if it works for you, the helix-gnome install
process is a joyous wonder to behold, and easy to
boot. it is especially great over a fast network
connection, but you can even do it over a modem
over several nights-- the installer program stores
the packages you select somewhere in/tmp until it
has all of the ones you selected. once you finally
get all the packages, then it installs fine.
helix-gnome is pretty cool if you ask me.
....Konqueror will [my emphasis] support the full gamut of current Internet technologies, including JavaScript, Java®, HTML 4.0, CSS-2 (Cascading Style Sheets), SSL (Secure
Socket Layer for secure communications) and Netscape Communicator® plug-ins (for playing FlashTM, RealAudioTM, RealVideoTM and similar technologies). In addition,
Konqueror's network transparency offers seamless support for browsing Linux® NFS shares, Windows® SMB shares, HTTP pages, FTP directories as well as any other
protocol for which a KIO plug-in is available.
Having not used Konqueror myself, I am curious as to where it currently stands on these claims. Can anyone speak to just how fully/incompletely compliant it is to the specs for HTML 4.0, CSS-2, etc? Is it all the way there, or do the authors have a lot of work to do before the release, or will they have to change the language to say "Konqueror will have nearly complete support for..."?
and memepool.com
had it on August 19!
what, oh what is the world coming too!
I just don't feel safe anymore, in a world where this kind of thing can happen...
</sarcasm>
The main question of the article is how the mental models we all keep in our heads influence our thinking and our actions. It's not talking about simple models that help us survive (i.e. things tend to fall, don't let fast things touch your head, etc); rather the article deals with the models that people use to think about more abstract things.
I think that the models we think with are largely a product of the culture we as individuals are exposed to. Not to mention the culture we choose to expose ourselves to.
I think it's important to question the models we think with (as damnably introspective, and as difficult, as that may be) because the models we think with become the origins of our behavior. You have to wonder: "Am I thinking independently, or am I only thinking within the model of a 'techie'? Is the 'techie' model the best model to think with? How did I come to think using the 'techie' model?"
The most interesting (to me) idea that I got from the article was about examining the models that scientists/technologists appear to be using, or the models that they may be helping to create for others to adopt? Is it dangerous, or just interesting, or amusing that lots of scientists/technologists seem to be operating on models that are heavily influenced by science fiction?
Personally, I'd like to be able to base my own thinking on the most fundamental logic and divorce myself from any particular culture, so that I don't have to worry whether my thoughts and behavior are purely mine or if they're tainted by my environment. Unfortunately, I don't know if it's possible to that; I'm sure some of my thinking must be constrained by some kind of culture at the moment; I also don't know how I'd ever be able to tell if my thoughts were free of cultural contamination.
Personally, I think this is more of a mistake than a good move for Corel. Doing so more or less admits to the world that they can't compete in the same market. Countless hours of development down the tubes with no way of recouping costs = a bad thing.
On the other hand: can you see Corel porting over CorelDraw without porting PhotoPaint? I don't know if anyone uses Corel PhotoPaint at all, unless it's all they have, but CorelDraw is a great piece of software in my opinion, and I would love to be able to use it on a Linux system. As it is, I don't think Corel even sells PhotoPaint separately for Windows, they just bundle it with CorelDraw, because it really is mediocre.
But if Corel can show that their PhotoPaint works as well on Linux as it does on Windows, then they mave have an easier time selling CorelDraw when they port that over. Since there are no competitive/well known (that I know of) vector drawing programs for Linux, Corel could find a strong market for CorelDraw.
2. What effect will magnetic forces (and/or electro-magnetic forces) has on this type of memory?
As far as I know, and I'm pretty confident on my E&M physics, it shouldn't matter much as long as the memory is properly packaged (i.e. shielded).
Here's how it works: you surround the memory with a conductive metal; it's really that simple. external electric fields can only get inside if there are holes in the enclosure. this is why you wouldn't be able to pick up radio signals if you were inside a metal box, or why radio signals would sound really really weak if you were inside a giant birdcage. (incidentally, this is also why a car is a safe place to be in a lightning storm)
so, you just make sure to wrap some foil around it, and then the memory's only vulnerabilities are through the connection it has to the rest of the components.
as for magnetic fields, I'm less sure but I think external magnetic fields can be shielded from by an iron (because iron is ferromagnetic) enclosure.
someone with better physics knowledge correct me if I'm wrong?
I'd like to rephrase the above question rephrased to ask the following:
Do you (Metallica) understand that online music sharing cannot be stopped without fundamentally changing the way the internet works?
