Interesting to learn the Lewis liked chronological order.
I always thought starting with The Magician's Nephew spoiled the fun of learning about Narnia along with Lucy, Edmund, Peter and Susan. And it totally spoils the surprise about the Professor.
Maybe a compromise order would work, -- start with The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, then backtrack to The Magician's Nephew and continue on in chronological order. (Perhaps this is the order you're suggesting above?)
Personally, I'm just waiting for some religious nut to condemn this on the grounds that fat cells have souls.
I probably qualify as a "religious nut." I am pro-life and am opposed to fetal stem-cell research.
I think this is great! I have a birth defect that resulted in one of my legs being deformed. I get around ok, and many people never notice, but it is a pain to deal with. All my life I've fantasized about being able to chop off my leg and grow a non-deformed one, like a lizard can with its tail. I have no idea if anything like that will happen in my lifetime, but I'm all for research that might make it possible. I just believe it's horribly wrong to kill other humans to do that research (or to use for a potential cure).
Suck out some fat to get the stem cells? Go for it!
Where was I when this [profitable dotcoms] was happening???
I believe it's a typo. The quote should read: "Remember when speculating in dotcoms was profitable?"
Re:Windows beat at their own game...
on
Palm OS 5.0 Preview
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
Sorry but a pda doesn't need to play mpeg video, display in 32 bit color, and have 3d accelerated OpenGl support.
If more customers are willing to spend more money for PDAs that play mpeg video, display in 32-bit color with accelerated 3-D graphics and can remove unsightly body hair, then that's what PDA makers are going to produce. And those who don't will go out of business.
Yeah, but the problem is that if real-time stats determined the programming, it'd be all NFL and Britney Spears 24x7.
Re:Manual length and Macs vs. PC
on
Macintosh Clustering
·
· Score: 4, Informative
This reminds me of an old Mac story.
The situation was that Guy Kawasaki (an Apple "evangelist" at the time) challenged some PC folks to a "bake off," to determine which system made some tasks easier.
When the day came, Kawasaki sent out a 10-year-old to go head-to-head with the PC geek.
Maybe we should have a new challenge where a Linux geek and a 10-year-old compete to see who can set up a compute cluster the fastest.:^)
My Manual is Smaller than Your Manual!
on
Macintosh Clustering
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
I recall, back when CD-ROMs were fairly newfangled, the "manual" that came with the CD, if it was a dual-platform disk, often offered an interesting contrast.
The Windows instructions would go on for pages, discussing running the installer application, how to get the right drivers, etc.
The Macintosh instructions were usually:
Insert the disk
Double-click on the icon
I never understood why Apple didn't market that advantage heavily.
there is probably a grey area in between "helping" and "cheating".
This is something I often wonder about. In the "real world" it is very unrealistic to work alone without reusing anyone else's code or working with anyone else. In fact, I think one would prefer the person who uses existing solutions as much as possible and pools knowledge and expertise. So the "cheater" may be the best employee.
I think the real problem is caused by our emphasis on grades. If the objective is to have students learn the material, then there's no reason to care about how they go about learning it. I learned perl (on the job) by stealing liberally from perl code out on the net. It was highly instructive.
But, for better or worse, our system wants to score each individual based on his/her mastery of the subject. The only way to do that is to insist that work not be borrowed, shared, or in any other way un-original.
Another poster mentioned upper-division classes being more team-oriented while lower-division classes are more individual. That's probably a reasonable compromise.
Some (don't know how) system to mod up late good posters. The problem with the current system is early on topic posters get modded up, but a 4 hour late gem has a very slim change to be modded up.
This is an interesting one. When I have mod points, I delibrerately go to "older" (0.5 to 2 days old) stories and look for gems that are sitting at 0 or 1.
Maybe the cost (in points) of a moderation could be based on how old the story is?
I find a very effective spam filter is to simply filter out any e-mail that doesn't have your address in the TO: or CC: fields. It's very rare to see a spam that's correctly addressed in this way.
I use this "algorithm," and in general, it's a good one. But it's getting worse. I'm getting more and more junk email that does have my address in the To: header. The spammers are starting to figure out that this is a commonly-used filter, methinks.
A few comments have already come in saying that this product isn't "innovative" enough. You can get more-or-less the same thing elsewhere.
But what does being highly innovative get Apple? Think Newton. It still runs circles around the Palm, but was a commercial failure. It was too innovative.
But, how about if you took the idea of an MP3 player, made it look nice, gave it a Firewire port for fast transfers and easy recharging, and made the whole thing sync seamlessly with iTunes.
