Slashdot Mirror

Homo sapiens sapiens won't last forever. The only question is whether we wipe out all intelligence in the Solar System due to superweapons, an outcome which we can legitimately label as "bad", or whether "life as we know it" is ended by the rise of greater-than-human intelligence first. Frankly, I think I'll take what's behind door number two.

Bill Joy scores points for pointing out the probability of apocalypse, but vastly more important is accepting the certainty of some apocalypse and deciding which one we want. I don't think there's much of a contest between the coinflip chance that AIs are nice to humans and the near-certainty of being murdered by Iraqi nanoweaponry.

Anyway, the Extropians list has been rehashing this issue for years - right down to the argument about how to build an AI - and, unsurprisingly, some Web resources seem to have sprung up along the way. So if you'd rather not reinvent the wheel...

Ope n Directory Singularity category
Singularity Sub-Page in Anders Transhuman Page
Comments on Vinge's Singularity (13 authors write essays; Vinge responds)
Staring into the Singularity
The Plan to Singularity (403K)

For those of you wondering about how to build the AI:
Coding a Transhuman AI (353K)
For those of you wondering about what the AIs will do:
Logic from Frequently Asked Questions about the Meaning of Life

or does this look like Befunge to anybody else?

Of course, don't search just slashdot for articles like this. Also search the archives of papers that have been presented at various USENIX/SAGE conferences (in particular, LISA), and other USENIX publications, starting at http://www.usenix.org/publicat ions/publications.html.

You will also want to use index sites such as Yahoo! and Excite, as well as search engines like Google, Altavista, and Hotbot, not to mention community directory projects such as dmoz Open Directory.

That's just a sampling of the sorts of research that you should START with. Of course, to do this right, you'll need to do much, much more.
--
Brad Knowles

It should be stated up front that I agree with the right of the state to decide under what rules public institutions --including libraries -- will be funded.

Where this law, and all attempts so far run into problems is that AFAIK, basically all filtering software use encryption to guard the list of allegedly "bad" sites. That encryption makes what should be openly available information into a proprietary, money making project.

So instead of a well moderated, human created link list like dmoz, they rely on software -- which has to try to catch things linguistically -- which is basically impossible.

Now then, personally I am very anti-porn, but I can't take away someone elses right to view what they want. But what I really wish I could do is contribute to a well moderated, dmoz style list of web sites which are pornographic in nature, because I can damn well do a better job than the filtering software.

Ya know what, I just thought of a good use for the moderation engine in the 0.9 slash code...(Just kidding Rob, really!!)

Disclaimer: I am one of those 20,000 editors.

Disclaimer: I am one of those 20,000 editors.

"...hardware such as those old 386s can be put to use." Yeah, right. What recent version of Linux will run on a 386 with maybe 8 Meg of RAM (but probably only 4) *and* fit on that under 528M hard drive that's the biggest thing the mobo's BIOS will take? I've got some old hardware I'd like re-use.

There are a bunch of "micro" Linuxes out there that are designed to run entirely on a floppy like Trinux, although they recommend at least 12MB RAM... &nbsp There's also the Linux Router Project and FreeSCO for using Linux as a router (which is what alot of the old 386s and 486s are used for). &nbsp For a list of full blown distributions, you can go here. &nbsp This is pretty cool.

First we have this wonderful timeline of events and eToys' stock price. But perhaps that's all propaganda...

Who is eToys target customer?
That would be net-savvy or at least net-capable people. The kind of people that would be bound to come across the massive amount of unfavorable eToys press. The kind of people who would have to be blind to miss half the protest sites if they did a search on eToys.

Who is eToys target investor?
People who are subject to all of the above but also get to read all the bad investor news.

To top it all off, you have people who realize that if Etoys is looking at controlling the etoy.com content we should wonder what kind of content they have. Now the FCC does too. Hmmm, I wonder who sent the information on over 350 mismarketed products?

No. Toywar had nothing to do with the fall of eToys, and Slashdot is a powerless entity as well. The only people who want you to believe that is companies who don't want to face their own toywar.

-----

Open Directory - Science: Technology: Optics: Optical Computing has a bunch of links to universities and and others pursuing these lines of investigation.

Proposal: Programmers could work on creating an open source configurable blocker that actually is worth something. It could use a public database that people can submit updates to (similar to dmoz). These updates simply contain information about they type of content. The people doing the installing choose which forms of content are not accessable. In addition they can add or remove sites and IP addresses as desired.

