Some little-known researcher comes up with a vague theory that may, some day in the distant future, help make a present pipe dream possible, and publishes his idea in his blog.
A dozen slashdotters submit the story with varying degrees of restraint.
The/. mods choose the story that says UNLIMITED ENERGY SOURCE FOUND IN WISCONSIN BASEMENT!!! FLYING CARS THAT CAN TAKE YOU TO MARS TO BE PRODUCED NEXT WEEK!!! OMGRAWR!!11!ONELEVEN!!!
What I can't understand is why people will pay $500-$2500 for their computer, another $200-$1000 for software, but won't pay a measly $20-$40 per year for an antivirus.
I use Trend Micro Pc-cillin Internet Security 2006. It's $50 to buy, and $25 a year after the first year, and it's the best I've tried so far. It includes antivirus, firewall (very configurable), anti-spam (which I don't use), and malware protection.
Unlike Norton, which only updates their definitions once a week, Trend Micro updates theirs every three hours. It's the same update frequency as their enterprise solutions, which are very powerful and easy to administer.
I know I sound like a commercial, but come on; with all the money you've spent on your computer, don't skimp on protecting it. Then again, as others have suggested, you could just go with Mac or Linux and not worry about viruses at all. (Just get something to protect against worms and root attacks.)
Just tell then it's the area under a curve, or the volume under a sheet. Even the most pretentious manager will be able to grasp that.
*sigh* Alas, not mine. A true PHB only understands one thing: today's bottom line. My manager, who somehow managed (no pun intended) to get an engineering degree way back in the mists of time, makes all of his decisions based on this formula:
Option A will cost $NN today.
Option B will cost us $N today, but could cost us $NNNNN tomorrow.
>> Select Option B
Act surprised tomorrow and blame the engineers for the extra cost.
Tape is still a very reliable, relatively durable storage medium for taking your backups off site. At my office, we're currently debating the relative merits of tape vs. removable hard drives for our next upgrade. Removable drives are starting to look good, but it's by no means a one-sided contest. Tape is still used, and will be for quite some time.
This is the Bloc holding the balance of power, and not the NDP. This is not surprising, since what are now CPC and BQ constituencies often voted PC in the Mulroney era. Remember Meech Lake, and Mulroney and Lucien Bouchard being close friends?
This does make more sense, and yes, I remember Meech. That's about the time old Pierre came out of the woodwork to remind the Tories that he tried the same thing in 1982.
As to lack of power leading to lack of corruption, there have been several provincial NDP governments which are remembered unfondly, and several current NDP MPs have had some scandals in municipal government.
The difference I see is that federal NDP scandals haven't cost the public all that much money because they've never been in a position to spend public money. As for the provincials, they're a different herd of animals altogether. I live in BC. The NDP here doesn't bear much resemblance to the federal party. But I'm originally from Manitoba, which has had several very successful NDP governments.
Also amusing is that the former NDP premier of Ontario, Bob Rae, is a candidate for the leadership of the (according to you) quite corrupt Liberal party.
Don't get me wrong; I vote Liberal in every federal election. I like having an economy that is the envy of the western world. But Martin and Chretien, and skilled as their fiscal management was, were up to their eyeballs in the sponsorship scandal. Then again, people have very short memories. The total 'scandal quotient' of the federal Liberals from 1993 to 2005 was about the same as for Mulroney's
Conservatives from November 1984 to... December 1984. And Mulroney's fiscal mismanagement cost the country $300 billion in increased national debt.
I agree with the Rhinos, though: we should just put the national debt on VISA, and let Quebec separate so it will be a shorter drive from Ontario to New Brunswick.
The point being, Canadian parties are truly in opposition to one another. They fight for seats during every election. If the governing party holds a majority of seats in the House of Commons, the opposition parties are completely powerless; the government can pass whatever bills it wants. And, as Brian Mulroney demonstrated in 1989, there are no limits on the power of the Prime Minister. The Senate blocks your bill? No problem! Appoint some of your best friends to the Senate! Then put your bill under the unwavering rubber stamp of the Governor General and you're done.
