XP 64 problems, and "automagically"
on
In2TV Goes Public
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· Score: 1
You can't even use it on XP 64.
Well, I pretty much assumed that. My sister has a 64-bit machine, but we've just decided to run XP Pro on it; once we get around to getting a new hard drive in it that actually has decent size (long story why we didn't in the first place) and install an OS to take advantage of that juicy 64-bittedness, it's certainly not going to dual-boot into XP 64, it's definitely going to be some distro of Linux. I mean, does anything work on XP 64? Hell, I wouldn't be surprised if people managed to find out some workaround for tricking In2TV to work on *nix before XP 64 ever gets support.
tip for Windows users who have removed their IE icon, open "My Computer" and directly enter the URL into the address bar - it converts from Explorer to Internet explorer automagically...
I'd almost think it's insulting the intelligence of/. readers to even mention that;) but I suppose there's probably people out there that don't realize how linked explorer and iexplore are underneath their facade-of-difference exteriors. I'm more interested in your word "automagically" . . . I'm unsure whether that's a spelling mistake or an intentional bit of wordplay, but that's brilliant! Brilliant, I say! Shortly people will be looking at me oddly as I begin working "automagically" into everyday conversation!:)
No, seriously now. For one, services like iTunes don't offer things losslessly; for two, they restrict my use of them too much for me to even bother (hell, I don't even have many convenient ways to play fuckin'.m4a files, much less DRMed ones . . . but my DAP plays ogg just fine, so I can take that anywhere with me no problem, and while it's too small of a flash drive to really hold FLAC comfortably it's a snap to drag-drop convert FLAC to ogg-vorbis for the run).
Thirdly, packaging. I mean, let's be honest now, it's been possible forever now to transmit text electronically quite well, but books are far from gone. It's just extra nice, convenient and so forth to have an actual physical copy in posession. Which is actually why I often buy albums I like in Vinyl now; I can usually just download lossless versions for digital use on the side (which is often how I came to like the album enough to buy it), and if you're going to go for the physical packaging, why not go for the gusto? Now, vinyl isn't exactly the easiest to get albums or singles in, so it's not always an option and many people would rather have a CD instead, but the fact that even now there are stores that sell a large volume of actual records speaks to the desire people have to actually own a physical copy of something (and what's more physical than analog?).
So no, I certainly don't think CDs are going away anytime soon. Yeah yeah, they'll decrease in prominence and sales, they might not even stay at the top of the food chain . . . but there's a long ways from that to complete oblivion as the title suggests (not that I'm sure the article claims such; in true slashdottian spirit I've avoided reading TFA).
Furthermore, if you expand the definition of CDs a bit and go into other forms of physically sold disks, there's alot of room for the medium to evolve from here. As noted, there aren't any major services offering lossless audio (unless I've been misinformed?), meanwhile we have emerging media types like DVDA and the growing practice of either two-sided disks or just a CD and a DVD to give extra content like videos along with albums, so even in the mere digital product the physical disks retain certain advantages over the online services.
Besides, if anything is going to fall to the power of the internet, I think that print newspapers will go before CDs. So maybe once/if that happens we can start thinking about perfoming the final rites for Compact Disks.
Now really, I have to assume here you're perpetuating a misconception of Godwin's Law here. A misconception that has become tradition, true, but it's rather absurd to say that once someone has invoked Nazi analogies that they lose, especially because grandparent was not even making any sort of direct analogy! He was just using something Hitler stated to explain a point: you don't need to convince people if you can win over their children. Note, however, that traditionally your attempt to deliberately invoke Godwin's Law means that you lose!
But yes, otherwise you raise some very valid counterpoints; having deleted the data it's not quite clear what he did, which changes under what grounds the issue is to be decided, so yes. But you still lose:P
Grandparent:When is Apple going to either stop making Quicktime suck or enable it to play all of the codecs out there? It just took me 2 computers and "Divx Doctor" to watch a low quality fight video off of video.google.com, that is ridiculous.
Parent:Why didn't you just download the 3rd-party divx codec for Quicktime? For that matter, why didn't you just use VLC? That app plays pretty much everything. Sounds like you were making things tougher on yourself than you had to.
Firstly VLC does things certain ways, and has some various failings of its own that I'm not going to bother going into in detail, but the fact remains that not everyone wants to use VLC. Furthermore, he was talking about how bad Quicktime was, so using VLC doesn't exactly solve that problem;) No, really, for a company priding itself on multimedia, Apple is pretty bad with handling any formats that they haven't come up with themselves (for the most part, at least, I don't mean this as a blanket statement). I have one friend who's quite a computer geek himself but uses a Mac almost exclusively, and he actually has to worry about trying to get things to play occasionally; this is quite foreign to me!
I'm not sure about Grandparent, but I would suspect that he might very well have tried a 3rd-party DivX codec and it just didn't work for one reason or another; don't blame him, ou seem to be acting under the assumption that it's always fun and games in Mac-land. Maybe it is for you, but the Mac OSes have their flaws and quirks, just like any other OS, and believe me, Quicktime is just one big potential frustration waiting to happen (not that I'm defending, say, WMP, although at least Microsoft is surprisingly nice enough in that case to leave mplayer2.exe which earns them alot of points in my books).
I've always sortof questioned that whole mantra. Yeah, so it ends up being true, but it seems more like a self-fulfilling prophecy to me than some kind of universal truism. Businesses think that they have to be always increasing, increasing, increasing . . . there's only a limited amount of stuff on this planet, period! You can't just increase everything forever. But alas, if you increase faster than your competitors, then you beat them and buy them out and everyone on that side jumps ship. Thus the ground-rules of "grow or die" are set up. Sustainable? Bah! Just as long as we're doing better than the competition at this moment.
And then . . . you have the entire market bouyed by this constant running-away from the bottom line. So as soon as you stop growing, the reality catches up; it's only that ever-accelerating pace, that continuous inflation, that keeps most companies alive now. You create markets artificially, then demand goes away so you run as fast as you can to the next ad-hoc market . . .
Yeah, the PC market is saturating . . . but don't worry, there'll be something else for you to buy soon! Then again, the PC market has saturated a couple of times. Look at many of the tasks we do, or the programs we run; they could be done a hell of a lot more efficiently, but they sprawl out and take up power and energy, the industry perpetuates itself.
That is in fact the point of Vista, or more topically the random things that Intel is spouting off that it's going to do now. Doing all the things that you could, technically, do already . . . but in a shiner package that you'll have to buy if you want to interoperate with everyone else doing these things with their own shiny packages now.
(random related example: MSN. It's just text messages, you'd think one would be able to do that on Win95, right? But MS won't let those old versions work with the new-stuff now, so awhile back when I was setting up an old computer to just use for e-mail and chat and so forth, I went and installed an old Jabber client. Gee, howabout that, it works. But it's not in Microsoft's interests to be distrubuting a client theirselves that can work . . . the tasks that the older systems could easily perform are re-written to require newer stuff that people have to go out and buy. Versioning alone has probably been the biggest thing behind keeping the PC and PC Software industry afloat).
[Insert comment which replies directly to the article and not to the post, replying to the first high-modded post only because it gives higher visibility, thus higher chances of up-modding.]
[Possible comment: in South Korea, only old people have mind control parasites]
Traditional spam e-mail is all "v1agra" ads and so forth, or it's virus-driven (hell, sometimes both). So arguably the implicit definition of spam is e-mails sent for the interests of the spammer. Here, the intent and surrounding circumstances are quite different; it's a rather selfless act (indeed, instead of financial benefits, here the "spammer" is putting himself at significant risk).
