I shred and pulp-ify all documents. I order periodic copies of my credit reports (although I'm irked that I have to pay for them - they're only free if you've been recently denied credit). Is there anything else I should be doing?
Yeah, don't forget the tin foil hat to keep out the Martian mindcontrol rays.:-P Hey, I'm not tryin' to flame here, this is just "constructive critisicm".
Seriously though, maybe you should just be sure to look both ways before crossing the street. I bet lots of people each year get killed by buses, run-away cars, etc. And then there's cancer and West Nile virus.
Note that those two deseases shouldn't be allowed to show up in the same sentence but many wouldn't notice the incongruity. That's the point I'm obliquely making:
There are many, many, many bad things happening to lots of people all over the world all the time. In the grand scheme of things, ID theft is only one of a seemingly infinite array of things that could happen to you that would suck. It's certainly a Good Thing(tm) to be (Warning: G.W.B.-style rhetoric follows) vigilant against the threat of identity theft. Just be sure that the amount of resources you commit to that is proportional to the actual threat posed to you personally by ID theft.
(Warning: the following post is very glib (but not really funny). It doesn't take itself too seriously so you shouldn't either.)
Proprietary software sucks. Don't take my word for it. Just read the article.
I mean, after all--if the proprietary software is already buggy, if the companies charge for the tech support as well, then what is the company really providing for the user? Clever marketing? Ease of aquisition of software (can be downloaded or purchased from a store)? Easy installation?
Okay, that's it guys. If the proprietary software really does suck that much, then all the Open Source community needs to do is (somehow) run a huge marketing campain and make the auto-installers work better. The tech support might suck, and the software might be full of bugs, but that's not any different from commercial software. (at least according to that one, rather short, CNN article) The only remaining barriers are lack of knowelge from the general public and difficulties with installation.
Technically, yes that's a problem. But the story was just bemoaning the death of the games and the preservation of history. Although it is *technically* illegal to have all these roms without the license to them or without posessing the roms, it does, for all *practical* purposes eliminate the problem the story submitter was going on about.
I apologize for being redundant, but I feel it's important enough that it's justified.
As at least one other person mentioned, your stats are kinda skewed because some old games lend themselves to multiplayer more than others. I doubt there'll be a long line to play Zoo Keeper on the 'net anytime soon...even though it does allow two people to take turns playing.
Perhaps if you had a *meta*-server--something that let a group of people cycle through a list of games like Zoo Keeper... or maybe you already have something like that, I don't know.
No. The problem with NES carts had nothing to do with the lock out chip. It didn't have very much to do with dirty contacts on the cart or the NES unit either.
It had an awful *lot* to do with that asinine sideways cartridge insertion. Ever noticed that *no other* console system *ever* required you to slide a cartridge in sideways then push it down? That's where your problems come in.
Simple fix: take apart your Nintendo so you can actually get the cartridge to make good contact.
Note: If you accidently break your Nintendo, electrocute yourself, or burn down the cat, I refuse to take responsibility. Instead, it is you who should feel stupid for actually believing *anything* you read on slashdot. You have been warned. Now go find your screwdriver and have fun with Legend of Zelda.
Knightfall writes
"Well, it seems remembering those games may soon be all that is left. As companies are dropping support, but not property rights to our old favorites, many are in danger of vanishing forever. [stuff deleted] What can we do to prevent them from no longer being available?"
"oh! the sky is falling! the sky is falling!" blah, blah, blah, blah... Mame,MAme,MAMe,MAME!
1. By default, bash (or readline) often doesn't know that [Home] means ^a and [End] means ^e. Sometimes it doesn't get [Delete] right either. 2. readline is not tolerant or verbose about problems with.inputrc. It just grinds on through, usually garbling your key bindings as a result. It's depressing to have to login to another session to run kill to end your previous session because you're unable to type "exit[ENTER]" in that session. 3. While it's true that a Unix text file should have "\n" line endings rather than "\r\n", we do, in fact, live in a world with The Internet and The Microsoft. Both of them use "\r\n" line endings. Some Linux progs silently support reading from "\r\n" files and that's great. bash doesn't though, so on several occasions I've had to deal with weird errors when copying.bash_profile from a Cygwin / Windows box.
