Instead of IT, News, Microsoft, etc. can't we just add a section for 'Microsoft Claims' and bung all this crap in there? I see these kind of stories all the time on slashdot now and we all know, without reading any of the articles, that they're all a bunch of rubbish; whether the claims are right or not.
Who cares what Gates thinks? I have a lot of opinions about things in this world too, which arent driven by money making schemes, or claims that popular big companies who may pose a 0.1% profit deficit to MS are going to be dead in x years.
What makes this guys opinions so important? AFAIK, pretty much everyone here hates the guy anyway. It's getting so repetetive that it's not even fun to slag them off anymore.
Heh, some of the things I've seen people excluded for are far less than this.
One time a teacher started saying things about a student's dad not being around because they flew into the twin towers (the student was coloured), so the student complained about it, and somehow the school turned it around and excluded him.
From my experience, they look after their own and if you're gonna start making claims, you could end up in more trouble than it's worth. Yeah, I probably could have got a lawyer and sorted it out, but it would be far too much time, effort and money considering how little long term damage was done to me. They didn't put it down on my record, so effectively I got a couple of weeks off school and that was the end of that.
1) Inform the admin of a possible security risk, and hope they're nice enough to take notice of you. Chances are you won't even get a single second of their thought. End Result: Security risk stays there and the admin thinks they have another 'im a teenage smartass' on their hands. 2) You hack their system to prove there is a security risk there. End Result: You could face criminal charges, get kicked out of college, and have one hell of a hard time getting back into one.
Either way you lose. It's better to go for the first option and if it fails, quit. If you're so bothered that you'd risk getting kicked out and charged, go ahead and prove it to them.
I told the admins at my secondary school about several security risks I found, they didn't even reply to me. A few months later and I'm playing around with some harmless files I made cos I'm bored in IT class. About half a year later when I ask for more disk space, they check my files breifly, think I'm trying to hack (which I wasn't, nothing harmful was there, I was just satisfiying my curiosity). They kick me out of school for 2 weeks, don't let me anywhere near computers for another week, and threaten to call the police if they suspect me doing anything I shouldn't ever again. They don't care what your aim was, all they care about is that some kid is doing stuff they shouldn't be.
Since I'm a pensive person, I've wondered what the human race will evolve into a few times.
Obviously other animals have evolved to adapt to their surroundings, birds have evolved to be lighweight so they can stay in the air, fish in very deep and dark water have evolved to have colourful lights on them, polar bears to have lots of fur, and so on.. But humans no longer need to physically adapt to our surroundings as much as before, since we have enough intelligence to change nature to how it suits us (for example, making cars instead of evolving to run faster), instead of the other way round. So I think we probably won't physically evolve as much as previously (we clearly will still evolve physically, maybe to handle hotter temperatures or whatever, or take height for example; each generation seems to get taller than the last - or maybe this is just to do with dominant genes?). I think the next main set of evolutionary steps for humans will be mental, rather than physical. Our minds play a much, much bigger part in our lives than our physical features do. Our brains aren't built to truly 'multitask'. Sure, we can walk and talk at the same time, but walking is pretty natural anyway, we don't need to think about it. Talking is similar but not the same, we aren't constantly consciously thinking about what we say, it just kind of flows out, but without some thought it wouldnt make sense. Maths, or other such things, on the other hand, do take a fair bit of real thought, and we can't do things like maths and talk about an unrelated topic at the same time. So my thoughts would be the brain evolves to multitask better, since we are expected to do it so much in this era.
Then again, what do I know, I'm a kid not a scientist.
Linux: Red Hat/Apache Slower Than Windows Server 2003?
Posted by Zonk on Saturday May 07, @06:20
from the who-doesn't-love-some-delicious-fud dept.
phantomfive writes "In a recent test by a company called Veritest, Windows 2003 web server performs up to 300% higher throughput than Red Hat Linux running with Apache. Veritest used webbench to do there testing. Since the test was commisioned by Microsoft, is this just more FUD from a company with a long history? Or are the results valid this time? The study can be found here."
Slashdot, 11th of May 2005.
Microsoft: 2k3 Server vs RedHat\Apache
Posted by Michael on Wednesday May 11, @09:01
from the oops-they-did-it-again department.
fooslashbardot writes "Well, it looks like the suits at Redmond have done it again with the test last week that stated Windows 2003 Server outperforms RedHat\Apache by 300%. We knew the test had been commissioned by Microsoft, and now a recent Wired article has arose which lays claims that Mr. Gates himself was seen slipping the people at Veritest wads of up to 10,000 hundred dollar bills shortly before the announcements were made. Gates has denied all such claims, and says that Balmer smells of Cheese."
