First off, I am severely tempted to say that I would welcome any buyout of linux.org just to get a halfway decent looking webpage on it!. Yeeeesh.
That small matter aside - I find it increasingly alarming that big business is moving into the linux arena so fast. What started out as a small phenomenon shared between the geekiest of the geeky has turned into a kind of mass-media event. I don't like the idea of large companies being linked to the name of linux. It just seems wrong that all the effort that has been expended on producing this wonderful free software will be covered up in advertisements, and packaged up in some forlorn website hawking the latest linux goods. And the newbies will never know what made linux great. I say we, as the linux community, petition all the major linux portals to provide easy access to documentation and papers that describe WHY linux is so stable, fast, and successful.
Because if we don't, linux may collapse into a black hole because nobody will contribute to it anymore.. they'll just use use use, and buy buy buy. People MUST be informed about free software. Linux is the poster child of the free software movement. It would be a damn shame if nobody knew that.
This is a test of the emergency broadcast system. Had this been an actual posting, real content would have followed this announcement. This is only a test...
First off, I'm glad I stuck around to read the last line of the interview "Next week: Alan Cox" otherwise I might have written the whole article off as a huge waste of bandwidth.
I submit the following to the slashdot audience to be moderated into oblivion...
1. Real Hackers aren't going to appear on MTV because they have long beards, look like hippies, and have spent so little time in the big blue room that they glow in the dark. As such, they are completely "unhip", and will not be appearing on any "hip" TV shows.
2. Let's face it: the life if a geek is boring. We spend all day in front of our computers checking our e-mail, coding, and sitting on our duff doing "nothing". Atleast to the untrained eye. On the molecular level, however, we are quite busy.
3. Ever tried holding a conversation with those tea-drinking, pony-tailed, geek-wannabes? You're more likely to find a fufilling conversation with your toothbrush. If you can get them to stop talking about the evils of eating meat, of course. *ducking and running*
As such, this article is a scam! Repent, heathen!:)
People are fed up with having mission-critical things blow up and BSOD all the time. Many people on/. have similar experiences. Granted, it's biased, but that doesn't negate the fact that the current crop of Microsoft offerings are woefully inadequate to the descriptions their sales department would have you believing.
Maybe if Microsoft was more honest with itself (and it's customers), and made a good-faith effort to improve the quality of it's products we wouldn't come down so hard on them.
Microsoft would have quite a few more friends here if they just came clean and said "we made a mistake, and here's what we're going to do to fix it", rather than spreading FUD around.
As the old saying goes, what goes around comes around.
Hello, and welcome to The Microsoft 911 Service - the most innovative 911 service ever! If you have a touch tone phone, please press 1 to speak with an operator, 2 to find out about new and exciting MS911 services, or 3 to find out more about MS911-98!
*beep*
Are you sure you want to speak with an operator?
*BEEEP!*
This operation could not be completed because an error of type -4019 occurred. Please standby, transferring you to the next available operator. Your expected wait time is: 493 minutes. Please have your MS-PIN and Certificate of..
*BEEP!* *BEEEEEEEEP!* *BEEEEEEEP!!*
... and thank you for using MS911! *click* NO CARRIER
I was trying to prevent any misinterpretation of the original slashdot posting. I read his.plan file and he plans on making the source for the VM available - but not the gaming engine itself. Some people may have been confused by the difference.
And yes, I'm aware of John's contributions.:) I should know - I have a matrox card -and- play q3test often.
The SB1200 doesn't store the MAC address. Even if it did, all you need to do is open your browser and click on this link, which will reset your modem to it's factory defaults. This is also useful when the modem periodically fouls up and garbles all your configuration information (usually resulting in a "serial port error" whenever you try to connect).
You know, tracking computers after they've been stolen is really simple. You don't even need a internet connection. There are companies out there selling anti-cartheft chips that are basically minature transmitters. When the vehicle is stolen, you call up the company, and they activate the chip via a satellite downlink, and then it's a simple matter of tracking down the signal.
Similar technology could easily be implemented for computers without all the privacy hoopla surrounding software or the "UID" stuff intel would have you believe is really there for your own good.
