Do you KNOW that those work with Linux? They'd be great machines, if it didn't involve a ton of hacking just to get it to boot. I have no problem with having to code around something, but I like an install to go fairly easy.
Can someone explain the rationale for dvd region codes? (Aside from the obvious answer of "money":-(
As I see it, it goes like this:
Movies come out here before in some other countries (say, all of Europe). If DVDs from here could play in Europe, people would have DVDs WAY before they were released. Which would do damage, rather serious damage, to the profits of the MPAA.
A couple of other people have mentioned it, but I just want to plug my all-time favorite game, Master of Magic, or MOM.
Hell yes. I still have that game. The disks wore out a long time ago, but I have disk images:)
As you might expect by the title, it's a fantasy-based game, which borrows heavily from the Magic:The Gathering style of magic system (Chaos, Life, Death, Nature, and Sorcery magics).
If you get caught with a radar detector in my state, and it has batteries in it or is plugged in, even if it is not on, you are guilty of a crime. I don't remember the severity off-hand, but it IS a crime.
Just a note:
In my state (NM), last I checked, radar/LIDAR detectors/jammers (yes, jammers), are legal. So, YSMV (your state may vary):)
I just cannot imagine reading the equivalent of five hundred paper pages on a 160x160 pixel screen. PalmDoc is useful for reference works, but I think it's got a long way to go before I load a novel on it.
(To understand what I mean, this little slashdot posting would fill a PalmOS screen.)
Well, I have a Visor, and I read on it all the time. Right now, I'm almost through with William Gibson's Bridge Trilogy (which, BTW, I own in hardcopy), and it's great. You get used to it, and don't even think about the fact that you're using a palmtop.
Plus, I have a 8 MB expansion card. The Bridge Trilogy (3 full length books) takes up ~900K. Which means, in a smaller-than-paperback package, I can carry a good 11000 pages. And I carry a good amount of text. HOW-TOs, wiring guides, letters (well, emails) that I'm writing, etc.
It was related to me that in a certain call center they got bored one night and decided that everybody would be named "Bob". I wasn't there when it happened, but it was part of the lore, and it seemed just as plausible as anything else.
Yep, at my last tech support job, the company name for that one was "Larry". Warning: don't do this. Barely being able to keep your laughter in when some guy named Larry actually calls and says the internet broke is BAD for your continued employment.
(of course, can just do what we did. Talk to them for about 30 sec, ask if you can put them on hold for just a moment, walk outside and quietly lose it. Go back.)
Sorry, but that's wrong. The full price version is $249 (professional). Last time I looked at buying an educational copy of VC++, it was $25-$35 depending on where you looked.
I don't know where you are, but try this on. I'm a computer science major at Santa Fe Community College, and ALL the programming classes that involve C or C++ are on Microsoft Visual C++. Don't know what Java is taught in.
Now, that's all well and good, but for one thing. It is taught on VC++ because MS gave the school a free site liscense to Visual Studio Enterprise (the big one). This involves every student getting ahold of VC++ 6.0, or doing all their work at school. Our "educational" copies cost $99 at the student store.
I must say, this may be a hostile environment where *nix is concerned. We run on NT/2k and VMS. When I asked if SSH could be allowed through the firewall (telnet is), I got blank looks. Then, questions about cost. When I said it was free, she said "well, that's even worse!"
This may be due to the Community College aspect. But, for the price... *shrug*
Anyway, the point is, most of the teachers wouldn't know where to start with Linux, from a user or teacher standpoint. And, since I'm a student, I can't talk admin to anyone.
This is a bad place to start from.
Erm, sorry for the minor rant. Point is, not everyone can afford $100+ for their Visual C++.
You're fucked. Part of PayPal says that you can NOT get your money back by calling the card company, and this has been verified by CC companies. Police call is the recourse.
