darkstar login: zantispam Password: Linux 2.0.34. Last login: Thur Oct 28 19:33:55 on tty4. No Mail.
Insanity is considered grounds for divorce, though by the very same grounds it is the shortest route to marriage. -- William Mizner
darkstar:~$
Re:interesting electrical properties too
on
Sir Arthur Speaks
·
· Score: 1
Hrmm...
<dig dig>
This paper seems to suggest that due to the Earth's rotation, an object farther away from the surface will build potential energy in much the same fashion that the blades of a celing fan move faster at the tips.
From the paper:
The classic example is a skyhook, a cable in geosynchronous orbit long enough to reach down and attach to the ground. A payload which climbs the skyhook builds potential energy, gains momentum from the Earth's angular momentum, and can go into orbit.
Thus, it would seem to me that if you attach the earth end of the elevator to the Earth and have enough weight at geosynchronis orbit, if the elevator broke then the broken piece would fly off into space, or at least orbit (think broken fan blade). What would happen to the attached end I couldn't say...
Have to disagree with you about the riots. I think y'all (yup. Texan.) are still behind the Spainards. I mean (and I could be totally wrong about this), where else is there a riot every time there is a soccer (football) game? And I thought L.A. was bad:-)
Probably not torture. I'd think that it would be a hemmorage(9mm) or a clot(lead), but that's just me.
Actually, now that my thinking cap is on (sllluurrppp! Mmmmm coffee), I would hope that there would be enough professionalism to offer him a choice; the red cyanide pill or being torn to shreds by your fellow countrymen.
Yes, exactly! The point is that with knowledge comes power. That power must be tempered with wisdom and common sense, or else it is useless and detrimental.
A hacker can do far more than a cracker. The temptation is surely there to do everything possible, whether out of curiosity or corruption. However, along with the years of learning and doing comes a sense of Right and Wrong. Age and maturity bear wisdom as their child, and this wisdom grows into a personal representation of the Hacker's Ethic.
5kR1p4 K1DD135 lack the knowledge. Crackers lack the maturity. As such, there can be no representation of the Hacker's Ethic for them. In time, perhaps, but a lot of things happen between now and then.
In conclusion, I will greatfully use a metaphor I saw in another post. As the American Indian has the Red Road, the Buddist has the Buddha Dharma, and the Christian has the Straight and Narrow, so does the Hacker have the computer and the Hacker's Ethic. The journey into computers and hackerdom closely parallels one's personal development.
> Sure, I can read my sister's diary and no harm will come of it.
Great analogy, but a wrong one.
A cracker would break the lock to read the diary (for whatever reasons).
A hacker would figure out how the lock worked, pick it, and then notify his sister that her diary may be insecure. Moreover, this act would occur without the hacker caring about the contents of the diary, and possibly (in my case) going to great lengths to make sure that he didn't see a word.
WRT privacy of personal information, the hacker really only cares about his own. The cracker wants to did it up for personal reasons (blackmail, negotiations, espionage, etc.). The hacker (again, I'm going by my own morals here) would take care to avoid being in the situation that allows him to see the info.
As an example: if I break into your box because of some undocumented exploit, I'd verify the exploit and mail it to you, possibly with a patch. I would not go straight to/home/eroot/mail/archive and start reading your mail.
It is a very subtle and possibly subjective distinction, but it does need to be made.
Vaguely ontopic, I'm just curious as to where this attitude comes from. I mean, it's obvious that we, as geeks, out-earn, out-perform, out-play, and out-just-about-everything-else the vast majority of America (other countries may vary). Oh, wait. Silly me. They're just jealous of our good looks and table manners.
I was going to say somethink Katz-like about how this person's book will only serve to widen the chasm between Geek and Jock, but thought better of it. I think I'll by a copy for use as bathroom reading material...
You can also do that with PythonWin and (IIRC) Tcl. To bad Tk support in Windows is buggy (YMMV).
> 3) MSDN
Whoa, now. MSDN is the most convoluted, useless piece of junk that Microsoft has ever produced (worse that J++, even). I mean, it's nice if you want to learn the basics of a language, but for hardcore things (like pretending VB is VC++) it just doesn't cut it. That, and it's slow. It's slower to start up the help files in VB than it is to start VB.
