Slashdot Mirror

I'd like someone at linux.com to explain the rationale behind publishing one brief clip per day over the course of the week, instead of just publishing the interview. I'm not saying its a horrible thing to do.. just can't figure out why.

1. ...because nobody visits Linux.com , it's about as much of a thundering success as sendmail.net was (archive link) at being a "tech news portal"
2. because the only property keeping VA Software afloat these days is Slashdot (especially after their "buy proprietary sourceforge as a way to efficiently fire your American employees and farm work out to India!" campaign fell on its ass)
3. and because making content on a regular basis is hard, and the ten-little-pieces technique seems to be working for the "gaming news" properties they're trying desperately to emulate in hopes of turning enough ad-revenue hits out to justify their continued employment.

That's a very interesting number.

The NASA space power satellite (SPS) [nasa.gov] system was planned on a basis of $400/kg shipping cost. in the hopes that we might get to that price point someday. Shipping to synchronous orbit is quite a bit cheaper than shipping to the moon. Note that the URL is from the Wayback Machine. Since the Bush Administration killed the Solar Power Satellite program, it appears that they'd rather none of the rest of us were thinking about it.

Perhaps India's space agency should be looking at targets a lot closer to home.

Or set up a fake printer script that takes a postscript stream and converts to pdf automatically. Had a bookmark, had to go to the wayback machine, but here it is...

http://web.archive.org/web/20011217172330/http://w ww.linuxgazette.com/issue72/bright.html

Already exists: ZyXEL G-4100
D-Link had something similar but looks like they don't carry it anymore.

Corporate and institutional FOSS users can be helped out here by a change in the media environment. We can just call Microsoft's bluff. As of 17:53 pm on 2007-05-22, we have 514 people who have signed up to be "sued" by Microsoft for Microsoft's "patent claims". Wink, wink, nod, nod.

If we continue to get a large response to the "Sue me first, Microsoft" list, we have a greater chance of getting media exposure for the fact that Microsoft makes bluffs, and just backs off of those bluffs. We ignored SCO, and so we can ignore Microsoft, too. The place to sign up to challenge Microsoft to sue you is here:

http://digitaltippingpoint.com/wiki/index.php?titl e=Sue_me_first%2C_Microsoft

The story about our "Sue me first, Microsoft" challenge appeared here yesterday on Slashdot. A story appeared here today in Redmond Mag on-line. So we practically have Microsoft surrounded. Heh. Okay, maybe not. But we're getting there.

Christian Einfeldt,

Producer, The Digital Tipping Point

'Back in the Win95 days, I recall a stupid little exploit that would lock up a Win95 machine. The root of the problem, however, was in the TCP/IP code from BSD's source'

I assume you are referring to the ping of death. The root cause being a bug in the TCP protocol and occured on other platforms not using the BSD code.

was Another likely example of OSS?

A song to accompany my rant.
(Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.0)
Download ogg audio of Pirate Radio Song

This is how it started
It's not hard to understand
From coast to coast they're lying
At a CEO's command
From Nationalist Public Radio
CNN and ABC
Big Brother's spewing propaganda
From the Disinformation Ministry

They say the economy is booming
We hear the homeless beggar's cries
They say we help poor countries
We see bombs falling from the skies
Reality doesn't exist
They're trying to say
But some of us decided
There is another way

(Chorus)
Seize the airwaves
Seize the time
Lying to the people
Is the real crime
When it's all owned by corporations
And theirs is the only word
We will seize the airwaves
Speak freely and be heard

Someone got a transmitter
Started up a station
Then the idea spread
Right across the nation
Like the land and water
The air must be free
So let us shout together
"Fuck the FCC"

(Chorus)

And we'll do it all together
In a grassroots style
Breaking down the fences
Throughout this whole square mile
It's the new Town Meeting
It's the way the news should be
The rulers call it chaos
We say it's democracy

So when you turn on the radio
And you've had it with this shit
From 88 to 107
Makes you want to have a fit
When you listen to the music
And it's all the same pop song
Start up a pirate station
'Cause that's where you belong

(Chorus)

I never saw that spoof, but had always assumed that the zinc movie was a spoof of this:

A Case of Spring Fever

The internet archive includes a couple of useful videos:

This one on roasting coffee: http://www.archive.org/details/RoastingCoffee

And this one (a classic!), called "This is Coffee!", on making coffee: http://www.archive.org/details/ThisisCo1961 - from the Coffee Brewing Institute if I remember correctly. Definitely worth watching, even if just for the soundtrack, the cool retro coffee gear, and to boggle at the cigarette smoking involved (vid dates from 1961). This vid doesn't recommend any particular method, but it stresses using actual coffee (as opposed to "instant coffee" I suppose), and using fresh water, with clean equipment. All good advice, to which I would add:

