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You may see more success in the neighbourhood ftp server access via WiLans out there before this is anything more than an idea.

Of course, the military has already been looking into this. Albeit not for "mp3s".

For me, "PC" stuff has included finding and downloading the banned Puerto Rican Day Parade episode of Seinfeld (with WinMX), converting it to MPEG-1 and burning a VideoCD of it so that my wife could watch the episode on our DVD player, since she missed the only airing on TV. She refused to sit at the PC to watch the episode!

Jesus...I wouldn't have believed it, but here's another article on it. IMO, these people (the chefs) are setting themselves up for lawsuits bigtime. Tobacco is toxic.

Check with your state government. I know in New York you can sign up on the Do Not Call Registry and make it illegal for them to call you.

What, you mean like Philip Johnson's 'Glass House' (1949, New Canaan, CT)?

Oh yeah, and: LOL. Potty humor...is there nothing funnier? :)

You Linux Zealots make me sick. You sing the same old tune over and over, and it's getting kind of old, quite frankly.

how it frees you from the threat of virii becuase proper security was designed in from the start and has always been a priority.

Uhh... maybe since it only has 0.24% of the desktop market share, it would make no sense to write a virus for it. Try reading this for once. If a virus gets r00t access, it can wreak havoc. And NO, in Windows NT due to file permissions it can't propagate like you claim. When will you twits realize this and quit comparing everything to Win95? That was 7 long years ago... things have changed since then. Grow up.

how nice it is to be free from crash worries: that even when it happens, it never takes down the whole box [unless you like riding the bleeding edge odd-dot-numbered kernels or it was a kernel crash, but you needn't mention those cases].

Really? Nice that you think so, but I've never had an NT crash that brought down the whole box. Of course I've had X-Window System crash on me many times... I understand that "hitting ctrl-alt-backspace" doesn't necessarily correspond to "bringing down the whole box"... but whatever. Only time you'll EVER encounter a BSOD on NT is if you have serious hardware/driver issues. This is analagous to recompiling the kernel with the wrong drivers/modules... Kernel Oops/Panic away!

how the Free (libre) software gives you more useful features, because the developers are also users.

Yeah. I forgot that Microsoft and Sun developers aren't users either. As far as having to dig into a text file or recompile the code myself to get at these "useful features," no thank you. Also, what "useful features" are you talking about? Remember folks, only writers of free software are users too.

tell them the difference in technical help between people who want to empower you and those who wish to enslave you to their corporate budget.

Right. Basically the difference between being told to 'RTFM' and live humanoid technical support. That was a quick one.

tell them the difference in technical help between people who want to empower you and those who wish to enslave you to their corporate budget.

Yeah, good one there. It's all about money, and not about furthering technology. They're out to get you, those evil bastards. That must explain the transition from NT 3.51 to 4 to 2000 to XP. Also must explain why Novell went from Netware 3 to 4.11 to 5 to 6. All about money, those greedy bastards. Just tell me who will determine that Linux 0.0.1 isn't outdated. I think I'll build my next server on it... why... because I can! [followed by incessant GNU/whining]

And if they're still listening, explain the difference between proprietary and open protocols

You know, people listened to Hitler too because they thought he was interesting and had something which sounded like a great idea at the time. But we all know how that turned out.

If you have time to rant about the evils of 'those money making bastards' in your journal this evening, I'd say that you have too much time on your hands. Reminds me of 'That Root Mean Square Guy'. Just like Hitler, you seem to have an agenda to promote. Just remember that people don't go to college to work for free. That's just idiotic.

-cscx (posting as an AC with no thanks to Fuck-O The Wonder Moderator, who decided to slaughter my karma... thanks for the communist IP ban, guys!)

Technically, concrete is simply a mixture of three ingredients: big lumps of material called the coarse aggregate (such as gravel), smaller lumps called the fine aggregate (such as sand) and a binding agent, or cement, to glue it all together into a solid. So translucent concrete, in theory, should be fairly easy to make using bits of plastic or glass of various sizes, with some kind of transparent glue to act as a binding agent.

