"What the hell does PBS and their boring shows have to do with 'News For Nerds' here? [... ]This isn't about your rights here, it's slashdot and PBS trying to turn this into a bigger issue than it really is. Everybody has to play by the FCC's rules."
That seems an incredibly myopic viewpoint. Rights to privacy, free speech and freedom of information are core values here. The FCC has a broad reach, all the more reason to follow everything they do.
Or would you rather have the DMCA + FCC clamp down on the flow of all kinds of information? There is already quite a fight going on here in the States to preserve even basic requests under the Freedom of Information Act.
Want jail time for that Xbox mod you installed, or for discussing a certain encryption algorithm online? Think it can't happen? Then by all means roll over and focus on "news for nerds" like the PS3 rollout. But if you ignore the "stuff that matters", you may not be around to see that PS3.
What stuns me is the number so-called "conservatives" who are watching an unprecedented assault on basic citizen rights here in America. What a bunch of pathetic posers. Wouldn't know the concepts of small government and personal liberties if it bit them on the leg. This administration has set the conservative movement back many decades, and the GOP will pay for it for decades to follow.
"1% is not really any news. Seriously, it is pathetic that/. is jumping up and down, all giddy, for one percentage point."
It's the first loss in an MS-dominant end-user application. As in the masses. And that is extremely significant.
I'll guarantee you there is plenty of jumping up and down in Redmond over that 1%. And not celebratory. Fortune magazine had an article on IE slipping over security concerns. In my company alone I have far more leverage now to introduce Opera/Firefox/etc. than I did a month ago (test installations now in place). In other words, awareness is reaching the mainstream.
And as others have pointed out, simply knowing there are choices, not to mention better ones, is a huge step forward in the cosumer market. A corner is being turned here, sharp or wide we don't know, but again I guarantee that Redmond is NOT happy over this.
"IIS has 35% and went down to 21%, Apache had 56% and went up to 67%"
Also worth cheering, but those are server "geek" technologies, where there has long been an appreciation for ease of maintenance and reliability. Both set of stats together are no doubt making for a bad day on the MS campus.
"but one percentage point is simply not statistically significant."
It's extrememly significant. When is the last time a dominant MS end-user product *lost* marketshare? Coming at a time when the "Life Around MS Campus Is Going To Get Tough" memo is released, I think it shows that MS is for once (and largely thanks to open source) finding itself with an actual fight on its hands.
Go penguins! And little BSD daemons. And that... Mozilla lizard thing.:-)
"On the other hand, OpenBSD doesn't looks as much like swiss cheese, so being open doesn't necessarily mean being full of holes either."
Or maybe being open source means the holes that do exist are found far more readily than in closed source. After all (using your example), Solaris source (closed) may have as many holes as RHL (open), but how would you ever find out, short of blindling stumbling across the Solaris hole?
"If you think there isn't "an agency just sitting on little-known accidental root exploits and keeping them in their classified root kit" for most (if not all) of the *nixs out there you are dreaming."
Definitely, but Open Source *nixs are far less likely to harbor them than any closed source OS, *nix or otherwise. Agreed? If not, let's discuss.
What really shocks me is why so many countries are still using MS at all in their gov't infrastructure. I've always wondered about the following scenario. (Note: Tinfoil hat required.)
MS is closed-source and rife with a constant stream of what are effectively root exploits being stumbled upon. What if some agency wanted to cozy up to MS and carefully craft backdoors and such, inject them into the OS and have them released into the world? Windows is so ubiquitous that your task has now become that much easier.
Furthermore only the random stumbling of a security researcher/hacker has a chance of discovering it. Probability == low in most cases. In which case "Oops, release patch (add new backdoor)".
Then there's the less nefarious scenario - an agency just sitting on little-known accidental root exploits and keeping them in their classified root kit.
Either way it strikes me that linux in particular (and open source in general) would give sovereign nations some peace of mind. Not bulletproof, but having a global community reviewing the source and tracking exploits openly would sure seem to me to be a better way to safeguard my country's secrets than relying on a huge foreign company with a crappy track record for security.
(You can now remove your tinfoil hats. No, wait, NEVER remove your tinfoil hat...)