Don't store a big stash of coffee for a long time - buy enough to last you a week or two at a time.
Use freshly roasted beans (roasted at home, or from a local roaster).
Use freshly ground beans (grind them yourself, as you need them, or at least get them ground when you buy them, don't ever buy coffee that's been pre-ground).
Keep the coffee in a cool place, in an air-tight container.
Storing coffee in the fridge is not ideal because when you open the container, warm moisture will get in, and when the container goes back in the fridge, the moisture will condense. This will cause your coffee to soak up moisture.
Experiment with different beans and roasts, and write down your experience, so that you get to know what you prefer. Everyone is different.
Avoid ultra-dark roasts ... they are foul, and bad for you.

Personally I like brewed ("Turkish") coffee, but it's a bit of a health hazard if you drink it that way a lot.

My favourite is espresso, with scalded milk ("flat white"). At home I have a stove-top espresso machine. Pump-driven ones are better, in general, but to get a reasonable quality one is quite expensive. The cheap ones make rubbish coffee.

The internet archive includes a couple of useful videos:

This one on roasting coffee: http://www.archive.org/details/RoastingCoffee

And this one (a classic!), called "This is Coffee!", on making coffee: http://www.archive.org/details/ThisisCo1961 - from the Coffee Brewing Institute if I remember correctly. Definitely worth watching, even if just for the soundtrack, the cool retro coffee gear, and to boggle at the cigarette smoking involved (vid dates from 1961). This vid doesn't recommend any particular method, but it stresses using actual coffee (as opposed to "instant coffee" I suppose), and using fresh water, with clean equipment. All good advice, to which I would add:

Don't store a big stash of coffee for a long time - buy enough to last you a week or two at a time.
Use freshly roasted beans (roasted at home, or from a local roaster).
Use freshly ground beans (grind them yourself, as you need them, or at least get them ground when you buy them, don't ever buy coffee that's been pre-ground).
Keep the coffee in a cool place, in an air-tight container.
Storing coffee in the fridge is not ideal because when you open the container, warm moisture will get in, and when the container goes back in the fridge, the moisture will condense. This will cause your coffee to soak up moisture.
Experiment with different beans and roasts, and write down your experience, so that you get to know what you prefer. Everyone is different.
Avoid ultra-dark roasts ... they are foul, and bad for you.

Personally I like brewed ("Turkish") coffee, but it's a bit of a health hazard if you drink it that way a lot.

My favourite is espresso, with scalded milk ("flat white"). At home I have a stove-top espresso machine. Pump-driven ones are better, in general, but to get a reasonable quality one is quite expensive. The cheap ones make rubbish coffee.

Since I could no longer find it on LinuxWorld, here's the original article from the Wayback Machine.

http://web.archive.org/web/20030406062521/http://w ww.linuxworld.com/2003/0401.tsu.html

The link provided here resulted in a "not found" error, so I went to archive.org and found the original comparison.

It's old, but gives some insight into how things have (or have not) progressed in the last few years.

Hmm, now I see why the blurb links to the slashdot story instead of the real FA; it doesn't exist.

The Internet Archive is your friend.

Agreed, and well stated, sir. In her original article, she anticipated the attacks/questions/loudly shouted advice for which nerds are so (deservedly?) known:

I can hear some of you now:
* "The newsgroups are where you should go for help!"
* "Website 'A' has the documentation you need!"
* "You have to read the man pages!"
* "Use 'apropos'!"
* "It takes an expert to install and configure an operating system!"

This caution, which was followed by a lengthy explanation that the article was written to address the feasibility of Linux as a viable mass-market (read: installable by idiots) operating system, was completely ignored in many of the flames that were posted. Let's hope she gets a fair shake this time.

Remember when Scientology tried to remove the entire alt.religion.scientology group from Usenet. See also Blinding Me with Scientology Nov 2001

It was a bit tricky to find, many pages talking about it were gone, but here it is.

I wrote a program like this eight years ago, and it can still be found here. Doesn't seem to work with wine properly, but at least is free if you have windows.

Our first systems, getting a computer to work with your new printer involved typing in ESCAPE code sequences into a config file in WordStar. Things change, and usually for the better. That's the only thing that is guaranteed.

