This is quite unlike the Star Wars Lego project that was posted last week. Rather than building scenes out of legos, this artist mostly uses pre-built pieces to lay out suggestive tableus. Which is not to say it isn't a creative or amusing re-interpretation, but it's not such a show of mad devotion and arete. I am, however, reminded of the Screenshots project that depicted historical scenes in a Sims-like CG style...
Many people have pointed out that challenges to the ballot should have been made before the election. But the potential confusion between the Gore dot and the Buchanan dot were only the lesser part of the problem. The issue is that the ballot didn't match up with the sample ballot that was given out before the election and posted at the polling place. People who looked at that ballot to figure out how to vote (I know I did) might well have gone by position, especially if the name-hole correspondence was the least bit unclear. That's the basis on which to challenge this ballot.
Also worth noting is that Buchanan himself has stated that he doesn't think he deserves most of those votes, and he'd like us to find out who they were meant for. You have to admire that, considering that the man can't be a Gore fan...
This might be true if the Greens were a small, young party based around a few popular characters, like the Reform party. In fact, they're a well-established organization with over 250 candidates running in the 2000 American elections, as well as allied green parties throughout the world. To some extent, they're willing to bend the party line to admit good, honest candidates (e.g., Nader himself), but they're hardly too small to hold together in the face of popularity.
Who cares whether the Columbine murderers were geeks (or nazis or gun-nuts or drugged-out or insufficiently loved)? The point is that the media thought they were members of the geek-computer-gaming subculture, and in the wake of the massacre good people were undeservingly harassed and punished. This is the issue that requires our attention.
Nor does it matter that the writers who claimed to identify with their anger might have identified with a false image. The anger and alienation expressed here are no less powerful for it. Whatever the final verdict on Columbine is, the mistreatment of nonconformist youth that was brought to light is beyond doubt genuine.
Tux grows to 40 times original size, stomps off to terrorize Redmond.
More radiation and he'll gain the power of speech: "Hello, Mr. Gates..."
- M
Re:One last defense of my gender on /.
on
Deja For Sale
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· Score: 1
I think you're making an erroneous assumption about the replies you receive -- unless I should conclude from the numerous "RMS is a goat-f****er" replies I've gotten that someone is persecuting me for my (heretofore unrecognized) inter-species yearnings.
I strongly agree. Please ask questions that are balanced. Don't give the candidates a ready-made opinion to agree with -- and don't convince them that we're all unreasonable ranting ideologues.
You know, it would be easy to post something that looked a whole lot like DeCSS... someday it might be interesting to see how many of those copies of the code descramble every DVD into a banner ad for pr0n...
I believe that respect for the dead is a meaningful concept. However, I also believe that the dead are gone, permanently, and that god -- if any such thing exists -- doesn't really care what we do with their bodies.
Therefore, respect for mortal remains is valuable only insofar as it respects the wishes of the living (either to comfort the survivors or quell the fears of the not-dead-yet). If Einstein volunteered his brain for research, and his family never complained, then I see nothing morally offensive about what was done with it.
Pragmatically wasteful, maybe.
(though maybe not, if we can study the brain more expertly than we could have had it been decanted right away)
Doesn't running the client waste a lot of electricity?
Many modern computers can enter low power-usage states when they detect they are idle. This mostly involves powering down the monitor, stopping the hard drive, and allowing the CPU to enter a slower idle state that does not produce as much heat. Running the client on a normally idle should not affect its ability to power down the monitor, which is a significant part of the power usage.
However, the hard drives of a power-saving machine may be prevented from spinning down if the client continues to periodically save or load blocks to disk. If you have multiple hard drives in your machine, you may want to consider ensuring that your client buffers and logs are on the hard drive that is most likely to have other activity as well (such as your OS swap file, or OS System directory), allowing the other less frequently accessed drives to spin-down unaffected. You might also want to consider enabling the Client's "nodisk" mode so that it only uses RAM for its operations, but be aware that your work may be lost if your computer crashes or loses power (wasting the power and idle cycles that the client could have used for productive work if it wasn't lost). You might also want to be aware of the fact that spinning up/down your hard drives can actually reduce its lifetime.
Additionally it is true that the Client will also probably prevent your CPU idle from entering its reduced power consumption idle cycle mode (sometimes called "HLT" mode in x86 processors). However, the actual power consumption by the CPU processor alone is actually a minor portion of the total usage by the computer (much less than 20% usually), and entering the lower usage idle mode only reduces that amount slightly. Note that this idle mode is unrelated to the CPU frequency-lowering that is sometimes done automatically by APM services when no user interactivity is detected (the client will not interfere with this reduction). You should also be aware that sometimes computer fans run only when excessive heat is detected (such as from a continuously operating CPU or hard drive). These cooling fans are an additional source of power usage.