So Canadian parties care about every seat they can possibly win. Take the current government. The Conservatives hold a minority of seats. The NDP has teamed up with them in a very shaky coalition. Those two parties are socially and fiscally complete opposites. If the Conservatives try to push just about anything on their social agenda, the NDP will call a non-confidence vote and force an election, almost certainly returning the Liberals to power. The current Conservative Prime Minister is faced with a term of doing nothing but passing a few meaningless vote-garnering bills, and continuing the successful fiscal policies of the Liberals.
The big problem with the current machines is that they combine both those steps & don't provide any means of independent public oversight.
Nail, meet hammer. Right on the head.
A great deal of the problem with American vote counting, as opposed to Canadian, is that, as another reply stated, with a two-party system, the second party doesn't really care if the first party gets knocked off this time around. Their position is just about as powerful; their 'leader' just doesn't get to sit in the big comfy chair and hold the remote.
In Canada, by contrast, we have the following parties:
The Liberals. This party has been in power the most often. They are fiscally conservative, socially progressive, and quite corrupt. They are currently without a real leader.
The Conservatives, formerly the Progressive Conservatives, briefly the Reform Party, even more briefly the (conservative) Alliance. One of Canada's two original parties, the Progressive Conservatives were almost completely destroyed by their own leader's unpopularity in 1992. The new Conservative party is fically conservative, socially regressive, quite corrupt, and generally whacko. Their current leader is the head whacko.
The New Democratic Party. Canada's semi-socialist party, fiscally socialist, socially very progressive. At the height of their popularity in the 1980s, they became known as "the conscience of the Commons". Unfortunately, when their leader retired, they lost their direction and their credibility. Their current leader is a posturing buffoon. The NDP currently holds the balance of power in Ottawa. They've never held enough seats to become corrupt.
Le Bloc Quebecois. One of the parties that formed following the destruction of the Progressive Conservatives, the Bloc's sole mission is to separate Quebec from the rest of Canada. They have only fielded candidates in Quebec.
The fringe parties. The Communist Party, the Green Party, the Marijuana Party, the Animal Alliance Environment Voters Party... we've got 'em all. Full list here.
The Rhinoceros Party. This party disbanded after its original leader died, but it is worth noting for being the most popular 'joke' party in Canada's history. Although they never held a seat, they received numerous votes from disgruntled voters for policies like the following:
putting the national debt on Visa
turning the Louis-Hippolyte Lafontaine tunnel in Montreal into a free carwash by poking holes in the ceiling
switching Canada to driving on the left side of the road to be more like England (and therefore less like the USA), but making the transition gradual: trucks and buses first.
These ridiculous security holes can only be intentional.
My greatest fear regarding American elections is that Diebold machines will be used for a national vote to repeal the 22nd amendment, then for the following presidential acclimation--I mean, election.
Americans, please, start a grassroots movement to outlaw the use of any electronic, and therefore hackable, voting machines. Look at Canada's election process. Sure, we have only 10% of your population, but we have substantially less than 10% of your election hassles. In Canada, paper ballots are counted manually by Elections Canada volunteers, witnessed at each vote counting station by representatives from all official parties.
And for the love of Mike, start some new political parties! You may turf out the Republicans in 2008, but your Democrats are no prize either!
...part of the difference has to do with Dell's reputation for owning the customer.
I think they mean pwning.
Last year, I bought a new Dell workstation for work, the first of several workstations we were going to evaluate to replace our aging machines. Price on website: $1300 and change. But the website was flaky, and I couldn't complete the order. I called, got an "account manager", who took the product numbers I had written down from the website, and we ordered it--only to have the total come to $1400 and change.
I called back to complain, and the account mangler very rudely refused to do anything to help resolve the situation, boldly lying about one of the options I had purchased as an add-on supposedly being included in the base price. Eventually he said, "I don't know what you expect me to do about this," and wouldn't say anything else.
Needless to say, today we are an all-HP shop. We have a local reseller who provides excellent on-site service, and who I can reach directly; no IVR, no switchboard; I call my tech directly.
