But I hear the astronauts have trouble understanding the controls as they are labeled with strange markings, "haute", "bas", "gauche", "droit", "ouvrez", "fermez", WTF?
I'd guess these wouldn't be the same guys that had no problem with meters and feet (in mouth?) while putting a lander on Mars?
the canadian arm installed on ISS, seems to be missing a finger. A Nasa employe was heard mumbling something about canadain engineers, comics and four fingers...
Sources in the NASA have corroborated this story, but other sources imply, that the NASA engineer in question had personally detached the middle finger of the arm after some sort of gesture he perceived upon uttering a derogative remark towards "kanucks".
The days of the Digirati are over, and they will not be missed.
Oh, yes, they will. Those days you could still keep up with Usenet, the days 99% of posts was relevant to the group and the previous message, those days when "Flame" stood for an intelligent, almost literary rebuttal, instead of moronic incendiary gutter-drivel, the days of the Crystal Cave, the days the 'net _was_ free and open, and abuse and crass commercialism non-existent. They will be missed, Jon, until they pry the keyboard from my cold, dead fingers and nail the coffin shut. And I bet many will agree, if maybe not here.
Yes pranks taken to the next level with almighty rail guns.
I was thinking more along the lines of those Texans meeeting up with those Canucks, so that next year they'll be shooting a beetle off the Golden Gate with a rail gun.
Stefan. It takes a lot of brains to enjoy satire, humor and wit-
Pure speculation, but it might just discourage people from joining on a whim. 'Keeping out the riff-raff' so to speak.
My initial reaction was indeed: What the fuck? We deserve the info, for free!
But reading your contribution I realised: Perhaps Vixie wants a little extra barrier to keep the script kiddies from getting the info and acting upon it, before us hard-worked sysadmins have time to plug all the holes on all the systems they manage in all the world. Hence the suggestion of "strong" non-disclosure agreements.
Sadly, it won't work. There is no guarantee that some patron script-kiddie-hero-wannabee won't have the dosh and the position, to be a member of the the list, or that simply some disgruntled sysadmin won't leak the info to the kiddies (or won't be one), or that the info will not be found by a hacking kiddie from hell.
We manage a fair number of servers and there is no way we can ever keep their security ahead of the kiddies. We do our best, but I'm always sure there is always a hole somewhere, I just hope and pray we find it and close it before they do. Usually they overlook us and our customers, no media attention in it. So only jail, no glory.
But no matter what you do, security through obscurity won't work even the way Vixie proposes. That's what I think. Information leaks, almost as if it wants to be free.
Stefan. It takes a lot of brains to enjoy satire, humor and wit-
There is one reason, and one reason alone for the power shortages: lack of power.
Actually, according to my newspaper, (in Dutch, so no babel to help foreigners, so no link) the current problems in Caifornia are due to a lack of money, caused by the higher oil prices and a maximum price for the consumers to cover the cost. The BBC confirms this. So if the Californian power companies had been allowed to rise prices with the price of oil, there would not have been a problem. So, in a way, deregulation is the cause, since if the powerproduction were still a state job, no doubt the increased price of oil would have been reflected in the consumer power prices.
Stefan. It takes a lot of brains to enjoy satire, humor and wit-
Same thing happens when you go to the Shockwave site from a Solaris system. So I'd guess it'll be the same for any Unix. So what's the matter, indeed? Is this an independant strategic choice or should we look in the direction paranoia is pointing? Since when is this happening?
Stefan, who will not mourn the loss of shockwave capability, should it come that far. It takes a lot of brains to enjoy satire, humor and wit-
I agree. The single most important feature of my professional life was, that my father bought a HP-45, which lead to my buying a HP-67 at about 16, and a ZX Spectrum later on. Which led me to become a Systems Programmer. And I still will hold, and defend, that Reverse Polish Notation is more logical than bracket stuff. It may be I'm wired wrong, but with RPN is have no trouble, but balancing brackets is very difficult if you do not know in advance what you're precisely calculating. With RPN it doesn't matter, the numbers are just there. And if later on , there's another addition to perform, just enter both numbers, and do the addition, and the next computation.