I've never used either, or know anything about Veritest, so I haven't a clue about whether the results are likely to be correct or not. But we all know Microsoft:P
Ah, I understand now, and the stuff about CC's seems to make sense when combined with what I already knew about them. Btw, I've never had a credit card, had my debit card for yrs though:p.
I thought (in the UK anyway), you can get debit cards at 16+, (might be younger, I got mine at 16 but I'm sure I remember friends having them) and credit cards at 18+. The difference being debit cards have stricter limits on how much can be spent\withdrawn in one day, and most have no overdraft, whereas credit cards tend to be much more loose.
Re:I do know myself
on
Mapping the Mind
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
All aside, pretty much every single day since that story about the seemingly intelligent autonomous bots based upon the principles of ant paths, along with a couple of other similar observations I happened to find\read around that time, I've been inspired to write a piece of software that immitates intelligence (a 'chatbot' of sorts). But every time I think I should get started on it, I figure I'm not quite ready yet. My current ideas, which are already plentiful, may work ok in some situations I've thought up, but there's so many other possibilities I daren't even try to start yet.
I think whether my wallet agrees with me or not, I'm gonna have to go out and buy a book, and since this story is here, and the book sounds promising, it'll probably be this one - I've been plagued by thoughts about how the mind works far too much since that story.. damn Slashdot.
hanks, Danila. You may have just solved my little infatuation about the mind.
"accurate video game physics down to the quantum level"
Not to nitpick, but what's the point in that? Is any normal human being capable of being able to tell what's going on at the quantum level? Im afraid not, "quantum foam" (the distortion of space and time and seemingly impossible random things happening) is very volatile and unpredictable, however, like quantum computers, the randomness in all of this ends up with the one most likely result at the macroscopic level (things big enough that we can see them). For example, when you throw a ball, you pretty much know where it's going to go and how long it will take, but inside and around the ball, at the quantum level, things are going in all sorts of directions, and probably even through time and dimensions which we are unaware of (see String Theory). Therefore having physics that complex in a game would be nothing but an immense waste of time and computing power.
Because Go is incalcuably more complex to design a computer program for, there are only two pieces, but they can go anywhere at any time (Ok, not *anywhere at any time* but pretty much), and the number of combinations there are to a simple move is much more difficult than the moves are in chess. Or so I would assume, I've never actually tried to make a program for either, but it would appear so to anyone who has played more than a few games of each.
I googled up on this guy to see how many digits of pi he remembered, and it seems he rememebers 22,514, which although is a hell of a lot, it doesnt even compare to the actual record, set by Hiroyuki Goto of Japan, in February 18th, 1995, who managed to remember a whopping 42,195 digits from memeory. Only took him 9 hours to do it too:p. Personally, I know the first 107, it's not too hard to remember, although I've heard that my method (just remembering it plain n simple) is only good for up to 200-300 digits. Ho Hum. Now, I think I'll RTFA.
Yea, they often have funny fake news articles, I've only read ones linked from/. though. I remember one about how the number of linux distros had outnumbered the number of linux users, actually thought it was real for a good few minutes. heehe.
10 digits? Muahaha, I know pi to 107 digits, haven't recited it for a good few weeks but I can still remember it well... Ah, only on Slashdot could I reveal this fact and not feel a complete geek. I considered using it as a password for a few seconds till I realised how dumb it would be, having told people I should use it as my password.
Anyway, I normally use one of two random and stupid phrases as a password anyway (for more-than-average-security needed things), but '1337'-ify it so its even more secure.
Why does everyone keep saying they haven't seen any new features whilst its been in beta? I've seen quite a few myself, maybe I just pay more attention to the little things, or (ha! v. unlikely) I've had GMail for longer than most slashdotters. Not many are coming to mind tbh, and I cant' seem to find a list of updates.. They added thumbnails to emails with picture attachments, they added external POP3 access, they've improved the contacts manager, they fixed up that nasty bug (which shouldn't have really been there anyway for someone like Google) where memory could be read by missing a closing tag in the To (or wad it From?) field. There's the GMail notifier and other things I cant remember at present. I can say I'm happy with the progress they're making, considering it was a good service beforehand, and there will be god knows how many bug fixes and things we won't notice. Being in Beta is a sensible idea, they aren't as pressured to be perfect and it's not finished. If they released it fully now and people found bugs or errors it wouldnt look very good, if they wait, the majority of people wont notice, and they have an excuse. Beta is the programmers heaven:)
Slashdot Mirror
Oh for gods sake.
Instead of IT, News, Microsoft, etc. can't we just add a section for 'Microsoft Claims' and bung all this crap in there? I see these kind of stories all the time on slashdot now and we all know, without reading any of the articles, that they're all a bunch of rubbish; whether the claims are right or not.