Will someone PLEASE put Ballmer back in charge of Sales?
It's one thing to have some sales sleaze saying, "Dat's a nice server youse got there... shame if anything should happen to it," and quite another to have the top sales maniac saying, "I'm going to fucking KILL YOU!" and throwing chairs at your server.
Off-topic digression*:
If anyone out there likes making game hacks, someone write up "Ballmer Kong". The Ball-ape stands at the top, lobbing chairs down the scaffolding, while your character, a penguin, jumps over the chairs, or blows them up by throwing apples at them.
Racist?! For a simulated accent imitation? Would I be a racist if I imitated a Newfie accent? Or a Southern accent? How about Cockney or Scots?
I read a tech support horror story from the customer's point of view once where the support tech had such a heavy accent that the customer could not understand what he was saying. The customer asked to speak to someone else. The supervisor called him a racist and hung up on him, even though he had made no other comment than "I cannot understand what this technician is saying."
You, sir, are a knee-jerk reactionary. People talk differently. People think differently. Misunderstandings between people with different dialects, and different thought patterns, are funny. They have been since Much Ado About Nothing, and most likely long before that.
Do you complain about every comedian who makes a culture-oriented joke? Must keep you busy, because that's pretty much all of them.
"New Delhi, we have a problem."
"Thank you for calling Mission Control. May I be having your name, address, and current software version please?" "The software has locked us out. We need you to make a course correction in exactly 20 seconds!"
"Certainly sir. If I could just be having your license number please." "License number?! Just fire thrusters 2 and 3 for 4.5 seconds on my mark!"
"You're Mark? Thank you for giving me your name, but I am needing your license code too please." "Our license number is going to be 3-D-E-A-D-G-U-Y-S if you don't fire the thrusters in--5 seconds!"
"If this is an emergency request, please be giving me your express service code." "Express... Hey Buzz, crack the main hatch open for 5 seconds on my mark... NOW! We'll have to hope this works."
"I'm sorry sir, but it appears you have voided your warranty. Please be having a nice day."[click]
The goose that has laid the golden egg in China is not the Chineese government, but the Chineese people inspite of the government. When we cooperate with the Chineese authorities, we cut off our nose inspite of our face.
... ?
So... Okay, if I read this right... We're cutting off the goose's nose despite of our face-off with the government... ours or theirs... because the Chinese people are laying golden eggs?
It's no wonder western governments are falling over themselves to appease the Agatean Empire--I mean, the Jade Empire--if the people have gold coming out of their asses!
...the only difference will be the faces around the big conference table, and the reasons they give for imposing their will on the people.
All that will happen is that the cycle will start over again with someone else as the oppressor, and someone else as the oppressed. That's why it's called a revolution; everything comes around again.
...the growing pile of radioactive skeletons would serve as a graphic example to future generations about the dangers of radioactive waste, while simultaneously cleaning the gene pool.
...making the builder of the edifice the "gene pool boy". Which would be a bad epitaph to carve on the structure because future generations would keep breaking in looking for all the pr0n starring "Gene the pool boy."
...does the matter in the universe come together in the Big Crunch, or does it fly off into space forever, replenished by subsequent Big Bang events?
I haven't followed cosmology news for years, but I remember reading that it had been established that the universe was expanding fast enough that it could never come together in a Big Crunch(TM)*. That conclusion also obviated the possibility of our current universe coming from a previous Big Crunch because, to use an analogy, a ball cannot bounce higher than the height from which it was dropped.
Then again, with the introduction of Higgs Bosons, inflationary theory, and who knows what else that was required to fit the Big Bang theory into the time frame five generations of physicists worked so hard to establish, maybe the previous universe had a Cosmic Crusher(TM) that sped the collapse.
*Is it just me, or does that sound like a kids' breakfast cereal?
I can't see how doing so would help prevent attacks on the U.S. Perhaps the idea is to disable communications and espionage capabilities...
Since most of the USA's current "enemies" (terrorists, hackers, illegal file sharers, Linux users, etc.) communicate through the Internet, perhaps these giant "LA-SERS" will spend most of their time shooting American satellites.
