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*Yawn*

RedZero debunks all of the consipracy theory holders' main points.

2E69 approx. - A.D. 1,834,652,618,499,343,590,337,415,746,119,712,509, 834,124,421,548,072,260,582,352,567,003,896-01-25 Sat 17:06:08 GMT, UNIX 256-bit signed time_t fails.

I mean my god! We better get patching! Only *pulls out calculator* 1,834,652,618,499,343,590,337,415,746,119,712,509, 834,124,421,548,072,260,582,352,567,001,893 more years!

I've just spent the last 21 months as network person at Moor Park High School in Preston, Lancs. I implemented two Linux servers which did internal www which staff could access parts of via their W:\ drive, mail, proxy (with authentication and ability to block kids by a gui), ability to reclone damaged NT/2000 workstations, quota limits for kids, staff and pupil shared areas (accessible via S:\ and T:\ drives), shell access for kids, remote KDE/GNOME desktops in a window for staff (not that they used them!)...

The whole thing cost them £400 in software. Unfortunately two weeks ago they still insisted on me spending 7 hours a week standing in a library doing duties telling kids to take their coats off... and all for less than six pounds fifty an hour (probably 9-10 USD per hour). They're now looking for three people to replace me. I've now gone self employed and am the cheapest IT person I know even at more than twice the rate they paid me.

The biggest difficulty I found with implementing Linux was getting it to understand our existing username/password database. You have several options, some of them being:

- Make everyone set a new password (bad idea - they'll want to know why)
- Use pwdump.c (available from Samba mirrors) to create an smbpasswd file from your existing NT or 2000 server.
- Use John the Ripper or L0phtcrack to crack your existing account database. This isn't such a great solution, as some passwords could take weeks to crack, and some passwords will get changed after you cracked them.
- Use Winbind, which is part of the Samba suite which will talk to your existing NT/2000 setup and make those user accounts appear as ordinary users. This is an absolutely great solution once it works; you can give them access to any service you want (it works through PAM, so it's as good as having them all in /etc/passwd in many ways) - such as ftp, ssh, local or XDMCP access, you can chown and chmod files and directories to them, and it just works. It can be, however, an absolute nightmare to set up, and so I've written a document on the subject and how to get past a number of random error messages here.
- Read the comments in smb.conf

Management are always a problem, and it's the usual scenario: if it's Free, it has to be crap. If this is a problem, then instead of telling them how good it is, just show them. It's not difficult to find a spare unused machine in a school, or to boot Knoppix onto something, and you only need something with 16 or 32MB to install Debian or an old version of RH onto it and make it a useful server - machines of that calibre of write offs in UK schools right now with all the money the UK government are pumping into them. (This quarter alone, we had £27,000 to spend on IT - something like $40,000.)

Set something up, and implement a feature that your network lacks - quotas, web, email, cloning (use Partition Image - a much nicer replacement to Norton Ghost), proxy server (use Squid and Webmin so that your boss can easily add users to a list of banned people). Consider writing a cronjob to automatically copy everyone's home directory once a day, and then suddenly you'll be able to restore someones work from backup from any particular day or week (depending on how much hard disk space you have - a couple of cheap maxtor 80GB disks or something similar will do the job) in the space of ninety seconds *every time*. No more messing with backup tapes. (But still do tape backups, because you don't know when a lightning strike/minor earth tremor is going to destroy every hard disk...)

Write a manual. "This is how our Linux boxes were set up. The IP is this, here are the open ports, these packages were compiled from sourc

"Testimony of Bruce Wiseman. Presented to The Pennsylvania House Democratic Policy Committee Philadelphia, Pennsylvania July 20, 1999

Bruce Wiseman is National President of the Citizens Commission on Human Rights (CCHR) "

Consider the source. CCHR is a front organization for the $cientology mind-control multinational. Nuff said.

Also check out http://www.resultsproject.net/

Feh. That site is full of the typical quack anti-ADHD fear-mongering.

It's about time that Scyld goes, seeing that he's DEAD (his funeral) at least as far as Beowulf is concerned.