Sounds like a pretty good idea to me. I imagine they'll sell quite a few. It's the right feature set at the right time.
I don't necessarily think the the "replacement" for Microsoft will look anything like Microsoft. I think that ultimately, the market will change somehow, and Microsoft will not be able to dominate the new market. They'll still be around, but will be merely a player, rather than the dominant force.
We don't need a "Windows clone," we need "the Next Big Thing." And with the linux world merely attempting to clone Windows (after having successfully cloned Unix), I don't see Linux ever becoming the Next Big Thing, either.
When the action against Microsoft first started, my thought was that it was typical -- the government was taking action after the time when it was most needed.
It was my opinion then, and is still my opinion, that the market would take care of Microsoft, just like it had with IBM (the previous 800-lb gorilla of the computing world). The government could try to stop Microsoft, but the market would ultimately do a better job.
Now we see statements like:
"There are a lot of (angry) chief information officers out there," says Steven Steinbrecher, CIO for California's Contra Costa County. His 3-year costs will jump to $651 per desktop from $335.
Q.E.D.
In time (no, I have no idea how long), Microsoft will be just a player in a new computing world. I don't know what the new world will be, or who its biggest player will be. If I did, I'd be buying stock like crazy.
Unix has many situations where trust of users has been implicit, if not outright designed in.
Many Unix commands have failed to test user input, leading to the potential for problems ("passwd -f", for example, used to allow things like newlines, making it trivial to add your own r00t account).
The "all or nothing" security model of Unix leads to a whole bunch of setuid programs, which means we have to trust the users, or at least trust our ability to code against every possible thing a user might try.
The three-level permission model (user, group, others)is pretty weak, and there's no standard way to implement ACLs to make up for it.
Think of all of the ways to crack root on a Unix box.
I'm in no way defending Microsoft, I'm just saying that *nix users shouldn't be so smug. Unix was designed by researchers in friendly environments (even the Internet was a friendly environment, once upon a time). We've spent the last 10 years or so trying to work around built-in assumptions and provide some semblance of security. If *nix is more secure than Windows, it's mostly due to having had a head start.
A couple of years ago, NT admins on campus where I work were ranting against Linux because there were so many exploits floating around, while Windows was largely ignored. NT was "obviously" more secure, since it wasn't being exploited at the same rate as Linux, Irix, etc. I said that NT would have its day, too. *nix was the #1 security problem then, Windows is today, and tomorrow something else will get its turn (maybe even *nix again).
Any computer that's running and networked is vulnerable. (If it can be used, it can be abused.) There are just varying degrees of vulnerability, and varying degrees of desirability of targets.
I live in a small market (Moscow, Idaho/Pullman, WA). Other than Top 40 and Country, it's pretty tough for anything to be profitable. Because of two universities, there are some "alternative" radio stations, but they aren't playing anything I'm interested in.
But I like jazz. And bluegrass. Neither of those gets played on the radio, and it wouldn't make any sense for anyone to do it. I'm just out of the range of a jazz station run by Eastern Washington University in Cheney, WA.
There aren't enough jazz or bluegrass listeners in my area to make for a profitable venture. But on the internet? You better believe it.
The trick, of course, is to come up with a viable revenue model.
Also, I can't listen to internet radio at work, because of "no personal use" rules. That certainly limits my availablity as a customer/listener.
It's a tough market, and there are definitely some obstacles, but the potential is there.
I have no idea what sort of rights the radio stations have. Lawyers are, in general, a cautious breed, so I am not surprised that a radio station's lawyers would be concerned about streaming if the station's contract doesn't specifically allow for it.
Perhaps someone who is in the radio industry and/or a lawyer could fill us in.
Re:Stop addressing Code Red
on
Code Red III
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
The issue is system administrators need to take proactive measures to make sure their systems have been patched. That's the problem and thats what needs to be addressed.
Sysadmins aren't entirely at fault. Certainly, this particular problem has received enough coverage that there really shouldn't be any unpatched IIS installations any more (but there are, sigh), but the other side is that it's pretty near impossible to keep up with every patch to every system.
Here's a good rant on the subject entitled The Security Patch Treadmill. It was written in March 2001, before Code Red. It still applies. A quote:
Those who manage computer networks are people too, and people don't always do the smartest thing. They know they're supposed to install all patches. But sometimes they can't take critical systems off-line. Sometimes they don't have the staffing available to patch every system on their network. Sometimes applying a patch breaks something else on their network. I think it's time the industry realized that expecting the patch process to improve network security just doesn't work.
