Slashdot Mirror

While the most useful samples will come from indiginous populations, members of the general public will be able to mail in their own DNA on special cheek swabs. for only $100.00 plus ship/handling"

--
http://unk1911.blogspot.com

last night, i got a popup message saying "updates were applied to your system and it will be rebooted in 5 minutes" - i tried to kill that process but it kept respawning. is that related to these patches? weird, i thought i had autoupdate disabled..

--
http://unk1911.blogspot.com

MEETin.org is a free, much more popular system and has very thriving communities in New York, D.C., and other large metropolitan areas. I was a member of both but meetup.com events never really got big enough to get excited over while MEETin peeps are much more fun to hang out with.

--
http://unk1911.blogspot.com

He continued to provoke McVoy,

Provoke McVoy how? By disobeying him?

It's not as if he ever wrote McVoy an email saying "nyah, nyah, I'm going to clone BK so suck it up!" or anything. McVoy heard about it third-hand and started demanding that Linus and OSDL shut him down.

and for no benefit that I can see;

Maybe Andrew was giving him too much credit. If Larry could have responded maturely, that would have been great, we could be assured of the freedom to move away from BitKeeper if needed, and many of the criticisms of BitKeeper would have died down. We'd probably still be using it for the forseeable future.

As it was, Larry spitefully exercised the "nuclear option", confirming everyone's worst fears.

Given this, disentangling projects from Larry's increasing domination seems a major long-term benefit to me.

I'll grant that Larry's terms are weird and probably counterproductive, but Linus thought they were, for the moment, acceptable.

The initial terms didn't seem so bad, but Larry has slowly made them more restrictive over time. Frog, meet slowly heated pot of water.

Linus was a fool, and is apparently now too blinded by buyer's remorse to think through the implications of the position he is now advocating.

He is, in effect, now advocating against Samba, against OpenOffice, against so much of the software developed using reverse-engineering due to uncooperative vendors.

If reverse-engineering against a vendor's wishes is really immoral, then so was developing that software, including many Linux device drivers.

Hopefully Linus will eventually work his way through the cognitive dissonance, as he could do some serious damage to the continued viability of Free Software (vis a vis interoperability) if he continues this line of advocacy. Heaven save us if Microsoft really picks up on this and runs with it.

Linus got McVoy to export the kernel tree without using Tridgell's work.

...but not via a method that was free of McVoy's attempts at manipulation through onerous licensing terms.

Also remember that the Linux kernel isn't the only Open Source project hosted on bkbits.net.

I'm not denying Tridgell's legal right to reverse-engineer the protocol, but I think doing it in a way that got McVoy to cancel the free BitKeeper product and to get Linus's and OSDL's licenced cancelled to boot was a lame thing to do to Linus.

How could Andrew have done it in a way that wouldn't have angered Larry? Larry said that he didn't want it reverse-engineered at all.

Question -- if one accepts that Larry is has a right to prohibit any reverse-engineering by fiat, isn't that denying Andrew's right to reverse-engineer?

It just doesn't work to say "if you'd just kept him happy, everything would have been okay!" It wouldn't have been. Appeasement never, never works. Domineering personalities just take further advantage.

Things weren't standing still; the BK license was getting increasingly more restrictive in ways that made migration increasingly difficult. Something had to give eventually, and I'm glad it wasn't our freedom as developers.

With the complexity of the subway system in NYC, I don't think that it would be a good idea to computerize the subway system. Aside from the human aspect (conductors losing their jobs), there's the question of practicality. I take the subway to and from work every day and most of the time there are so many people jam packed in the train that you end up pressed against other people in most intimate configurations. There are probably anywhere from 1000 to 2000 people riding on each train during rush hour. Also, people act irrationally: some rush into the train as the doors are closing; some hang out very close to the edge of the platform; people try to leave as others are coming in, and so forth. All in all, it's pure chaos. On top of it, there's constant changes, repairs, modifications in service, floods. I'm sorry, I just don't see a computer being able to manage all this chaos. Given how progressive the city is in other aspects, the subway system is fairly antiquated but given its enormity and complexity, that may be the only practical way to operate it?

