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Google's secrecy by agsharad · 2005-07-14 09:19 · Score: 1 · on Ambiguity Drives Google's Valuation

Interesting that Slashdot should feature this article, roughly 4 weeks after I posted something similar (albeit with less information and more deliberations):
http://agsharad.blogspot.com/2005/06/how-do-we-kno w-what-we-know-about.html/

Shameless Self-Promotion by CheeseburgerBlue · 2005-07-14 08:10 · Score: 1 · on Doctorow and Stross Release Latest Novels for Free

Hi, you know me -- I'm that cheeseburger who wrote The Darth Side: Memoirs of a Monster which was Slashdotted a couple of months ago.

My new science-fiction novel is also on-line, being issued as a serial in blog format. If you're not a big stupid retard, check it out!

Simon of Space

Shameless Self-Promotion by CheeseburgerBlue · 2005-07-14 08:10 · Score: 1 · on Doctorow and Stross Release Latest Novels for Free

Hi, you know me -- I'm that cheeseburger who wrote The Darth Side: Memoirs of a Monster which was Slashdotted a couple of months ago.

My new science-fiction novel is also on-line, being issued as a serial in blog format. If you're not a big stupid retard, check it out!

Simon of Space

Re:Oh, come on by digitallife · 2005-07-14 05:05 · Score: 1 · on Clinton To Take On Rockstar

I reposted your comment on a spanking new blog of mine http://tickletrap.blogspot.com/ and just wanted to make sure that was ok with you. If not let me know!

Anyone but the U.N. by blankmeyer · 2005-07-14 04:23 · Score: 3, Insightful · on U.N. To Govern Internet?

I made this comment on my blog (http://blankmeyer.blogspot.com/2005/07/should-un- control-of-internet.html):

Following last weeks announcement by the U.S. that it would not turn over DNS servers it controls to ICANN (U.S. Won't Let Go of Master Domain Servers), the U.N. is set to report next week that it should control the internet backbone.

If there's one organization that I can name that shouldn't have control of the Internet, it is the United Nations. I think the UN has outlived its useful life and needs to either be drastically reformed or replaced completely. If we're ever going to have a united world government, that institution needs actual power, protection for member states, and freedom from corruption (or what the best safeguards can allow).

The UN has no business asking to regulate something, when it can't even regulate itself. Granted, I don't necessarily think the U.S. government should be in charge of the DNS backbone. I think it needs to be an un-national and un-political organization that has a limited focus on running the internet with feedback, not only from world-wide governments, but from businesses and individual users, as well. A model based off of the open-source movement could work.

Just keep it out of the hands of the U.N.

Re:Well, here's my take by doc+modulo · 2005-07-14 03:20 · Score: 1 · on Asa Dotzler on Why Linux Isn't Ready for the Desktop

Installing and uninstalling was nearly impossible because packages scattered files across a confusing, oblique filesystem, and it was a very common occurrence to find rpm entries had been corrupted and left unusable.

Read this page for a description of how to fix the installation usability/buggyness problem Linux has. It's a four-piece blog with a blueprint of how re reengineer Linux to use the appfolder system. Another way of explaining it is that the article explains how to make Linux application installation more like Mac OS X installations (installing is just dragging a folder over) but the articles go further than just using the Mac system, the resulting design is even easier.

There are already Linux and other OS systems that implement the appfolder way of installing, uninstalling and updating. The links to those as well as comments about these systems are all collected on those pages if you want a single source to get all your reading material from.

A good read.

Re:Hydrogen is a red herring by Anonymous Coward · 2005-07-14 03:07 · Score: 1, Interesting · on New Way to Make Hydrogen

Just wanted to drop into anonymous coward mode to say a few things:

1. Thanks for the links! I'll be watching to see the rollout of the next generation of batteries.

2. If you could try to be little less offended by people who disagree with you, you'll find more people open themselves to what you have to say.

3. Re: "Any electricity which can be used to generate hydrogen can now be stored in batteries with a higher energy density than compressed hydrogen gas."

Many attempts at generating hydrogen are based in making hydrogen a byproduct of existing industrial processes, like water treatment. In other words, which energy technologies succeed will depend more on manufacturing efficiencies than on output efficiencies. Having said that, hydrogen has some horrible manufacturing and transport efficiencies to overcome. Zinc may actually turn out to be a better replacement.

Hydrogen: The Incredible Bulk by Engineer-Poet · 2005-07-14 02:09 · Score: 1 · on New Way to Make Hydrogen

If you're going to have to offload used silica-stuff anyway, you might as well use zinc.

