Can we *please* stop working the not-so-subtle iPod references into every story that involves music, DRM, copyright, digital broadcasting, or portable hardware? It's really getting old, and the readers are starting to wonder just how much Apple is paying for product placement.
Either stop it, or highlight stories that have been bought and paid for by advertisers in a different color, like Google's ads.
People were interested in the mars rovers because that was the only space science going on at the time. Holding the public's intrest is not why we need people in space (though it is a nice fringe benefit). We need people in space because the goal of space exploration should be to have a large, permanent population in space and on other planets. Orbiting hotels and SS1's successor craft look like they're going to make a lot more progress toward that goal than NASA's fleet of miniature rovers and their sad excuse for a space station.
Rovers are neat for scouting out potential landing sites for a future manned mission, but they are not anywhere close to being able to really explore a planet. Present rovers don't travel fast enough, they get stuck in anything but the smoothest terrain, they can't improvise, they can't act autonomously, and if something doesn't go exactly as planned you have to wait many hours for another radio transmission window to load updated instructions. Humans can act on their own judgement, can travel faster and farther from the landing site, can improvise new tools if they need to do something that wasn't in the original mission plan, and can answer questions from ground control that scientists working from rover images can only guess at (like whether a dark blotch on a photo is a darker spot in the rock, or just a shadow).
The bigger question is, what's the point of knowing about Martian geology or if we're never going to go there to experience it directly? If the only way we're ever going to see Mars is through a computer screen, we might as well just play Doom 3!
Spin it however makes you happy, but to me there's still a big difference between designing and building your own spacecraft and selling copies of one you designed in the '70s under a billion dollar Air Force contract, or bought as military surplus from Russia.
3.5 minute joyrides aren't real "exploration" either. However they seem to me far more likely to lead to widespread access to space (and therefore more exploration) than a defense-industry conglomerate putting up yet another TV sat on a modified ICBM booster.
Really? What about Boeing, Lockheed-Martin, Orbital Sciences, Arianespace, SeaLaunch and a couple of Russian and Chinese companies whose names I can't think of at the moment? They've been providing commercial space launch services for decades now. Or don't they count because they just launch boring unmanned satellites that lots of people on the ground actually find useful?
Boeing and Lockheed Martin are reselling technology originally developed under military or NASA contracts (Delta and Atlas series rockets). SeaLaunch uses reconfigured Soviet rockets. Ariannespace is practically a branch of the French government. The Russian and Chinese services are just middlemen selling space on rockets built for and operated by governments. Right now, Orbital Science's pegasus is the only thing (other than SS1) that comes close to being a privately-developed space launch system, and they had some help from NASA.
Besides, boosting satellites into orbit is hardly "exploration".
Hmm, assuming that the only two possible political affiliations are conservative and communist. Good one.
Unfortunately, your rants only give greater credence to my claims that all conservatives are closet nazis, and that socialism is the only possible alternative to a fascist police state!
Two comments: First, let's compare apples to apples here. The PlayStation 2 is 5-year-old technology now. You can get a GeForce 2 for $35, and it'll push pixels just as fast as a PS2. Drop $50 for a GeForce 3 and your PC will be able to hold it's own against an XBox or Gamecube. Console graphics aren't that great, they just look a little smoother than an equivalent PC because they use "poor man's antialiasing", analog NTSC output.
Second, if 640x480 is too little resolution for you to enjoy Doom 3, it's not going to be any more fun as a console game.
Valve has them under their belts, o if Sierra goes belly up, it would become a national holiday, and i'd still be playing my TFC!
That's even worse! Sierra publishes a lot of games. Valve only has the Half-Life franchise. If HL2 doesn't sell well (or doesn't get released) you can kiss TFC and all the other steam-based games goodbye.
Bugs or no bugs, Steam is unacceptable IMHO. When I buy a game on physical media, I have a tangible thing that belongs to me. I can install it on a new machine, I can lend it to a friend, I can sell it on eBay, I can keep playing it as long as I want, even after the publisher goes out of business. Steam allows none of that.
If Sierra goes belly up next week, how long do you think the Steam master server is going to be around? Probably not long. How can you sell a game you don't play anymore if it's on Steam? You can't! You don't actually have anything to sell, you've just been paying for access to someone else's game.
No it's not. Users may submit stories, but final authority lies in an unelected exectutive that decides whether or not they go on the front page. (and how many times they go on the front page) Crapflooders, trolls, and people who abuse moderation can be banned or denied mod points by the executive without any input from the people (like a jury trial).
I think/. is more like a constitutional monarchy. There are rules that govern who can do what, and for the most part it's not a repressive regime. However an unelected leader still wields near-absolute power.