I must say that my experience with C++ (or VC++) is lacking, however, I would be more than willing to trade everything positive about Visual Studio for my handy dandy text editor and compiler/linker/interpreter of choice.
As for another post earlier about doing DB stuff in VB, it's simple. JUST USE DAO! That's it. Don't try to learn all of the cruft MS sends your way. It goes like this: -- Create a workspace -- Create a database -- Create a recordset -- Pull an index of the database -- Futz with it as needed -- INSERT INTO... -- DB.Commit() -- Cleanup
This is why I use DAO for everything that I can. Anything else gets done in Python, JPython, or PHP4.0(beta 2 woohoo!) and javascript.
To respond to the original poster concerning sockets, I created a client-server logging tool in VB using a WinSock control array. Works great until it gets more than about 30 simultaneous connections. The overhead brings the program to a halt. Lesson? Use Java or JPython instead.
Anyhoo, sorry for the long post. I just needed to get it off of my chest.
(longing for the day when I can uninstall VS6.0 forever)
Ummm, how hard is it to bypass that? A friend of mine runs Gnome on RHAT 6.0. Boots right into Gnome. I watch it. The LILO prompt comes up, goes away, and the Gnome login box is right there. How hard would it be to go: Name: grandpa Password: grandpa?
So, we have successfully booted to the GUI. How hard is it to have single-click icons to launce everything? How difficult is it to set up window widgets along the title bar that go something like Close Me as opposed to _ox?
I think that with a little work, the system can be set up in such a way as to hide *all*of the intricacies of the wm, the OS, and all of the other stuff it takes to make the system go.
As for my on-topic response, this is good and bad.
Good because you have an immense amount of information at your fingertips. Get information about anything, right now.
Bad because you have an immense amount of information to sort through. I'd be afraid to do a paper on AIDS or WWII or even US History. Search Results: Showing 10 out of 10e6 hits
Anyway, I'll check it out if the server ever recovers...
...I for one would go as simple and as big as possible. Other posters have said use a Mac, which is cool, but you've already invested in a PC. Someone said to just leave Win98 on there. I disagree.
If I may be percieved as [insert politically incorrect root here]-ist, your grandfather comes from a time where when you bought something and it didn't work, you took it back. I think that with even the simple apps that he wants to use, Windows in not the best choice. How will he react when it BSODs out of the blue? Even if it only does it once, how tough will it be to explain the problem to him? Will he be willing to accept it?
I would recommend an extremely stripped down linux box. Pull out everything (and I mean EVERYTHING) he doesn't need, want, or will never use. Set the resolution to 600x800 and decide on a WM that has support for big buttons and maybe tool tips. Have the box boot directly into X, or teach him how to use the CLI. If you're having him use the GUI, put big, single-click buttons on the desktop. If it's something like Gnome with a start-esque menu, remove as many things as you can.
If you decide to go the CLI route, map all of the programs to simple commands: netscape starts the browser, office starts Star Office, mail starts the mail, help brings up some general man pages, bye makes it shut down. Maybe hack some maintenance tools that run on shutdown and pipe the output to a file that you check periodically.
Either way, keep it simple. Keep it fast. Don't do anything he isn't comfortable with. It will save both of you time and headaches in the long run.
And, of course, you've been moderated up as `Insightful'.
I have to agree with what I hope is the moderator's intent. It's obvoius that you have brought to light a point that I (for one) missed: This article is not worth moderating. Why the moderators are not using points on this article is another thing, however.
Some thoughts...
-- There is a shortage of moderators (unlikely) -- There is a shortage of moderator points (again, unlikely) -- Most moderators hate MTV, and will therefore not bother to read the artice (one can hope) -- The/. community at large feels that this is a colossal waste of time and energy, and therefore do not bother to use brainpower to moderate or post (probable. note that I'm not replying to the actual article myself)
I know that the kids-turn-your-parents-in-for-doing-drugs, thing, is going strong. Maybe that could start the PEAR movement - Pirates are Evil And Ruthless (or something. Too much alcohol tonite, so read at your own risk...)