So yeah, you could say that arguably political issues often revolve around commercial and economic issues . . . but, uhh, I would still argue that the situations here are markedly different. Maybe they both boil down to spamming people, but imagine an analogy: killing people. A bit of an extreme analogy, but work with me here. On one hand we might have someone who goes into someone's house to rob and murder them; on the other hand we have someone fighting a war. Now, if you disagree with the war, or believe that killing people is always wrong no matter what, well then you might call the soldier fighting in the war a murderer. However, many people would see the situation of the soldier in most wars (I shall avoid any present-day examples that I might not agree with myself. . . let's say, WWII for the Allies, that should go over relatively well) as at worst a grey area, at best an actually laudable goal. True, it's sad that it comes to those measures, but sometimes it has to be done, right?
Obviously spam isn't nearly as serious as killing people. However, if you think about that for a minute and realize that this guy's family back in China could suffer punishment of that level if he's found out . . . well, that's exactly the kind of problem he's trying to fight against with his "spam".
So I would argue that sometimes small evils are worth it if they're fighting against much larger evils, especially considering that many societies condone greater evils for the same alleged ends.
Even just think of it this way. He's redirecting one of the more questionable sides of freedom on the internet to fight the enemies of that freedom. That's like, I dunno, maybe using beef products to save the amazon rainforest! It's a bit crazy, but if this kind of thing is out there already and one can redirect it towards something good . .
Heh, looks like I managed to mis-link some of those posts somehow. Sloppy work on my part. (I don't even recall reading that post that wasn't moderated, heh, I'm pretty sure I inteded a different post)
I do certainly recall reading some pro-MS ones, often frequently, but the more recent batch of articles hasn't seemed to breed much. I would argue that the Gates example sortof counts, though . . . I mean, it's people praising Bill Gates over Steve Jobs. On Slashdot. Really, now!
I think the main difference is one of quantity, though. There are a hell of a lot more pro-Linux posts than pro-MS posts. Thus it's far more likely for there to be +5 Linux posts.
And honestly, in my searching (through random recent pages for "5, I") I didn't actually see that many purely rant pro-Linux posts. Ones defending MS against *nix claims crop up relatively often, anyways. So what if there aren't many +5 rants? There are certainly +5 insightful defences, that's indeed what we should be looking for here.
('sides, not sure more pro-Linux versus pro-MS is a "bias" per se . . . we're so obsessed with biases these days, we forget that all "truths" are not created equally true, yaknow?;) Even the ones from people who are MSCEs give moderate and complex views)
I feel like I'm going crazy here, though, 'cause I could swear about a year back when I was reading/. alot more frequently I would see a lot of pro-MS rants at +5 fighting pro-Linux rants at equally maxed out moderation. But instead of fighting with Slashdot's search system, I'm going to actually study for my midterm like I should, so I concede the debate to you . . . for now;)
This one is arguably pro-MS (at least, strongly and intelligently supporting them on an issue). Indeed, in that article there were many random random other posts (example). Now, maybe this topic doesn't quite count (and okay, these aren't rabidly pro-MS rants, but you don't see many purely pro-anything rants per se that aren't modded off-topic, n'est pas?).
Things get a bit clearer with that Gates VS. Jobs article, now granted this is nothing to do with software. But then again, liking a company or not is hardly going to be 100% software, one way or another. Here's a good pro-Gates one.
I don't really feel like spending time looking any further, but you can see that even from this cursory investigation (I just looked at some recent MS-themed articles for a few minutes) that people say pro-MS things and get modded up . . . yeah, none of these were simple, foundationless rants. But then, the format of slashdot discourages such! They were all topical, and topically they supported the MS side. Some of these cases it was even on a subject that slashdot is more likely to be biased for the opposing side, too (like, Steve Jobs versus Bill Gates, hmm, who do you think people on/. are more likely to be touting?).
In other words, I think it's demonstrated that pure versions of the rants you're referring to are likely out there, awhile ago. Same way that fossils show that there were giant reptiles, yaknow? Not direct evidence, but I think proves the point anyways. Reasonable reason to believe, at least.
I welcome Google, if this analyst prediction (read: guess, at best an educated one) for what Google "may" be doing turns out to be true. Why? Because Google won't be using Windows Media.
Funny, I welcome this possibility because I doubt that Google will use Apple's AAC format! Every device I have that can play digital media has no problem with Windows Media Audio (not to say I don't avoid it like the plague, though, but that's just 'cause it sucks compared to something decent like ogg-vorbis or more workable and universal like mp3) but if I bought something from iTunes, let me see . . . first I'd have to hold out for a new version of Hymn, then I'd have to convert the file to another format, losing quality if I wanted to play it on my flash player (which doesn't support FLAC, alas, but then again I'd only be able to fit a single album on there then anyways).
But wait, parent, you just described a situation that leaves me no room to understand how they're actually going to impliment it. So they won't be using WMA, but I doubt Apple will open up their own format for it (and hopefully they won't, from my point of view!). Then what's there to happen? I'm hoping, hoping, hoping that Google would fill the niche of "no-DRM", a smaller market for sure (since the biggest labels won't be doing business with you) but it's part of the market that remains virtually untapped (oh, there are a few (like Allofmp3), but certainly not Stateside.
But let us be honest. There isn't any real option here that it isn't easy to argue that Google wouldn't do. Therefore, well, uhh, I might be going out on a limb here (well, okay, to be serious I'm probably parroting what half of the comments here say) and declare that this analyst's prediction is bull. Think about it, if Google did the same thing as Google video then it'd have to be a player that plays a format that works only with their player. There's so little market for that, I doubt they'd bother. Unless they get a deal with Apple, no one will care. And in the unlikely, hell-freezing-over event of that, then I don't care;)
These proprietary formats just breed apathy in me . . .
An apt reference to Nazi Germany . . . 'tis a rare breed of analogy;)
More seriously, that's painfully true . . . it's somewhat disheartening to think that people would be much more outraged if it had happened recently. (Although I may be speaking as a bit of an apologist for Google in this matter, the only justification I can see is if Google truly thinks that their presence in censored form does more good than their absence.) And it's not like the distance of time has improved the temperment of the Chinese government or opened up the society, it's still more or less the same predicament that existed back then, but people loose touch with things over time, they need those reminders or they seem to put back on their rose-tinted glasses.
It may be too common to trot out Nazi Germany as an example of terrible deeds by a State whenever someone disagrees with something and wants to rouse up opposition . . . but on the other hand, using one modern totalitarian regime as an analogy for another is quite apt! Somewhat distressingly so, really. Many companies did indeed deal with Nazi Germany until there was no real option there, and people elsewhere were quick to believe the soothing reports of things being fine until it came time for everyone to be roused up into fury . . . disheartening, as it seems that with the great economic paradise that China is being touted now to be, people are all too quick to forget what they can. As long as things are looking good for them, it's much nicer to imagine that things aren't that bad over in China, there's nothing really that wrong there, it's not like they kill people and quash dissent with force or anything . . .
(And Galilleo did kindof run away, eh, didn't he? He recanted, but he worked away under house arrest, and his points won out against his opponents anyways. Furthermore he spent his house arrest writing a book that later physicists would praise . . . think about that as an allegory of the Google situation, if you will;)
Well, yes, but if they agree that this was a post-Easter occurrence, then that's a bit of a tacit agreement that it wasn't some divine plan, eh? I mean, if there was some guy sent by God, Son of or not, you'd think God would have to have intended it (imagine God looking on: "oh, shit! Well, too late now. Damn, if only I was all-powerful, I could do something about this. Them's the breaks.") I would not disagree, and I rather agree with that scholarly opinion, but it's hard for me to put that out straightforwardly without segueing into my complete lack of any faith in any direction whatsoever, so I tend to try to try to curb that impulse for the sake of not being too argumentative (odd reasoning, I know...) But just think about it. If the attribution of meaning to his death is a later development (which is indeed where the evidence is pointing) then that would certainly be a HUGE point towards the theory that, even if there is some creator, he wasn't that involved in the life of this Jesus guy, right? There'd be *some* meaning (to his death of all things) if there was all that much divine involvement!
