New option for robots.txt (Score:3, Interesting)
Please put this new undocumented tag on your robots.txt file: "hackthis=false" "xss=false" "scriptkiddies=log,drop" And all your problems will be solved.
The property status of the moon is determined by whomever puts military bases in place first.
It's not a new phenomenon--at the start of the last century, the border between the United States and Canada was very vaguely defined in the area of the valuable seaports in Southeast Alaska and British Columbia. How was the situation resolved? The United States Army built Fort William H. Seward in the disputed territory and trained its guns on the narrow waterways. Now, 105 years later, the US controls all the port cities in Southeast Alaska and the Canadian border is 40 miles away from the ocean most of the way down.
See? No politics required. It's called "staking a claim".
In my experience the IT worker -> xNxP hypothesis is dead on, but it's important to note that personality, especially at the Meyers-Briggs level, is exceptionally susceptible to environmental influence at an early age. So the fact you mention that 25% of males are xNxP while only 5% of females are (which I can believe) doesn't necessarily suggest that more men than women are *inherently* qualified to be happy in an IT career. It's more likely that our society actually tends to push girls away from xNxP tendencies at a very early age, which means that geek pwnage tends to be less satisfying to girls once they reach adulthood.
You know, I get kind of bothered by the ub3rcynicism about corporations sometimes. It's not that corporations can't get away with exploitation--they do. It's not that there aren't people who put their personal wealth above all other concerns--there are.
But when we rant about how corporations are fundamentally evil and never going to change, all we're doing is accepting it. Corporations aren't bloated, undead beast-things that exist off of the souls of the living (well, except EA). They're organizations of people, and the ideals a corporation's leadership pushes are the ideals that corporation follows. We shouldn't be pushing selfless, dedicated people away from corporations and into the Peace Corps or god knows what else--we should be encouraging them to enter the corporate world and make changes. If you say that business is a career choice only for the selfish, manipulative and cruel, all you're doing is criticizing, demeaning and discouraging the people that do business who aren't any of those things.
Maybe I'm too idealistic, but I see a fundamentally healthy business as one that's profitable because it treats its customers well and fulfills a need customers have better than it had been fulfilled before. I see a corporation existing in any other state as unhealthy. And fine, a lot of corporate America is unhealthy. I'm not arguing that. But when did we start accepting that as a given?
But one is generally accepted and welcomed in pursuing their passion while the other is shunned and joked and beat-up by the other.
It's because they're beat up by the athletes. If science nerds could routinely beat up basketball fans in middle school, we'd have a much different social heirarchy.
I know exactly what you mean--a year or so ago I had a fraudulent charge appear on my Citizens Bank debit account. I generally am not particularily paranoid about charges on my account (I've embarrassed myself before by freaking out about charges I've actually made listed under a parent company's name on my statement) but when I couldn't rememember ever buying anything from TimeLife I sent an email to Citizens asking for additional information. I didn't even outright say I thought it was fraudulent--but Citizens immediately gave me a temporary credit for the whole amount and told me they'd look into it. Two weeks later they said that I should consider the credit permanent and that the parties responsible for the charge had been taken care of. See, banks? Was that so hard?
I don't want a game to let me win any more than I want it to cheat. Adjustable AI takes all of the meaning out of structured difficulty levels. I don't want an AI to take pity on me and make me think I'm better than I am--if I should lose, I should lose. The example that comes to mind is Warcraft II: Beyond the Dark Portal--the AI was intensely difficult, but if you destroyed your own towers at the beginning of many levels the AI would think you were weak and take a fall. Some levels were pitifully easy if you sacked parts of your own base early on.
Now what would be useful is what another poster mentioned--if the AI would kick my ass anyway, but then figure out what I did wrong and give me a tip or two (build more troops earlier, you teched too fast; work on keyboard shortcuts, your actions-per-second rate is too slow).
I hate to get too far off topic, but the parent is right about one thing. Sierra Utilities is by far worse than anything Steam is now. I still have bits of Sierra Utilities buried in my machine. It's like some tragic abandoned futuristic robot soldier long after the apocalypse--I just want to tell it, "Go to sleep, Sierra Utilies--Sierra is dead. Sierra is dead." Seriously, companies don't live forever. When Valve dies, all we have is our little abandoned Steam clients, playing "Cannot connect to server" deathmatch.
I still remember the cooperative multiplayer, crawling through that damned ship while on a phone line with a friend of mine. That was hands down the best cooperative-horror game experience I've ever had.
Both players could specialize--I hacked, he fought--and the entire experience was so *immersive*. We still talk about one moment when, hacking a crate, he had the bright idea to come up behind me, groan "I'm... sorry...." into the mic, and club me from behind. I knocked half the stuff off my desk trying to turn around so quickly.
Screw Doom 3. I miss System Shock 2.
Personally, I think that's just defensive legislating and a good job of it at that. The government clearly has jurisdiction over its own machines and machines used for commerce, but most spyware can't tell the difference. As long as a program is capable of infringing on government machines, it's vulnerable to litigation.
Maybe there would be some way to purchase two of these devices, synchronize them somehow, and then you'd have some kind of cool two-handed key-operated input device for computers. We'd need some kind of drivers for it though.
Slashdot Mirror
New option for robots.txt (Score:3, Interesting)
Please put this new undocumented tag on your robots.txt file: "hackthis=false" "xss=false" "scriptkiddies=log,drop" And all your problems will be solved.
Note to mods: *slap*
The property status of the moon is determined by whomever puts military bases in place first.
