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That's my question too.... it's nice that the thing can translate, but can it keep up with the speed of people talking, and can it also translate more than just rote. I know from my experience with foreign languages that word order and sentance structure is best done sentance by sentance (if not paragraph by paragraph) rather than word by word. Places like Babelfish do a few phrases, but the user still has to fix a lot of things. Anyone have info on this?

NIVRAM

• price
• speech recognition - even pure English readers require the speaker to be clear and/or slow, and they aren't even always correct, and forget about it if there is a lot of background noise
• translation - Babelfish isn't the best, but it demonstrates that translation software still has a way to go before it replaces human translators

However, if I could afford one of these, I suppose it would be better and faster than getting a pocket translator, typing in a phrase, and trying to pronounce the output.

...through babelfish produces some humerous results: "Linux is an as far as possible stink-normal Unix."

feed this url http://www.ix.de/newsticker/forum/go.shtml?read=1& g=19991110as000&msg=95
through babelfish

The comm ent doesn't specify what are its sources, but it:
1. Confidently states that Crusoe works by special hardware translating the instructions and then storing them in a huge cache,
2. Says that because of that, MS-Windows will probably not run on Crusoe. This is because of Windows' habit of altering its code on the fly for reasons of optimization, and
3. Speculates that Linus was hired because Linux is to be [one of the] first OS[s] to run on Crusoe (ok, so this isn't new :D ).

It looks like both Intel and Microsoft are facing Interesting Times... :)

I'm not a gamer and have never played or even installed DOOM, but I would guess it uses svgalib to run full screen. From what I understand, running such programs is a security risk because they need to run setuid root to gain direct access to the video hardware.

A quick search reveals several sites which offer a patch, svga_patch.tar.gz. I have not looked at the patch though, so I can't speak as to what it does.

Perhaps someone else can provide more information on both the original security hole and the patch.

The famous line from John F. Kennedy's Berlin speech is as follows:

Two thousand years ago the proudest boast was "civis Romanus sum." Today, in the world of freedom, the proudest boast is "Ich bin ein Berliner."

...according to http://www.historyplace.com/speec hes/berliner.htm. The German phrase could be interpreted as either "I am a citizen of Berlin" or "I am a jelly doughnut". Those listening knew perfectly well that he meant the former, although "Ich bin Berliner" (no "ein") would be more grammatically accurate. This is briefly explained at http://www.urbanle gends.com/language/kennedy_berliner_quote.html.

For that matter, so does Babel Fish. InterTran translates Ich bin Berliner as "I am doughnut" and Ich bin ein Berliner as "I am one doughnut" -- not too swift. At least it handles a ton more languages than Babel Fish does (even Japanese with Shift JIS encoding to some extent).

And you don't have to always have English as a language being translated to or from, either.

Using the Hemos-to-English selection, Babelfish returned "The context is which has it supposdly made not becoming not broken in the military service of Serbian"

So cut him some slack... He made more sense the translation did...

If you want to see whether Perl "sucks" or "rules" compared to other languages, use the "count hits" option of Altavista to count how many times each phrase appears. You'll see that Perl has a better "rules"/"sucks" ratio than almost any other CGI language. :)

If we gave power back to the people to recognize this, to act together to stop it, the tidal forces of change would rip through this country the likes of which haven't been seen since the Civil War. That is the power of information.

Are you referring to how the Civil War changed lots of living people into dead people?

Anyway, almost sounds to me like you're proposing anarchy, or a form thereof. Informational Anarchy. Let everyone get anything they want whenever they want it. Let the people control the media, let the people disseminate the information. Isn't that kind of the principle of the Internet, or at least what it's become? That's what I like about it anyway. I don't have to go to a certain place for info.

I dunno, but it seems like this is just a way to make money. I mean, if I want to find some info, I go to http://www.altavista.com (and now, if I want weather too). If I can't find it there, then I go to Yahoo. If I can't find it there... Well I dunno, I've never gotten as far as Yahoo.

If they were really interested in spreading information, they'd have a public question-answer forum or something... This is either a brilliant way to get gullible people to reward greedy people, or an interesting but flawed way to try and get around the trick that anyone can post info on the net and present it as fact.

Oh well, Altavista for me.

~Sentry21~

http://www.altavista.com/cgi-bin/query? text No bells and whistles, just a clean search interface. This is how I've been accessing it for quite some time.