A multiphase material formed from a combination of materials which differ in composition or form, remain bonded together, and retain their identities and properties. Composites maintain an interface between components and act in concert to provide improved specific or synergistic characteristics not obtainable by any of the original components acting alone. Composites include: (1) fibrous (composed of fibers, and usually in a matrix), (2) laminar (layers of materials), (3) particulate (composed of particles or flakes, usually in a matrix), and (4) hybrid (combinations of any of the above).

Technically, concrete is simply a mixture of three ingredients: big lumps of material called the coarse aggregate (such as gravel), smaller lumps called the fine aggregate (such as sand) and a binding agent, or cement, to glue it all together into a solid. So translucent concrete, in theory, should be fairly easy to make using bits of plastic or glass of various sizes, with some kind of transparent glue to act as a binding agent.

A multiphase material formed from a combination of materials which differ in composition or form, remain bonded together, and retain their identities and properties. Composites maintain an interface between components and act in concert to provide improved specific or synergistic characteristics not obtainable by any of the original components acting alone. Composites include: (1) fibrous (composed of fibers, and usually in a matrix), (2) laminar (layers of materials), (3) particulate (composed of particles or flakes, usually in a matrix), and (4) hybrid (combinations of any of the above).

Take heart my friend, there have been a number of new and exciting treatments developed in the past several years. Talk to your doctor, he may have something that's right for you.

Now please excuse me as I drool, beat my hand against my chest, and spout out mindless grunting noises. Hey, it makes sense to me!

Who had a job programming 50 years ago?

Well, among other people, Dr. J. Presper Eckert and Dr. John W. Mauchly. aka the inventors of the ENIAC and the UNIVAC, the first commercially available computer. 1952 was the year the UNIVAC became famous for the publicity stunt of correctly predicting the Eisenhower-Stevenson presidential election that year.

About a year later, IBM entered the fray with the 701 EDPM. (which was, incidentally, incompatible with IBM's punch card processing equipment -- an early version of changing media (like floppies to CD)). Of course I think only about 20 were ever sold.

So there *were* programmers out there, just not a heck of a lot of 'em...

Check these patents:

Silly patents

Really silly patents

Really Very silly patent

Plain absurd patent

Even law firms admit many patents are silly

Are you getting bored of all this silliness yet?

I can go on

And on

And on. Even in Spanish

Incidentlly, I have just made my own patent application:
Method of recieving Karma Points from www.slashdot.org utilising process of relying entirely on external sources and/or hyperlinks - "Karma Whoring".

Actually, it's not X Windows, but the X Window System. And actually, Microsoft Windows predates it -- Windows was released in 1983, and the X Window System's first commercial release was in 1986.

I'd guess that most product names that could help Lindows have already been submitted. Really, the name "Lindows" is pretty much doomed at this point.

History of USENET

Archive for the History of Usenet Mailing List

Usenet Readers and Clients

History of Usenet - Development, people involved

(Yeah sure, anyone could look these up but isn't it easier to just point and click? There is more to USENET history than Google. Also, if you think I'm a karma whore, that's fine. I've got karma to burn.)

I thought that was all a hoax. I don't think there is actually a law that prohibits it, even though some police officers do ask women in parks to breast in more private places. I know some friends complained that some Zoo's, amusement parks and park employees discourage breast feeding in public. Here is a link about the hoax.

Good point. I'm reminded of a bit of California history. Few, if any, 49ers got rich mining gold. But that was not true of he people who sold them supplies!

The spike in Nostradamus searches could be people checking to see if he predicted the WTC disaster. Or, maybe it was the phony prediction that the village idiot (George Bush) becomes the leader in new millennium.

The spike in Nostradamus searches could be people checking to see if he predicted the WTC disaster. Or, maybe it was the phony prediction that the village idiot (George Bush) becomes the leader in new millennium.

Leave the Mormons, er LDS folk, alone. It's not their fault their prophet was inspired by a rock in his hat.

Oh yeah, send me a postcard next time you visit Kolob.

Absence makes the heart grow fonder:
Isle of Beauty, fare thee well!
Isle of Beauty. , Thomas Haynes Bayly. (1797-1839)

Also the first line in an anonymous poem in Davidson' Poetical Rhapsody (1602) but probably popularized by Bayly.