Like most free-market fundamentalists, you don't appear to grasp the idea of social costs (a.k.a externalities). Failing to do anything about them is the main weakness of capitalism.
Burning gasoline has a social cost in pollution-related illnesses, environmental damage, stupid foriegn policy decisions, being flamed by condescending Europeans on slashdot, etc. Unless society at large (through the government) uses regulation or taxation to factor those hidden social costs into the price of gasoline and/or inefficient vehicles, people who use less gas but pay income taxes, health insurance premiums, etc (that would be you and me, with the 30+ MPG cars) are subsidising other people's gas-guzzling behemoths. We're effectively using tax money to suppress alternative fuels by indirectly subsidising gasoline.
Great idea! Now instead of paying for a new car stereo to replace the one that was stolen, she can pay the equivalent new stereo to her insurance agent every 6 months for the rest of her life!
I didn't mean to say you were being chauvanistic, just that the idea that humanity is the top of the evolutionary ladder not just here, but in the entire universe is pretty sad.
"...there are a number of reasons to believe that life forms raised on this planet would be much stronger, faster, swifter, and smarter than just about anywhere else."
That's quite possibly the most depressing thing I've ever read.
"Cultural cruft" like Debian not being a supported distro by the software you wanty to use? Or cultural cruft like managment not liking to hear phrases like "most of it can be persuaded to work" in connection with critical apps?
Both of those would be considered serious technical problems to someone who is interested in the final system working rather than in shoehorning his favorite distro into a niche where it doesn't fit. Use Debian somewhere else. Tell IBM you want them to support it. Then do the right thing and install SuSE and make everything work like it's supposed to.
Not only is it obvious that you have absolutely no idea who does what on any open-source project, you didn't even read the article. That's a pretty pathetic effort from someone with the handle "geek" and a four-digit UID.
Gnome (and to a lesser extent, KDE) doesn't have anything to do with any sort of a dock. Users sometimes add groups of vaguely dock-like launchers to both desktops, but most of those require third-party software. They like that style, and probably don't care that you think it's "rediculous".
What do you expect the Gnome developers to do to impose more standards and consistency? Write a license that forbids users from mixing docks and panels? Break the knuckles of anyone who writes an OSX dock clone? Wasn't the point of this whole Linux thing to give the user more choice in software?
Mozilla milestone 18 was released in October of 2000 (nearly 4 years ago) and superseded by Moz 0.6 in December of 2000. If that's the only Mozilla-based browser that's showing up in your logs, you have a seriously wierd user base. The lack of hits from MSIE 5, MSIE 6 or Netscape 7 make me think you analyzed wrong year's logs, or used a very VERY old version of analog.
Or maybe this is a pre-fab troll post that's getting a little out of date...
No, I don't think he was announcing a plan to rig the elections. It certainly could have been worded in a way that made it clear that he intended to help get out the vote, or donate money, or something else specific and obviously proper. The problem is that between the thoughtless comments to Ohio republicans, the bad security practices, and flat-out stonewalling on the issue of putting printers on their voting machine, they give the impression that something shady is up. An election that many people *think* is rigged is just as damaging to democracy as one that really *is* rigged.
In summary I don't think he's a crook, I think he's a moron but in the voting machine business that's just as bad.
(A) The President is authorized to direct the drawdown of defense articles from the stocks of the Department of Defense, defense services of the Department of Defense, and military education and training for such organizations. (B) The aggregate value (as defined in section 644(m) of the Foreign Assistance Act of 1961) of assistance provided under this paragraph may not exceed $97,000,000.
Did you not even read this section? Or is it just hard for you to grasp the difference between $97 million to arm and train a free Iraqi army if one appears in the future, and $150 BILLION and thousands of lives to go over there and depose Saddam Hussein right now?
Besides, the "Clinton would have done it too" is a really weak excuse. Maybe he would have, it doesn't make damn bit of difference to me. It was still the wrong thing to do.
If The Steve really objects to having a new iMac integrated into the monitor panel, it's not for technical reasons. The Twentieth Anniversary Mac was a computer integrated into a flat-panel monitor, complete with a vertical CD drive, and they made that way back in 1997! (that large box next to the TAM in that picture is just a subwoofer, the CD-ROM is right below the screen)
Slashdot Mirror
podcast
Can we *please* stop working the not-so-subtle iPod references into every story that involves music, DRM, copyright, digital broadcasting, or portable hardware? It's really getting old, and the readers are starting to wonder just how much Apple is paying for product placement.
Either stop it, or highlight stories that have been bought and paid for by advertisers in a different color, like Google's ads.
People were interested in the mars rovers because that was the only space science going on at the time. Holding the public's intrest is not why we need people in space (though it is a nice fringe benefit). We need people in space because the goal of space exploration should be to have a large, permanent population in space and on other planets. Orbiting hotels and SS1's successor craft look like they're going to make a lot more progress toward that goal than NASA's fleet of miniature rovers and their sad excuse for a space station.