First off - Quake is simply incredible. It lets you repeatedly kill your boss in the office without being arrested.:)
Second, he is only making the source available for the VM - which helps the mod community. But to make this clear: Quake3 is not open source. For a real open source game, check out Golgotha. I hate it when people call any source release an "open source" release. . .
I thought it might be useful for you guys to read this excerb from Appendix B of the Hacker Dictionary (aka Jargon File):
Hackerdom is still predominantly male. However, the percentage of women is clearly higher than the low-single-digit range typical for technical professions, and female hackers are generally respected and dealt with as equals.
In the U.S., hackerdom is predominantly Caucasian with strong minorities of Jews (East Coast) and Orientals (West Coast). The Jewish contingent has exerted a particularly pervasive cultural influence (see Food, above, and note that several common jargon terms are obviously mutated Yiddish).
The ethnic distribution of hackers is understood by them to be a function of which ethnic groups tend to seek and value education. Racial and ethnic prejudice is notably uncommon and tends to be met with freezing contempt.
When asked, hackers often ascribe their culture's gender- and color-blindness to a positive effect of text-only network channels, and this is doubtless a powerful influence. Also, the ties many hackers have to AI research and SF literature may have helped them to develop an idea of personhood that is inclusive rather than exclusive -- after all, if one's imagination readily grants full human rights to future AI programs, robots, dolphins, and extraterrestrial aliens, mere color and gender can't seem very important any more.
People: marijuana kills you. At best, you're slowly turning your brain into mush.
It's a helluva lot safer than alchohol, which does all of the above, and then some. But that's legal. Marijuana has been the cornerstone of the "war on drugs" initiated by our legislators. It is not as dangerous as alchohol, and there's a lot of misinformed people out there about the exact effects of marijuana. Yes, you can die from it. You can also die if you slip and fall in your bathtub. Should we outlaw bathtubs because of that? No!
Amazing how we legalize alcohol, which causes thousands to be killed in automobile accidents, but make marijuana illegal. Marijuana makes you about as dangerous as a tree. But yet one is socially acceptable, and one is not.
What hypocrisy! The only causualties of the war on drugs has been our civil rights. I don't care if people use drugs - it's their body and their life. The government has no business telling you what you can or cannot do as long as it does not cause injury to another. And I would like to remind our legislators that if you want something done - make it illegal for kids to do it.
Look in countries like Ireland where they have legalized it - it's a non-issue. Nobody gets "smoked up" and plays baseball with other people's mailboxes. It lost all of it's "forbidden fruit" value once it was legalized, and now it's not even interesting.
In short, it's a big joke. So what if people want to smoke pot? Atleast they aren't getting tanked up and doing something really stupid like buying Office 2000....
I wanted to do something similar by going door to door and picking up old 486's for use in a beowolf cluster. The problem is that if you pick up a computer comparable DX4/100 for more than $50, you're paying more than it's worth by my estimates. We used a dual-celeron 300 system as a base comparison, and then used bogomips generated for each type to form a baseline. Unfortunately, the disposal of these machines often cost more than $50..
The other problem we ran into was energy consumption - running 50 DX4/100's puts out (a) alot of heat and (b) sucks up alot of energy, making it uneconomical to use old machines for our beowolf cluster.:/
I'd like to chat with anybody though that has tried this to see whether there is anything I may have overlooked, however.
This most definately falls under the idea of cruel and unusual punishment. You distribute $2500 worth of software, and get 3 years in the slammer? Which, by the way, costs the TAXPAYERS about $100,000 to house that person for that amount of time.
You're telling me the punishment is 100x worse than the "crime" committed? That's what it sounds like here - $250,000 / $2500 = 100.
Not only does it fall under the category of unusual, but it's also cruel. This poor kid has no way to make $250,000. He's fresh out of college, and wet behind the years. Kevin Mitnick, who the government claimed caused millions in damage was fined about $5,000 based on his projected earnings. What do you think this kid will get?