So if there isn't divine involvement, then he wasn't, uhh, so important. But he's remembered. Why? 'Cause the circumstances of his death created a rallying point under which, as history went, his followeres grew. So there's a point to be made towards his death being a "good" thing (assuming one agrees that the history of Christianity equals out to "good" overall). So either way, it can be argued that the guy nailing him to the cross did a deed that wasn't reallly "evil" per se.
Which is how my reply was actually a reply to your point!
Now, obviously it was a bit of a joke, but mine certainly wasn't entirely serious either. My point was just to muddy the waters, which I admit I did a bit incompetantly, but what can I say, I'm running on well over 24 hours without sleep, I beg for some slack! My point though is that this action, which may in-and-of-itself seem evil, gets much more complicated to categorize when one looks at the overall and longterm affect it has. It's no longer so black and white. And people have certainly brought that up: it's debatable, for example, whether it's better for Google to make sure it's there showing on it's page "some results were removed 'cause of your government's laws" or to take a stand publically and say that they refuse to do business there (come to think of it, if they did that, how would anyone in China hear?;)
As to Google being amoral, I'm admittedly on the fence about that. As a general rule I'm quick to point out how corporations act, and it's certainly not in a moral manner. Yes, it's all about profit. BUT, Google has done some things in the past (like its rather nice treatment of employees, for one) that seem pretty nice and not-evil. Problem is, for the most part these could be explained away as just profit-motive generated (it's often in the best interests of the company to treat employees well, to continue the example). I would find it relatively easy to believe that the founders could have intended for the company to truly "do no evil", but as a huge corporation? I guess I'm agnostic on the issue;) For my own part I'm withholding judgement for now, considering this seems to be an era of Google Rising. There are a lot of things happening with Google nowadays that not only will spelll out how the company is, but also what kind of entity it will become. I'm predicting that it'll become more and more of a standard corporation, but I'm willing to postpone my judgement under charges of cynicism, yaknow?
Man, I hope this is real so much. I've always hated dark matter. You know what dark matter reminds me of? Aether. The whole idea of dark matter reminds me of a stupid hack . . . Anyway, these "Gavitons".. I think I've had them in computer games for a while now, its about time we 'discovered' them. Aethe-- I mean Dark Matter was such a cranks idea anyway...
I've actually always disliked gravitons because they reminded me too much of that old Aether! Less of a hack than dark matter, perhaps. But dark matter I've always just taken as "there's something else out there registering as mass somehow" instead of, yaknow, literally some kind of mysterious dark matter. Or more to say, I've accepted it as a lack of knowledge, actually a mystery I guess. Whereas gravitons have always been a bit sketchy of an idea, and the proponents always too quick to jump in exclaiming how it solved things and must, just must be true oh it's so kewl!!!
Not to insult you . . . I actually really liked your post, and you're quite right about how dark matter is quite the hack (and that this kind of thing does come up all-too-often). But right now I think there are just waaaaaaaay too many things unexplained in Physics for us to say much more than "dark matter." Alas, there's a tendency with people to take tentative hypotheses and act as if they were the whole truth, instead of keeping open minds. Thus the treatment of Dark Matter as if it was indeed some dark stuff that we knew was out there, instead of just a big unresolved question mark, a variable balancing an equation that we hadn't solved for yet.
(Sometimes I feel like a fundamentalist Christian waiting around for second coming, another Einstein to turn things on their head and explain those problems that nag at modern Physics! Any day now . . .;)
Roman Military Contractor in First Century Palestine: "The Romans have just asked me to help them nail this Jesus guy to the cross, but everything that I have heard about him is that he a good and decent man guilty of no crime. But, you know, I do have a family to feed and a plans to retire to Tuscany. And, hey, if I don't do it, then that Brutus guy will probably get the job and he won't drive the nails in as gently and humanely as I will. So, I guess I just have to make the best of it!"
And hey, if that Jesus guy hadn't been crucified, then the central tenants of modern Christianity would be completely different! Of course, if he was actually all that that religion makes him out to be, then it was all supposed to happen, and the crucifiction served a purpose. Thus, this contractor of yours is a just man indeed! Meanwhile, if he wasn't, he probably wouldn't have been remembered as much. If the guy believed what he preached, then he'd probably be pretty happy in retrospect that his influence is still felt. Well, maybe not, the whole history of it all is debatable, the arguement could go in a million directions. But the overall opinion is unified through scholars: your point is bunk;)
'sides, crucifiction was only for political criminals; at very least the Roman authorities must have *believed* he had committed crimes for which he needed to be thusly handled, and it's likely that any people working in the employ of these authorities would have heard the story in that light as well. In that case, why stick your neck out for another good-for-nothing rabblerouser? Argue whether that's correct or not, but your "Roman military contractor" would probably have seen little reason to avoid crucifying this Jesus of Nazareth guy, certainly not any more reasons than another other political preacher crucified.
And hey. If we're going for equivalents, then the equivalent position for this guy in reference to Google would be something more like agreeing to crucify this Jesus guy, but putting up a sign on the hill saying "some of these political criminals may not have been guilty of the crimes they were charged with and now executed for".
I recall reading a book (which had been published sometime in the 80s, if I recall, but I've been beating myself up for 15 minutes over it yet can remember no title) written by a rather respected science writer (again, damn my memory!). The book was a rather higher-level book attempting to be a comprehensive study of dinosaurs and Paleontology. Much of the last little bit naturally dealt with the death of the Dinosaurs, and more strikingly the fact that every ~30 million years there's a major catastrophe on the Earth (many of which are quite big, many bigger than what killed the Dinosaurs--actually, funny anecdote, about the time I was reading this I was in summer camp, and one of the camp leaders was taking biology. He knew about the Permian extinction but insisted that it had, in fact, killed off ALL of the life on Earth, which had then started over again. He scoffed at my assertion that this was bullshit. It might have been then, at a rather tender age, that I realized that people could easily go to University and still persist in being really f-ing stupid. And ignorant. And arrogant. Indeed, it often can perpetuate it.)
Anyways, the punchline of all this is missing. Why was it that approximately every 30 million years (not quite the number, IIRC it's a bit more exact, but I forget the specifics) there were recurring catastrophes? Talk about a science mystery worthy of Science Fiction! My own thoughts were along the lines of some kind of statistical quirk of the setup of Earth over millions of years (things get strange characteristics over such timespans, much the way that the dynamics of situations look fundamentally different if you're looking at things recorded reeeeaaalllyyyy sssslllloooowwwwwwwwwwwwly or, trading time for space, under a microscope). But the book referenced an apparently widely-known theory, though hotly contested, that the Sun had a twin star, probably a brown dwarf, which orbited somewhere outside of the Oort cloud. Perhaps some characteristic of its orbit meant that around every 30 million years (or whatever it was) it would swing close enough for awhile to start disturbing the Oort cloud. With so many possibly dangerous objects being flung around, the likelihood of a cometary impact on Earth suddenly becomes relatively quite alot higher (though probably still unlikely enough that it's far from a reliable impact, perhaps explaining the wiggle room in the exact time of the recurrance of mass extinction). There were other bits of random evidence both astronomy-related and geology-related, I don't quite recall them. But whether the theory is true or bunk, the idea of Nemesis (which is also how it was referred to in the book and in other related literature that I read up on at the time) is at least a significant step about the stereotypical internet-theory.
One last sidenote, though it's somewhat OT: I had been thinking, back then, that if you do the rather simple math we're at least a handful of million years overdue for another mass extinction. Then I did a double take as I realized that we actually weren't! The way that these extinctions were measured, since the fossil record is far from play-by-play, is a sudden and drastic disappearence of biodiversity, with large numbers of species suddenly disappearing. And you know what? Not making any direct opinionated slant on this (though my stance is probably obvious), but humans have managed to wipe out enough in the way of species that we're already about on par with many of these rather significant (from a fossil-record viewpoint) extinctions. (Seen from a kind of statistical-determanistic point of view, then, we're just the inevitable comet-equivalent that would inevitably pop up sooner or later, give or take a handful of million years).
