Slashdot

sm62704 writes "Yahoo Games is asking "Has the video game industry dug up its very own blood diamond?" However, the problem isn't just games or Sony as the article's headline suggests, it affects almost all consumer electronics and IT gear, as well as other uses such as aviation.

According to a report by activist site "Toward Freedom", for the past decade the search for a rare metal necessary in the manufacturing of Sony's Playstation 2 game console has fueled a brutal conflict in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

The material is coltan, which is refined into Tantalum, used in capacitors and resistors. Wikipedia says

Tantalum is also used to produce a variety of alloys that have high melting points, are strong and have good ductility. Alloyed with other metals, it is also used in making carbide tools for metalworking equipment and in the production of superalloys for jet engine components, chemical process equipment, nuclear reactors, and missile parts.

"

sm62704 writes "New Scientist is reporting that John Carmak's firm, Armadillo Aerospace, is racing a rocket propelled airplane against XCOR Aerospace of Mojave, California's rocket plane.

The Rocket Racing League is born! That is, if Carmak gets his flight permit from the Federal Aviation Administration in time.

The Rocket Racing League was founded Granger Whitelaw, an Indy 500 car race team owner, and X-Prize Foundation chairman Peter Diamandis."

sm62704 writes "On the heels of yesterday's Batman discussion, the AP is reporting (via Yahoo news) that Batman star Christian Bale was arrested Tuesday for assaulting his sister and mother.

A police spokesman did not mention him by name but said "A 34-year-old man attended a central London police station this morning by appointment and was arrested in connection with an allegation of assault." He is reportedly still in jail."

sm62704 writes "The Chicago Tribune is reporting that researchers at University of Massachusetts at Amherst and the University of Washington have demonstrated that "an implantable defibrillator could be altered remotely to deliver a dangerous shock or withhold a potentially lifesaving one. The group presented its findings at a recent symposium on security and privacy in Oakland."

The article quotes Dr. William Maisel, a Harvard cardiologist, as saying "This is not an important risk for patients right now. We just want the industry to be thoughtful about where we as a society are going with these devices."

The researchers urge the industry to pay more attention to security. The newspaper says "The group suggests various strategies, including making implants better able to recognize unauthorized signals and capable of alerting patients to unwanted interference.""

Reuters is reporting (via Yahoo news) that EBay has beat Tiffany jewelry in court in a "knockout" decision.

All of Tiffany's trademark infringement claims against eBay were rejected — a knockout blow to the four-year-old lawsuit that had been closely watched by Internet companies as well as luxury goods makers seeking to stop the sale of counterfeit products online.

Tiffany & Co had alleged that eBay turned a blind eye to the sale of fake Tiffany silver jewelry on its site. EBay had countered that it was not in a position to determine which goods were knock-offs of the prestigious New York brand and had said the jeweler did not adequately participate in eBay's programs that help brand owners prevent fraud.

The judge, in a 66-page decision following a non-jury trial in U.S. District Court in Manhattan last November, said he was "not unsympathetic" to Tiffany and others who have invested in building their brands only to see them exploited on the Web. But he said the law was clearly on eBay's side.

sm62704 (mcgrew) writes "The AP says that Microsoft, Google, and Facebook executives will be "grilled" about online privacy today. However —

the company likely to get the most scrutiny is a small Silicon Valley startup called NebuAd Inc.

NebuAd has drawn fierce criticism from privacy advocates in recent weeks for working with Internet service providers to track the online behavior of their customers and then serve up targeted banner ads based on that behavior.

According to Ari Schwartz, vice president of the Center for Democracy & Technology, a civil liberties group, NebuAd's business model raises many of the same concerns as an earlier generation of "adware" companies. Those companies developed software programs that — when downloaded to a computer — could track where a user went on the Internet and mine that information to deliver customized online ads. Several NebuAd executives in fact were once employed by Gator Corp., an adware company that later renamed itself Claria Corp.

"

So I'm at Yahoo News and every damned page displays the urgent warning "Your current security settings prohibit running Active-X controls on this page. As a result, the page may not display correctly".

I haven't been reading Yahoo news at work much lately for this very reason; we have IE as our browsers, and Active-X is of course disabled. The IT guys are no fools.

So I click a link to another story and alt-tab to slashdot (hey, my breaks aren't long enough to wait for page loads from our overloaded T1).

