I babelfished the text from English to French and back:
The soldiers look by using the system for several of its executions in the foreign countries, notes of Palmquist. " it is very intimidating when a navy carrying a gun goes up to civil and puts a question and the civil one cannot include/understand it, " says to him. " if you could more easily communicate with this person, much of tension is relieved. There is a certain advantage when the soldiers can communicate with the local rabble."
Rabble? Yeah, that probably communicates the attitude of american soldiers towards local populace correctly. Good luck!
Otherwise, the back-and-forth-translation was amazingly good.
I often make up passwords just by typing them. For example:
d7f8g8h9
j9f4h8g5
ascg6888
Can you see the logic?
Just put your hands on the keyboard and find something you can type quickly, and that's it. Very useful for root passwords and such, which you need to write often. Just don't use qwer1234 or any other trivial combination, and you're probably safe.
I'm not sure how easy it would be to make an algorithm to create such patterns. I hope not too easy.
In any case, I usually try to force nonregularity by deliberately making a word that has some crypting meaning. For example, bo0bsiii (self-explanatory) or vivaiv111 (long live IV beer !!!).
Sure, using a password generator would be safer, but those passwords are horribly slow to type.
What's so amazing about the cubes, except that they look cute?
The iPaq 36xx handheld models have about 206MHz StrongARM processor, with 16-64MB Flash and RAM. They have USB, they have everything. The price vary between $300-$600....and the size is about 5x3x0.6 inches, which is much less volume than the cube has.
But, of course, the iPaqs come with LoseCE preinstalled, although Linux works too. I don't know if Apache has yet been ported, but it might have.
While they are not cute cubes, they fit much better in your pocket.
What I'd like to see is server farms based on tiny ipaq-sized low-power processor cards. Just stuff one 4U box full of those and whheeee....
Microsoft's arguments for the proprietary software business are, in a way, rational and sound. Companies have benefited and will benefit from the proprietary model, possibly more than from the "service business" model of the open source. Attaching Microsoft's leach in your neck may give you profit, in some cases. GPL doesn't fit everywhere, true. It may, in some cases, be harmful also to certain software businesses and forms of innovation generally. Perhaps true.
What Microsoft doesn't want you to understand is that by playing their rational game, you lose, they win.
Doing business is much like playing games. No wonder some praise Go or other strategy games for learning business tactics. It's not just business, but all competition, such as evolution, is much based on "games".
Game theory is a branch of mathematics that deals with identifying winning strategies and situations in games, such as business.
Drama theory is a generalization of the game theory that takes into account irrationality. Irrationality, in this case, means just short-term irrationality. On long term, or on another scale, it's very rational.
''
Traditional models of "rational choice", such as those
based on Game Theory and Decision Theory tend to work on
the assumption that aims/preferences can be specified
prior to the decision process, and remain fixed during it.
Other approaches, by contrast, stress the dynamics of
preference change and problem re-formulation.''
Drama theory gives explanations to why people get mad, envious, revengeful, bullying, and what not. These are usually considered very negative aspects of life, and I'm not trying to say that they shouldn't be, but their function really is just level the playing field when you get stuck in a losing situation. They are rational at some level.
Revolutions, violent demonstrations, and wars (''war is just a continuation of politics'') are examples of trying to change the rules. Others more accepted ones are boycotts, work strikes, and so on. Religions are not usually rational - but amazingly they are often helpful to the followers. Even if a certain God of Vows (such as Mithra) doesn't exist, believing in his powers and making business deals or marriages in his name helps in building a strong society. Irrationality pays, big.
Microsoft wants businesses to play by the traditional rules of the business game. Supporting the proprietary business model may be rational in many cases. But the problem is that Microsoft has attained a game-theoretically sustainable winning position. You can only win by changing the rules, which may require slight "irrationality".
It's perfectly rational to get red mad at Microsoft, and give up short-term business opportunities, to perhaps be able to compete in a healthy market later.
Microsoft is also trying to talk generally about the ''best'' business model for software industry, although Linux and Open Source movements are an ad hoc response of the IT world to combat specially against Microsoft's unhealthy monopoly. The rationale for general context is completely irrational and irrelevant for the current specific situation in the operating system industry.
GPL means changing the rules, especially for this particular situation. It means starting a revolution, which may in some cases mean giving up the proprietary model even where it might have been useful otherwise. The target is Microsoft.
They're not looking for A job, they're looking for a job that pays them what they're used to with the skills and qualifications they have to offer.
Instead of swallowing their pride and picking up a job, ANY job to pay the bills, and in the mean time cutting way WAY back on their expenses so they can survive on that job, meager as it might be, at least they will be able to keep a roof over their heads.
