Using the current mod system on Slashdot you are using someone else's blinders.
Using the Friend / Foe system you are using a static subset.
True, though the system is flexible enough that I'm not required to mod categories and/or people up or down. I've determined over time that adding/subtracting points based on relationships here is a double-edged sword. I often actually want to see what people who don't like me are saying, to get some sense of why and to challenge them on a fundamental level, if I can or if I want to. It makes logical sense to mod friends up, but then I don't expect them to disagree with me too terribly often, so I use the Friend/For system more as a marker so I can pick those comments out more easily.
And so if a parent refuses to have their privacy infringed just to pick their child up from school will the child be held indefinitely or expelled?
No. But we do have, shall we say, ways of persuading people. After all, we would hate to have anything happen to anyone... like an "accident", if youse know what I'm sayin'...
And the current moderation system is subjected to other people's current peeves and political leanings.
Which is what makes it so much fun!
Seriously, its wonderful that Bayesian filters are useful, but why put blinders on? Slashdot would simply cease to be interesting if you could will away anything you didn't like. Intelligent discourse requires an airing of all sides of an issue and theoretically this can lead to consensus building, if the best parts of all ideas are combined. Of course you're going to get people with very little to say, or very little between the ears, muddying the waters -- the challenge is to take the disparate elements and meld them to something coherent. Superfluous elements will be winnowed out and hopefully the end product is something most people can agree on.
Of course this is Slashdot, the Internet equivalent of a bar brawl. The rough-and-tumble of this kind of fourm is what keeps it interesting and more importantly, as much as we are infuriated by those who don't agree with us, makes us think.
Porn is never the intial driving force behind these inventions but eventually the sex fanatics find a way to take the technology and use it for their purposes and make their presence felt. And so what? If they become a driving force in the HD-DVD/Blu-Ray fracas, that will just spice things up, because hey, the whole argument is pretty dull. Besides, can you imagine the advertising?!?
The thing about this 2-tiered Internet is, it hurts everyone, from comapnies to individual users. What it says is, "only those of you who play by our rules [the telcos] can get faster access, otherwise we take our toys and go home." The telecom companies created this situation and now they want to throw a tantrum because they can't profit from it (even more!). And so, not only will it hurt the big firs, but the mid-level and small firms, who will have to shell out more of their precious cash to keep up with the big guys, and in the end this "play-by-our-rules" mentality will mean that content may be altered in way we users don't like or appreciate.
Excellent idea. Nice to see content instead of having to hunt for it and this will force submitters to get creative with their headlines!
I have only one complaint and that's having the stub stories "grafted" onto the bottom of full stories. While I like the curve and it makes for an interesting visual package, I think the stub stories should be in their own individual little capsules, color-coded to the sections they belong in. This will make it easier to see them for one and also indicate that they are not "attached" in any way to the full story above them.
I'm certain...
on
IE7 Leaked
·
· Score: 5, Informative
...that IE7 leaks all right. Anyone want to place bets on how secure it is?
From The Washington Post: The Republican-led Congress is struggling with the issue. On one hand, it has taken a deregulatory approach to the Internet, but on the other, it can't ignore the concerns of Google, Yahoo and eBay, some of the most successful companies of the last 10 years. These companies alone have built up businesses worth hundreds of billions of dollars on an unfettered Internet. Moreover, unfettered Internet access has come to be seen by Americans in general as not just a privilege or a product, but a right akin to free speech and free association.
It comes down to who you think is more important: companies like AT&T, BellSouth, etc. that provide a connection to the Internet, or Google, Yahoo, etc. that provide the content that cause people to want to have an Internet connection in the first place.
Personally, I think this is sour grapes by the telecoms, because they didn't think to invest in the content side of things. Let's face it, one share of Google's stock is worth one share of each of theirs combined and then some.
If I'm Congress, I threaten to nationalize the Internet, specifically its infrastructure and connectivity. Tell them the Federal Government now owns the trunks and fiber and they can bid on a contract for maintenance of the whole thing. Thorw some billions their way as "compensation." They'll change their tune in a hurry lest the lose their steady income.
Clementine indicated that there may be water ice on the moon; however, this was not confirmed by the later impact of Lunar Prospector, so further investigation will be needed. Mars Express indicated that there is very probably water on Mars - in the polar icecaps, and in subsurface permafrost.