Yes, I know there's probably a better way out of these problems than simply bitching--but the question was what annoyed me the most, so there you go.
P.S. In SuSe 7.2, the way to burn CDs involved setting up the CD-R drive as a pseudo-SCSI device using SCSI emulation. Is this ugly hack still necessary? or can Linux now handle IDE CD burners?
I think the categories of "introvert" and "extrovert" are too broad to make many meaningful statements about. Certainly, they seem too broad to make a lot of general statements as to their causes. In other words, there are surely many multiple causes for what can appear as "introvertedness" or "extrovertedness". It is also unlikely that any of these explanations are either purely biological or purely environmental. Most likely, they are a mix of the two.
It might be useful to pick this book up and skim some chapters, but it does not seem like a book I would want to buy.
Yes, I know my original example was sloppy. I'm not the one that modded it up to Score: 5... although it is nice to have the Karma; that just goes to show how slashdot often works. The sloppy, short-attention-span argument tends to fair better vs. the well-reasoned one. Unless you use bold text and
bullets.
But I suppose that shouldn't be too surprising. It merely means the arguments that are easier to read stand a better chance of getting modded up. In other words, it pays to be that which I am often not, i.e.
concise.
The original poster was asking about how can the Universe have a container and all that. A better answer would have been: we can never really know what's beyond the Universe or if anything is. The answer to such a question is, quite literally, beyond the scope of this Universe. It's rather like "beyond the scope of this book" but more irevocable.
I'm not quite so willing, as you are, to simply say, "you cannot contain an infinite amount of space in something" because I don't know enough physics. Oh sure I've had algrebra-based physics in high school and college, and I readily agree you can't have infinte apples in your house. (unless your house is really a TARDIS.) The thing is, outer space is so darn weird. And, as I already stated, I don't believe we humans understand the concept of infinity as well as we think we do. I also don't think we understand the Universe as well as we think we do. How else can we explain the way that quantum physics seems to make no sense and yet it keeps getting confirmed over and over again?
This is not to say that we shouldn't try to understand the Universe of course. This is also not intended to be an endorsement of pseudo-science or other random bunk like Eternal Life Rings. All I'm saying is that, despite our best efforts to understand the Universe, we're all still hairless apes at heart. (Yes, I know we evolved from a common primate ancestor, not apes per sey.)
Besides, it's not that likely that this author is right is it? You, he, and I will all be long dead before we find out if he was right anyway so... it's not like he'll be spoiling the ending for you or something.
How can you ever really be sure of cosmological answers without the ability to test and observe in a laboratory? It's not possible to recreate the Universe in a test tube to study it in detail, so it seems that your science will be forever held back by being stranded to a small blue and green ball called Earth.
Do black holes really exist? Do singularities really exist? If not, what is there instead?
If you're not sure of the answers to these questions, how can you be so sure about how the Universe will end. Personally, I think I'll just take a "wait and see" approach to the End of the Universe question.:-)
Brace yourself. Infinity within a container coming right up... drum roll please...
(0,1)
ta da! In case you can't read the notation, that's all the real numbers between 0 and 1 but excluding 0 and 1 themselves. There are infinitely many of them, but they are bounded by 0 and 1 (a container). Also note: although 0 and 1 were used in the definition of this interval, they are not actually a part of it.
Perhaps the real problem is that infinity is a hard concept. I don't think we humans can ever truly understand it. But we can still throw it around in math and physics problems and come up with interesting results.
Fortunately most of Usenet is such a cespool that really they can only make it better. And after cornering the market on email worms, imagine the benefits they can bring to NNTP!
Mr. Taco, you do seem rather naive. There is nothing so bad that Microsoft cannot make it worse. What's worse than a Usenet cesspool? A really cool Usenet that is proprietary. So you can only get into it if you subscribe to it and have to pay a monthly fee.
It'd be cool to see some patches come from Redmond, but that's probably wishful thinking.
Yes. Yes that really is just wishful thinking. That's not the way Microsoft does business. Instead, they'll:
research the Linux apps thoroughy,
determine if the Linux apps really are better in any obvious ways (read: the marketing dept. can't pull the wool over potential customers' eyes with fake numbers in these areas)
Now, with this info, they'll make their code just barely good enough to show that it's better than the equilvelent Linux version.