Personally I think not only should they legalize drugs but the government should also subsidize it. People who want to do drugs are going to do it regardless of whether it's legal or not. So you make it cheap enough so the people who are going to abuse em can easily buy enough to overdose themselves. We clear the world up of some otherwise losers, and we save money on fighting a war and treating a disease that we'll never win. This is all part of the platform for my political party..."The lotto reform" party. In addition to the drug subsidization we also want to reform this corrupt lotto system, I have been playing for a year now and I still haven't won millions. Vote for me as president and I'll make sure that these astronomical odds are brought down to levels where you and I can all benefit.
[ Reply to This | Parent ]
Personally I think not only should they legalize drugs but the government should also subsidize it. People who want to do drugs are going to do it regardless of whether it's legal or not. So you make it cheap enough so the people who are going to abuse em can easily buy enough to overdose themselves. We clear the world up of some otherwise losers, and we save money on fighting a war and treating a disease that we'll never win. This is all part of the platform for my political party..."The lotto reform" party. In addition to the drug subsidization we also want to reform this corrupt lotto system, I have been playing for a year now and I still haven't won millions. Vote for me as president and I'll make sure that these astronomical odds are brought down to levels where you and I can all benefit.
Umm, other than the lotto thing, you have a good idea. Another reason to government-subsidise it: make shitloads of money. Honestly. Cut that deficit down, way down, with the combined money made from: no war on drugs, and revenue from drugs, like the taxes on alcohol and tobacco. Tax it just like those, and all is good.
Why Hard Drives? Couldn't you just make a cartridge it would come in, maybe bigger, but protect it when not being used?
Or, if you would have to make them enclosed, they could be basically a USB (firewire, whatever) plug, barely any drive. Kinda like a iKey on Meth, or something...
Hey... that's a thought. Imagine the token-based authentication with one of these things.
One last thought. The \X/4r3z kids are going to have a field day...
It's a special-need kernel, not something for general consumption. As much as how every article on/. has a comment saying "Man, I'd like a Beowulf of these babies," most of the people saying that never will have a Beowulf or a need for a clustered system. (I mean, come ON, what would you, personally, use all that computing power for?)
Personally, I would use it for Distributed.Net, but that may just be me.
In all seriousness, the main home use of a Beowulf-type cluster is not to make a supercomputer, but to use all those '86es sitting around (like the 3 under my desk).
You need to 'train' people to write with a pen already, although it usualy happens in elementary school.
Isn't that the idea behind it?
Anyway, if a person wanted the exsperiance of using a pen and paper, then they could just use a pen and paper...
Actually (might just be me), I'd rather use a pen and paper, if I could do half the things I do with StarOffice. Copy/paste, spellcheck, save multiple copies, revert, change formatting after the fact... I could go on, but I think you get the idea.
Anyone remember The Diamond Age? Did Stephenson have "an end to world hunger and poverty?" No. It just changed how you would get your hands on something. Instead of going to the store for (say) an matress, you tell your personal army of Nanobots to make one. They charge you the same amount, you just cut out all the manuacturers.
So, maybe nanotech is the end-all of technology. It doesn't change who controls it.
Oh, hell yes. Imagine this for the rave/techno crowd. You could make infinite length CDs. Wow, that's mind-blowing. I know I'd buy them, just for the experience.
Wouldn't work with, say, classical, though. Some things are better left alone
How do they come up with this number? The only explanation I can see is that they've built a machine to travel to a parallel universe in which piracy never occurs, and discovered that there are 18,000 more jobs in it. Or for a more mundane explanation: there are three types of lies...
Let me guess... Lies, damn lies, and anything said by Microsoft?
It really bugs me, this unrealistic portrayal of computers in movies. It's just colourless, and lacking in vision. The closest I ever found to real programming, for instance, was the girl using Jurassic Park Unix (in the like-named movie). I've been using Jurrassix for years; it's great once you get the hang of it. For a while I found flying around between my file systems a bit tricky, and I had to completely restore my system about a year back after I hit/root at full tilt. But now it's second nature. The process scheduling algorithm works much better now that it can fly around all the processes on my system and bring 'em on in to the coral, and since I got the codes for unlimited ammo in my grenade launcher, we've had no more virus problems.