See also:

Absinthe makes the heart grow fonder.

Abstinence makes the heart grow fonder

Maintenance makes the heart grow fonder

Obsolesence makes the heart grow fonder

Absynth Makes the Heart Grow Fonder

etc.

Yes.

This article talks a little bit about Colt's decision two years ago to stop making handguns for non-LEOs. Why? Because they were getting sued when their products were used criminally. Gun manufacturers are both persecuted and prosecuted when their products are used for criminal purposes.

Apparently they've been able to regenerate spinal cords in rats too. There's an article about it here. Those rats are some resilient little buggers! (So there's hope for that rat Rush Limbaugh yet ;) )

If you aren't being sarcastic , try Kate

e.g. Cap'n Kirk's communicator == prototype mobile phone

His links aren't broken. You have to have been around /. for a while to understand how to use them is all. The 'lameness' filter adds spaces to long text strings to prevent spammers from making the /. pages insanely long side scrollers.

Use this instead:

Link

The second link does indeed seem to be broken, though.

just strip the slashcode has inserted into the links...

forget it, just click here and here

funny thing is that the second server just seemed to die.

Try this. (1 or 2 shots of espresso, 12 oz. heated eggnog, dash each of nutmeg & cinnamon.
Combine the espresso, nutmeg, and cinnamon in the bottom of a mug. Add the heated egg nog.) Maybe for you, more coffee, less eggnog. Use pasteurized eggnog that comes in a carton. Making it from scratch is a nasty process involving raw egg yolks that you don't want to know about.

Myself, I would skip the coffee, add one shot each of bourbon and rum to cold eggnog, let it sit in the fridge for awhile, and drink it with 1 ice cube.

You said marijuana was completely harmless and tobacco was a deadly drug. Tobacco is a deadly drug, as is marijuana. Get it right

That said, the hydrogen not only made the Hindenburg float, it was a big factor in why it exploded!

Theories abound, but the simple fact is that with any great amount of this gas, there is still a safety factor to be considered.

However, the same article discusses the actual things that burned, suggesting that hydrogen was *not* the culprit, only an accomplice. You decide.

Even though our own farts (mentioned in other posts - not my idea) are explosive to a point (some more than others ;-), the containment of hydrogen gas is still a relatively unregulated concern. Easily argued, it is not as dangerous as some fossil fuels, it is still not easy to handle. What do we do? Embrace it - contain it - or wait and see what Big Bro sez to do?

As part of the ongoing Internet law enforcement initiative, the FTC has trained more than 700 law enforcement and consumer protection officials from 20 different countries, including 17 federal agencies, 25 state governments and 14 Canadian consumer protection offices in online investigation and law enforcement techniques in locations ranging from Anchorage, Alaska to Paris, France.

Sounds like these are the boys (and girls) in blue to talk to. This is where to find them to file a complaint.

http://simpsons.about.com/library/media/audio/3f05 /fatfingers.wav

Actually, it wouldn't. He already did it, well before the law was (would be) passed. He can't be charged with something that didn't exist at the time, thats protected by the Constitution. It's called Ex Post Facto (Latin for "After the Fact"). Here is an article discribing it.

A few links regarding the parent of this post
http://www.nerve.com/Opinions/JenkinsP/strangerTha nFiction/, http://crime.about.com/library/weekly/aa070501a.ht m, NYPost No reg required (I think)
no I am not a karma whore just wished that the poster would have used google for a second to include a link. So I did

No offense, Walter, but where did you get that info? Diesel fuel is generally quite stable and burns very slowly. That's why it is often used to cause fires to clear brush. I don't think it could have been the cause of the Hindenburg disaster.