Overall, the actual difference in power consumption by computers that are running the client during periods of time when they are normally left on (for unrelated purposes) is very minor....
- Michael Cohn
misunderstanding metaphor
on
Men of Zeal
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· Score: 2
Note that in Jonas' piece, the "men of zeal" are not admirable free software advocates. They're the companies that release free-OS versions of proprietary software, and the free software supporters who embrace them. He's arguing that these "men of wellmeaning and zeal but without understanding" may ultimately hurt the movement, unless we remain focused on our freedom.
I don't think the term "zeal" can't be applied otherwise (as many posters are), but that is how it was used here.
I don't know... if public terminals deliberately adopted easily-fooled censorware, that might be a reasonable compromise. It would be a sort of "opt-out" system where the young and impressionable couldn't stumble onto anything, but those who bothered to learn something would have complete freedom.
I'm sure censor-happy parents would be quick to point out that kids' computer skills develop much more quickly than their life skills. I won't argue the concept here, though.
I'm not sure Akamai's refusal to implement blocking is so much "saying no" as "lauging their asses off." As far as I can tell, any solution to this problem would require Akamai to 1) engage in performance-degrading communications to ensure there's no blocking software on the computer making a request or 2) set up blocking software itself. And even with 1) there's always proxying...
So I'm pretty sure N2H2 goes on the clueless buffoon list for this one. This makes about as much sense as a parent going to congress and telling them the networks can't show sexual content because he's afraid his kid might see it. And it has about as much chance of... oh.
Well, as long as the government doesn't get involved, it's still stupid.
Literary nitpick: Brave New World was about a future in which genetic engineering, eugenics, and behavioral programming were used to create happy, ignorant niche-people. When most people say "brave new world" in relation to a techno-dystopian scenario, they're actually invoking 1984. The biggest difference is that BNW actually made a decent argument for its ability to make 99.99% of the people genuinely happy, whereas in 1984 there was little question that everything sucked.
Slashdot Mirror
. . . and may the Slashdot 2017 equivalent of Natalie Portman trolls completely ignore her existence.
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Go ahead, blame me... I voted for Nader!
This is quite unlike the Star Wars Lego project that was posted last week. Rather than building scenes out of legos, this artist mostly uses pre-built pieces to lay out suggestive tableus. Which is not to say it isn't a creative or amusing re-interpretation, but it's not such a show of mad devotion and arete. I am, however, reminded of the Screenshots project that depicted historical scenes in a Sims-like CG style...
-----
Go ahead, blame me... I voted for Nader!
Mon dieu! An apology, on Slashdot! Taco, we need a new entry in the hall of fame!
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Go ahead, blame me... I voted for Nader!
Many people have pointed out that challenges to the ballot should have been made before the election. But the potential confusion between the Gore dot and the Buchanan dot were only the lesser part of the problem. The issue is that the ballot didn't match up with the sample ballot that was given out before the election and posted at the polling place. People who looked at that ballot to figure out how to vote (I know I did) might well have gone by position, especially if the name-hole correspondence was the least bit unclear. That's the basis on which to challenge this ballot.
Also worth noting is that Buchanan himself has stated that he doesn't think he deserves most of those votes, and he'd like us to find out who they were meant for. You have to admire that, considering that the man can't be a Gore fan...
- Michael
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Go ahead, blame me... I voted for Nader!
The Texan voter's dilemma is an interesting one... do we vote Bush out of office, or take one on the chin for America by keeping him here?
- Michael
Hey, I wrote that program back in 1980! You will be hearing from my lawyer.
- Michael Cohn
This might be true if the Greens were a small, young party based around a few popular characters, like the Reform party. In fact, they're a well-established organization with over 250 candidates running in the 2000 American elections, as well as allied green parties throughout the world. To some extent, they're willing to bend the party line to admit good, honest candidates (e.g., Nader himself), but they're hardly too small to hold together in the face of popularity.
- Michael Cohn
Who cares whether the Columbine murderers were geeks (or nazis or gun-nuts or drugged-out or insufficiently loved)? The point is that the media thought they were members of the geek-computer-gaming subculture, and in the wake of the massacre good people were undeservingly harassed and punished. This is the issue that requires our attention.
Nor does it matter that the writers who claimed to identify with their anger might have identified with a false image. The anger and alienation expressed here are no less powerful for it. Whatever the final verdict on Columbine is, the mistreatment of nonconformist youth that was brought to light is beyond doubt genuine.