This kind of legislation needs to be repealed because it is a clear and present danger to a very important national resource - people. I don't know of a computer geek that doesn't have a harddrive full of MP3s and an illegal copy of windows. What are we going to to - arrest the whole country?
Lastly: Legislators, what were you smoking to pass this law?
Been reading my posts to license-discuss again haven't you?:) No, it isn't. Digital would need to make a commitment to make it go very far, but I think it's better than laying off a hundred workers and killing the project.
You know, is there any way that Digital could make the alpha-nt source available to the public? I know, it's a crazy idea, and I'm almost positive that MS would have fits over it.. but is it possible they made an oversight and Digital could release it?
This is the reason free software can be so beneficial - alpha-NT would have continued unhindered if it had a developer base independent of the company. Now it's just going to sink for no reason other than economics.:/
I know I'm going to be drawn out and quartered for telling people this - but secure music is most likely to succeed by using PKI (Public Key Infrastructure) & watermarking.
By encoding each file with somebody's personal key, or any "tag" that uniquely identifies the person, if the file is released it can be traced back to the individual. I'll leave it to future posters to describe the shortcomings of each, but it's a helluva lot better than the current approach. The main problem is coming up with a way to keep the watermark even after filtering the data. I'm not sure how far they've gotten on this, but I know it can be difficult to remove them from image files.
Since everything would be maintained by the record companies (ie: the distribution servers), they would force you to register w/ them before downloading. The PKI could be used to tell the user where/who it was downloaded from. You could also use symetric keys.. although the NSA might get upset with you if you use any non-trivial size.:)
I uhh *cough*, don't know how these files showed up in my directory, but they're here. There's only the index page and the 3 chapters there, nothing else. Please only access it if the main site borks under the slashdot effect...
lastly, what's going on with all the "nt rulez" stuff? Is somebody trying to suck moderator points?
Maybe, but I'm alittle more practical. If somebody is scanning my house, I want a detector, and optionally, a response mechanism to block their scans. Also, it'd be a really cool and geeky thing to do.;) Definate hack value.
You know, he handles over 500 submissions a day, or about 3500 a week. Now, given that the original whois was posted almost a month ago, how do you expect any sane individual to remember 14,000 submissions?
Try to keep in in perspective - so what if things are reposted once in awhile? That's the price we pay to get our news as soon as it hits the wire.
Slashdot Mirror
That small matter aside - I find it increasingly alarming that big business is moving into the linux arena so fast. What started out as a small phenomenon shared between the geekiest of the geeky has turned into a kind of mass-media event. I don't like the idea of large companies being linked to the name of linux. It just seems wrong that all the effort that has been expended on producing this wonderful free software will be covered up in advertisements, and packaged up in some forlorn website hawking the latest linux goods. And the newbies will never know what made linux great. I say we, as the linux community, petition all the major linux portals to provide easy access to documentation and papers that describe WHY linux is so stable, fast, and successful.
Because if we don't, linux may collapse into a black hole because nobody will contribute to it anymore.. they'll just use use use, and buy buy buy. People MUST be informed about free software. Linux is the poster child of the free software movement. It would be a damn shame if nobody knew that.
--
This is a test of the emergency broadcast system. Had this been an actual posting, real content would have followed this announcement. This is only a test...
--
No, actually it's vi and a toothpick.
--
Real Hackers code in obfusciated C !
--
I submit the following to the slashdot audience to be moderated into oblivion...
1. Real Hackers aren't going to appear on MTV because they have long beards, look like hippies, and have spent so little time in the big blue room that they glow in the dark. As such, they are completely "unhip", and will not be appearing on any "hip" TV shows.
2. Let's face it: the life if a geek is boring. We spend all day in front of our computers checking our e-mail, coding, and sitting on our duff doing "nothing". Atleast to the untrained eye. On the molecular level, however, we are quite busy.
3. Ever tried holding a conversation with those tea-drinking, pony-tailed, geek-wannabes? You're more likely to find a fufilling conversation with your toothbrush. If you can get them to stop talking about the evils of eating meat, of course. *ducking and running*
As such, this article is a scam! Repent, heathen! :)
--
Maybe if Microsoft was more honest with itself (and it's customers), and made a good-faith effort to improve the quality of it's products we wouldn't come down so hard on them.
