens when you do so-and-so.
It's a misconception that only the most talented are able to contribute. If you send in a bug complaint, you have helped whether you do anything else to help fix it or not.
Many hands make light work.
I don't consider the activity of developing, testing, maintaining, and advocating FOSS and open systems to be "selfless".
It's how I pay for the stuff I get. I owe Linus for Linux, Tridge for SAMBA, RMS for GCC, etc. There's no accounting, to be sure, but that's how I think of it.
To whom much is given, much is asked.
Here is a more complete searchable timeline.
But you found them, right?
I want to have several terminals running 'tail -f' on my log files, each turned so I can just see the shape of the output and maybe read it a litle. This gives me more information than just that some file changed - I can see a little bit of the info without having to know the details.
I want to be able to leave my log files in a little group and look at them when I want to go look at them.
I want to have several processes running on a particular machine and leave that group in a little village while I go look at other things. Alternatively, several processes related to a particular task (e.g., editor, compiler, test files) all grouped in a village, independent of which machine they're on.
Splitting a screen into two vertical halves, or using two monitors, allows for true 3D.
There are LED screens coming out soon (I think) with the pixels laid out on a fanfold or accordion arrangement, such that your right and left eyes see only one side of the fold. In other words,
(left)..(right)
The left eye sees only the "/" characters, and the right eye sees only the "\" characters. With the correct video driver and X server, you could have realistic 3D on commodity hardware.
That's for a system I don't use.
I want an interface that lets me think in 3D.
And I want it to be Free.
To answer the obvious retort: every time I get started learning X programming, my feeble little brain starts to hurt. Kudos to you wizards out there who grok X.
Right. That's why I always rename the Firefox icon "Internet". As soon as I show them tabbed browsing, they're hooked.
We should start right now with an innovative grassroots effort to keep Paramount from cancelling the series.
I can't wait to see what happens after Revenge of the Sith.
I guess I have to move. It's been nice living here in the basement, but Mom isn't getting any younger and complains about fixing breakfast now. Oh, but wait -- there are still reruns! I've still got the original series on VHS and TNG on DVD! Still, it'll be harder to lure chicks down here without a new episode coming on.
Every document should focus on its audience, which in the case of a design document changes over time. Its goal should be to get the reader up to speed on the target program or system, with as little self-aggrandizing fluff as possible. Keep it simple, and work from the top/outside to the bottom/inside.
It should always give an overview of the program, telling what each chunk does. It should also tell how the program does what it does in terms of the chunks of the program, but not the details of how each chunk should do what it does. It should tell how the chunks relate to accompish the task.
At first, the design document should specify the boundaries of each chunk of the program or system being developed, along with the data to be exchanged at the borders.
As time goes on, and the work progresses, the design document should be changed to reflect the current status, as if there were no work completed. The goal is to zero in on the completed program, not to have it expand out of control, so you have to watch that.
When handled properly, the finished program and the finished design document make a better finished product. When handled incorrectly, you have either unimplemented or undocumented features, two classes of bugs that are particularly annoying for the end user.
The bugs that are uglier are like that because a few genes here and there changed....Duh!
I don't think it's obvious at all that the DNA changed. What is obvious is that the ugly bugs survived better sometimes and the pretty ones survived better other times. The genes for being a pretty bug were still there, either in a surviving minority or as recessives.
I don't believe mutation during the 80 years studied caused the changes observed in the bugs. Claiming that seems like headline-grabbing to me.
Co-ops are also more in the spirit of the Internet. In the Old Days, nearby sites which each had expensive connections would create inexpensive local links so that local traffic didn't go out over the backbone. Larger ISPs still do that, under certain conditions.
It oughta be this way (and when I am King, so will it be):
Johnny has a broadband cable connection. He also has a local WiFi network so he can use his laptop wherever he wants.
Johnny's WiFi signal reaches his neighbor Susie's house. Susie also has a WiFi network, and a broadband DSL connection with a different company.
Johnny and Suzie get together and agree to include each other's WiFi routers in their routing tables. When either Johnny's cable or Susie's DSL is unusable, their TCP/IP software automatically routes their traffic through the WiFi connection to the other network.
Now suppose Pat wants to connect to the Internet, but doesn't want cable TV and doesn't like that the DSL provider insists on bundling local POTS and long distance phone service with the DSL connection. Pat pays the JSDotNet Cooperative some fee, and they let him piggyback their connection. If Pat had a broadband cell phone connection, the JSDotNet Cooperative could use it as yet another alternate route.
The trouble with that scheme is that typically consumer broadband services won't allow you to share your connection, even though it would potentially benefit them if their customers had secondary routes.
This is not a reason to use Firefox - it's useless in Firefox.
... all. Oh.
I just clicked the demo link using Firefox 1.0, and nothing happened at
Never mind.
That's very insightful.
The only wildcard is if these blokes in Britain have figured out how to make a gozillion* itty-bitty diamonds all grow exactly the same. My guess is they haven't, but they'll take the venture money to prove you can't.
* For those of you in Great Britain, a gozillion is a thousand gajillion :-)
While it's probably a useful weapon to be able to shut down GPS, won't that hamper emergency response efforts? A little, anyway.
Maybe it's to disable autohoming bombs and small-plane attacks.