Or: People who want to share music (whether it is legal or not) will find other ways to do it. You can see that a very large number of people want to do it (your lawyers are naming 335,000 Napster users, and this only counts people with Metallica mp3s), and these people will just go and share the music a different way if Napster is stopped. So why do you think stopping Napster will be effective in preventing rampant online sharing of copyrighted material?
I'm very happy with my "4D" mouse; it has three buttons and a thumb button that is equivalent to the middle button. in between the regular buttons, there are wheels: the left one is for vertical; the right one is for the rare horizontal scroll.
cost $20 at CompUSA, seems to be generic in manufacture, but mine happens to say "MICRO innovations": on it. works great so far.
I wonder what would happen if there were the option on these posting forms, next to posting anonymously, to post as a designated troll? the idea being that then only people who set their threshold appropriately or checked a box saying "I want to read trolls". trolldot.org seems to be an interesting idea too.
there seem to be lots of people who like to troll, and flame, and so forth; and a similar amount of people who like to flame trolls and troll flames, and so forth.
would a self-designation as troll option improve the general slashdot comment-reading experience (signal/noise ration)? or would trolls avoid designating themselves as such? or would people post good comments but designate themselves as trolls to protest the system?
on a similar note, what if there were a mirror of slashdot, but with the purpose of being a receptacle for trolls/flames?
I don't have a cellphone. when/if I get one, I'd prefer one with encryption. crypto is better than no crypto, don't get me wrong. And a software implementation of SSL in Netscape works just fine for my credit card numbers (like there's an alternative for buying something online anyway?)
As for address/phone number, I feel like the cat is more or less out of the bag on that one. I haven't tried myself, but I wouldn't be surprised if it were easy to look those up.
overall, and as much of a misanthrope as I am, I just haven't felt like much of anyone is out to get me, electronically at least;) And I can't think of a whole lot of personal info about myself, that I keep outside my head, that I feel like I don't want others to know about.
I enjoyed your joke about the tinman, if I understood it. but I can't think of a good reason to be the "tinman" (secure my linux box that or run OpenBSD, encrypt all my data, etc.) other than that it would be fun and educational (which, I admit, might be reason enough)
Seems to me like this would be good hardware to put in a bridgehead router... particularly with software/drivers to opportunistically encrypt IP traffic between routers that support it. I don't know how far away we are from this, but I think this is the goal. Transparent end-to-end opportunistic encryption. Yee ha.
I agree there, now that you mention it; user-transparent encryption certainly can't hurt other than to give some users a possibly false sense of security. And it looks like they are doing something like what you're talking about, at least with respect to DSL modems and related equipment (check out their press releases). It will definitely be cool, I think, if routers that used this sort of technology come into use.
another neat thing, besides OpenBSD getting cooler, is that some companies are going to be using this hardware encryption/decryption/authentication/etc. technology for DSL modems.
how long, do you suppose, before someone makes a keyboard that ssh's (or use some equivalent measure to encrypt all traffic between the keyboard and computer) to the computer, so that the truly paranoid can feel a little less worried about someone planting a KeyGhost on a machine when they're not looking? or is that way too paranoid?
this sounds so cool-- lots of strong encryption at blisteringly fast speeds--
but wait... I don't have anything to encrypt... or decrypt. guess I better find something appropriately shady to do to justify that kind of protection.
much as I want to reserve the right to have the kind of secrecy strong crypto might permit, I can't think of anything I want to hide that badly. any suggestions?
<sarcastic> if only I was a secret agent or something </sarcastic>
I don't know one way or the other- but it's hard for me to imagine anyone but an actor with a script talking about meat and open space the way that panther was. I haven't seen creature comforts in a long time, though.
I loved Creature Comforts-- especially the (panther?) big cat animal complaining about the lack of space and meat. the voice acting was great, and as with other Aardman animations the facial expressions were magical.
I agree, I think-- the more ways out there for people to become security conscious the better.
As someone without the most experience, I like knowing that I have a range of choices when it comes to security. If I want to be paranoid, I can use OpenBSD, and learn to set up the extra stuff I want. If I want to have more fun, I can use linux and learn to turn off the junk I don't wank. And if I just want to screw around and put up with the occasional crash, I can use Windows, and avoid doing anything patently stupid.
Hopefully though, security will start to become the default in more places than OpenBSD. It will be interesting to see what happens with respect to computer security over the next few years; as more people get connected to broadband and the net in general, will a similar increase in compromised systems force people to worry about it more? or will the level of computerized mischief remain low enough that only the semi-paranoid put security as their first design priority?
