"The "unwritten rules," in this area, preclude anyone BUT the big boys from playing."
They're not unwritten rules, the CPD have publically stated that they wish to preclude anyone but the big boys from playing.
I find it rather odd that they claim so many times on that page to be "non-partisan", even as they select rules such as to exclude parties they dislike.
"I suggest you go to countries that really don't have democracy before you start complaining about the US. You know, the ones where the "president" wins 99.9% of the vote or is elected "president for life"."
Or the one where two halves of an identical party win 99.9% of the vote, and have been elected every 4 years for the duration of your life?
"Well, He is a candidate. Don't you think he should be in the debates?
Sure, if he can demonstrate beforehand that he and his platform will sway a significant number of voters to at least make him a viable candidate (like Ross Perot did)."
Those are rules that you just made up, on whether you should be eligable to use university property and government money? You realise that those rules you propose are incompatible with the law (specifically, it represents an illegal partisan contribution to some parties, to the detriment of others)
Who would you nominate to decide whether someone should be allowed to campaign for president? Presumably you trust ballots.org to make that decision, as they currently are doing.
"* The candidate must be at least 35 years old. * The candidate must be a natural-born U.S. citizen. * The candidate must have resided in the U.S. for at least 14 years at the time of the election."
"Even the name is an insult because only a total moron would buy one when you can get a kick ass used car with lots of features for less than half of the price."
And spend the rest of that money fixing the things that fall off your bargain used-car, bringing the total up to about the same.
Plus, the smart car doesn't devalue. Look at the second-hand ones. You can sell it for exactly the same price you bought it for, how's that for free car-hire?
Don't forget the ever-useful "estate car" -- drives like a car, brakes capable of stopping you before an accident (like a car or van but not a SUV), but you can fold the back seats down and it essentially becomes a van. Extremely useful for anyone with students in the family (taking furniture and computers and ridiculous amounts of junk to and from campus 3 times per year)
"And also it doesn't have cupholders for giant Slurpees"
Granted, but you can park it in spaces normally available only to motorbikes, and pop into a cafe to sit down with your coffee, while the people with bigger cars continue to drive around looking for somewhere to park. (Remember it's a city car)
"Microsoft killed Netscape, and AOL gobbled it up. And out of which, Mozilla was born."
And so at last the beast fell and the unbelievers rejoiced. But all was not lost, for from the ash rose a great bird. The bird gazed down upon the unbelievers and cast fire and thunder upon them. For the beast had been reborn with its strength renewed, and the followers of Mammon cowered in horror.
"Huh? Advertising a program that is supposed to protect/remove spyware but acts as spyware or a trojan does not at all compare to being pulled over by a cop."
It's hopeless. They'll always moderate-up daft analogies. It's part of the culture.
"I just looked at the page source code... they actually did something very similar to this. They create a table cell, set the background image to the book page (it's fed out of their search engine as opposed to being a static image link, so I imagine the backend screens based on http_referer or something), and then stretch a 1x1 transparent gif over the table cell. "Show Image" then shows the transparent gif, and there is no "show background image" since we are over a foreground image."
If you ever find images which confuse the right-click menu on mozilla, you can look at the "Page Info" window (Ctrl-I, or click on the padlock icon) which shows all images on the page, backgrounds, table backgrounds, etc. in a neat list with previews, and a "Save As" button to save each file to a specified location on disk.
"I've never figured out how one could make a secure PHP program on a multi-user system. All PHP scripts run using the web server's perms, not the programmer's. Which means all data files must be writable and all SQL passwords must be readable by the web server."
"The PHP safe mode is an attempt to solve the shared-server security problem. It is architecturally incorrect to try to solve this problem at the PHP level, but since the alternatives at the web server and OS levels aren't very realistic, many people, especially ISP's, use safe mode for now."
"If you're building stuff to run your own systems, go for it. If you're building stuff to resell to corporate / government clients that they want to be able to install as a turnkey, _you_ try getting them to install PHP..."
Actually I'm finding it doesn't always work that way in corporate environments. This is a desktop-app example rather than a web-app, but it's supposed to be pretty similar now.
