Not to mention the fact that Libya only produces about 2 million barrels of oil per day (http://europe.theoildrum.com/node/4513). Figure they export at most 1.5 million of it, that's not a lot to spread around. Hardly worth invading them for it. I'll stick with the "human rights" excuse too.
Agreed. The article seemed to be describing old hackers, hardly the methodical, *sudo using* people with the talent to be actual admins. Granted, there's a lot of overlap, but they are far from the same thing.
You're wrong, the parent is right.
FIAT currency tends to be *backed* by something, like an economy, like USA or European Union or even China. What is this backed by?
Anyway, another fad "currency". Might as well collect "ISK in eveonline" or "gold nuggets in WoW" - same thing.
You've got it completely backwards. Fiat currency is called fiat currency specifically because it *is not* backed by anything. It has value for no reason other then because someone (in this case a government) says so. But you are right about BitCoin, it is not backed by anything. BitCoin therefore, like the USD, is also a fiat currency, as it does not represent any actual value beyond that determined by the issuing agency or the merchants accepting it.
I believe that in this context the group of people who are advocating for things like civilian run mesh networks are not advocating that we *replace* the Internet as we know it today with these networks as so man Slashdotters seem to be assuming. They are not talking about having these systems in place for watching movies on Netflix, or for telling all your friends on facebook that you just farted.
Rather, the point is so that in a state of emergency (i.e., the government has completely lost it's marbles and decided to declare martial law and thereby shutdown all civilian communications) these networks can be used to continue to take advantage of the kind of instant mass communications our society has come to rely on. The point is so that you can still contact your family back on the other coast, or tell your friends you're hosting a meeting to talk about how to handle the national guard unit stationed around your neighborhood for your own "safety",
I think really, they just want to be able to send e-mail, and post in online forums.
Personally, I think it's too late. If, for example, the US federal government decides to "go Egypt on our asses", they're going to do it in the next few years, well before we have time to setup any sophisticated civilian run mesh networking. Our only hope is to make sure that such a thing never happens by pressuring our politicians hard, and getting our friends to do the same...
I suspect that most of the Slashdoters who are hating on OnLive actually just hate this Perlman fellow, and have never actually tried OnLive.
I've had a (free) OnLive since the beta and while I wouldn't pay money for it, it's not hard to imagine that lots of people would. When it works (which is subject to the whims of your ISP) it works surprisingly well and you quickly forget that it's a highly compressed video stream running at (for me) about 4Mbps. For RTSs, RPGs, puzzle games and the like (i.e., a very significant portion of PC games) it's quite usable. I tried a few FPSs on it, and they also ran well, but obviously if you're training for a career in Korea you'll be purchasing a copy for play on your local machine.
I've seen posts claiming it costs more then just buying a good gaming machine. I'd like to see some evidence for that. At 10$/mo. it's only $120/yr. Even if you only replace your gaming rig every 5 (gasp!) years, that gives you a measly $600 gaming rig. I think typical mid-range rigs go for more like $1,000 at the very least.
One negative comment that I will add about OnLive: Whenever they think your bandwidth has dropped too low, they'll automatically pause your game and force you to stare at a 5 minute countdown timer until you get booted entirely. Sometimes you get the option to reconnect, sometimes you don't. It "claims" to be testing your bandwidth to determine whether or not to let you reconnect. I've done a little snooping and it often seems that it isn't sending any data at all. This is a minor issue though which could easily be fixed.
The interstate commerce clause is frequently misused - but telecom and the Internet seems to clearly be interstate commerce.
Telecommunications does not equal commerce. Nor does the Internet (a subset of telecommunications) equal commerce.
A new University of Georgia study has found that despite overwhelming military superiority, the world's most powerful nations failed to achieve their objectives in 39 percent of their military operations since World War II.
39% hardly equates to *most*.
That somebody will explain how our superiority in the highly competitive black-ops space-plane carrying mystery cargo arena will eventually be converted into a solution for the fact that we can't seem to fight a ground war against a 14th century tribal rabble armed with 1950's eastern bloc shit without getting our stuff blown up all the time...
You might find this surprising, but most military powers find it difficult to fight wars without getting their stuff blown up all the time. I think it has something to do with the presence of a "foe".
Tell that to the Conquistadors.
The problem is that we don't *know* in 7th or 8th grade who is likely to need more math 5 or 6 years down the line. Most kids, if you tell them in 7th grade that they can stop taking math, they're going to. Then they hit junior or senior year of high school, realize they want to be an engineer, and they have none of the needed mathematical background. Basically we teach 4-5 years of advanced math to every student in the country, so that the 10-15% if them who will actually need it, have it. It's wasteful as Hell, but I can't think of a better way to do it without forcing life altering career choices on 13-14 year olds.
Maybe if you're not interested in math as a 13 or 14 year old, you shouldn't go on to be an engineer, or a scientist, or whatever. I don't say that to be a troll, what if it's true though? Maybe the population as a whole would have a considerably higher job satisfaction rate if they listened a little more carefully to their interests at that age. Maybe that guy who is drudging through his life as an electrical engineer was really "supposed" to be a graphic designer for a high tech consumer product manufacturer. He knew he was into high tech gadgets, and he had all that math, so he got pushed into being an EE, but he really was more into designing how people used them then in designing how they functioned. Just a thought.
My opinion is that if you post personally identifiable information to a public website, and expect that information to be kept from all the world's eyeballs, you're being incredibly foolish.
I understand the general idea of what you (and many other bewildered Slashdotters) are saying, but you just don't get it. Yes, the website is publicly accessible, I mean, duh, *all* Internet websites are publicly accessible. Would you recommend not entering personally identifiable information into your banking website? Or your Federal Income Tax Return website? Just because the website is publicly accessible, does not mean that the information you enter into it should be publicly accessible. Now I can forgive a bad programmer for *accidentally* sharing my information without my consent, but that is a far cry from *intentionally* doing so.
The idea of using Facebook without entering personally identifiable information is like recommending that we have sex without touching anyone else. The whole point (as I, and I suspect many others, see it) is to share personally identifiable information with YOUR FRIENDS. What on Earth else would you do with a Facebook account?
"I've got some amyls. We could either party later or, like, start his heart." -- "Cheech and Chong's Next Movie"