--
http://unk1911.blogspot.com

I'm Bi-Polar you insensitive clod!

(no offense actually taken)

On Press The Buttons there's a link to a few other console gaming blogs, one of which is Retrogaming With Racketboy. The post from April 9th is the one that'll interest most /. readers: "I also want to commend Press The Buttons for being featured on Slashdot's main page. :D"

On Press The Buttons there's a link to a few other console gaming blogs, one of which is Retrogaming With Racketboy. The post from April 9th is the one that'll interest most /. readers: "I also want to commend Press The Buttons for being featured on Slashdot's main page. :D"

From the tech perspective -- Japan and Germany have tried this before, and I don't mean back in the 40s, but as recent as the 70s, we heard talks about the "domination" of Japan and Germany in the car industry. Flash forward 30 years, I don't think anyone can claim that Japanese and German cars are the only ones people buy now.

The political dimension -- true, Tibet is the clear victim of this unholy alliance. India should be thanked for hosting Tibetans who had to flee China because of the genocidal and religious persecution, but it is puzzling that the Indian leadership now thinks it needs the cheap labor in China to augment its burgeoning software industry. I mean, there is already a vast pool of qualified, and inexpensive to be sure, workers dying for manufacturing jobs within India's own borders, isn't it?

A side note: I wrote a novel, titled "Slipping into Madness", which deals with the suffering of Tibetan exiles; if anyone is interested, it is posted online in its entirety at: http://losangelesnow.blogspot.com/.

And Douglas Adams always thought of Last Chance to See as his best and favourite work.

I have heard rumours of a proposed TV follow up with Stephen Fry joining Mark Carwardine, and after Stephen's "spectacled bears" adventures I think that would be a great idea.

Sadly though, Mark recently said that the baiji dolphin was believed extinct, and the northern white rhino is almost gone too.

The big kakapo parrot is doing OK though.

And Douglas Adams always thought of Last Chance to See as his best and favourite work.

I have heard rumours of a proposed TV follow up with Stephen Fry joining Mark Carwardine, and after Stephen's "spectacled bears" adventures I think that would be a great idea.

Sadly though, Mark recently said that the baiji dolphin was believed extinct, and the northern white rhino is almost gone too.

The big kakapo parrot is doing OK though.

And Douglas Adams always thought of Last Chance to See as his best and favourite work.

I have heard rumours of a proposed TV follow up with Stephen Fry joining Mark Carwardine, and after Stephen's "spectacled bears" adventures I think that would be a great idea.

Sadly though, Mark recently said that the baiji dolphin was believed extinct, and the northern white rhino is almost gone too.

The big kakapo parrot is doing OK though.

On February 24, 2005 I tried to pose some questions to USPTO On-Line chat for Independent Inventors today, however the digichat java applet does not appear work with any combination of Linux Galeon/Mozilla/Firefox jdk1.5.0/j2re1.4.2_07 or MacOSX Firefox/Safari. Here is what I tried to ask:

I understand that the discovery of prior art and the evaluation of the obviousness of an invention are difficult tasks for the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) patent application examiners to perform. The percentage of patents being overturned under the scrutiny of the courts leads me to believe that the process is not quite as accurate as could be desired. In a few recent cases the existence of publicly accessible digital content has played a part in disclosing prior art. The public, technical and scientific communities use of Internet has to a large extent replaced printed media such as journals for the public disclosure of new ideas. To what extent does the current USPTO patent application examination process take into account public accessible website content? Do the patent examiners currently use Internet search engines such as Google ( http://www.google.com ) to locate instances of prior art? Is the changeable and unverifiable nature of some digital content a barrier to its being cited as prior art in the patent application examination process?

