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Women Warriors in History by jabber01 · 2000-09-01 00:49 · Score: 1 · on Ash: A Secret History

I suppose that the following were all myths, despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary:

Joan d'Arc
Boudiccia
Kang Ke-Ching
Grace O'Malley
Bat Zabbai (Zenobia)
A whole nation known as the Amazons

While it is very true that women were traditionally a minority in armed combat, they were certainly not unheard of. Take a look at one of the Women Worriors pages on the net, or do your own search next time that facts inconveniently stand contrary to your opinion and prejudice.

The REAL jabber has the /. user id: 13196

Let's get the MPAA back for this by cabalamat2 · 2000-08-30 05:40 · Score: 1 · on More Threats From The MPAA

If I link to a page [that links to a page]* that links to a DeCss, am I in trouble?

I've proposed a change to the GPL which would penalise organisations that seek to forbid hyperlinking to open source software.

Re:Not yet... by Anonymous Coward · 2000-08-30 00:26 · Score: 3 · on More Threats From The MPAA

Re:you're still not *doing* anything,.. by gelatinous+typeglob · 2000-08-27 20:48 · Score: 1 · on Has Linux Lapped Apple As Competition For Redmond?

But is following a "paint-by-numbers" book to Roll Your Own that much different than a distro? Is ALFS a distro? That's a currently debated issue on alfs-discuss.

I honestly worry that people do try too hard to be different. I just do whatever I need to do, personally. IMHO, LFS is a great learning experience (assuming you take the time to branch out and understand the why/how behind the instructions), and a great way to optimize your GNU/Linux box. But bragging rights? Just don't feel bad when I refer to you as a mere Linux user.

*gel

Re:Fixed? or Hoax? by x-empt · 2000-08-25 05:48 · Score: 2 · on More DeCSS Time-Warner Hypocrisy

I say fixed, because it is unlikely that the person designing that screenshot realized then onmouseover with IE turns text red, then when you take a screenshot in win32 the mouse will disappear. That is why that screenshot link is red and not underlined.

Also the window footer contains "http://www.zpok.demon.co.uk/decss/" (oops I just linked it) which indeed would happen when the mouse is over.

So I doubt this is a fake, but indeed it was fixed pretty rapidly.

CNN's doing it... by vkulkarn · 2000-08-23 05:33 · Score: 2 · on More On Kaplan's Ruling Making Links Illegal

... so I guess it's still okay... :) http://www. cnn.com/2000/TECH/computing/08/23/decss.part2.idg/ index.html Scroll down to the links at the bottom... it links to http://www.zpok.demon.co.uk/decss/.

Re:Adventure games by dgale · 2000-08-18 05:59 · Score: 1 · on Vanishing Game Genres

If someone whould come out with a new "Monkey Island" or "Infocom" or "Grim Fandango" type game with quality puzzles and stories, I would buy one every month.

Well, you can find Infocom style games, thanks to Inform.

Many people have made some really nice text ad^H^H^H^Hinteractive fiction with Inform. Most notably Curses and Jigsaw by Gramah Nelson, creator of Inform.

Re:Adventure games by dgale · 2000-08-18 05:59 · Score: 1 · on Vanishing Game Genres

If someone whould come out with a new "Monkey Island" or "Infocom" or "Grim Fandango" type game with quality puzzles and stories, I would buy one every month.

Well, you can find Infocom style games, thanks to Inform.

Many people have made some really nice text ad^H^H^H^Hinteractive fiction with Inform. Most notably Curses and Jigsaw by Gramah Nelson, creator of Inform.

Two thoughts by Ravagin · 2000-08-17 20:48 · Score: 1 · on Vanishing Game Genres

First, I think adventure gaming may be dying, but it may also be in a partial reboirth in the genre of Roguelikes. First among these is Rogue, but it also includes biggies like Nethack (which has a greater adventure element to it), Moria, *band, Adom, and many, many more (the Roguelike News is an excellent Roguelike source). They are simple, usually free, and with variant-friendly games like Angband, just about anyone with knowledge of C can write one.
Just my plug for my favorite genre, one which is certainly notdying out.

Second thought: It bugs that people think a genre is dying out because a new, unique specimen of it has not recently been released. I still play Battlehawks 1942 and Secret Wepaons of the Luftwhaffe(sp?) every once in a while...and i'm always up for some original TIE Fighter. I think a genre's survival is based on how much people want tto play it, not the amount of release's in it. Of course, the two are linked.
And that's all. BTW, anyone remmber an RTS called Walls of Rome? I play that a lot, too. ;-)
-J

The obvious difficulty by Derwen · 2000-08-17 06:01 · Score: 1 · on Agenda's Linux Based Handheld

To port Linux to another architecture it certainly helps to have all the spec's from the manufacturer. When these were obtained, Linux on the psion 5 was soon up and running.