It's not that simple. You can't run around looking for a job if you're turning hambugers from 9 to 5.
Finding a job is a full-time job. I've been now preparing for one interview for two weeks; buying airplane tickets, finding a hotel, collecting and printing work and study documents (hard as I don't own a printer), finding cheap place to send faxes, learning a little German, reading about the job company and what they are doing, reading their technical specs, going through all the special softwares they use or which I would need if I get the job, etc. etc. And then the company might have 500 applicants, 20 going for an interview, and one gets the place. Two weeks wasted (well, almost). Income zero, rent $300/month. Next month I couldn't afford to buy plane tickets to get to another interview (even if they pay it back afterwards).
Sure, just in case I don't get the dream job, I'm applying for a dozen not-so-interesting IT jobs. The problem of course is that they usually look foor permanent workers, and I can't honestly promise more than maximum of 2-3 years.
Also, if you turn hamburgers long enough, your work skills become obsolete, and your potential employers know that. Therefore it's much better to stay unemployed, perhaps study new techniques (even the buzzwords...Java, XML, CORBA), perhaps train on free software projects, and have top trimmed skills to offer to the employers.
But of course, it's just not your choise, as it depends on the unemployment support policy of your country. I really pity the americans in that respect, but it's not always easy here either (I don't qualify for unemployment benefits because of certain technical difficulties).
I've been wondering if the situation is harder for Linux/Unix people, since they are the most common OSses in.com companies.
I've been having hard time looking for a new job for many months now. Many companies seem to be interested, and I've been to several interviews, but they haven't contacted me after that. There are surprisingly many Linux/Unix jobs, but there are also many people with a lot of experience in them.
The US unemployment system probably sucks, I'm glad I don't live there. But then, my last job ended 1½ months ago, and I'm now living on 0 income. We do have decent unemployment system in Finland, but unfortunately I happen to be registered at university as a student. Even if I deregister, I wouldn't get any unemployment support for 3 months, and I keep hoping that I get a job sooner than that.
Then, of course, companies want people with certain "attitude". Meaning that you must love submitting yourself as a slave with no rights. You may not object to HR manager-psychologists doing personality tests and probing your personal matters, but you must confess your sins to them. You should not have opinions about business policies or ethics, or expect ethical behaviour from the company. That's risky for the company - you might even sue them if they treat you bad.
It's rather irrelevant that you're an enthusiastic person who loves making advanced software. Ordinary bosses and even most software workers (the career-pipe types) have no understanding of "hacker work ethics"; they really live in a totally different world and expect you to live there too.
It's also difficult for a person who has opinions. The last company I visited is preparing a set of software patents. I'm really not very enthusiastic about that. But what should I do - stay unemployed with no income just because of that?
Forget the governments and laws. I have become more and more worried about the "voluntary" abandonment of privacy and freedom, when people get an apartment, a job, an insurance, a university, and so on.
Laws restrict mostly just the government control and violations of privacy and freedom. But control will, always, find a way, and then comes the running and the screaming. A new form of stricter-than-ever control is emerging fast.
More and more companies are joining in the trend to put all new workers to tight psychological personality tests. They don't just test your ability to work, but also ask about your family, your childhood, and what not.
The problem in most psychological tests is that they weren't designed for companies, but for psychiatric analysis. A question: "Are you planning to get many children?" may be quite fine for a medical test, but not for a work psychologist, who works for the hiring company. (In one company to which I applied for, one of the interviewing psychologists even worked in the same room where I was supposed to work. Well, I didn't answer questions which I considered too private and irrelevant for work, the psychologist didn't like that, and I'm still an unemployed Linux hacker. *sigh*)
Then there are the permissions to get criminal records. Hey, there are laws why they are private, and those laws have reasons! By giving the permission to companies, you make the possibly very good and well-reasoned laws effectively useless. You also don't know what records they get - perhaps also those where you were just suspected, and you can't influence how they interpret them. There's also no time-limit; that 20 year old DUI sentence might not be so unfavourable, but if you've even been caught of smoking grass...well, byebye to ever working again.
Oh, and then there are the mandatory drug tests. One Very Big Finnish company (not Nokia, but might apply to them too) even does mandatory AIDS tests to workers. Not that the tests help the companies any bit, as they are usually done only once, and usually just kick many very productive people out of work.
They can tap your keyboard, read your emails, put tv-cameras everywhere, watch where you drive your car, snoop in your home as they wish (didn't you read the fine print in your rent contract?), and everything.