Take an app written in visual basic.net. Create an EXE. Doesn't run at all.
Install the.net framework. "Requires service pack x"
Get service pack x. Install. "Requires internet explorer 6.01"
Get and install IE6. "Your operating system [Windows NT] is not supported. Please wait while we download the appropriate version of IE"
Computer tries to connect to the internet. Fails (it's on a classified network). IE6 install fails, service pack install fails,.net install fails, your application doesn't run. And you've just wasted half a day (i.e. $500) and lots of stress from fuckups caused by Microsoft's assumption that (a) you will want the latest internet explorer, (b) that it has to be integrated into windows, and (c) that every computer has an internet connection. So you have a problem no solution, people are demanding that it work now and there's nothing you can do to get the program to run.
Great. Just great. So I rewrite the app in Python and it runs without any fuss. Guess that open-source is corporate fortune-500 stuff now, and microsoft software is for hippie losers who don't value their own time.
"In *any* server-side scripting language, you should doublecheck each string you get from an URL, POST, etc."
This would be more like your.htaccess files not working -- completely independent of any application-layer security, and used for different things (e.g. password-protecting a whole directory structure of static files, or preventing access to your template files)
"What are the odds that Congress will happily enact the necessary law to mandate the broadcast flag if it turns out that the FCC ain't allowed to put it in its regulations?"
Depends... is that a power given to them by the US constitution?
"Of course Rutan didn't perform any of the fundamental research that lead to the first manned flights, so his efforts are piggy-backing on those of NASA. What a bullshit comparison."
So presumably, future NASA efforts will be comparably priced?
Of course, NASA spends $5,800,000,000 per year on spaceflight, so I expect it's 200 times as exciting as the X-Prize project.
"In an office environment MS Office is "free" as in "no cost" to the cube dwelling end user. Most offices have all of Office installed on all the computers"
Offtopic, but I just saw our managing director choke at hearing the cost of upgrading to MS-Office
It would be amusing if those thousands of pounds weren't coming out of the same bank-account as our salaries.
Needless to say they bought the software without even thinking about it.
"Off-hand, I'd say we're fucked... What we really need is to find a way to prove some kind of anti-competitive conspiracy between, say, Microsoft and Kodak"
More usefully, we could do with a system where all new inventions aren't automatically banned from use for the next 25 years at the option of the inventor
"Someone feel like doing the physics to work out.."
"The guided tour is written for people who want to know a lot about wind energy, short of becoming wind engineers."
For anyone with a long list of questions they think will be best answered by posting them on slashdot, the windpower.org website has enough to keep you occupied for the rest of the evening.
Power output calculations here - remember it's statistical, so don't just assume constant wind speed and multiply it by the average weight of air
"Much as we need a better system, it won't catch on if it can't be explained in one simple sentence."
Sounds like a challenge...
"One vote (approx.) per free citizen are collected by machine, sent to another machine, put on disk for transport to central location where they are counted by a third machine which discards all but the candidate with the highest number of votes and announces the result which is told to an official who travels to the electoral college to vote as that official sees fit, votes which are collected and counted by human, discarding all candidates but the one with the highest number of electoral-college votes and anouncing the winner to a spokesman who informs the press who inform the nation"
"And, a currency not backed by gold won't be suddenly and disastrously devalued in about 50 years when the first nanobot gold miner starts extracting copious amounts of gold atoms from seawater."
If the dollar hasn't devalued despite being backed by a government $7,381,064,241,000 in debt, isn't that an indication that the backing of a currency doesn't appear to have much relevance?
"Wow, I can't believe people are so selfish that they'd risk the U.S.'s relations with another country"
Or more specifically, the US government's relationship with that other country's government, both of which are too embarrassed to admit to their respective countries what they did.
Slashdot Mirror
"The "unwritten rules," in this area, preclude anyone BUT the big boys from playing."
They're not unwritten rules, the CPD have publically stated that they wish to preclude anyone but the big boys from playing.
I find it rather odd that they claim so many times on that page to be "non-partisan", even as they select rules such as to exclude parties they dislike.
"I suggest you go to countries that really don't have democracy before you start complaining about the US. You know, the ones where the "president" wins 99.9% of the vote or is elected "president for life"."