It's not like 99% of keyed systems were very secure. Except for the newer laser/dimple keys, thieves are going to easily get into your car.
I don't think the type of key has much of an effect. Because car doors are designed not to trap the occupants in an accident, damaging the lock will make it fail open. My car was stolen about three years ago, when all it had on it was the Club, installed the old way, nice and tight in a horizontal position. After it was recovered, the insurance esimator told me exactly how he figured it was stolen:
Thief uses a screwdriver to open the door (5 sec).
Thief yanks on the Club to break the steering lock (5 sec).
Thief hacksaws the steering wheel and removes the Club (30 sec).
Thief uses the Club as... well, a club to bash off the ignition (10 sec).
Thief hot-wires the car and drives away (30 sec).
So in a couple of minutes, my car disappears.
I remember seeing on TV a news thing they did with a former car thief. He said that a car with a club, a brake pedal lock and an alarm system were the most secure. Not because they were un-stealeable, but because it wasn't worth the time or effort.
Interestingly enough, that's the exact setup I put on my car after getting it back from the shop... without the label from the alarm manufacturer that tells a savvy thief exactly what kind of alarm he's dealing with. And with the Club installed the new way, loose and diagonally, so at least it can't be used as a lever to break the steering lock.
Nowadays, I like to park my car right beside a nice, shiny mini-van with no visible security systems. (Dodge mini-vans are the most frequently stolen vehicle around here.) Anticipating the long time required to get though my hardware and unknown alarm system, a thief will always move to the next car.
Mr. Orgasmic's (sp?) pyramid isn't even the biggest one in Europe, as this monument built by the ancient alien Tetrahedron Cult proves. Reconstruction is due to start next month when I gather my army of flying civil engineer monkeys.
Slashdot Mirror
This could be called "the other slashdot effect."
What I can't understand is why people will pay $500-$2500 for their computer, another $200-$1000 for software, but won't pay a measly $20-$40 per year for an antivirus.
I use Trend Micro Pc-cillin Internet Security 2006. It's $50 to buy, and $25 a year after the first year, and it's the best I've tried so far. It includes antivirus, firewall (very configurable), anti-spam (which I don't use), and malware protection.
Unlike Norton, which only updates their definitions once a week, Trend Micro updates theirs every three hours. It's the same update frequency as their enterprise solutions, which are very powerful and easy to administer.
I know I sound like a commercial, but come on; with all the money you've spent on your computer, don't skimp on protecting it. Then again, as others have suggested, you could just go with Mac or Linux and not worry about viruses at all. (Just get something to protect against worms and root attacks.)
Your sig line makes your response even more amusing. :D
Whaddaya mean I can't mod the story "-1: Flamebait"?
*sigh* Alas, not mine. A true PHB only understands one thing: today's bottom line. My manager, who somehow managed (no pun intended) to get an engineering degree way back in the mists of time, makes all of his decisions based on this formula:
Tape is still a very reliable, relatively durable storage medium for taking your backups off site. At my office, we're currently debating the relative merits of tape vs. removable hard drives for our next upgrade. Removable drives are starting to look good, but it's by no means a one-sided contest. Tape is still used, and will be for quite some time.
This does make more sense, and yes, I remember Meech. That's about the time old Pierre came out of the woodwork to remind the Tories that he tried the same thing in 1982.
The difference I see is that federal NDP scandals haven't cost the public all that much money because they've never been in a position to spend public money. As for the provincials, they're a different herd of animals altogether. I live in BC. The NDP here doesn't bear much resemblance to the federal party. But I'm originally from Manitoba, which has had several very successful NDP governments.
Don't get me wrong; I vote Liberal in every federal election. I like having an economy that is the envy of the western world. But Martin and Chretien, and skilled as their fiscal management was, were up to their eyeballs in the sponsorship scandal. Then again, people have very short memories. The total 'scandal quotient' of the federal Liberals from 1993 to 2005 was about the same as for Mulroney's Conservatives from November 1984 to... December 1984. And Mulroney's fiscal mismanagement cost the country $300 billion in increased national debt.