I hate to say it, but I know someone who *belived* that scene. No shit. Was SO HYPED when he got a copy of Solaris, because he thought it was "visual unix". God help us all.
How come nobody hacks in a well lighted room, a la ST:TNG? Why is it always in some dingy dark hole? Explanations wanted, apply within.
Do you do your coding in a well lighted room? I know I work a bit better in the dark, especially when doing the slightly nefarious. Might just be me. The lack of light helps me concentrate on the task at hand, because the only source of light is what you're working on.
My gripe: why do they always code in virtual silence? Other than the soundtrack of the movie, they don't have anything in the background. I know I can't code for hours on end in silence. Bill needs his music to work. That and caffeine.
especially if it wasn't just an internet thing, but a generic network thing; we have a _lot_ of computers at the school just sitting there all day waiting for someone to ctrl-alt-del and put a username in the login box. would be nice if they could be put to some meaningful use in their downtime.. like just say on one computer "rip this mp3 for me", or like an entire queue of mp3s and 3d renderings or whatever, and have all the computers on the network not in use do the work while i continue using the computer i'm on. 'course the network admin might not be too happy about his entire network being turned into an mp3 encoder, but hey, he doesn't need to know about it. It's his own damn fault for using NT, esp. without reading the damn manual..
Someone needs to read up on Beowulf. It's already there, for crap like MP3 ripping, 3d work, etc...
(p.s. mp3s are a hypothetical example, of course.. i wouldn't actually do that, that would be illegal! Riiight..)
Umm, MP3s aren't illegal, distributing them is. If you own the CD, you can use MP3s of the songs.
Slashdot Mirror
Do you KNOW that those work with Linux? They'd be great machines, if it didn't involve a ton of hacking just to get it to boot. I have no problem with having to code around something, but I like an install to go fairly easy.
Can someone explain the rationale for dvd region codes? (Aside from the obvious answer of "money" :-(
As I see it, it goes like this:
Movies come out here before in some other countries (say, all of Europe). If DVDs from here could play in Europe, people would have DVDs WAY before they were released. Which would do damage, rather serious damage, to the profits of the MPAA.
(Ok, well, I tried not to mention money)
A couple of other people have mentioned it, but I just want to plug my all-time favorite game, Master of Magic, or MOM.
Hell yes. I still have that game. The disks wore out a long time ago, but I have disk images :)
As you might expect by the title, it's a fantasy-based game, which borrows heavily from the Magic:The Gathering style of magic system (Chaos, Life, Death, Nature, and Sorcery magics).
One nit to pick, this was pre-M:TG, wasn't it?
If you get caught with a radar detector in my state, and it has batteries in it or is plugged in, even if it is not on, you are guilty of a crime. I don't remember the severity off-hand, but it IS a crime.
Just a note:
In my state (NM), last I checked, radar/LIDAR detectors/jammers (yes, jammers), are legal. So, YSMV (your state may vary) :)
I just cannot imagine reading the equivalent of five hundred paper pages on a 160x160 pixel screen. PalmDoc is useful for reference works, but I think it's got a long way to go before I load a novel on it.
(To understand what I mean, this little slashdot posting would fill a PalmOS screen.)
Well, I have a Visor, and I read on it all the time. Right now, I'm almost through with William Gibson's Bridge Trilogy (which, BTW, I own in hardcopy), and it's great. You get used to it, and don't even think about the fact that you're using a palmtop.
Plus, I have a 8 MB expansion card. The Bridge Trilogy (3 full length books) takes up ~900K. Which means, in a smaller-than-paperback package, I can carry a good 11000 pages. And I carry a good amount of text. HOW-TOs, wiring guides, letters (well, emails) that I'm writing, etc.
It was related to me that in a certain call center they got bored one night and decided that everybody would be named "Bob". I wasn't there when it happened, but it was part of the lore, and it seemed just as plausible as anything else.
Yep, at my last tech support job, the company name for that one was "Larry". Warning: don't do this. Barely being able to keep your laughter in when some guy named Larry actually calls and says the internet broke is BAD for your continued employment.