Who cares what Gates thinks? I have a lot of opinions about things in this world too, which arent driven by money making schemes, or claims that popular big companies who may pose a 0.1% profit deficit to MS are going to be dead in x years.
What makes this guys opinions so important? AFAIK, pretty much everyone here hates the guy anyway. It's getting so repetetive that it's not even fun to slag them off anymore.
You call that a diamond?
This is a diamond.
Heh, some of the things I've seen people excluded for are far less than this.
One time a teacher started saying things about a student's dad not being around because they flew into the twin towers (the student was coloured), so the student complained about it, and somehow the school turned it around and excluded him.
From my experience, they look after their own and if you're gonna start making claims, you could end up in more trouble than it's worth. Yeah, I probably could have got a lawyer and sorted it out, but it would be far too much time, effort and money considering how little long term damage was done to me. They didn't put it down on my record, so effectively I got a couple of weeks off school and that was the end of that.
Good call :)
Catch 22 situation.
Either you:
1) Inform the admin of a possible security risk, and hope they're nice enough to take notice of you. Chances are you won't even get a single second of their thought. End Result: Security risk stays there and the admin thinks they have another 'im a teenage smartass' on their hands.
2) You hack their system to prove there is a security risk there. End Result: You could face criminal charges, get kicked out of college, and have one hell of a hard time getting back into one.
Either way you lose. It's better to go for the first option and if it fails, quit. If you're so bothered that you'd risk getting kicked out and charged, go ahead and prove it to them.
I told the admins at my secondary school about several security risks I found, they didn't even reply to me. A few months later and I'm playing around with some harmless files I made cos I'm bored in IT class. About half a year later when I ask for more disk space, they check my files breifly, think I'm trying to hack (which I wasn't, nothing harmful was there, I was just satisfiying my curiosity). They kick me out of school for 2 weeks, don't let me anywhere near computers for another week, and threaten to call the police if they suspect me doing anything I shouldn't ever again. They don't care what your aim was, all they care about is that some kid is doing stuff they shouldn't be.
Since I'm a pensive person, I've wondered what the human race will evolve into a few times.
Obviously other animals have evolved to adapt to their surroundings, birds have evolved to be lighweight so they can stay in the air, fish in very deep and dark water have evolved to have colourful lights on them, polar bears to have lots of fur, and so on..
But humans no longer need to physically adapt to our surroundings as much as before, since we have enough intelligence to change nature to how it suits us (for example, making cars instead of evolving to run faster), instead of the other way round. So I think we probably won't physically evolve as much as previously (we clearly will still evolve physically, maybe to handle hotter temperatures or whatever, or take height for example; each generation seems to get taller than the last - or maybe this is just to do with dominant genes?).
I think the next main set of evolutionary steps for humans will be mental, rather than physical. Our minds play a much, much bigger part in our lives than our physical features do. Our brains aren't built to truly 'multitask'. Sure, we can walk and talk at the same time, but walking is pretty natural anyway, we don't need to think about it. Talking is similar but not the same, we aren't constantly consciously thinking about what we say, it just kind of flows out, but without some thought it wouldnt make sense. Maths, or other such things, on the other hand, do take a fair bit of real thought, and we can't do things like maths and talk about an unrelated topic at the same time. So my thoughts would be the brain evolves to multitask better, since we are expected to do it so much in this era.
Then again, what do I know, I'm a kid not a scientist.
42.
...Meh, I felt left out.
In the articles context, I'd say he was being sarcastic.
Sarcasm doesn't work too well on the internet.
Posted by Zonk on Saturday May 07, @06:20
from the who-doesn't-love-some-delicious-fud dept.
phantomfive writes "In a recent test by a company called Veritest, Windows 2003 web server performs up to 300% higher throughput than Red Hat Linux running with Apache. Veritest used webbench to do there testing. Since the test was commisioned by Microsoft, is this just more FUD from a company with a long history? Or are the results valid this time? The study can be found here."
Slashdot, 11th of May 2005.
Posted by Michael on Wednesday May 11, @09:01
from the oops-they-did-it-again department.
fooslashbardot writes "Well, it looks like the suits at Redmond have done it again with the test last week that stated Windows 2003 Server outperforms RedHat\Apache by 300%. We knew the test had been commissioned by Microsoft, and now a recent Wired article has arose which lays claims that Mr. Gates himself was seen slipping the people at Veritest wads of up to 10,000 hundred dollar bills shortly before the announcements were made. Gates has denied all such claims, and says that Balmer smells of Cheese."
I've never used either, or know anything about Veritest, so I haven't a clue about whether the results are likely to be correct or not. But we all know Microsoft
Hahaha, I wish I had mod points for you.
That crash really would be a blue screen of death.
