Allowing countries to purchase pollution credits to offset greenhouse emissions is nothing more than a scam to redistribute wealth to the poorer countries.
What a terrible scam. I can't think of anything worse than redistributing wealth to poor countries and maybe reducing global poverty. Those damn poor people always want our stuff. So selfish.
It has been discovered that Paper(tm), a voting system planned to be widely deployed in the coming elections, suffers from numerous vulnerabilities.
A security assessment taskforce has found that the system, in which a stylus is used to infuse chemical dyes onto a thin cellulose-based wafer, is vulnerable to a Denial Of Service attack in which the wafer is exposed to heat until fully oxidised. This renders the results unreadable. Furthermore, the wafers are unencrypted, which makes them vulnerable to replay and other man-in-the-middle attacks. Another attack involves exposing the wafers to lateral force until they are compressed, rendering them easier to dispose. This is known as the 'scrunch-it-and-trash-it' attack, which was made famous in the underground hacker classic Election, starring Matthew Broderick and Reese Witherspoon.
Members of the security community are said to be flabbergasted at the general level of public apathy towards these vulnerabilities, which the taskforce has given its highest threat rating.
Seriously, it seems to me that Windows is less and less about operating systems. WinFS was the major new OS feature, and it's been shelved. Looks like we're waiting all these years for adequate security, a new window manager and a bunch of wizards. That's right, and a new command shell. Forgive for not getting too excited.
But will they make it to market before memory cards [slashdot.org] large enough and cheap enough to feasibly replace hard drives altogether do?
Why the assumption that we have one or the other? The history of computing is one of a lengthening memory pyramid. It used to be just RAM and nonvolatile storage. Now we have three levels of cache on top of that. Now (excepting certain bits of bloatware *cough cough*) operating systems are not growing in size at the same rate as storage technology. I still have trouble filling more than a gigabyte or two on a basic Linux install. Why not have a situation where OS and core applications are stored on solid-state memory chips (say 10 G), while all the media that people are so fond of can end up on your mega hard-drive? That way you get the benefit of both: snappy load times for executable code, and near-unlimited, low-cost storage for all your media.
However, the technology required changes to the way those operating systems run that HP couldn't duplicate on Windows systems, because "we don't own Windows"
Surely this could have been anticipated at the beginning of the project?
The fact is (and this is the only MS product I can say this about) that Word is the best product in its class. All the alternatives blow to a greater or lesser extent.
Although I use LaTeX for the creation of serious documents, and I hate Word in principle, I still find myself firing it up whenever I have to create a document with some low-level formatting. It's simply the easiest and best choice. Surely that's the mark of a useful product -- when you hate it, and yet you still use it.
What I seriously object too, however, are those evil.doc files. While I generally use AntiWord to view Word attachments, and it does a very good job, it is only a matter of time before the format is changed again. It is just criminal that the de facto standard for document propagation is proprietary and closed. I recently got into a fight with a non-techy friend about this. She just couldn't understand why I got all worked up about it.
Wardriving doesn't have to involve entering the networks. You might just be walking down the street trying doorknobs, and counting how many are not locked.
I suspect this sort of activity is also of dubious legality. I know I sure wouldn't be impressed if someone I didn't know walked up to my door and tried to open it. If confronted, "oh, I was just counting how many doors were unlocked".
I'm sure some people wardrive as some sort of weird hobby, like trainspotting, but there is no doubt that many people wardrive in the pursuit of less savoury fulfilment.
I like the idea of everyone sharing their internet connection with everyone else, and I am sure there are directories of people who are willing to do so, but driving around trying to find open access points seems a bit like sticking a tap into peoples' phone lines.
BTW, I'm not flamebaiting, just seriously trying to get an understanding of this phenomenon.
Sure, people who leave their wireless networks insecure are stupid, or naive. Same as people who leave their front doors unlocked.
But just because someone is dumb enough not to lock their front door doesn't mean you have the right to walk in there and take what you want. So can somebody please explain to me how wardriving is any different to cruising around the 'hood looking for unlocked front doors and then walking in to take what you want? Seems pretty criminal to me...
For those who want to participate in the "utopian ideal" of free access for all, maybe there is some way of indicating that you are willing to share your connectivity. You know, like "front door is open, please come in and take some cookies". The assumption should be that you are not welcome on someone's network unless it is indicated otherwise.