A paragraph into slashdot and Yahoo's page pops back up to tell me yet again that my "current security settings prohibit running Active-X controls on this page. As a result, the page may not display correctly".

It's bad enough that the stupid browser is popping up a dialog box to tell me that a nonstandard gizmo that is only supported in one browser is disabled (of course it's disabled, DUH), but to have it bring the focus to the page with the popup, on top of the page I'm actually reading, is beyond stupid and far beyond rude and far, far beyond arrogance.

How can I get this awful browser that won't properly support standards to stop popping up the stupid "error" message and interrupting what I'm doing, short of enabling the useless and dangerous Active-X? Is there a registry hack I can perform?

Can we get Microsoft to simply remove the abomination that is Active-X from their browser, period?

Have you ever used Active-X for anything other than advertising? I'm curious.

On a positive note, Active-X is better than Evil-X. I'm glad I got rid of her!

Slashdot has covered the case of Megan Meier, a teenager who was stricken with clinical depression who hung herself after a grown woman, Lori Drew, created a MySpace account and pretended to be a teenaged boy, then after gaining the teenager's affection, wrote to her "The world would be a better place without you".

What I hadn't seen here or elsewhere until this morning when I looked at the St Louis Post Dispatch is that the adult, Lori Drew. is going on trial for "conspiracy" and even more disturbing, "illegally accessing MySpace computers."

How is it that a law designed to outlaw "cracking" can be used against someone whose technical "expertise" is limited to creating a MySpace account?

How can someone be charged with "conspiracy" when the activity they are conspiring to do is not illegal? Clearly, I am no more "sm62704" than Lori Drew is "Josh Evans". Am I breaking the laws against "illegally accessing slashdot computers" by not using my real name? If I used my real name I would likely be sued by a disk jockey/comedian in Colorado whose parents unwisely gave him the same moniker as mine when I was about ten.

The Post Dispatch says

The indictments were handed down after months of rumors that the U.S. Attorney's office in Los Angeles was taking a look at a case that had been rejected by local and federal prosecutors here.

O'Brien filed charges there because MySpace and its computer servers are located in the Los Angeles area.

Dean Steward, one of Drew's attorneys, has vowed to try to get the case thrown out by challenging both the venue and prosecutors' interpretation of the statutes used to charge Drew.

Steward has called the charges "creative." He's also said that Drew didn't type any of the messages, although she knew about Josh's MySpace page.

If convicted, Drew could face five years in prison for each charge. Steward has said that more than a year total would be unlikely, however.

Are the people in LA (home of the RIAA, MPAA and DMCA) all insane? Are they all evil? What's wrong with these bozos?

Why haven't Missouri's child protection agencies gone after Megan's parents for not getting her depression treated? There are a lot of effective drugs and other therapies these days, after all.

Are all these people heartless, stupid grandstanders or am I the one lacking in common sense here?

Could you be the next one to face prison for something that is clearly not against the law?

sm62704 writes "New scientist is reporting that

A gravitational lens can do more than reveal details of the distant universe. In an unexpected collision of astrophysics and algebra, it seems that this cosmic mirage can also be used to peer into the heart of pure mathematics.

It goes on to describe the numbers. However, I found this quote form the scientist involved to be at least as fascinating of the explanation of gravity lenses:

Rhie no longer works in academia, having run out of funding. "I didn't even bother to submit my papers to journals because I had been so much harassed by the referees [of earlier papers]," she told New Scientist. "I was new to gravitational lensing at that time. What I said and the way I said it must have been unfamiliar to the gravitational lensing experts."

"

sm62704 writes "The LA Times is running the story of a brewer in Weed, California who makes Weed beer. The bottlecaps say "A friend in Weed is a friend indeed. Try Lagal Weed."

The feds are not amused.The bureau's bureaucrats have told Dillmann he needs to stop using the "Try Legal Weed" bottle caps. If he doesn't, he could risk fines or sanctions. His worst fear: being forced out of business.

"This is ludicrous, bizarre, like meeting Big Brother face-to-face," he grumbled recently. "Forget freedom of speech and the 1st Amendment. They are the regulatory gods, a judge and jury all rolled into one. This is a life-or-death issue for my business.""