Re:Free as in Crap (or, "if it were any good,...") by cygnusx · 2005-07-13 22:33 · Score: 1 · on Doctorow and Stross Release Latest Novels for Free

I find Cory novels difficult reading but I have read Accelerando and it totally rocks. About the only criticism some people have had of this book is that it you need to take breaks while reading it because of the sheer number of ideas and imagery thrown at you per paragraph (Accelerando is a very good title for the book, IMHO)

Some choice quotes from the book to give you a feel for the writing -- despite the technobabble it actually reads quite well in context and has a kind of manic humour driving it along:

"Uh, I'm not sure I got that. Let me get this straight, you claim to be some kind of AI, working for KGB dot RU, and you're afraid of a copyright infringement lawsuit over your translator semiotics?"

* * *

"Am have been badly burned by viral end-user license agreements. Have no desire to experiment with patent shell companies held by Chechen infoterrorists. You are human, you must not worry cereal company repossess your small intestine because digest unlicensed food with it, right? Manfred, you must help me-we. Am wishing to defect."

* * *

"Nyet!" The artificial intelligence sounds as alarmed as it's possible to sound over a VoiP link. "Am not open source! Not want lose autonomy!"

* * *

Manfred walks on, hands in pockets, brooding. He wonders what he's going to patent next.

* * *

He's the guy who patented using genetic algorithms to patent everything they can permutate from an initial description of a problem domain - not just a better mousetrap, but the set of all possible better mousetraps.

* * *

There are lawyers in San Diego and Redmond who swear blind that Macx is an economic saboteur bent on wrecking the underpinning of capitalism, and there are communists in Prague who think he's the bastard spawn of Bill Gates by way of the Pope.

* * *

His fiance and sometime dominatrix Pamela threw him over six months ago, for reasons he has never been quite clear on. (Ironically, she's a headhunter for the IRS, jetting all over the place at public expense, trying to persuade entrepreneurs who've gone global to pay taxes for the good of the Treasury Department.) To cap it all, the Southern Baptist Conventions have denounced him as a minion of Satan on all their websites. Which would be funny because, as a born-again atheist Manfred doesn't believe in Satan, if it wasn't for the dead kittens that someone keeps mailing him.

* * *

Oh shit, thinks Manfred, better buy some more server time. He can recognize the signs: He's about to be slashdotted.

Another ebook you may enjoy is Kelly Link's Stranger Things Happen -- it's a bunch of short stories so it'll be easier to sample.

Re:Otherpower.com Rules! by arbitraryaardvark · 2005-07-13 16:19 · Score: 1 · on How to Build a 17-ft Wind Turbine

One of my lifelong goals is to live simply, on a large plot of undeveloped land somewhere.
You might enjoy http://raccooncreek.blogspot.com./
We have the land, are moving a barn to it, still haven't worked out all the energy use solutions.
www.f4.ca/text/possumliving.htm is a free online book about simple living.
I didn't realize it was also a movie.
http://www.newday.com/films/Possum_Living.html

- informative, offtopic -

Re:Reread that article, dammit! by AKAImBatman · 2005-07-13 14:12 · Score: 2, Informative · on Asa Dotzler on Why Linux Isn't Ready for the Desktop

Asa is saying that Linux *must* be more user-focused, and there's almost nothing in his article except good suggestions that will not remove any of the "geeky cred" or usefulness of Linux.

Indeed. FWIW, I wrote an article on this not so long ago. One of the biggest backlashes was the complaint that "We don't want Linux to be like Windows!" I found this complaint to be humorous, because I never suggested anything even remotely like Windows. The design I suggested was more like OS X, but more advanced, powerful, and Linux focused.

Even so, I had to do a followup article to clear up many of the misconceptions people had about my suggested design.

Re:Reread that article, dammit! by AKAImBatman · 2005-07-13 14:12 · Score: 2, Informative · on Asa Dotzler on Why Linux Isn't Ready for the Desktop

Asa is saying that Linux *must* be more user-focused, and there's almost nothing in his article except good suggestions that will not remove any of the "geeky cred" or usefulness of Linux.

Indeed. FWIW, I wrote an article on this not so long ago. One of the biggest backlashes was the complaint that "We don't want Linux to be like Windows!" I found this complaint to be humorous, because I never suggested anything even remotely like Windows. The design I suggested was more like OS X, but more advanced, powerful, and Linux focused.

Even so, I had to do a followup article to clear up many of the misconceptions people had about my suggested design.

More nonsense studies: by winkydink · 2005-07-13 12:03 · Score: 1 · on Study Shows One Third of All Studies Are Nonsense

Questionable studies like Second-Hand Smoke Is Bad or Drink 8 Glasses of Water a Day (does beer count?)