Microsoft would have quite a few more friends here if they just came clean and said "we made a mistake, and here's what we're going to do to fix it", rather than spreading FUD around.
As the old saying goes, what goes around comes around.
--
*beep*
Are you sure you want to speak with an operator?
*BEEEP!*
This operation could not be completed because an error of type -4019 occurred. Please standby, transferring you to the next available operator. Your expected wait time is: 493 minutes. Please have your MS-PIN and Certificate of..
*BEEP!* *BEEEEEEEEP!* *BEEEEEEEP!!*
... and thank you for using MS911!
*click*
NO CARRIER
--
And yes, I'm aware of John's contributions. :)
I should know - I have a matrox card -and- play q3test often.
--
The SB1200 doesn't store the MAC address. Even if it did, all you need to do is open your browser and click on this link, which will reset your modem to it's factory defaults. This is also useful when the modem periodically fouls up and garbles all your configuration information (usually resulting in a "serial port error" whenever you try to connect).
--
You know, tracking computers after they've been stolen is really simple. You don't even need a internet connection. There are companies out there selling anti-cartheft chips that are basically minature transmitters. When the vehicle is stolen, you call up the company, and they activate the chip via a satellite downlink, and then it's a simple matter of tracking down the signal.
Similar technology could easily be implemented for computers without all the privacy hoopla surrounding software or the "UID" stuff intel would have you believe is really there for your own good.
--
Second, he is only making the source available for the VM - which helps the mod community. But to make this clear: Quake3 is not open source. For a real open source game, check out Golgotha. I hate it when people call any source release an "open source" release. . .
--
When it absolutely, positively, has to be lost at the speed of light interplanetary tcp/ip!
--
Hey, we may be addicted, but we're still running this country, so Nyaaaaah!
Now if you'll excuse me, somebody called from the Metro Area Sanitarium and said they were having problems with their OC3...
--
I thought it might be useful for you guys to read this excerb from Appendix B of the Hacker Dictionary (aka Jargon File):
Hackerdom is still predominantly male. However, the percentage of women is clearly higher than the low-single-digit range typical for technical professions, and female hackers are generally respected and dealt with as equals.
In the U.S., hackerdom is predominantly Caucasian with strong minorities of Jews (East Coast) and Orientals (West Coast). The Jewish contingent has exerted a particularly pervasive cultural influence (see Food, above, and note that several common jargon terms are obviously mutated Yiddish).
The ethnic distribution of hackers is understood by them to be a function of which ethnic groups tend to seek and value education. Racial and ethnic prejudice is notably uncommon and tends to be met with freezing contempt.
When asked, hackers often ascribe their culture's gender- and color-blindness to a positive effect of text-only network channels, and this is doubtless a powerful influence. Also, the ties many hackers have to AI research and SF literature may have helped them to develop an idea of personhood that is inclusive rather than exclusive -- after all, if one's imagination readily grants full human rights to future AI programs, robots, dolphins, and extraterrestrial aliens, mere color and gender can't seem very important any more.
--
People: marijuana kills you. At best, you're slowly turning your brain into mush.
It's a helluva lot safer than alchohol, which does all of the above, and then some. But that's legal. Marijuana has been the cornerstone of the "war on drugs" initiated by our legislators. It is not as dangerous as alchohol, and there's a lot of misinformed people out there about the exact effects of marijuana. Yes, you can die from it. You can also die if you slip and fall in your bathtub. Should we outlaw bathtubs because of that? No!
--
Amazing how we legalize alcohol, which causes thousands to be killed in automobile accidents, but make marijuana illegal. Marijuana makes you about as dangerous as a tree. But yet one is socially acceptable, and one is not.
What hypocrisy! The only causualties of the war on drugs has been our civil rights. I don't care if people use drugs - it's their body and their life. The government has no business telling you what you can or cannot do as long as it does not cause injury to another. And I would like to remind our legislators that if you want something done - make it illegal for kids to do it.
