In addition, the sonic cannon was found to be quite effective in crashing passenger jets cruising well within range overhead at only 30,000 feet. The paint chips falling at high speed were found to be damaging to the car's clear coating and the falling passengers often created dangerous delays during the morning commute. Fortunately, the technology was sold before these findings became public.
Okay, Motif was, towards the end, practically falling apart. But... it worked. It has widgets, programmers who know it, stability, and attitude (or was that altitude? I forget...) control too. It also has mould, dents, leaks, and a shredded-looking user interface, but we're not that bothered about that.
Start building GNOME as a set of add-on modules to Motif. Take advantage of Motif's facilities until you get the chance to replace them. Run off the existing codebase until you get the replacement interface set up. Use Motif's technical support pool until the documentation recycler is installed. etc.
Eventually the new modules will be supplying all the functionality and the old parts of Motif will be unused. At which stage, you can either use them as scratch space, or depressurise them and mothball them. Maybe one day you can recycle the raw materials; even as scrap, those ancient electrons are ludicrously valuable.
But no, Motif went down in flames and GNOME went down in budget. All for annoying political reasons. IMO it's highly unlikely that GNOME will ever do anything useful. By the time it gets large enough (as if it isn't already), other commercial products will be eclipsing it.
If you are good looking, I am sure it would help your chances quite a bit to send an 8x10 publicity photo of yourself. This will be especially effective if you are white, clean cut, female. All three can be really effective. Just remember, there is no reason to care why you are hired. You should only care whether you can do the job once you are. The employment process is a war, and those who expect a fair fight will remain unemployed.
It's damn uncompetetive to be overwriting everybody else's love. Just because you have the last word, there is no reason to stack the echos against everyone else. We like Eugenia too you know...
www.DigiKey.com has a great number of A/D chips, many under $5. If you can handle a soldering iron and can read the spec sheet, you should definitely consider it.
Those companies who steal GPL code have no doubt stole code from other companies too. Corporate spying has been around since the invention of business; if you make it easy for your competitors to find your code, they will steal it. Period. You can whine about license violations or ethics or other such things, but they will have made millions of dollars by then, which is the only thing that matters in business.
Real nerds(tm) use microwave power transmission! How could any real nerd pass up an opportunity like that? You might even get a slashdot category named after you.
Come on now, a true nerd would build a steam engine to run his generator. You clearly have some wood around. Sure the conversion efficiency is only 5%, but think of the nerd points you'd get for posting pictures of your steam-powered computer!;) And, if you are really nerdy, you could even try for a Stirling engine, which could also be run in reverse to cool your CPU.
> Mastery of mspaint does not qualify you as an experienced user.
Perhaps not, but remembering that mspaint still exists might be a qualification in itself. That program seems as ancient as dosshell these days.
A true list of the problems of a small mind.
on
Systemantics
·
· Score: 0, Troll
Only a small and untalented mind could come up with a pessimistic list like that. Only a man who has never made a working system in his life can hold beliefs like these. Beliefs that are self-perpetuating, contagious (though only to other small minds), and just plain wrong. Let me elaborate:
# Systems in general work poorly or not at all.
Only if the designer is a talentless slob or a commitee, which is all too often the case in the modern world. If your mind is clean and ordered, so will its products be. If your mind is a mess, full of nothing but superstitions, half-formed beliefs, prejudices, other people's opinions and bad advice, is it any surprize that it can not come up with anything that is good?
# New systems generate new problems.
Baloney. The problems are inevitably the same; there just aren't too many of them to begin with. Only applications vary, but to a small mind that is not capable of abstraction, each such application looks novel, untried, and unfamiliar. And what hope does he have of solving it in this particular incarnation? No more than in any of the previous ones.
# Systems operate by redistributing energy into different forms and into accumulations of different sizes.
A beautifully vague statement worthy of a beggar fortuneteller.
# Systems tend to grow, and as they grow, they encroach.
Systems created by small minds always grow because the mental process of abstraction is essential for their reduction. Look at any software project and you'll discover dozens of code passages that do exactly the same thing, but differ due to a haphazard and mindless design of the data structures.
# Complex systems exhibit unpredictable behavior.
If you create a system you should understand it. If you can not understand it, you should not create it, but delegate the task to someone who can.
# Complex systems tend to oppose their own proper function.
If you do not know what the system's proper function is (see previous point), how can you be surprized that your guesses prove wrong?
# People in systems do not do what the system says they are doing.
Because you, as the system architect, failed to understand its purpose, the people will naturally be forced outside it in order to accomplish it.
# A function performed by a larger system is not operationally identical to the function of the same name performed by a smaller system.
See the growth point above.
# The real world is whatever is reported to the system.
Garbage in, garbage out. Garbage without, garbage within.
# Systems attract systems people.
Systems attract stupid people who are too afraid to make a decision for which some system can not be blamed.