Historically, slashdot has wisely limited the number of posts that a reader who isn't logged in can make in a certain time period. Allowing unlimited anonymous posts invites spam and trolling (link to the wiki included because a lot of slashdotters, even slashdot moderators, have funny ideas of what "trolls" are).

Slashdot has recently tried to become a "MySpace for nerds", with its friends, foes, fans, freaks, etc. This is to be applauded IMO; true nerds are not in the mainstream, although oddly to this old nerd there are now nerd wannabes. This seems a huge irony to me, as "nerd" used to be a grave high school insult.

But very recently slashdot has extended this limit on the number of posts in a certain time period to logged in users.

A site for nerds is penalizing the hyperlex. I'm not referring to wikipedia's definition of the hyperlex; I refer to people who are the opposite of someone with dyslexia, people who read very fast with a high degree of comprehension of reading matter, who become completely immersed in well written prose to the extent that they are harder to awaken from their reading than normal people are from sleep. I'm sure many if not most slashdotters fall into this category. John F Kenendy was said to be one.

Not only are logged in users penalized for the ability to read and/or type fast, logged in users with excellent karma are as well. This poses grave problems for the hyperlex, but moreso for slashdot's seeming want to become a social network for nerds.

Here is the problem with that - the hyperlexic nerd (and "hyperlexic nerd" may well be a redundant phrase) logs on to slashdot after a long day of coding or engineering or studying hubble photos or whatever possibly non-nerdy occupation he or she may earn money from and spends two or three hours on slashdot, commenting on stories he or (less usually, of course) she is interested in, has expertise in, or finds humorous.

Then they eat dinner, rebuild the dog and debug the computer (need more flea spray) and wonder why they can't find a mate. Ok, that's enough of the "mom's basement" jokes. I promise. Well, in this thread anyway.

The next day they come home from work to find that the three or four comments they posted have been highly rated, and "slashdot's message center" says they have forty two "messages" (in reality 42 comments commenting on their comments). With slashdot's new five minute delay between posting comments, that's three and a half hours spent merely responding to "messages", assuming said nerd answers all forty two.

"Slashdot requires you to wait between each successful posting of a comment to allow everyone a fair chance at posting a comment."

But the poster is given this roadblock the next day, commenting on a story that is for all intents and purposed dead and buried, and he or she is trying to answer people who have written responses to the poster's comments.

So here are a few small suggestion to slashdot's site coders.

Make the time between posts karma-dependant. A certain, long time value for anonymous posts (even if the post is anonymous by checking the "post anonymously" box, regardless of the poster's karma). A bit longer than that for users with bad karma, less for new users who haven't recieved downmods, with increasingly short posting times as a user's karma increases. After all, the theory karma's based on is that users who post insightful, witty, interesting, etc. posts are likely to continue doing so and that those who troll and flame are likewise likely to continue to do so.

People come to slashdot for three reasons: to find stories in other sites they may seldom if ever visit that would interest them, but mostly for the funny, insightful, informative, interesting comments.

Some just come to troll, of course.

The "cowboy time" should be dependant on how long it has been since the story one is comenting on is posted. Why must I "allow everyone a fair chance at posting a comment" on a story that isn't even on the front page any more and has already had 420 comments? Stories older than 24 hours shouldn't have any "cowboy time" at all!

Likewise, if slashdot wants to be the "MySpace for nerds" it seems to want to become, then there should be no cowboy time whatever when posting from the "slashdot message center", except perhaps when the summary itself is less than a certain time old.

To those of you who wonder why I'm not responding to your comments, particularly if you're asking a question, blame Cowboy Neal. Contrary to popular opinion I can't spend all my time at slashdot. I have to go to the bars and get rejected by women so I have something to write about in my journals.

No, reading my journals isn't a reason people come to slashdot. But it's especially annoying to have to wait five minutes to respond to someone's comment in my "own" journal!

Update: I just discovered today (and it didn't seem like this was the case yesterday) that the more comments I made in a story, the longer the cowboy time. Which makes sense to me.

If you're a slashdot coder and just implimented that, kudos! I endorse the idea!

sm62704 writes "The Illinois Times is running an interesting story about a new book, The Encyclopedia of Civil War Medicine By Glenna Schroeder. From the article:

"A lot of the guys who were doctors during the Civil War were pretty cutting-edge," she says; many were medical-school professors or were supervised by them. "These were guys who knew their stuff. . . . Some of the treatments they used aren't necessarily that far off [from what we'd use today]."