They can do it. They'll look at Linux source and modify it if necessary. And, if they do that, no they won't give it back to the community and yes they will get away with a GPL violation.
If you think Microsoft isn't willing to do this sort of thing, you're living in a dream world with "lots of fru-fru, happy bunnies."
DISCLAIMER: I AM WEARING ASBESTOS THOUGH I DO NOT HOLD A MATCH: This post is not intended as troll or a flame. It is not a statement of fact. It is, of course, only my (strongly worded) opinion.
Yes it would, but I was dumb--I bought the card without checking to see if it would work with Linux because many network cards do have Linux drivers.
Many other people got these particular stupid cards because, for a while, they were being promised that they would be supported *Real Soon Now*.
Of course the cards, once purchased, could be returned--but many Linux users naturally have that sort of "never say die!" attitude that you really need when you want to play around with your system in an in-depth way.
Re:Before all the flamers get in.
on
Qt On DirectFB
·
· Score: 1
Useful tidbit about TV on the Internet: If you have broadband, you can get news broadcasts and some small quantities of prepackaged programs from http://news.bbc.co.uk using RealPlayer.
Now getting RealPlayer to work well on a Unix-like system... that's another matter. I have an older version that mostly works, but I haven't had much luck with the newer RealOne (stupid name) player.
But you *are* required to agree to something to use GPL software--you're required to *agree* not to hold the software maker(s)' liable if the program fails to function as advertised. ("not even the implied warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose.")
In fact, even if the program were a Trojan horse type of deal, you'd probably have no legal recourse.
Hey, yeah, that's a good point. I wonder if the cat already has legal representation or not... (rubs hands eagerly) *I* shall represent the cat and take 80% of the cat's winnings (er... legal settlement) from the court case.:-)
Slashdot Mirror
I feel your sig blurs the distinction between mean and median.
Yeah, don't forget the tin foil hat to keep out the Martian mindcontrol rays. :-P Hey, I'm not tryin' to flame here, this is just "constructive critisicm".
Seriously though, maybe you should just be sure to look both ways before crossing the street. I bet lots of people each year get killed by buses, run-away cars, etc. And then there's cancer and West Nile virus.
Note that those two deseases shouldn't be allowed to show up in the same sentence but many wouldn't notice the incongruity. That's the point I'm obliquely making:
There are many, many, many bad things happening to lots of people all over the world all the time. In the grand scheme of things, ID theft is only one of a seemingly infinite array of things that could happen to you that would suck. It's certainly a Good Thing(tm) to be (Warning: G.W.B.-style rhetoric follows) vigilant against the threat of identity theft. Just be sure that the amount of resources you commit to that is proportional to the actual threat posed to you personally by ID theft.
Okay, so MS currently has nearly $50 billion.
50,000,000,000 / 521,000,000 ~= 95.969289
So... if this happened to MS like maybe 50 or 60 more times, they'd be hurting. yeah.
whimper/sigh.
(Warning: the following post is very glib (but not really funny). It doesn't take itself too seriously so you shouldn't either.)
Proprietary software sucks. Don't take my word for it. Just read the article.
I mean, after all--if the proprietary software is already buggy, if the companies charge for the tech support as well, then what is the company really providing for the user? Clever marketing? Ease of aquisition of software (can be downloaded or purchased from a store)? Easy installation?
Okay, that's it guys. If the proprietary software really does suck that much, then all the Open Source community needs to do is (somehow) run a huge marketing campain and make the auto-installers work better. The tech support might suck, and the software might be full of bugs, but that's not any different from commercial software. (at least according to that one, rather short, CNN article) The only remaining barriers are lack of knowelge from the general public and difficulties with installation.
Technically, yes that's a problem. But the story was just bemoaning the death of the games and the preservation of history. Although it is *technically* illegal to have all these roms without the license to them or without posessing the roms, it does, for all *practical* purposes eliminate the problem the story submitter was going on about.
I apologize for being redundant, but I feel it's important enough that it's justified.
As at least one other person mentioned, your stats are kinda skewed because some old games lend themselves to multiplayer more than others. I doubt there'll be a long line to play Zoo Keeper on the 'net anytime soon...even though it does allow two people to take turns playing.
