First of all, the slashdot user who submitted the story is the same one who's posting this so-called "hole" on the mailing list to begin with. Go read his first message, then Stallman's reply, then his next message, then Stallman's next reply. There's no hole in the GPL; or if there is, then this isn't it. This guy seems to just be trying to stir up controversy so that he can get mentioned on Slashdot, or maybe get a movie contract, or something.
And boo to Slashdot for posting this ridiculous story without actually reading the links first. There's been far too much of that lately, as the comments keep seeming to indicate...
I'm sure that if we used the collective technical expertise of Slashdot, we could easily extract some DNA from the T-rex's bones and begin genetically engineering an army of superintelligent Tyrannosaurs with which to stomp Amazon.com's corporate offices into dust.
The real question is, what happens if the Tyrannosaurs decide to take over the world? There would be little we could do to stop them, especially since they would probably be flying fighter jets and bombing our military infrastructure. Because of this likelihood, we must purchase the T-rex skeleton and then destroy it. I'm not having no damn dirty dinos taking over my planet!
Given that it's called Crusoe, I think it's most likely that the processor will be used for rescuing people from desert islands, so it's probably some kind of GPS device!
is not whether someone has a certification, but whether the certification is worth anything. Hopefully this organization's program actually contains the material and instruction necessary to turn people into useful Linux sysadmins, or something resembling one. If so, then I think they will get the imprimatur of the Linux community, which will mean that this certification will mean something. And since no one body controls Linux, a Linux certification might mean something, compared to more centrally-controlled certification programs *cough*MCSE*cough*.
--- Dirtside | "Spirituality" is the irrational belief in the supernatural
I have a better idea, how about we DOS the patent office in meatspace, that is, use a modification of Milkman Dan's milk-a-pult to hurl burned-out software engineers at the US Patent Office building until they surrender?
--- Dirtside | "Spirituality" is the irrational belief in the supernatural
Just recently a few companies have announced all-optical switches, thus eliminating the light-to-electron conversion latency. (And vice versa.) I believe Cisco had something to do with it.
--- Dirtside | "Spirituality" is the irrational belief in the supernatural
(Dirtside stares in blank horror for a moment) I'm going to assume you had a brain fart, because the only other option is that you're an idiot.
What the sig means is that, on average, you will always lose money playing the lottery. Yes, some people will win, but if you total the amount of money spent on lottery tickets, N, and the total amount of money paid out by the state to the winners, X, you will find that N > X. Simple arithmetic then tells you that the average person loses money on the lottery, no matter what. Assume the population of lottery players is P; then the average person has spent N/P on the lottery, and has won X/P. N/P > X/P. Therefore you spend more than you win. Yes, SOME people will hit it big, but on average it's a losing gamble.
Just because there are only two options (win and lose) does not mean that the probabilities are equal. If this isn't blindingly obvious, then, well, sorry, but you shouldn't be posting on Slashdot.
--- Dirtside | "Spirituality" is the irrational belief in the supernatural
As an interesting aside I have noticed that when transmitting large volumes of data that network preformance (with almost any line but usually public ones) goes down in a linear or logarathmic fashion is there some phenomeon that causes this to happen (besides increased network trafic?)
This can happen if there's some kind of progressive bug in the transmission hardware/software. I remember in the early 90's that some modems (specifically, US Robotics) would enter something called a Death Spiral when you transferred any sizable amount of data. But that was really a hardware problem. I haven't really seen that kind of thing happen in a while, not over modern Ethernet networks/the internet. Hell, yesterday I uploaded 8 gigs of MP3s to my machine at home, and there wasn't one second of slowdown.
Also, we're not "losing data" as it were, it's just that a lot of times I'll have to reconnect to the FTP server or the SSH server, because it will spontaneously disconnect, or freeze up. We're still in the development phase, so it's not like we're losing customers... yet.:)
--- Dirtside | "Spirituality" is the irrational belief in the supernatural
It seems, or so I've been led to believe, that their East Coast facilities are much better than their West Coast facilities. Not hardware, but rather, people.
--- Dirtside | "Spirituality" is the irrational belief in the supernatural
My God, you're right! I didn't mean to defame the excellent financial package that is Microsoft Money. I'm so ashamed. Can you find it in your heart to forgive me?
--- Dirtside | "Spirituality" is the irrational belief in the supernatural
Don't use web hosting companies that are defective, like CIHost, or Digex. God, Digex sucks. For the past three months we've been dealing with their crap. We have three Solaris boxen at their facility in NoCal; ever since we've had them, they have had connection and bandwidth problems. We get timeouts; we get slow speeds; we get packet loss. Hell, the other day I had to FTP a 146 MB file from one to another. These machines are on a 100BaseT LAN. It never broke 15KB/s. Not to mention uploading the 146 MB file in the first place, which never broke 10KB/s.