IIRC from history class, Pinkerton detectives were a major pain for early unionizing movements (in the late 19th century/early 20th century, again, IIRC); pinkerton detectives were hired by companies to control strikes, spy on workers etc. so they've had dark spots in their past too.
I've got to chime in here. First, let me say I don't like the idea of the program and that I think it will fail; it will fail because it is too idealistic to be practical.
Everyone will rat on everyone if anyone rats at all, with this system. "Geeks" will rat on the jocks who make fun of them and shove them around; that's violent behavior, isn't it? It won't just be the popular/non-geek/whatever kids picking on the sad, weak, minority; the neutrality of the system means that anyone who is concerned about anyone else's behavior is going to be able to say so and have someone listen.
I object *strongly* to the idea that this system is bad just because it targets 'Geeks'. It doesn't. If you read the webpage, they never say
Hey kids, tell us about those weirdos in your school who noone likes!
Instead, they say (on http://www.waveamerica.com/waveline/whycall.htm)
Call the WAVE Line at 1.888.960.9600 if you want to anonymously report...
Threats of Violence
Aggressive Behavior
Weapons on Campus
Drugs or Alcohol on Campus
Harassment
Vandalism
Suicide Threats
Intensely Prejudiced or Intolerant Attitudes
Anything Else Harmful to You or Your School
And they also say that you should talk to an adult first anyway.
To me, this seems pretty innocuous, in terms of it's intent. But of course, I realize that if this thing gets going at all, it's going to be so hideously abused by all the immature people of all cliques, creeds, colors, etc. that it will collapse. If something like this had been around while I was in school, I don't know if I would have been targeted by it or not; I'm certainly eccentric and was picked on for it; but if I had had an anonymous place to tell someone about all the ways I was being harassed, etc, I think I might have used it, esp. if other people in the school were using it too.
IMHO, this program has the best of intentions- preventing unecessary death/violence/bad feelings/stuff for kids in school. It's not supposed to be about making a new club of conformity watchdogs; it's not about conformity at all. It is trying to be about opening up more communication, so that problems get talked about instead of being suppressed until they explode.
for all it's good intentions though, this program will not work for the same reason that this program is needed: people are people, and they will be immature, petty, violent, etc. and a system like this will be abused by everyone if it is abused by anyone, and if it is used by anyone, there will be someone out there to abuse it.
Possibly interesting bit of trivia, from www.imdb.com:
A lawsuit by A.E. van Vogt, claiming plagiarism of his 1939 story "Discord in Scarlet" (which he had incorporated in the 1950 novel "Voyage of the Space Beagle"), was settled out of court. (The suit was with regard to the movie Alien)
"Discord in Scarlet" was a great chapter in Voyage of the Space Beagle, which is my favorite A.E. Van Vogt book. If you've ever read it, you'll understand why he sued! "Discord in Scarlet" is about finding an alien body floating deep in interstellar space, far from anything, but still alive. The alien is a millions-of-years-old survivor of a hyper-advanced civilization, and it is at least as vicious as the alien in "Alien", without all the acid drooling and with the cool ability to walk through walls. It reproduces by grabbing an egg out of it's own chest and passing it into the body of a host, in this case a crew member of the ship that found it. The ensuing battle between the alien and the crew of the ship is a lot more interesting, and clever, I think, than the plot of "Alien", as much as that movie rocked. A.E. Van Vogt was certainly before my time, but I have fond memories of reading his stories out of my father's collection of Science Fiction, including lots of old back issues of Analog magazine. "Voyage of the Space Beagle" is my favorite Van Vogt book, but Slan is pretty good too, and the Weapon Shops stories are a lot of fun. I'd recommend Van Vogt to nerds everywhere, for a big ol' dose of prime vintage Sci-Fi
Slashdot Mirror
if it works for you, the helix-gnome install process is a joyous wonder to behold, and easy to boot. it is especially great over a fast network connection, but you can even do it over a modem over several nights-- the installer program stores the packages you select somewhere in /tmp until it
has all of the ones you selected. once you finally
get all the packages, then it installs fine.
helix-gnome is pretty cool if you ask me.
and memepool.com
had it on August 19!
what, oh what is the world coming too!
I just don't feel safe anymore, in a world where this kind of thing can happen...
</sarcasm>
trying to bring about the invocation of, what is it, Godwin's law? good luck :P
The main question of the article is how the mental models we all keep in our heads influence our thinking and our actions. It's not talking about simple models that help us survive (i.e. things tend to fall, don't let fast things touch your head, etc); rather the article deals with the models that people use to think about more abstract things.