Perhaps if you had a *meta*-server--something that let a group of people cycle through a list of games like Zoo Keeper... or maybe you already have something like that, I don't know.
No. The problem with NES carts had nothing to do with the lock out chip. It didn't have very much to do with dirty contacts on the cart or the NES unit either.
It had an awful *lot* to do with that asinine sideways cartridge insertion. Ever noticed that *no other* console system *ever* required you to slide a cartridge in sideways then push it down? That's where your problems come in.
Simple fix: take apart your Nintendo so you can actually get the cartridge to make good contact.
Note: If you accidently break your Nintendo, electrocute yourself, or burn down the cat, I refuse to take responsibility. Instead, it is you who should feel stupid for actually believing *anything* you read on slashdot. You have been warned. Now go find your screwdriver and have fun with Legend of Zelda.
"oh! the sky is falling! the sky is falling!" blah, blah, blah, blah...
Mame, MAme, MAMe, MAME!
'nuff said
Some of bash's defaults piss me off.
.inputrc. It just grinds on through, usually garbling your key bindings as a result. It's depressing to have to login to another session to run kill to end your previous session because you're unable to type "exit[ENTER]" in that session. .bash_profile from a Cygwin / Windows box.
Examples that spring to mind:
1. By default, bash (or readline) often doesn't know that [Home] means ^a and [End] means ^e. Sometimes it doesn't get [Delete] right either.
2. readline is not tolerant or verbose about problems with
3. While it's true that a Unix text file should have "\n" line endings rather than "\r\n", we do, in fact, live in a world with The Internet and The Microsoft. Both of them use "\r\n" line endings. Some Linux progs silently support reading from "\r\n" files and that's great. bash doesn't though, so on several occasions I've had to deal with weird errors when copying
Yes, I know there's probably a better way out of these problems than simply bitching--but the question was what annoyed me the most, so there you go.
P.S.
In SuSe 7.2, the way to burn CDs involved setting up the CD-R drive as a pseudo-SCSI device using SCSI emulation. Is this ugly hack still necessary? or can Linux now handle IDE CD burners?
I think the categories of "introvert" and "extrovert" are too broad to make many meaningful statements about. Certainly, they seem too broad to make a lot of general statements as to their causes. In other words, there are surely many multiple causes for what can appear as "introvertedness" or "extrovertedness". It is also unlikely that any of these explanations are either purely biological or purely environmental. Most likely, they are a mix of the two.
It might be useful to pick this book up and skim some chapters, but it does not seem like a book I would want to buy.
They keep track of whether or not you solved the problem at Gateway. But then, Gateway's dying aren't they? No good deed goes unpunsished.
I liked it. :-P Anyway, they give you an address to send your complaints to:
robin@roblimo.nospam.com | grep -v "nospam."
Yes, I know my original example was sloppy. I'm not the one that modded it up to Score: 5... although it is nice to have the Karma; that just goes to show how slashdot often works. The sloppy, short-attention-span argument tends to fair better vs. the well-reasoned one. Unless you use bold text and
But I suppose that shouldn't be too surprising. It merely means the arguments that are easier to read stand a better chance of getting modded up. In other words, it pays to be that which I am often not, i.e.
concise.
The original poster was asking about how can the Universe have a container and all that. A better answer would have been: we can never really know what's beyond the Universe or if anything is. The answer to such a question is, quite literally, beyond the scope of this Universe. It's rather like "beyond the scope of this book" but more irevocable.
I'm not quite so willing, as you are, to simply say, "you cannot contain an infinite amount of space in something" because I don't know enough physics. Oh sure I've had algrebra-based physics in high school and college, and I readily agree you can't have infinte apples in your house. (unless your house is really a TARDIS.) The thing is, outer space is so darn weird. And, as I already stated, I don't believe we humans understand the concept of infinity as well as we think we do. I also don't think we understand the Universe as well as we think we do. How else can we explain the way that quantum physics seems to make no sense and yet it keeps getting confirmed over and over again?
This is not to say that we shouldn't try to understand the Universe of course. This is also not intended to be an endorsement of pseudo-science or other random bunk like Eternal Life Rings. All I'm saying is that, despite our best efforts to understand the Universe, we're all still hairless apes at heart. (Yes, I know we evolved from a common primate ancestor, not apes per sey.)