Not to mention that they tend to tell you they'll call you right back, and then don't; they'll tell you something has been fixed, but they haven't tested it (and of course it's not fixed); and so forth. I would avoid Digex at all costs if I were you.
--- Dirtside | "Spirituality" is the irrational belief in the supernatural
That's right, interest-free loans, unlimited checking, no ATM fees, and there's a branch anywhere you can use a computer!*
(*Service requires you to turn over your immortal soul to Microsoft for all eternity. Bank of Microsoft is only compatible with Windows 2000, Microsoft Money 7.0, Microsoft Wallet 4.5, Microsoft Hidden Fees 3.0, Microsoft S&L Scandal 6.1, and Microsoft Surly Bank Tellers 2.0.)
--- Dirtside | "Spirituality" is the irrational belief in the supernatural
Maybe we can return the rebates to Microsoft in exchange for a promise to write better software.
Or better yet, if every Californian does this, we'll have $14 billion, which we can use to make a competing company to write better software. Say, "Macrosoft".
--- Dirtside | "Spirituality" is the irrational belief in the supernatural
It occurred to me that (I'm playing devil's advocate here) maybe this kind of thing is the exception to law enforcement rather than the rule. (First we have to determine whether Ramsey was actually breaking the law, but that's not the point; this post is about law enforcement procedures.)
We always hear about some or other law enforcement agency doing ridiculously wrong things like confiscating someone's car because he drove past a drug lab, or crap like that. My question is, how often does this kind of nonsense happen in relation to the number of times when, say, a company is making illegal eavesdropping devices and the gov't sends them a letter saying, "Cease and desist now or we're going to boot you in the head." Of course you'd never hear about those instances because, let's face it, how exciting is a letter?
Now I'm not saying that one or the other is more common, but it certainly would be a good thing to know before we condem our entire government as nothing but a group of nogoodniks.
--- Dirtside | "Spirituality" is the irrational belief in the supernatural
The worst-case scenario for something like this is that someone creates or finds an airborne agent that has almost no resistance among the population, spreads quickly through mere breathing, and has an incubation time of at least a month. That way, practically everyone on Earth would be infected by the time the first cases started showing symptoms, and then everyone dies horribly, and the population goes from 6 billion down to nearly nothing.
Why hasn't this happened yet? Well for one thing, there aren't any organisms like that. For whatever reason they just don't exist. It might not even be physically feasible for such an organism to exist, so we might not even ever have to worry about it.
Secondly, the kinds of people who would want to destroy the entire human race usually lack the key component of sanity; they are not necessarily thinking straight. So something like this is usually beyond their capacity.
Yeah, I know, all it takes is one person who's stable enough and smart enough, with enough resources, to create something horrible and do horrible things to the entire world. The problem is that if this was going to happen, I find it hard to believe that it wouldn't have already. I'm not saying it can't happen, but the chance is so remote that fretting about it is about as productive as fretting about whether or not aliens from Neptune are going to fry our brains.
Eternal vigilance is the price of freedom. As long as we keep watching, we'll be doing as good a job as we can, and worrying about it beyond that is pointless.
Gadgets are typically things that perform some useful function, but are considered "cool" or "novel". The wheel is an important advance but it's not a gadget in any sense of the word. Electronic organizers are gadgets (although I wouldn't say top 10); those little electronic stud finders you hold up to the wall, that's a gadget. James Bond's laser watch, now THAT'S a gadget.
--- Dirtside | "Spirituality" is the irrational belief in the supernatural
I sent the following email (Thanks, Babelfish!) to these three addresses:
Subject: Vous personnes horribles! (You horrible people!)
Je suis consterné par la réclamation de votre compagnie des dommages par l'association Leonardo. Votre compagnie ne peut posséder le Leonardo nommé plus que pape John Paul II peut posséder John nommé! Ce que vous avez fait est terrible et doit être puni. Votre compagnie mérite d'être mise hors des affaires pour un acte si mauvais. Je m'assurerai que chacun que je sais évite votre compagnie pour le reste de ma vie.
(English translation: I am appalled by your company's claim of damages by the Association Leonardo. Your company cannot own the name Leonardo any more than Pope John Paul II can own the name John! What you have done is terrible and must be punished. Your company deserves to be put out of business for such an evil act. I will make sure that everyone I know avoids your company for the rest of my life.)