# The bigger the system, the narrower and more specialized the interface with individuals.
When you can not see the similarity between interfaces, they breed like rabbits. Sadly, each one eventually becomes attached to an individual who could be fired.
# A complex system cannot be "made" to work; it either works or it doesn't.
A perfect description of the mindset of a man who can not "make" anything work. Without abstraction and thought, information never becomes knowledge. Without knowledge, understanding is impossible. Without understanding, the man is a nothing but a pathetic blind, mute, and helpless cripple, created by his own listless hand.
# A simple system may or may not work.
A truly simple system always works. The hard part is making a system simple. Now that is the true talent.
# If a system is working, leave it alone.
And stick your head in the sand while you are at it.
# 15. A complex system that works is invariably found to have evolved from a simple system that works.
Bloated beyond recognition by clinging imbeciles whose only intelligence lay in avoiding screwing up the work of the person who created the simple system.
> bugs, specifically the one in which users > experienced system panics during install
I wonder how they expect anyone to actually use an operating system whose installation procedure makes experienced users panic... Oh, yeah; I forgot. It's open source.
> I hope the prosecuters are fired afterwards, > wasting tax payer's money to shill for a bunch of > scum bags in suits is hardly in the public interests.
In Gowachin law (F.Herbert, "Dosadi Experiment") the legum (lawyer) who lost his case was immediately killed by the winning legum. I suspect that this particular measure was meant to prevent a system like that of the United States where litigation happens on the slightest velleity.
> to cross 70 miles of the strait of formosa would be an undertaking that would make normandy and okinawa be minor ops. > they don't have the 1) airforce to provide cover, > 2) the navy to carry them over, 3) the ability to > protect the invasion from being observed from > satelites, which would give us and taiwan > advanced notice, 4) the ability to hold and > maintain a beachhead once there
China has an excellent military, including an air force and the navy, which it can use quite effectively. Remember the time when Taiwan was having its first elections, back in 1996? China performed quite a show of force back then, holding exercises in which an occupying force took and held a beachhead and a few islands, giving a good proof of concept for a Taiwan invasion. The comparison with Normandy is misleading; Taiwan does not have anything comparable to the forces that Germans had on that beach. The coast of Taiwan is not all that well protected, and I doubt that the Chinese army would worry much about it, unless the U.S. decided to intervene. As for your comment about satellites; first, advance warning of a few hours is not going to help much against such a powerful adversary; second, if Saddam Hussein had no difficulty hiding tanks in the open desert from both the satellites and ground observation, surely, a technologically advanced nation like China could figure something out.
> second, china built the three gorges dam.
When important national interests are at stake, the Chinese government would be willing to overlook a few casualties.
> we could take it out in about 10 minutes.
Perhaps. But would we? The U.S. needs China way more than China needs the U.S.; China is the producer, the U.S. is the consumer. If the producer loses one market, it could find another. If the consumer loses the goods, he loses the goods. There is simply no way domestic industry could replace all the cheap imports from China. Slave labor is always cheaper than technology.
Geeks should recall that neither is it wise to intentionally provoke a neighbour with 40 billion dollars in assets and a 99% desktop market share. It may be instructive to also remember those things called "ideals", that some people consider to be worth fighting for.
We already have that something to differentiate Us from Them. It's called virginity.
Cracking old messages? Come on...
on
RSA-576 Factored
·
· Score: 2, Funny
> Those people could be concerned at this point that > their old messages could be cracked.
Who would want to spend zillions of hours of computer time to read some geek's old messages?
"Great news, today I have finally managed to install the latest 0.99.1 kernel and boy is it great! I'm so glad I picked SLS instead of slackware, whose installer sucks big time. With my beloved SLS all I had to do was swap four floppies in and out and everything works beautifully! No crashes yet. I never realized how much of a pain DOS was! I just finished getting my printer to work (sure was tough, see attached comments on my 7551 hack) and am bored stiff. Do you know if there are any games for Linux? Moria just doesn't cut it after King's Quest."
There really is no reason for most individuals to have a computer in their home. A computer is a tool and is not useful by itself, but is instead only a means to an end. The sort of ends that it can serve a means to, is far beyond the intelligence of average people.
> Come on. Do you really think Microsoft knows that much about security?
Don't insult me. I worked at Microsoft too and know quite a bit about security. I also know why many Microsoft products don't have much of it, and it has nothing to do with ignorance of programmers.
"There are known unknowns, that is, there are things we know we don't know. And there are unknown unknowns, which are the things we do not yet know we do not know." -- Donald Rumsfeld
Slashdot Mirror
In addition, the sonic cannon was found to be quite effective in crashing passenger jets cruising well within range overhead at only 30,000 feet. The paint chips falling at high speed were found to be damaging to the car's clear coating and the falling passengers often created dangerous delays during the morning commute. Fortunately, the technology was sold before these findings became public.