Sorry for waxing so arguably OT, but the theory of Nemesis is such an interesting science bit, what with how it manages to draw threads in from so many interdisciplinary puzzles and findings. And in such a more reasonable and non-paranoid way than those aforementioned internet theories!
Why "redundant"? I would mod it more along the lines of "funny" or "insightful" myself, and as another AC replying to parent notes, a second post being redundant, howabout that logic there... Look at the timestamp. It's the same MINUTE as the first post.
And it's so true. Every events like this, my own reaction always goes "see, now people must see the insanity and unreasonable arbitraryness of our patent system! . . . oh, who am I fooling."
My own gmail account remains Free and Clear; I actually got one spam message ever on it, and I've had it for quite awhile now (and get quite a few e-mails and even subscribe to a few yahoo groups via it). And it's not like my e-mail address is that obscure, just my own first name followed by two other letters (and then the @gmail.com, naturally). The same could be said of my ISP e-mail address, or my university e-mail, or my hotmail/msn address, or even better my yahoo mail address which I fling around willy-nilly to sign up for things or whatnot whenver they require an e-mail address. And yet none of those e-mail addresses, all of which (except for my Uni one) I use astonishingly frequently and throw around all over the place, get any spam. Whatsoever. None. Except for that one gmail one (which ruined my perfect record, grr).
Note, also, that I turned off spam protection in hotmail, turned it off in yahoo mail, have none for my ISP one or my Uni one (both would only mark e-mail as spam instead of blocking it anyways, so I would know), and etc. Considering how high the signal-to-noise ration is, the possibility for false-positives understandibly outweighs the miniscule spam concerns I would have.
So what the hell am I doing right that most people seem to be doing wrong?
First off, none of my addresses are entirely intuitive or plain. No numbers even, nothing other than pure letters, but nothing that would show up unmodified in a wordlist or namelist (not even with good ol' "two random letters at the end of the string"). My sister has a gmail address of the same length as mine, but gets literally hundreds of spam messages every single day. The difference is that hers is her last name, while mine is my first name with two letters from my last; so hers is likely to show up in wordlists. That seems to be the kicker.
Meanwhile, my yahoo address seems to attest to the idea that signing up for things online won't get you spam, BUT the things I sign up for are message boards at places like BeyondUnreal.com or the official The Trews webboard or maybe to view some newpaper online (for those amnesiac days that I don't remember about BugMeNot). So nothing particularily sketchy.
In other words, as long as a person is relatively smart about how they handle their e-mail, they should be fine, 'tis my theory. This theory is not without major flaws, though, I'll admit. And furthermore, sometimes a person just wants a specific e-mail address, and it sucks then that it might just doom them to spam.
And further going down the questionable route of using my own personal experience as a scientific study, seeing as I had no spam until that one message, it would look something like this, starting arbitrarily in 2000:
So, in other words, I can prove anyone right. Parent? Sure, spam has increased DRAMATICALLY in the last while. Naysayers? Bah, spam isn't a problem! Etc. Ah, subjectivity.
I mean, okay, in theory it's off-topic to talk about something that isn't the article; but where else on Slashdot would one talk about Slashdot? All that really exists here is random articles and people commenting about them (yeah, yeah, there's diaries, but that's hardly where most of the talking goes on, and saying that people can complain there is like saying they can protest anywhere they want as long as it's in a designated protest area).
Take a wider view here. Slashdot has alot to say about Linux, really, all the time, and arguably Linus is the most important single person in that area. So mentioning something that he says about Slashdot itself is almost more on topic than a story could even be!
For the record, the page where he describes/. as a "big public wanking session" is here, interesting at least as context and certainly as far as seeing what The Big Guy In Open Source has to say about, well, what everyone is talking about in this thread.
Of course, go ahead and ignore what I say, since I guess (finally re-checking the RSS feed) that I was too late in writing this, and that there already is http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/01/10/144024 0&from=rss>a better story in which to post this stuff, but I figured I should post here since I was replying to the parent anyways. And screw it if it's off topic, he does reference an interesting post by Linus, and personally I'm quite okay with "off-topic" if it also means "nonetheless very interesting"! (But I have to say, CmdrTaco's post is somewhat convincing).
Keep in mind that ripping any CSS protected DVDs is likely to be illegal in your country.
Point. But more a point towards "wow, these laws are sortof stupid" than any real sort of warning. Unless one seriously expects companies to start looking at the contents of peoples' computers and then sueing them for it. Welllll, okay, nevermind, that's actually not that far off. But they really should not be allowed to get away with things like that, and I think it's better to hasten the day when that issue inevitiably comes up in a big way than to wait as public opinion adapts more and more to the currently strong zeitgeist of "if you aren't doing anything wrong...."
I mean, not to bring up politics, but yaknow . . .
But hey. Weren't there legal decisions in the favour of being able to make backups with older techs? But each new technology the fight is fought again, and each time the consumer side loses a bit more. Of course there are legal justifications for it (it being illegal to break encryption, etc etc) but there are enough random laws that these cases could in theory be justified many different ways for many different results.
Honestly, that's one of the reasons I'm relatively unlikely to buy DVDs (and much less likely to buy either of the new formats). Why in the world should I pay money for something that I'm not even allowed to use how I want, simply because the companies involved are greedy in an unrealistic way (ie. the actions motivated by their greed do not actually get the results they intend anyways)? And then it pays for things like the industry lobbying for the kind of laws that make it illegal to do things like making (what really should be perfectly legitimate backups, honestly, try to argue against it from a logical point of view knowing that the guy is using them for personal viewing, just making a bit simpler what he paid to be able to do anyway). Sorry, no thanks.
because parent just said exactly what I was going to say, on every count. And really, personally I really liked that they actually killed the characters off. In some ways that made the movie for me; these characters live in a dangerous world, it just seems so fake in so many similar cases of fiction where the characters just refuse to fucking die when you'd think someone would have been shot by now, yaknow? Both deaths seemed utterly natural to the world, and that really helped sell it as something more than just hollow escapism. Now, I'm not denying that alot of Firefly fans are there for that, but that's never why I liked the series.
I, for one, cannot wait for Space: Above and Beyond. Who knew they would be making new episodes?
Or wait, was S:AaB a Fox show? I'm assuming that this only applies to shows cut short by Fox. Fuck, they'll have to create a whole new TV station just to accomodate all the awesome TV shows cancelled before their time! On the downside, while some geeks have escaped being sucked into WoW, add in this "all shows that don't suck, all the time" station and I'm not sure any geeks will have any time left . . .
Imagine that. Sure, we'll all be in entertainment heaven, but no one will even read/.! Not even the editors! Well, okay, nevermind, that last bit isn't anything new.
But still, the question remains: If news for nerds posts on a webpage and no one makes a hit, does CowboyNeal remain a poll option?
Safe to say that the torrent community has gone downhill since, I'd say.
On the contrary! Torrent sites have split up and decentralized, that is true. But that, in many ways, is a good thing, and the content has in many ways improved in quality; back in the days of Suprnova I still would search for most things via DC++ or IRC because the general level of quality and content was better, even if Suprnova had the quantity. But nowadays, even if they're harder to get into, the torrent sites have precisely for that reason grown more vibrant and connected within themselves. Instead of faceless posts of questionable content, we have tightly knit communities!
Really, look me straight in the eye and argue that places like Demonoid and Dimeadozen aren't stellar examples of what the torrent community can be (each in their own ways; Dimeadozen perhaps the most notable, considering that it works expressly to share media from live music, and in doing so ensures a rather high quality of content, something that just wouldn't happen with stuff of similar subject matter back on Suprnova).
Slashdot Mirror
You can't even use it on XP 64.