Errr, it's easy to be utterly original when you can write a complete game in three days.
That was exactly my point. Games these days are all about big budgets and production values. Originality doesn't get that much of a look-in. It is easier to be original when you can write a complete game in three days... that's why so many of those games were so good.
And there is no way I'm switching to MM3... I played that back when it came out. Ugly as crap and incredibly awkward camera angles. And no toilet racing, as you rightly point out. Give me MM2 any day. I'll try Puzzle Fighter, but I can't see it beating the head-to-head chain reaction mode on Frozen-Bubble. So vicious...
Look how much the number and quality has shrunk in the gaming market since then...
Well actually, the quality at least probably has shrunk since those days. I really do think it's more than just nostalgia that makes so many people prefer old games to the lastest cookie-cutter FPS/RTS/racing sim. I know this is going to make me sound old, but so many of those old games had an element of utter originality that is totally absent from the current crop of games.
It's not piracy-induced poverty that has stifled originality of games, however; rather the opposite. As the maket has grown and game studio budgets have grown commensurately, the opportunity to take risks has been shrinking. Studios simply can't afford to release a total flop anymore. Thus, gaming has followed the track of Hollywood. Sequels sequels sequels.
A lot of the problem is also brought on by consumer expectations and the distribution format. People pay a lot of money for games, and thus they want 20-50 hours of non-repetitive gameplay and the latest super-whizz-bang graphics or they complain. How can you fit a game like Tetris into a market like that? Better just make it another FPS...
People can struggle with the copy-protection on their copy of Doom 14... or they can play Frozen-Bubble and Micro Machines 2 (my current favourites). Gaming companies better face up to the stiff competition they face from their own past and start treating consumers with some respect.
We have to recognise that any interaction we have with the environment is going to have some impact on it. This impact will by definition be negative if we characterise any change to the existing equilibrium as being negative. The smart thing to do is to spread the impact by interacting in lots of different ways on a lower level, rather than abusing a single resource, as we currently do with fossil fuels.
I applaud what they are doing in Canada. The more alternative energy sources we use, the better.
Maybe I'm missing something, but won't extracting the coldest water and leaving the warmer water increase the average temperature of the lake? This would be true even if the warmed water is then not returned to the lake.
A recent thought of the moment entry [suso.org] that is related to this.
The ideas in that thought of the moment are entirely unoriginal; they are simply a rehash of the basic tenets of communism.
While I am too young to view communism with the sort of venom incited by Western Cold War propaganda, I can see why it was doomed to failure. Basically, communism asks us to subvert human nature on a grand scale. Don't be greedy. Don't be selfish. Hey, evolution invested billions of years making us greedy and selfish!
The real weakness of communism is that is requires a powerful ruling class to ensure that everybody else does what they're meant to do. Of course, this class becomes highly corrupted and we end up with an ugly totalitarian regime. History will back me up on this one.
Dammit, I used to be borderline communist once, but the more I thought about it, the more obvious the fatal and irrepairable deficiencies of the system.
As Churchill is widely rumored to have said, though allegedly falsely:
"If you're not a liberal when you're 25, you have no heart. If you're not a conservative by the time you're 35, you have no brain"
Convergence is hardly a new phenomenon, and is always a compromise. My stupid toaster oven makes bad toast and can't bake.
What tends to happen is that enthusiasts refuse to compromise and stick to specialised units, while the average consumer -- for whom 'good enough' is good enough -- chooses the ease and value of a convergence device. Convergence devices will never clobber specialised items, but it will drive them into a niche.
This is exactly what has happened in the audio market, where enthusiasts can blow tens of thousands of dollars on arcane component audio devices, while the mass market is dominated by el cheapo Sharp and Panasonic integrated units.
If you don't like the scrambled eggs your console makes -- or the games you can play on it -- you can still get separate units. But be prepared to pay.
Slashdot Mirror
Steve Jobs, the Prince Charles of the tabloid computer industry
Steve Jobs is marrying Camilla Parker-Bowls???
"Oi Vey" is Jewish punk rock.
Oi vey is not Jewish punk rock. This, however, is Jewish punk rock.
I know for a fact. It will be announced in two months and four days.
Remember the implausible Google rumour that was revealed April 1 last year?