"Right before the election Dubya will announce that he's found the missing Weapons of Mass Destruction. They're sitting in boxes at the Bagdad CompUSA store marked "Intel inside"!"
At a press conference later that same day, Dubya will pull out the same map and declare that they've pinpointed the source of global warming as well.
Good question. For day-to-day 911 calls, yes cellphones are fantastic tools that have completely overwhelmed turf which Hams once had a unique claim to (2-way mobile comm). Natural disasters are still another story, however.
"Now you just whip out a cell phone and dial 911."
Now what happens when that cyclone roars through and tears your cell tower network to shreds. What do you do until an emergency cell network of limited capactity is rebuilt? Meaning transported to disaster area, properly placed and activated, etc. Only to be overwhelmed by everyone and their grandmother trying to call their friends and relatives? What happens if the disaster area is far away and the site inaccessible? (Island nation, etc.)
So realistically Ham radio still has a valuable place in disaster operations, perhaps even a critical role in some cases.
Which is a good reason that Ham radio ops are still useful, particularly in disaster relief scenarios where much of the local infrastructure may have been destroyed.
But first you have to get us to stop talking about the weather and our rigs.:-)
Might help. Of course I then set it back to the regular Safari/Firefox/non-MSIE user agent ID so that any webmasters gathering stats will see that there are folks who (gasp) actually don't use IE.
"some HAMs are using 10 kilowatts upwards just for transmitting earth-to-earth!"
Actually, ignoring the 1.5KW max Ham radio ops are legally bound to, most Ham operators operate in the 100 watt range (in the HF freqs == "shortwave"), and there's a dedicated core of low-power enthusiasts who communicate around the world on 5 watts, 1 watt or even a few hundred milliwatts. (The microwatt crew even come out during favorable solar conditions).
It varies by spectrum of course (VHF/HF/etc.) but I've personally worked every continent with less than 5 watts using just a homemade wire antenna, no fancy NSA-like array of metal high in the air.
Antarctica was the most fun - Russian op down there at their research station. Darn neatstuff!
"If you want unbiased, read through the report yourself... If you are basing your opinion on any news station, you are not going to get the real story."
Well, what you'll get instead is the bias of the person who wrote the report.;-)
The flipside is that many (most?) of us Americans seem too damned lazy to actually take the time to develop an informed, independent opinion on anything. We merely digest what we're spoon-fed. So if it's reported incorrectly there's no critical analysis. It's just accepted as fact. Lazy. Too damn lazy.
An ignorant democracy is no democracy at all. Just a flock of sheep waiting for the most shiny light.
"Oh, that pun made me grin and cringe at the same time!"
The best kind.:-)
"I really think that this is about nit-picking."
Well of course it is, this is Slashdot we're talking about!;-) To avoid nitpicking, we're instead all supposed to meet at a good pub and discuss over malt beer. My rule on Slashdot is "no harm no foul". (To which ducks will no doubt take exception.) The entire community is all about quibbling. Something of a Monty Python sketch, I suppose. It's all about a good argument. And bad puns. OK and pr0n jokes. Definitely the pr0n jokes.:-)
[...Massively cool list of dad's Disneyland feats... ]
Damn! So at Career Day in class when kids would bring in their parents to describe their jobs, everyone else must've just sunk their head in their hands and sobbed, "I suck!"
Seriously, how does one follow an act like that? "I adjust actuarial tables to reflect trends in home insurance claims." (Kids begin to fidget and cry.)
"Human females are nearly unique in that their bodies conceal the times in which they are fertile, rather than advertising it."
Granted, and (paraphrasing here) there's quite a chasm between stating:
0) "Human females' physiological changes during periods of fertility are far less overtly apparent than those of many other female mammals."
and:
1) "Human females conceal when they're fertile."
I completely agree with the first statement. The second assertion is an all-encompassing statement that implies blanket concealment, and is demonstrably incorrect.
Perhaps the original was just sloppy wording, but semantics matter when making broad claims. (Ooo... bad pun - not intended.:-)
"Did you read what I wrote? Did you read the article you linked to?"
Errrm... yes, I did. Hence my reply. You wrote as your key claim that: "
human females, almost uniquely among animals, conceal when they're fertile.".