It taught me the importance of registers, and the fact, that they are not infinite in capacity or number. That you should cut doen tasks to the equipment you have, and that there is much fun to be had with limited resources.
At the moment, my HP 67 lives a graveyard live, since its battery gave out long ago, but I still dream about finding a replacement battery and fireing it up again, and see of these old magnetic strips have survived as well.
I hail this most influential man on my life, and mourn his death, for he has undoubtably been of notable influence on our life, and I like to think, to the benefit.
Stefan. It takes a lot of brains to enjoy satire, humor and wit-
ctually since we created the.NET and we control most of the servers and pipes, we get to make the rules.
Perhaps it is time to create.bofh, if it's not already been done, and
maintain the following rules:
Any SPAM is automatically grounds to revoke your.bofh domain, whether it's with or without your knowledge. Proof of remedy will regain you your place.
Commercial influences are abhorred. We are an anarchy, and do not want anything we are not ourselves seeking for. If we want you, we'll find you, so don't bother us before that.
Although we uphold the Declaration of Human rights, you have no right to harass or humiliate some female, simply because she won't give you any.
We may be an anarchy, but we cooperate, and anyone disruptive is first excluded, then may make his case in his defense, which he should have done before the disruption. And the penalty for disrupting.bofh is harsh, but called for. We do not like our playground spoiled.
There is more, but we will write it down whenever we have time and energy to do so.
Stefan. It takes a lot of brains to enjoy satire, humor and wit-
Enforcement on an international scale is impossible. The "world community" can barely enforce a common morality with regard to mass killings, do you really expect them to forge unity on whether or not slashdot.org belongs in.com?
Enforcement on an international scale is only impossible, if all the major players in the international field decline. And even then, to paraphrase Frank Zappa: "There's more of us little motherfuckers than you are."
And about those responsible for mass killings, the international Court of Justice seems to be doing quite well regarding the most atrocious killers of the recent Balkan war, even so, that some of them are freely going there, to await justice and get it over with.
What we need a single, flat namespace that doesn't have any "distinctions." The distinctions are unnecessary, unmanageable and unenforceable. Multinationals will claim their name in all namespaces by carrot or stick. There's no shortage of domain names if you're willing to be clever. There are, however, a shortage of obvious generic name terms and trademarked names, but that would be true in any namespace.
I agree, that the current three letter TLDs are not meeting needs or wants. For instance, where I work, we originated as an university computer center, and are therefore still not-for-profit, but we do have very commercial clients, for instance, the largest national newspaper, and a large publisher. Since only the US is hesitant about using their national TLD, this poses no problem, because we use the national TLD. But imagine, soon we will lose the not-for-profit status, and, in US terms, move from.edu to.com, and our acronym is a female first name,SARA. SO, what to do, buy out some luscious girl or her pimp, who exploits a sara.com site? Or stress the educational part of our business with the more easily maintained.edu site? Since it's sara.nl, the question will never rise, unless at some time we grow so big as to contemplate sara.int, but I do not see that happenning for some decades. And by then, we could always choose a new name, more cheaply.
But with a single namespace name collisions would take place more often, resulting in money destroying court cases, so let's not go there. Simply hand over the non-country-based TLDs to the UN, and leave the other ones to the countries involved.
Stefan. It takes a lot of brains to enjoy satire, humor and wit-
Yes, perhaps you are correct that America should now give up control of the non nation specific TLDs, but how would decisions get made then? The UN is not exactly a model of efficiency (and even the UN has a small security council that wields most of the effective power).