Pro: My friends think I'm really cool.
Con: I don't know what time it is.
At the risk of comparing Linus to Jesus... There's a lot to be said about how little the followers actually attempt to emulate that which they follow.
He's not the Messiah... he's a very naughty boy!
What a terrible scam. I can't think of anything worse than redistributing wealth to poor countries and maybe reducing global poverty. Those damn poor people always want our stuff. So selfish.
They had better not bury it...
All those memory leaks could contaminate the groundwater.
It has been discovered that Paper(tm), a voting system planned to be widely deployed in the coming elections, suffers from numerous vulnerabilities.
A security assessment taskforce has found that the system, in which a stylus is used to infuse chemical dyes onto a thin cellulose-based wafer, is vulnerable to a Denial Of Service attack in which the wafer is exposed to heat until fully oxidised. This renders the results unreadable. Furthermore, the wafers are unencrypted, which makes them vulnerable to replay and other man-in-the-middle attacks. Another attack involves exposing the wafers to lateral force until they are compressed, rendering them easier to dispose. This is known as the 'scrunch-it-and-trash-it' attack, which was made famous in the underground hacker classic Election, starring Matthew Broderick and Reese Witherspoon.
Members of the security community are said to be flabbergasted at the general level of public apathy towards these vulnerabilities, which the taskforce has given its highest threat rating.
If they didn't release a product until 2008, the market (mostly linux) would have time to catch-up.
Catch up? Because Linux doesn't have any command shells...
Seriously, it seems to me that Windows is less and less about operating systems. WinFS was the major new OS feature, and it's been shelved. Looks like we're waiting all these years for adequate security, a new window manager and a bunch of wizards. That's right, and a new command shell. Forgive for not getting too excited.
But will they make it to market before memory cards [slashdot.org] large enough and cheap enough to feasibly replace hard drives altogether do?
Why the assumption that we have one or the other? The history of computing is one of a lengthening memory pyramid. It used to be just RAM and nonvolatile storage. Now we have three levels of cache on top of that. Now (excepting certain bits of bloatware *cough cough*) operating systems are not growing in size at the same rate as storage technology. I still have trouble filling more than a gigabyte or two on a basic Linux install. Why not have a situation where OS and core applications are stored on solid-state memory chips (say 10 G), while all the media that people are so fond of can end up on your mega hard-drive? That way you get the benefit of both: snappy load times for executable code, and near-unlimited, low-cost storage for all your media.
Let's not stop until women actually scream when they run away from us!
Dude, we're posting on Slashdot. Surely that's enough to make the women run away from us anyway...
Surely this could have been anticipated at the beginning of the project?
The fact is (and this is the only MS product I can say this about) that Word is the best product in its class. All the alternatives blow to a greater or lesser extent.
Although I use LaTeX for the creation of serious documents, and I hate Word in principle, I still find myself firing it up whenever I have to create a document with some low-level formatting. It's simply the easiest and best choice. Surely that's the mark of a useful product -- when you hate it, and yet you still use it.
What I seriously object too, however, are those evil .doc files. While I generally use AntiWord to view Word attachments, and it does a very good job, it is only a matter of time before the format is changed again. It is just criminal that the de facto standard for document propagation is proprietary and closed. I recently got into a fight with a non-techy friend about this. She just couldn't understand why I got all worked up about it.
Wardriving doesn't have to involve entering the networks. You might just be walking down the street trying doorknobs, and counting how many are not locked.
I suspect this sort of activity is also of dubious legality. I know I sure wouldn't be impressed if someone I didn't know walked up to my door and tried to open it. If confronted, "oh, I was just counting how many doors were unlocked".
I'm sure some people wardrive as some sort of weird hobby, like trainspotting, but there is no doubt that many people wardrive in the pursuit of less savoury fulfilment.
I like the idea of everyone sharing their internet connection with everyone else, and I am sure there are directories of people who are willing to do so, but driving around trying to find open access points seems a bit like sticking a tap into peoples' phone lines.
BTW, I'm not flamebaiting, just seriously trying to get an understanding of this phenomenon.
Sure, people who leave their wireless networks insecure are stupid, or naive. Same as people who leave their front doors unlocked.