My mate Adrian was right all along: http://www.abarnett.demon.co.uk/theories.html#TURK EY

Just to be the pedantic bastard, pounds are a measure of weight and kilo's are a measure of mass. The imperial measure of mass is the slug which ways ~32lbs under standard conditions See this A newton is the SI unit of weight... apples to apples people.

Those who have visited Ayrshire in Scotland will most likely have visited Electric Brae, which is just about the wierdest place I've ever been. Things roll uphill here, or at least appear to.

Here's a link, and here's another.

Bob

It's just north of Ayr, near a place called Dunure. Quite a bizarre thing, too. Website here

Surprisingly, Chrysantemum seeds work against roaches. We set some out a while back and the roaches dissapeared.

Not so surprising; chrysanthemums contain pyrethrins, a natural insecticide.

• Sid Meier's Pirates!
• Sid Meier's Colonization
• Covert Action
• Gunship
• Silent Service
• F-19 Stealth Fighter
• F-15 Strike Eagle
• CPU Bach

• Sid Meier's Pirates!
• Sid Meier's Colonization
• Covert Action
• Gunship
• Silent Service
• F-19 Stealth Fighter
• F-15 Strike Eagle
• CPU Bach

Ish*t, is not active atm, but you can check out his setup, to let people flush his toilet from a browser ;)
Here you can read a comparison of the internet and a toilet...
Always amusing Onion, has an article on online sh*tting ;)

Man, I gotta pull myself together and get some work done :P

I got to it before the /.; this is all it said:

"This is a test server only

This is not the server you were looking for.

Actually, it is micro_http running on a Dreamcast and serving a piece of html saved on the Dreamcast vmu.

For more details please visit linuxdc.net.

To show your deep admiration of this utterly useless hack, email me."

This almost makes me wish I didn't sell my Dreamcast a couple weeks ago. Though to me it was kind of useless since I wasn't going to spend $100 for a DC NIC anytime soon.

Nope. Sorry. There are 2 reasons why 14.4K will never be fast again:

1. Graphics. There are plenty of web pages that are not optimizing for graphics, and plenty of web pages that are using more complicated technologies (such as flash) where simple technologies (such as gif) will work.

That sounds more like a problem of webpages that suck than a bandwidth problem. A webmaster who pays for hosting sees a higher bill at the end of the month if (for instance) he's sending out 3MP images straight from a digital camera instead of cutting them down to a more reasonable resolution and applying a reasonable level of compression (something like cjpeg -Q 40 -opt foo.bmp >foo.jpg at a minimum).

2. HTML Mail. Isn't it wonderful how a simple "Meet you at 5" can end up being bloated to half a meg with a "pretty" html background?

Bouncing HTML mail back to the lusers who send it takes care of that problem 95% of the time. HTML mail is nearly as annoying as top-posting to Usenet.

(All that said, you can have my cable modem after you pry it from my cold, dead fingers. :-) )

This reminds me, superficially, of H.U.R.G., an extremely restrictive games development environment for the ZX Spectrum.

I was going to write the next Jet Set Willy, but I couldn't program (well, I knew BASIC), so I bought this thinking it would be just the ticket (I was only 10...). I can still remember the stomach-sinking disappointment when the reality displaced my golden hopes. I think it put me off the whole idea of games-authoring for life...

I hope this is better!

As the costs for this goes up, the slippery-slope endgame will be that email addresses are registered (like DNS), and mail servers and intermediate systems will have to reject email with unknown endpoints. Actually, this could be cool in a carbomite maneuver sort of way - all 'illegal' email is directed back to the sender along with an additional message saying why it was rejected.

On a personal note, I have a problem with my ISP right now where spam actually chokes my inbound download (because of invalid headers, etc.), so I have to use POP3 Scan Mailbox to roto-rooter the queue before all my mail can download. Major pita. But, I'm hoping to make mods to Thunderbird to allow me to do this in one swell foop, as it were.

Anti-spam activists go to a lot of trouble to help locate and identify people and groups responsible for flooding the net with spam (or who provide spamware to misinformed laypeople). These same good-doers are often sought out by spammers, sued by groups of them, have their privacy invaded (release of home phone, address) in effort to scare them into shutting up.