Two of the many projects can be found here and here.
However things have been moving more slowly with the new chips on the 5mx (see the mailing list).

You can of course connect your psion 3 or 5 to your Linux desktop, without supplanting your PDA's OS.
Derwen

Re:Or "approval voting" by Andrew+Cady · 2000-08-07 13:23 · Score: 1 · on 2600 Staffer Arrested During Republican Convention

Approval voting is flawed. Rather than merely a pass-fail, what is necessary is a ranking of the voters. Approval voting still allows for tactical voting. Let's say you want Gore, but you want Nader more. How do you express this desire? You don't want Bush to win, but should the election come down to Gore vs. Nader, you want to be able to choose Nader. But the only way you can do this is by approving Nader, but not Gore. This increases the chances that Bush will win. Your only way to move your vote towards the left is to risk a win by the right! Solving this is only possible in a system not based on pass/fail approval, but rather based on ranking -- which is the minimum amount of data required of voters for a fair vote. Condorcet is one method of analysing that data, but that's another issue. The point is, unless you can explicitly vote e.g. Nader #1, MacReynolds #2, Gore #3, then the government may not have enough information to know what candidate is most preferred by the public. It will not, for instance, know whether you prefer Gore over than Nader. If Gore and Nader are the top two candidates, not knowing which you prefer means trouble!

For more info on Condorcet, which solves the problems in approval voting, see the Voting Systems FAQ. [LINK]

In Condorcet, you never incur a greater risk by voting your true preference. With FPTP (the current system) you do (by "throwing away" your vote on a third party, increasing the chances of victory for the greater of two republicrat evils). With approval voting you do, too (by specifying Nader over Gore and risking Bush victory, or specifying both over Bush and risking Gore victory when you prefer Nader).

Unfortunately, Condorcet often fails to produce a winner. There are tie-breakers for such a situation, though. One of them is an alternative to Condorcet that almost always produces the Condorcet winner if there is one -- IRV (instant run-off voting -- aka alternative vote or AV). Interestingly enough, it is the voting system used by the American Political Science Association -- an organization of political science professors -- to select the president of the association. However, the best system imaginable, from a game theoretic point of view, is Condorcet, with IRV only as a tie-breaker. In those situations where IRV fails to match Condorcet, Condorcet is clearly the preferable choice. In those situations where Condorcet ends in tie, the IRV result always appears equitable. See the Voting Systems FAQ for more info (they refer to IRV as "AV", which I didn't use here to avoid confusion with "approval voting").

There are flaws necessarily inherent in all voting systems (inherent in the very concept of voting), but those appear to be the only flaws from which Condorcet suffers.

Re:Or push for proportional representation by Andrew+Cady · 2000-08-06 02:25 · Score: 4 · on 2600 Staffer Arrested During Republican Convention

I think you forgot your link. But here's one: fairvote.org. Also see Open Directory Project's listing on voting systems and the Voting Systems FAQ.

Re:I'm ashamed... by Quietust · 2000-08-02 22:22 · Score: 1 · on Darwin's Revenge In Kansas

G'rtqdnx Planet Construction Group, LLC

Shouldn't that be called Magrathea? :)

--

Inform is a great exercise in OOP.. by dwlemon · 2000-08-02 01:15 · Score: 1 · on Ideas for High School Computer Projects?

The syntax can be a little weird but Inform is a really great object orientated language because it is used for writing Interactive Fiction.. and the objects you create are real objects like forks, animals, buildings etc..

Compilers and VMs are freely available for most platforms.

www.gnelson.demon.co.uk/inform.html

Re:Classic Gaming Rocks by baldeep · 2000-08-01 11:30 · Score: 1 · on Classic Gaming Gets Recognition

If you're lazy, here's a site with omega executables.

baldeep

copying Scientology's tactics by touretzky · 2000-08-01 09:09 · Score: 2 · on "If You Can Put It On A T-Shirt, It's Speech"

Back in 1995 when Arnie Lerma posted a court document containing secret Scientology scripture, and I turned it into a web page, the Scientologists went nuts. Not only did they sue Arnie and threaten me, they sent threats to every single Usenet poster who dared to quote from the scripture. A little four-line quote (in which L. Ron Hubbard instructs his followers to use their telepathic powers to communicate with plants and animals) was enough to generate a legal threat from the now-notorious Helena K. Kobrin.

The motion picture industry is now following Scientology's example, suing a t-shirt vendor for disclosing their trade secrets, all the while knowing that this makes them look like total loons.

Here's a clue, Mr. Valenti: IT'S NOT A SECRET ANYMORE. Scientology had to learn that lesson the hard way. It's a pity the motion picture companies, who are just down the street from the Scientology "pod palace", couldn't have learned from that example.