Just go to www.altavista.com/cgi-bin/ query?pg=aq&what=web&text if you don't want to deal with all the portal crap, and just want a quick-loading page so you can get your search done.

That link helps keep Altavista as an alternative to Google (which remains my first port of call, though).

There was also an option for quickie plain text Usenet searching, although what comes to returning results it can't touch Dejanews.

Altavist a Usenet (text search)
Altavista Usenet (adv. text search)

Now, wouldn't it be nice if Google started offering Usenet searches too? Right now it seems to be a shoot between useless simplicity or more useful mess-of-a-page.

That link helps keep Altavista as an alternative to Google (which remains my first port of call, though).

There was also an option for quickie plain text Usenet searching, although what comes to returning results it can't touch Dejanews.

Altavist a Usenet (text search)
Altavista Usenet (adv. text search)

Now, wouldn't it be nice if Google started offering Usenet searches too? Right now it seems to be a shoot between useless simplicity or more useful mess-of-a-page.

That link helps keep Altavista as an alternative to Google (which remains my first port of call, though).

There was also an option for quickie plain text Usenet searching, although what comes to returning results it can't touch Dejanews.

Altavist a Usenet (text search)
Altavista Usenet (adv. text search)

Now, wouldn't it be nice if Google started offering Usenet searches too? Right now it seems to be a shoot between useless simplicity or more useful mess-of-a-page.

I use two search engines. Google and the text-only Altavista boolean search. As long as I can link directly to these two pages, I don't care what happens to the front end.

http://chinook.altavista.com/

Word at the Open Directory Project is that the "new" AltaVista has been popping in and out of existence all day. Presumably, this represents a failed attempt to test the new site without showing it to the public.

(According to CNET, there was a beta version of the new AltaVista at beta.altavista.com, but it was taken down when CNET phoned AV about it. Obviously, whatever AV's doing to hide the new page from the public now isn't working quite right.)

http://www.altavista.com/cgi-bin/query?opt=on&en c=iso88591&text=on
Above is the Link I use, this removes almost everything except the search function.
there are various settings you can set if you hunt for them.

One huge problem is the abuse of the system. Someone could simply set up the knowledge base to go fishing for some secret industrial data, well someone already did.

The story of the german energy company Enercon is a good example here. In short it describes how a german company finds their own invention already patented in the US, by the US competitor Kennentech, with papers bearing even Enercon logos! It sounds funny until you realize that Enercon lost 100 million DM and 300 people lost their jobs, as Enercon was not allowed to sell their products in the US.

So if you are looking for some adversely affected 'decent citizens' (though not US citizens) throw the words 'Enercon' and 'NSA' at your preferred Searchengine. I did so and got some coverage of the case here or a little down the page from heise. German readers might want to look at a script for the "plusminus" show or a "Spiegel" or "Zeit" article. While digging up the case i also stumbled over this nice collection of slides concerning the NSA.

Here's a quote from Bill Gates that was run through Babelfish many times. The Madonna article has inspired me.

"What we I give is created tools like to word processor that lets people express their ideas and we' king not at all involved in how they choose to use it."


+--
stack. the off .sig this pop I as Watch

ahhh yes...babelfish can be fun :)

babelfish

" Madonna: Thank you for saying these compliments [holds up hands]. Please stop with taking sensationalist photographs until I have removed my garments for all to see [laughs]. This is a joke I have made. " LOL

1. According to the FAQ you can't officialy do more than 10 as a default. But you can do up to a hundred for any subsequent search (number 1-100 can be plugged into the URL if you don't want to search in units of 10,30, or 100. You can always create your own local search form page if you want to start with number other than 10 (but still less than 101)

1. if you need more than 2,000 (20x100) results, you may want to try MetaFind As far as I know they don't limit their results, though they may be limited by the search engines they themselves use.

1. I use AltaVista or DogPile, which does a metasearch of both the Altavista and Deja (old & current) Usenet databases.
   
   

Hi, I recently saw this article about a guy who overclocked his Pentium III to 993 MHz. Interesting reading, -150 degree Celsius cooling involved. Article is in German, babelfish it.

Click.

Perhaps Slashdot could start posting URLs like these with another link to Babelfish to give them credit?

--

I, too was unimpressed with the 'new' AltaVista, but thankfully they kept the text-only interface. It doesn't get much leaner than that!

http://www.altavista.com/cgi-bin/query? text
You could click on Advanced Search, too ...