I am not kidding here. Take a look at some of the projects that scare the hell out of professional spammers:

spamhaus keeps an exhaustive list of major spam operations.

SPEWS lists areas of the Internet that have frequently be used for spamming, including detailed evidence files and histories of ISPs that turn a blind eye to spam.

Spamware vendor list has a listing of sites that sell spamming software -- without which we would have little or no spam.

Try google search for "chording keyboard" and you'll come up with some really wild designs. Some of them home-made, some in mass trade. Personally, if I had some spare bucks, I'd give a try to CyKey, a neat wireless keyboard that whole fits in your palm (No desk required!)

I am a scientist working with nanotechnology, so listen to what I have to say.

Although this article does bring up some important points, it is basically FUD (fear, uncertainty, and doom, for the newbs). The fact that it is self-published is a big tip-off. Here are some important points, some repeated from others' replies, but repeated here because they are important.

(1) Pretty much everyone in materials science is working the word "nano" into their work. Nanotechnology and nanoscience are buzzwords that are currently very hot. Hot areas attract lots of researchers. More than that, though, great numbers of people apply the latest hot label to their work if they can, because it helps them get funding, which helps them do their work. For example, a seminally hot buzzword is "cancer." If you can somehow claim that your work will lead to curing cancer, then it is more likely to get funded. This may sound dumb, but it's reality.

(2) Just about all materials science research is nano-research. So, in many cases, adding the "nano" tag to your work is valid.

(3) Most nanotechnology and nanoscience work does NOT deal with powders. You can call your stuff nano if it has features less than 0.1 microns. Nanoscience deals with layers that are nano, bulk materials which have grain structures on the nano scale, the production of nano-sized features on surfaces, and so on. Some things that you could call nanoscience and nanotechnology are common. In fact, you are using a nanomachine to read this post. (There are structures in computer chips that are only a nanometer or two thick, for example the gate oxide in those billions of transistors.)

(4) Most nano-sized things are not going to jump out and kill you. That is because they are a part of a larger thing, stuck together, if you like. To be of any concern for entry into the body, these things have to be airborne. When part of something, they are not.

(5) Many nanopowders are probably unhealthy. Nano-sized things described in (4) can be freed by smashing something up. Of course, any time you smash something up, you are creating nanoparticles, too. And every time you burn something, you are creating nanoparticles. Lots. All of these things can get into your lungs. Many of them stay there to cause cancer or scarring. That's what's so dangerous about diesel engines and coal power plants. So really, breathing in nanoparticles is nothing new.

(6) One thing that makes some inhaled particles which your lungs do not eject (less than 1 micron) dangerous, is that they can cause scarring, which over time results in loss of working lung tissue. Example materials are: asbestos, silica particles, diatomaceous earth, fiberglass, and probably nanotubes. Many other materials don't cause this kind of damage. Why? Well, tiny particles are usually very sharp. If your body can't dissolve them, then they stay sharp. And if your body also cannot eject them, then they keep cutting for the rest of your life. Only people who inhale a lot of these bad things on a regular basis get enough of them in their lungs to cause disease.

Anyway, there are many materials that we know do not dissolve in the body, but most stuff does, thanks to water.) Any nanopowder of a material that doesn't break down in the body will cause an "-osis" disease if enough of it is inhaled. But, unless you work in a factory making hundreds of pounds of nanopowders for sale, then it is unlikely that you have anything to worry about. If your specific worries are the titanium oxide and zinc oxide in sunscreens, then you should also stop taking vitamins, because they are in there, too. But, I'm pretty sure that they dissolve in your body, probably through hydroxylation.

(7) Drexler is an idiot. His nanoassemblers and the gray goo are pure fantasy. I won't bother to go into it, but unless such machines can be backed up by an army of Maxwell Demon

Why are the overwhelmingly white moderators of Slashdot suppressing Native American culture?

ah! finally we get to see what it was that infocom's Z-Machine was emulating. pretty impressive i'd say. all that to play Zork on...

I would suggest:

1) Buy the Japanese-only authentic non-pirate DVD
2) Download the timed fansub
3) Rip the DVD at some horrendously high-quality filesize
4) Sync it up
5) (if applicable) Burn yourself a DVDR and throw it in your player

Oh yeah, don't share it. You don't even have to register the apps you use to sub it or sync it or whatever, although a donation might be nice.