I think that the models we think with are largely a product of the culture we as individuals are exposed to. Not to mention the culture we choose to expose ourselves to.
I think it's important to question the models we think with (as damnably introspective, and as difficult, as that may be) because the models we think with become the origins of our behavior. You have to wonder: "Am I thinking independently, or am I only thinking within the model of a 'techie'? Is the 'techie' model the best model to think with? How did I come to think using the 'techie' model?"
The most interesting (to me) idea that I got from the article was about examining the models that scientists/technologists appear to be using, or the models that they may be helping to create for others to adopt? Is it dangerous, or just interesting, or amusing that lots of scientists/technologists seem to be operating on models that are heavily influenced by science fiction?
Personally, I'd like to be able to base my own thinking on the most fundamental logic and divorce myself from any particular culture, so that I don't have to worry whether my thoughts and behavior are purely mine or if they're tainted by my environment. Unfortunately, I don't know if it's possible to that; I'm sure some of my thinking must be constrained by some kind of culture at the moment; I also don't know how I'd ever be able to tell if my thoughts were free of cultural contamination.
But if Corel can show that their PhotoPaint works as well on Linux as it does on Windows, then they mave have an easier time selling CorelDraw when they port that over. Since there are no competitive/well known (that I know of) vector drawing programs for Linux, Corel could find a strong market for CorelDraw.
Here's how it works: you surround the memory with a conductive metal; it's really that simple. external electric fields can only get inside if there are holes in the enclosure. this is why you wouldn't be able to pick up radio signals if you were inside a metal box, or why radio signals would sound really really weak if you were inside a giant birdcage. (incidentally, this is also why a car is a safe place to be in a lightning storm)
so, you just make sure to wrap some foil around it, and then the memory's only vulnerabilities are through the connection it has to the rest of the components.
as for magnetic fields, I'm less sure but I think external magnetic fields can be shielded from by an iron (because iron is ferromagnetic) enclosure.
someone with better physics knowledge correct me if I'm wrong?
Do you (Metallica) understand that online music sharing cannot be stopped without fundamentally changing the way the internet works?
Or: People who want to share music (whether it is legal or not) will find other ways to do it. You can see that a very large number of people want to do it (your lawyers are naming 335,000 Napster users, and this only counts people with Metallica mp3s), and these people will just go and share the music a different way if Napster is stopped.
So why do you think stopping Napster will be effective in preventing rampant online sharing of copyrighted material?
cost $20 at CompUSA, seems to be generic in manufacture, but mine happens to say "MICRO innovations": on it. works great so far.
(I wonder where I could find more creepy pages like this? anyone reading this thread know any?)
I agree, but on the bright side at least it's finally been done somewhere, after begging for someone to do it for so long.
there seem to be lots of people who like to troll, and flame, and so forth; and a similar amount of people who like to flame trolls and troll flames, and so forth.
would a self-designation as troll option improve the general slashdot comment-reading experience (signal/noise ration)? or would trolls avoid designating themselves as such? or would people post good comments but designate themselves as trolls to protest the system?
on a similar note, what if there were a mirror of slashdot, but with the purpose of being a receptacle for trolls/flames?
And a software implementation of SSL in Netscape works just fine for my credit card numbers (like there's an alternative for buying something online anyway?)
As for address/phone number, I feel like the cat is more or less out of the bag on that one. I haven't tried myself, but I wouldn't be surprised if it were easy to look those up.
overall, and as much of a misanthrope as I am, I just haven't felt like much of anyone is out to get me, electronically at least ;)
And I can't think of a whole lot of personal info about myself, that I keep outside my head, that I feel like I don't want others to know about.
I enjoyed your joke about the tinman, if I understood it.
but I can't think of a good reason to be the "tinman" (secure my linux box that or run OpenBSD, encrypt all my data, etc.) other than that it would be fun and educational (which, I admit, might be reason enough)
I agree there, now that you mention it; user-transparent encryption certainly can't hurt other than to give some users a possibly false sense of security. And it looks like they are doing something like what you're talking about, at least with respect to DSL modems and related equipment (check out their press releases). It will definitely be cool, I think, if routers that used this sort of technology come into use.