For all y'all who are praising Google's lack of ads, it doesn't take too long to find this page, which basically says that ads are on the way.

Don't bitch too hard, though... ads make a lot of cool stuff free (slashdot, yahoo, altavista, you know this list could go on forever).

RP

Here is an interesting article based on the recent Munich convention. It basically says that PICS is dead and that their programmers call it "the best porn search engine around". Article is in German, babelfish it :)

Wasn't it just a day or two ago that /. had a link to the ghost of the great Ada Byron. Yet I haven't seen her mentioned anywhere in these posts.

that'd be babelfish.altavista.com
First reply to the fourth post, yo!

I found "tea rodent" to be amusing.

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Slashdot Load Testing (Continues) Posted by CmdrTaco on Mon August 30, 02:13 PM EDT
from the ain't-this-fun? dept.
Fixed so far:

• Dropped http MaxClients down to 75
• increased mysql max_connections to to 250

( Read More... | 190 of 190 comments )

Help Test Our New Server! Posted by CmdrTaco on Mon August 30, 12:51 PM EDT
from the load-testing-is-cool dept.
So here it is: A mirror of Slashdot (as of a week or so ago). It exists now for testing: So feel free to post comments and help test the new load balancer. For the curious, the new system has 3 http machines (P2s) and one mysql box (a dual P2) with a load balancer trying to keep everyone all equally busy. And its about time: the old setup has been really stressed out trying to keep up with everyone. Anyway, don't get to attached to any of your comments here, when we're satisfied that the new setup is stable, I'm gonna mirror over Slashdot and make the final switcheroo.

( Read More... | 335 of 335 comments )

Interview: Mandrake Answers Posted by Roblimo on Fri August 20, 12:00 PM EDT
from the x-leads-to-enlightenment dept.
Monday a whole bunch of people had questions for Mandrake, one of the heavies behind Enlightenment. Slashdot Moderators picked the best ones. We forwarded them, unedited, to Mandrake on Tuesday. His (excellent) answers appear below.

( Read More... | 11562 bytes in body | 9 of 9 comments )

Geeks in the Space: The Attack of 5 Posted by Hemos on Thu August 19, 04:10 AM EDT
from the more-stuff-to-listen-to dept.
Well, we've done it again. Yes, Geeks in Space, Episode 5 has been released. In it, we lament the lack of good news, talk about anti-matter, and the hiring of hacks by companies. You can also become...educated in my long-term plan for the hostile takeover of a certain Redmond-based company.

( Read More... | 14 of 17 comments )

Apple announces Darwin 0.3 Posted by Hemos on Thu August 19, 12:24 AM EDT
from the more-to-download dept.
J. FoxGlov writes "Macintouch reports that v0.3 of Darwin, the open-source foundation for Mac OS X Server is available on Apple's Public Source site. Apple Developer Connection members can get it on CD for $29. Check Public Source for more about the Darwin SDK and the new Darwin. "

( Read More... | 67 of 68 comments )

Microsoft's New Audio Format Cracked Posted by Hemos on Wed August 18, 05:23 PM EDT
from the secure-this-buddy dept.
Barcode (JPB) was one of the first to send us the word from Wired that the new audio format Microsoft introduced (Two days ago), supposed to be a secure format (resricting playback) has already been cracked. Dimension Music first carried the news-and what a name the crack has *grin*.

( Read More... | 238 of 240 comments )

Find your Star Wars Twin Posted by Hemos on Wed August 18, 05:16 PM EDT
from the what-freud-really-wanted-to-do dept.
The_Monk writes "Ever wanted to know your Star Wars twin? Now this incredibly important information can be verified. It placed me the likes of Astro Mech Droids, 'Tarkin, and R2-D2. " Ahem-as the lost twin of Lando (extraversion), I have a Cloud City I'd like to sell someone. But I'm about as agreeable as Boba, always a bonus.

( Read More... | 94 of 94 comments )

Now Police Can 'See' Through Walls Posted by Roblimo on Wed August 18, 12:40 PM EDT
from the move-along-there's-nothing-to-see-here dept.
Bram writes "Just found an article about another way to invade privacy." He's talking about hand-held radar systems police can use to detect breathing, beating hearts or other motion through walls and other obstacles. Sounds like a declassified version of the Ground Support Radar [GSR] units we used years ago in the Army. I can see why police would want them, and I can also see why Bram considers them a privacy threat. Depends on how they're used, I suppose.