Our first systems, getting a computer to work with your new printer involved typing in ESCAPE code sequences into a config file in WordStar. Things change, and usually for the better. That's the only thing that is guaranteed.

Compare then with now

Computers DO forget; the internet DOES forget.

One of my favorte sites back in my Quake playing days was Yello There, a hilarious parody of Blue's News. But it's gone, almost completely forgotten. The Wayback machine doesn't even remember my British online friend Niel and his site. AFAIK the only computerized "memory" of it is one page I downloaded to my own PC. Much of my old Quake site is still archived, but Niel's is gone.

Likewise, in 1993 shortly after my ex-wife, Evil-X, left me and my teenaged daughters, I posted a series of pieces about my futile efforts to get laid or even a date at K5 known as the "Paxil Diaries." They (and I) were quite popular there at the time, as were most of the stories I submitted. But now If you google for "'paxil diaries' mcgrew" your search returns Your search - "paxil diaries" mcgrew - did not match any documents. Some of the widely plagairized pieces (e.g., "how to stop smoking cigarettes") can still be found, but the Paxil Diaries are gone, except on my hard drive.

No, the "don't put anything personal on the internet because they'll find you fifty years from now" is a myth. In slashdot stories about the subject I've posted my name and challenged slashdotters to identify me, and not once have I been identified, although some poor Canadian fellow with my name always gets fingered and his address and phone number posted on slashdot. Sorry, Steve. Your mother should have given you a different name! Likely when the Paxil Diaries were popular the poor fellow probably took flak for them, despite the fact that there is no Springfield in Canada.

In short, and in slashdot terminology, "nothing to see here, move along".

-mcgrew

And another. Man! One of Slashdot's first stories ... announcing Linux kernel 2.1.79 ... those were the days!

This sounds a lot like when a spammer tried to sue me for publishing their "copyrighted" spam.

Previous slashdot story.

Rich.

I don't think that means what you think it means ;)

Yes it will go 115 years if it REPLACED every five years or so as it reaches its expected end of life....which is MUCH less than MTBF. DOH.

We know some go dead quickly, how do you think they measured the ones that lasted over 115 years to get the average? Of course you can't replace a 5 year-old drive with a new version of same so you can't even test their definition... If they were really expected to last that long what are the odds of having a dead drive? Now how many of us have/had a dead HD...not even remotely close eh?

http://web.archive.org/web/20001202154100/http://w ww.storage.ibm.com/storage/oem/tech/mtbf.htm

Even with the 115 years i still wouldn't bet on it outlasting the house...If houses burned on average 100 years we would have 1000 house fires a years. I found 4 actual fire calls last week, only 1 burned down the house and 1 partial. Be generous and call it 2 for 100 per year, not too close. (totlaly wild guesses at 100k houses,etc)

The Mono team admits that their implementation of ADO.NET, ASP.NET and Windows.Forms is a "potential" problem.

• Jim Miller at Microsoft has made a statement on the patents covering ISO/ECMA, (he is one of the inventors listed in the patent). Basically a grant is given to anyone who want to implement those components for free and for any purpose

• Mono's strategy for dealing with any potential issues that might arise with ASP.NET, ADO.NET or Windows.Forms is: (1) work around the patent by using a different implementation technique that retains the API, but changes the mechanism; if that is not possible, we would (2) remove the pieces of code that were covered by those patents, and also (3) find prior art that would render the patent useless.

I have lots of ideas and the required skills to implement them, and my mind is quick to understand most problems as well as to react to them, the problem is that I seem to lack the motivation or the discipline to keep myself focused on something. I start a project, write like 90% of it, and then when it comes to put the pieces together and make everything work I just give up...

Last time this happened was on the YopyNG project, I was porting the 2.4.28 Linux kernel to the Yopy YP3700 PDA and everything was going perfectly. The drivers were all working and the new kernel was responding much faster than the original one ported by G-mate (the manufacturer), but there was a final bug to resolve: for some reason people were reporting random kernel panics that I never managed to reproduce, and all of a sudden I lost interest in the project, especially when G-mate disappeared and the Yopy died.

For years I've wondered why this is happening to me and envied people like David Reveman (cmpiz's father) for their ability to remain focused on their personal projects as well as quiet about them until it's time to come out and show the community what they've made, and the culprit has always seemed to be my lack of discipline, but after reading this article I'm beginning to believe that perhaps there's more to it than what I thought, perhaps I have too much to entertain myself with and will have to accept the fact that no matter what I do, I'll never be like those people...

But Napster wasn't technically a web application...