Ian Watson's Novels

An Interview with Ian Watson

Ian Watson's Bibliography

Science Fiction Weekly Interview

I'd recommend replacing "God" with "Invisible Pink Unicorn."

Sorry, DC, I'm afraid I don't quite agree with your detective work there...

Meteor strikes like these are not as uncommon as one may think, it's just that the information is rarely released in such a public fashion. Who wants to release news that may create mass hysteria?

Meteor falls are quite rare, actually. There are typically about 50 recorded per year for the entire planet.

Do you really think that stories on meteor falls are being suppressed by the media? Really? I just can't believe that anyone would think that the media would not pounce on such a story. And to give as justification that they are worried about causing mass hysteria is just laughable. (A) the news media lives and breathes by ratings, and disaster stories create high ratings; (B) where is the "mass hysteria" that this event (which the Chicago Tribune so foolishly refused to suppress) caused? There isn't any, because people understand that these are rare events. So when they occur, they are regarded as an interesting novelty, not as a portend of coming doom.

With more public acknowledgement of the problem, we could develop something like the Patriot missile defense system for extraterrestrial bodies so things like this would not happen.

God, what a phenomenal waste of effort and money that would be. Who gives a damn about this class of meteor fall? Are you truly suggesting the government invest trillions so that some dude's bedroom mirror doesn't get broken by a falling rock? Get some perspective, man, there are far more dangerous things to worry about than falling VW-sized rocks.

Rikky and Pete is a fantastic movie, with some geek charm to it (Pete is a mechanical genius). Is it a film with a deep meaning and a strong moral message? Nope, it's just a great slice-of-life film. I dare you to find it anywhere though.

-B

The idea would be to use a mouse/tablet right handed and the Cykey left handed, I could switch to right handed chording for a rest too. It is easy to learn, and no I'm not affilitaed :-)

My fave is this one. Damn, the link's broken, try this instead.

I'm assuming you mean published "name brand" poets, rather than Anonymous Cowards... I suspect I'm gonna be the only person posting anything useful here, but it just so happens that you've touched on a favorite obsession of mine: why aren't there more poets dealing with actual modern life?

Anyway, a few pointers:

You'll probably have trouble finding them, but Lawrence Lerner wrote two books of computer-inspired poems. The first was "A.R.T.H.U.R.: The Life and Opinions of a Digital Computer". UMass Press, ISBN 0-87023-181-2.

ARTHUR is a dim-witted AI (the poems were written in the early 70s). The poems are humorous, but at the same time some of them are quite chilling. I forget the title of his second ARTHUR book; I never managed to track down a copy.

The other obvious answer is "The Policeman's Beard Is Half Constructed" by RACTER, aka William Chamberlain and Thomas Etter. RACTER was the psychotic cousin of ELIZA, and Chamberlain and Etter used it to create programs which would output demented prose and poetry.

Something I've often pondered is the feasibility of building a reverse-engineered INRAC clone under the GPL, so RACTER could live again. (Apparently the original authors lost the BASIC source code some years ago.)

If you include song lyrics as poetry, you have to check out recent albums by Momus. He's the only songwriter I'm aware of dealing with technological subjects in an intelligent and witty fashion. "Virtual Valerie" (from "The Philosophy of Momus") is the best song I've ever heard about long-distance relationships via Internet, and "Finnegan The Folk Hero" is a hilarious pastiche of country music that'll strike a nerve with any web developer.

with the exception of fuel injection and emissions "add-ons", has changed very little in the last 50 years.