This is worrying because it's "voluntary", and gives an illusion of freedom. Of course, "You can always go to another place." Yeah, right. In practice, it's mandatory.
The companies and other institutions do, of course, have their reasons. So what? Everybody always has "good and sound reasons" when they violate your privacy or freedom, to "protect our children's safety" by killing the evildoers. Really, the reasons are usually "good." But they are often against the freedom and privacy, which are often too abstract concepts to understand in relation to most everyday problems. "The safety of our children must not be endangered by the 'human rights' or criminals and drug addicts." Nevertheless, even these abstract human rights have reasons too, you know.
"Those who give up their freedom don't deserve it." (One of the rare ideals which those silly Americans got right...and then forgot.)
My rat seems to have a perverse taste for thin copper wires. I had stored my old computer in my bedroom corner for a while, with one front panel missing. When I opened it for turning it into a web server, I found a pile of chopped wire from the bottom:
Luckily, I had to replace just the ground wire and the IDE cable, as most other wires are useless anyways (who needs a reset button?). Also the processor's cooler fan wire was cut, but I couldn't figure where it should be connected. Luckily, the processor runs very cool without it, so I guess the cooler is there just to give an impression of a powerful processor?
(The computer in the pictures is now the web server serving the pictures, so please don't slashdot the poor old non-cooled processor too much... )
You have a commercial application that ONLY works with MySQL and ships the application with the MySQL server. This is because we view this as linking even if it is done over the network.
This is getting really fuzzy. Is it a violation to use a proprietary web browser to "link to", i.e., connect through the network with a protocol interface to a GPL-licensed web server? Or a web application such as Slashdot? Wow, we have a case against MS!
Anyhow, GPL is too restrictive to be useful for libraries, which is why there is LGPL. Programs are written to be used and it shouldn't make any difference whether the user is a program or a person. Linking to shared libraries is morally no more stealing than using a GPLed web browser for trading stocks or writing a book with Emacs. That's what even GPLed programs are intended for: for personal benefit (both fun and making your living).
The idea of the GPL is to force users to give back any changes to the tool, not for using the tool. If you want to "get something back" also from the people who just use your GPLed editor for writing their business stuff, give up the GPL, make it proprietary, and charge money for it.
Also, I would believe that gcc wouldn't be as popular as it is, had the libs not been LGPLed. LGPL promotes use, while preserving the central intent of the license.
I agree on that Nokia may not be able to lure voluntary developers of free games. Rather, they get commercial game developers such as Loki, which is what they really want because the fact is that commercial games are usually better than free games (contrary to free OSs). I would think that the compability between MediaTerminal and Linux PCs could be a key factor for many console game developers.
Thus, while most Linux users might not be so interested about buying a separate game console, this is great news for all Linux gamers who want more games.
Some have argued that game consoles are usually sold with loss, and real profit comes from games. You should remember that this is a digital TV box, and Internet terminal, so it has much more value in itself than any pure game console. Also, many Linux users who would not be so interested about a game console, might be interested about the digital TV receiver, digital recorder, DVD player.
While the announcement answers my questions about Loki, it still doesn't tell which current Linux games will be available. I'm also little worried about the openness of the system for installing new software that has not been packaged by Nokia, as Nokia probably doesn't want to be responsible for customers messing up the system software.
My proposition: as the gravity drops down as the probes go out of Solar system, the time goes faster, relative to our position near the Sun. That causes us to detect a bit higher radio signal, which looks just like the probe had slowed down. Pretty simple Einstein, eh?
Well, this was probably the first possibilities they thought of. Anyhow, the phenomenom doesn't have to be caused by a "force".
It would be interesting to know what existing Linux games work in the console. I would believe that the Linux is so well hidden behind a custom GUI that you can't install just any programs you want, nor do any other hacking by your own (unless you want to void your warranty). You'd also need a special package of any current commercial games (Loki), etc.
But then, set-top-boxes and game consoles are intended for the masses, not for hackers. Why use a console (and develop for it) when you can play the Linux games on your PC? However, the hardware (digital TV card) and special applications (DVD player, etc.) might create some temptating possibilities.
These pictures show that the martian soil and climate are definitely so different from those on Earth, that we can't use much of our earthly experience to understand its behaviour.
First, the mineral composition of Mars is different from earth. This means new kinds of dust that pile up differently than the earth dust.
Second, Mars has quite a lot of microscopic dust, while on earth all that dust is quickly blown by strong winds to oceans.
Third, the martian low-pressure atmosphere and very peacefully changing weather causes the soil to move in a way very different from earth. On Earth, the weather is much more chaotic.