There is probably no governing body in the world that is "a model of efficiency", so that's hardly an argument unless you know something better. Fact is, the US have been declaiming themselves the one true democracy in the world, and leader of all nations, at the same time balking at paying their agreed financial contribution needed to uphold the UN. But I should return to the matter at hand. Yes, the US started the internet, the first true democracy since the ancient Greeks thought of the concept, and now their baby had grown to a faltering maturity, they should relinquish their inclination to control it beyond their borders. As every other nation in the world. The UN, or another independent global institution, should conduct a research of law globally, including every nation and minority therein, and construct an international Law, hopefully with the Declaration of Human Rights as a constitution. There should be a court, widely recognised, with judges not appointed by any government, but apolitically, like the International Court in the Hague, to adjudicate, and we're getting closer to the basics of a world government. But of course most governments won't want to give up their own powers, as we can see in the lamentable struggles towards an European Union, and the fears of the US to recognise the International Court.
But to the point: the internet has outgrown the US, and if it was still 1990, or so, control would easily be distributed amongst those deserving, and with the current knowledge, the TLDs, that aren't country based, would be administered internationally. Alas, that is not how it came to pass, but I feel very strongly, that no single givernment should be able to exert decisive influence on the shaping of the internet, unless they tone down the influence of mighty companies. The internet used to be the only true democracy, bordering on the best of anarchy, but now everyone and his dog wants to get their claws on us and cream us.
Stefan. It takes a lot of brains to enjoy satire, humor and wit-
The more elegant solution for/. I already suggested: leave the mail address in your preferences empty. That should make it clear enough, that you do not want any email reactions to anything you post here. Without the chance of irritating the person responsible for handling abuse email when someone who is ignorant about 127.0.0.1 wants not to bother the whole of/. with their reaction to you.
Stefan. It takes a lot of brains to enjoy satire, humor and wit-
bSMTP means "batched SMTP", not "bulk SMTP". And it is used for companies nad individuals who do not have a permanent internet connection and do not want a connection made for every single email they send.
Stop using FUD.
*plonk*
Stefan. It takes a lot of brains to enjoy satire, humor and wit-
But then again, you could also first learn what you're talking about, so as not to show your ignorance, before you make a judgement.
Hint1: 127.0.0.1 is IP for "this host which I'm currently (ab)using." Hint2: abuse is (nearly) a required email address on any mail server.
Now picture in your mind a mail server that doubles as a webbrowser server. True, a very bad idea in the first place, but what is management for if not for the bad ideas?
Stefan. It takes a lot of brains to enjoy satire, humor and wit-
I've been flamed, mail bombed, had my machines attacked, this has become seriously unfunny!
Then why, oh overwrought one, do you specify your email address on slashdot as it is? Do you get your jollies thinking about how now and again overworked and underpaid email server administrators get an email intended to you, but incomprehensible and not truly trackable to them?
I think you need to think again and recalibrate your sense of humour. Hint: specifying an email address is not mandatory on Slashdot.
Stefan. It takes a lot of brains to enjoy satire, humor and wit-
I know that the windows version of Sim City 3000 needs the cd but is it the same way with the linux version?
The Unix version of SC3U can be installed on disk completely, and will play perfectly without the CD. I should know, it's kept me from going to bed in time quite a few times.
Stefan. It takes a lot of brains to enjoy satire, humor and wit-
Re:Christmas isn't about presents
on
Gifts For Geeks
·
· Score: 1
And if that gives you stange look, you could always go back to the source, and celebrate the present giving party on the eve of the death of saint Nicolas, the bishop of Myrna, 6 december 340. And thereby undo the embrace and expand of whoever it was, that decided the combination with the supposed birthday of Christ and the heathen Yule celebrations would do some extra good or whatever. Maybe some pope deciding it would help extinguish Hanukah (that's a Jewish gifts celebration about the same time, isn't it?).
Over here in the Netherlands we do the gifts on the evening of the fifth of december, without a church anywhere near, though the tradition is crumbling under the weight of foreign traditions combining it with Christmas.
Stefan. It takes a lot of brains to enjoy satire, humor and wit-
"vrisu" is probably the Hindu god of malign stupidity: the kind of stupidity, that knows it's stupid to do something some way, yet perseveres it the folly. The kind of stupidity, that could lead to a Darwin award.