And water is one of many simple, universal compounds. Even thought there are no great heaping pools of it on the Moon and Mars, it's bound up by chemical activity in the minerals there. It can be cracked out easily enough through heating. And if a spacecraft uses fuel cells, they'll be able to carry significant quantities of hydrogen and oxygen aboard their ship as propellant, atmosphere, and fuel to produce electricity and water. Water isn't really the biggest challenge; dealing with the radiation that lashes the Martian surface is a bigger challenge.
Assuming that rural areas can have uninterruptable Internet connections (perhaps this means a bigger market for satellite systems) and easy access to those connections. I grew up in Vermont, as rural a state as they come. Stringing cables isn't easy and winter storms have a tendecy to make has out of power lines, phone lines, and cable connections. I wouldn't mind doing my job from Vermont as long as I was assured connectivity.
From MSNBC: Using a series of nonverbal tests, scientists claim to have uncovered core knowledge of geometry in villagers from a remote region of the Amazon who have little schooling or experience with maps and speak a language without the mathematical language of geometry.
I knew Amazon was big, but where could a remote region be? Now I know how Jeff Bezos is keeping costs down and why deliveries sometimes get delayed.
There are patches already available. Fix it. Move on. Mind you, this is not like what happens with "some other operating systems," where they have to be berated by users into issuing patches...
Doesn't this starkly expose the futility and dysfunctionality of the stock market system, and discredit the idea that "the free market" has some sort of guiding hand that will give the best results?
No, that's discredited by the fact that a company reports a profit for the third quarter of 22 cents when Wall Street was expecting 24 cents and therefore the stock price plunges. And if this happens to a Blue Chip stock, the whole market tanks.
What kind of insanity is this, that the government goes out of control, spending billions on a pointless war, spends billions more spying on its own citizens - and Google has its stock price downgraded because it stands up to a basic infringement on the rights of American citizens?
I suspect Google's stock price dip had more to do with the overall drop in the market than simply the refusal of the DoJ's request, but no doubt it was that kind of news coupled with the rise in oil prices and tensions overseas that propelled the market's slide.
Bantown claims to have figured out a way to subvert that test...
CAPTCHA images are useful, but not unbreakable. If they were planning on using that as their only line of defense against scripts, they were really kidding themselves. Simple distorted and discolored text is difficult but not impossible to crack. The CAPTCHA Project is working on more sophisticated forms, using multiple words, image groups, and even audio.
"Sideshow" Steve Jobs is not above a little showmanship. I mean it's part of his repertoire, being Apple's head man and biggest booster. So he goes out and whips up interest in his products and engages in a little verbal sleight-of-hand. It's not an outright lie:
From MacWorld: Instead, our tests found the new 2.0GHz Core Duo iMac takes rougly 10 to 25 percent less time than the G5 iMac to perform the same native application tasks, albeit with some notable exceptions. (If you'd prefer, that makes the Core Duo iMac 1.1 to 1.3 times as fast.) And we also found that applications that aren't yet Intel-native--which must run using Apple's Rosetta code-translation technology--tend to run half as fast as the same applications running natively on the iMac G5.
Not blazingly faster, but faster nonetheless. And who's really going to notice? Graphic designers and CAD people maybe, but the casual user isn't really going to notice the pickup in speed. So perhaps it's a bit of exaggeration but in the end it isn't hurting anyone.
The numbers are meaningless anyway, unless you have another set for comparison, say the loss from common white-collar crimes (embezzlement, theft, etc.). It's about the proportion of loss more than the actual loss. Sure, a worm or virus can bollix up the works, but such things are easily fixable. An accountant siphoning money from the company accounts is harder to trace and when found, is usually harder to recoup.
And even if real cash were involved, how many people are going to trust the system enough and go to the effort of proactively doing this for the prospect of an extra $100/yr?
Every broke college student with student loans and credit card bills. Heck, they'll find a way to have more than one profile so they can rake in the dough.
I thought the free software movement was about increasing the quality of code in the world by cooperation.
No, no, it's the Free Software Movement, whose guiding principle is that software should be free to roam the Internet, unidsturbed, at home in its natural environment.
And how does having the GPL actually increase the quality of code? It's about what you can do with the code, not so much how good it is. There's an awful lot of free code out there I wouldn't touch with an 8-ft USB cable.