No, because there is no "slashdot collecitve"; there's only a bunch of discordant banshees screaming stridently at each other.
Okay, so maybe this is sort of flame-bait-ie or trollish, but it reads well. I think being a banshee would be fun.
Mystery is fun but answers are nice too.
Besides, it's not that likely that this author is right is it? You, he, and I will all be long dead before we find out if he was right anyway so... it's not like he'll be spoiling the ending for you or something.
How can you ever really be sure of cosmological answers without the ability to test and observe in a laboratory? It's not possible to recreate the Universe in a test tube to study it in detail, so it seems that your science will be forever held back by being stranded to a small blue and green ball called Earth.
:-)
Do black holes really exist? Do singularities really exist? If not, what is there instead?
If you're not sure of the answers to these questions, how can you be so sure about how the Universe will end. Personally, I think I'll just take a "wait and see" approach to the End of the Universe question.
Brace yourself. Infinity within a container coming right up... drum roll please...
(0,1)
ta da! In case you can't read the notation, that's all the real numbers between 0 and 1 but excluding 0 and 1 themselves. There are infinitely many of them, but they are bounded by 0 and 1 (a container). Also note: although 0 and 1 were used in the definition of this interval, they are not actually a part of it.
Perhaps the real problem is that infinity is a hard concept. I don't think we humans can ever truly understand it. But we can still throw it around in math and physics problems and come up with interesting results.
Mr. Taco, you do seem rather naive. There is nothing so bad that Microsoft cannot make it worse. What's worse than a Usenet cesspool? A really cool Usenet that is proprietary. So you can only get into it if you subscribe to it and have to pay a monthly fee.
And the MS juggernaut rolls on...
It'd be cool to see some patches come from Redmond, but that's probably wishful thinking.
Yes. Yes that really is just wishful thinking. That's not the way Microsoft does business. Instead, they'll:
- research the Linux apps thoroughy,
- determine if the Linux apps really are better in any obvious ways (read: the marketing dept. can't pull the wool over potential customers' eyes with fake numbers in these areas)
- Now, with this info, they'll make their code just barely good enough to show that it's better than the equilvelent Linux version.
They can do it. They'll look at Linux source and modify it if necessary. And, if they do that, no they won't give it back to the community and yes they will get away with a GPL violation.If you think Microsoft isn't willing to do this sort of thing, you're living in a dream world with "lots of fru-fru, happy bunnies."
DISCLAIMER: I AM WEARING ASBESTOS THOUGH I DO NOT HOLD A MATCH:
This post is not intended as troll or a flame. It is not a statement of fact. It is, of course, only my (strongly worded) opinion.
Assuming you're a guy, you already have one of those, thanks to Mother Nature. It lets you know exactly when it's time to start groveling for sex.
Yes it would, but I was dumb--I bought the card without checking to see if it would work with Linux because many network cards do have Linux drivers.
Many other people got these particular stupid cards because, for a while, they were being promised that they would be supported *Real Soon Now*.
Of course the cards, once purchased, could be returned--but many Linux users naturally have that sort of "never say die!" attitude that you really need when you want to play around with your system in an in-depth way.
Useful tidbit about TV on the Internet: If you have broadband, you can get news broadcasts and some small quantities of prepackaged programs from http://news.bbc.co.uk using RealPlayer.
Now getting RealPlayer to work well on a Unix-like system... that's another matter. I have an older version that mostly works, but I haven't had much luck with the newer RealOne (stupid name) player.
That was how I watched most of the Iraq war.
But you *are* required to agree to something to use GPL software--you're required to *agree* not to hold the software maker(s)' liable if the program fails to function as advertised. ("not even the implied warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose.")
In fact, even if the program were a Trojan horse type of deal, you'd probably have no legal recourse.
Hey, yeah, that's a good point. I wonder if the cat already has legal representation or not... (rubs hands eagerly) *I* shall represent the cat and take 80% of the cat's winnings (er... legal settlement) from the court case. :-)
You did waste some of your life--you posted on Slashdot! :-P
... oh no! I posted too! AAaaaaggghhh!