Stefan. It takes a lot of brains to enjoy satire, humor and wit-
I mean, apart of the different kernel levels, there's only one Linux, unless Linus is going to split off a baby-linux along with each and every kid he and his wife have. Granted, there are a lot of different distributions, but these all fish
in the same pool of software. Linux is as fragmentated as the cat population, and neither seems to have a problem interacting productively.
Stefan. It takes a lot of brains to enjoy satire, humor and wit-
All this gruntling and name calling and other childish commentary from either major candidate just makes one thing clear: chuck out the antiquated voting machines in preference to electronic voting machines. Here in the Netherlands we used to have to mark a single box with a red pencil on a ballot sheet, which where then all handcounted. But somewhere in the eighties, this was replaced by electronic voting machines: just press the button next to your candidate, double check on the little LCD screen and press the confirm button. Quick, unambiguous, and very easy to count.
The only design error I see with our machines, it that the candidates names are aligned right, and the corresponding buttons are aligned left in the colunm, so the corresponding buttons are actually nearer a completely different candidate. Apart from that, little can go wrong. The only malfeasance we've had since were small extreme right wing groups solliciting votes and voting cards from gullible elderly people. And some recounts in very close, small villages still voting by paper ballot.
Stefan. It takes a lot of brains to enjoy satire, humor and wit-
Stefan. It takes a lot of brains to enjoy satire, humor and wit-
Re:Damned if you do, Damned if you don't
on
Golden Rice
·
· Score: 1
Why don't we hear the same screaming and yelling about pesticides and fertilisers, which are *proven* to cause long-term damage to the environment compared to GM, where the degree of harm is mostly alleged, and where there is evidence, it is less.
Well, I can only say: If you don't hear about that, it's because you're not living in Europe, where the yelling does take place. With too little effect, so far, because the farmer lobby, which is pretty strong around here, says: 'But we wants it! It'll cost us money if we don't use them. And we've been using them forever, so where's the harm.'
The problem with genetic engineering is, in my opinion, that we know too little about it to use it just yet. And the dangers of a strain going astray are so enormous still, that I think it would be wise to study a lot more first, before going off changing this and this and that. We must learn to walk, before we can run.
Stefan. It takes a lot of brains to enjoy satire, humor and wit-
Slashdot Mirror
But I hear the astronauts have trouble understanding the controls as they are labeled with strange markings, "haute", "bas", "gauche", "droit", "ouvrez", "fermez", WTF?
I'd guess these wouldn't be the same guys that had no problem with meters and feet (in mouth?) while putting a lander on Mars?
Stefan.
Sources in the NASA have corroborated this story, but other sources imply, that the NASA engineer in question had personally detached the middle finger of the arm after some sort of gesture he perceived upon uttering a derogative remark towards "kanucks".
Stefan.
Oh, yes, they will. Those days you could still keep up with Usenet, the days 99% of posts was relevant to the group and the previous message, those days when "Flame" stood for an intelligent, almost literary rebuttal, instead of moronic incendiary gutter-drivel, the days of the Crystal Cave, the days the 'net _was_ free and open, and abuse and crass commercialism non-existent. They will be missed, Jon, until they pry the keyboard from my cold, dead fingers and nail the coffin shut. And I bet many will agree, if maybe not here.
Stefan.
with a license to bill?
Stefan.
It takes a lot of brains to enjoy satire, humor and wit-
I was thinking more along the lines of those Texans meeeting up with those Canucks, so that next year they'll be shooting a beetle off the Golden Gate with a rail gun.
Stefan.
It takes a lot of brains to enjoy satire, humor and wit-
'Keeping out the riff-raff' so to speak.
My initial reaction was indeed: What the fuck? We deserve the info, for free!
But reading your contribution I realised: Perhaps Vixie wants a little extra barrier to keep the script kiddies from getting the info and acting upon it, before us hard-worked sysadmins have time to plug all the holes on all the systems they manage in all the world. Hence the suggestion of "strong" non-disclosure agreements.
Sadly, it won't work. There is no guarantee that some patron script-kiddie-hero-wannabee won't have the dosh and the position, to be a member of the the list, or that simply some disgruntled sysadmin won't leak the info to the kiddies (or won't be one), or that the info will not be found by a hacking kiddie from hell.