And I called bullshit on that. Talk to any number of women who care to discuss it. Many sure as hell know, based on the fact that they have marked changes in both physiology and increased sex drive. And yes, that's ovulation and hence fertility they're aware of, not only menstruation.
And of those that aren't explicitly aware, they certainly are still aware at some level. Hence being more likely have unprotected sex on a "whim". So far from concealing their status, even those who aren't explicitly aware will still subconsciously modify their behavior based on their fertile state. That strikes me as the opposite of concealing their fertility.
Both of which point to an apparent flaw in your key assertion that: "human females, almost uniquely among animals, conceal when they're fertile." Hint: When they're pouncing on you, they're more likely fertile. Or drunk. Or both.:-)
And as my linked study pointed out, the more fertile the woman is the higher her sex drive, peaking on the exact day. How is that "concealing it"?
Again, just talk to some actual women. Actually that's a good point - how many women have you personally discussed this with?
Actually a good body of older research also points to signs that human females are likely to be more aggressive in pursuing a mating partner during estrus.
Start talking to some female friends (yes, this often requires we actually leave our desks - 'HotChik69' on that chat room window is probably an obese 40-something male). Adequate empirical data is much better than the interesting yet purely theoretical musings of Anthropology PhDs.
Slashdot Mirror
"What the hell does PBS and their boring shows have to do with 'News For Nerds' here? [
That seems an incredibly myopic viewpoint. Rights to privacy, free speech and freedom of information are core values here. The FCC has a broad reach, all the more reason to follow everything they do.
Or would you rather have the DMCA + FCC clamp down on the flow of all kinds of information? There is already quite a fight going on here in the States to preserve even basic requests under the Freedom of Information Act.
Want jail time for that Xbox mod you installed, or for discussing a certain encryption algorithm online? Think it can't happen? Then by all means roll over and focus on "news for nerds" like the PS3 rollout. But if you ignore the "stuff that matters", you may not be around to see that PS3.
What stuns me is the number so-called "conservatives" who are watching an unprecedented assault on basic citizen rights here in America. What a bunch of pathetic posers. Wouldn't know the concepts of small government and personal liberties if it bit them on the leg. This administration has set the conservative movement back many decades, and the GOP will pay for it for decades to follow.
"1% is not really any news. Seriously, it is pathetic that
It's the first loss in an MS-dominant end-user application. As in the masses. And that is extremely significant.
I'll guarantee you there is plenty of jumping up and down in Redmond over that 1%. And not celebratory. Fortune magazine had an article on IE slipping over security concerns. In my company alone I have far more leverage now to introduce Opera/Firefox/etc. than I did a month ago (test installations now in place). In other words, awareness is reaching the mainstream.
And as others have pointed out, simply knowing there are choices, not to mention better ones, is a huge step forward in the cosumer market. A corner is being turned here, sharp or wide we don't know, but again I guarantee that Redmond is NOT happy over this.
"IIS has 35% and went down to 21%, Apache had 56% and went up to 67%"
Also worth cheering, but those are server "geek" technologies, where there has long been an appreciation for ease of maintenance and reliability. Both set of stats together are no doubt making for a bad day on the MS campus.
"but one percentage point is simply not statistically significant."
It's extrememly significant. When is the last time a dominant MS end-user product *lost* marketshare? Coming at a time when the "Life Around MS Campus Is Going To Get Tough" memo is released, I think it shows that MS is for once (and largely thanks to open source) finding itself with an actual fight on its hands.
Go penguins! And little BSD daemons. And that... Mozilla lizard thing. :-)
"On the other hand, OpenBSD doesn't looks as much like swiss cheese, so being open doesn't necessarily mean being full of holes either."
Or maybe being open source means the holes that do exist are found far more readily than in closed source. After all (using your example), Solaris source (closed) may have as many holes as RHL (open), but how would you ever find out, short of blindling stumbling across the Solaris hole?
"Find a legit copy of MS Office for sale on ebay that's being sold for $5"
Ummm... I'll leave this as an exercise for the reader. *cough*
"this is a novel which deals in part with the synthesis of and culture surrounding LSD."