Seeing unexpected order is nothing special, as it is routinely generated by the self-organization of matter in open thermodynamic systems (such as "weather"). We can see it in stars, we can see it on the Sun, we can see it in the sand desers of Earth. And Mars is nothing but a huge and geologically diverse desert.
The "self-calibrating" isochron methods work on very long timescales and with dead matter (rocks), while radiocarbon is probably the most important dating method for young biological material.
In any case, the fundies won't be able to rejoice much (after they read below the title), as this applies only to very old objects.
It was a pity that the article didn't mention what OTHER method they used for dating the stalagmites...
Possibly they found yearly "varves" (very common method), if the stalagmites grew differently at different times of year. In that case, some years might be missing if there was a long local drought some 10-45ka ago, and we well know that there were dramatic global climate changes at that time. Well, this is just one possible problem, IANAG.
Thus, it will be interesting to read the Science article with it appears.
There's one interesting "neural network" method for mapping and data-mining the web. It's called WEBSOM, developed by Krista Lagus, Timo Honkela, Samuel Kaski, et al from the Helsinki University of Technology, Finland. It's based on the Self-Organizing Maps (SOM) developed by Teuvo Kohonen.
Although the SOM are usually described as a form of neural computation, that category is somewhat misleading, although they are inspired by neural nets and have many things in common.
The method works with a restricted keyword vocabulary (a few thousand words if I remember correctly). The words are fed to the SOM as triplets, which makes the method somewhat context-sensitive. The method creates a two-dimensional map that is organized according to the "nearness" of documents. The map can then be used for different kinds of applications, such as classification.
Although the SOM learning is usually "unsupervised learning", where the different classes are not known beforehand, it's possible to define the classes afterwards.
I'm not sure what method AOL uses, but SOM is one possibility. If they use training data where the classes are known beforehand, they probably use some supervised learning method, such as conventional feedforward nets and backpropagation. They might be able use a similar triplet coding with that too.
You can find more information about WEBSOM from http://websom.hut.fi/websom/. They have several articles available there, and also some interactive search system.
why bother uninstalling windows if you're going to format your hd? or does it just need to follow the 'rule of 3' for it to be funny?
Because Windows leaves yucky Windows bits on the hard drive which would bring bad karma (-1) when you resurrect the machine with a Linux soul.
Since Windows has Scientologist code, there are also probably thousands of body thetans on the hard drive that would cause problems in the new operating system.
And yes, you have to follow a "threefold law", to remove the bad karma bits and thetans.
Clarify? They really should have used a more clear notation than:
MAIL FROM: <reverse-path> [SP <mail-parameters> ] <CRLF>
The same notation in RFC821 has misled many implementors to think that it means:
MAIL FROM: babe13@sex.com
Although the < and > brackets really should be there:
MAIL FROM: <babe13@sex.com>
Unfortunately there are SMTP servers that do not require the brackets, and thus many mail clients and gateways tested with just the "nicer" servers do not work with servers that follow the protocol strictly.
The Russians should grant the involved FBI agents a national medal of honour. They should also give them official permit to do their work in Russia, and promise them full assistance in gathering all possible evidence against the arrested criminals.
But of course, when the FBI agents would arrive in Russia, they should be arrested and charged for illegal computer cracking.
Really, on what international legal grounds does U.S. police force commit crimes in another nation? On what moral grounds can they convict the suspected russians for cracking U.S. computers, if they themselves commit equvalent crime in Russia, and expect to get away with it?
I don't respect the Russia's international behaviour much, and they probably have more than enough internal problems, but they really should react to this kind of things. If the FBI agents are not procecuted in U.S. for their tactics, and the actions are not at least apologized, it means that U.S. government officially supports FBI committing crimes in Russia.
It's 100% different thing to work in ''co-operation'' with local police by asking a permission. Without permission, it is simply an international offence. U.S. seems to have given up the last bit of their respect for other nations sovereignity and moral rights. Well, nothing really new in that.
WHOAH!!! "and rape their women" If you quote the bible you better be able to find a verse that says what you claim! NO! NOT TRUE!
Sorry, I forgot the quotes. The God's command to rape is quite clear here: 5. Moos. 21:10-14. God tells Israelites to take slaves and wifes from enemies, without their consent (and such wifes will not have same rights other wifes have).
Here's a second one where he doesn't really condemn it: 5.Mos 22:28-29 ("Oh, you raped the woman, now you must take her to be your wife.")
And, no, modern Christians don't typically go around killing their neighbours. They don't follow the insane laws of the Old Testament anymore, like they did during the Burning Times. Thank no God for that!