We manage a fair number of servers and there is no way we can ever keep their security ahead of the kiddies. We do our best, but I'm always sure there is always a hole somewhere, I just hope and pray we find it and close it before they do. Usually they overlook us and our customers, no media attention in it. So only jail, no glory.
But no matter what you do, security through obscurity won't work even the way Vixie proposes. That's what I think. Information leaks, almost as if it wants to be free.
Stefan.
It takes a lot of brains to enjoy satire, humor and wit-
Actually, according to my newspaper, (in Dutch, so no babel to help foreigners, so no link) the current problems in Caifornia are due to a lack of money, caused by the higher oil prices and a maximum price for the consumers to cover the cost. The BBC confirms this. So if the Californian power companies had been allowed to rise prices with the price of oil, there would not have been a problem. So, in a way, deregulation is the cause, since if the powerproduction were still a state job, no doubt the increased price of oil would have been reflected in the consumer power prices.
Stefan.
It takes a lot of brains to enjoy satire, humor and wit-
Stefan, who will not mourn the loss of shockwave capability, should it come that far.
It takes a lot of brains to enjoy satire, humor and wit-
It taught me the importance of registers, and the fact, that they are not infinite in capacity or number. That you should cut doen tasks to the equipment you have, and that there is much fun to be had with limited resources.
At the moment, my HP 67 lives a graveyard live, since its battery gave out long ago, but I still dream about finding a replacement battery and fireing it up again, and see of these old magnetic strips have survived as well.
I hail this most influential man on my life, and mourn his death, for he has undoubtably been of notable influence on our life, and I like to think, to the benefit.
Stefan.
It takes a lot of brains to enjoy satire, humor and wit-
Perhaps it is time to create .bofh, if it's not already been done, and
Stefan.
It takes a lot of brains to enjoy satire, humor and wit-
Enforcement on an international scale is only impossible, if all the major players in the international field decline. And even then, to paraphrase Frank Zappa: "There's more of us little motherfuckers than you are."
And about those responsible for mass killings, the international Court of Justice seems to be doing quite well regarding the most atrocious killers of the recent Balkan war, even so, that some of them are freely going there, to await justice and get it over with.
What we need a single, flat namespace that doesn't have any "distinctions." The distinctions are unnecessary, unmanageable and unenforceable. Multinationals will claim their name in all namespaces by carrot or stick. There's no shortage of domain names if you're willing to be clever. There are, however, a shortage of obvious generic name terms and trademarked names, but that would be true in any namespace.
I agree, that the current three letter TLDs are not meeting needs or wants. For instance, where I work, we originated as an university computer center, and are therefore still not-for-profit, but we do have very commercial clients, for instance, the largest national newspaper, and a large publisher. Since only the US is hesitant about using their national TLD, this poses no problem, because we use the national TLD. But imagine, soon we will lose the not-for-profit status, and, in US terms, move from .edu to .com, and our acronym is a female first name,SARA. SO, what to do, buy out some luscious girl or her pimp, who exploits a sara.com site? Or stress the educational part of our business with the more easily maintained .edu site? Since it's sara.nl, the question will never rise, unless at some time we grow so big as to contemplate sara.int, but I do not see that happenning for some decades. And by then, we could always choose a new name, more cheaply.
But with a single namespace name collisions would take place more often, resulting in money destroying court cases, so let's not go there. Simply hand over the non-country-based TLDs to the UN, and leave the other ones to the countries involved.
Stefan.
It takes a lot of brains to enjoy satire, humor and wit-
There is probably no governing body in the world that is "a model of efficiency", so that's hardly an argument unless you know something better. Fact is, the US have been declaiming themselves the one true democracy in the world, and leader of all nations, at the same time balking at paying their agreed financial contribution needed to uphold the UN. But I should return to the matter at hand. Yes, the US started the internet, the first true democracy since the ancient Greeks thought of the concept, and now their baby had grown to a faltering maturity, they should relinquish their inclination to control it beyond their borders. As every other nation in the world. The UN, or another independent global institution, should conduct a research of law globally, including every nation and minority therein, and construct an international Law, hopefully with the Declaration of Human Rights as a constitution. There should be a court, widely recognised, with judges not appointed by any government, but apolitically, like the International Court in the Hague, to adjudicate, and we're getting closer to the basics of a world government. But of course most governments won't want to give up their own powers, as we can see in the lamentable struggles towards an European Union, and the fears of the US to recognise the International Court.