How many redundant posts will we see in this thread? That makes me wonder though, how many duplicate posts will we see in this thread? ;)
Ah, I understand now, and the stuff about CC's seems to make sense when combined with what I already knew about them. :p.
Btw, I've never had a credit card, had my debit card for yrs though
I thought (in the UK anyway), you can get debit cards at 16+, (might be younger, I got mine at 16 but I'm sure I remember friends having them) and credit cards at 18+. The difference being debit cards have stricter limits on how much can be spent\withdrawn in one day, and most have no overdraft, whereas credit cards tend to be much more loose.
You must be new here; we loves ourself some old news here at SlashDot ;)
Thanks, I'll give them a look too :)
All aside, pretty much every single day since that story about the seemingly intelligent autonomous bots based upon the principles of ant paths, along with a couple of other similar observations I happened to find\read around that time, I've been inspired to write a piece of software that immitates intelligence (a 'chatbot' of sorts). But every time I think I should get started on it, I figure I'm not quite ready yet. My current ideas, which are already plentiful, may work ok in some situations I've thought up, but there's so many other possibilities I daren't even try to start yet.
I think whether my wallet agrees with me or not, I'm gonna have to go out and buy a book, and since this story is here, and the book sounds promising, it'll probably be this one - I've been plagued by thoughts about how the mind works far too much since that story.. damn Slashdot.
hanks, Danila. You may have just solved my little infatuation about the mind.
"accurate video game physics down to the quantum level"
Not to nitpick, but what's the point in that? Is any normal human being capable of being able to tell what's going on at the quantum level?
Im afraid not, "quantum foam" (the distortion of space and time and seemingly impossible random things happening) is very volatile and unpredictable, however, like quantum computers, the randomness in all of this ends up with the one most likely result at the macroscopic level (things big enough that we can see them).
For example, when you throw a ball, you pretty much know where it's going to go and how long it will take, but inside and around the ball, at the quantum level, things are going in all sorts of directions, and probably even through time and dimensions which we are unaware of (see String Theory). Therefore having physics that complex in a game would be nothing but an immense waste of time and computing power.
Well I would assume s/he is using some kind of speech to text engine, anything else would seem to be tedious.
Because Go is incalcuably more complex to design a computer program for, there are only two pieces, but they can go anywhere at any time (Ok, not *anywhere at any time* but pretty much), and the number of combinations there are to a simple move is much more difficult than the moves are in chess.
Or so I would assume, I've never actually tried to make a program for either, but it would appear so to anyone who has played more than a few games of each.
I googled up on this guy to see how many digits of pi he remembered, and it seems he rememebers 22,514, which although is a hell of a lot, it doesnt even compare to the actual record, set by Hiroyuki Goto of Japan, in February 18th, 1995, who managed to remember a whopping 42,195 digits from memeory. Only took him 9 hours to do it too :p.
Personally, I know the first 107, it's not too hard to remember, although I've heard that my method (just remembering it plain n simple) is only good for up to 200-300 digits. Ho Hum.
Now, I think I'll RTFA.
Yea, they often have funny fake news articles, I've only read ones linked from /. though.
I remember one about how the number of linux distros had outnumbered the number of linux users, actually thought it was real for a good few minutes. heehe.
10 digits? Muahaha, I know pi to 107 digits, haven't recited it for a good few weeks but I can still remember it well... Ah, only on Slashdot could I reveal this fact and not feel a complete geek.
I considered using it as a password for a few seconds till I realised how dumb it would be, having told people I should use it as my password.
Anyway, I normally use one of two random and stupid phrases as a password anyway (for more-than-average-security needed things), but '1337'-ify it so its even more secure.
I think you'd need that more than the parent.
It's funny, laugh.
Why does everyone keep saying they haven't seen any new features whilst its been in beta? I've seen quite a few myself, maybe I just pay more attention to the little things, or (ha! v. unlikely) I've had GMail for longer than most slashdotters. :)
Not many are coming to mind tbh, and I cant' seem to find a list of updates.. They added thumbnails to emails with picture attachments, they added external POP3 access, they've improved the contacts manager, they fixed up that nasty bug (which shouldn't have really been there anyway for someone like Google) where memory could be read by missing a closing tag in the To (or wad it From?) field. There's the GMail notifier and other things I cant remember at present. I can say I'm happy with the progress they're making, considering it was a good service beforehand, and there will be god knows how many bug fixes and things we won't notice. Being in Beta is a sensible idea, they aren't as pressured to be perfect and it's not finished. If they released it fully now and people found bugs or errors it wouldnt look very good, if they wait, the majority of people wont notice, and they have an excuse. Beta is the programmers heaven
Google Maps is still in beta, it probably won't show up till at least they're fully finished with it.