And now for something completely different. by stephenbooth · 2000-07-31 18:44 · Score: 1 · on Overcomming Programmer's Block?

Personally, to solve the coders block problem, I go to the cinema for the day (there a a few cinemas around here that are open 11am to midnight or 1 am) and watch a load of films that keep my attention but require no real brain work (action movies are best). If that don't work I watch Buffy videos and/or read Buffy fanfic.

The next day I'm ready for work and usually have the solution nicely mapped out in my brain.

This is the same method the SF author Issac Asimov used (although he didn't have access to Buffy) to combat writers block.

Stephen

to emphasize my point... by Barbarian · 2000-07-27 21:56 · Score: 1 · on UK Passes Surveillance Law For ISPs

The damn thing is
smaller than an oil derrick...

--

i was just researching the same thing!! by yomoma · 2000-07-24 09:21 · Score: 1 · on Old Macs As Terminals

here are some sites you may want to check out:

there are of course, many more similar sites. If anyone has done anything cool post it here! Also a great resource if you live in the SF bay area is Weird Stuff, they have tons of old macs for sale and the salespeople are quite knowledgable.

Re:Fairer system by ColMstrd · 2000-07-18 19:45 · Score: 1 · on On the Time Preference for Information...

Stallman's take on this is that the founding fathers of the US constituion explicitly rejected the notion that copyright holders have the the right to unlimited copyright on their work; rather, that the public traded their natural right to copy in exchange for the public good of encouraging more copyrightable works.

Hence, the expiration of copyright.

Tecno-AO by XNormal · 2000-07-17 15:05 · Score: 2 · on Cell Phone Companies To Release Radiation Data

I was just as skeptic as most of the posters here about how a tiny oval patch could possibly act as a shield against radiation. So I looked a little more deeply into it I am not so sure it's a total scam, there might actually be something there.

First of all, they don't claim to block radiation. It would be impossible for a one inch patch to block a signal with a wavelength of about 1ft. What this device claims to do is generate low frequency magnetic fields that somehow reduce the damage to biological systems. They have some research done on chicken embryos to back this up.

Proceedings of first World Congress on the Bioeffects of Electricity and Magnetism. (note that it's sponsored by Tecno-AO)

Tecno-AO "science"

See also here and here.

----

License by David+Hume · 2000-07-16 19:53 · Score: 2 · on Visual Python 0.1 Loosed

I couldn't find the license agreement on the web site. I downloaded the VisualPython-0.1 .tar.gz file. After extracting same, I found the file /VisualPython-0.1/Copying that appears to contain the license. That file states:

Terms and Conditions

Copyright (c) 2000 Phil Thompson (phil@river-bank.demon.co.uk)

Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:

The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.

THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE COPYRIGHT HOLDER BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.

Except as contained in this notice, the name of the copyright holder shall not be used in advertising or otherwise to promote the sale, use or other dealings in this Software without prior written authorization from the copyright holder.

At first glance, this appears to be a variation of the BSD license.

The addtional paragraph stating that, except as provided, "the name of the copyright holder shall not be used in advertising" is interesting. The purpose of this paragraph appears to be to address, or at least attempt to address, the same trademark concerns the Abisource people have regarding trademarks..

Re:It's all about standards and driver implementat by ketku · 2000-07-16 15:22 · Score: 1 · on Linux Gaming: A Field Report

The only missing glue is the input API. Perasonally, I wouldn't mind it if SDL became standard. It works on almost everything now.

I agree that SDL would be a nice solution to the common API problem. Why? IMHO because it is and it aims to be be cross-platform. I think that Linux (and other unices) need to have some common API with Windows to ease the development of games to many platform at once. We can't (yet) even dream of a situation where leading-edge games were developed primarily on Linux - now it helps to have some common API with Windows.

There are alternatives, too. I can recall Allegro and Clanlib right now.

Re:Structural languages are not used because.... by mistral · 2000-07-16 00:16 · Score: 1 · on What About Functional Languages?

Haskell has CGI and animation libraries, as well as a system for writing music. There are foreign library interfaces and highly optimizing compilers, database interfaces and graph visualizers.
Libraries and Tools in Haskell
Haskell in Practice
Here are some books and papers about how to program in Haskell and functional languages in general.
I particularly recommend Hudak's book; Paul himself is a very clear teacher and lecturer, as is Zhong Shao, who does research in ML (Standard ML of NJ). I think SML is the only functional language around whose semantics are completely specified.
Follow these links and learn about Erlang (in massive production use at Ericsson), high level abstraction through functions defined via structural induction over datatypes, monads, layered functionality used to build parsers (via parser combinators), and a type theory for object-oriented programming.