My vote for truly the best web software ever was the Zippy Filter. It's the only thing that made most of the web bearable and it is sorely missed. As one of the comments suggested, "This is almost certainly the finest thing I have seen on the Web. When you figure out how to apply this filter to the rest of the universe, don't tell me about it. Just do it."

No Napster = No DSL/Cable, No YouTube, No ...

Last but not least: here.

I can't see anything linked from the ext3cow.com site, save for the near-silent mailing lists. I'm tagging this 'slashdotted'. There's not even a huge amount on the Wayback Machine: http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://ext3cow.com

I guess that this is a fork of the ext3 code with Copy On Write functionality and userland tools to make snapshots and time-travel the snapshots. Wikipedia's article on Ext3cow names Zachary Peterson, the submitter of the article, and links to an ACM Transactions on Storage paper at http://hssl.cs.jhu.edu/papers/peterson-tos05.pdf.

I'm Piquan. I meet both of those criteria. I've also never downloaded a movie from the Internet*. Pleased to meet you.

* Except some legal ones.

I hadn't read the Wikipedia 'Slashdot Trolling Phenomena' article before it got replaced.
It is still here. http://web.archive.org/web/20060104140752/http://e n.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slashdot_trolling_phenomena
Off topic I know but I found it quite interesting.

Have you tried using Internet Archive? You probably could find it using the "Way Back Machine"...that is if they haven't been asked to remove their archived content....

Have you tried using Internet Archive? You probably could find it using the "Way Back Machine"...that is if they haven't been asked to remove their archived content....

Thanks for the thoughtful replies Pfhorrest.

You seem like a person interested in property rights and copyright law. Here are some additional resources that clarify my viewpoints towards the fundamental connection between rights and property, and how so-called "intellectual property" and copyright laws muddy the waters.

The first is a video series by Michael Badnarik on the US Constitution. You can view the entire series here: http://www.archive.org/details/Michael_Badnarik

The second is a great book on copyright law history by Lawrence Lessig. Again, freely available here: http://www.free-culture.cc/freeculture.pdf

While I fervently disagree with your assertion that a person can truly own something while at the same time be restricted from doing something with it, I respect your opinion. I hope you find the links I provided interesting (if you haven't already read/viewed them), I know I did.

Have a nice day.

This sort of thing always makes me want to check the site out for juicy stuff.
archive.org wayback machine cache is my friend.

Hey, how many libertarians does it take to stop a panzer division?

None -- the free market will take care of it!

No man is an island, no man is self-made. Though I disagree with many of his opinions, Charley Reese is right when he talks about why he isn't a libertarian. It's why I cannot be one as well.

http://web.archive.org/web/20010416233157/http://o rlandosentinel.com/news/opinion/columnists/orl-ope d-reese15041501.column

Here's a look at the website in 2003, via the Internet Wayback machine:

http://web.archive.org/web/20031204153129/http://e lection.sos.state.oh.us

So it did exist before Nov. 3, 2004.

I've been boycotting the RIAA for a couple of years now. I listen to live music and I buy t-shirts and merchandise from the bands I listen to.

http://www.archive.org/details/audio

Those bastards won't get a red cent from me until they stop harrasing their customers.

"An alternative explanation of the Two-slits experiment (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two-slit_experiment) could be possible with the aether thing."

That "aether thing" spells out in detail how the Two-slits experiment can do its thing. It also explicitly states that nothing is Real for very long, and why, and was supposedly written in 1995. According to archive.org the prediction has been posted on the Web since 2004.

"Why They Behave Like Russians" by John Fischer, is an interesting book on the subject, and it goes into how the *embedded culture* generates its own choice of government. Russian gov't hasn't really changed much over the centuries, just who gets to play the game. Frex, as some have pointed out, the KGB didn't go away, they just changed their uniforms.

http://www.archive.org/details/whytheybehavelik00f iscmiss

Pretty damned insightful for a book written in 1947.

(I'm glad to see this in the archive; damned if I know where my dead-tree copy is.)

Not only that, but you can sacrifice compression to create recovery capability in the case of lost/corrupted data, especially in the newer ones.

Not that I can tell. You can check at the mirror posted at archive.org.

If you can manage to steal someone's idea, sign the oath saying you invented whatever it is, and obtain the patent, it will probably still fall apart in court when you go to enforce it. 35 U.S.C. 102(f) bars you from obtaining a patent for something you didn't invent.