Well, I pretty much assumed that. My sister has a 64-bit machine, but we've just decided to run XP Pro on it; once we get around to getting a new hard drive in it that actually has decent size (long story why we didn't in the first place) and install an OS to take advantage of that juicy 64-bittedness, it's certainly not going to dual-boot into XP 64, it's definitely going to be some distro of Linux. I mean, does anything work on XP 64? Hell, I wouldn't be surprised if people managed to find out some workaround for tricking In2TV to work on *nix before XP 64 ever gets support.
tip for Windows users who have removed their IE icon, open "My Computer" and directly enter the URL into the address bar - it converts from Explorer to Internet explorer automagically...
I'd almost think it's insulting the intelligence of
Hardly. Nowadays I often even buy vinyl. Hah!
.m4a files, much less DRMed ones . . . but my DAP plays ogg just fine, so I can take that anywhere with me no problem, and while it's too small of a flash drive to really hold FLAC comfortably it's a snap to drag-drop convert FLAC to ogg-vorbis for the run).
No, seriously now. For one, services like iTunes don't offer things losslessly; for two, they restrict my use of them too much for me to even bother (hell, I don't even have many convenient ways to play fuckin'
Thirdly, packaging. I mean, let's be honest now, it's been possible forever now to transmit text electronically quite well, but books are far from gone. It's just extra nice, convenient and so forth to have an actual physical copy in posession. Which is actually why I often buy albums I like in Vinyl now; I can usually just download lossless versions for digital use on the side (which is often how I came to like the album enough to buy it), and if you're going to go for the physical packaging, why not go for the gusto? Now, vinyl isn't exactly the easiest to get albums or singles in, so it's not always an option and many people would rather have a CD instead, but the fact that even now there are stores that sell a large volume of actual records speaks to the desire people have to actually own a physical copy of something (and what's more physical than analog?).
So no, I certainly don't think CDs are going away anytime soon. Yeah yeah, they'll decrease in prominence and sales, they might not even stay at the top of the food chain . . . but there's a long ways from that to complete oblivion as the title suggests (not that I'm sure the article claims such; in true slashdottian spirit I've avoided reading TFA).
Furthermore, if you expand the definition of CDs a bit and go into other forms of physically sold disks, there's alot of room for the medium to evolve from here. As noted, there aren't any major services offering lossless audio (unless I've been misinformed?), meanwhile we have emerging media types like DVDA and the growing practice of either two-sided disks or just a CD and a DVD to give extra content like videos along with albums, so even in the mere digital product the physical disks retain certain advantages over the online services.
Besides, if anything is going to fall to the power of the internet, I think that print newspapers will go before CDs. So maybe once/if that happens we can start thinking about perfoming the final rites for Compact Disks.
Oh and, btw:
:P
Adolf Hitler
you lose.
Now really, I have to assume here you're perpetuating a misconception of Godwin's Law here. A misconception that has become tradition, true, but it's rather absurd to say that once someone has invoked Nazi analogies that they lose, especially because grandparent was not even making any sort of direct analogy! He was just using something Hitler stated to explain a point: you don't need to convince people if you can win over their children. Note, however, that traditionally your attempt to deliberately invoke Godwin's Law means that you lose!
But yes, otherwise you raise some very valid counterpoints; having deleted the data it's not quite clear what he did, which changes under what grounds the issue is to be decided, so yes. But you still lose
Grandparent: When is Apple going to either stop making Quicktime suck or enable it to play all of the codecs out there? It just took me 2 computers and "Divx Doctor" to watch a low quality fight video off of video.google.com, that is ridiculous.
;) No, really, for a company priding itself on multimedia, Apple is pretty bad with handling any formats that they haven't come up with themselves (for the most part, at least, I don't mean this as a blanket statement). I have one friend who's quite a computer geek himself but uses a Mac almost exclusively, and he actually has to worry about trying to get things to play occasionally; this is quite foreign to me!
Parent: Why didn't you just download the 3rd-party divx codec for Quicktime? For that matter, why didn't you just use VLC? That app plays pretty much everything. Sounds like you were making things tougher on yourself than you had to.
Firstly VLC does things certain ways, and has some various failings of its own that I'm not going to bother going into in detail, but the fact remains that not everyone wants to use VLC. Furthermore, he was talking about how bad Quicktime was, so using VLC doesn't exactly solve that problem
I'm not sure about Grandparent, but I would suspect that he might very well have tried a 3rd-party DivX codec and it just didn't work for one reason or another; don't blame him, ou seem to be acting under the assumption that it's always fun and games in Mac-land. Maybe it is for you, but the Mac OSes have their flaws and quirks, just like any other OS, and believe me, Quicktime is just one big potential frustration waiting to happen (not that I'm defending, say, WMP, although at least Microsoft is surprisingly nice enough in that case to leave mplayer2.exe which earns them alot of points in my books).
It's grow or die in this market...
I've always sortof questioned that whole mantra. Yeah, so it ends up being true, but it seems more like a self-fulfilling prophecy to me than some kind of universal truism. Businesses think that they have to be always increasing, increasing, increasing . . . there's only a limited amount of stuff on this planet, period! You can't just increase everything forever. But alas, if you increase faster than your competitors, then you beat them and buy them out and everyone on that side jumps ship. Thus the ground-rules of "grow or die" are set up. Sustainable? Bah! Just as long as we're doing better than the competition at this moment.
And then . . . you have the entire market bouyed by this constant running-away from the bottom line. So as soon as you stop growing, the reality catches up; it's only that ever-accelerating pace, that continuous inflation, that keeps most companies alive now. You create markets artificially, then demand goes away so you run as fast as you can to the next ad-hoc market . . .
Yeah, the PC market is saturating . . . but don't worry, there'll be something else for you to buy soon! Then again, the PC market has saturated a couple of times. Look at many of the tasks we do, or the programs we run; they could be done a hell of a lot more efficiently, but they sprawl out and take up power and energy, the industry perpetuates itself.
That is in fact the point of Vista, or more topically the random things that Intel is spouting off that it's going to do now. Doing all the things that you could, technically, do already . . . but in a shiner package that you'll have to buy if you want to interoperate with everyone else doing these things with their own shiny packages now.
(random related example: MSN. It's just text messages, you'd think one would be able to do that on Win95, right? But MS won't let those old versions work with the new-stuff now, so awhile back when I was setting up an old computer to just use for e-mail and chat and so forth, I went and installed an old Jabber client. Gee, howabout that, it works. But it's not in Microsoft's interests to be distrubuting a client theirselves that can work . . . the tasks that the older systems could easily perform are re-written to require newer stuff that people have to go out and buy. Versioning alone has probably been the biggest thing behind keeping the PC and PC Software industry afloat).
[Insert comment which replies directly to the article and not to the post, replying to the first high-modded post only because it gives higher visibility, thus higher chances of up-modding.]
[Possible comment: in South Korea, only old people have mind control parasites]
Traditional spam e-mail is all "v1agra" ads and so forth, or it's virus-driven (hell, sometimes both). So arguably the implicit definition of spam is e-mails sent for the interests of the spammer. Here, the intent and surrounding circumstances are quite different; it's a rather selfless act (indeed, instead of financial benefits, here the "spammer" is putting himself at significant risk).
So yeah, you could say that arguably political issues often revolve around commercial and economic issues . . . but, uhh, I would still argue that the situations here are markedly different. Maybe they both boil down to spamming people, but imagine an analogy: killing people. A bit of an extreme analogy, but work with me here. On one hand we might have someone who goes into someone's house to rob and murder them; on the other hand we have someone fighting a war. Now, if you disagree with the war, or believe that killing people is always wrong no matter what, well then you might call the soldier fighting in the war a murderer. However, many people would see the situation of the soldier in most wars (I shall avoid any present-day examples that I might not agree with myself. . . let's say, WWII for the Allies, that should go over relatively well) as at worst a grey area, at best an actually laudable goal. True, it's sad that it comes to those measures, but sometimes it has to be done, right?