For example, contradicting our modern perception, anesthesia was used amply and effectively. "Doctors would give [soldiers] just enough anesthesia so they weren't feeling pain but not enough that they were completely relaxed, so they would thrash and moan and people would have to hold them down," Schroeder-Lein says. "It would look like they were having their amputation without anesthesia, but in fact they woke up not remembering anything."

"He's dead, Jim.""

"One whom crosses Duke Nukem is comparable to one whom is dead."
~ Oscar Wilde on Duke Nukem

"Come get some!"
~ Duke Nukem on opening a new McDonald's restaurant

"If that don't teach you a lesson, might show you his Smith and Wesson"
~ Foreigner (Headknocker)

According to the uncyclopedia, Duke Nukem was 2nd on the Rolling Stones "500 Baddest Motherfuckers of all time" following Chuck Norris.

Every now and then somebody at slashdot mentions the old guy, and laughs about him. Man, you shouldn't laugh at an old war hero whose seen better days like that! I don't see anybody laughing about John Wayne. Uh, ok, that link does, but they're assholes. Not serious assholes, just your every other day garden variety assholes.

Well, maybe that link and Jackie Chan in the movie Shanghai Noon.

Oh, and at Felber's, too. There's a big framed portrait of the Duke (Wayne, not Newton... I mean, Nukem), and somebody put a speech balloon on it that says "I never pushed 1 for English".

But I digress. I was hanging around with Duke (Nukem, not Wayne) when he was a squeaky little side scroller. I saw him yesterday, the poor old guy isn't doing too well.

"Duke!" I said. "Hey, dude, it's mcgrew, haven't seen you in a while! Where you been?"

"Hey mcgrew, hi, howarya, haven't seen you since you took that vacation to Stroggos. I' been in the hospital lately mostly." He was bald, wrinkled, walked with a stoop and carried a cane. No doubt the cane had a sword in it. Or even more likely, a chain saw.

"What happened?"

"Well, after Mr. Broussard and the guys retired me I started drinking pretty heavy. I wound up homeless and depressed, and tried to kill myself. They said I had PTSD and put me on Paxil. Boy, mix that stuff with alcohol...

"Then I got a bad case of gout. I have arthritis all over now."

It was sad, seeing my old hero like this.

"Who's your doctor?" I asked.

"I'm indigent, so I have to go to the VA hospital and take whoever they give me. The new doctor's name is 'Proton'. They tell me he's pretty good."

originally posted as a comment that I fattened up a little and edited somewhat. This journal may or may not be continued. Until then, you can find a trailer for Duke Nukem 4ever here

Slashdot poll:
Favorite Newton:
Fig
Sir Isaac
Wayne
Duke
Natalie
Olivia

Fool me once, shame on you (Score:0, Troll)

Fool me twice, shame on me.

I'd been playing DOOM since I played the first one on my old 386, with the graphics turned down enough that it was playable. As soon as I saw DOOM 2 on the shelf I bought it, too. I had hundreds of user-created levels for the two DOOMS.

DOOM 3 came out. I'd just had my CPU fry from its fan failing, and bought a new motherboard and video card. I bought DOOM 3, knowing I had enough hardware to throw at the game.

It required the new Windows OS, XP. Sixty bucks for a game that wouldn't run on my OS. It still sits on the shelf uninstalled. I didn't RTFA, but don't think I have to to know that it's going to require a four CPU machine with a $10,000 video card and Windows Vista (service pack six) to run.

I'm done with Id's software. R.I.P. Springfield Fragfest.

-mcgrew

sm62704 (mcgrew) writes "The Chicago Tribune says (bugmenot required; here are more sources for the story)

With nearly 13 million online users, the rapidly expanding virtual world Second Life is a risk for children, who could be sexually exploited, U.S. Rep. Mark Kirk (R-Ill.) said Monday. Kirk sent a letter to the Federal Trade Commission requesting a consumer-alert warning about its dangers.

This despite the fact that "Kirk said he knew of no cases in which children were targeted by sexual predators on Second Life". Anybody got a cluebat for this guy?"