I see. So basically a tale of the origins of unix? :-)
"If you think there isn't "an agency just sitting on little-known accidental root exploits and keeping them in their classified root kit" for most (if not all) of the *nixs out there you are dreaming."
Definitely, but Open Source *nixs are far less likely to harbor them than any closed source OS, *nix or otherwise. Agreed? If not, let's discuss.
Woohoo!
What really shocks me is why so many countries are still using MS at all in their gov't infrastructure. I've always wondered about the following scenario. (Note: Tinfoil hat required.)
MS is closed-source and rife with a constant stream of what are effectively root exploits being stumbled upon. What if some agency wanted to cozy up to MS and carefully craft backdoors and such, inject them into the OS and have them released into the world? Windows is so ubiquitous that your task has now become that much easier.
Furthermore only the random stumbling of a security researcher/hacker has a chance of discovering it. Probability == low in most cases. In which case "Oops, release patch (add new backdoor)".
Then there's the less nefarious scenario - an agency just sitting on little-known accidental root exploits and keeping them in their classified root kit.
Either way it strikes me that linux in particular (and open source in general) would give sovereign nations some peace of mind. Not bulletproof, but having a global community reviewing the source and tracking exploits openly would sure seem to me to be a better way to safeguard my country's secrets than relying on a huge foreign company with a crappy track record for security.
(You can now remove your tinfoil hats. No, wait, NEVER remove your tinfoil hat...)
"Second, I have never -- that means NOT EVER -- seen an IE fix that broke my machine worse than a virus would."
Hmmm. Well THERE's a ringing endorsement....
"Right before the election Dubya will announce that he's found the missing Weapons of Mass Destruction. They're sitting in boxes at the Bagdad CompUSA store marked "Intel inside"!"
At a press conference later that same day, Dubya will pull out the same map and declare that they've pinpointed the source of global warming as well.
Good question. For day-to-day 911 calls, yes cellphones are fantastic tools that have completely overwhelmed turf which Hams once had a unique claim to (2-way mobile comm). Natural disasters are still another story, however.
"Now you just whip out a cell phone and dial 911."
Now what happens when that cyclone roars through and tears your cell tower network to shreds. What do you do until an emergency cell network of limited capactity is rebuilt? Meaning transported to disaster area, properly placed and activated, etc. Only to be overwhelmed by everyone and their grandmother trying to call their friends and relatives? What happens if the disaster area is far away and the site inaccessible? (Island nation, etc.)
So realistically Ham radio still has a valuable place in disaster operations, perhaps even a critical role in some cases.
Just my half a nibble.
Which is a good reason that Ham radio ops are still useful, particularly in disaster relief scenarios where much of the local infrastructure may have been destroyed.
But first you have to get us to stop talking about the weather and our rigs.
Ah, but did Affinity Engines hire a team of MIT mathematicians to prove their "stolen code" case? I thought not!
Bah! Amateurs! My pet fish Eric could launch a better shakedown scam than that....
"I've actually had online banking sites force me to use MSIE when they decided Mozilla 1.5 wasn't a modern browser."
The debug build of Safari would let you spoof the user agent. A site requires MSIE? (click) Oh look! I'm MSIE now.
Looks like there's an extension for Mozilla that does the same.
Might help. Of course I then set it back to the regular Safari/Firefox/non-MSIE user agent ID so that any webmasters gathering stats will see that there are folks who (gasp) actually don't use IE.
"some HAMs are using 10 kilowatts upwards just for transmitting earth-to-earth!"
Actually, ignoring the 1.5KW max Ham radio ops are legally bound to, most Ham operators operate in the 100 watt range (in the HF freqs == "shortwave"), and there's a dedicated core of low-power enthusiasts who communicate around the world on 5 watts, 1 watt or even a few hundred milliwatts. (The microwatt crew even come out during favorable solar conditions).
Check out these guys for a starting point.
It varies by spectrum of course (VHF/HF/etc.) but I've personally worked every continent with less than 5 watts using just a homemade wire antenna, no fancy NSA-like array of metal high in the air.
Antarctica was the most fun - Russian op down there at their research station. Darn neatstuff!
"If you want unbiased, read through the report yourself... If you are basing your opinion on any news station, you are not going to get the real story."