"This is captiam Jean luc Picard of the starship Enterprise. Stop your engines and prepare to be boarded!"
[unknown business vessel] "But why?"
"The Federation has reason to believe that you're using pirated MS software to run you're ship.
[to Geordi] See if you can lock onto their main database. [Geordi] Aye, Capitan. [Picard] Is it Access 3050? [Geordi] Yes Sir! [Picard] Mr. Warf, fire Photon Torpedos...now! [Warf] Yes Sir!
The thing to remember is that `Absolute power sorrupts absoultly'. If I'mm BillG, I am going to want a part of everything - inluding/. Who is my greatest threat? An informed consumer. Who can inform consumers better that/.
This isn't to say that I buy into the conspiracy theory. However, I do feel that it's well within the realm of possibility that BillG reads., on occasion. If I'm an intelligent emporer, I will look to my resistance to help make me stronger.
(please note: I've posted these comments after three glasses of Merlot and two Crown and Cokes. IOW, Forgive the spelling and gramatical errors, please)
"First of all, I do not really believe the UN can produce anything remotely interesting, technically speaking. I like the IETF motto: "we believe in rough consensus, and working code". Show me the money^H^H^H^H^Hcode first, please. What's so special about UNL? Theoretical translation of language A into a universal language and from there to language B is almost as old as "machine" translation itself. As far as I remember, early EU research into machine translation were based on a similar idea -- and they were dismissed as a failure. For a good example of the total and dismal failure of machine translation, try translating this text into"
I did. English -> French French -> English English -> German German -> English English -> Italian Italian -> English English -> Spanish Spanish -> English English -> Portuguese Portuguese -> English
The end result???
In the first place of all, crío to really distant distant of interest who the O.N.U all can produce and not point out technician. I have the taste of the modernity of the IETF:" we create in the agreement approached and the operation bases it ". the champions money^H^H^H^H^Hcode in the beginning, please. Which is therefore extreme special UNL? The theoretical translation of the language to the inside to a universal language and with of the language B is nearly therefore old here how much the translation " of the machine ". Like the memory, IT CREDITS the first jambs of capturing in the automatic translation it has been based on a similar idea -- and has been isolated like the landslide. For entire a landslide and it good slaughter houses of the example that the automatic translation, manages, in
"maybe I should start drinking 2 cases of dew a week?"
2??? Just 2??? Hell, I go through about 5 cases (5*24=120) of Coke a week!
Seriously, though. I think that there is a theoretical limit to this. I can't remember how old I am (22, I think. Wait, no. Ummm...hrmmm. Uhh yeah, 22) and Goddess help me if I misplace my keys...
But let's start explaining the intricacies(sp?) of quantum physiscs or paleantology and I'm there.
Also, as an earlier poster pointed out, what about those in out population without, umm, testicals???
...is dialect and `slang' support. If I'm in the southern US and I say `yeah, I'm fixing to go do that', how will that be interpreted?
Worse still will be Chinese support. They have, what, 2000 dialects of Mandarin alone? Will the UN force everyone to use the same language in a particular region? Or will this Meta-language understand that.
Doable, but not very well. Wait until they start including slang and jargon. And we all thought Babelfish was bad...
Slashdot Mirror
Hrmmm...
Welcome to Linux 2.0.34.
darkstar login: zantispam
Password:
Linux 2.0.34.
Last login: Thur Oct 28 19:33:55 on tty4.
No Mail.
Insanity is considered grounds for divorce, though by the very same grounds it is the shortest route to marriage.
-- William Mizner
darkstar:~$
Hrmm...
<dig dig>
This paper seems to suggest that due to the Earth's rotation, an object farther away from the surface will build potential energy in much the same fashion that the blades of a celing fan move faster at the tips.
From the paper:
The classic example is a skyhook, a cable in geosynchronous orbit long enough to reach down and attach to the ground. A payload which climbs the skyhook builds potential energy, gains momentum from the Earth's angular momentum, and can go into orbit.