( Read More... | 205 of 205 comments )

FreeType posts patent warning Posted by Hemos on Wed August 18, 11:53 AM EDT
from the i-want-my-verdonna dept.
Anonymous Coward writes "According to the the FreeType web page, there have been some new concerns raised about Apple's patents on TrueType. I hope this doesn't affect the planned TrueType support in XF86 4. " It appears that they are still checking into the issue, but I'd really like TrueType support. A lot. Let's hope Apple responds nicely.

( Read More... | 202 of 206 comments )

Microsoft to "publish code" to Instant Messenger Posted by Hemos on Wed August 18, 09:49 AM EDT
from the want-more-market-share dept.
VFVTHUNTER writes "According to this article at cnet, MS, in an attempt to gain a share of AOL's Instant Messenger Service Market, announced today it is going to publish the protocol to its own messenger service. " It's important to note it's NOT the source code, just the protocol.

( Read More... | 192 of 192 comments )

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Features The latest installment of Geeks in Space is up at The Sync. We talk about the Red Hat IPO, crazy naming schemes, and much more.

Perhaps you are seeking Jon Katz's series of articles related to recent events in Colorado. These articles include Voices from the Hellmouth, More Stories from the Hellmouth or The Price of Being Different,

With all the hype about the recent MindCraft Linux/NT benchmarks, you might be interested in reading ESR's Response to the Mindcraft Fiasco

For something different, try reading my little essay Thoughts from the Furnace about the internet, and flame.

Update: 05/03 01:48 by CT : Past Features

Mozilla.org

PerLDAP v1.4 Released

M9 Released

Mozilla BOF at O'Reilly OSS Convention

cvs-mirror.mozilla.org Is (no longer) Sick

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M7 Binaries Released

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Internet Tax Moratorium Over?

Feature: Is Open Source for Windows Less Important?

Interview: Ask Alan Cox

3rd State of the Perl Onion

LinuxPPC challenge rides again

Review: The First 20 Million is Always the Hardest

Star Office to become Open Source?

Palm Gameboy Emulator update & screens

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Securing The Home Linux System: Updated

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Slashdot Load Testing (Continues) Posted by CmdrTaco on Mon August 30, 02:13 PM EDT
from the ain't-this-fun? dept.
Fixed so far:

• Dropped http MaxClients down to 75
• increased mysql max_connections to to 250

( Read More... | 190 of 190 comments )

Help Test Our New Server! Posted by CmdrTaco on Mon August 30, 12:51 PM EDT
from the load-testing-is-cool dept.
So here it is: A mirror of Slashdot (as of a week or so ago). It exists now for testing: So feel free to post comments and help test the new load balancer. For the curious, the new system has 3 http machines (P2s) and one mysql box (a dual P2) with a load balancer trying to keep everyone all equally busy. And its about time: the old setup has been really stressed out trying to keep up with everyone. Anyway, don't get to attached to any of your comments here, when we're satisfied that the new setup is stable, I'm gonna mirror over Slashdot and make the final switcheroo.

( Read More... | 335 of 335 comments )

Interview: Mandrake Answers Posted by Roblimo on Fri August 20, 12:00 PM EDT
from the x-leads-to-enlightenment dept.
Monday a whole bunch of people had questions for Mandrake, one of the heavies behind Enlightenment. Slashdot Moderators picked the best ones. We forwarded them, unedited, to Mandrake on Tuesday. His (excellent) answers appear below.

( Read More... | 11562 bytes in body | 9 of 9 comments )

Geeks in the Space: The Attack of 5 Posted by Hemos on Thu August 19, 04:10 AM EDT
from the more-stuff-to-listen-to dept.
Well, we've done it again. Yes, Geeks in Space, Episode 5 has been released. In it, we lament the lack of good news, talk about anti-matter, and the hiring of hacks by companies. You can also become...educated in my long-term plan for the hostile takeover of a certain Redmond-based company.