The USPTO patent application examiners task could be made more reliable if the examiners could consult one or more public online registries that document cases of prior art and public discoveries. The online registries could provide a means for the public to retroactively point to cases of preexisting prior art for pending patent applications and a means to proactively document publicly known ideas and concepts. Although websites and digitally stored content in general is changeable, individual entries and changes in an online registry could be legally authenticated by means of digital timestamping ( http://www.rsasecurity.com/rsalabs/node.asp?id=234 7 ). An online registry could be hosted by the USPTO as an adjunct to the existing online public patent and patent pending databases. The USPTO could also publicly recognize other individual registries hosted by third parties such as a commercial entity or a non-profit community similar to Wikipedia ( http://www.wikipedia.org/ ). An individual adding an entry to such a publicly online registry does not involve granting that individual any form of monopoly, therefore the action need not have any artificial barrier involving fees or payments. Would the existence of digitally timestamped public content overcome any objections by the USPTO to its citing as prior art? Has the USPTO any plans to add some form of publicly accessible feedback mechanism to the patent application process?

It has been nine years since the USPTO updated the Guidelines for Computer-Related Inventions ( http://www.uspto.gov/web/offices/com/hearings/soft ware/analysis/computer.html ). Since that time has the USPTO undertaken, commissioned or evaluated any studies on the effects that granting software related patents has had on the progress of science, useful arts and the software industry in general? If no such study has been performed or evaluated, why not? Can the USPTO point to any instances where the granting of software related patents has been an actual benefit to the progress of science, useful arts and the software industry in general? In a similar vein, can the USPTO point to any instances where the granting of business method related patents has been an actual benefit to the progress of science, useful arts and industry in general?

All I know is that I'm not too excited about this. I work in upper level tech support for the High speed internet division here in Buffalo NY. Let me tell you, this last year since the bankruptcy was announced haven't been pretty. With all the uncertainty surrounding the bankruptcy we have been hemorraging people like crazy. Most of our best talent has bailed for other companies and/or other states. It's only within the last 3 months that things have really begun to improve as many long needed network upgrades have taken place, and we FINALLY got some more people here at level 2 support to help with the call load.

If this deal is indeed final (no offical word from the courts yet), I suspect that the talent bleed will begin anew since we will probably only have about 6 more months of employment at that point. The worst part about it is that the economy is so poor in the Buffalo area (despite having more IT infrastructure in place than many IT 'capitols' like Austin Texas) That for many of us, getting work in IT will be next to impossible locally. This means that we will have to try and sell our houses in a sinking housing market and make a jump to another area of the country. Alternately, we could make a bid for Self-Employment in one of the most business unfriendly states in the union, or up and quit the IT field altogether and start a new carreer in a new field. Frankly, I'm not excited about any of those prospects. Working for myself is by far the most enticing, but trying to create a sucessful small business in this state is alot like trying to "chop down the greatest tree in the forest with a herring." In other words, darn near impossible. At any rate, it's gonna be ugly. Darn ugly. I suspect that I will probably ride it out to the end, as we will probably be receiving good severance packages. But I would imagine that many others will be leaving as soon as they are able to get other work. Wish us all luck. we're gonna need it.

BTW, I will probably be commenting more about this in my blog http://www.wearyman.blogspot.com/ feel free to stop by. Just don't expect any real insider info. I won't be putting my severance package at risk just for a blog post!

I'd say answers.com is an extremely usable tool. It's getting great press from Forbes, Wall Street Journal, etc and traffic is ramping up very quickly. See this URL for some interesting reviews:
http://www.answersblogger.blogspot.com/

hope this will set a good presedent in the courts so we could get more spammers put away

--
http://unk1911.blogspot.com

by injesting the magic mushroom, our minds leaped forward in terms of evolutionary progress many years ago, at least accord to mckenna. the mushroom should deserve some credit in this discussion.

another interesting parallel is, how did the mushroom get here in the first place.. did it perhaps get blown in from space?

--
http://unk1911.blogspot.com

I agree with your comment.
Your formatting is slightly unorthodox, but otherwise perfectly ordinary. ...
So why am I laughing hysterically???

(this is going on my quote blog, unless you mind :)

i was never a big fan of outsourcing because it takes jobs away from us but i always thought it was strange to outsource critical tasks abroad because how do you find people accountable for their actions when things go wrong, if they live in another country? it definitely gets tricky, whether the errors were intentional (to undermine us) or accidental. just imagine outsourcing the writing of our defense software to another country..