The Christians who complain about violence and sex in movies are clearly making a double standard - just read the Bible. God that kills people in Floods, then orders the Chosen Nation to kill and plunder neighbouring pagans, enslave men, and rape their women. Just read Deuterionum; God telling His People to destroy a neighbour city, and kill all men, women, children and animals inside. You can find orders to massacre everywhere in the book. Nah, modern books are tame.
I think there some German lawyers tried to ban Bible in some schools (or kindergarten) last year or something, because it contained so much violence and sex that it clearly should be considered illegal. I don't know if they succeeded.
But that gives a neat idea, if some book or movie is censored, just create a religion around it, and it'll be uncensored in no-time. (Make it preferably a Christian sect, and success is guaranteed.)
But then, if you look at SciFi, I think Lexx is quite violent. Hey, Mantrid even destroyed the Universe! One of the main characters, Kai, has "killed countless people; men, women, old people, children, mothers with their babies in their wombs, heroes, scientists, and poets..." The other main character is the captain of Lexx, the most powerful weapon of two universes, and uses it to occasionally blow up planets, moons, and such. Lots of sex and all kinds of really sick combinations of sex and violence in the series too. Oh, I forgot to mention, Lexx is definitely the best TV-series around right now!
Slashdot Mirror
Rabble? Yeah, that probably communicates the attitude of american soldiers towards local populace correctly. Good luck!
Otherwise, the back-and-forth-translation was amazingly good.
d7f8g8h9
j9f4h8g5
ascg6888
Can you see the logic?
Just put your hands on the keyboard and find something you can type quickly, and that's it. Very useful for root passwords and such, which you need to write often. Just don't use qwer1234 or any other trivial combination, and you're probably safe.
I'm not sure how easy it would be to make an algorithm to create such patterns. I hope not too easy.
In any case, I usually try to force nonregularity by deliberately making a word that has some crypting meaning. For example, bo0bsiii (self-explanatory) or vivaiv111 (long live IV beer !!!).
Sure, using a password generator would be safer, but those passwords are horribly slow to type.The iPaq 36xx handheld models have about 206MHz StrongARM processor, with 16-64MB Flash and RAM. They have USB, they have everything. The price vary between $300-$600. ...and the size is about 5x3x0.6 inches, which is much less volume than the cube has.
But, of course, the iPaqs come with LoseCE preinstalled, although Linux works too. I don't know if Apache has yet been ported, but it might have.
While they are not cute cubes, they fit much better in your pocket.
What I'd like to see is server farms based on tiny ipaq-sized low-power processor cards. Just stuff one 4U box full of those and whheeee....
What Microsoft doesn't want you to understand is that by playing their rational game, you lose, they win.
Doing business is much like playing games. No wonder some praise Go or other strategy games for learning business tactics. It's not just business, but all competition, such as evolution, is much based on "games".
Game theory is a branch of mathematics that deals with identifying winning strategies and situations in games, such as business.
Drama theory is a generalization of the game theory that takes into account irrationality. Irrationality, in this case, means just short-term irrationality. On long term, or on another scale, it's very rational.
Drama theory gives explanations to why people get mad, envious, revengeful, bullying, and what not. These are usually considered very negative aspects of life, and I'm not trying to say that they shouldn't be, but their function really is just level the playing field when you get stuck in a losing situation. They are rational at some level.
Revolutions, violent demonstrations, and wars (''war is just a continuation of politics'') are examples of trying to change the rules. Others more accepted ones are boycotts, work strikes, and so on. Religions are not usually rational - but amazingly they are often helpful to the followers. Even if a certain God of Vows (such as Mithra) doesn't exist, believing in his powers and making business deals or marriages in his name helps in building a strong society. Irrationality pays, big.
Microsoft wants businesses to play by the traditional rules of the business game. Supporting the proprietary business model may be rational in many cases. But the problem is that Microsoft has attained a game-theoretically sustainable winning position. You can only win by changing the rules, which may require slight "irrationality".
It's perfectly rational to get red mad at Microsoft, and give up short-term business opportunities, to perhaps be able to compete in a healthy market later.
Microsoft is also trying to talk generally about the ''best'' business model for software industry, although Linux and Open Source movements are an ad hoc response of the IT world to combat specially against Microsoft's unhealthy monopoly. The rationale for general context is completely irrational and irrelevant for the current specific situation in the operating system industry.
GPL means changing the rules, especially for this particular situation. It means starting a revolution, which may in some cases mean giving up the proprietary model even where it might have been useful otherwise. The target is Microsoft.