( Read More... | 14 of 17 comments )

Apple announces Darwin 0.3 Posted by Hemos on Thu August 19, 12:24 AM EDT
from the more-to-download dept.
J. FoxGlov writes "Macintouch reports that v0.3 of Darwin, the open-source foundation for Mac OS X Server is available on Apple's Public Source site. Apple Developer Connection members can get it on CD for $29. Check Public Source for more about the Darwin SDK and the new Darwin. "

( Read More... | 67 of 68 comments )

Microsoft's New Audio Format Cracked Posted by Hemos on Wed August 18, 05:23 PM EDT
from the secure-this-buddy dept.
Barcode (JPB) was one of the first to send us the word from Wired that the new audio format Microsoft introduced (Two days ago), supposed to be a secure format (resricting playback) has already been cracked. Dimension Music first carried the news-and what a name the crack has *grin*.

( Read More... | 238 of 240 comments )

Find your Star Wars Twin Posted by Hemos on Wed August 18, 05:16 PM EDT
from the what-freud-really-wanted-to-do dept.
The_Monk writes "Ever wanted to know your Star Wars twin? Now this incredibly important information can be verified. It placed me the likes of Astro Mech Droids, 'Tarkin, and R2-D2. " Ahem-as the lost twin of Lando (extraversion), I have a Cloud City I'd like to sell someone. But I'm about as agreeable as Boba, always a bonus.

( Read More... | 94 of 94 comments )

Now Police Can 'See' Through Walls Posted by Roblimo on Wed August 18, 12:40 PM EDT
from the move-along-there's-nothing-to-see-here dept.
Bram writes "Just found an article about another way to invade privacy." He's talking about hand-held radar systems police can use to detect breathing, beating hearts or other motion through walls and other obstacles. Sounds like a declassified version of the Ground Support Radar [GSR] units we used years ago in the Army. I can see why police would want them, and I can also see why Bram considers them a privacy threat. Depends on how they're used, I suppose.

( Read More... | 205 of 205 comments )

FreeType posts patent warning Posted by Hemos on Wed August 18, 11:53 AM EDT
from the i-want-my-verdonna dept.
Anonymous Coward writes "According to the the FreeType web page, there have been some new concerns raised about Apple's patents on TrueType. I hope this doesn't affect the planned TrueType support in XF86 4. " It appears that they are still checking into the issue, but I'd really like TrueType support. A lot. Let's hope Apple responds nicely.

( Read More... | 202 of 206 comments )

Microsoft to "publish code" to Instant Messenger Posted by Hemos on Wed August 18, 09:49 AM EDT
from the want-more-market-share dept.
VFVTHUNTER writes "According to this article at cnet, MS, in an attempt to gain a share of AOL's Instant Messenger Service Market, announced today it is going to publish the protocol to its own messenger service. " It's important to note it's NOT the source code, just the protocol.

( Read More... | 192 of 192 comments )

natelinx

ai

bsi

cnn

smug

garden

taco hell

superbad

mod_perl

everything

space ghost

oostendorp.net

Be News

Unisys gif-lzw-license Model Changed

YMF724 Driver Patch

Guidelines for Sane Advocacy

BeNews Is Moving - Outages Planned

Audio Buzz "Fixes" Announced

Austin BUG Meeting This Wednesday

Wacom Driver Goes Open Source

3dsound Secrets Revealed

ACE Bot, Devastation for Quake2

Be.com Frontpage Layout Updated Get more Be...

Alta Vista Search Alta Vista

any language Chinese Czech Danish Dutch English Estonian Finnish French German Greek Hebrew Hungarian Icelandic Italian Japanese Korean Latvian Lithuanian Norwegian Polish Portuguese Romanian Russian Spanish Swedish

Q3Arena.com

Quake3 Launcher

Site Movement

New Carmack Worklog

NMS v3.0

NOP v2.1 Released

etc.

Game Name Builder v1.32

John Carmack Updated His .plan

Voice Actors Needed

KOTS Mod Needs Servers

More Ass Kicking Quake Action...

Dr. Dobb's TechNetCast

Open Source At Work

LIVE From LinuxWorld

What's Wrong with HTTP and Why It Doesn't Matter

Inside the BeOS

A Brief History of Unix and the Internet

Author of sendmail on open-source and early days of email

Linus Torvalds on State of Linux

Creator of Tcl/Tk: Open-Source Creates Commercial Opportunities

Inside the Netscape Gecko Open Source Browser Team More TechNetCast

Hollywood Bitchslap

Review: Bowfinger - 'Funniest Eddie Murphy movie in a decade. Steve Martin showed...'