Interviewing Mike Sklut was a bad idea by Fawking+DSL · 2000-07-15 00:56 · Score: 4 · on Interview With Mike Sklut

Hey slashdot editors! I know you are busy, and maybe that's why you thought interviewing Mike Sklut would be a great idea. This was a very bad idea. So I thought I would try and be productive. Here is a list of people who are of the right caliber to merit an interview (that is to say, try interviewing great folk like this FIRST before wasting your time and ours on Mike Sklut):

(from the 1999 Free Software Award Nominee page)

1.Tom Adelstein
2.Eric Allman
3.Lennart Augustsson
4.Stig Bakken
5.Donald Becker
6.Brian Behlendorf
7.Tim Berners-Lee -- inventor of the World Wide Web
8.Jim Blandy
9.Craig Burley
10.Thomas Bushnell
11.Shane Caraveo
12.James Clark
13.Alan Cox -- major Linux kernel hacker
14.Miguel de Icaza
15.DJ Delorie -- DJGPP
16.Theo De Raadt -- founder of the OpenBSD project
17.Matthias Ettrich
18.Paul Eggert
19.Ralf S. Engelschall
20.Fred Fish
21.Olivier Fourdan
22.Fractint Team
23.John Gilmore
24.Andi Gutmans
25.Chuck Hagenbuch
26.Carsten Haitzler
27.Charles Hannum
28.Shawn Hargreaves -- Allegro game programming library
29.Geoff Harrison
30.Mike Heins
31.Joey Hess
32.Earl Hood
33.Jordan K. Hubbard
34.Dan Ingalls
35.Lars Magne Ingebrigtsen
36.Kyle Jones
37.Bill Joy -- Sun, vi editor
38.Alexandre Julliard
39.Mike Karels
40.Jeremy Katz
41.Spencer Kimball
42.Donald E. Knuth -- author of Art of Computer Programming
43.Werner Koch
44.Alfredo Kenji Kojima
45.Jeffrey A. Law
46.Patrick Lenz
47.Marc Lehmann
48.Rasmus Lerdorf
49.Mark Linton
50.Paul Mackerras
51.Peter Mattias
52.Doug McEachern
53.Caolan McNamara
54.Kirk McKusick
55.Bram Moolenaar
56.Tobias Oetiker
57.Tim O'Reilly -- O'Reilly books
58.John Ousterhout
59.Dave Rand
60.Brian Paul
61.Nicholas Petreley
62.Bernhard Rosenkraenzer
63.Alessandro Rubini
64.Dr Douglas Schmidt
65.Keith Sklower
66.W. Richard Stevens -- Unix Network Programming
67.Darryl Strauss, Zeev Suraski
68.Danny ter Haar
69.Andrew Tridgell
70.Jorrit Tyberghein
71.Bert Tyler
72.Guido van Rossum -- Python programming language
73.Miquels van Smoorenburg
74.Wietse Venema
75.Paul Vixie -- cron daemon
76.Patrick Volkerding
77.Tim Wegner
78.Jim Winstead
79.Jamie Zawinski
80.Phil Zimmerman.

Granted, some of these have been covered already, but maybe a handful at the most. I must confess to maybe knowing who 10% of these people are. I would sure like to know something about the rest of them. Just imagine all the cool stuff each of these people has to offer--why in the world are we looking to interview inflamatory, damaging people like JP?

Just trying to help :-) I figure 80 some odd suggestions should keep you busy for a while.

Interviewing Mike Sklut was a bad idea by Fawking+DSL · 2000-07-15 00:56 · Score: 4 · on Interview With Mike Sklut

Hey slashdot editors! I know you are busy, and maybe that's why you thought interviewing Mike Sklut would be a great idea. This was a very bad idea. So I thought I would try and be productive. Here is a list of people who are of the right caliber to merit an interview (that is to say, try interviewing great folk like this FIRST before wasting your time and ours on Mike Sklut):

(from the 1999 Free Software Award Nominee page)