Slashdot's moderation system is seriously broken. In China Wants US-Owned Hotels to Censor Internet, the summary states ""The Chinese government is demanding that US-owned hotels there filter Internet service during the upcoming Olympic Games in Beijing, US Senator Sam Brownback has alleged." I responded

Sam Brownback doesn't exist. If he did, there would be an uncyclopedia article about him.

Oh wait, he does exist, here [uncyclopedia.org] is the entry on the honorable Senator Browbakc from Kansas [uncyclopedia.org]

The link to Brownback's name went to the uncyclopedia entry on "fucktard" and "kansas" went to the Kansas entry. I quoted the Kansas entry.

It was moderated offtopic. Clearly brownback's slutty wife (I only pay her five bucks but damn it she won't shave her legs) has mod points.

No, I do not like Sam Brownback or his politics or his Godforsaken state. But that comment was on topic.

"I don't think we're in Kansas anymore." ~ Dorothy on noticing a school teaching actual science

A fellow named wattrlz (1162603) replied to War Brewing on the Inexpensive Laptop Front with subject "Oblig,", comment "Imagine a beowulf cluster of those.". I replied

I, for one, welcome... OW! OW! STOPPIT!

(lame humorless slashdot filter encountered. don't use so many caps. it's like shouting. really, tone it odwn in here mcgrew, this is a library not a goddamned bar)

Both our comments were moderated "troll". An AC responded to wattrlz (1162603) with "Yeah, a beowulf cluster of those *might* end up being just as fast as my T61 Thinkpad" and it sat at 1, no moderation. The time stamps say all three comments were within ten minutes of each other.

In the thread Tesla Motors Opens Retail Store someone said that the >200 mile limit was short range; I commented that I seldom travel more than a hundred miles one way, and a binary number (or at least, a number consisting only of ones and zeros) listed all the long long trips he takes frequently. I answered "You, sir, are a very big contributor to global warming and the price of fuel. I sincerely hope you're not driving an Escalade."

It was moderated "troll". Slashdot - Fox News for nerd wannabes, stuff that mutters.

But the post that really pissed me off and caused this flaming pile of shit I'm writing now to be posted was in answer to this comment in the armageddon poll. Someone said he wanted to be shot to death by a jealous husband at age 100, and an answering comment (rated 2, insightful) read "wow that is some goal in life. Make sure said husband has a 20 year old wife too."

I responded quite truthfully and sincerely

You're a sicko. I'm only 56 but if I fucked a 20 year old I'd feel like a pedophile. Actually anybody under 30 looks like a child to me, imagine being twice my age?

Yes, it was moderated "troll"! Both my daughters are younger than that, you sick fucks! WHAT THE GODDAMNED FUCK IS WRONG WITH THIS PICTURE???

I guess IHBT - by the mods. But as one slashdotter's sig says, "Karma: Excellent. Try again, mod boy".

Update (today, imagine that!):
Today, you have 10 moderations to meta-moderate.

Re:Where are the Cheetos?
by - on Monday January 07, @08:31PM (#21948634)
The original skit is better. Its sad how popular that skit is and yet it seems 99% of people do not know of the creators =(.

Best video rendition imo had to be the one they did with the Summoner crew.
--
Ice Cream has no bones.
Original Discussion: Ask the Designers of D&D Fourth Edition
Rating: Informative.
This rating is Unfair Fair | See Context

Re:deja vu
by - on Thursday January 10, @08:03PM (#21992976)

The last I heard, the NSLU2 will NEVER spin down the hard drives. This may accelerate the wear on the bearings, and cause premature failure. Drives also consume more power while spinning.

Actually, what I learned a long time ago (in a technology-land far, far away) is "never shut down your equipment." The only times hard drives and other computer hardware experience physical wear is startup, shutdown, and under G force loads.

A spinning platter running on new bearings essentially maintains bearing-on-lubricant-on-bushing contact the entire time it is on, and has zero wear. But when the platter is spun down, the bearings will of course stop. At that time the bearings "poke through" the lubrication layer, causing metal-on-metal contact. Over time the weight of the platters on the bearings will cause microscopic deformations to be created on the surfaces of the bearings. These no-longer-round bearings then have high spots that also poke through the lubrication layer, causing metal-on-metal contact while the drive is spinning. This becomes a source of vibration, which leads to more metal-on-metal contact, causing wear.