This is what Microsoft is afraid of.
You can't control life. I mean, life will find a way. Oo and aah, that's how it starts, but later comes the running and the screaming.
Instead of swallowing their pride and picking up a job, ANY job to pay the bills, and in the mean time cutting way WAY back on their expenses so they can survive on that job, meager as it might be, at least they will be able to keep a roof over their heads.
It's not that simple. You can't run around looking for a job if you're turning hambugers from 9 to 5.
Finding a job is a full-time job. I've been now preparing for one interview for two weeks; buying airplane tickets, finding a hotel, collecting and printing work and study documents (hard as I don't own a printer), finding cheap place to send faxes, learning a little German, reading about the job company and what they are doing, reading their technical specs, going through all the special softwares they use or which I would need if I get the job, etc. etc. And then the company might have 500 applicants, 20 going for an interview, and one gets the place. Two weeks wasted (well, almost). Income zero, rent $300/month. Next month I couldn't afford to buy plane tickets to get to another interview (even if they pay it back afterwards).
Sure, just in case I don't get the dream job, I'm applying for a dozen not-so-interesting IT jobs. The problem of course is that they usually look foor permanent workers, and I can't honestly promise more than maximum of 2-3 years.
Also, if you turn hamburgers long enough, your work skills become obsolete, and your potential employers know that. Therefore it's much better to stay unemployed, perhaps study new techniques (even the buzzwords...Java, XML, CORBA), perhaps train on free software projects, and have top trimmed skills to offer to the employers.
But of course, it's just not your choise, as it depends on the unemployment support policy of your country. I really pity the americans in that respect, but it's not always easy here either (I don't qualify for unemployment benefits because of certain technical difficulties).
I've been having hard time looking for a new job for many months now. Many companies seem to be interested, and I've been to several interviews, but they haven't contacted me after that. There are surprisingly many Linux/Unix jobs, but there are also many people with a lot of experience in them.
The US unemployment system probably sucks, I'm glad I don't live there. But then, my last job ended 1½ months ago, and I'm now living on 0 income. We do have decent unemployment system in Finland, but unfortunately I happen to be registered at university as a student. Even if I deregister, I wouldn't get any unemployment support for 3 months, and I keep hoping that I get a job sooner than that.
Then, of course, companies want people with certain "attitude". Meaning that you must love submitting yourself as a slave with no rights. You may not object to HR manager-psychologists doing personality tests and probing your personal matters, but you must confess your sins to them. You should not have opinions about business policies or ethics, or expect ethical behaviour from the company. That's risky for the company - you might even sue them if they treat you bad.
It's rather irrelevant that you're an enthusiastic person who loves making advanced software. Ordinary bosses and even most software workers (the career-pipe types) have no understanding of "hacker work ethics"; they really live in a totally different world and expect you to live there too.
It's also difficult for a person who has opinions. The last company I visited is preparing a set of software patents. I'm really not very enthusiastic about that. But what should I do - stay unemployed with no income just because of that?
Laws restrict mostly just the government control and violations of privacy and freedom. But control will, always, find a way, and then comes the running and the screaming. A new form of stricter-than-ever control is emerging fast.
More and more companies are joining in the trend to put all new workers to tight psychological personality tests. They don't just test your ability to work, but also ask about your family, your childhood, and what not.
The problem in most psychological tests is that they weren't designed for companies, but for psychiatric analysis. A question: "Are you planning to get many children?" may be quite fine for a medical test, but not for a work psychologist, who works for the hiring company. (In one company to which I applied for, one of the interviewing psychologists even worked in the same room where I was supposed to work. Well, I didn't answer questions which I considered too private and irrelevant for work, the psychologist didn't like that, and I'm still an unemployed Linux hacker. *sigh*)
Then there are the permissions to get criminal records. Hey, there are laws why they are private, and those laws have reasons! By giving the permission to companies, you make the possibly very good and well-reasoned laws effectively useless. You also don't know what records they get - perhaps also those where you were just suspected, and you can't influence how they interpret them. There's also no time-limit; that 20 year old DUI sentence might not be so unfavourable, but if you've even been caught of smoking grass...well, byebye to ever working again.
Oh, and then there are the mandatory drug tests. One Very Big Finnish company (not Nokia, but might apply to them too) even does mandatory AIDS tests to workers. Not that the tests help the companies any bit, as they are usually done only once, and usually just kick many very productive people out of work.
They can tap your keyboard, read your emails, put tv-cameras everywhere, watch where you drive your car, snoop in your home as they wish (didn't you read the fine print in your rent contract?), and everything.