More importantly, in terms of realism regarding UK broadband connectivity:

ADSL-For-Ipswich | Barnt Green, Birmingham | Edenbridge, Kent | Brinscall, Lancashire | Chafford Hundred, Grays | Broxburn/Uphall, Scotland | New Mills, Stockport | Bradford-on-Avon | Antrim, Northern Ireland | Paddock Wood, Kent | Mossley, Greater Manchester | Maltby, Rotherham | Cudworth, South Yorkshire | Pembury, Kent | Telford, Shropshire | Totnes, Devon | Caister on Sea, Great Yarmouth | Broadband in the East of England | Wargrave, Berkshire | Alton, Hampshire #1 | Alton, Hampshire #2 | Frodsham, Cheshire | Atherstone, Warwickshire | Sleaford, Lincolnshire | Neston, South Wirral | Blackpool/Fleetwood, Lancashire | Colwyn Bay, Wales | Whitby, Yorkshire | Saltcoats/Ardossan/Stevenston, Strathclyde | Thornbury, South Gloucestershire | Dinnington, Sheffield | Irby, Wirral | Colwyn Bay/Old Colwyn/Rhos-On-Sea, North Wales | Hednesford, Staffs | Connahs Quay/Flint/Mold/Sealand/Queensferry, North Wales | Eastham/Wirrall, Cheshire | Worle, North Somerset | Dereham, Norfolk | Leicester Kirby Muxloe, Leicestershire | Bolton Westhoughton, Lancashire | Leek, Staffordshire | Ivybridge, Devon | Attleborough, Norfolk | Whaley Bridge, Derbyshire | Montrose, Angus, Scotland | Hurstpierpoint, West Sussex | Worcester/St Johns/Fernhill Heath, Worcester | Allerton, Liverpool (and surrounding exchanges) | Buntingford, North Hertfordshire | Glastonbury, Somerset | St Budeaux, Devon | Fenland towns of Ramsey, Yaxley, Whittlesey, Chatteris, Ely and Soham | Grimsby, North East Lincolnshire | Pershore, Worcs | Yarmouth, Norfolk | Great Oakley, Corby, Northants | South Woodham Ferrers, Essex | Goring & South Stoke, South Oxfordshire and Streatley & Lower Basildon, West Berkshire | Kinross & Milnathort, Perthshire | Bolsover, Derbyshire | Elton, Ince and Helsby in Cheshire | Hanwell/Horley/Wroxton/Balscote/North Newington/Drayton, Oxfordshire | Tonyrefail/Gilfach Goch and surrounding area, Mid Glamorgan | Rotherfield Greys/Rotherfield Peppard/Shepherds Green, Oxfordshire | Heath Hayes, Staffordshire | Hednesford, Staffordshire | Chipping Norton, Oxfordshire | Adderbury (Nr. Banbury), Oxfordshire | Lydney, Gloucestershire | Knaresborough, North Yorkshire | Saltburn-By-The-Sea, Cleveland | Hebden Bridge, West Yorkshire | Churchdown, Gloucestershire

My other piece of durable tech is the Samsung SCH-8500 cellular phone (purchased December 2000) and I still use it. It's survived countless drops onto concrete and pavement, drops into puddles (and a toilet), being slept on, and a bad battery. I have yet to find another phone that even looks as durable yet, so I'm not replacing it anytime soon.

More info here from the same site

Article on the Irish MEP (Member of European Parliament) who wants an investigation. (Bit cheeky of the site to copy the page whole, though!)

Article by Duncan Campbell on the facility

More info here from the same site

Article on the Irish MEP (Member of European Parliament) who wants an investigation. (Bit cheeky of the site to copy the page whole, though!)

Article by Duncan Campbell on the facility

This means WAR!

Evolution is a fact

Obviously not a scientist - nothing is a fact - it's all just a theory.

Here are five links explaining why evolution is a fact.

And just in case you're too lazy to click the links and read the damn text - I know from experience that most of you fundie types are really that lazy - here is a sound-bite that even you can't ignore:

"Well evolution is a theory. It is also a fact. And facts and theories are different things, not rungs in a hierarchy of increasing certainty. Facts are the world's data. Theories are structures of ideas that explain and interpret facts. Facts don't go away when scientists debate rival theories to explain them." [Stephen Jay Gould]

Clear enough? Or perhaps you'd like to claim that the late great Stephen Jay Gould was not a scientist?

When I did my Biology degree (10 years ago) one of the first statements made, when teaching Evolution, was that Chimps have DNA that is up to 98% the same as humans.

Amazing! They've been saying this for years. The problem is that the human genome was only mapped a couple of years ago, and I'd bet they haven't mapped the Chimps - so how did/do they know this?