There are other physical reasons to not shut down your computer, too.

Surge currents are a problem. They occur in a hard drive because a stopped motor takes much more torque to spin up than a running motor. That means that a component which is spec'd to carry the running current of the motor, say 80ma, has to temporarily provide startup current of perhaps 200ma. Most components can handle that much extra current for a very small amount of time, but a marginal component may fail under the extra stress. Avoiding power surges maximizes the life of those components

There is another source of wear that people often ignore, and that is thermal stress. Powering equipment up causes it to heat up, expanding the materials it's made of. And all materials have different coefficients of expansion -- aluminum expands quite a bit more per degree than steel, and both expand much more rapidly than ceramics and fiberglass. When a computer is powered off and cools down, everything shrinks at its own rate -- traces on the circuit boards, soldered joints, the case, the screws holding the heat sink to the motherboard, the gold wires connecting the chip package to the die, everything. That's the only mechanical wear these otherwise solid state components will ever have. The more heating/cooling cycles, the more often they will tug at each other, causing wear.

However, many things have changed since I learned this stuff. The technology of hard drives is vastly different than it was when I learned this; especially the properties of the lubricants that are now used. Also, cheap hard drives may have poor bearings to start with, and may already be vibrating when you purchase them (sound is a good way to detect this -- a good drive is a silent drive.) Hardware designers who are building quality equipment specify components with the capacity to handle the thermal and electrical stresses. And energy efficiency is of concern to everyone. But unless it's really crap gear, I'd suggest that powering down to attempt to preserve the longevity of your equipment might not be the appropriate answer.

--
John
Sed quis debuget ipsum debugatorem?
Original Discussion: Current Recommendations For a Home File Server?
Rating: Interesting.
This rating is Unfair Fair | See Context

Re:RIAA
by - on Thursday January 24, @11:39AM (#22167660)
Ticketmaster. Unfortunately, there's a $1000 service fee per ticket.
Original Discussion: Internet Group Declares War on Scientology
Rating: Funny.
This comment is Unfunny Funny | See Context

Re:solve the cause, not the symptom
by - on Thursday March 13, @01:41AM (#22736338)
1. Do you write scripts for the white house by any chance? how much do you make? start considering it... they need someone to save ass this last year. 2. "The police officer, in self defense, shoots back. " 1--> Since when did the Israeli military become Palestine's police? 2--> Assuming Gaza/West Bank are sovereign as Israel "claims" they are, wouldn't the so called "terrorists" be defending the Palestinians, hence isn't Israel shooting at the Palestinian military/police/civilians thereby causing retaliatory acts? "The terrorists in Israel fire rockets. Palestine fights back. Some innocent people get killed on both sides. Palestanians feel terrible when this happens. But it's not Palestine's fault. Palestine is fighting in self defense." Good job, that was a great loop of a sentence. (FYI I think the 120 vs 5 number matches the previous sentence more. ;))
Original Discussion: Israelis Sue Government For Laser Cannons
Rating: Flamebait.
This rating is Unfair Fair | See Context

please... dogs people
by - on Tuesday April 08, @08:23PM (#23007238)
if you live in a society where there are dogs

Dogs are not necessary, nor particularly useful in our society. Children, however are 100% required for the perpetuation of the human race.
the default should be that if you wish to bring a wild (or a domesticated wild) animal into our society, it is your responsibility to conroll it. The whole reason we built walls, then cities was to keep filthy animals from killing us. It is insane to insinuate that because you have chosen to bring a beast into this human society, that the rest of the humans should accomidate you by learning the beast's behaviors, quirks, and psychology.

Don't get me wrong, I take personal responsibility to teach myself and my children to deal with other people's borderline narcissistic need to train animals to serve them, but the responsibility that comes with bringing an unpredictible animal into society still rests squarely on the shoulders of the person who has opted to negate the reason why we have society and let in the beast. Sure I teach my kids, but if you brought your animal into society, you are the one that played the first losing card in the blame game.
Original Discussion: Cylons Are ... ?
Rating: Insightful.
This rating is Unfair Fair | See Context

It was a little off-topic for the FA but on-topic for the comment it was responding to. It showed the kind of intelligence often lacking in many slashdot comments these disenlightened days.

Re:Responses
by - on Saturday April 12, @10:24AM (#23046478)
If DISH network has corrected the problem with a new software download, why do they need to pursue this to the US Supreme Court?