Send a copy of this email (the French version!) to the addresses:
If this kind of thing keeps up -- police organizations acting subservient to business interests, without consideration for the rights of the individual -- eventually we're going to end up in among the worst of all possible worlds: one controlled by the corporations with no concern for the individual, and no rights except what the corporation gives you.
On another note, I would like to announce that I have trademarked and patented the use of every word in this comment. Anyone using the words "If," "this," "kind," etc. will be immediately sued for... one MILLION dollars!
It's interesting that I've never heard about this guy before, not to mention his hydrinos. I'm not a professional or academic scientist (I'm a programmer) but I do keep up with popular science (not the magazine, the topic) and something this earth-shaking seems like it would have been more well-known a long time ago.
We ought to wait for the results of some INDEPENDENT SCIENTIFIC TESTS before we assume that this is entirely bogus (although much of it does sound too good to be true) or that it's true.
Slashdot Mirror
And boo to Slashdot for posting this ridiculous story without actually reading the links first. There's been far too much of that lately, as the comments keep seeming to indicate...
The real question is, what happens if the Tyrannosaurs decide to take over the world? There would be little we could do to stop them, especially since they would probably be flying fighter jets and bombing our military infrastructure. Because of this likelihood, we must purchase the T-rex skeleton and then destroy it. I'm not having no damn dirty dinos taking over my planet!
Uh... isn't RH Linux already free? How is this any different from the school system adopting Linux of its own accord?
Given that it's called Crusoe, I think it's most likely that the processor will be used for rescuing people from desert islands, so it's probably some kind of GPS device!
Does this include driver's license testing?
--- Dirtside | "Spirituality" is the irrational belief in the supernatural
is not whether someone has a certification, but whether the certification is worth anything. Hopefully this organization's program actually contains the material and instruction necessary to turn people into useful Linux sysadmins, or something resembling one. If so, then I think they will get the imprimatur of the Linux community, which will mean that this certification will mean something. And since no one body controls Linux, a Linux certification might mean something, compared to more centrally-controlled certification programs *cough*MCSE*cough*.
--- Dirtside | "Spirituality" is the irrational belief in the supernatural
# df
total newspaper pages: 725580
newspaper pages used: 15887
newspaper pages free: 709693
--- Dirtside | "Spirituality" is the irrational belief in the supernatural
I have a better idea, how about we DOS the patent office in meatspace, that is, use a modification of Milkman Dan's milk-a-pult to hurl burned-out software engineers at the US Patent Office building until they surrender?
--- Dirtside | "Spirituality" is the irrational belief in the supernatural
Just recently a few companies have announced all-optical switches, thus eliminating the light-to-electron conversion latency. (And vice versa.) I believe Cisco had something to do with it.
--- Dirtside | "Spirituality" is the irrational belief in the supernatural
What the sig means is that, on average, you will always lose money playing the lottery. Yes, some people will win, but if you total the amount of money spent on lottery tickets, N, and the total amount of money paid out by the state to the winners, X, you will find that N > X. Simple arithmetic then tells you that the average person loses money on the lottery, no matter what. Assume the population of lottery players is P; then the average person has spent N/P on the lottery, and has won X/P. N/P > X/P. Therefore you spend more than you win. Yes, SOME people will hit it big, but on average it's a losing gamble.
Just because there are only two options (win and lose) does not mean that the probabilities are equal. If this isn't blindingly obvious, then, well, sorry, but you shouldn't be posting on Slashdot.
--- Dirtside | "Spirituality" is the irrational belief in the supernatural
This can happen if there's some kind of progressive bug in the transmission hardware/software. I remember in the early 90's that some modems (specifically, US Robotics) would enter something called a Death Spiral when you transferred any sizable amount of data. But that was really a hardware problem. I haven't really seen that kind of thing happen in a while, not over modern Ethernet networks/the internet. Hell, yesterday I uploaded 8 gigs of MP3s to my machine at home, and there wasn't one second of slowdown.
Also, we're not "losing data" as it were, it's just that a lot of times I'll have to reconnect to the FTP server or the SSH server, because it will spontaneously disconnect, or freeze up. We're still in the development phase, so it's not like we're losing customers... yet. :)
--- Dirtside | "Spirituality" is the irrational belief in the supernatural
It seems, or so I've been led to believe, that their East Coast facilities are much better than their West Coast facilities. Not hardware, but rather, people.
--- Dirtside | "Spirituality" is the irrational belief in the supernatural
My God, you're right! I didn't mean to defame the excellent financial package that is Microsoft Money. I'm so ashamed. Can you find it in your heart to forgive me?
--- Dirtside | "Spirituality" is the irrational belief in the supernatural
A direct competitor to Nutscrape Nazigator.