--
http://unk1911.blogspot.com

Oh, that's what it is! One of the local headline writers made it sound a little different.

I believe people are quite capable of adapting to the seasons of their own accord.

and Canada too! The ban was lifted today, so no more worries for us oppressed Canucks!

You could always do what my co-worker is doing... start a blog on the topic of a co-worker (in this case, me) named I Love Brendan Grant.

is to bash on a co-worker and then send the link to everyone at the office

10,000 barrels saving out of 20 mil barrels is only 0.05%, that is hardly a drop in the ocean and will not achieve anything. the only real way that we will get anywhere is if we start scaling down on gusseling suv's, big cars that burn through gasoline in return for an illusion of safety. alternatively, and this is what i have done, is people should move back into the cities and use public transportation thus dissipating the cost of fuel per person to almost nothing. there was a good article in the new yorker magazine written about the efficiency of new york city because everyone uses public transportation and although the city consumes tons of energy, there's also 10 mil+ people living here and thus it is actually much more efficient than someone living out in the middle of nowhere and has to drive 10 miles each way to rent a video in a ford explorer.

--
http://unk1911.blogspot.com

Hitachi's new nano-battery looks like it'll do more to clean up the environment more than any amount of well meaning legislation. I did the math and unless I'm horribly mistaken it could wipe out our dependence on gasoline, saving the average american about $2,000 pre-tax dollars a year.

Wrote about it on my old blog here.

Daylight "Savings" Time isn't really a savings at all. Sure, you get an extra hour of sleep; but then you just lose an hour six months later. Instead, we should set our clocks forward one minute every day. Then, at the end of the year, we set them back 365 minutes. That's 6 hours of extra sleep, folks. We could do it at Christmas, as a Christmas present to the whole world. Happy Birthday, Jesus -- have a siesta on us!

-- from the Facts for You blog

I would love to see a site dedicated to a gallery of satellite 'Easter Eggs', as described here:
http://ideamatt.blogspot.com/2005/04/google-satell ite-maps-easter-eggs.html. The post gives a few examples (Kennedy Space Center, Hawaii, some ships in SF). It would be very cool. Anyone seen this?

If you look at the per-mile cost of electricity (and battery depreciation), solar electricity is already about the same cost as gasoline. There's a tsunami about to take huge amounts of the world's fossil energy consumption and wash it away, leaving a very different landscape behind it. That tsunami may be solar, or cogeneration, or wind with cogeneration backup and conventional fuels for what remains; the dominoes haven't fallen yet.

If you look at the per-mile cost of electricity (and battery depreciation), solar electricity is already about the same cost as gasoline. There's a tsunami about to take huge amounts of the world's fossil energy consumption and wash it away, leaving a very different landscape behind it. That tsunami may be solar, or cogeneration, or wind with cogeneration backup and conventional fuels for what remains; the dominoes haven't fallen yet.

If you look at the per-mile cost of electricity (and battery depreciation), solar electricity is already about the same cost as gasoline. There's a tsunami about to take huge amounts of the world's fossil energy consumption and wash it away, leaving a very different landscape behind it. That tsunami may be solar, or cogeneration, or wind with cogeneration backup and conventional fuels for what remains; the dominoes haven't fallen yet.

After losing the presidential election, he has moved into newer pastures to make a killing. :)

good luck with your new enterprise Mr Gore. And make sure it has support for linux. heh heh

--
http://linuxhelp.blogspot.com/

I wonder why people are making a big deal about a project that has no significance. I mean if it is a linux clone , I am sure there are other better options and distros to run on PowerPC archetecture.
--
http://linuxhelp.blogspot.com/

But what does this have to do with Al Gore?

--
http://oncee.blogspot.com/

You have no clue how outrageously expensive solar power is compared to using fossil fuels, do you?

Fortunately for a few lucky adventurers, this happens to be the season when sailboats cross the South Pacific from Mexico to French Polynesia (they call it the Puddle Jump). My mom's boat happens to be among them, traveling on her retirement adventure.