Thus, it would seem to me that if you attach the earth end of the elevator to the Earth and have enough weight at geosynchronis orbit, if the elevator broke then the broken piece would fly off into space, or at least orbit (think broken fan blade). What would happen to the attached end I couldn't say...
Just as a thought...
How tough would it be to add a line of javascript before the banner like this:
SetCookie("banner1=no");
then send the banner...
<a href="http://www.mybannersite.com" target=new><img src="http://wwww.mybanner.com" border=0></a>
Then send another javascript line, like this:
SetCookie("banner1=yes");
Wouldn't that have the same effect as sending a cookie with a banner? Or have I just had too much crack on my cereal this morning??
Have to disagree with you about the riots. I think y'all (yup. Texan.) are still behind the Spainards. I mean (and I could be totally wrong about this), where else is there a riot every time there is a soccer (football) game? And I thought L.A. was bad :-)
If I were you, I'd get ahold of Bruce Perens, either here, or post something to Technocrat.net. Doesn't look like he's gotten wind of this yet.
Note: I would do it myself, but I am way too busy to provide the proper follow-up...
Probably not torture. I'd think that it would be a hemmorage(9mm) or a clot(lead), but that's just me.
Actually, now that my thinking cap is on (sllluurrppp! Mmmmm coffee), I would hope that there would be enough professionalism to offer him a choice; the red cyanide pill or being torn to shreds by your fellow countrymen.
Will the networked card run linux?
*ducks*
Imagine a beowulf clister of these babies!
*runs, hides behind tree*
Sorry, I had to...;-)
Yes, exactly! The point is that with knowledge comes power. That power must be tempered with wisdom and common sense, or else it is useless and detrimental.
A hacker can do far more than a cracker. The temptation is surely there to do everything possible, whether out of curiosity or corruption. However, along with the years of learning and doing comes a sense of Right and Wrong. Age and maturity bear wisdom as their child, and this wisdom grows into a personal representation of the Hacker's Ethic.
5kR1p4 K1DD135 lack the knowledge. Crackers lack the maturity. As such, there can be no representation of the Hacker's Ethic for them. In time, perhaps, but a lot of things happen between now and then.
In conclusion, I will greatfully use a metaphor I saw in another post. As the American Indian has the Red Road, the Buddist has the Buddha Dharma, and the Christian has the Straight and Narrow, so does the Hacker have the computer and the Hacker's Ethic. The journey into computers and hackerdom closely parallels one's personal development.
As it should be, waiting is.
zantispam.unMount(SoapBox);
Here are the first two chapters...
> Sure, I can read my sister's diary and no harm will come of it.
/home/eroot/mail/archive and start reading your mail.
Great analogy, but a wrong one.
A cracker would break the lock to read the diary (for whatever reasons).
A hacker would figure out how the lock worked, pick it, and then notify his sister that her diary may be insecure. Moreover, this act would occur without the hacker caring about the contents of the diary, and possibly (in my case) going to great lengths to make sure that he didn't see a word.
WRT privacy of personal information, the hacker really only cares about his own. The cracker wants to did it up for personal reasons (blackmail, negotiations, espionage, etc.). The hacker (again, I'm going by my own morals here) would take care to avoid being in the situation that allows him to see the info.
As an example: if I break into your box because of some undocumented exploit, I'd verify the exploit and mail it to you, possibly with a patch. I would not go straight to
It is a very subtle and possibly subjective distinction, but it does need to be made.
(I'm gonna loose karma for this)
I *SO* envy you, sir!
Vaguely ontopic, I'm just curious as to where this attitude comes from. I mean, it's obvious that we, as geeks, out-earn, out-perform, out-play, and out-just-about-everything-else the vast majority of America (other countries may vary). Oh, wait. Silly me. They're just jealous of our good looks and table manners.
</oddly silly post>
I didn't think Austin Powers was a geek.
(Yeah, baby!)
I was going to say somethink Katz-like about how this person's book will only serve to widen the chasm between Geek and Jock, but thought better of it. I think I'll by a copy for use as bathroom reading material...
> 1) Intellisense
Agreed. This is massively cool.
> 2) Edit and continue.