It's not a new phenomenon--at the start of the last century, the border between the United States and Canada was very vaguely defined in the area of the valuable seaports in Southeast Alaska and British Columbia. How was the situation resolved? The United States Army built Fort William H. Seward in the disputed territory and trained its guns on the narrow waterways. Now, 105 years later, the US controls all the port cities in Southeast Alaska and the Canadian border is 40 miles away from the ocean most of the way down.
See? No politics required. It's called "staking a claim".
The similarities between Kafka and modern US politics are disturbing. I recall very clearly what Kafka's society became.
In my experience the IT worker -> xNxP hypothesis is dead on, but it's important to note that personality, especially at the Meyers-Briggs level, is exceptionally susceptible to environmental influence at an early age. So the fact you mention that 25% of males are xNxP while only 5% of females are (which I can believe) doesn't necessarily suggest that more men than women are *inherently* qualified to be happy in an IT career. It's more likely that our society actually tends to push girls away from xNxP tendencies at a very early age, which means that geek pwnage tends to be less satisfying to girls once they reach adulthood.
You know, I get kind of bothered by the ub3rcynicism about corporations sometimes. It's not that corporations can't get away with exploitation--they do. It's not that there aren't people who put their personal wealth above all other concerns--there are.
But when we rant about how corporations are fundamentally evil and never going to change, all we're doing is accepting it. Corporations aren't bloated, undead beast-things that exist off of the souls of the living (well, except EA). They're organizations of people, and the ideals a corporation's leadership pushes are the ideals that corporation follows. We shouldn't be pushing selfless, dedicated people away from corporations and into the Peace Corps or god knows what else--we should be encouraging them to enter the corporate world and make changes. If you say that business is a career choice only for the selfish, manipulative and cruel, all you're doing is criticizing, demeaning and discouraging the people that do business who aren't any of those things.
Maybe I'm too idealistic, but I see a fundamentally healthy business as one that's profitable because it treats its customers well and fulfills a need customers have better than it had been fulfilled before. I see a corporation existing in any other state as unhealthy. And fine, a lot of corporate America is unhealthy. I'm not arguing that. But when did we start accepting that as a given?
Here that the risk of a crushing domination of America in the definition of the idea continues that the next generations will be made world!
Yeah, it's called "proprioception". Learn. Grow.
GByte? I was a little worried when it seemed that GBrowser was hoax, but it's all better now! GoogleOS is awesome!
Microsoft v. - to acquire with monopolistic intent SYNONYM: assimilate
I think you misspelled "Computer Associates".
But one is generally accepted and welcomed in pursuing their passion while the other is shunned and joked and beat-up by the other.
It's because they're beat up by the athletes. If science nerds could routinely beat up basketball fans in middle school, we'd have a much different social heirarchy.
I know exactly what you mean--a year or so ago I had a fraudulent charge appear on my Citizens Bank debit account. I generally am not particularily paranoid about charges on my account (I've embarrassed myself before by freaking out about charges I've actually made listed under a parent company's name on my statement) but when I couldn't rememember ever buying anything from TimeLife I sent an email to Citizens asking for additional information. I didn't even outright say I thought it was fraudulent--but Citizens immediately gave me a temporary credit for the whole amount and told me they'd look into it. Two weeks later they said that I should consider the credit permanent and that the parties responsible for the charge had been taken care of. See, banks? Was that so hard?
I don't want a game to let me win any more than I want it to cheat. Adjustable AI takes all of the meaning out of structured difficulty levels. I don't want an AI to take pity on me and make me think I'm better than I am--if I should lose, I should lose. The example that comes to mind is Warcraft II: Beyond the Dark Portal--the AI was intensely difficult, but if you destroyed your own towers at the beginning of many levels the AI would think you were weak and take a fall. Some levels were pitifully easy if you sacked parts of your own base early on.
Now what would be useful is what another poster mentioned--if the AI would kick my ass anyway, but then figure out what I did wrong and give me a tip or two (build more troops earlier, you teched too fast; work on keyboard shortcuts, your actions-per-second rate is too slow).
What's funny is that even before I reached the punchline of parent all I was thinking was "mmm... gin"
Wouldn't this just assign *every* vote to "Bush-Cheney"? $record_vote_function() { ...
$i = rand(1,0, 0.000001);
if($i=1 && $vote="Kerry-Edwards") {
$vote="Bush-Cheney";
} ...
}
I hate to get too far off topic, but the parent is right about one thing. Sierra Utilities is by far worse than anything Steam is now. I still have bits of Sierra Utilities buried in my machine. It's like some tragic abandoned futuristic robot soldier long after the apocalypse--I just want to tell it, "Go to sleep, Sierra Utilies--Sierra is dead. Sierra is dead." Seriously, companies don't live forever. When Valve dies, all we have is our little abandoned Steam clients, playing "Cannot connect to server" deathmatch.
I still remember the cooperative multiplayer, crawling through that damned ship while on a phone line with a friend of mine. That was hands down the best cooperative-horror game experience I've ever had. Both players could specialize--I hacked, he fought--and the entire experience was so *immersive*. We still talk about one moment when, hacking a crate, he had the bright idea to come up behind me, groan "I'm... sorry...." into the mic, and club me from behind. I knocked half the stuff off my desk trying to turn around so quickly. Screw Doom 3. I miss System Shock 2.
Personally, I think that's just defensive legislating and a good job of it at that. The government clearly has jurisdiction over its own machines and machines used for commerce, but most spyware can't tell the difference. As long as a program is capable of infringing on government machines, it's vulnerable to litigation.
Maybe there would be some way to purchase two of these devices, synchronize them somehow, and then you'd have some kind of cool two-handed key-operated input device for computers. We'd need some kind of drivers for it though.
Yeah, haven't you heard? "Bich" is latin for "generosity".