Or the one where two halves of an identical party win 99.9% of the vote, and have been elected every 4 years for the duration of your life?
"Well, He is a candidate. Don't you think he should be in the debates?
Sure, if he can demonstrate beforehand that he and his platform will sway a significant number of voters to at least make him a viable candidate (like Ross Perot did)."
Those are rules that you just made up, on whether you should be eligable to use university property and government money? You realise that those rules you propose are incompatible with the law (specifically, it represents an illegal partisan contribution to some parties, to the detriment of others)
Who would you nominate to decide whether someone should be allowed to campaign for president? Presumably you trust ballots.org to make that decision, as they currently are doing.
"* The candidate must be at least 35 years old.
* The candidate must be a natural-born U.S. citizen.
* The candidate must have resided in the U.S. for at least 14 years at the time of the election."
* The candidate must be elected
"Even the name is an insult because only a total moron would buy one when you can get a kick ass used car with lots of features for less than half of the price."
And spend the rest of that money fixing the things that fall off your bargain used-car, bringing the total up to about the same.
Plus, the smart car doesn't devalue. Look at the second-hand ones. You can sell it for exactly the same price you bought it for, how's that for free car-hire?
Don't forget the ever-useful "estate car" -- drives like a car, brakes capable of stopping you before an accident (like a car or van but not a SUV), but you can fold the back seats down and it essentially becomes a van. Extremely useful for anyone with students in the family (taking furniture and computers and ridiculous amounts of junk to and from campus 3 times per year)
"And also it doesn't have cupholders for giant Slurpees"
Granted, but you can park it in spaces normally available only to motorbikes, and pop into a cafe to sit down with your coffee, while the people with bigger cars continue to drive around looking for somewhere to park. (Remember it's a city car)
"Microsoft killed Netscape, and AOL gobbled it up. And out of which, Mozilla was born."
And so at last the beast fell and the unbelievers rejoiced. But all was not lost, for from the ash rose a great bird. The bird gazed down upon the unbelievers and cast fire and thunder upon them. For the beast had been reborn with its strength renewed, and the followers of Mammon cowered in horror.
The Book of Mozilla, 7:15
"Huh? Advertising a program that is supposed to protect/remove spyware but acts as spyware or a trojan does not at all compare to being pulled over by a cop."
It's hopeless. They'll always moderate-up daft analogies. It's part of the culture.
"I just looked at the page source code... they actually did something very similar to this. They create a table cell, set the background image to the book page (it's fed out of their search engine as opposed to being a static image link, so I imagine the backend screens based on http_referer or something), and then stretch a 1x1 transparent gif over the table cell. "Show Image" then shows the transparent gif, and there is no "show background image" since we are over a foreground image."
If you ever find images which confuse the right-click menu on mozilla, you can look at the "Page Info" window (Ctrl-I, or click on the padlock icon) which shows all images on the page, backgrounds, table backgrounds, etc. in a neat list with previews, and a "Save As" button to save each file to a specified location on disk.
"I've never figured out how one could make a secure PHP program on a multi-user system. All PHP scripts run using the web server's perms, not the programmer's. Which means all data files must be writable and all SQL passwords must be readable by the web server."
"The PHP safe mode is an attempt to solve the shared-server security problem. It is architecturally incorrect to try to solve this problem at the PHP level, but since the alternatives at the web server and OS levels aren't very realistic, many people, especially ISP's, use safe mode for now."
PHP
"If you're building stuff to run your own systems, go for it. If you're building stuff to resell to corporate / government clients that they want to be able to install as a turnkey, _you_ try getting them to install PHP..."
.net. Create an EXE. Doesn't run at all.
.net framework. "Requires service pack x"
.net install fails, your application doesn't run. And you've just wasted half a day (i.e. $500) and lots of stress from fuckups caused by Microsoft's assumption that (a) you will want the latest internet explorer, (b) that it has to be integrated into windows, and (c) that every computer has an internet connection. So you have a problem no solution, people are demanding that it work now and there's nothing you can do to get the program to run.
