1. Someone posted the BeoWulf joke 5 posts up. 2. Supercomputer are basically BeoWulf clusters 3. Someone else posted the same joke 3 posts up, but included "Will it run linux". 4. It isn't the first time someone has made the mistake of their/they're 5. You aren't the first to point that out to anyone. 6. Somone else will reply to your post and point that out two posts after mine. 7. Someone else in this comment thread will also make misuse of their and they're. 8. Somone two posts down from your original will also make a mention of a Beowulf cluster. 9. And 5 posts after that another will try to get modded funny by trying to include "In Soviet Russia, only old people use Beowulf Clusters Running linux."
Really... Soviet russia cliches may still be funny, but Beowulf and "Will it run linux" aren't.
Please think of the children and refrain from mentioning either two ever again. If you are tempted to mention it, it means 5 other people already have by the time somone posts it.
Or so they can sit in class and play online games while the prof is droning on and on?
Well, at least they are in class and not in their dorm rooms skipping class to play online games *cough* not that I would know anything about that *cough*.
Secondly, if you are in class and are playing online games, chances are your just not interested in what the professor is teaching and would be doing something else without the laptop.
Before we had laptops, we had kids playing games on their TI calculators. Before that people either slept or just wrote notes.
Like many people say... Guns don't kill people. People kill people.
Likewise, laptops don't make people not pay attention. They just don't want to pay attention.
Reuters is reporting that 'slashdot poster Vertinox on Tuesday said he aims to deliver its new Blu-ray DVD format to his home on day that coincides with Sony prying his old DVD player from his dead cold hands.
When apple did the conference in January I bought the stock at 76 and then it jumped to 86 with my hopes it would keep on going, but then when Intel reported badly it dropped down into the upper 60's. Right now it is hovering in the upper 68's and I wondering why the stock price is down with the impending announcement.
I like RMS, his ideas, and his work on GNU, but when he starts spouting off about "Treacherous Computing" and "Digital Restrictions Management" instead of using the traditonally accepted names (trusted computing and digital rights management, respectively), he just marginalizes himself and his positions.
Traditionally accepted names? What is this tradition you speak of?
I don't think we were talking about DRM back in the 1800's. Heck I didn't hear about DRM until the late 1990's and then I don't think society came up with it.
But seriously, what he says is basically true. Trusted computing and Digital Rights Managment are phrases created to bias wording in someones favor (say the coporations). He is simply pointing out his bias.
We do it every day:
Insurgent or Freedom Fighter Revolutionary or Patriot Theft or Copyright Infringment
Many phrases in the Englsih language mean the same thing, but each phrase has a different connotation that has a bias.
There is nothing wrong of him to do so and I don't think he is marginalizing anyone. I would have to agree that DRM could mean Digital Restrictions Managment. It is obviously restricting me from doing what I want with content on my computer. I am of course not stating that this is right or wrong or that I agree or disagree with DRM, but it is obviously restricting use on my computer.
Is it just me or does it seem like RMS created a new verion of the GPL because people stopped listening to him about the old one.
I don't think so. I'm a more BSD fan than anyone else, but I can see where he is coming from. He is simply trying to make it so GPL can't be used to restrict the rights of others.
People don't have to use it if they don't want to for things they want to write from scratch, but he is giving the option for authors who want to use a GPL license but don't want their works to be used down the line by someone else for DRM and other freedom restricting type of software.
No one has to change over to GPL3 if they don't want to. So either do or don't. No need to complain.
Back in 1996 when my family got Internet access, dialup access was almost the norm among the middle class families where we lived in coastal North Carolina.
Back in 1996. I had the computer in my bed room with a BIOS password and about 3 local ISPs that I had passwords for. *coughs*
However, as my parents believed (and it turned out to be true) I ended up becoming quite successful in the technology industry because they gave me free reign over the computer.
Blogs have always been overhyped and overrated. Who cares what you had for breakfast, or how someone cut you off in traffic today, or how you want to screw that cute new girl at work, or how your boss sucks?
Seriously, I hate reality TV more than most people, but for some reason they remain popular. Its basically normal people watching normal people and other than the fake drama I don't know what what people see in it.
You don't. I don't get food stamps, a welfare check, my kids don't go to public schools (I don't have any), but I pay taxes that go into these programs. My real estate tax goes straight to the school district. I don't use that service.