- Michael
Tux grows to 40 times original size, stomps off to terrorize Redmond.
More radiation and he'll gain the power of speech: "Hello, Mr. Gates..."
- M
I think you're making an erroneous assumption about the replies you receive -- unless I should conclude from the numerous "RMS is a goat-f****er" replies I've gotten that someone is persecuting me for my (heretofore unrecognized) inter-species yearnings.
- Michael
I strongly agree. Please ask questions that are balanced. Don't give the candidates a ready-made opinion to agree with -- and don't convince them that we're all unreasonable ranting ideologues.
- Michael
Please tell us more about this Please Change Beliefs site.
You know, it would be easy to post something that looked a whole lot like DeCSS... someday it might be interesting to see how many of those copies of the code descramble every DVD into a banner ad for pr0n...
- Michael Cohn
Before you rush out to grab the latest, neatest technology[1], take a minute to remember who threatened to "firewall [Napster] at your computer".
Let's show them we have something like a memory and something like a conscience.
Michael Cohn
[1] and I admit Crusoe sounds pretty neat
Not bad. This is the kind of response that might prove useful to trolls when they grow out of their juvenile insensitivity.
- Michael Cohn
Evil. Debatably prosecutable. But why prosecute over the nature of volunteerism, rather than for psychological abuse?
- Michael Cohn
I believe that respect for the dead is a meaningful concept. However, I also believe that the dead are gone, permanently, and that god -- if any such thing exists -- doesn't really care what we do with their bodies.
Therefore, respect for mortal remains is valuable only insofar as it respects the wishes of the living (either to comfort the survivors or quell the fears of the not-dead-yet). If Einstein volunteered his brain for research, and his family never complained, then I see nothing morally offensive about what was done with it.
Pragmatically wasteful, maybe.
(though maybe not, if we can study the brain more expertly than we could have had it been decanted right away)
- Michael Cohn
How on earth do you justify a corporation using intimidation and fear to force people to toe the line? When they are NOT paid?
If you weren't being paid or otherwise compensated, how did they intimidate you?
I'm reminded of the Stanford Prison Experiment...
- Michael Cohn
but I do wonder with these pay schemes if the payment will actually be enough to cover the cost of electricity. Hurm.
I quote the distributed.net FAQ:
- Michael Cohn
Note that in Jonas' piece, the "men of zeal" are not admirable free software advocates. They're the companies that release free-OS versions of proprietary software, and the free software supporters who embrace them. He's arguing that these "men of wellmeaning and zeal but without understanding" may ultimately hurt the movement, unless we remain focused on our freedom.
I don't think the term "zeal" can't be applied otherwise (as many posters are), but that is how it was used here.
- Michael Cohn
I don't know... if public terminals deliberately adopted easily-fooled censorware, that might be a reasonable compromise. It would be a sort of "opt-out" system where the young and impressionable couldn't stumble onto anything, but those who bothered to learn something would have complete freedom.
I'm sure censor-happy parents would be quick to point out that kids' computer skills develop much more quickly than their life skills. I won't argue the concept here, though.
- Michael Cohn
I'm not sure Akamai's refusal to implement blocking is so much "saying no" as "lauging their asses off." As far as I can tell, any solution to this problem would require Akamai to 1) engage in performance-degrading communications to ensure there's no blocking software on the computer making a request or 2) set up blocking software itself. And even with 1) there's always proxying...
So I'm pretty sure N2H2 goes on the clueless buffoon list for this one. This makes about as much sense as a parent going to congress and telling them the networks can't show sexual content because he's afraid his kid might see it. And it has about as much chance of... oh.
Well, as long as the government doesn't get involved, it's still stupid.
- Michael Cohn
Welcome to a brave new world. :P
Literary nitpick: Brave New World was about a future in which genetic engineering, eugenics, and behavioral programming were used to create happy, ignorant niche-people. When most people say "brave new world" in relation to a techno-dystopian scenario, they're actually invoking 1984. The biggest difference is that BNW actually made a decent argument for its ability to make 99.99% of the people genuinely happy, whereas in 1984 there was little question that everything sucked.
- Michael Cohn
In case you missed it in the theatres, go to theforce.net and see the episode II trailer! But if you do, make sure you also go to the FAQ...
- Michael Cohn
Q: And, up to this point, have any of the "Windows killer" features been GUI related?
A: No.
Q: Is Linux hindered in killing Windows in mainstream markets by its lack of simple, high-quality GUI features?
A: Yes.
Q: Are companies used to producing commercial software likely to be able to help Linux develop such features?
A: Yes.
Q: Then why complain?
- Michael Cohn