Obviously spam isn't nearly as serious as killing people. However, if you think about that for a minute and realize that this guy's family back in China could suffer punishment of that level if he's found out . . . well, that's exactly the kind of problem he's trying to fight against with his "spam".
So I would argue that sometimes small evils are worth it if they're fighting against much larger evils, especially considering that many societies condone greater evils for the same alleged ends.
Even just think of it this way. He's redirecting one of the more questionable sides of freedom on the internet to fight the enemies of that freedom. That's like, I dunno, maybe using beef products to save the amazon rainforest! It's a bit crazy, but if this kind of thing is out there already and one can redirect it towards something good . .
Heh, looks like I managed to mis-link some of those posts somehow. Sloppy work on my part. (I don't even recall reading that post that wasn't moderated, heh, I'm pretty sure I inteded a different post)
;) Even the ones from people who are MSCEs give moderate and complex views)
/. alot more frequently I would see a lot of pro-MS rants at +5 fighting pro-Linux rants at equally maxed out moderation. But instead of fighting with Slashdot's search system, I'm going to actually study for my midterm like I should, so I concede the debate to you . . . for now ;)
I do certainly recall reading some pro-MS ones, often frequently, but the more recent batch of articles hasn't seemed to breed much. I would argue that the Gates example sortof counts, though . . . I mean, it's people praising Bill Gates over Steve Jobs. On Slashdot. Really, now!
I think the main difference is one of quantity, though. There are a hell of a lot more pro-Linux posts than pro-MS posts. Thus it's far more likely for there to be +5 Linux posts.
And honestly, in my searching (through random recent pages for "5, I") I didn't actually see that many purely rant pro-Linux posts. Ones defending MS against *nix claims crop up relatively often, anyways. So what if there aren't many +5 rants? There are certainly +5 insightful defences, that's indeed what we should be looking for here.
('sides, not sure more pro-Linux versus pro-MS is a "bias" per se . . . we're so obsessed with biases these days, we forget that all "truths" are not created equally true, yaknow?
I feel like I'm going crazy here, though, 'cause I could swear about a year back when I was reading
This one is arguably pro-MS (at least, strongly and intelligently supporting them on an issue). Indeed, in that article there were many random random other posts (example). Now, maybe this topic doesn't quite count (and okay, these aren't rabidly pro-MS rants, but you don't see many purely pro-anything rants per se that aren't modded off-topic, n'est pas?).
/. are more likely to be touting?).
There are more examples, but I suppose most of that page is critiquing the headline. There are some ones that are more forcefully on MS's side, but that's further down the page and thus less mod points.
Things get a bit clearer with that Gates VS. Jobs article, now granted this is nothing to do with software. But then again, liking a company or not is hardly going to be 100% software, one way or another. Here's a good pro-Gates one.
I don't really feel like spending time looking any further, but you can see that even from this cursory investigation (I just looked at some recent MS-themed articles for a few minutes) that people say pro-MS things and get modded up . . . yeah, none of these were simple, foundationless rants. But then, the format of slashdot discourages such! They were all topical, and topically they supported the MS side. Some of these cases it was even on a subject that slashdot is more likely to be biased for the opposing side, too (like, Steve Jobs versus Bill Gates, hmm, who do you think people on
In other words, I think it's demonstrated that pure versions of the rants you're referring to are likely out there, awhile ago. Same way that fossils show that there were giant reptiles, yaknow? Not direct evidence, but I think proves the point anyways. Reasonable reason to believe, at least.
Sometimes I'm very glad I live in a country with fewer inhabitants than some of the USA's larger cities :)
You've left me curious. What country is it that you refer to?
Notice that this bug was introduced by service pack 2 BTW
Hah! Another reason why I'm glad I didn't "update" to SP2!
Oh, right, I'm running a single-core AMD system . . . still, though!
I welcome Google, if this analyst prediction (read: guess, at best an educated one) for what Google "may" be doing turns out to be true. Why? Because Google won't be using Windows Media.
;)
Funny, I welcome this possibility because I doubt that Google will use Apple's AAC format! Every device I have that can play digital media has no problem with Windows Media Audio (not to say I don't avoid it like the plague, though, but that's just 'cause it sucks compared to something decent like ogg-vorbis or more workable and universal like mp3) but if I bought something from iTunes, let me see . . . first I'd have to hold out for a new version of Hymn, then I'd have to convert the file to another format, losing quality if I wanted to play it on my flash player (which doesn't support FLAC, alas, but then again I'd only be able to fit a single album on there then anyways).
But wait, parent, you just described a situation that leaves me no room to understand how they're actually going to impliment it. So they won't be using WMA, but I doubt Apple will open up their own format for it (and hopefully they won't, from my point of view!). Then what's there to happen? I'm hoping, hoping, hoping that Google would fill the niche of "no-DRM", a smaller market for sure (since the biggest labels won't be doing business with you) but it's part of the market that remains virtually untapped (oh, there are a few (like Allofmp3), but certainly not Stateside.
But let us be honest. There isn't any real option here that it isn't easy to argue that Google wouldn't do. Therefore, well, uhh, I might be going out on a limb here (well, okay, to be serious I'm probably parroting what half of the comments here say) and declare that this analyst's prediction is bull. Think about it, if Google did the same thing as Google video then it'd have to be a player that plays a format that works only with their player. There's so little market for that, I doubt they'd bother. Unless they get a deal with Apple, no one will care. And in the unlikely, hell-freezing-over event of that, then I don't care
These proprietary formats just breed apathy in me . . .
An apt reference to Nazi Germany . . . 'tis a rare breed of analogy
More seriously, that's painfully true . . . it's somewhat disheartening to think that people would be much more outraged if it had happened recently. (Although I may be speaking as a bit of an apologist for Google in this matter, the only justification I can see is if Google truly thinks that their presence in censored form does more good than their absence.) And it's not like the distance of time has improved the temperment of the Chinese government or opened up the society, it's still more or less the same predicament that existed back then, but people loose touch with things over time, they need those reminders or they seem to put back on their rose-tinted glasses.
It may be too common to trot out Nazi Germany as an example of terrible deeds by a State whenever someone disagrees with something and wants to rouse up opposition . . . but on the other hand, using one modern totalitarian regime as an analogy for another is quite apt! Somewhat distressingly so, really. Many companies did indeed deal with Nazi Germany until there was no real option there, and people elsewhere were quick to believe the soothing reports of things being fine until it came time for everyone to be roused up into fury . . . disheartening, as it seems that with the great economic paradise that China is being touted now to be, people are all too quick to forget what they can. As long as things are looking good for them, it's much nicer to imagine that things aren't that bad over in China, there's nothing really that wrong there, it's not like they kill people and quash dissent with force or anything . . .
(And Galilleo did kindof run away, eh, didn't he? He recanted, but he worked away under house arrest, and his points won out against his opponents anyways. Furthermore he spent his house arrest writing a book that later physicists would praise . . . think about that as an allegory of the Google situation, if you will
Well, yes, but if they agree that this was a post-Easter occurrence, then that's a bit of a tacit agreement that it wasn't some divine plan, eh? I mean, if there was some guy sent by God, Son of or not, you'd think God would have to have intended it (imagine God looking on: "oh, shit! Well, too late now. Damn, if only I was all-powerful, I could do something about this. Them's the breaks.") I would not disagree, and I rather agree with that scholarly opinion, but it's hard for me to put that out straightforwardly without segueing into my complete lack of any faith in any direction whatsoever, so I tend to try to try to curb that impulse for the sake of not being too argumentative (odd reasoning, I know...) But just think about it. If the attribution of meaning to his death is a later development (which is indeed where the evidence is pointing) then that would certainly be a HUGE point towards the theory that, even if there is some creator, he wasn't that involved in the life of this Jesus guy, right? There'd be *some* meaning (to his death of all things) if there was all that much divine involvement!