But just because someone is dumb enough not to lock their front door doesn't mean you have the right to walk in there and take what you want. So can somebody please explain to me how wardriving is any different to cruising around the 'hood looking for unlocked front doors and then walking in to take what you want? Seems pretty criminal to me...
For those who want to participate in the "utopian ideal" of free access for all, maybe there is some way of indicating that you are willing to share your connectivity. You know, like "front door is open, please come in and take some cookies". The assumption should be that you are not welcome on someone's network unless it is indicated otherwise.
Errr, it's easy to be utterly original when you can write a complete game in three days.
That was exactly my point. Games these days are all about big budgets and production values. Originality doesn't get that much of a look-in. It is easier to be original when you can write a complete game in three days... that's why so many of those games were so good.
And there is no way I'm switching to MM3... I played that back when it came out. Ugly as crap and incredibly awkward camera angles. And no toilet racing, as you rightly point out. Give me MM2 any day. I'll try Puzzle Fighter, but I can't see it beating the head-to-head chain reaction mode on Frozen-Bubble. So vicious...
Look how much the number and quality has shrunk in the gaming market since then...
Well actually, the quality at least probably has shrunk since those days. I really do think it's more than just nostalgia that makes so many people prefer old games to the lastest cookie-cutter FPS/RTS/racing sim. I know this is going to make me sound old, but so many of those old games had an element of utter originality that is totally absent from the current crop of games.
It's not piracy-induced poverty that has stifled originality of games, however; rather the opposite. As the maket has grown and game studio budgets have grown commensurately, the opportunity to take risks has been shrinking. Studios simply can't afford to release a total flop anymore. Thus, gaming has followed the track of Hollywood. Sequels sequels sequels.
A lot of the problem is also brought on by consumer expectations and the distribution format. People pay a lot of money for games, and thus they want 20-50 hours of non-repetitive gameplay and the latest super-whizz-bang graphics or they complain. How can you fit a game like Tetris into a market like that? Better just make it another FPS...
People can struggle with the copy-protection on their copy of Doom 14... or they can play Frozen-Bubble and Micro Machines 2 (my current favourites). Gaming companies better face up to the stiff competition they face from their own past and start treating consumers with some respect.
Surely we can blame this on the Republicans somehow... suggestions?
We have to recognise that any interaction we have with the environment is going to have some impact on it. This impact will by definition be negative if we characterise any change to the existing equilibrium as being negative. The smart thing to do is to spread the impact by interacting in lots of different ways on a lower level, rather than abusing a single resource, as we currently do with fossil fuels.
I applaud what they are doing in Canada. The more alternative energy sources we use, the better.
Maybe I'm missing something, but won't extracting the coldest water and leaving the warmer water increase the average temperature of the lake? This would be true even if the warmed water is then not returned to the lake.
The ideas in that thought of the moment are entirely unoriginal; they are simply a rehash of the basic tenets of communism.
While I am too young to view communism with the sort of venom incited by Western Cold War propaganda, I can see why it was doomed to failure. Basically, communism asks us to subvert human nature on a grand scale. Don't be greedy. Don't be selfish. Hey, evolution invested billions of years making us greedy and selfish!
The real weakness of communism is that is requires a powerful ruling class to ensure that everybody else does what they're meant to do. Of course, this class becomes highly corrupted and we end up with an ugly totalitarian regime. History will back me up on this one.
Dammit, I used to be borderline communist once, but the more I thought about it, the more obvious the fatal and irrepairable deficiencies of the system.
As Churchill is widely rumored to have said, though allegedly falsely:"If you're not a liberal when you're 25, you have no heart. If you're not a conservative by the time you're 35, you have no brain"
OMG! Somebody just trojaned my carefully selected meaningless binary string in just 80,000 CPU hours! Excuse me while I go drown myself.
What tends to happen is that enthusiasts refuse to compromise and stick to specialised units, while the average consumer -- for whom 'good enough' is good enough -- chooses the ease and value of a convergence device. Convergence devices will never clobber specialised items, but it will drive them into a niche.
This is exactly what has happened in the audio market, where enthusiasts can blow tens of thousands of dollars on arcane component audio devices, while the mass market is dominated by el cheapo Sharp and Panasonic integrated units.
If you don't like the scrambled eggs your console makes -- or the games you can play on it -- you can still get separate units. But be prepared to pay.
Get that content out of my Ad Browser!