I could care less about confusing the general public by 2% on hard disk size. It was a 2% difference back when measuring floppy disks of KB vs KiB. But now that we are in the terabyte range it is up to 9%. That means you lose over 92GiB on a 1TB disk.
This "fixed that for you" meme is quite obnoxious. Everything on the internet is archived and when you modify someone's quote to make it look like they said something other than what they actually said there is now a lie about what they said in the permanent record.
It's always been that way. Editors can't be experts at everything or even dabble in everything. And if you pay attention, a lot of real news media with professional journalists and editors can be just as misleading. The true value of/. - and the reason I have been here for the last 10 years - has always been the comments from people that know what they are taking about or are even directly involved in the story. e.g. the ex-mysql ceo posting in this thread or Dr. Lisi about his exceptionally simple theory or even ex-grad students of scientists' work being reported.
Anyway, if every story - or comment - were perfectly true and accurate you'd never get to exercise your brain, just inhale the information blindly. I don't want to do that.:)
Well said, AC. I'll add an excerpt from the Jargon file's Portrait of J. Random Hacker.:)
Also, the ties many hackers have to AI research and SF literature may have helped them to develop an idea of personhood that is inclusive rather than exclusive -- after all, if one's imagination readily grants full human rights to future AI programs, robots, dolphins, and extraterrestrial aliens, mere color and gender can't seem very important any more.
And being a "hacker" has nothing to do with breaking into computers. Give it up. You can't change the definition of a word yourself. The overwhelming majority of English speakers have already decided the definition; and that definition most definitely has something to do with race.:)
It's probably because a lot of us computer geeks aren't racist combined with the fact that a lot of us are introverted and have a hard time understanding people having irrational thoughts different from the obvious reality. I ignore nonsense such as whether one race is superior just the same as I ignore nonsense such as which god is superior. They seem like quite pointless subjects to me, even if the majority of the world cares so much about them. I can see how this looks like being close-minded.
That's my gut response, at least. More analytically, statistics like these have so many variables that there doesn't seem to be a way to pick out one, or even a set, of causes. So the motivation more seems to be rabble-rousing amongst the folks that like to argue or express righteous indignation about race rather than actually accomplishing anything.
I'm confused at his request, also. Perl is my mysql front-end and I can do absolutely anything with it. Maybe he is asking for the old MS Access style graphical "form" interface for inputting data and generating reports or perhaps he is talking about a GUI administrative interface like phpmyadmin.
Evidently you are a true Anonymous Coward. I'll explain. When posting from an account there is a checkbox labeled "No Karma bonus" which when checked causes your post to start with a score of 1 instead of the usual 2. I will demonstrate since this is precisely the proper off-topic opportunity to use it.:)
I find it interesting that you only express regret about telling the truth and not moving but no regret about actually breaking the law.
No jail time at all, no fine, a removable felony - I never heard of that, but I guess it means future job applications you can say "no" when asked if you have a felony which is what matters, right? These all seem to be reasonable downward adjustments of the sentence for the crime you don't seem to dispute being guilty of. So, to answer your question, I do think your legal punishment fit your crime. The extremely unfortunate incidental effects of losing your scholarship are not under purview of the judge; he can only choose between a finite range of punishments and obviously chose the least possible.
This had nothing to do with credit vs cash. We're talking about putting up with advertising vs paying directly for all goods and services.
Humans, by and large, are not a bunch of perfect capitalist Randroids willing to dole out the proper price for any goods and services rendered. They make many purchasing decisions with their instincts and incomplete information and are perfectly willing to put up with ads which collect the money from them indirectly because it puts off the pain (in the emotional sense) of paying directly.
A lot of indirect taxes work this way for the various governments to take money from you also. 8^) (e.g. the brilliant way that instead of raising income tax to pay for social security/medicare they lowered your salary and pretend your employer is paying half)
We like paying for things directly even less. This way we don't feel the pain of pulling our wallet out. It just increases the prices of everything we do buy by a bit.