I claim you are a liar. Even a first year biology student is taught how the similarity was determined. It's an estimate based on the rate of hybridization. It's simply impossible for you to have a biology degree and not know this.

"A quick method of measuring changes in DNA structure is to mix the DNA from two species, then measure by how many degrees of temperature the melting point of the mixed (hybrid) DNA is reduced below the melting point of pure DNA from a single species. The method is generally referred to as 'DNA hybridization.' As it turns out, a melting point lowered by one degree centigrade means that the DNAs of the two species differ by roughly 1 percent." [http://www.netherworld.com/~walkerk1/chap1.html]

And before you make the obvious (and incorrect) claim that hybridization isn't an accurate measure, you would do well to educate yourself on the topic. If you or anybody else could disprove hybridization you would be famous overnight.

The first real incarnation of this was a weird little thing called a MacCharlie. It took what was then the only form factor of the Mac (what I believe folks today call a 128KE) and added a pair of 5 1/4" floppy drives, a system board, and the keyboard extension needed for the F1-F10 keys and the numeric keypad.

Here's a decent webpage about it. It was manufactured by Dayna, and actually was sort of cute.

I believe it was limited to 80x24 text applications (since in that day, the Monochrome Graphics Adapter was actually an expansion, and if you were -really- inventive, you could get (gasp) a CGA card! Woo! :)

Is there a point in debating this?

No, which is why I don't bother. Creationists purposefully ignore contrary evidence, overstep their area of expertise, fradulently claim skills and knowledge that they do not have, and repeat "arguments" that have already been shown to be false.

As I've said before, I don't debate with creationists. I treat them with the contempt I'd reserve for any religious nutcase who perverts science and attacks education. I ridicule them. I attack them. My purpose is not to enlighten you, but to make you stop talking.

In the end how can you say that evolution is a fact?

Because it is a fact. That you bring up the tired old argument of "evolution is just chance" is exactly why I don't bother with debate. You repeat this refuted argument as if it's still a matter for debate! It is not.

I don't know of an ASCII art car washer - just this ASCII art animation of a cow & a car - which can be found here.

Did anyone else find that the best way to create realistic landscapes was to just take topographic maps of the world...

The world map for my current campaign is set on Mars - take a look at Blue Mars. Download the terrain map, and rotate it 180 degrees, and there you have it. Adapting the world history to the map was interesting and fun... the large inland sea is the result of a magical catastrophy that destoryed the Elven empire ~ 2000 years ago, and most of the campaign's activity so far has occured in the Small Kingdoms along the coast south of the inland sea.

Really? The sales figures given here don't look so good. But even if you are right, compared to their original predictions, 16k is a tiny number.

• Fictional man, doing good: no problem.
  
• Real man, doing good: Author may be misrepresenting the truth, but it's positive, so there's few complaints.
  
• Fictional man, doing bad: The audience knows it's all fake, so no harm done.
  
• Real man, doing bad: The author is spreading lies.
  

OK, I know it's off-topic kinda, but we have some cool abadoned Tube Stations[demon.co.uk] in London.

The tube (London's underground rail system) network is the largest in the world and there are a lot of old tube stations that were abandoned due to improvments to existing stations and changes in the organisation of the lines. They are all mainly closed off, though you can still see some above ground.

Perhaps a little more spooky than abandoned airfields mainly because they have never been redeveloped. Some still have the old advertising in them from the 40's/50's.

Just something I thought some people might find interesting...

For those who don't "get it" --

Marvin The Paranoid Android

~Berj

I agree with your point about reading classical texts, but AFAIK, I'ching is an oracle, a randomised card-game sort of thing that purportedly answers your question through sufficiently vague passages. Not in the same league as, say, Aristotle's works.

Check it out Here

Software development is one hundred percent design

A chessboard is 8x8, meaning 64 spaces. However, each space can contain a pawn, a rook, a bishop, a knight, a king or a queen of either colour. The best estimate for the number of states the board can be in is 2.99x1041.

Not all of these states are reachable by legal moves, though. The number of reachable states is still vast, but far smaller than the number of total states, and far harder to calculate.