Rovers are neat for scouting out potential landing sites for a future manned mission, but they are not anywhere close to being able to really explore a planet. Present rovers don't travel fast enough, they get stuck in anything but the smoothest terrain, they can't improvise, they can't act autonomously, and if something doesn't go exactly as planned you have to wait many hours for another radio transmission window to load updated instructions. Humans can act on their own judgement, can travel faster and farther from the landing site, can improvise new tools if they need to do something that wasn't in the original mission plan, and can answer questions from ground control that scientists working from rover images can only guess at (like whether a dark blotch on a photo is a darker spot in the rock, or just a shadow).
The bigger question is, what's the point of knowing about Martian geology or if we're never going to go there to experience it directly? If the only way we're ever going to see Mars is through a computer screen, we might as well just play Doom 3!
Spin it however makes you happy, but to me there's still a big difference between designing and building your own spacecraft and selling copies of one you designed in the '70s under a billion dollar Air Force contract, or bought as military surplus from Russia.
3.5 minute joyrides aren't real "exploration" either. However they seem to me far more likely to lead to widespread access to space (and therefore more exploration) than a defense-industry conglomerate putting up yet another TV sat on a modified ICBM booster.
Really? What about Boeing, Lockheed-Martin, Orbital Sciences, Arianespace, SeaLaunch and a couple of Russian and Chinese companies whose names I can't think of at the moment? They've been providing commercial space launch services for decades now. Or don't they count because they just launch boring unmanned satellites that lots of people on the ground actually find useful?
Boeing and Lockheed Martin are reselling technology originally developed under military or NASA contracts (Delta and Atlas series rockets). SeaLaunch uses reconfigured Soviet rockets. Ariannespace is practically a branch of the French government. The Russian and Chinese services are just middlemen selling space on rockets built for and operated by governments. Right now, Orbital Science's pegasus is the only thing (other than SS1) that comes close to being a privately-developed space launch system, and they had some help from NASA.
Besides, boosting satellites into orbit is hardly "exploration".
Hmm, assuming that the only two possible political affiliations are conservative and communist. Good one.
Unfortunately, your rants only give greater credence to my claims that all conservatives are closet nazis, and that socialism is the only possible alternative to a fascist police state!
I love the two-party system...
Two comments: First, let's compare apples to apples here. The PlayStation 2 is 5-year-old technology now. You can get a GeForce 2 for $35, and it'll push pixels just as fast as a PS2. Drop $50 for a GeForce 3 and your PC will be able to hold it's own against an XBox or Gamecube. Console graphics aren't that great, they just look a little smoother than an equivalent PC because they use "poor man's antialiasing", analog NTSC output.
Second, if 640x480 is too little resolution for you to enjoy Doom 3, it's not going to be any more fun as a console game.
Sierra does not host the Steam master server(s)
Valve has them under their belts, o if Sierra goes belly up, it would become a national holiday, and i'd still be playing my TFC!
That's even worse! Sierra publishes a lot of games. Valve only has the Half-Life franchise. If HL2 doesn't sell well (or doesn't get released) you can kiss TFC and all the other steam-based games goodbye.
Bugs or no bugs, Steam is unacceptable IMHO. When I buy a game on physical media, I have a tangible thing that belongs to me. I can install it on a new machine, I can lend it to a friend, I can sell it on eBay, I can keep playing it as long as I want, even after the publisher goes out of business. Steam allows none of that.
If Sierra goes belly up next week, how long do you think the Steam master server is going to be around? Probably not long. How can you sell a game you don't play anymore if it's on Steam? You can't! You don't actually have anything to sell, you've just been paying for access to someone else's game.
Counterexample: slashdot is very democratic.
/. is more like a constitutional monarchy. There are rules that govern who can do what, and for the most part it's not a repressive regime. However an unelected leader still wields near-absolute power.
No it's not. Users may submit stories, but final authority lies in an unelected exectutive that decides whether or not they go on the front page. (and how many times they go on the front page) Crapflooders, trolls, and people who abuse moderation can be banned or denied mod points by the executive without any input from the people (like a jury trial).
I think
Like most free-market fundamentalists, you don't appear to grasp the idea of social costs (a.k.a externalities). Failing to do anything about them is the main weakness of capitalism.
Burning gasoline has a social cost in pollution-related illnesses, environmental damage, stupid foriegn policy decisions, being flamed by condescending Europeans on slashdot, etc. Unless society at large (through the government) uses regulation or taxation to factor those hidden social costs into the price of gasoline and/or inefficient vehicles, people who use less gas but pay income taxes, health insurance premiums, etc (that would be you and me, with the 30+ MPG cars) are subsidising other people's gas-guzzling behemoths. We're effectively using tax money to suppress alternative fuels by indirectly subsidising gasoline.