1.Tom Adelstein
2.Eric Allman
3.Lennart Augustsson
4.Stig Bakken
5.Donald Becker
6.Brian Behlendorf
7.Tim Berners-Lee -- inventor of the World Wide Web
8.Jim Blandy
9.Craig Burley
10.Thomas Bushnell
11.Shane Caraveo
12.James Clark
13.Alan Cox -- major Linux kernel hacker
14.Miguel de Icaza
15.DJ Delorie -- DJGPP
16.Theo De Raadt -- founder of the OpenBSD project
17.Matthias Ettrich
18.Paul Eggert
19.Ralf S. Engelschall
20.Fred Fish
21.Olivier Fourdan
22.Fractint Team
23.John Gilmore
24.Andi Gutmans
25.Chuck Hagenbuch
26.Carsten Haitzler
27.Charles Hannum
28.Shawn Hargreaves -- Allegro game programming library
29.Geoff Harrison
30.Mike Heins
31.Joey Hess
32.Earl Hood
33.Jordan K. Hubbard
34.Dan Ingalls
35.Lars Magne Ingebrigtsen
36.Kyle Jones
37.Bill Joy -- Sun, vi editor
38.Alexandre Julliard
39.Mike Karels
40.Jeremy Katz
41.Spencer Kimball
42.Donald E. Knuth -- author of Art of Computer Programming
43.Werner Koch
44.Alfredo Kenji Kojima
45.Jeffrey A. Law
46.Patrick Lenz
47.Marc Lehmann
48.Rasmus Lerdorf
49.Mark Linton
50.Paul Mackerras
51.Peter Mattias
52.Doug McEachern
53.Caolan McNamara
54.Kirk McKusick
55.Bram Moolenaar
56.Tobias Oetiker
57.Tim O'Reilly -- O'Reilly books
58.John Ousterhout
59.Dave Rand
60.Brian Paul
61.Nicholas Petreley
62.Bernhard Rosenkraenzer
63.Alessandro Rubini
64.Dr Douglas Schmidt
65.Keith Sklower
66.W. Richard Stevens -- Unix Network Programming
67.Darryl Strauss, Zeev Suraski
68.Danny ter Haar
69.Andrew Tridgell
70.Jorrit Tyberghein
71.Bert Tyler
72.Guido van Rossum -- Python programming language
73.Miquels van Smoorenburg
74.Wietse Venema
75.Paul Vixie -- cron daemon
76.Patrick Volkerding
77.Tim Wegner
78.Jim Winstead
79.Jamie Zawinski
80.Phil Zimmerman.

Granted, some of these have been covered already, but maybe a handful at the most. I must confess to maybe knowing who 10% of these people are. I would sure like to know something about the rest of them. Just imagine all the cool stuff each of these people has to offer--why in the world are we looking to interview inflamatory, damaging people like JP?

Just trying to help :-) I figure 80 some odd suggestions should keep you busy for a while.

Re:Less obvious arguments against this. by (deleted+-+SCI) · 2000-07-12 12:21 · Score: 1 · on Just Say No To Reading About Drugs

Anybody want to set up a website along the lines of Mr. Cranky , but rating politicians instead? Or a place to read legislation converted into 'everyday language' - can't be harder than explaining computer code in everyday language. Politics is o so very dry. Somebody should do something about that.

I love code. I love the law. I love them both for the same reason: logic and intricacy. What the law lacks in consistency, it makes up in rock-hard 'sneak up behind you with a 2x4' relevance. Both are dry, but if anything code is drier, in the sense of being 'impersonal'

You can't *truly* translate law into common language for the same reason that the only true description of a program is the program itself: namely, any layman's description is likely to gloss over precisely the elements of phraseology or punctuation that will turn out to be most ambiguous (and hence critical) later. Most laymen could do as little with such a lay explanation as they could with an explanation of Perl or APL code. Debugging is a skilled art in law or software.

That doesn't mean that I don't advocate study. i most certainly do. I wish more people were taught a bit more about the law in their (roughly) 12 years of state-mandated education. If ignorance of the law is no excuse [unless you're a NZ judge] [R.S., c.C-34, s.19 in Canadian law] [Code of Hammurabi ;->) [random cool article on the general subject] [Google search] then shouldn't the state take a bit better care to assure we aren't ignorant?

Nah, we can't even teach spelling, grammar, math, science, history, geography or sex.

Make a new classic arcade game by dsyu · 2000-07-10 03:57 · Score: 1 · on Saving Our Video Game Heritage

If MAME folks and those who review MAME are concerned about copyright issues and what-not, they should consider releasing a devkit to write old-style arcade games. Preserve old classics by preserving the platform (emulators in this case) by making new games that popularize the platform. Besides, my last programmable Z80 fried last week...

Well, okay, only partially serious here. But for you real old-timers, look at what Inform and others did to prevent old text adventures from dying out completely.

Re:Fair enough by flufffy · 2000-07-07 01:25 · Score: 1 · on MP3: On Artist Protection And Copy Protection

Well, I usually do buy the CD, in the end, if I like it. I think, though, that a number of points still obscure the apparently clear equation of more mp3 downloads = less sales of product.