(of course, can just do what we did. Talk to them for about 30 sec, ask if you can put them on hold for just a moment, walk outside and quietly lose it. Go back.)
or, you could get it from the source at http://bofh.ntk.net , or at the register.
Sorry, but that's wrong. The full price version is $249 (professional). Last time I looked at buying an educational copy of VC++, it was $25-$35 depending on where you looked.
I don't know where you are, but try this on. I'm a computer science major at Santa Fe Community College, and ALL the programming classes that involve C or C++ are on Microsoft Visual C++. Don't know what Java is taught in.
Now, that's all well and good, but for one thing. It is taught on VC++ because MS gave the school a free site liscense to Visual Studio Enterprise (the big one). This involves every student getting ahold of VC++ 6.0, or doing all their work at school. Our "educational" copies cost $99 at the student store.
I must say, this may be a hostile environment where *nix is concerned. We run on NT/2k and VMS. When I asked if SSH could be allowed through the firewall (telnet is), I got blank looks. Then, questions about cost. When I said it was free, she said "well, that's even worse!"
This may be due to the Community College aspect. But, for the price... *shrug*
Anyway, the point is, most of the teachers wouldn't know where to start with Linux, from a user or teacher standpoint. And, since I'm a student, I can't talk admin to anyone.
This is a bad place to start from.
Erm, sorry for the minor rant. Point is, not everyone can afford $100+ for their Visual C++.
You're fucked. Part of PayPal says that you can NOT get your money back by calling the card company, and this has been verified by CC companies. Police call is the recourse.
Personally I think not only should they legalize drugs but the government should also subsidize it. People who want to do drugs are going to do it regardless of whether it's legal or not. So you make it cheap enough so the people who are going to abuse em can easily buy enough to overdose themselves. We clear the world up of some otherwise losers, and we save money on fighting a war and treating a disease that we'll never win. This is all part of the platform for my political party..."The lotto reform" party. In addition to the drug subsidization we also want to reform this corrupt lotto system, I have been playing for a year now and I still haven't won millions. Vote for me as president and I'll make sure that these astronomical odds are brought down to levels where you and I can all benefit. [ Reply to This | Parent ] Personally I think not only should they legalize drugs but the government should also subsidize it. People who want to do drugs are going to do it regardless of whether it's legal or not. So you make it cheap enough so the people who are going to abuse em can easily buy enough to overdose themselves. We clear the world up of some otherwise losers, and we save money on fighting a war and treating a disease that we'll never win. This is all part of the platform for my political party..."The lotto reform" party. In addition to the drug subsidization we also want to reform this corrupt lotto system, I have been playing for a year now and I still haven't won millions. Vote for me as president and I'll make sure that these astronomical odds are brought down to levels where you and I can all benefit.
Umm, other than the lotto thing, you have a good idea. Another reason to government-subsidise it: make shitloads of money. Honestly. Cut that deficit down, way down, with the combined money made from: no war on drugs, and revenue from drugs, like the taxes on alcohol and tobacco. Tax it just like those, and all is good.
Why Hard Drives? Couldn't you just make a cartridge it would come in, maybe bigger, but protect it when not being used?
Or, if you would have to make them enclosed, they could be basically a USB (firewire, whatever) plug, barely any drive. Kinda like a iKey on Meth, or something...
Hey... that's a thought. Imagine the token-based authentication with one of these things.
One last thought.
The \X/4r3z kids are going to have a field day...
An iKey would be good here.
Even easier to use, USB based.
It's a special-need kernel, not something for general consumption. As much as how every article on /. has a comment saying "Man, I'd like a Beowulf of these babies," most of the people saying that never will have a Beowulf or a need for a clustered system. (I mean, come ON, what would you, personally, use all that computing power for?)
Personally, I would use it for Distributed.Net, but that may just be me.
In all seriousness, the main home use of a Beowulf-type cluster is not to make a supercomputer, but to use all those '86es sitting around (like the 3 under my desk).