This is worrying because it's "voluntary", and gives an illusion of freedom. Of course, "You can always go to another place." Yeah, right. In practice, it's mandatory.
The companies and other institutions do, of course, have their reasons. So what? Everybody always has "good and sound reasons" when they violate your privacy or freedom, to "protect our children's safety" by killing the evildoers. Really, the reasons are usually "good." But they are often against the freedom and privacy, which are often too abstract concepts to understand in relation to most everyday problems. "The safety of our children must not be endangered by the 'human rights' or criminals and drug addicts." Nevertheless, even these abstract human rights have reasons too, you know.
"Those who give up their freedom don't deserve it." (One of the rare ideals which those silly Americans got right...and then forgot.)
http://magi.yok.utu.fi/~magi/kuvia/series/display. cgi/ratputer.ser?height=768 and
http://magi.yok.utu.fi/~magi/kuvia/series/display. cgi/ratputer.ser?current=1&height=768
Luckily, I had to replace just the ground wire and the IDE cable, as most other wires are useless anyways (who needs a reset button?). Also the processor's cooler fan wire was cut, but I couldn't figure where it should be connected. Luckily, the processor runs very cool without it, so I guess the cooler is there just to give an impression of a powerful processor?
(The computer in the pictures is now the web server serving the pictures, so please don't slashdot the poor old non-cooled processor too much... )
This is getting really fuzzy. Is it a violation to use a proprietary web browser to "link to", i.e., connect through the network with a protocol interface to a GPL-licensed web server? Or a web application such as Slashdot? Wow, we have a case against MS!
Anyhow, GPL is too restrictive to be useful for libraries, which is why there is LGPL. Programs are written to be used and it shouldn't make any difference whether the user is a program or a person. Linking to shared libraries is morally no more stealing than using a GPLed web browser for trading stocks or writing a book with Emacs. That's what even GPLed programs are intended for: for personal benefit (both fun and making your living).
The idea of the GPL is to force users to give back any changes to the tool, not for using the tool. If you want to "get something back" also from the people who just use your GPLed editor for writing their business stuff, give up the GPL, make it proprietary, and charge money for it.
Also, I would believe that gcc wouldn't be as popular as it is, had the libs not been LGPLed. LGPL promotes use, while preserving the central intent of the license.
Thus, while most Linux users might not be so interested about buying a separate game console, this is great news for all Linux gamers who want more games.
Some have argued that game consoles are usually sold with loss, and real profit comes from games. You should remember that this is a digital TV box, and Internet terminal, so it has much more value in itself than any pure game console. Also, many Linux users who would not be so interested about a game console, might be interested about the digital TV receiver, digital recorder, DVD player.
While the announcement answers my questions about Loki, it still doesn't tell which current Linux games will be available. I'm also little worried about the openness of the system for installing new software that has not been packaged by Nokia, as Nokia probably doesn't want to be responsible for customers messing up the system software.
Well, this was probably the first possibilities they thought of. Anyhow, the phenomenom doesn't have to be caused by a "force".
But then, set-top-boxes and game consoles are intended for the masses, not for hackers. Why use a console (and develop for it) when you can play the Linux games on your PC? However, the hardware (digital TV card) and special applications (DVD player, etc.) might create some temptating possibilities.
First, the mineral composition of Mars is different from earth. This means new kinds of dust that pile up differently than the earth dust.
Second, Mars has quite a lot of microscopic dust, while on earth all that dust is quickly blown by strong winds to oceans.
Third, the martian low-pressure atmosphere and very peacefully changing weather causes the soil to move in a way very different from earth. On Earth, the weather is much more chaotic.
Seeing unexpected order is nothing special, as it is routinely generated by the self-organization of matter in open thermodynamic systems (such as "weather"). We can see it in stars, we can see it on the Sun, we can see it in the sand desers of Earth. And Mars is nothing but a huge and geologically diverse desert.
In any case, the fundies won't be able to rejoice much (after they read below the title), as this applies only to very old objects.
It was a pity that the article didn't mention what OTHER method they used for dating the stalagmites...
Possibly they found yearly "varves" (very common method), if the stalagmites grew differently at different times of year. In that case, some years might be missing if there was a long local drought some 10-45ka ago, and we well know that there were dramatic global climate changes at that time. Well, this is just one possible problem, IANAG.
Thus, it will be interesting to read the Science article with it appears.
Although the SOM are usually described as a form of neural computation, that category is somewhat misleading, although they are inspired by neural nets and have many things in common.