Review: Mickey Blue-Eyes - 'Not as funny as it could have been'

Feature: Robert Towne - From Chinatown to Hollywood. More from Hollywood Bitchslap

Slashdot Poll Preferred Compression
zip
gzip
bzip
compress
arj
other
[ Results | Polls ]
Comments:383 | Votes:24104

Crazy Person

Lunch

The Funnies (?)

User Friendly

Red Meat

Dilbert

Sluggy Freelance

Bastich

Punc & Mark

Helen

Goats

Pokey the Penguin

Superosity

Kevin & Kell

Doonesbury

The Fifth Wave

Features The latest installment of Geeks in Space is up at The Sync. We talk about the Red Hat IPO, crazy naming schemes, and much more.

Perhaps you are seeking Jon Katz's series of articles related to recent events in Colorado. These articles include Voices from the Hellmouth, More Stories from the Hellmouth or The Price of Being Different,

With all the hype about the recent MindCraft Linux/NT benchmarks, you might be interested in reading ESR's Response to the Mindcraft Fiasco

For something different, try reading my little essay Thoughts from the Furnace about the internet, and flame.

Update: 05/03 01:48 by CT : Past Features

Mozilla.org

PerLDAP v1.4 Released

M9 Released

Mozilla BOF at O'Reilly OSS Convention

cvs-mirror.mozilla.org Is (no longer) Sick

Mozilla Birds-Of-A-Feather Session

Getting Involved

Blackwood

Bugathon Needs JavaScripters

News From The Front

M8 On The Wire

Mozilla for BeOS

Mozilla is Alive and Well

BugAThon 300

New Newsgroup Announcements

M7 Binaries Released

Slashdot

Load Test the New Slashdot Setup

Microwave T1 Service

Internet Tax Moratorium Over?

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Linuxnewbie.org

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Interview with Borland Sr. Product Mgr

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Wednesday August 18

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SIGGRAPH '99 OpenGL/Linux BOF Minutes (37)

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Don't kid yourself. Little is relevant, and nothing lasts forever. All trademarks and copyrights on this page are owned by their respective owners. Comments are owned by the Poster. The Rest © 1997-99 Andover.Net. [ home | awards | supporters | rob's homepage | contribute story | older articles | Andover.Net | advertising | past polls | about | faq ]

Your site's popularity is truely amazing. My agents have scrutinized your numbers and used all the industry-standard metrics to assess its value. We are convinced that your site is worth considerably more than $12 million.

We originally became interested when our Sysadmin, while reading some news site, spontaneously spouted "Shoeboy.org ain't worth a fsckin' fart in a whirlwind, much less $12 million!" Naturally, we were a little surprised that something "worthless" was being purchased for millions. We assigned the problem to a crack team of MBA's and market analysts. After very thorough research, backed by reams of solid documentation, they assessed your site's value at $47 million -- and even more if you are willing to obligate yourself to two years of supporting the site with our company.

Admittedly, our CEO was skeptical -- until we told him it was "on the web". Then we presented him with our research documents, detailing just how much similar sites have sold for. Now he is fully committed to the acquisition of your important site.

Please reconsider your hasty decision to sell Shoeboy.org. The company you are dealing with does not truely understand the value of such a landmark site as Shoeboy.org and has undervalued it to the point of insult.

Please contact me at our headquarters.

In fact, the Xanadu Operating Company (XOC) was funded by AutoDesk (of AutoCad fame) for about five years under the pretext that the Xanadu system would make a dandy archive/retrieval system for AutoCad design files. That it also tickled the imagination of AutoDesk founder John Walker was a happy coincidence.

I was involved in a week's worth of discussion with the folks at XOC (and ESR) about turning USENET into a "coarse grain" hypertext system (after all, every article has a world-wide unique message-ID, required by the transport, and the software can use "references" like links), but there were a number of issues we didn't have clean answers for, and the discussion never resulted in software. Besides, now we have DejaNews as an archive of USENET, also Alta Vista can search it, too.

Anyway, when Carol Bartz became CEO of AutoDesk, she cut a lot of things (AutoDesk was in financial trouble at the time), and XOC was one of the casualties. Now, one could well ask why, with five years of funding, XOC never produced anything that the market saw...

I think the principal failing of Ted Nelson's dream was the almost relentless drive for perfection, with almost no "real world" testing of the incremental versions of the software - no one associated with the effort wanted to release anything less than complete and perfect.