Didn't IBM get in trouble with the U.S. government once before - resulting in big fines - for selling mainframes("supercomputers") to people behind the Iron Curtain(USSR itself?) during the Cold War? My search-fu is failing to pull up a valid reference to this. Maybe I made it up.:)
Perhaps there is an ethical concern regarding the fact that if you distribute via a torrent then the downloaders also become distributors of the content.
With the kind of material involved it could open up the "distributors" to repercussions in their home countries much more serious than those regarding copyright infringement; e.g. repercussions involving imprisonment, harassment, just being added to the wrong list, or even death in some places for treason.
To put some numbers behind your idea:
Each day about 63 people receive an organ transplant, but another 16 people on the waiting list die because not enough organs are available. http://www.fdhc.state.fl.us/MCHQ/Health_Facility_Regulation/Organ_Donors/index.shtml Although they cite no source for that statistic. I sent them an e-mail to find out. A web search shows others attributing the above quote to the US Department of Health and Human Services.
But do they have a PR guy savvy enough to advertise that fact and the related "enterprise" products by getting a mention in the WSJ and submitting the story to/. anonymously?
That's why the ol' security maxim of basing authentication on "something you have and something you know." a.k.a. multi-factor authentication. It's a lot harder to social engineer something they have away from someone.
If Wikileaks had an article posted about "How to refine uranium with sea water, bottle of bleach, and a house hold blender" then I would be concerned.
Interesting mention considering that obtaining uranium from seawater is quite possible and in fact Japan is developing capacity to do so so they don't have to rely on imported uranium to fuel their reactors. http://jolisfukyu.tokai-sc.jaea.go.jp/fukyu/mirai-en/2006/4_5.html
I think it was quite clever of them to use an X-box controller to steer the thing remotely. It's something most of the 18 to 20-something year old grunts will be familiar with.
I wonder what % of us really are programmers nowadays, though.
That post the other day about the future of many-core processors that stirred up a lot of insightful and interesting debate about heterogeneous vs homogeneous cores or shades thereof and the relation of that hardware to the code made me realize that those types of discussions/comments have been somewhat rare.
I don't see this as such a bad thing. I'm just pointing out that the/. audience is a lot broader today.
Slashdot Mirror
It amuses me that you counter one exaggerated absolute statement with another. ;)
This "fixed that for you" meme is quite obnoxious. Everything on the internet is archived and when you modify someone's quote to make it look like they said something other than what they actually said there is now a lie about what they said in the permanent record.
It's always been that way. Editors can't be experts at everything or even dabble in everything. And if you pay attention, a lot of real news media with professional journalists and editors can be just as misleading. The true value of /. - and the reason I have been here for the last 10 years - has always been the comments from people that know what they are taking about or are even directly involved in the story. e.g. the ex-mysql ceo posting in this thread or Dr. Lisi about his exceptionally simple theory or even ex-grad students of scientists' work being reported.
:)
Anyway, if every story - or comment - were perfectly true and accurate you'd never get to exercise your brain, just inhale the information blindly. I don't want to do that.
CMO for Chief Marketing Officer. Heh, that's a new one to me. Leave it to advertising folks to invent prestigious sounding job titles for themselves in order to try to move further up the hierarchy. ;)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chief_Marketing_Officer#External_links has a link which seems to indicate that's precisely why the CMO institue is trying to popularize the term:
Study: Marketing execs still lack boardroom clout 8^)
And being a "hacker" has nothing to do with breaking into computers. Give it up. You can't change the definition of a word yourself. The overwhelming majority of English speakers have already decided the definition; and that definition most definitely has something to do with race. :)
It's probably because a lot of us computer geeks aren't racist combined with the fact that a lot of us are introverted and have a hard time understanding people having irrational thoughts different from the obvious reality. I ignore nonsense such as whether one race is superior just the same as I ignore nonsense such as which god is superior. They seem like quite pointless subjects to me, even if the majority of the world cares so much about them. I can see how this looks like being close-minded.
That's my gut response, at least. More analytically, statistics like these have so many variables that there doesn't seem to be a way to pick out one, or even a set, of causes. So the motivation more seems to be rabble-rousing amongst the folks that like to argue or express righteous indignation about race rather than actually accomplishing anything.