I apologize if this post is redundant.
there are press releases talking about this on the Hi/fn press release page.
how long, do you suppose, before someone makes a keyboard that ssh's (or use some equivalent measure to encrypt all traffic between the keyboard and computer) to the computer, so that the truly paranoid can feel a little less worried about someone planting a KeyGhost on a machine when they're not looking? or is that way too paranoid?
but wait... I don't have anything to encrypt... or decrypt. guess I better find something appropriately shady to do to justify that kind of protection.
much as I want to reserve the right to have the kind of secrecy strong crypto might permit, I can't think of anything I want to hide that badly. any suggestions?
<sarcastic> if only I was a secret agent or something </sarcastic>
I don't know one way or the other- but it's hard for me to imagine anyone but an actor with a script talking about meat and open space the way that panther was. I haven't seen creature comforts in a long time, though.
I loved Creature Comforts-- especially the (panther?) big cat animal complaining about the lack of space and meat. the voice acting was great, and as with other Aardman animations the facial expressions were magical.
As someone without the most experience, I like knowing that I have a range of choices when it comes to security. If I want to be paranoid, I can use OpenBSD, and learn to set up the extra stuff I want. If I want to have more fun, I can use linux and learn to turn off the junk I don't wank. And if I just want to screw around and put up with the occasional crash, I can use Windows, and avoid doing anything patently stupid.
Hopefully though, security will start to become the default in more places than OpenBSD. It will be interesting to see what happens with respect to computer security over the next few years; as more people get connected to broadband and the net in general, will a similar increase in compromised systems force people to worry about it more? or will the level of computerized mischief remain low enough that only the semi-paranoid put security as their first design priority?
IIRC from history class, Pinkerton detectives were a major pain for early unionizing movements (in the late 19th century/early 20th century, again, IIRC); pinkerton detectives were hired by companies to control strikes, spy on workers etc. so they've had dark spots in their past too.
Everyone will rat on everyone if anyone rats at all, with this system. "Geeks" will rat on the jocks who make fun of them and shove them around; that's violent behavior, isn't it? It won't just be the popular/non-geek/whatever kids picking on the sad, weak, minority; the neutrality of the system means that anyone who is concerned about anyone else's behavior is going to be able to say so and have someone listen.
I object *strongly* to the idea that this system is bad just because it targets 'Geeks'. It doesn't. If you read the webpage, they never say
Instead, they say (on http://www.waveamerica.com/waveline/whycall.htm) And they also say that you should talk to an adult first anyway.To me, this seems pretty innocuous, in terms of it's intent. But of course, I realize that if this thing gets going at all, it's going to be so hideously abused by all the immature people of all cliques, creeds, colors, etc. that it will collapse. If something like this had been around while I was in school, I don't know if I would have been targeted by it or not; I'm certainly eccentric and was picked on for it; but if I had had an anonymous place to tell someone about all the ways I was being harassed, etc, I think I might have used it, esp. if other people in the school were using it too.
IMHO, this program has the best of intentions- preventing unecessary death/violence/bad feelings/stuff for kids in school. It's not supposed to be about making a new club of conformity watchdogs; it's not about conformity at all. It is trying to be about opening up more communication, so that problems get talked about instead of being suppressed until they explode.
for all it's good intentions though, this program will not work for the same reason that this program is needed: people are people, and they will be immature, petty, violent, etc. and a system like this will be abused by everyone if it is abused by anyone, and if it is used by anyone, there will be someone out there to abuse it.
A lawsuit by A.E. van Vogt, claiming plagiarism of his 1939 story "Discord in Scarlet" (which he had incorporated in the 1950 novel "Voyage of the Space Beagle"), was settled out of court.
(The suit was with regard to the movie Alien)
"Discord in Scarlet" was a great chapter in Voyage of the Space Beagle, which is my favorite A.E. Van Vogt book. If you've ever read it, you'll understand why he sued! "Discord in Scarlet" is about finding an alien body floating deep in interstellar space, far from anything, but still alive. The alien is a millions-of-years-old survivor of a hyper-advanced civilization, and it is at least as vicious as the alien in "Alien", without all the acid drooling and with the cool ability to walk through walls. It reproduces by grabbing an egg out of it's own chest and passing it into the body of a host, in this case a crew member of the ship that found it. The ensuing battle between the alien and the crew of the ship is a lot more interesting, and clever, I think, than the plot of "Alien", as much as that movie rocked.
A.E. Van Vogt was certainly before my time, but I have fond memories of reading his stories out of my father's collection of Science Fiction, including lots of old back issues of Analog magazine. "Voyage of the Space Beagle" is my favorite Van Vogt book, but Slan is pretty good too, and the Weapon Shops stories are a lot of fun. I'd recommend Van Vogt to nerds everywhere, for a big ol' dose of prime vintage Sci-Fi