You can also do that with PythonWin and (IIRC) Tcl. To bad Tk support in Windows is buggy (YMMV).
> 3) MSDN
Whoa, now. MSDN is the most convoluted, useless piece of junk that Microsoft has ever produced (worse that J++, even). I mean, it's nice if you want to learn the basics of a language, but for hardcore things (like pretending VB is VC++) it just doesn't cut it. That, and it's slow. It's slower to start up the help files in VB than it is to start VB.
I must say that my experience with C++ (or VC++) is lacking, however, I would be more than willing to trade everything positive about Visual Studio for my handy dandy text editor and compiler/linker/interpreter of choice.
As for another post earlier about doing DB stuff in VB, it's simple. JUST USE DAO! That's it. Don't try to learn all of the cruft MS sends your way. It goes like this:
-- Create a workspace
-- Create a database
-- Create a recordset
-- Pull an index of the database
-- Futz with it as needed
-- INSERT INTO...
-- DB.Commit()
-- Cleanup
This is why I use DAO for everything that I can. Anything else gets done in Python, JPython, or PHP4.0(beta 2 woohoo!) and javascript.
To respond to the original poster concerning sockets, I created a client-server logging tool in VB using a WinSock control array. Works great until it gets more than about 30 simultaneous connections. The overhead brings the program to a halt. Lesson? Use Java or JPython instead.
Anyhoo, sorry for the long post. I just needed to get it off of my chest.
(longing for the day when I can uninstall VS6.0 forever)
Disclaimer:IANA*OXG (A Am Not A *nix Or X God)
Ummm, how hard is it to bypass that? A friend of mine runs Gnome on RHAT 6.0. Boots right into Gnome. I watch it. The LILO prompt comes up, goes away, and the Gnome login box is right there. How hard would it be to go:
Name: grandpa
Password: grandpa?
So, we have successfully booted to the GUI. How hard is it to have single-click icons to launce everything? How difficult is it to set up window widgets along the title bar that go something like
Close Me
as opposed to
_ox?
I think that with a little work, the system can be set up in such a way as to hide *all*of the intricacies of the wm, the OS, and all of the other stuff it takes to make the system go.
Fifteen minutes later.....Yup still down.
As for my on-topic response, this is good and bad.
Good because you have an immense amount of information at your fingertips. Get information about anything, right now.
Bad because you have an immense amount of information to sort through. I'd be afraid to do a paper on AIDS or WWII or even US History.
Search Results: Showing 10 out of 10e6 hits
Anyway, I'll check it out if the server ever recovers...
...I for one would go as simple and as big as possible. Other posters have said use a Mac, which is cool, but you've already invested in a PC. Someone said to just leave Win98 on there. I disagree.
If I may be percieved as [insert politically incorrect root here]-ist, your grandfather comes from a time where when you bought something and it didn't work, you took it back. I think that with even the simple apps that he wants to use, Windows in not the best choice. How will he react when it BSODs out of the blue? Even if it only does it once, how tough will it be to explain the problem to him? Will he be willing to accept it?
I would recommend an extremely stripped down linux box. Pull out everything (and I mean EVERYTHING) he doesn't need, want, or will never use. Set the resolution to 600x800 and decide on a WM that has support for big buttons and maybe tool tips. Have the box boot directly into X, or teach him how to use the CLI. If you're having him use the GUI, put big, single-click buttons on the desktop. If it's something like Gnome with a start-esque menu, remove as many things as you can.
If you decide to go the CLI route, map all of the programs to simple commands: netscape starts the browser, office starts Star Office, mail starts the mail, help brings up some general man pages, bye makes it shut down. Maybe hack some maintenance tools that run on shutdown and pipe the output to a file that you check periodically.
Either way, keep it simple. Keep it fast. Don't do anything he isn't comfortable with. It will save both of you time and headaches in the long run.
And, of course, you've been moderated up as `Insightful'.
/. community at large feels that this is a colossal waste of time and energy, and therefore do not bother to use brainpower to moderate or post (probable. note that I'm not replying to the actual article myself)
I have to agree with what I hope is the moderator's intent. It's obvoius that you have brought to light a point that I (for one) missed: This article is not worth moderating. Why the moderators are not using points on this article is another thing, however.