Therin lies the problem. One cannot control how his taxes are spent.
However, one can control how much taxes one pays.
In fact, my recommendation is not to pay them at all if you can.
How you may ask? Well... It depends. I know plenty of people who don't pay taxes.
In theory, you just have to not own anything, buy anything, or make any money. However, my employer reports me as making money, so I can't use that theory.
I can however say I made less money (in theory). However, sometimes this requires paying an accountant sums of money and in the end I end up saving more money by paying taxes.
There's no rule in chess that says nuclear weapons can't be used, but that lack doesn't mean you can nuke your opponent.
Actually, that would be against international law and if you had a nuke I'm sure your opponent would let you win, but I think you'd have more to worry about the team of highly trained anti-terrorist soldiers that kind of like the guys from Rainbow 6.
What you are thinking of would be like if we played a game of chess and I started playing a boom box really loud with Vanilla Ice while every time it was your turn while a group of naked midgets danced around us.
I'm sure its not against the rules, but I think it is quite questionable.
However, thats when have things called "house rules" to append to chess. Seeing you like have your friends throw things at me and I like to play music loudly, we could come to a personal agreement that we won't do those things.
Then again, we might decide on "house rules" to make the game more fun. Lets say every time we take a chess pecie we get to zap our opponent with an electric taser.
I think most games and rules are like that. All things are allowed unless specifically denied except for things that would be rude or illegal. I don't see why a parachute would be against the rules seeing it was actually solving the problem.
These New Mexico Tech students 'thought outside the box', and in doing so, completely subverted the whole point of the competition. Using this strategy, they managed to net second place, and they get a newspaper article for it.
And no I wasn't going to do the cliche, but remember the story about the millions NASA pumped into making the ballpoint pen that could be used in zero gravity, but the Soviets saved time and money by using a pencil. (Even though I remember reading a snopes article)
But the lesson is the same. In the real world, you goal is to accomplish tasks and it doesn't matter how sometimes.
I know about a month ago this came up in an article about how OSX/Linux users could face issues because they felt to secure.
I dunno. How many Mac/Linux users still open attachments from strangers just because they can and say "HA HA! You couldn't do this on a Windows PC without getting infected by a virus! Now I shall post in the forums about my little adventure of opening unsafe attachments!"
Seriously, most people are going on about this like Linux and Mac users like to browse google looking with the search phrase "infect my computer with a virus" and then try to open as many of these files as possible to prove the world they have a secure system or something.
What happens when the power dies and all of those sitting in seats fall on their asses?
If your are in a sub 1000 meters under water, and the power fails... I think falling on your ass is the least of your worries.
Re:I never understood gaming...
on
Flashback NES
·
· Score: 1
All I saw was him stating that he, personally, never had the desire to sit and play video games, and that he'd rather write them.
I think that is a problem with the industry actually. This has nothing to do with the grandparent or the great grandparent post, but a gripe I've got with modern developers. I've played many games in which I thought to myself "My god. Did the guys who made this even sit down and play their own game? For that matter do they play any games at all? I know 20 other games that get this right."
Seriously, I think most MMOGs could learn from each other. When I played EQ for the first time I was appalled about how many mistakes that I had seen in Ultima Online, but the UO devs fixed. Later I read about how Brad Mcquaid (lead dev of EQ) had played UO for a week and then decided not to play anymore.
I mean if you don't like to play games, then how will you know if other people will like the ones you make.
I think it takes a game player to know what games are worth playing.
DRM is going to get "Good Enough" that for all practical purposes it will not be crackable.
By a human, yes.
But what happens when you have machines with more computer power than the collective brain power of humanity (say 2030? yeah its a long time away but we'll eventually get there) and someone has created strongAI?
I suppose it will be AI making DRM vs AI that is cracking it?
There are literally thousands of mystery books out there teaching our children how to be perfect killers.
If these books teach nothing else, if that lady named Jessica Fletcher shows up in your town, you should hold off on your murder plans;)
Drugs is a misused word in the english language
on
Games Are Not Drugs
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
Drugs used to mean medication and it still does.
But mostly people refer to drugs as a bad thing.
Like "He is on drugs" or "She gives special favors for drugs" when the meaning could be just about someone having to take allergy drugs or aids drugs or some one take a pharmacy drug for medical reasons.