It would seem that it is SOP for a manufacturer to EOL a piece of equipment. Tell the users they need to upgrade. There will be some gnashing of teeth, some users will flee, but if the new product is better... Some people need a shove to move on.

Having said that, I would be pissed off if someone told me I had to abandon a perfectly functional piece of kit and upgrade. I sure a community of terrorists that have hacked their own distro of Linux onto it to maintain functionality could be found. Someone would do it because they could.

Any idea how this affects Bell Express Vue in Canada? I notice about 3 months ago we received new software that did more things that were TIVO like. Record all eps, record all new eps, priorities and so on...
Original Discussion: TiVo Patent Victory Over Dish Network Upheld
Rating: Interesting.
This rating is Unfair Fair | See Context

Wonder if they are afraid to start their own cars?
by - on Monday April 14, @04:13PM (#23068706)
Just imagine walking out to your car in the morning, getting in, turning the key, and kaboom!
Original Discussion: Eco-Marathon Team Hits 2,843 mpg
Rating: Funny.
This comment is Unfunny Funny | See Context

I have no idea where that comment could possibly have come from. Kaboom? Why would an eco-friendly car explode? It's not like this contest was held in Iraq! A non-eco-friendly car, holding more fuel, would be far more likely to explode.

Maybe I'm stupid but I didn't get the (woosh) joke.

Chose what you like better
by - on Wednesday April 16, @05:52AM (#23087536)
I'd probably go for the liberal arts college. You'll meet some interesting people, have a good life for a while and probably get a better education if the groups are small anyway. You can always go to MIT for your masters. I'd also not discount the value of theory. I've always prefered hiring the math student with some programming knowledge over the CS student who took all the Java classes.
--
Think inside the box!
Original Discussion: For CS Majors, How Important Is the "Where?"
Rating: Interesting.
This rating is Unfair Fair | See Context

Re:I don't think that...
by - on Sunday April 20, @09:48PM (#23138202)
Get real, the only damage done to the project was via corporate marketdroids. As soon as it was obvious that the OLPC was a threat to corporate profits in school computer sales and overt attack campaign was launched via web trolls.

The underlying reality is the OPLC had to get out there as soon as it good, so that it be refined, and continue to develop, a continuing process. Along the way, there will always be for profit corporations who see the OLPC as nothing more but a source of profits and seek to take shortcuts and cheat the concept in order to increase profits.

For many countries, the ideal school notebook should be locally manufactured, as part of the education and development process. This is also necessary to ensure reliable supply in the event of any disruptive issues be that natural or man made disasters. For every child to have a notebook consistent supply becomes very important and the OLPC project as an open development process does teach a lot of lessons.

Of course the attacks on OLPC by various parties, also teaches other lessons, that corporate greed knows no bounds and billionaires remain greedy no matter how much money they have.

--
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
Original Discussion: Widespread Keyboard Failures on OLPC's XO-1
Rating: Interesting.
This rating is Unfair Fair | See Context

christian science?
by - on Monday May 05, @05:38PM (#23305234)
Christian Science?...zzzt....bing!...rrrr....does not compute!!!!
Original Discussion: War Brewing on the Inexpensive Laptop Front
Rating: Troll.
This rating is Unfair Fair | See Context

I didn't metamoderate this one, and left it alone. The author was clearly trying for "funny" but failing miserably at it. He was clearly not troilling, either. But a great many scientists ARE Christians (and Bhuddists and Muslims etc). There is nothing anti-science about religion, and there is nothing anti-religion about science. Sceince and religion (and philosophy) answer entirely different questions. "Thou shalt not fuck thy neighbor's wife" has no meaning to science, and E-MC2 has no meaning in religion. You might well ask "which is redder, white or black?"

Offtopic Update 5/8/8
Newton wasn't the first to say "if I see farther than other men, it is because I stand on the shoulders of giants" although the quote is often (usually?) attributed to him.

In the last couple of days I saw two "fair use" uses of Newton's "stolen" phrase in slashdot sigs, one funny and the next both funny and ironic. If I see many more of them I'll excise this update and make a whole journal out of it.

"If I have seen farther than other men, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars"

"If I have seen further it is by stealing the Intellectual Property of Giants"