You need to 'train' people to write with a pen already, although it usualy happens in elementary school.
Isn't that the idea behind it?
Anyway, if a person wanted the exsperiance of using a pen and paper, then they could just use a pen and paper...
Actually (might just be me), I'd rather use a pen and paper, if I could do half the things I do with StarOffice. Copy/paste, spellcheck, save multiple copies, revert, change formatting after the fact... I could go on, but I think you get the idea.
Anyone remember The Diamond Age? Did Stephenson have "an end to world hunger and poverty?" No. It just changed how you would get your hands on something. Instead of going to the store for (say) an matress, you tell your personal army of Nanobots to make one. They charge you the same amount, you just cut out all the manuacturers.
So, maybe nanotech is the end-all of technology. It doesn't change who controls it.
Oh, hell yes. Imagine this for the rave/techno crowd. You could make infinite length CDs. Wow, that's mind-blowing. I know I'd buy them, just for the experience.
Wouldn't work with, say, classical, though. Some things are better left alone
How do they come up with this number? The only explanation I can see is that they've built a machine to travel to a parallel universe in which piracy never occurs, and discovered that there are 18,000 more jobs in it. Or for a more mundane explanation: there are three types of lies...
Let me guess... Lies, damn lies, and anything said by Microsoft?
(Wasn't there a fourth one...?)
It really bugs me, this unrealistic portrayal of computers in movies. It's just colourless, and lacking in vision. The closest I ever found to real programming, for instance, was the girl using Jurassic Park Unix (in the like-named movie). I've been using Jurrassix for years; it's great once you get the hang of it. For a while I found flying around between my file systems a bit tricky, and I had to completely restore my system about a year back after I hit /root at full tilt. But now it's second nature. The process scheduling algorithm works much better now that it can fly around all the processes on my system and bring 'em on in to the coral, and since I got the codes for unlimited ammo in my grenade launcher, we've had no more virus problems.
I hate to say it, but I know someone who *belived* that scene. No shit. Was SO HYPED when he got a copy of Solaris, because he thought it was "visual unix". God help us all.
How come nobody hacks in a well lighted room, a la ST:TNG? Why is it always in some dingy dark hole? Explanations wanted, apply within.
Do you do your coding in a well lighted room? I know I work a bit better in the dark, especially when doing the slightly nefarious. Might just be me. The lack of light helps me concentrate on the task at hand, because the only source of light is what you're working on.
My gripe: why do they always code in virtual silence? Other than the soundtrack of the movie, they don't have anything in the background. I know I can't code for hours on end in silence. Bill needs his music to work. That and caffeine.
especially if it wasn't just an internet thing, but a generic network thing; we have a _lot_ of computers at the school just sitting there all day waiting for someone to ctrl-alt-del and put a username in the login box. would be nice if they could be put to some meaningful use in their downtime.. like just say on one computer "rip this mp3 for me", or like an entire queue of mp3s and 3d renderings or whatever, and have all the computers on the network not in use do the work while i continue using the computer i'm on. 'course the network admin might not be too happy about his entire network being turned into an mp3 encoder, but hey, he doesn't need to know about it. It's his own damn fault for using NT, esp. without reading the damn manual..
Someone needs to read up on Beowulf. It's already there, for crap like MP3 ripping, 3d work, etc...
(p.s. mp3s are a hypothetical example, of course.. i wouldn't actually do that, that would be illegal! Riiight..)
Umm, MP3s aren't illegal, distributing them is. If you own the CD, you can use MP3s of the songs.
Oh, hell yes. A hardware mp3 decoder, maybe firmware updateable for all my SDMI's , would kick ass. Hell, I'd buy one without the computer.
:)
I'd go for the bumper sticker, regardless
Yeah, a Rio port. Just like a laptop docking station, mount it as a hard drive while connected. Hey, this could work.
Oh, and I agree with the previous post, it should look cool. Black, with a few glowing lines, maybe.
Try bits as being read, "binary pieces of information", ok?