Result: nothing was ever released (until now).

It'll be interesting to see if the code lives up to the decades of hype about it.

"My housemates and I decided to have a hacking party. We do this every month or so. Since we have a network of PCs running Unix at home, it is easy to get lots of people programming together. We couldn't decide what to build so I said `Well, we all like science fiction novels. So let's build a system where we type in the names of the books that we like and a rating. Then the system can grind over the database and figure out what books to suggest.'"

And?

"It took us the whole afternoon, but we got it to the point where it would notice that I liked Books A, B, and C but hadn't read Book D, which other people who liked A, B, and C had liked. So that was suggested for me. We also got it to notice if you and I had opposite tastes and suppress your recommendations."

This was back in 1994. Anne and her friends had, in one afternoon, completed virtually the entire annual research agenda of at least two MIT professors (neither in my department, I'm relieved to note).

by Philip Greenspun, Chapter 9 of Philip and Alex's Guide to Web Publishing

(... And if you all had any sense you quit reading this slashdot crap until you'd finished reading this book. It's all available on-line, but it's definitely worth buying a hardcopy of it.)

Anyway, as for Firefly... everyone I know thought it was ridiculous. They played with it in the same way people play with bablefish, just to laugh at how stupid the results were. Microsoft bought it? Cool... I hope they buy lots of other useless companies. They shut it down? Too bad, it would be better if they wasted more money on it. Maybe passport will help burn some of their cash.

The appropriate c't article via Babelfish (German->English) is here:

Athlon article

Unfortunately Babelfish translates only half of it...

Well, as long as you're going down, how about linking some neat drug-related sites for us?
Here's a few:

Jolt
INFACT Homepage
Altavi sta: Simple Query "drug related"

This was just a lazy search for sites. I'm sure there are plenty of drug or paraphenalia related web sites around.

Heh... check out the babelfish translation of the first paragraph:

Microsoft founder sits down with 44 to the peace

Number three pulls itself from talking moon with some billions back | Maritz was director/conductor of the software development | Contradictory predicates around completeness of the retreat | A quarter of all persons employed dollar millionaires are round

The subject of this posting could also be I downloaded the JRE for this?... but I digress:

I strongly agree with CoughDropAddict (can I call you CDA?) that this is pretty much useless.
I'll go a step further and tell you that it takes the words you enter and goes to two search engines (perhaps more, but two were all I identified), namely AltaVista and something called Scour.Net. I guess it then takes the titles of the documents it finds and swirls them about.

If you see one that interests you, tough! Because clicking on it will not necessarily bring up that phrase in the text box. If you click long enough, I guess it cycles through them. Eventually, you'll see the one you wanted. You hit and it goes out and does another search, this time using the page's title as keywords.

Wait a minute... what about the content of the page that I saw that had such an interesting title? What if I want to read it? I guess I'll have to go open a real browser to do that. I'll just copy'n'paste the URL of the page that I saw... no, wait. Netomat doesn't give you the URL either. OK, I'll just start over with a browser, by going to friggin' AltaVista my own self and doing a search. WAIT! That's what I already do!!!

Again, I installed the JRE for this?

The subject of this posting could also be I downloaded the JRE for this?... but I digress:

I strongly agree with CoughDropAddict (can I call you CDA?) that this is pretty much useless.
I'll go a step further and tell you that it takes the words you enter and goes to two search engines (perhaps more, but two were all I identified), namely AltaVista and something called Scour.Net. I guess it then takes the titles of the documents it finds and swirls them about.

If you see one that interests you, tough! Because clicking on it will not necessarily bring up that phrase in the text box. If you click long enough, I guess it cycles through them. Eventually, you'll see the one you wanted. You hit and it goes out and does another search, this time using the page's title as keywords.

Wait a minute... what about the content of the page that I saw that had such an interesting title? What if I want to read it? I guess I'll have to go open a real browser to do that. I'll just copy'n'paste the URL of the page that I saw... no, wait. Netomat doesn't give you the URL either. OK, I'll just start over with a browser, by going to friggin' AltaVista my own self and doing a search. WAIT! That's what I already do!!!

Again, I installed the JRE for this?

I did an Altavista search for 'link:aolsearch.com' and came up with three matches! Two are from webmasterfx.com. The other is simply called "AOL Search" and is in a list of several other search engines designed for finding people.