One can't go about and say "That guy is addicted to AIDs drugs" because he'd most likley die without them.
However, because some medical drugs like morphine and cocaine turned out to be addicted, we ended up referring to them as a bad thing. Then we started calling things that were not medical drugs as drugs. You know... LSD and pot... While not calling tobacco and beer drugs.
I mean, one does not smoke tobacco and drink beer for cure ailments... Well maybe I do, but I don't expect medical benefits or a doctors prescription to buy a six pack. Now back to my point...
Because people who speak english have a bad habbit of making analogies like how a car engine is like Microsoft windows, we eventually started referring to anything addicting to be akin to drug use.
The truth of the matter is, anything can be addicting:
You know like breathing air and clean water. Religion can be addicting. Sex can be addicting. Reading books can be addicting. Exercise can be addicting. Eating and sitting on the coach can be addicting. Playing poker can be addicting. Posting on slashdot can be addicting. Sleeping can be addicting. Doing nothing can be addicting Doing everything can be addicting.
Any activity that stimulates the brain can cause an addiction. That is all there is to it. Some activities are more addicting than others and some habbits are harder to break than others.
However, this has nothing to do with drugs.
Certain drugs do give a euphoria or a brain stimulas that cannot be acheived otherwise and many people can get addicted because they haven't felt anything like it before and just want to do nothing but doing that.
While, most other activities that do not affect the mind directly with a chemical injested stimulus can be walked away from.
Well... At least until my Xbox720 or Playstation 4 has a direct neural interface into my brain via a cybernetic jack.
Slashdot Mirror
1. Someone posted the BeoWulf joke 5 posts up.
2. Supercomputer are basically BeoWulf clusters
3. Someone else posted the same joke 3 posts up, but included "Will it run linux".
4. It isn't the first time someone has made the mistake of their/they're
5. You aren't the first to point that out to anyone.
6. Somone else will reply to your post and point that out two posts after mine.
7. Someone else in this comment thread will also make misuse of their and they're.
8. Somone two posts down from your original will also make a mention of a Beowulf cluster.
9. And 5 posts after that another will try to get modded funny by trying to include "In Soviet Russia, only old people use Beowulf Clusters Running linux."
Really... Soviet russia cliches may still be funny, but Beowulf and "Will it run linux" aren't.
Please think of the children and refrain from mentioning either two ever again. If you are tempted to mention it, it means 5 other people already have by the time somone posts it.
No one has to say. Really... They don't.
This is the internet we are talking about. You have to have a lowercase i or e infront of everything.
Like eFecting or iFecting.
Or so they can sit in class and play online games while the prof is droning on and on?
Well, at least they are in class and not in their dorm rooms skipping class to play online games *cough* not that I would know anything about that *cough*.
Secondly, if you are in class and are playing online games, chances are your just not interested in what the professor is teaching and would be doing something else without the laptop.
Before we had laptops, we had kids playing games on their TI calculators. Before that people either slept or just wrote notes.
Like many people say... Guns don't kill people. People kill people.
Likewise, laptops don't make people not pay attention. They just don't want to pay attention.
Don't blame technology for people's shortcomings.
This must be stopped now. If this continues, then they may start telling students where to live, or what books to buy.
On the bright side, students will most likley pay less for their laptop than they will for their books.
Tinfoil
I wanna hire this guy [ebaumsworld.com] to clean out my inbox!
Speaking of content thieves and spammers...
Reuters is reporting that 'slashdot poster Vertinox on Tuesday said he aims to deliver its new Blu-ray DVD format to his home on day that coincides with Sony prying his old DVD player from his dead cold hands.
I wonder if Apple is going to go this route next. It would be certainly far more usable than a dedicated gaming console.
Thats my biggest gripe about this new version:
Graphics and Video Support
* Intel GMA950 graphics processor with 64MB of DDR2 SDRAM shared with main memory.
Shared memory? Yuck! If you could only get a 128mb or a 256mb I'd get one. However, I bet it would be more than $1,000, but I'd still be interested.
When apple did the conference in January I bought the stock at 76 and then it jumped to 86 with my hopes it would keep on going, but then when Intel reported badly it dropped down into the upper 60's. Right now it is hovering in the upper 68's and I wondering why the stock price is down with the impending announcement.