In my experience, most mp3s are dumped, anyway. I just don't know what to do with them. I would guess if you could somehow figure the total number of files ever swapped on Napster -- and other sites -- it would dwarf the amount of storage out there. However, point taken, there will be a certain number out there which might otherwise have been sales to you. Funnily enough, the best use I can see for mp3 technology for myself -- assuming the memory becomes cheap enough -- is to be able to rip 10 or 20 CDs I already own, and then carry an mp3 player instead of a diskman. and CDs.
No-one actually knows what sells music in the music industry. The first person who actually figures that one out, will have the market. Success involves not just technical competence, but a mix of other intangibles, including fashions and trends. Unlike other more material commodities, there is no direct equation between the use value of musical commodity, and its exchange value. Just because you have a product you think is fantastic, doesn't mean it will sell, and that could have nothing to do with how good you are as an artist or musician.
From my personal experience, the effort I went through to copy something I wanted but didn't want to buy was directly related to my income. On $12 an hour, I burned CDs. On $25 an hour, I like walking into the record store. Point being, there is probably a correlation between income and copying; in other words, Napster users might not have that much money anyway (although university undergrads? -- hmmm, I don't know).

Anyway. The few people I know who have gained some sort of temporary exposure for being musicians (record deals, tours, selling out venues, etc.) all worked far harder than just about anybody else I know. You have to work pretty hard just to be on the radar, but I guess you know that. (My brother is in a band in Wales, they work hard, tour a lot, have great reviews, play to sell out crowds, have a bunch of CDs, but I doubt they could afford a 'previously owned' BMW between them, although they do seem to be having a great time). What I'm saying is, it's quite a crap shoot. You have to have a fair amount of luck. Napster's implications have now been superseded by Gnutella, Freenet, etc., anyway. So I wouldn't worry about it, it'll take too much of the time you could be using for your own projects, with which I wish you every success.

PC's are the least of these children's problems. by dominion · 2000-07-05 02:27 · Score: 2 · on Are Computers in Classrooms Bad for Learning

I'd say that computers are neutral compared to the damage that forced education does to children. This may be a bit off-topic, but I think it's something that people should learn more about.

Check out stuff by authors such as A.S. Neill, John Taylor Gatto, and Alfie Kohn. In fact, Alfie Kohn has a website devoted to his work, and the school started by A.S. Neill (Summerhill School) also has it's own website.

We all need to realize where the idea of public schools and everything involved with them (forced education, splitting the day into one hour segments, age separation, bells, assigned seating, raising your hand) originated, and it did not originate in the idea of creating a free-thinking society. John Taylor Gatto has an essay that deals with just this subject.

Here's an excerpt:

The structure of American schooling, 20th century style, began in 1806 when Napoleon's amateur soldiers beat the professional soldiers of Prussia at the battle of Jena. When your business is selling soldiers, losing a battle like that is serious. Almost immediately afterwards a German philosopher named Fichte delivered his famous "Address to the German Nation" which became one of the most influential documents in modern history. In effect he told the Prussian people that the party was over, that the nation would have to shape up through a new Utopian institution of forced schooling in which everyone would learn to take orders.

So the world got compulsion schooling at the end of a state bayonet for the first time in human history; modern forced schooling started in Prussia in 1819 with a clear vision of what centralized schools could deliver:

1.Obedient soldiers to the army;

2.Obedient workers to the mines;

3.Well subordinated civil servants to government;

4.Well subordinated clerks to industry

5.Citizens who thought alike about major issues.

Other things to look into are schools such as the "Sudbury Valley" schools, and even Montessori (although I don't find Montessori schools to be nearly radical enough in their teaching methods).

The whole idea of these schools (usually called "free", "democratic", or "modern" schools) is that children do not need to be forced to learn. Teachers should play a supportive role, and should involve themselves only when children initiate learning.

A lot of people say, "But then children won't learn anything," but that's not the case. Children are, by nature, very curious and willing to learn. If you've ever observed students going from 1st to 2nd to 3rd grade you see an incredible transformation from being absorbed by learning, to actively resisting it. This is because they're being forced to learn subjects and in ways that they're not comfortable with.

Before the Spanish Civil War, a lot of the anarchists (which totalled around 3 million out of Spain's 20 million) were strong advocates of modern schools as put forth by Francisco Ferrer (who later was killed by the Catholic Church), because they were opposed to the authoritarian methods that the Church used in their schools (which were the only ones available to poor children).

To summarize, authoritarian learning is not really learning, but instead obedience mixed with memorization. Libertarian learning, on the other hand, is much deeper, because it is based on what a child wants, and not what teachers and by extension, the state, imposes on them.

In other words, computers in the classroom are the least of these children's worries.