Okay, Motif was, towards the end, practically falling apart. But... it worked. It has widgets, programmers who know it, stability, and attitude (or was that altitude? I forget...) control too. It also has mould, dents, leaks, and a shredded-looking user interface, but we're not that bothered about that.
Start building GNOME as a set of add-on modules to Motif. Take advantage of Motif's facilities until you get the chance to replace them. Run off the existing codebase until you get the replacement interface set up. Use Motif's technical support pool until the documentation recycler is installed. etc.
Eventually the new modules will be supplying all the functionality and the old parts of Motif will be unused. At which stage, you can either use them as scratch space, or depressurise them and mothball them. Maybe one day you can recycle the raw materials; even as scrap, those ancient electrons are ludicrously valuable.
But no, Motif went down in flames and GNOME went down in budget. All for annoying political reasons. IMO it's highly unlikely that GNOME will ever do anything useful. By the time it gets large enough (as if it isn't already), other commercial products will be eclipsing it.
If you are good looking, I am sure it would help your chances quite a bit to send an 8x10 publicity photo of yourself. This will be especially effective if you are white, clean cut, female. All three can be really effective. Just remember, there is no reason to care why you are hired. You should only care whether you can do the job once you are. The employment process is a war, and those who expect a fair fight will remain unemployed.
SkyOS has full support for nVidia cards, something that the Linux kernel is still missing.
It's damn uncompetetive to be overwriting everybody else's love. Just because you have the last word, there is no reason to stack the echos against everyone else. We like Eugenia too you know...
Do not ask who Eugenia is; ask if she is single.
www.DigiKey.com has a great number of A/D chips, many under $5. If you can handle a soldering iron and can read the spec sheet, you should definitely consider it.
> there would be physical evidence that a procedure like that had been performed
It's called 'hangover', and is the first symptom to check when you wake up next to someone you don't know.
Those companies who steal GPL code have no doubt stole code from other companies too. Corporate spying has been around since the invention of business; if you make it easy for your competitors to find your code, they will steal it. Period. You can whine about license violations or ethics or other such things, but they will have made millions of dollars by then, which is the only thing that matters in business.
Real nerds(tm) use microwave power transmission! How could any real nerd pass up an opportunity like that? You might even get a slashdot category named after you.
Come on now, a true nerd would build a steam engine to run his generator. You clearly have some wood around. Sure the conversion efficiency is only 5%, but think of the nerd points you'd get for posting pictures of your steam-powered computer! ;) And, if you are really nerdy, you could even try for a Stirling engine, which could also be run in reverse to cool your CPU.
> Mastery of mspaint does not qualify you as an experienced user.
Perhaps not, but remembering that mspaint still exists might be a qualification in itself. That program seems as ancient as dosshell these days.
Only a small and untalented mind could come up with a pessimistic list like that. Only a man who has never made a working system in his life can hold beliefs like these. Beliefs that are self-perpetuating, contagious (though only to other small minds), and just plain wrong. Let me elaborate:
# Systems in general work poorly or not at all.
Only if the designer is a talentless slob or a commitee, which is all too often the case in the modern world. If your mind is clean and ordered, so will its products be. If your mind is a mess, full of nothing but superstitions, half-formed beliefs, prejudices, other people's opinions and bad advice, is it any surprize that it can not come up with anything that is good?
# New systems generate new problems.
Baloney. The problems are inevitably the same; there just aren't too many of them to begin with. Only applications vary, but to a small mind that is not capable of abstraction, each such application looks novel, untried, and unfamiliar. And what hope does he have of solving it in this particular incarnation? No more than in any of the previous ones.
# Systems operate by redistributing energy into different forms and into accumulations of different sizes.
A beautifully vague statement worthy of a beggar fortuneteller.
# Systems tend to grow, and as they grow, they encroach.
Systems created by small minds always grow because the mental process of abstraction is essential for their reduction. Look at any software project and you'll discover dozens of code passages that do exactly the same thing, but differ due to a haphazard and mindless design of the data structures.
# Complex systems exhibit unpredictable behavior.
If you create a system you should understand it. If you can not understand it, you should not create it, but delegate the task to someone who can.
# Complex systems tend to oppose their own proper function.
If you do not know what the system's proper function is (see previous point), how can you be surprized that your guesses prove wrong?
# People in systems do not do what the system says they are doing.
Because you, as the system architect, failed to understand its purpose, the people will naturally be forced outside it in order to accomplish it.
# A function performed by a larger system is not operationally identical to the function of the same name performed by a smaller system.
See the growth point above.
# The real world is whatever is reported to the system.
Garbage in, garbage out. Garbage without, garbage within.
# Systems attract systems people.
Systems attract stupid people who are too afraid to make a decision for which some system can not be blamed.