Some thoughts...
-- There is a shortage of moderators (unlikely)
-- There is a shortage of moderator points (again, unlikely)
-- Most moderators hate MTV, and will therefore not bother to read the artice (one can hope)
-- The
Sorry, the link is here. Darn commas...
Actualy, they already do that.
I know that the kids-turn-your-parents-in-for-doing-drugs, thing, is going strong. Maybe that could start the PEAR movement - Pirates are Evil And Ruthless (or something. Too much alcohol tonite, so read at your own risk...)
"This is captiam Jean luc Picard of the starship Enterprise. Stop your engines and prepare to be boarded!"
[unknown business vessel] "But why?"
"The Federation has reason to believe that you're using pirated MS software to run you're ship.
[to Geordi] See if you can lock onto their main database.
[Geordi] Aye, Capitan.
[Picard] Is it Access 3050?
[Geordi] Yes Sir!
[Picard] Mr. Warf, fire Photon Torpedos...now!
[Warf] Yes Sir!
[unknown business vessel] Aaaarrrggghh!!!
[Massive explosion of unknown business vessil]
[Picard] Well. Guess that will teach them!
[bridge crew laughs...]
The thing to remember is that `Absolute power sorrupts absoultly'. If I'mm BillG, I am going to want a part of everything - inluding /. Who is my greatest threat? An informed consumer. Who can inform consumers better that /.
., on occasion. If I'm an intelligent emporer, I will look to my resistance to help make me stronger.
This isn't to say that I buy into the conspiracy theory. However, I do feel that it's well within the realm of possibility that BillG reads
(please note: I've posted these comments after three glasses of Merlot and two Crown and Cokes. IOW, Forgive the spelling and gramatical errors, please)
"First of all, I do not really believe the UN can produce anything remotely interesting, technically speaking. I like the IETF motto: "we believe in rough consensus, and working code". Show me the money^H^H^H^H^Hcode first, please. What's so special about UNL? Theoretical translation of language A into a universal language and from there to language B is almost as old as "machine" translation itself. As far as I remember, early EU research into machine translation were based on a similar idea -- and they were dismissed as a failure. For a good example of the total and dismal failure of machine translation, try translating this text into"
I did.
English -> French
French -> English
English -> German
German -> English
English -> Italian
Italian -> English
English -> Spanish
Spanish -> English
English -> Portuguese
Portuguese -> English
The end result???
In the first place of all, crío to really distant distant of interest who the O.N.U all can produce and not point out technician. I have the taste of the modernity of the IETF:" we create in the agreement approached and the operation bases it ". the champions money^H^H^H^H^Hcode in the beginning, please. Which is therefore extreme special UNL? The theoretical translation of the language to the inside to a universal language and with of the language B is nearly therefore old here how much the translation " of the machine ". Like the memory, IT CREDITS the first jambs of capturing in the automatic translation it has been based on a similar idea -- and has been isolated like the landslide. For entire a landslide and it good slaughter houses of the example that the automatic translation, manages, in
Almost.
If a man is alone in the forest and says something and there is no woman to hear him, is he still wrong?
"maybe I should start drinking 2 cases of dew a week?"
2??? Just 2??? Hell, I go through about 5 cases (5*24=120) of Coke a week!
Seriously, though. I think that there is a theoretical limit to this. I can't remember how old I am (22, I think. Wait, no. Ummm...hrmmm. Uhh yeah, 22) and Goddess help me if I misplace my keys...
But let's start explaining the intricacies(sp?) of quantum physiscs or paleantology and I'm there.
Also, as an earlier poster pointed out, what about those in out population without, umm, testicals???
...is dialect and `slang' support. If I'm in the southern US and I say `yeah, I'm fixing to go do that', how will that be interpreted?
Worse still will be Chinese support. They have, what, 2000 dialects of Mandarin alone? Will the UN force everyone to use the same language in a particular region? Or will this Meta-language understand that.
Doable, but not very well. Wait until they start including slang and jargon. And we all thought Babelfish was bad...