Michael Chisari
mchisari@usa.net

More information on InstallFests by Anonymous Coward · 2000-07-04 08:51 · Score: 1 · on Australian National InstallFest Season

CABAL InstallFest Page
...hours. Before coming: Read this pre-InstallFest document. Also, RSVP, to...
...Ethernet patch cables and hubs. An InstallFest server with ftp and NFS...
linuxmafia.com/cabal/installfest/ - Show matches (Cache) - 26k - Similar pages

InstallFest HOWTO
...Table of Contents InstallFest HOWTO Jono Bacon jb@linuxuk.co.uk v1.00 Feb...
...and hosting a successful Linux InstallFest. An InstallFest is a...
www.apis.demon.co.uk/LinuxDay/installfest-HOWTO. html - Show matches (Cache) - 3k - Similar pages

Washington, DC Area Linux InstallFest
...Users Group (DCLUG)/NOVALUG InstallFest (Hey, What exactly is an...
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Installfest Info Page
... Installfest -- The Purdue Installfest mailing List About...
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Linux Users group at NC State - InstallFest Registration
...by mtdonagh@eos.ncsu.edu InstallFest Registration Instructions In order...
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Auburn Linux Installfest
...Auburn Linux Installfest The Auburn Linux Installfest is your...
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Installfest Info Page
... Installfest -- Organisation / coordination d'install parties nationales....
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CLUE: National InstallFest 1998
...Canadian National InstallFest was held on Saturday, September 25-- an...
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Vancouver Linux Installfest 1998
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From their old web site by flossie · 2000-07-03 03:09 · Score: 1 · on Answers From Sealand: CTO Ryan Lackey Responds

located at fruitsofthesea.demon.co .uk
"The Law of Sealand is based on British Common Law and British Law of Contract." I would suspect that there would be no significant difference between the British and Seal(andish?/ish?) laws in this area.

Re:Sealand Homepage by Ex+Machina · 2000-07-03 00:05 · Score: 3 · on Answers From Sealand: CTO Ryan Lackey Responds

Their old page has cool pictures and fun facts.

Re:Sealand Homepage by Ex+Machina · 2000-07-03 00:05 · Score: 3 · on Answers From Sealand: CTO Ryan Lackey Responds

Their old page has cool pictures and fun facts.

Re:Sealand Homepage by Ex+Machina · 2000-07-03 00:05 · Score: 3 · on Answers From Sealand: CTO Ryan Lackey Responds

Their old page has cool pictures and fun facts.

Fake site ! by dingbat_hp · 2000-07-02 23:50 · Score: 1 · on Answers From Sealand: CTO Ryan Lackey Responds

You have the web sites the wrong way around.

The real Sealand site is at: http://www.fruitsofthesea.demon.co.uk/sealand/

The site at http://www.principality-sealand.net/ is a bunch of evil Spanish passport scamsters (alhough it's generally a more informative site on the history).

more Sealand info by Tiro · 2000-07-02 23:28 · Score: 1 · on Answers From Sealand: CTO Ryan Lackey Responds

For backround and photos visit The official Web site of the Principality of Sealand or this other page about Sealand.

As shown in the photographs at these sites, Sealand is just a tiny platform high over the open sea. Smallest damn principality I've ever seen...

Nitinol, and better things by dingbat_hp · 2000-07-02 22:51 · Score: 3 · on New Walking Robot From Honda

Nitinol is cute, but very limited. It needs a huge power to generate a small force - most is wasted in heat.

Mondotronics have a cute project book and kit for Nitinol, which is a splendid birthday present for any geek larvae you might know. Milford Instruments sell it in the UK.

If you want a more workable muscle for small robots, look at the Air Muscle from Shadow Robots. These are interesting because they generate a pull action from air pressure, yet in a small package.

Re:Create a censoware-type hack? by PigleT · 2000-07-01 01:04 · Score: 2 · on DoubleClick 'Web Bugs' On Porn, Medical Sites

"OK, we at /. all know how to edit our HOSTS files to take care of this. "
Editing your /etc/hosts file isn't the way to do it, surprisingly enough. Far better to run either
a) a filtering proxy and/or
b) a local name server, pointing *.doubleclick.net to an unrouted IP# (eg localhost, 192.168.x.y, and so on).

"But what about John Q. User, who would be hard pressed to save a file in a text editor?"
What indeed? Let him be caught surfing for pr0n by all means ;)

What you really want is WWWoffled, which has a very nice web-based admin CGI frontend, allowing you to edit your filter list from the comfort of your own browser...
~Tim
--
.|` Clouds cross the black moonlight,

More on this topic... by Denor · 2000-06-28 22:12 · Score: 2 · on Games: The Boundary Of Open Development?

While we're talking about open source and games, here is a piece by Shawn Hargreaves (maker of the allegro gaming library) on open source and gaming. It's an interesting read, even if you don't quite agree with what he has to say.

Re:[OT]: Thumbnail generation by commanderfoxtrot · 2000-06-24 17:47 · Score: 1 · on Hemos Gets Hitched

I wrote a quick C program (gaps.c) to do all this for me after my uni exams finished this month: it can be downloaded from here, and example pages can be found on my Demon site: http://www.morants.demon.co.uk in the gap year section, labelled as "New Version"s. It is quite simple to use - all documentation in the source file itself!