Slashdot Mirror
Interesting to learn the Lewis liked chronological order.
I always thought starting with The Magician's Nephew spoiled the fun of learning about Narnia along with Lucy, Edmund, Peter and Susan. And it totally spoils the surprise about the Professor.
Maybe a compromise order would work, -- start with The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, then backtrack to The Magician's Nephew and continue on in chronological order. (Perhaps this is the order you're suggesting above?)
I always find it amazing just how high the failure rate is for what should, after 50 years, be routine rocketry.
Yeah, I mean it's not like it's rocket science or anything....
actually I think a "GeekPAC" would be a good idea
Guess what? There is a GeekPac! Check it out.
My question is, why haven't we done this already? Why don't we have a political action group?
Check out GeekPac.
I probably qualify as a "religious nut." I am pro-life and am opposed to fetal stem-cell research.
I think this is great! I have a birth defect that resulted in one of my legs being deformed. I get around ok, and many people never notice, but it is a pain to deal with. All my life I've fantasized about being able to chop off my leg and grow a non-deformed one, like a lizard can with its tail. I have no idea if anything like that will happen in my lifetime, but I'm all for research that might make it possible. I just believe it's horribly wrong to kill other humans to do that research (or to use for a potential cure).
Suck out some fat to get the stem cells? Go for it!
Where was I when this [profitable dotcoms] was happening???
I believe it's a typo. The quote should read: "Remember when speculating in dotcoms was profitable?"
Sorry but a pda doesn't need to play mpeg video, display in 32 bit color, and have 3d accelerated OpenGl support.
If more customers are willing to spend more money for PDAs that play mpeg video, display in 32-bit color with accelerated 3-D graphics and can remove unsightly body hair, then that's what PDA makers are going to produce. And those who don't will go out of business.
That's just the way life is.
Yeah, but the problem is that if real-time stats determined the programming, it'd be all NFL and Britney Spears 24x7.
This reminds me of an old Mac story.
t ml
:^)
The situation was that Guy Kawasaki (an Apple "evangelist" at the time) challenged some PC folks to a "bake off," to determine which system made some tasks easier.
When the day came, Kawasaki sent out a 10-year-old to go head-to-head with the PC geek.
The full details of the story are at http://www.halcyon.com/kegill/mac/win95/faceoff.h
Maybe we should have a new challenge where a Linux geek and a 10-year-old compete to see who can set up a compute cluster the fastest.
I recall, back when CD-ROMs were fairly newfangled, the "manual" that came with the CD, if it was a dual-platform disk, often offered an interesting contrast.
The Windows instructions would go on for pages, discussing running the installer application, how to get the right drivers, etc.
The Macintosh instructions were usually:
I never understood why Apple didn't market that advantage heavily.
This is something I often wonder about. In the "real world" it is very unrealistic to work alone without reusing anyone else's code or working with anyone else. In fact, I think one would prefer the person who uses existing solutions as much as possible and pools knowledge and expertise. So the "cheater" may be the best employee.
I think the real problem is caused by our emphasis on grades. If the objective is to have students learn the material, then there's no reason to care about how they go about learning it. I learned perl (on the job) by stealing liberally from perl code out on the net. It was highly instructive.
But, for better or worse, our system wants to score each individual based on his/her mastery of the subject. The only way to do that is to insist that work not be borrowed, shared, or in any other way un-original.
Another poster mentioned upper-division classes being more team-oriented while lower-division classes are more individual. That's probably a reasonable compromise.
Some (don't know how) system to mod up late good posters. The problem with the current system is early on topic posters get modded up, but a 4 hour late gem has a very slim change to be modded up.
This is an interesting one. When I have mod points, I delibrerately go to "older" (0.5 to 2 days old) stories and look for gems that are sitting at 0 or 1.
Maybe the cost (in points) of a moderation could be based on how old the story is?
The advertisers have me as all of the above. Plus, I'm a woman whose breasts are too small.
Oh, and I have an unreliable Windows system.
(Note that I have no Windows systems. They're all Mac and Linux.)
I use this "algorithm," and in general, it's a good one. But it's getting worse. I'm getting more and more junk email that does have my address in the To: header. The spammers are starting to figure out that this is a commonly-used filter, methinks.
But what does being highly innovative get Apple? Think Newton. It still runs circles around the Palm, but was a commercial failure. It was too innovative.
But, how about if you took the idea of an MP3 player, made it look nice, gave it a Firewire port for fast transfers and easy recharging, and made the whole thing sync seamlessly with iTunes.