I like RMS, his ideas, and his work on GNU, but when he starts spouting off about "Treacherous Computing" and "Digital Restrictions Management" instead of using the traditonally accepted names (trusted computing and digital rights management, respectively), he just marginalizes himself and his positions.
Traditionally accepted names? What is this tradition you speak of?
I don't think we were talking about DRM back in the 1800's. Heck I didn't hear about DRM until the late 1990's and then I don't think society came up with it.
But seriously, what he says is basically true. Trusted computing and Digital Rights Managment are phrases created to bias wording in someones favor (say the coporations). He is simply pointing out his bias.
We do it every day:
Insurgent or Freedom Fighter
Revolutionary or Patriot
Theft or Copyright Infringment
Many phrases in the Englsih language mean the same thing, but each phrase has a different connotation that has a bias.
There is nothing wrong of him to do so and I don't think he is marginalizing anyone. I would have to agree that DRM could mean Digital Restrictions Managment. It is obviously restricting me from doing what I want with content on my computer. I am of course not stating that this is right or wrong or that I agree or disagree with DRM, but it is obviously restricting use on my computer.
Is it just me or does it seem like RMS created a new verion of the GPL because people stopped listening to him about the old one.
I don't think so. I'm a more BSD fan than anyone else, but I can see where he is coming from. He is simply trying to make it so GPL can't be used to restrict the rights of others.
People don't have to use it if they don't want to for things they want to write from scratch, but he is giving the option for authors who want to use a GPL license but don't want their works to be used down the line by someone else for DRM and other freedom restricting type of software.
No one has to change over to GPL3 if they don't want to. So either do or don't. No need to complain.
Teens always rebel from their parents.. but some take it too far.. and the Internet allows them to do it.
So did cars and backseats in the 1950's.
Back in 1996 when my family got Internet access, dialup access was almost the norm among the middle class families where we lived in coastal North Carolina.
Back in 1996. I had the computer in my bed room with a BIOS password and about 3 local ISPs that I had passwords for. *coughs*
However, as my parents believed (and it turned out to be true) I ended up becoming quite successful in the technology industry because they gave me free reign over the computer.
Blogs have always been overhyped and overrated. Who cares what you had for breakfast, or how someone cut you off in traffic today, or how you want to screw that cute new girl at work, or how your boss sucks?
Seriously, I hate reality TV more than most people, but for some reason they remain popular. Its basically normal people watching normal people and other than the fake drama I don't know what what people see in it.
You don't. I don't get food stamps, a welfare check, my kids don't go to public schools (I don't have any), but I pay taxes that go into these programs. My real estate tax goes straight to the school district. I don't use that service.
Therin lies the problem. One cannot control how his taxes are spent.
However, one can control how much taxes one pays.
In fact, my recommendation is not to pay them at all if you can.
How you may ask? Well... It depends. I know plenty of people who don't pay taxes.
In theory, you just have to not own anything, buy anything, or make any money. However, my employer reports me as making money, so I can't use that theory.
I can however say I made less money (in theory). However, sometimes this requires paying an accountant sums of money and in the end I end up saving more money by paying taxes.
Why were some games (Gauntlet, Asteroids) trimmed over legal issues, if the downloads were legal?
Midway owns the rights to those I think.
I recently bought a bargin bin Gauntlet for Nintendo Gameboy Advance.
There's no rule in chess that says nuclear weapons can't be used, but that lack doesn't mean you can nuke your opponent.
Actually, that would be against international law and if you had a nuke I'm sure your opponent would let you win, but I think you'd have more to worry about the team of highly trained anti-terrorist soldiers that kind of like the guys from Rainbow 6.
What you are thinking of would be like if we played a game of chess and I started playing a boom box really loud with Vanilla Ice while every time it was your turn while a group of naked midgets danced around us.
I'm sure its not against the rules, but I think it is quite questionable.
However, thats when have things called "house rules" to append to chess. Seeing you like have your friends throw things at me and I like to play music loudly, we could come to a personal agreement that we won't do those things.
Then again, we might decide on "house rules" to make the game more fun. Lets say every time we take a chess pecie we get to zap our opponent with an electric taser.
I think most games and rules are like that. All things are allowed unless specifically denied except for things that would be rude or illegal. I don't see why a parachute would be against the rules seeing it was actually solving the problem.
These New Mexico Tech students 'thought outside the box', and in doing so, completely subverted the whole point of the competition. Using this strategy, they managed to net second place, and they get a newspaper article for it.