The method works with a restricted keyword vocabulary (a few thousand words if I remember correctly). The words are fed to the SOM as triplets, which makes the method somewhat context-sensitive. The method creates a two-dimensional map that is organized according to the "nearness" of documents. The map can then be used for different kinds of applications, such as classification.
Although the SOM learning is usually "unsupervised learning", where the different classes are not known beforehand, it's possible to define the classes afterwards.
I'm not sure what method AOL uses, but SOM is one possibility. If they use training data where the classes are known beforehand, they probably use some supervised learning method, such as conventional feedforward nets and backpropagation. They might be able use a similar triplet coding with that too.
You can find more information about WEBSOM from http://websom.hut.fi/websom/. They have several articles available there, and also some interactive search system.
I just loved the ping reports:
$ ping -i 450 10.0.3.1
PING 10.0.3.1 (10.0.3.1): 56 data bytes
64 bytes from 10.0.3.1: icmp_seq=0 ttl=255 time=6165731.1 ms
64 bytes from 10.0.3.1: icmp_seq=4 ttl=255 time=3211900.8 ms
64 bytes from 10.0.3.1: icmp_seq=2 ttl=255 time=5124922.8 ms
64 bytes from 10.0.3.1: icmp_seq=1 ttl=255 time=6388671.9 ms
9 packets transmitted, 4 packets received, 55% packet loss
round-trip min/avg/max = 3211900.8/5222806.6/6388671.9 ms
What happened with the 5 packets? Was the "carrier lost" or perhaps eaten? Or did it just "drop the packet?"
Because Windows leaves yucky Windows bits on the hard drive which would bring bad karma (-1) when you resurrect the machine with a Linux soul.
Since Windows has Scientologist code, there are also probably thousands of body thetans on the hard drive that would cause problems in the new operating system.
And yes, you have to follow a "threefold law", to remove the bad karma bits and thetans.
(1) "Uninstall Windows, format your hard disk, then re-install Windows."
If that doesn't help:
(2) "Uninstall Windows, format your hard disk, then don't re-install Windows."
Usually, the instruction (1) doesn't help them.
The same notation in RFC821 has misled many implementors to think that it means:
Although the < and > brackets really should be there:
Unfortunately there are SMTP servers that do not require the brackets, and thus many mail clients and gateways tested with just the "nicer" servers do not work with servers that follow the protocol strictly.
But of course, when the FBI agents would arrive in Russia, they should be arrested and charged for illegal computer cracking.
Really, on what international legal grounds does U.S. police force commit crimes in another nation? On what moral grounds can they convict the suspected russians for cracking U.S. computers, if they themselves commit equvalent crime in Russia, and expect to get away with it?
I don't respect the Russia's international behaviour much, and they probably have more than enough internal problems, but they really should react to this kind of things. If the FBI agents are not procecuted in U.S. for their tactics, and the actions are not at least apologized, it means that U.S. government officially supports FBI committing crimes in Russia.
It's 100% different thing to work in ''co-operation'' with local police by asking a permission. Without permission, it is simply an international offence. U.S. seems to have given up the last bit of their respect for other nations sovereignity and moral rights. Well, nothing really new in that.
Sorry, I forgot the quotes. The God's command to rape is quite clear here: 5. Moos. 21:10-14. God tells Israelites to take slaves and wifes from enemies, without their consent (and such wifes will not have same rights other wifes have).
Here's a second one where he doesn't really condemn it: 5.Mos 22:28-29 ("Oh, you raped the woman, now you must take her to be your wife.")
And, no, modern Christians don't typically go around killing their neighbours. They don't follow the insane laws of the Old Testament anymore, like they did during the Burning Times. Thank no God for that!
Moon is not closing on earth, just the opposite! There's one great introduction to Earth-Moon dynamics in talkorigins.org.
I think there some German lawyers tried to ban Bible in some schools (or kindergarten) last year or something, because it contained so much violence and sex that it clearly should be considered illegal. I don't know if they succeeded.
But that gives a neat idea, if some book or movie is censored, just create a religion around it, and it'll be uncensored in no-time. (Make it preferably a Christian sect, and success is guaranteed.)
But then, if you look at SciFi, I think Lexx is quite violent. Hey, Mantrid even destroyed the Universe! One of the main characters, Kai, has "killed countless people; men, women, old people, children, mothers with their babies in their wombs, heroes, scientists, and poets..." The other main character is the captain of Lexx, the most powerful weapon of two universes, and uses it to occasionally blow up planets, moons, and such. Lots of sex and all kinds of really sick combinations of sex and violence in the series too. Oh, I forgot to mention, Lexx is definitely the best TV-series around right now!