But to the point: the internet has outgrown the US, and if it was still 1990, or so, control would easily be distributed amongst those deserving, and with the current knowledge, the TLDs, that aren't country based, would be administered internationally. Alas, that is not how it came to pass, but I feel very strongly, that no single givernment should be able to exert decisive influence on the shaping of the internet, unless they tone down the influence of mighty companies. The internet used to be the only true democracy, bordering on the best of anarchy, but now everyone and his dog wants to get their claws on us and cream us.
Stefan.
It takes a lot of brains to enjoy satire, humor and wit-
And the internet will by that time have gigabit or terabit links, so "impossible" is definitely limited in time.
Stefan.
It takes a lot of brains to enjoy satire, humor and wit-
Stefan.
It takes a lot of brains to enjoy satire, humor and wit-
Stop using FUD.
*plonk*
Stefan.
It takes a lot of brains to enjoy satire, humor and wit-
The server from which the users start their webbrowser.
Stefan.
It takes a lot of brains to enjoy satire, humor and wit-
Hint1: 127.0.0.1 is IP for "this host which I'm currently (ab)using."
Hint2: abuse is (nearly) a required email address on any mail server.
Now picture in your mind a mail server that doubles as a webbrowser server. True, a very bad idea in the first place, but what is management for if not for the bad ideas?
Stefan.
It takes a lot of brains to enjoy satire, humor and wit-
[SNIP]
I've been flamed, mail bombed, had my machines attacked, this has become seriously unfunny!
Then why, oh overwrought one, do you specify your email address on slashdot as it is? Do you get your jollies thinking about how now and again overworked and underpaid email server administrators get an email intended to you, but incomprehensible and not truly trackable to them?
I think you need to think again and recalibrate your sense of humour. Hint: specifying an email address is not mandatory on Slashdot.
Stefan.
It takes a lot of brains to enjoy satire, humor and wit-
The Unix version of SC3U can be installed on disk completely, and will play perfectly without the CD. I should know, it's kept me from going to bed in time quite a few times.
Stefan.
It takes a lot of brains to enjoy satire, humor and wit-
Over here in the Netherlands we do the gifts on the evening of the fifth of december, without a church anywhere near, though the tradition is crumbling under the weight of foreign traditions combining it with Christmas.
Stefan.
It takes a lot of brains to enjoy satire, humor and wit-
Stefan.
It takes a lot of brains to enjoy satire, humor and wit-
Stefan.
It takes a lot of brains to enjoy satire, humor and wit-
The only design error I see with our machines, it that the candidates names are aligned right, and the corresponding buttons are aligned left in the colunm, so the corresponding buttons are actually nearer a completely different candidate. Apart from that, little can go wrong. The only malfeasance we've had since were small extreme right wing groups solliciting votes and voting cards from gullible elderly people. And some recounts in very close, small villages still voting by paper ballot.
Stefan.
It takes a lot of brains to enjoy satire, humor and wit-
Stefan.
It takes a lot of brains to enjoy satire, humor and wit-
Well, I can only say: If you don't hear about that, it's because you're not living in Europe, where the yelling does take place. With too little effect, so far, because the farmer lobby, which is pretty strong around here, says: 'But we wants it! It'll cost us money if we don't use them. And we've been using them forever, so where's the harm.'
The problem with genetic engineering is, in my opinion, that we know too little about it to use it just yet. And the dangers of a strain going astray are so enormous still, that I think it would be wise to study a lot more first, before going off changing this and this and that. We must learn to walk, before we can run.
Stefan.
It takes a lot of brains to enjoy satire, humor and wit-