# The bigger the system, the narrower and more specialized the interface with individuals.
When you can not see the similarity between interfaces, they breed like rabbits. Sadly, each one eventually becomes attached to an individual who could be fired.
# A complex system cannot be "made" to work; it either works or it doesn't.
A perfect description of the mindset of a man who can not "make" anything work. Without abstraction and thought, information never becomes knowledge. Without knowledge, understanding is impossible. Without understanding, the man is a nothing but a pathetic blind, mute, and helpless cripple, created by his own listless hand.
# A simple system may or may not work.
A truly simple system always works. The hard part is making a system simple. Now that is the true talent.
# If a system is working, leave it alone.
And stick your head in the sand while you are at it.
# 15. A complex system that works is invariably found to have evolved from a simple system that works.
Bloated beyond recognition by clinging imbeciles whose only intelligence lay in avoiding screwing up the work of the person who created the simple system.
# Complex systems designed from scratch
> bugs, specifically the one in which users
> experienced system panics during install
I wonder how they expect anyone to actually use an operating system whose installation procedure makes experienced users panic... Oh, yeah; I forgot. It's open source.
My date(1) insists that I always provide the $$, since arguments for processing the %s can be difficult to process.
> I hope the prosecuters are fired afterwards,
> wasting tax payer's money to shill for a bunch of
> scum bags in suits is hardly in the public interests.
In Gowachin law (F.Herbert, "Dosadi Experiment") the legum (lawyer) who lost his case was immediately killed by the winning legum. I suspect that this particular measure was meant to prevent a system like that of the United States where litigation happens on the slightest velleity.
> to cross 70 miles of the strait of formosa would be an undertaking that would make normandy and okinawa be minor ops.
> they don't have the 1) airforce to provide cover,
> 2) the navy to carry them over, 3) the ability to
> protect the invasion from being observed from
> satelites, which would give us and taiwan
> advanced notice, 4) the ability to hold and
> maintain a beachhead once there
China has an excellent military, including an air force and the navy, which it can use quite effectively. Remember the time when Taiwan was having its first elections, back in 1996? China performed quite a show of force back then, holding exercises in which an occupying force took and held a beachhead and a few islands, giving a good proof of concept for a Taiwan invasion. The comparison with Normandy is misleading; Taiwan does not have anything comparable to the forces that Germans had on that beach. The coast of Taiwan is not all that well protected, and I doubt that the Chinese army would worry much about it, unless the U.S. decided to intervene. As for your comment about satellites; first, advance warning of a few hours is not going to help much against such a powerful adversary; second, if Saddam Hussein had no difficulty hiding tanks in the open desert from both the satellites and ground observation, surely, a technologically advanced nation like China could figure something out.
> second, china built the three gorges dam.
When important national interests are at stake, the Chinese government would be willing to overlook a few casualties.
> we could take it out in about 10 minutes.
Perhaps. But would we? The U.S. needs China way more than China needs the U.S.; China is the producer, the U.S. is the consumer. If the producer loses one market, it could find another. If the consumer loses the goods, he loses the goods. There is simply no way domestic industry could replace all the cheap imports from China. Slave labor is always cheaper than technology.
Geeks should recall that neither is it wise to intentionally provoke a neighbour with 40 billion dollars in assets and a 99% desktop market share. It may be instructive to also remember those things called "ideals", that some people consider to be worth fighting for.
We already have that something to differentiate Us from Them. It's called virginity.
> Those people could be concerned at this point that
> their old messages could be cracked.
Who would want to spend zillions of hours of computer time to read some geek's old messages?
"Great news, today I have finally managed to install the latest 0.99.1 kernel and boy is it great! I'm so glad I picked SLS instead of slackware, whose installer sucks big time. With my beloved SLS all I had to do was swap four floppies in and out and everything works beautifully! No crashes yet. I never realized how much of a pain DOS was! I just finished getting my printer to work (sure was tough, see attached comments on my 7551 hack) and am bored stiff. Do you know if there are any games for Linux? Moria just doesn't cut it after King's Quest."
> So, I guess 'those that can' are on the bottom rung, huh?
Have you looked at teachers' salaries lately?
There really is no reason for most individuals to have a computer in their home. A computer is a tool and is not useful by itself, but is instead only a means to an end. The sort of ends that it can serve a means to, is far beyond the intelligence of average people.
> Come on. Do you really think Microsoft knows that much about security?
Don't insult me. I worked at Microsoft too and know quite a bit about security. I also know why many Microsoft products don't have much of it, and it has nothing to do with ignorance of programmers.
The average slashdotter will die painfully from even one hour of art history lectures. Physics, on the other hand, we could listen to for a long time.
> Smalley has no proof that this is impossible
"There are known unknowns, that is, there are things we know we don't know. And there are unknown unknowns, which are the things we do not yet know we do not know." -- Donald Rumsfeld