And no I wasn't going to do the cliche, but remember the story about the millions NASA pumped into making the ballpoint pen that could be used in zero gravity, but the Soviets saved time and money by using a pencil. (Even though I remember reading a snopes article)
But the lesson is the same. In the real world, you goal is to accomplish tasks and it doesn't matter how sometimes.
I know about a month ago this came up in an article about how OSX/Linux users could face issues because they felt to secure.
I dunno. How many Mac/Linux users still open attachments from strangers just because they can and say "HA HA! You couldn't do this on a Windows PC without getting infected by a virus! Now I shall post in the forums about my little adventure of opening unsafe attachments!"
Seriously, most people are going on about this like Linux and Mac users like to browse google looking with the search phrase "infect my computer with a virus" and then try to open as many of these files as possible to prove the world they have a secure system or something.
What happens when the power dies and all of those sitting in seats fall on their asses?
If your are in a sub 1000 meters under water, and the power fails... I think falling on your ass is the least of your worries.
All I saw was him stating that he, personally, never had the desire to sit and play video games, and that he'd rather write them.
I think that is a problem with the industry actually. This has nothing to do with the grandparent or the great grandparent post, but a gripe I've got with modern developers. I've played many games in which I thought to myself "My god. Did the guys who made this even sit down and play their own game? For that matter do they play any games at all? I know 20 other games that get this right."
Seriously, I think most MMOGs could learn from each other. When I played EQ for the first time I was appalled about how many mistakes that I had seen in Ultima Online, but the UO devs fixed. Later I read about how Brad Mcquaid (lead dev of EQ) had played UO for a week and then decided not to play anymore.
I mean if you don't like to play games, then how will you know if other people will like the ones you make.
I think it takes a game player to know what games are worth playing.
And even if iTunes shut down tomorrow, I would lose 0% of my music.
;)
No, but if your iPod explodes, hard drive crashes, and all your CD-Rs melt in a fire all simultaneously, then you'd be shit out of luck.
DRM is going to get "Good Enough" that for all practical purposes it will not be crackable.
By a human, yes.
But what happens when you have machines with more computer power than the collective brain power of humanity (say 2030? yeah its a long time away but we'll eventually get there) and someone has created strongAI?
I suppose it will be AI making DRM vs AI that is cracking it?
There are literally thousands of mystery books out there teaching our children how to be perfect killers.
;)
If these books teach nothing else, if that lady named Jessica Fletcher shows up in your town, you should hold off on your murder plans
Drugs used to mean medication and it still does.
But mostly people refer to drugs as a bad thing.
Like "He is on drugs" or "She gives special favors for drugs" when the meaning could be just about someone having to take allergy drugs or aids drugs or some one take a pharmacy drug for medical reasons.
One can't go about and say "That guy is addicted to AIDs drugs" because he'd most likley die without them.
However, because some medical drugs like morphine and cocaine turned out to be addicted, we ended up referring to them as a bad thing. Then we started calling things that were not medical drugs as drugs. You know... LSD and pot... While not calling tobacco and beer drugs.
I mean, one does not smoke tobacco and drink beer for cure ailments... Well maybe I do, but I don't expect medical benefits or a doctors prescription to buy a six pack. Now back to my point...
Because people who speak english have a bad habbit of making analogies like how a car engine is like Microsoft windows, we eventually started referring to anything addicting to be akin to drug use.
The truth of the matter is, anything can be addicting:
You know like breathing air and clean water.
Religion can be addicting.
Sex can be addicting.
Reading books can be addicting.
Exercise can be addicting.
Eating and sitting on the coach can be addicting.
Playing poker can be addicting.
Posting on slashdot can be addicting.
Sleeping can be addicting.
Doing nothing can be addicting
Doing everything can be addicting.
Any activity that stimulates the brain can cause an addiction. That is all there is to it. Some activities are more addicting than others and some habbits are harder to break than others.
However, this has nothing to do with drugs.
Certain drugs do give a euphoria or a brain stimulas that cannot be acheived otherwise and many people can get addicted because they haven't felt anything like it before and just want to do nothing but doing that.
While, most other activities that do not affect the mind directly with a chemical injested stimulus can be walked away from.
Well... At least until my Xbox720 or Playstation 4 has a direct neural interface into my brain via a cybernetic jack.