Here is the most accepted theory:

"After years of exhaustive traveling and research, Bain uncovered what he believes is the answer to the Hindenburg mystery. His research shows that the Hindenburg's skin was covered with the extremely flammable cellulose nitrate or cellulose acetate, added to help with rigidity and aerodynamics. The skin was also coated with flecks of aluminum, a component of rocket fuel, to reflect sunlight and keep the hydrogen from heating and expanding. It had the further benefit of combating wear and tear from the elements. Bain claims these substances, although necessary at the time of construction, directly led to the disaster of the Hindenburg. The substances caught fire from an electric spark that caused the skin to burn. At this point the hydrogen became the fuel to the already existing fire. Therefore, the real culprit was the skin of the dirigible. The ironic point to this story is that the German Zeppelin makers knew this back in 1937. A handwritten letter in the Zeppelin Archive states, "The actual cause of the fire was the extreme easy flammability of the covering material brought about by discharges of an electrostatic nature." For more information about Dr. Bain's investigation, please refer to this article from the California Hydrogen Business Council."

link

Actually, as fare as I know, Apple Corp (that was founded by the Beatles in 1968) sued Apple Computer.

I'm almost positive that Apple Records was fully owned by Apple Corps, Ltd. See here for more information. But yeah, it would be the Corp which did the actual suing.

The case ended in a settlement where Apple Computer payed something between $25 million - $30 million and had to agree to stay out of the music business.

According to a number of sites I've read, including this one, the original settlement, for "an undisclosed amount" (probably very small), had the stipulation that Apple Computer could not be used for music purposes. In 1989 Apple Corps sued Apple Computer for breaching that contract. That was settled for somewhere in the $30 million range. If the Federal Trademark Dilution Act had been in effect in 1981 (sorry, not 1984), Apple Computer would have been in a much more precarious legal situation, and would likely not have been able to reach a settlement (I doubt they had $30 million at that time).

AFAIK, Apple Computer is no longer barred from going into the music industry. They certainly breached their original settlement by this point, it's quite easy to use the Macintosh as a low budget recording studio, probably with about as much quality as the Beatles had back in 1981.

Agreed! I'm sure that the Wright brothers, Diesel, Sir Whittle, and others feel no guilt for the actions of criminals.

http://ai.about.com/library/weekly/aa072099.htm
http://www.forbes.com/2001/02/13/0213robot.html
http://www1.cnn.com/TECH/9612/11/interactive.robot s/
http://www.daily.umn.edu/daily/1999/12/07/news/new 2/
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/sci/tech/newsid_1 112000/1112411.stm
http://internet.cybermesa.com/~haddrill/robots.htm l
http://www.berkeley.edu/news/media/releases/97lega cy/robot.html
http://www.it.umn.edu/inventing/98fall/cover/
http://slashdot.org/articles/99/06/21/1934206.shtm l
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/4.03/robots.htm l
http://ai.miningco.com/library/weekly/aa072099.htm

Is this the tape where Armstrong says "Good luck, Mr. Gorsky"?

I can just hear Jack Nichelson's voice: "Where does he get all of those toys?"

http://ai.about.com/library/weekly/aa072099.htm
http://www.forbes.com/2001/02/13/0213robot.html%20
http://www1.cnn.com/TECH/9612/11/interactive.robot s/
http://www.daily.umn.edu/daily/1999/12/07/news/new 2/
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/sci/tech/newsid_1 112000/1112411.stm
http://internet.cybermesa.com/~haddrill/robots.htm l
http://www.berkeley.edu/news/media/releases/97lega cy/robot.html
http://www.it.umn.edu/inventing/98fall/cover/
http://slashdot.org/articles/99/06/21/1934206.shtm l
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/4.03/robots.htm l
http://ai.miningco.com/library/weekly/aa072099.htm

I am a big kid so i still play with Lego. It appears as though atollo.com was slashdotted though, so a quick google search found this link:

http://kidscience.about.com/library/weekly/aa11100 0a.htm

Enjoy!

Have you all - gone - completely - insane?
VRML rules the Universe, and I will explain why.

There are comments that VRML is slower than specialised game engines. Well, duh. It's a general solution, they are specific solutions. There are many things that you can do in VRML that are not possible in game engines. For example, arbitrarily large worlds. Every object being active and scriptable. In the Quake engine, it's not possible to make a door rotate on its hinge. Quake only allows for sliding doors. In VRML, of course, any object can do anything. In Quake, the largest space you can make is the size of a dance hall. In VRML, you can make a space as big as the solar system, and zoom in to a grain of sand. If you've ever tried to use a game engine, you'll know; they're great within their constraints. But those constraints are severe.

