my password is 'password'

don;t click here

WANTED: dead laptop for my child to play on

Posted by: "sveapolster" svea@stardotbmp.com sveapolster
Sat May 3, 2008 6:00 am (PDT)
has anyone got a dead laptop (preferably mac but i'm not choosy - though the husband is)
for my little daughter to play on?
this would save our 'proper' computers from destruction.

[Emphasis mine]

To celebrate doubling the amount of memory in my laptop, I am using Firefox with 12 to 15 tabs open at once, and also edited an image in The GIMP earlier.

Three stories have been tagged '!ellobo', one of which is one the front page right now. No stories have ever been tagged 'ellobo'.

Why? Why not?

at my university after being caught 'hacking' (actually scanning port 23 on a range of hosts inside the university network).

seems to have been fixed!

..he discovers some previously unknown element of political theory to explain the discrepancy between the two.

I could list examples of this, but they are so easy to find that I can't be bothered.

Within the last few weeks, something has changed. Whereas tags like 'fud' 'notfud' and 'yes' or 'no' answers to rhetorical questions in the headlines used to dominate, they are rarely seen anymore. There are in general a lot fewer wisecrack tags. and every article has tags for its Section - eg 'business', and often several of the official slashdot sections if it could have belonged to several. It seems to me that very few people would have bothered to add these categorising tags, when you can already filter stories by section heading without a need for tags.
Did CmdrTaco et al implement tags then decide that Web 2.0 style 'folksonomy' was too risky, and skew the tag system heavily in favour of top-down editorial control? Did they blacklist certain tags to avoid the front page making slashdot look like a hangout for the childish, the cheeky, and those with a chip on their shoulder? It would be interesting to find out.

I am never buying a HP printer (or anytthing else made by them) again. Two of their printers this year have died on me. Not the hardware, but the software seems to have fubared on the most recent one. The printer powers on, error lights flash and they refuse to print anything.
My (paranoid?) theory is that running the printer from a dual-booting Windows/Linux system has triggered some kind of DRM in the printer which tries to stop the printer and cartridges from being reverse engineered. printing worked fine under linux then the printer died when i booted back into windows. the printer worked fine previously under a different windows system. the other printer died in similar circs.
now i've seen a cheap lexmark which i'm wondering about since they are apparently 'considered evil'?

liberalism Catholicism autism corporatism Stalinism Capitalism Stalinism corporatism Buddhism Hinduism schism pacificism Capitalism Terrorism facism Catholicism relativism relativism relativism capitalism autism autism autism autism autism autism animism corporatism capitalism atheism iltheism anti-semitism baptism Judaism Judaism atheism corporatism capitalism Racism Conservativism Catholicism distributism radicalism capitalism capitalism capitalism Communism capitalism communism Materialism communism Catholicism Catholicism Relativism conservativism liberalism isolationism Protestantism Evangelism relativism Materialism communism Materialism Catholicism secularism secularism distrbutism terrorism tourism counterculturalism terrorism isolationism Communism communism patriotism communism liberalism Distributism distributism Catholicism Catholicism federalism survivalism Liberalism Conservativism Marxism Marxism Liberalism Libertarianism Marxism patriotism corporatism Marxism Pacifism pacifism Traitorism Catholicism Catholicism Marxism materialism corporatism communism Fundamentalism creationism fundamentalism fundamentalism fundamentalism protectionism Capitalism Catholicism communism totalitarianism capitalism fascism Environmentalism Anarcho-capitalism capitalism anarcho-capitalism corporatism anarcho-capitalism socialism capitalism socialism capitalism capitalism feminism Fanaticism Capitalism Capitalism communism capitalism Capitalism capitalism Capitalism capitalism mechanism Terrorism capitalism distributism individualism Catholicism Catholicism Catholicism capitalism communism Globalism corporatism racism classism capitalism Distributism Libertarianism distributism libertarianism distributism libertarianism distributism Socialism capitalism distributism Protestantism distributism Terrorism marxism Culturalism Racism racism racism
(thanx to leoPetr for the Grabber)

My feeling is that the Network Neutrality wars will be won by Google, which means apparently that the first Net Neutrality war, the current one, will be won by the pro-neutral side. You see after being among the only major web players to escape the dotcom crash fairly unscathed, Google took advantage of the subsequent telco crash to start buying up dark fibre, lots and lots of unused bandwidth all over the US.

I don't know if you would get your broadband provision from GoogleNet, but I reckon a lot of people would. So in the first instance at least, they are not really as subject to blackmail by telcos as a lot of people speaking out in favour of neutrality are suggesting. Everyone else is though, so the question is what do Google see as the future of the Internet? Indexing the chaos of the current system, where anyone can connect and contribute, has made them a lot of money. But perhaps the Hollywood backed alternative of the TVnet, as system whereby you can buy all forms of sanitised and commercial music, film and games in the comfort of your own home will start to appeal to them more once they do an Apple and reinvent themselves as 'content providers'.

my little sister surprised me; we were talking about 'oyster' cards, the rfid-based fare system for most public transport in london. the system is quite new and quite complex as there are lots of different fares and different ways of paying; you can put credit on the card and get charged per journey, or use it as a 'travelcard' which allows you unlimited travel through certain zones over a day, a week, a month etc., or use a mix of both.

my sister has used it for a while and when i talk to her about it she tells me the different ways she 'swipes' in and out of the system so as to avoid paying where it's not necessary (if the station has the barriers open / no barriers) or so.

i'm pretty interested in 'oyster' so i'd been doing a little research into it. i explained to her that there are two ways you can run a system like this. one is that the cards have no information on them except an identifier. when you 'swipe' this just allows the barrier or ticket machine to look you up on the central database, to check if you're allowed to travel, and modify the amount of credit you have if necessary. the other way is that this information is actually stored on the card in some form, which would presumably need to be encrypted. often when i talk to her (and many other people) about stuff like this i get the feeling they are just humouring me by acting interested.

then she surprised me by telling her what i was just about to tell her: "Yes, oyster seems to use a mixture of both." I knew this from reading information on the internet about it, but she didn't.

from observing the behaviour (input and output) of a black box, she was able to create a theory about how the system worked inside. that is the hacker property.

especially when a little window pops up in the top left hand corner and reappears every time i try to close it.

i have mod points and nothing to do except abuse the moderation system.

it's just a lot easier to mod down ppl who have drawn attention to themselves by FOEing me than to actually read whole stories and dozens of comments.