--- Dirtside | "Spirituality" is the irrational belief in the supernatural
Not to mention that they tend to tell you they'll call you right back, and then don't; they'll tell you something has been fixed, but they haven't tested it (and of course it's not fixed); and so forth. I would avoid Digex at all costs if I were you.
--- Dirtside | "Spirituality" is the irrational belief in the supernatural
(*Service requires you to turn over your immortal soul to Microsoft for all eternity. Bank of Microsoft is only compatible with Windows 2000, Microsoft Money 7.0, Microsoft Wallet 4.5, Microsoft Hidden Fees 3.0, Microsoft S&L Scandal 6.1, and Microsoft Surly Bank Tellers 2.0.)
--- Dirtside | "Spirituality" is the irrational belief in the supernatural
Or better yet, if every Californian does this, we'll have $14 billion, which we can use to make a competing company to write better software. Say, "Macrosoft".
--- Dirtside | "Spirituality" is the irrational belief in the supernatural
We always hear about some or other law enforcement agency doing ridiculously wrong things like confiscating someone's car because he drove past a drug lab, or crap like that. My question is, how often does this kind of nonsense happen in relation to the number of times when, say, a company is making illegal eavesdropping devices and the gov't sends them a letter saying, "Cease and desist now or we're going to boot you in the head." Of course you'd never hear about those instances because, let's face it, how exciting is a letter?
Now I'm not saying that one or the other is more common, but it certainly would be a good thing to know before we condem our entire government as nothing but a group of nogoodniks.
--- Dirtside | "Spirituality" is the irrational belief in the supernatural
The worst-case scenario for something like this is that someone creates or finds an airborne agent that has almost no resistance among the population, spreads quickly through mere breathing, and has an incubation time of at least a month. That way, practically everyone on Earth would be infected by the time the first cases started showing symptoms, and then everyone dies horribly, and the population goes from 6 billion down to nearly nothing.
Why hasn't this happened yet? Well for one thing, there aren't any organisms like that. For whatever reason they just don't exist. It might not even be physically feasible for such an organism to exist, so we might not even ever have to worry about it.
Secondly, the kinds of people who would want to destroy the entire human race usually lack the key component of sanity; they are not necessarily thinking straight. So something like this is usually beyond their capacity.
Yeah, I know, all it takes is one person who's stable enough and smart enough, with enough resources, to create something horrible and do horrible things to the entire world. The problem is that if this was going to happen, I find it hard to believe that it wouldn't have already. I'm not saying it can't happen, but the chance is so remote that fretting about it is about as productive as fretting about whether or not aliens from Neptune are going to fry our brains.
Eternal vigilance is the price of freedom. As long as we keep watching, we'll be doing as good a job as we can, and worrying about it beyond that is pointless.
Gadgets are typically things that perform some useful function, but are considered "cool" or "novel". The wheel is an important advance but it's not a gadget in any sense of the word. Electronic organizers are gadgets (although I wouldn't say top 10); those little electronic stud finders you hold up to the wall, that's a gadget. James Bond's laser watch, now THAT'S a gadget.
--- Dirtside | "Spirituality" is the irrational belief in the supernatural
You're a sick man, Hemos.
--- Dirtside | "Spirituality" is the irrational belief in the supernatural
Subject: Vous personnes horribles! (You horrible people!)
Je suis consterné par la réclamation de votre compagnie des dommages par l'association Leonardo. Votre compagnie ne peut posséder le Leonardo nommé plus que pape John Paul II peut posséder John nommé! Ce que vous avez fait est terrible et doit être puni. Votre compagnie mérite d'être mise hors des affaires pour un acte si mauvais. Je m'assurerai que chacun que je sais évite votre compagnie pour le reste de ma vie.
(English translation: I am appalled by your company's claim of damages by the Association Leonardo. Your company cannot own the name Leonardo any more than Pope John Paul II can own the name John! What you have done is terrible and must be punished. Your company deserves to be put out of business for such an evil act. I will make sure that everyone I know avoids your company for the rest of my life.)
Send a copy of this email (the French version!) to the addresses:
yves.delacour@leonardofinance.fr
fmonnot@leonardofinance.fr
valerie.virlouvet@leonardofinance.fr
That'll show the frogs! (Humor, folks, relax.)
On another note, I would like to announce that I have trademarked and patented the use of every word in this comment. Anyone using the words "If," "this," "kind," etc. will be immediately sued for... one MILLION dollars!
We ought to wait for the results of some INDEPENDENT SCIENTIFIC TESTS before we assume that this is entirely bogus (although much of it does sound too good to be true) or that it's true.
And can we PLEASE get someone to edit his articles for punctuation and typographical errors? It shouldn't be that hard...