Sounds like a pretty good idea to me. I imagine they'll sell quite a few. It's the right feature set at the right time.
Geoff
I don't necessarily think the the "replacement" for Microsoft will look anything like Microsoft. I think that ultimately, the market will change somehow, and Microsoft will not be able to dominate the new market. They'll still be around, but will be merely a player, rather than the dominant force.
We don't need a "Windows clone," we need "the Next Big Thing." And with the linux world merely attempting to clone Windows (after having successfully cloned Unix), I don't see Linux ever becoming the Next Big Thing, either.
When the action against Microsoft first started, my thought was that it was typical -- the government was taking action after the time when it was most needed.
It was my opinion then, and is still my opinion, that the market would take care of Microsoft, just like it had with IBM (the previous 800-lb gorilla of the computing world). The government could try to stop Microsoft, but the market would ultimately do a better job.
Now we see statements like:
Q.E.D.
In time (no, I have no idea how long), Microsoft will be just a player in a new computing world. I don't know what the new world will be, or who its biggest player will be. If I did, I'd be buying stock like crazy.
Unix has many situations where trust of users has been implicit, if not outright designed in.
Many Unix commands have failed to test user input, leading to the potential for problems ("passwd -f", for example, used to allow things like newlines, making it trivial to add your own r00t account).
The "all or nothing" security model of Unix leads to a whole bunch of setuid programs, which means we have to trust the users, or at least trust our ability to code against every possible thing a user might try.
The three-level permission model (user, group, others)is pretty weak, and there's no standard way to implement ACLs to make up for it.
Think of all of the ways to crack root on a Unix box.
I'm in no way defending Microsoft, I'm just saying that *nix users shouldn't be so smug. Unix was designed by researchers in friendly environments (even the Internet was a friendly environment, once upon a time). We've spent the last 10 years or so trying to work around built-in assumptions and provide some semblance of security. If *nix is more secure than Windows, it's mostly due to having had a head start.
A couple of years ago, NT admins on campus where I work were ranting against Linux because there were so many exploits floating around, while Windows was largely ignored. NT was "obviously" more secure, since it wasn't being exploited at the same rate as Linux, Irix, etc. I said that NT would have its day, too. *nix was the #1 security problem then, Windows is today, and tomorrow something else will get its turn (maybe even *nix again).
Any computer that's running and networked is vulnerable. (If it can be used, it can be abused.) There are just varying degrees of vulnerability, and varying degrees of desirability of targets.
Geoff
This obviously should be the topic of a slashdot poll.
In the meantime, here's my contribution, a gem from Henny Youngman (I believe):
A guy goes to see a psychiatrist. The psychiatrist says, "You're crazy." The guy says, "I want a second opinion. "Ok. You're ugly, too!"
[insert sound of rimshot here]
Does this promote software bloat?
... can it run Linux?
... at least in some cases.
I live in a small market (Moscow, Idaho/Pullman, WA). Other than Top 40 and Country, it's pretty tough for anything to be profitable. Because of two universities, there are some "alternative" radio stations, but they aren't playing anything I'm interested in.
But I like jazz. And bluegrass. Neither of those gets played on the radio, and it wouldn't make any sense for anyone to do it. I'm just out of the range of a jazz station run by Eastern Washington University in Cheney, WA.
There aren't enough jazz or bluegrass listeners in my area to make for a profitable venture. But on the internet? You better believe it.
The trick, of course, is to come up with a viable revenue model.
Also, I can't listen to internet radio at work, because of "no personal use" rules. That certainly limits my availablity as a customer/listener.
It's a tough market, and there are definitely some obstacles, but the potential is there.
I have no idea what sort of rights the radio stations have. Lawyers are, in general, a cautious breed, so I am not surprised that a radio station's lawyers would be concerned about streaming if the station's contract doesn't specifically allow for it.
Perhaps someone who is in the radio industry and/or a lawyer could fill us in.
Sysadmins aren't entirely at fault. Certainly, this particular problem has received enough coverage that there really shouldn't be any unpatched IIS installations any more (but there are, sigh), but the other side is that it's pretty near impossible to keep up with every patch to every system.
Here's a good rant on the subject entitled The Security Patch Treadmill. It was written in March 2001, before Code Red. It still applies. A quote:
The linuxda website has a minimal info page at http://www.linuxda.com/products/os.html
I really wonder, though, if my Palm m100 is someplace I want to run Linux. PalmOS works fine, and does the intended job. If it ain't broke....