The domain is present on host4u's DNS servers ("dig @ns.host4u.net aolsearch.com") but the InterNIC record can't tell anything other than it was updated May 13, 1999.

I just checked for you at altavista to see where the word evil appears at the pages of either the Free software foundation or at the gnu website, and it doesn't return a thing.

(Try it, search for "host:fsf.org evil" or "host:gnu.org" evil)

Seeing all the bad rap RMS gets from people who haven't read a lot or nothing written by him, I'd say I don't think he's a communist, but a lot of his adverseries act a lot like McCarthy.

babelfish.altavista.com

Phil Reed sez:

Better take another look at patent law. If the guy has a patent on antennas, then he can restrict the manufacture of the antennas under all circumstances, including cooking one up at home. Doesn't necessarily mean he'll come after you if you do just one for yourself, but he's legally allowed to. No such thing as 'fair use' of a patent.

There's been a fair amount of discussion on the fractal antenna on various ham radio mailinglists, and whilst the antenna IS patented the person who owns the patent has explicitly given permission for the antenna to be used in non-commercial applications below cellular band.

On the Fractenna Homepage there are also explicit instructions on how to build a fractal antenna for various ham radio bands.

Warning: Subjects of a technical nature relating to both fractals and radio bandwidths follow. It shall be assumed that you have at least some grounders in both fractals and in antenna design if you are reading past this point. If you don't know what the hell a Koch curve, common ham radio terms, wavelength, or Yagi antennas are then the following will probably be of no use whatsoever. :)

As far as I can tell, apparently the fellow has made the antenna in the rough outline of a fractal resembling a Koch curve with squares and pointing inward instead of outward and with triangles (as in normal Koch curves). I don't know of too many hams using them just yet, but once programs are written where one can custom-design such an antenna by both wavelength and iterations then I'd expect more folks to be using them. There's been a fair amount of excitement in the QRP community at least, because one can pack a lot of antenna in one space and antennas for 20 meters and below that don't require longwire hookups, Slinkys, or towers become practical.

The designs for use in ham radio seem to be variations of Yagi square antennas (fairly common for homebrew use) where instead of a square one uses the "modified inverse Koch square" (for want of a better term for the fractal used) for the upper and lower ends of the band. These are better suited for directional antennas, of course (as are all Yagis); if one didn't want to use it as a Yagi and wanted a non-directional antenna I see no real reason you couldn't use a fractal antenna as a sort of modified loop antenna. (Folks doing AM DX listening in cramped quarters where installation of a longwire antenna is impossible ought to like that. ;)

If memory serves, calculating wavelengths for the "Yagi fractenna" is a bit more of a bear than configuring wavelengths for the normal type of Yagi. Again, though, it should be possible to figure out a way to rig up a quickie program to determine wavelength.

Just like the man said, the Fractenna is not going to give you ANY more gain than a Yagi antenna of comparable wavelength. What it does do is allow one to install a rather large (in wavelength and in wire length) antenna in a much smaller space than one would normally do so.

(end technical discussion)

Now, as for other interesting uses of fractals...I have heard of a number of kite enthusiasts who have built working kites based off of Sierpinski sponges. (Sierpinski sponges are just like Sierpinski gaskets or triangles, but in three dimensions. ;) Apparently the things get amazing lift--one has to be careful not to let the kite drag you because you're dealing really with upwards of four or more box kites! :)

A quickie search of Alta Vista for "fractal kite" or +kite +Sierpinski should lead you to some articles on how to make them and fly them. ;)

It's pretty easy to find though. It's right where he states: Windows 2000 will solve the problem. "Just wait until Y2K, folks. Win2K will beat everything." Reminds me of their tactics when OS/2 Warp came out... :-/

This is a translation done by hand, which is still better than BabelFish so far:

Apache's simply better
We're to blame if we don't bundle enough features with our servers to justify our price tag. Apache's simply better than us if it comes to hosting several sites off one server. Windows 2000 will solve this problem.

Use babelfish.altavista.com. The link given to babelfish.digital.com didn't work for me.

"Geeks, Where would you be without them?"

``Size isn't everything; but if you can have both size and relevancy, then you are able to please all types of users''

As soon as they get much closer to their "all the web" idea, I'll take another look. But for now my default engines will stay.

A HotSpot beta-tester wrote a long, detailed article to the newsgroups. You'll probably find it an interesting read. Find it here