So much for the free market...
Like UDI, FCode, or EFI bytecode? It's been tried; Linus said no every time.
Linus tells hardware vendors whether or not they can include a flash chip on their hardware? And they listen?
Why can't he just tell them to release open-source drivers then?
Great idea! Now instead of paying for a new car stereo to replace the one that was stolen, she can pay the equivalent new stereo to her insurance agent every 6 months for the rest of her life!
I didn't mean to say you were being chauvanistic, just that the idea that humanity is the top of the evolutionary ladder not just here, but in the entire universe is pretty sad.
"...there are a number of reasons to believe that life forms raised on this planet would be much stronger, faster, swifter, and smarter than just about anywhere else."
That's quite possibly the most depressing thing I've ever read.
"Cultural cruft" like Debian not being a supported distro by the software you wanty to use? Or cultural cruft like managment not liking to hear phrases like "most of it can be persuaded to work" in connection with critical apps?
Both of those would be considered serious technical problems to someone who is interested in the final system working rather than in shoehorning his favorite distro into a niche where it doesn't fit. Use Debian somewhere else. Tell IBM you want them to support it. Then do the right thing and install SuSE and make everything work like it's supposed to.
You forgot the glue that binds every Final Fantasy premise: an ally character named Cid.
I'm glad SOMEONE noticed...
Not only is it obvious that you have absolutely no idea who does what on any open-source project, you didn't even read the article. That's a pretty pathetic effort from someone with the handle "geek" and a four-digit UID.
Oh, and your trolling skills? They suck too.
Gnome (and to a lesser extent, KDE) doesn't have anything to do with any sort of a dock. Users sometimes add groups of vaguely dock-like launchers to both desktops, but most of those require third-party software. They like that style, and probably don't care that you think it's "rediculous".
What do you expect the Gnome developers to do to impose more standards and consistency? Write a license that forbids users from mixing docks and panels? Break the knuckles of anyone who writes an OSX dock clone? Wasn't the point of this whole Linux thing to give the user more choice in software?
Ah. It makes much more sense now.
Requests - Browser
402 - MSIE 4
42 - MSIE 3
2 - Mozilla M18
15 - Netscape 3
2 - Netscape 2
12 - Opera 5
Mozilla milestone 18 was released in October of 2000 (nearly 4 years ago) and superseded by Moz 0.6 in December of 2000. If that's the only Mozilla-based browser that's showing up in your logs, you have a seriously wierd user base. The lack of hits from MSIE 5, MSIE 6 or Netscape 7 make me think you analyzed wrong year's logs, or used a very VERY old version of analog.
Or maybe this is a pre-fab troll post that's getting a little out of date...
No, I don't think he was announcing a plan to rig the elections. It certainly could have been worded in a way that made it clear that he intended to help get out the vote, or donate money, or something else specific and obviously proper. The problem is that between the thoughtless comments to Ohio republicans, the bad security practices, and flat-out stonewalling on the issue of putting printers on their voting machine, they give the impression that something shady is up. An election that many people *think* is rigged is just as damaging to democracy as one that really *is* rigged.
In summary I don't think he's a crook, I think he's a moron but in the voting machine business that's just as bad.
"I am committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the president next year." --Walden O'Dell, CEO Diebold Inc.
Untwist your knickers. If he had said something about helping to "defeat Bush" or whetever, it would all be an evil left-wing conspiracy instead.
(2) MILITARY ASSISTANCE
(A) The President is authorized to direct the drawdown of defense articles from the stocks of the Department of Defense, defense services of the Department of Defense, and military education and training for such organizations.
(B) The aggregate value (as defined in section 644(m) of the Foreign Assistance Act of 1961) of assistance provided under this paragraph may not exceed $97,000,000.
Did you not even read this section? Or is it just hard for you to grasp the difference between $97 million to arm and train a free Iraqi army if one appears in the future, and $150 BILLION and thousands of lives to go over there and depose Saddam Hussein right now?
Besides, the "Clinton would have done it too" is a really weak excuse. Maybe he would have, it doesn't make damn bit of difference to me. It was still the wrong thing to do.
Interesting, I didn't know that. Still, a Playstation 2 works sitting on it's side, so I think a modern DVD-rom will work sideways.
If The Steve really objects to having a new iMac integrated into the monitor panel, it's not for technical reasons. The Twentieth Anniversary Mac was a computer integrated into a flat-panel monitor, complete with a vertical CD drive, and they made that way back in 1997! (that large box next to the TAM in that picture is just a subwoofer, the CD-ROM is right below the screen)