Given lots of JPEGs in a directory, running gaps -new in the directory will make a thumb/ directory of thumbnails, and a webpage!

Re:Most Portable ? by Schnedt+McWapt · 2000-06-22 10:42 · Score: 1 · on NetBSD Support From Wasabi Systems, Inc.

I'm running it on two Macs (A IIci and an SE/30) and two K6-2's. I am on the scout for more obscure architectures to run it on. I'd like to scarf up one of those Chalice StrongARM motherboards but they are SO EXPENSIVE.

Anybody know of a good source for cheap ARM hardware?

There are probably lots more than 31 sites by yerricde · 2000-06-17 08:58 · Score: 2 · on Mozilla Adds MNG Support

But [you] can count the number of sites that actually use [PNG images] on one hand, can't you?

For a set to be counted on one standard human hand, there must be thirty-one or fewer elements (all five fingers up = binary 11111 = 31). Here's a short list; can you think of more?

Pinocchio's Brother and redpinocchio (my homepage)
Every other site I've designed (can't name them; confidentiality)
PNG headquarters
League for Programming Freedom
Burn All GIFs Day
Campaign for Real Ale
AuctionBeagle
University of Puerto Ricto Institute of Neurobiology
Eressea Fantasy PBEM
several clip art sites (here or here)

To find more, do a web search for burn all gifs.

ZMachine by Gumshoe · 2000-06-11 23:20 · Score: 1 · on Text Adventures On Cell Phones

The old Infocom games ran on a virtual machine called the ZMachine. A lot of work (ie. reverse engineering) has been done on this over the last 10 years or so and a plethora of original works are released every year that use this system.

The best interpreter IMO for the ZMachine, is Frotz. It is available for many platforms and source code is available so porting to a mobile phone is always a possibility.

Moreover, a complete programming language explicitely designed for producing ZMachine games is also available. Inform This too is available for many systems along with source code.

Finally, an excellent repository for text adventures can be found at ftp://ftp.gmd.de/if-archive

Have fun :-)

Re:Cryptonomicon by tringstad · 2000-06-07 08:57 · Score: 1 · on Stephenson On His Novel In Progress

I'm afraid you are wrong.

The purpose of Solitaire used to transfer messages between prisoners of war in hostile environments, however Bruse Schneir did not travel back in time and tell them how to do it.

Schneir designed it specifically for the book. Try these links:

The original link to Counterpane
Problems with Bruce Schneier's "Solitaire"
Cryptography and PGP References
And a web based implementation of Solitaire

-Tommy

P.S. Fatland looks interesting, just ordered it.

LA Times article; organized crime by bcrowell · 2000-06-07 02:36 · Score: 1 · on Ask Havenco's CTO Anything You'd Like

The LA Times had an interesting article today on Sealand. The photo shows that the whole thing is just a small house on stilts, and the "prince and princess" don't even live there full time -- they have a house on the mainland. They've had problems with a Spanish/German organized crime group that stole their identity for money laundering. The imposters have their own web page, which was referred to in some previous postings as if it was the real one.

I think you really have to be a little humor-impaired to take the whole thing seriously...

Re:more info: A collection of Links by Carl+C-M · 2000-06-05 06:06 · Score: 2 · on Data Haven To Open For Business - Today

Here are some links I collected in the course of reading more about this subject and reading the Slashdot thread at a low threshold.

Some History:In the late sixties Roy Bates and his family occupied one of the forts and declared himself a soverign nation. This was upheld in British Court and the long bizarre history began. The tiny nation was attacked and captured by a German businessman and friends for several weeks until Roy could put a crew together to retake it by rappeling from helicopters. (There were no known fatalities from these actions.) Here are some fun links to learn more:

The New York Times Article that started it all.
What appears to be the official webisite:http://www.sealandgov.com/index.html
The HavenCo homepage: http://www.havenco.com/
A very nice article about the off-shore radio stations in England during the 1960's. http://fre\espace.virg in.net/line.design/forts/radioforts.htm. This includes a nice picture of the fort being installed: http://freespace.virgin .net/line.design/forts/sea_forts.htm.
Some publicity shots of Sealand from their old (archived) website. http://www.fruitsofthese a.demon.co.uk/sealand/gallery.html.
A Guardian Article about Sealand.
A Sunday Telegraph Article.
Dorothy Lerda at The National Geographic answers a question about Sealand. (Notice that she has what is likely to be the web address of the imposters responsible for selling passports.)
A brief history of the forts with pictures and diagrams.

Slashdot Mirror

Domain: demon.co.uk

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