Slashdot Mirror
Using the Friend / Foe system you are using a static subset.
True, though the system is flexible enough that I'm not required to mod categories and/or people up or down. I've determined over time that adding/subtracting points based on relationships here is a double-edged sword. I often actually want to see what people who don't like me are saying, to get some sense of why and to challenge them on a fundamental level, if I can or if I want to. It makes logical sense to mod friends up, but then I don't expect them to disagree with me too terribly often, so I use the Friend/For system more as a marker so I can pick those comments out more easily.
No. But we do have, shall we say, ways of persuading people. After all, we would hate to have anything happen to anyone... like an "accident", if youse know what I'm sayin'...
Via Link: In order to show you the most relevant results, we have omitted some entries very similar to the 17 already displayed.
And among those links are:Techtree.com, India - 2 hours ago
InformationWeek, NY - 13 hours ago
Computeractive, UK - 3 hours ago
TechWhack (press release), India - 5 hours ago
iT News, Australia - 17 hours ago
Etc., etc., etc. We should be lucky Avian Flu doesn't spread this fast.
Which is what makes it so much fun!
Seriously, its wonderful that Bayesian filters are useful, but why put blinders on? Slashdot would simply cease to be interesting if you could will away anything you didn't like. Intelligent discourse requires an airing of all sides of an issue and theoretically this can lead to consensus building, if the best parts of all ideas are combined. Of course you're going to get people with very little to say, or very little between the ears, muddying the waters -- the challenge is to take the disparate elements and meld them to something coherent. Superfluous elements will be winnowed out and hopefully the end product is something most people can agree on.
Of course this is Slashdot, the Internet equivalent of a bar brawl. The rough-and-tumble of this kind of fourm is what keeps it interesting and more importantly, as much as we are infuriated by those who don't agree with us, makes us think.
Porn is never the intial driving force behind these inventions but eventually the sex fanatics find a way to take the technology and use it for their purposes and make their presence felt. And so what? If they become a driving force in the HD-DVD/Blu-Ray fracas, that will just spice things up, because hey, the whole argument is pretty dull. Besides, can you imagine the advertising?!?
The thing about this 2-tiered Internet is, it hurts everyone, from comapnies to individual users. What it says is, "only those of you who play by our rules [the telcos] can get faster access, otherwise we take our toys and go home." The telecom companies created this situation and now they want to throw a tantrum because they can't profit from it (even more!). And so, not only will it hurt the big firs, but the mid-level and small firms, who will have to shell out more of their precious cash to keep up with the big guys, and in the end this "play-by-our-rules" mentality will mean that content may be altered in way we users don't like or appreciate.
Excellent idea. Nice to see content instead of having to hunt for it and this will force submitters to get creative with their headlines!
I have only one complaint and that's having the stub stories "grafted" onto the bottom of full stories. While I like the curve and it makes for an interesting visual package, I think the stub stories should be in their own individual little capsules, color-coded to the sections they belong in. This will make it easier to see them for one and also indicate that they are not "attached" in any way to the full story above them.
IE7 Screenshots
From The Washington Post: The Republican-led Congress is struggling with the issue. On one hand, it has taken a deregulatory approach to the Internet, but on the other, it can't ignore the concerns of Google, Yahoo and eBay, some of the most successful companies of the last 10 years. These companies alone have built up businesses worth hundreds of billions of dollars on an unfettered Internet. Moreover, unfettered Internet access has come to be seen by Americans in general as not just a privilege or a product, but a right akin to free speech and free association.
It comes down to who you think is more important: companies like AT&T, BellSouth, etc. that provide a connection to the Internet, or Google, Yahoo, etc. that provide the content that cause people to want to have an Internet connection in the first place.
Personally, I think this is sour grapes by the telecoms, because they didn't think to invest in the content side of things. Let's face it, one share of Google's stock is worth one share of each of theirs combined and then some.
If I'm Congress, I threaten to nationalize the Internet, specifically its infrastructure and connectivity. Tell them the Federal Government now owns the trunks and fiber and they can bid on a contract for maintenance of the whole thing. Thorw some billions their way as "compensation." They'll change their tune in a hurry lest the lose their steady income.