So if there isn't divine involvement, then he wasn't, uhh, so important. But he's remembered. Why? 'Cause the circumstances of his death created a rallying point under which, as history went, his followeres grew. So there's a point to be made towards his death being a "good" thing (assuming one agrees that the history of Christianity equals out to "good" overall). So either way, it can be argued that the guy nailing him to the cross did a deed that wasn't reallly "evil" per se.
Which is how my reply was actually a reply to your point!
Now, obviously it was a bit of a joke, but mine certainly wasn't entirely serious either. My point was just to muddy the waters, which I admit I did a bit incompetantly, but what can I say, I'm running on well over 24 hours without sleep, I beg for some slack! My point though is that this action, which may in-and-of-itself seem evil, gets much more complicated to categorize when one looks at the overall and longterm affect it has. It's no longer so black and white. And people have certainly brought that up: it's debatable, for example, whether it's better for Google to make sure it's there showing on it's page "some results were removed 'cause of your government's laws" or to take a stand publically and say that they refuse to do business there (come to think of it, if they did that, how would anyone in China hear?
As to Google being amoral, I'm admittedly on the fence about that. As a general rule I'm quick to point out how corporations act, and it's certainly not in a moral manner. Yes, it's all about profit. BUT, Google has done some things in the past (like its rather nice treatment of employees, for one) that seem pretty nice and not-evil. Problem is, for the most part these could be explained away as just profit-motive generated (it's often in the best interests of the company to treat employees well, to continue the example). I would find it relatively easy to believe that the founders could have intended for the company to truly "do no evil", but as a huge corporation? I guess I'm agnostic on the issue
So this particular exam
Man, I hope this is real so much. I've always hated dark matter. You know what dark matter reminds me of? Aether. The whole idea of dark matter reminds me of a stupid hack . . . Anyway, these "Gavitons".. I think I've had them in computer games for a while now, its about time we 'discovered' them. Aethe-- I mean Dark Matter was such a cranks idea anyway...
;)
I've actually always disliked gravitons because they reminded me too much of that old Aether! Less of a hack than dark matter, perhaps. But dark matter I've always just taken as "there's something else out there registering as mass somehow" instead of, yaknow, literally some kind of mysterious dark matter. Or more to say, I've accepted it as a lack of knowledge, actually a mystery I guess. Whereas gravitons have always been a bit sketchy of an idea, and the proponents always too quick to jump in exclaiming how it solved things and must, just must be true oh it's so kewl!!!
Not to insult you . . . I actually really liked your post, and you're quite right about how dark matter is quite the hack (and that this kind of thing does come up all-too-often). But right now I think there are just waaaaaaaay too many things unexplained in Physics for us to say much more than "dark matter." Alas, there's a tendency with people to take tentative hypotheses and act as if they were the whole truth, instead of keeping open minds. Thus the treatment of Dark Matter as if it was indeed some dark stuff that we knew was out there, instead of just a big unresolved question mark, a variable balancing an equation that we hadn't solved for yet.
(Sometimes I feel like a fundamentalist Christian waiting around for second coming, another Einstein to turn things on their head and explain those problems that nag at modern Physics! Any day now . . .
Roman Military Contractor in First Century Palestine: "The Romans have just asked me to help them nail this Jesus guy to the cross, but everything that I have heard about him is that he a good and decent man guilty of no crime. But, you know, I do have a family to feed and a plans to retire to Tuscany. And, hey, if I don't do it, then that Brutus guy will probably get the job and he won't drive the nails in as gently and humanely as I will. So, I guess I just have to make the best of it!"
;)
And hey, if that Jesus guy hadn't been crucified, then the central tenants of modern Christianity would be completely different! Of course, if he was actually all that that religion makes him out to be, then it was all supposed to happen, and the crucifiction served a purpose. Thus, this contractor of yours is a just man indeed! Meanwhile, if he wasn't, he probably wouldn't have been remembered as much. If the guy believed what he preached, then he'd probably be pretty happy in retrospect that his influence is still felt. Well, maybe not, the whole history of it all is debatable, the arguement could go in a million directions. But the overall opinion is unified through scholars: your point is bunk
'sides, crucifiction was only for political criminals; at very least the Roman authorities must have *believed* he had committed crimes for which he needed to be thusly handled, and it's likely that any people working in the employ of these authorities would have heard the story in that light as well. In that case, why stick your neck out for another good-for-nothing rabblerouser? Argue whether that's correct or not, but your "Roman military contractor" would probably have seen little reason to avoid crucifying this Jesus of Nazareth guy, certainly not any more reasons than another other political preacher crucified.
And hey. If we're going for equivalents, then the equivalent position for this guy in reference to Google would be something more like agreeing to crucify this Jesus guy, but putting up a sign on the hill saying "some of these political criminals may not have been guilty of the crimes they were charged with and now executed for".
I recall reading a book (which had been published sometime in the 80s, if I recall, but I've been beating myself up for 15 minutes over it yet can remember no title) written by a rather respected science writer (again, damn my memory!). The book was a rather higher-level book attempting to be a comprehensive study of dinosaurs and Paleontology. Much of the last little bit naturally dealt with the death of the Dinosaurs, and more strikingly the fact that every ~30 million years there's a major catastrophe on the Earth (many of which are quite big, many bigger than what killed the Dinosaurs--actually, funny anecdote, about the time I was reading this I was in summer camp, and one of the camp leaders was taking biology. He knew about the Permian extinction but insisted that it had, in fact, killed off ALL of the life on Earth, which had then started over again. He scoffed at my assertion that this was bullshit. It might have been then, at a rather tender age, that I realized that people could easily go to University and still persist in being really f-ing stupid. And ignorant. And arrogant. Indeed, it often can perpetuate it.)
Anyways, the punchline of all this is missing. Why was it that approximately every 30 million years (not quite the number, IIRC it's a bit more exact, but I forget the specifics) there were recurring catastrophes? Talk about a science mystery worthy of Science Fiction! My own thoughts were along the lines of some kind of statistical quirk of the setup of Earth over millions of years (things get strange characteristics over such timespans, much the way that the dynamics of situations look fundamentally different if you're looking at things recorded reeeeaaalllyyyy sssslllloooowwwwwwwwwwwwly or, trading time for space, under a microscope). But the book referenced an apparently widely-known theory, though hotly contested, that the Sun had a twin star, probably a brown dwarf, which orbited somewhere outside of the Oort cloud. Perhaps some characteristic of its orbit meant that around every 30 million years (or whatever it was) it would swing close enough for awhile to start disturbing the Oort cloud. With so many possibly dangerous objects being flung around, the likelihood of a cometary impact on Earth suddenly becomes relatively quite alot higher (though probably still unlikely enough that it's far from a reliable impact, perhaps explaining the wiggle room in the exact time of the recurrance of mass extinction). There were other bits of random evidence both astronomy-related and geology-related, I don't quite recall them. But whether the theory is true or bunk, the idea of Nemesis (which is also how it was referred to in the book and in other related literature that I read up on at the time) is at least a significant step about the stereotypical internet-theory.
One last sidenote, though it's somewhat OT: I had been thinking, back then, that if you do the rather simple math we're at least a handful of million years overdue for another mass extinction. Then I did a double take as I realized that we actually weren't! The way that these extinctions were measured, since the fossil record is far from play-by-play, is a sudden and drastic disappearence of biodiversity, with large numbers of species suddenly disappearing. And you know what? Not making any direct opinionated slant on this (though my stance is probably obvious), but humans have managed to wipe out enough in the way of species that we're already about on par with many of these rather significant (from a fossil-record viewpoint) extinctions. (Seen from a kind of statistical-determanistic point of view, then, we're just the inevitable comet-equivalent that would inevitably pop up sooner or later, give or take a handful of million years).