Moving to a first to file system would do away with the issue of someone publishing an idea into the public domain and less than a year afterwards, another person filing a patent application for the same idea (along with an affidavit establishing prior inventorship. Currently, you may not obtain a patent if

(a) the invention was known or used by others in this country, or patented or described in a printed publication in this or a foreign country, before the invention thereof by the applicant for patent, or
(b) the invention was patented or described in a printed publication in this or a foreign country or in public use or on sale in this country, more than one year prior to the date of the application for patent in the United States.

Now if you want to place something into the public domain (good for you!), make sure it is readily searchable and has a solid date of publishing attached (i.e., the Internet Archive can archive it).

Strange - police reveal the names like Pete Townshend - but have still kept the name of Labour Government Cabinet minister quiet.

Quote:

Detective Chief Inspector Bob McLachlan, former head of Scotland Yard's paedophile unit, told the Sunday Herald that the lack of urgency in making arrests will lead to suspects destroying evidence of downloading child pornography before they are arrested.

The Sunday Herald has also had confirmed by a very senior source in British intelligence that at least one high-profile former Labour Cabinet minister is among Operation Ore suspects. The Sunday Herald has been given the politician's name but, for legal reasons, can not identify the person. (Yet Pete Townshend was named in this same story)

There are still unconfirmed rumours that another senior Labour politician is among the suspects. The intelligence officer said that a 'rolling' Cabinet committee had been set up to work out how to deal with the potentially ruinous fall-out for both Tony Blair and the government if arrests occur.

http://web.archive.org/web/20050109090646/http://w ww.sundayherald.com/30813

The Sunday Herald took the story off their site - had to look in archive.org

The issue with going up against marketing is simple: a marketers job is to figure out what their marketing targets expect and need, and then communicate with those targets in a meaningful way.

Care to back that up with an actual reference for those of us in the uninformed masses?

Absolutely! The most important reference is the Halloween Documents. Especially interesting (if you don't want to read the actual documents) is the following bit from Microsoft's Official Response to the Halloween documents. I refer specifically to this bit:

"Q: The first document talked about extending standard protocols as a way to "deny OSS projects entry into the market." What does this mean?"
"A: To better serve customers, Microsoft needs to innovate above standard protocols. By innovating above the base protocol, we are able to deliver advanced functionality to users. An example of this is adding transactional support for DTC over HTTP. This would be a value-add and would in no way break the standard or undermine the concept of standards, of which Microsoft is a significant supporter. Yet it would allow us to solve a class of problems in value chain integration for our Web-based customers that are not solved by any public standard today. Microsoft recognizes that customers are not served by implementations that are different without adding value; we therefore support standards as the foundation on which further innovation can be based."

You don't see Microsoft own up to Embrace-and-Extend very often (although they did it in marketspeak...)

Also interesting, right from my first wikipedia link, "Document X
An e-mail from consultant Mike Anderer to SCO's Chris Sontag, also known as Halloween X: Follow The Money. Among other points, describes Microsoft's channeling of US$ 86 million to SCO."

So right they're they were funding the assault on Linux. Although we all see how that has been working out; it's mostly cost IBM a lot of money and provided a lot of entertainment.

You might also read Ballmer: 'Open source is not free'.

You could go back in time and read a commentary on Ballmer's assertion that Linux is like cancer, although that was just an idiot repeating something someone told him about the GPL once.

And ahhhh, here we go, this is one of the articles I've been looking for all this time. Google really needs to deprecate the blogosphere in pagerank, it makes it quite impossible to find old articles because most bloggers are too stupid to cite properly. Ballmer sees free software as Microsoft's enemy No. 1. And keep in mind that Microsoft signed the Novell deal in order to attack Linux: "Ballmer said in a question and answer session at a technology conference that Microsoft signed the deal because Linux "uses our intellectual property" and it wanted to "get the appropriate economic return for our shareholders from our innovation"."

How do you know, have you done any research on using hemp instead of nylon?

As a climber I'd hate to carry a wet hemp rope

The cords of the parachute that saved expres Bush Sr, when he bailed out over the Pacific when his plane was shotdown were probably made from hemp. The US government went so far as to make a movie, "Hemp for Victory", to encourage farmers to grow hemp during the Second World War partially because of the need for ropes. Now I've never carried hemp cord so I can't say how heavy it would be dry or soaked, but the gov decided it was worth it to grow hemp. Admittedly though nylon cord is light, while I've done a little climbing and would like to do more, I used to repel a lot. Off of clifts mostly but some out of helicopters.

and as a driver I'd hate to have a celluloid air bag in my car.

How do you know air bags made from hemp wouldn't be able to do the job? Or is there some other problem?