I agree with the Rhinos, though: we should just put the national debt on VISA, and let Quebec separate so it will be a shorter drive from Ontario to New Brunswick.
Oh, you're exaggerating.
The actual script started with "This call may be monitored or recorded for national securi--I mean, quality control purposes."
Submitted too soon...
The point being, Canadian parties are truly in opposition to one another. They fight for seats during every election. If the governing party holds a majority of seats in the House of Commons, the opposition parties are completely powerless; the government can pass whatever bills it wants. And, as Brian Mulroney demonstrated in 1989, there are no limits on the power of the Prime Minister. The Senate blocks your bill? No problem! Appoint some of your best friends to the Senate! Then put your bill under the unwavering rubber stamp of the Governor General and you're done.
So Canadian parties care about every seat they can possibly win. Take the current government. The Conservatives hold a minority of seats. The NDP has teamed up with them in a very shaky coalition. Those two parties are socially and fiscally complete opposites. If the Conservatives try to push just about anything on their social agenda, the NDP will call a non-confidence vote and force an election, almost certainly returning the Liberals to power. The current Conservative Prime Minister is faced with a term of doing nothing but passing a few meaningless vote-garnering bills, and continuing the successful fiscal policies of the Liberals.
Nail, meet hammer. Right on the head.
A great deal of the problem with American vote counting, as opposed to Canadian, is that, as another reply stated, with a two-party system, the second party doesn't really care if the first party gets knocked off this time around. Their position is just about as powerful; their 'leader' just doesn't get to sit in the big comfy chair and hold the remote.
In Canada, by contrast, we have the following parties:
My greatest fear regarding American elections is that Diebold machines will be used for a national vote to repeal the 22nd amendment, then for the following presidential acclimation--I mean, election.
Americans, please, start a grassroots movement to outlaw the use of any electronic, and therefore hackable, voting machines. Look at Canada's election process. Sure, we have only 10% of your population, but we have substantially less than 10% of your election hassles. In Canada, paper ballots are counted manually by Elections Canada volunteers, witnessed at each vote counting station by representatives from all official parties.
And for the love of Mike, start some new political parties! You may turf out the Republicans in 2008, but your Democrats are no prize either!
I think they mean pwning.
Last year, I bought a new Dell workstation for work, the first of several workstations we were going to evaluate to replace our aging machines. Price on website: $1300 and change. But the website was flaky, and I couldn't complete the order. I called, got an "account manager", who took the product numbers I had written down from the website, and we ordered it--only to have the total come to $1400 and change.
I called back to complain, and the account mangler very rudely refused to do anything to help resolve the situation, boldly lying about one of the options I had purchased as an add-on supposedly being included in the base price. Eventually he said, "I don't know what you expect me to do about this," and wouldn't say anything else.
Needless to say, today we are an all-HP shop. We have a local reseller who provides excellent on-site service, and who I can reach directly; no IVR, no switchboard; I call my tech directly.
This site will never buy another unit from Dell.
Well, they could probably sniff out pr0n because of--
The rest of this comment has been removed at the request of the TMI police.
It's one thing to have some sales sleaze saying, "Dat's a nice server youse got there... shame if anything should happen to it," and quite another to have the top sales maniac saying, "I'm going to fucking KILL YOU!" and throwing chairs at your server.
Off-topic digression*:
If anyone out there likes making game hacks, someone write up "Ballmer Kong". The Ball-ape stands at the top, lobbing chairs down the scaffolding, while your character, a penguin, jumps over the chairs, or blows them up by throwing apples at them.
*Yes, I know; that's a superfluous redundancy.
Racist?! For a simulated accent imitation? Would I be a racist if I imitated a Newfie accent? Or a Southern accent? How about Cockney or Scots?
I read a tech support horror story from the customer's point of view once where the support tech had such a heavy accent that the customer could not understand what he was saying. The customer asked to speak to someone else. The supervisor called him a racist and hung up on him, even though he had made no other comment than "I cannot understand what this technician is saying."