Actually I'm finding it doesn't always work that way in corporate environments. This is a desktop-app example rather than a web-app, but it's supposed to be pretty similar now.
Take an app written in visual basic
Install the
Get service pack x. Install. "Requires internet explorer 6.01"
Get and install IE6. "Your operating system [Windows NT] is not supported. Please wait while we download the appropriate version of IE"
Computer tries to connect to the internet. Fails (it's on a classified network). IE6 install fails, service pack install fails,
Great. Just great. So I rewrite the app in Python and it runs without any fuss. Guess that open-source is corporate fortune-500 stuff now, and microsoft software is for hippie losers who don't value their own time.
"In *any* server-side scripting language, you should doublecheck each string you get from an URL, POST, etc."
.htaccess files not working -- completely independent of any application-layer security, and used for different things (e.g. password-protecting a whole directory structure of static files, or preventing access to your template files)
This would be more like your
"It sounds better to yell "rewrite!" for the knee-jerk Slashbots rather than "five line patch!""
Howabout "your applications have been vulnerable for years, and you only just found out"?
Hope there wasn't any important data on those websites. How sure are you that it's still correct?
"What are the odds that Congress will happily enact the necessary law to mandate the broadcast flag if it turns out that the FCC ain't allowed to put it in its regulations?"
Depends... is that a power given to them by the US constitution?
"Free gmail invites [slashdot.org]"
Free Yahoo!Mail invites
"Of course Rutan didn't perform any of the fundamental research that lead to the first manned flights, so his efforts are piggy-backing on those of NASA. What a bullshit comparison."
So presumably, future NASA efforts will be comparably priced?
Of course, NASA spends $5,800,000,000 per year on spaceflight, so I expect it's 200 times as exciting as the X-Prize project.
"In an office environment MS Office is "free" as in "no cost" to the cube dwelling end user. Most offices have all of Office installed on all the computers"
Offtopic, but I just saw our managing director choke at hearing the cost of upgrading to MS-Office
It would be amusing if those thousands of pounds weren't coming out of the same bank-account as our salaries.
Needless to say they bought the software without even thinking about it.
So maybe my machine isn't up to the task of playing this game, if I can't even scroll their webpage at more than one frame per second???
"I'd love to know what numbers he's using to arrive at his assertation that "most people" still steal music"
At a guess, he's one of those people using the following equation:
(NumIPodsSold * StorageCapacity) - NumITunesSales
It's been quoted a lot recently by people apparently unaware of how stupid they sound.
"Off-hand, I'd say we're fucked... What we really need is to find a way to prove some kind of anti-competitive conspiracy between, say, Microsoft and Kodak"
More usefully, we could do with a system where all new inventions aren't automatically banned from use for the next 25 years at the option of the inventor
"Someone feel like doing the physics to work out.."
"The guided tour is written for people who want to know a lot about wind energy, short of becoming wind engineers."
For anyone with a long list of questions they think will be best answered by posting them on slashdot, the windpower.org website has enough to keep you occupied for the rest of the evening.
Power output calculations here - remember it's statistical, so don't just assume constant wind speed and multiply it by the average weight of air
"Much as we need a better system, it won't catch on if it can't be explained in one simple sentence."
Sounds like a challenge...
"One vote (approx.) per free citizen are collected by machine, sent to another machine, put on disk for transport to central location where they are counted by a third machine which discards all but the candidate with the highest number of votes and announces the result which is told to an official who travels to the electoral college to vote as that official sees fit, votes which are collected and counted by human, discarding all candidates but the one with the highest number of electoral-college votes and anouncing the winner to a spokesman who informs the press who inform the nation"
"And, a currency not backed by gold won't be suddenly and disastrously devalued in about 50 years when the first nanobot gold miner starts extracting copious amounts of gold atoms from seawater."
If the dollar hasn't devalued despite being backed by a government $7,381,064,241,000 in debt, isn't that an indication that the backing of a currency doesn't appear to have much relevance?
"Wow, I can't believe people are so selfish that they'd risk the U.S.'s relations with another country"
Or more specifically, the US government's relationship with that other country's government, both of which are too embarrassed to admit to their respective countries what they did.