And water is one of many simple, universal compounds. Even thought there are no great heaping pools of it on the Moon and Mars, it's bound up by chemical activity in the minerals there. It can be cracked out easily enough through heating. And if a spacecraft uses fuel cells, they'll be able to carry significant quantities of hydrogen and oxygen aboard their ship as propellant, atmosphere, and fuel to produce electricity and water. Water isn't really the biggest challenge; dealing with the radiation that lashes the Martian surface is a bigger challenge.
Or conversely, when you fail, change the requirements and make it look like a success, which is exactly what BG has done. Brilliant!
Assuming that rural areas can have uninterruptable Internet connections (perhaps this means a bigger market for satellite systems) and easy access to those connections. I grew up in Vermont, as rural a state as they come. Stringing cables isn't easy and winter storms have a tendecy to make has out of power lines, phone lines, and cable connections. I wouldn't mind doing my job from Vermont as long as I was assured connectivity.
From MSNBC: Using a series of nonverbal tests, scientists claim to have uncovered core knowledge of geometry in villagers from a remote region of the Amazon who have little schooling or experience with maps and speak a language without the mathematical language of geometry.
I knew Amazon was big, but where could a remote region be? Now I know how Jeff Bezos is keeping costs down and why deliveries sometimes get delayed.
There are patches already available. Fix it. Move on. Mind you, this is not like what happens with "some other operating systems," where they have to be berated by users into issuing patches...
No, that's discredited by the fact that a company reports a profit for the third quarter of 22 cents when Wall Street was expecting 24 cents and therefore the stock price plunges. And if this happens to a Blue Chip stock, the whole market tanks.
What kind of insanity is this, that the government goes out of control, spending billions on a pointless war, spends billions more spying on its own citizens - and Google has its stock price downgraded because it stands up to a basic infringement on the rights of American citizens?I suspect Google's stock price dip had more to do with the overall drop in the market than simply the refusal of the DoJ's request, but no doubt it was that kind of news coupled with the rise in oil prices and tensions overseas that propelled the market's slide.
CAPTCHA images are useful, but not unbreakable. If they were planning on using that as their only line of defense against scripts, they were really kidding themselves. Simple distorted and discolored text is difficult but not impossible to crack. The CAPTCHA Project is working on more sophisticated forms, using multiple words, image groups, and even audio.
"Sideshow" Steve Jobs is not above a little showmanship. I mean it's part of his repertoire, being Apple's head man and biggest booster. So he goes out and whips up interest in his products and engages in a little verbal sleight-of-hand. It's not an outright lie:
From MacWorld: Instead, our tests found the new 2.0GHz Core Duo iMac takes rougly 10 to 25 percent less time than the G5 iMac to perform the same native application tasks, albeit with some notable exceptions. (If you'd prefer, that makes the Core Duo iMac 1.1 to 1.3 times as fast.) And we also found that applications that aren't yet Intel-native--which must run using Apple's Rosetta code-translation technology--tend to run half as fast as the same applications running natively on the iMac G5.
Not blazingly faster, but faster nonetheless. And who's really going to notice? Graphic designers and CAD people maybe, but the casual user isn't really going to notice the pickup in speed. So perhaps it's a bit of exaggeration but in the end it isn't hurting anyone.
The numbers are meaningless anyway, unless you have another set for comparison, say the loss from common white-collar crimes (embezzlement, theft, etc.). It's about the proportion of loss more than the actual loss. Sure, a worm or virus can bollix up the works, but such things are easily fixable. An accountant siphoning money from the company accounts is harder to trace and when found, is usually harder to recoup.
Sounds like a job for Branson and Rutan's The Spaceship Company. I doubt they can get Andy Griffith to fly it though.
Rethink my advertising partnership for one thing.
Bury the cables deeper... I'm thinking a couple of kilometers down. Let's see them hit those!
Off-topic: Name Not Used for Operator in "The Matrix": Backhoe
Every broke college student with student loans and credit card bills. Heck, they'll find a way to have more than one profile so they can rake in the dough.
Yessssssssssss!!!!! Got an old HP sitting at home with nothing to do... Hehehe...
...Intel gets dumped in favor of AMD?
No, no, it's the Free Software Movement, whose guiding principle is that software should be free to roam the Internet, unidsturbed, at home in its natural environment.
And how does having the GPL actually increase the quality of code? It's about what you can do with the code, not so much how good it is. There's an awful lot of free code out there I wouldn't touch with an 8-ft USB cable.