I'm confused at his request, also. Perl is my mysql front-end and I can do absolutely anything with it. Maybe he is asking for the old MS Access style graphical "form" interface for inputting data and generating reports or perhaps he is talking about a GUI administrative interface like phpmyadmin.
Evidently you are a true Anonymous Coward. I'll explain. When posting from an account there is a checkbox labeled "No Karma bonus" which when checked causes your post to start with a score of 1 instead of the usual 2. I will demonstrate since this is precisely the proper off-topic opportunity to use it. :)
I find it interesting that you only express regret about telling the truth and not moving but no regret about actually breaking the law.
No jail time at all, no fine, a removable felony - I never heard of that, but I guess it means future job applications you can say "no" when asked if you have a felony which is what matters, right? These all seem to be reasonable downward adjustments of the sentence for the crime you don't seem to dispute being guilty of. So, to answer your question, I do think your legal punishment fit your crime. The extremely unfortunate incidental effects of losing your scholarship are not under purview of the judge; he can only choose between a finite range of punishments and obviously chose the least possible.
How long until google is indexing my underwear drawer?
;)
They long passed that stage since they are on "3. Profit!" now.
This had nothing to do with credit vs cash. We're talking about putting up with advertising vs paying directly for all goods and services.
Humans, by and large, are not a bunch of perfect capitalist Randroids willing to dole out the proper price for any goods and services rendered. They make many purchasing decisions with their instincts and incomplete information and are perfectly willing to put up with ads which collect the money from them indirectly because it puts off the pain (in the emotional sense) of paying directly.
A lot of indirect taxes work this way for the various governments to take money from you also. 8^) (e.g. the brilliant way that instead of raising income tax to pay for social security/medicare they lowered your salary and pretend your employer is paying half)
We like paying for things directly even less. This way we don't feel the pain of pulling our wallet out. It just increases the prices of everything we do buy by a bit.
Didn't IBM get in trouble with the U.S. government once before - resulting in big fines - for selling mainframes("supercomputers") to people behind the Iron Curtain(USSR itself?) during the Cold War? :)
My search-fu is failing to pull up a valid reference to this. Maybe I made it up.
Lot's of other examples and terms that folks have used for the phenomenon here:
http://ask.metafilter.com/84851/Who-remembers-an-article-about-The-Paul-Reiser-Effect
Perhaps there is an ethical concern regarding the fact that if you distribute via a torrent then the downloaders also become distributors of the content.
With the kind of material involved it could open up the "distributors" to repercussions in their home countries much more serious than those regarding copyright infringement; e.g. repercussions involving imprisonment, harassment, just being added to the wrong list, or even death in some places for treason.
"I propose we leave math to the machines and go play outside."
-- Calvin, from "Calvin and Hobbes" by Bill Watterson
Although they cite no source for that statistic. I sent them an e-mail to find out. A web search shows others attributing the above quote to the US Department of Health and Human Services.
But do they have a PR guy savvy enough to advertise that fact and the related "enterprise" products by getting a mention in the WSJ and submitting the story to /. anonymously?
I admit that most of my friends are online, though I occasionally meat some IRL.
Freudian confessions of cereal killer.
That's why the ol' security maxim of basing authentication on "something you have and something you know." a.k.a. multi-factor authentication. It's a lot harder to social engineer something they have away from someone.
If Wikileaks had an article posted about "How to refine uranium with sea water, bottle of bleach, and a house hold blender" then I would be concerned.
Interesting mention considering that obtaining uranium from seawater is quite possible and in fact Japan is developing capacity to do so so they don't have to rely on imported uranium to fuel their reactors. http://jolisfukyu.tokai-sc.jaea.go.jp/fukyu/mirai-en/2006/4_5.html
I think it was quite clever of them to use an X-box controller to steer the thing remotely. It's something most of the 18 to 20-something year old grunts will be familiar with.
I wonder what % of us really are programmers nowadays, though.
/. audience is a lot broader today.
That post the other day about the future of many-core processors that stirred up a lot of insightful and interesting debate about heterogeneous vs homogeneous cores or shades thereof and the relation of that hardware to the code made me realize that those types of discussions/comments have been somewhat rare.
I don't see this as such a bad thing. I'm just pointing out that the