VRML is the only general, extensible solution for VR. And it happens to be an open standard, controlled by a consortium with Open Source as a core part of its platform. It's come a long way since 1997. It's integrated into MPEG4 - go to The MPEG4 spec page and do a search for "VRML". It's been extended with NURBS, geospatial capabilities, and more. It's fully scriptable with Java, ECMAScript, and whatever else you want to plug into the open source.

There are comments here that what we need is and XML language for Web3D. OK, fine, you got it. VRML has an XML encoding; it's called X3D. The old encoding still works too.

It's out there now, being used in real applications to actually do stuff with VR beyond running around in a maze shooting blocky 256-colour monsters. Not that there's anything wrong with that.

If you want to know what's actually going on now, the best source for general Web3D info is Sandy Ressler's about.com site.

If you want cool tools for VRML, go to the new kings of Web3D - ParallelGraphics. They have authoring tools for Windows, and a browser for Mac and Windows. Unfortunately they are WinTel-centric, so no Linux, and no Mac authoring. Shout at them until they come around. Nicely, of course.

If you want a visual VRML authoring tool for Windows, go to Spazz3D, the most useful tool to ever have such a stupid name.

But this is Slashdot, so here's the dirt: for the Free Software/Open Source angle, go to OpenVRML. They have a browser for all major platforms, and if you don't like it, you can fix it yourself.

Both Aspirin and Heroin were trademarks of Bayer, a german company, at the end of WW1 in the treaty of Versailles Bayer was required to give up the 2 trademarks (they had already been appropriated by the US during the war).

• http://sprite.gi.alaska.edu/html/sprites.htm
  
• http://thunder.msfc.nasa.gov/primer/primer3.html
  
• http://geology.about.com/library/weekly/aa020198.h tm?rnk=r7&terms=lightning
  
• http://ibis.nmt.edu/sprites/sprites.html

Even where the law is wrong it must be obeyed

Our founding fathers disagreed with you. In
the United States legal system there is a principle called Juror
Nullification , whereby if a jury finds a defendant innocent of any
genuine wrongdoing, they can declare them nonguilty, even if they have
in fact broken the letter of the law beyond any reasonable doubt.

-- Guges --

I'm using Galeon to read this right now 0.11.0, and while it's a really nice, clean interface, it does have some problems.

http://ska.about.com/library/cannabis/blccrolling. htm

This is one of them. One of the two pop ups on this page crash it EVERY time. Without fail. I warn you, do not visit this in Galeon (unless there is some way of turning pop-ups off, which is entirely possible, I've never really delved too deep into it's guts.

But I like it MUCH better than Mozilla and Netscape. It just seems cleaner to me.

And for those of you visiting that web site in non Galeon browers, I did eventually figure out how to roll a joint without its help :)

Verloc

Video Games to treat ADD?

Incidentally, I think ADD is a fake disease just like everybody else. It's a chance to put schoolkids on Soma^H^H^H^HRitalin, which the schools want to do to control behavior. (I wonder how much money Merck and other companies make from selling Ritalin, too...)

http://rugby.about.com/library/weekly/aa033101.htm

Write your congressman today and request, nay, DEMAND that the DMCA and CSS and DVDA be repealed so we can steal MP3's again.

I'll agree with everything else you said, but not DVDA. That's the band of Matt Stone and Trey Parker. For those not in the know, DVDA stands for Double-vaginal-double-anal (from Orgazmo )

Chess- how much physical activity is that? You'd think that something a little more interesting like Paintball would be considered. With Paintball being played everywhere, even the Toronto Skydome why not introduce paintball as an olympic sport before chess. Maybe the steroids testing might actually be useful for something that requires some sort of strenous effort?

Ball room dancing, chess.... what next?

How about billiards?

You mean all the guys who look like "The Comic Book Guy" on The Simpsons, are going to have their pictures up there?