Sorry for waxing so arguably OT, but the theory of Nemesis is such an interesting science bit, what with how it manages to draw threads in from so many interdisciplinary puzzles and findings. And in such a more reasonable and non-paranoid way than those aforementioned internet theories!
Why "redundant"? I would mod it more along the lines of "funny" or "insightful" myself, and as another AC replying to parent notes, a second post being redundant, howabout that logic there... Look at the timestamp. It's the same MINUTE as the first post.
And it's so true. Every events like this, my own reaction always goes "see, now people must see the insanity and unreasonable arbitraryness of our patent system! . . . oh, who am I fooling."
My own gmail account remains Free and Clear; I actually got one spam message ever on it, and I've had it for quite awhile now (and get quite a few e-mails and even subscribe to a few yahoo groups via it). And it's not like my e-mail address is that obscure, just my own first name followed by two other letters (and then the @gmail.com, naturally). The same could be said of my ISP e-mail address, or my university e-mail, or my hotmail/msn address, or even better my yahoo mail address which I fling around willy-nilly to sign up for things or whatnot whenver they require an e-mail address. And yet none of those e-mail addresses, all of which (except for my Uni one) I use astonishingly frequently and throw around all over the place, get any spam. Whatsoever. None. Except for that one gmail one (which ruined my perfect record, grr).
Note, also, that I turned off spam protection in hotmail, turned it off in yahoo mail, have none for my ISP one or my Uni one (both would only mark e-mail as spam instead of blocking it anyways, so I would know), and etc. Considering how high the signal-to-noise ration is, the possibility for false-positives understandibly outweighs the miniscule spam concerns I would have.
So what the hell am I doing right that most people seem to be doing wrong?
First off, none of my addresses are entirely intuitive or plain. No numbers even, nothing other than pure letters, but nothing that would show up unmodified in a wordlist or namelist (not even with good ol' "two random letters at the end of the string"). My sister has a gmail address of the same length as mine, but gets literally hundreds of spam messages every single day. The difference is that hers is her last name, while mine is my first name with two letters from my last; so hers is likely to show up in wordlists. That seems to be the kicker.
Meanwhile, my yahoo address seems to attest to the idea that signing up for things online won't get you spam, BUT the things I sign up for are message boards at places like BeyondUnreal.com or the official The Trews webboard or maybe to view some newpaper online (for those amnesiac days that I don't remember about BugMeNot). So nothing particularily sketchy.
In other words, as long as a person is relatively smart about how they handle their e-mail, they should be fine, 'tis my theory. This theory is not without major flaws, though, I'll admit. And furthermore, sometimes a person just wants a specific e-mail address, and it sucks then that it might just doom them to spam.
And further going down the questionable route of using my own personal experience as a scientific study, seeing as I had no spam until that one message, it would look something like this, starting arbitrarily in 2000:
2000 - 0%
2001 - 0%
2002 - 0%
2003 - 0%
2004 - 0%
2005 - 100% OMFG 2005 IS TEH SPAM APOCALYPSE
2006 - 0% (so far...)
So, in other words, I can prove anyone right. Parent? Sure, spam has
increased DRAMATICALLY in the last while. Naysayers? Bah, spam isn't
a problem! Etc. Ah, subjectivity.
I mean, okay, in theory it's off-topic to talk about something that isn't the article; but where else on Slashdot would one talk about Slashdot? All that really exists here is random articles and people commenting about them (yeah, yeah, there's diaries, but that's hardly where most of the talking goes on, and saying that people can complain there is like saying they can protest anywhere they want as long as it's in a designated protest area).
/. as a "big public wanking session" is here, interesting at least as context and certainly as far as seeing what The Big Guy In Open Source has to say about, well, what everyone is talking about in this thread.
4 0&from=rss>a better story in which to post this stuff, but I figured I should post here since I was replying to the parent anyways. And screw it if it's off topic, he does reference an interesting post by Linus, and personally I'm quite okay with "off-topic" if it also means "nonetheless very interesting"! (But I have to say, CmdrTaco's post is somewhat convincing).
Take a wider view here. Slashdot has alot to say about Linux, really, all the time, and arguably Linus is the most important single person in that area. So mentioning something that he says about Slashdot itself is almost more on topic than a story could even be!
For the record, the page where he describes
Of course, go ahead and ignore what I say, since I guess (finally re-checking the RSS feed) that I was too late in writing this, and that there already is http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/01/10/14402
Keep in mind that ripping any CSS protected DVDs is likely to be illegal in your country.
Point. But more a point towards "wow, these laws are sortof stupid" than any real sort of warning. Unless one seriously expects companies to start looking at the contents of peoples' computers and then sueing them for it. Welllll, okay, nevermind, that's actually not that far off. But they really should not be allowed to get away with things like that, and I think it's better to hasten the day when that issue inevitiably comes up in a big way than to wait as public opinion adapts more and more to the currently strong zeitgeist of "if you aren't doing anything wrong...."
I mean, not to bring up politics, but yaknow . . .
But hey. Weren't there legal decisions in the favour of being able to make backups with older techs? But each new technology the fight is fought again, and each time the consumer side loses a bit more. Of course there are legal justifications for it (it being illegal to break encryption, etc etc) but there are enough random laws that these cases could in theory be justified many different ways for many different results.
Honestly, that's one of the reasons I'm relatively unlikely to buy DVDs (and much less likely to buy either of the new formats). Why in the world should I pay money for something that I'm not even allowed to use how I want, simply because the companies involved are greedy in an unrealistic way (ie. the actions motivated by their greed do not actually get the results they intend anyways)? And then it pays for things like the industry lobbying for the kind of laws that make it illegal to do things like making (what really should be perfectly legitimate backups, honestly, try to argue against it from a logical point of view knowing that the guy is using them for personal viewing, just making a bit simpler what he paid to be able to do anyway). Sorry, no thanks.
But my main camera manufacturer of choice (Canon) has switched over to SD cards, I hear, at very least for the smaller cameras. Boooo.
because parent just said exactly what I was going to say, on every count. And really, personally I really liked that they actually killed the characters off. In some ways that made the movie for me; these characters live in a dangerous world, it just seems so fake in so many similar cases of fiction where the characters just refuse to fucking die when you'd think someone would have been shot by now, yaknow? Both deaths seemed utterly natural to the world, and that really helped sell it as something more than just hollow escapism. Now, I'm not denying that alot of Firefly fans are there for that, but that's never why I liked the series.
I, for one, cannot wait for Space: Above and Beyond. Who knew they would be making new episodes?
/.! Not even the editors! Well, okay, nevermind, that last bit isn't anything new.
Or wait, was S:AaB a Fox show? I'm assuming that this only applies to shows cut short by Fox. Fuck, they'll have to create a whole new TV station just to accomodate all the awesome TV shows cancelled before their time! On the downside, while some geeks have escaped being sucked into WoW, add in this "all shows that don't suck, all the time" station and I'm not sure any geeks will have any time left . . .
Imagine that. Sure, we'll all be in entertainment heaven, but no one will even read
But still, the question remains: If news for nerds posts on a webpage and no one makes a hit, does CowboyNeal remain a poll option?
Safe to say that the torrent community has gone downhill since, I'd say.
On the contrary! Torrent sites have split up and decentralized, that is true. But that, in many ways, is a good thing, and the content has in many ways improved in quality; back in the days of Suprnova I still would search for most things via DC++ or IRC because the general level of quality and content was better, even if Suprnova had the quantity. But nowadays, even if they're harder to get into, the torrent sites have precisely for that reason grown more vibrant and connected within themselves. Instead of faceless posts of questionable content, we have tightly knit communities!
Really, look me straight in the eye and argue that places like Demonoid and Dimeadozen aren't stellar examples of what the torrent community can be (each in their own ways; Dimeadozen perhaps the most notable, considering that it works expressly to share media from live music, and in doing so ensures a rather high quality of content, something that just wouldn't happen with stuff of similar subject matter back on Suprnova).