Well, what you'll get instead is the bias of the person who wrote the report. ;-)
The flipside is that many (most?) of us Americans seem too damned lazy to actually take the time to develop an informed, independent opinion on anything. We merely digest what we're spoon-fed. So if it's reported incorrectly there's no critical analysis. It's just accepted as fact. Lazy. Too damn lazy.
An ignorant democracy is no democracy at all. Just a flock of sheep waiting for the most shiny light.
"Thanks to all that power, and the plethora of electronics on Cassini and the Huygens probe, we can now hear sounds from Saturn."
Not to mention that giant space phonograph needle they included at the last minute. Now we just have to have it doesn't skip on the Cassini Division.
(Append witty RIAA reference here.)
"Oh, that pun made me grin and cringe at the same time!"
The best kind. :-)
"I really think that this is about nit-picking."
Well of course it is, this is Slashdot we're talking about! ;-) To avoid nitpicking, we're instead all supposed to meet at a good pub and discuss over malt beer. My rule on Slashdot is "no harm no foul". (To which ducks will no doubt take exception.) The entire community is all about quibbling. Something of a Monty Python sketch, I suppose. It's all about a good argument. And bad puns. OK and pr0n jokes. Definitely the pr0n jokes. :-)
Malt beer... 5pm seems so far away....
[
Damn! So at Career Day in class when kids would bring in their parents to describe their jobs, everyone else must've just sunk their head in their hands and sobbed, "I suck!"
Seriously, how does one follow an act like that? "I adjust actuarial tables to reflect trends in home insurance claims." (Kids begin to fidget and cry.)
""FWOOMP!" isn't a bad sound. Gernade lauchers make a FWOOMP sound when fired."
I guess good/bad depends on which side of the FWOOMP you're on then, eh? :-)
"What's the fun in fireworks if there's no boom when they're shot?"
The celebration of freedom will now instead contain the Looney Tunes sound of "FWOOMP!"
Which tragicomically seems a good fit, given the world today.
"Human females are nearly unique in that their bodies conceal the times in which they are fertile, rather than advertising it."
Granted, and (paraphrasing here) there's quite a chasm between stating:
0) "Human females' physiological changes during periods of fertility are far less overtly apparent than those of many other female mammals."
and:
1) "Human females conceal when they're fertile."
I completely agree with the first statement. The second assertion is an all-encompassing statement that implies blanket concealment, and is demonstrably incorrect.
Perhaps the original was just sloppy wording, but semantics matter when making broad claims. (Ooo... bad pun - not intended. :-)
"Food for thought, maybe?"
Or "glucose for thought", so to speak. :-)
"Did you read what I wrote? Did you read the article you linked to?"
Errrm... yes, I did. Hence my reply. You wrote as your key claim that: " human females, almost uniquely among animals, conceal when they're fertile.".
And I called bullshit on that. Talk to any number of women who care to discuss it. Many sure as hell know, based on the fact that they have marked changes in both physiology and increased sex drive. And yes, that's ovulation and hence fertility they're aware of, not only menstruation.
And of those that aren't explicitly aware, they certainly are still aware at some level. Hence being more likely have unprotected sex on a "whim". So far from concealing their status, even those who aren't explicitly aware will still subconsciously modify their behavior based on their fertile state. That strikes me as the opposite of concealing their fertility.
Both of which point to an apparent flaw in your key assertion that: "human females, almost uniquely among animals, conceal when they're fertile." Hint: When they're pouncing on you, they're more likely fertile. Or drunk. Or both. :-)
And as my linked study pointed out, the more fertile the woman is the higher her sex drive, peaking on the exact day. How is that "concealing it"?
Again, just talk to some actual women. Actually that's a good point - how many women have you personally discussed this with?
"And with good reason: human females, almost uniquely among animals, conceal when they're fertile."
Interesting theory, but direct experience and a little recent research claim otherwise.
Actually a good body of older research also points to signs that human females are likely to be more aggressive in pursuing a mating partner during estrus.
Start talking to some female friends (yes, this often requires we actually leave our desks - 'HotChik69' on that chat room window is probably an obese 40-something male). Adequate empirical data is much better than the interesting yet purely theoretical musings of Anthropology PhDs.