I created a blog for their sailboat. Since they have email access via single sideband radio, they can blog from the boat! Plus there's a GPS tracker built into the site so you can see the current position. Pretty neat.

http://wind-river.blogspot.com

Fortunately for a few lucky adventurers, this happens to be the season when sailboats cross the South Pacific from Mexico to French Polynesia (they call it the Puddle Jump). My mom's boat happens to be among them, traveling on her retirement adventure.

I created a blog for their sailboat. Since they have email access via single sideband radio, they can blog from the boat! Plus there's a GPS tracker built into the site so you can see the current position. Pretty neat.

http://wind-river.blogspot.com

From the description in this news article, "Current" sounds like MTV without the music tapes. String together all the semi-hip news and pretentious lecture-in-disguise clips MTV now offers, and you get "Current"!

A friend who has participated in numerous "brainstorm" sessions in TV industry once described those meetings as "plenty of saliva storm but no brain". Now I know why.

The report says Gore bought the network for $70 million; my graphic blog, http://sunandfun.blogspot.com/, does not cost a dime to produce and offers plenty of entertainment.

no way they are switchng to Linux, so don't even go there

Yeah, it's mysterious and scary :P (sorry, couldn't help it)

Cooler rooms sounds wonderful until you spend 12 hours working in one.

epinions.com remains a good across-the-board review site, not just for hardware. good detailed specs appear next to user writeups. plus you can make money by writing reviews, which i have done.

--
http://unk1911.blogspot.com

This had already been reported at Parade of Delusion.

And what the article doesn't tell you is the number of the pay phone outside the theater:
(323) 462-9609.

John Rogers who wrote the Catwoman screenplay (the first draft at least) is writing the screenplay for Transformers. He has a blog over at Kung Fu Monkey

You have to wonder what the guy up in Seattle who's been waiting up in line for *five months* for Episode III feels about this.

This article reminded me of the Seattle Star Wars squater, Jeff Tweiten. Aparently, he was kicked off his couch by a city ordinance and an anonymous complaint back in January. He has managed to continue his wait for the movie opening without a permanent station.

The various distributions including non-profit ones like Ubuntu play a very important part in that they make it impossible for one particular company to monopolize the market like microsoft ended doing. As far as the choice of distribution is concerned, it filters down to one thing - support.

If a distribution is able to give good support in terms of frequent bug fixes , software updation and technical support (need not be like redhat's 24x7 type but even mailing lists, news servers and email support will do ) - then even if it is a small company or even a non-profit one, it doesn't make much of a difference.

Anyway if a firm decides to move over to linux, then they will be hiring atleast one linux professional to take care of their network. So eventually the type of distro doesn't make much of a difference.
--
http://linuxhelp.blogspot.com

I have been an avid supporter and user of linux for the past few years. And my opinion is that as long as your university does not depend on propritery software like photoshop (Yes you have GIMP but it cannot be compared to photoshop), adobe illustrator and the likes which do not have a equvalent in linux as of yet, they can easily make the transition to linux in a smooth manner. Ultimatly to take the decision, there should be general consensus and the will to move over to open source equvalents of propritery softwares.

My opinion is that linux has come of age in the desktop arena and is here to stay.
--
http://linuxhelp.blogspot.com

the list will prolly be updated immeditately.

Prolly: What the hell is this? You see this everywhere on the internet, often in forums or chatrooms, used by people who are to lazy to type the "bab" in "probably" so just slap an extra "l" in there instead. Does anyone actually say this in person? If anyone said to me "I could prolly eat a Cessna light aircraft", I'd kick him in the nuts. Twice. Once for saying a stupid fucking nonexistent word, and twice for being a glutton. The word is PROBABLY. Is it really that hard to spell?

http://murkydepth.blogspot.com/2004_04_01_murkydep th_archive.html

Are you honestly trying to tell us that this doesn't have magical powers? Wait until it stalks you in stealth mode.

You don't?

http://health.groups.yahoo.com/group/EverQuest-Wid ows/

http://www.olganon.org/

http://eqdailygrind.blogspot.com/

http://www.families-against-eq.com/eq/