You, sir, are a knee-jerk reactionary. People talk differently. People think differently. Misunderstandings between people with different dialects, and different thought patterns, are funny. They have been since Much Ado About Nothing, and most likely long before that.
Do you complain about every comedian who makes a culture-oriented joke? Must keep you busy, because that's pretty much all of them.
...received from my Crystal Ball(TM):
"New Delhi, we have a problem."
"Thank you for calling Mission Control. May I be having your name, address, and current software version please?"
"The software has locked us out. We need you to make a course correction in exactly 20 seconds!"
"Certainly sir. If I could just be having your license number please."
"License number?! Just fire thrusters 2 and 3 for 4.5 seconds on my mark!"
"You're Mark? Thank you for giving me your name, but I am needing your license code too please."
"Our license number is going to be 3-D-E-A-D-G-U-Y-S if you don't fire the thrusters in--5 seconds!"
"If this is an emergency request, please be giving me your express service code."
"Express... Hey Buzz, crack the main hatch open for 5 seconds on my mark... NOW! We'll have to hope this works."
"I'm sorry sir, but it appears you have voided your warranty. Please be having a nice day."[click]
According to the following quote from another post...
...the ho will refuse to put out when the John reveals that he's a big-shot tech-geek gangsta, and he'll react in his trademark way.
... ?
So... Okay, if I read this right... We're cutting off the goose's nose despite of our face-off with the government... ours or theirs... because the Chinese people are laying golden eggs?
It's no wonder western governments are falling over themselves to appease the Agatean Empire--I mean, the Jade Empire--if the people have gold coming out of their asses!
...the only difference will be the faces around the big conference table, and the reasons they give for imposing their will on the people.
All that will happen is that the cycle will start over again with someone else as the oppressor, and someone else as the oppressed. That's why it's called a revolution; everything comes around again.
...making the builder of the edifice the "gene pool boy". Which would be a bad epitaph to carve on the structure because future generations would keep breaking in looking for all the pr0n starring "Gene the pool boy."
I haven't followed cosmology news for years, but I remember reading that it had been established that the universe was expanding fast enough that it could never come together in a Big Crunch(TM)*. That conclusion also obviated the possibility of our current universe coming from a previous Big Crunch because, to use an analogy, a ball cannot bounce higher than the height from which it was dropped.
Then again, with the introduction of Higgs Bosons, inflationary theory, and who knows what else that was required to fit the Big Bang theory into the time frame five generations of physicists worked so hard to establish, maybe the previous universe had a Cosmic Crusher(TM) that sped the collapse.
*Is it just me, or does that sound like a kids' breakfast cereal?
You've got it backwards. You mean GPM. Seriously.
Since most of the USA's current "enemies" (terrorists, hackers, illegal file sharers, Linux users, etc.) communicate through the Internet, perhaps these giant "LA-SERS" will spend most of their time shooting American satellites.
I don't think the type of key has much of an effect. Because car doors are designed not to trap the occupants in an accident, damaging the lock will make it fail open. My car was stolen about three years ago, when all it had on it was the Club, installed the old way, nice and tight in a horizontal position. After it was recovered, the insurance esimator told me exactly how he figured it was stolen:
So in a couple of minutes, my car disappears.
Interestingly enough, that's the exact setup I put on my car after getting it back from the shop... without the label from the alarm manufacturer that tells a savvy thief exactly what kind of alarm he's dealing with. And with the Club installed the new way, loose and diagonally, so at least it can't be used as a lever to break the steering lock.
Nowadays, I like to park my car right beside a nice, shiny mini-van with no visible security systems. (Dodge mini-vans are the most frequently stolen vehicle around here.) Anticipating the long time required to get though my hardware and unknown alarm system, a thief will always move to the next car.
Mr. Orgasmic's (sp?) pyramid isn't even the biggest one in Europe, as this monument built by the ancient alien Tetrahedron Cult proves. Reconstruction is due to start next month when I gather my army of flying civil engineer monkeys.