Look in countries like Ireland where they have legalized it - it's a non-issue. Nobody gets "smoked up" and plays baseball with other people's mailboxes. It lost all of it's "forbidden fruit" value once it was legalized, and now it's not even interesting.
In short, it's a big joke. So what if people want to smoke pot? Atleast they aren't getting tanked up and doing something really stupid like buying Office 2000....
--
I wanted to do something similar by going door to door and picking up old 486's for use in a beowolf cluster. The problem is that if you pick up a computer comparable DX4/100 for more than $50, you're paying more than it's worth by my estimates. We used a dual-celeron 300 system as a base comparison, and then used bogomips generated for each type to form a baseline. Unfortunately, the disposal of these machines often cost more than $50..
The other problem we ran into was energy consumption - running 50 DX4/100's puts out (a) alot of heat and (b) sucks up alot of energy, making it uneconomical to use old machines for our beowolf cluster. :/
I'd like to chat with anybody though that has tried this to see whether there is anything I may have overlooked, however.
--
This most definately falls under the idea of cruel and unusual punishment. You distribute $2500 worth of software, and get 3 years in the slammer? Which, by the way, costs the TAXPAYERS about $100,000 to house that person for that amount of time.
You're telling me the punishment is 100x worse than the "crime" committed? That's what it sounds like here - $250,000 / $2500 = 100.
Not only does it fall under the category of unusual, but it's also cruel. This poor kid has no way to make $250,000. He's fresh out of college, and wet behind the years. Kevin Mitnick, who the government claimed caused millions in damage was fined about $5,000 based on his projected earnings. What do you think this kid will get?
This kind of legislation needs to be repealed because it is a clear and present danger to a very important national resource - people. I don't know of a computer geek that doesn't have a harddrive full of MP3s and an illegal copy of windows. What are we going to to - arrest the whole country?
Lastly: Legislators, what were you smoking to pass this law?
--
Been reading my posts to license-discuss again haven't you? :) No, it isn't. Digital would need to make a commitment to make it go very far, but I think it's better than laying off a hundred workers and killing the project.
--
You know, is there any way that Digital could make the alpha-nt source available to the public? I know, it's a crazy idea, and I'm almost positive that MS would have fits over it.. but is it possible they made an oversight and Digital could release it?
This is the reason free software can be so beneficial - alpha-NT would have continued unhindered if it had a developer base independent of the company. Now it's just going to sink for no reason other than economics. :/
--
I know I'm going to be drawn out and quartered for telling people this - but secure music is most likely to succeed by using PKI (Public Key Infrastructure) & watermarking.
By encoding each file with somebody's personal key, or any "tag" that uniquely identifies the person, if the file is released it can be traced back to the individual. I'll leave it to future posters to describe the shortcomings of each, but it's a helluva lot better than the current approach. The main problem is coming up with a way to keep the watermark even after filtering the data. I'm not sure how far they've gotten on this, but I know it can be difficult to remove them from image files.
Since everything would be maintained by the record companies (ie: the distribution servers), they would force you to register w/ them before downloading. The PKI could be used to tell the user where/who it was downloaded from. You could also use symetric keys.. although the NSA might get upset with you if you use any non-trivial size. :)
--
Doh, bad link! this one will work better.
--
I uhh *cough*, don't know how these files showed up in my directory, but they're here. There's only the index page and the 3 chapters there, nothing else. Please only access it if the main site borks under the slashdot effect...
lastly, what's going on with all the "nt rulez" stuff? Is somebody trying to suck moderator points?
--
Maybe, but I'm alittle more practical. If somebody is scanning my house, I want a detector, and optionally, a response mechanism to block their scans. Also, it'd be a really cool and geeky thing to do. ;) Definate hack value.
--
You know, he handles over 500 submissions a day, or about 3500 a week. Now, given that the original whois was posted almost a month ago, how do you expect any sane individual to remember 14,000 submissions?
Try to keep in in perspective - so what if things are reposted once in awhile? That's the price we pay to get our news as soon as it hits the wire.
--