• -naked
• -paysite
• -portman
• +slashdot.org
• +classic art

Advantages: It's not like /. is short of volunteers.

-----

dmoz has links to a couple of parody sites as well.

http://macosrumorz.8m.com/ - hilarious poem at this one
http://macosrumorz.8m.com/mosr.html - hilarious picture of Meader...
http://macosrumors.8m.com/ - another parody...
http://members.tripod.com/~MacOSHumor/ - pretty funny
http://macosrumorsrumors.8m.com/ - another one...
http://paulschreiber.com/mosrr/ - another one...

Paul

Not necessarily. Remember SourceForge is itself open-sourced. They do put their principles into practice.

See also dmoz listings for Open Source hosting.

Nice summary. I don't suppose you could be convinced to take over the
ODP Kerberos page? It's at www.dmoz.org and could do with a well-informed editor...

Yes-- not that this effect doesn't happen with RL communities too. The leaders going around behaving as though they think they're God is a cause of both emigrations and revolutions.

In my experience of VCs (specifically, talkers), both the places which underdid leadership (so randoms felt free to log in and abuse the residents, who consequently were always watching their backs) and those which overdid it (so the leaders were always coming down like a ton of bricks on the residents, who consequently were always watching their backs) were, well, causes of dissatisfaction among residents. It's an important (and difficult) balance to get right.

(shameless plug: IMO there are communities around which achieve this balance very well :) )

RISC OS was an OS developed for the Acorn platform. This was a British phenomenon; I believe that these machines were StrongARM-based, which is where the RISC part comes in.

Acorn is no longer in operation, and so a whole lot of RISC OS folk have started looking at Linux/X as their future platform.

This is a pretty good thing; they may have some useful UI ideas, as well as useful code that might be ported.

Yes, that is why Open Directory is a good resource. the open source, human edited search engine: dmoz.org superant@usa.net

That turned into ODP. Well, we're only a tiny outfit, only 1.3 million sites, only 20,000 editors, only being used by AOL Search, Netscape Netcenter, Hotbot, Lycos, Altavista... All thanks to our Open Content license! See for yourself.

That sounds a bit like the Open Directory. Anyone can apply to become a volunteer editor, and any editor can join in the discussions on categorisation (or ontology as we tend to call it). While it is, admittedly, owned by AOL and the paid staff have the final call, in practice they let us make the ontology decisions by consensus most of the time. It's a cool project to be part of!

according to certain tastes and peramaters.

It would be quite easy to make a customisable Open Directory, which learns from your personal preferences, based on the freely available ODP data (yes, free! It's 100% Open Content!) at http://dmoz.org/license.html

Mozilla's Open Directory Project can always use more volunteer editors to index web sites into yahoo-like categories. Editors are expected to have knowledge about the cats for which they are responsible, so there's human judgement involved. I know, it's not as efficient as meta-tags and spiders, et cetera but humans are creating web sites (mostly). Maybe in the long run, humans are required to sort it all out properly. ODP data is open source (I think I'm using the term correctly), and used by many web directories.

That's the problem. Obsure is all I ever deal with. You are right about heirarchies, however. miningco is a pretty nice one as well. Oh, and what became of newhoo also....Just thought I'd point them out because I had almost completely forgotton about dmoz, and I keep stumbling across miningco pages from other searches, and they sem worth mentioning...


mcrandello@my-deja.com
rschaar{at}pegasus.cc.ucf.edu if it's important.

The Open Directory Project, managed by dmoz.org, is an open source effort to create an organized index of the internet through volunteer work. Currently their are 20,000+ volunteers working on the project. This is a way cool idea that we should all support.

Dmoz: Allegedly Unethical Firms.

As you can see, Monsanto (responsible for GM foods, the Terminator gene [though they backed off on that one], pesticides, Agent Orange...) and Wal-Mart have categories all to themselves!

IdeaLab had the nerve to submit their site to the etoy dmoz.org category today!

Write to eToys "Uncle of the Board" Toby Lenk. For more information, go to the etoy ODP catgeory.

Open Directory: Planetary_Defense/ and
http://dspace.dial.pipex.co m/town/terrace/fr77/more.htm.

This only underlines the conclusion that this Centre (British spelling please!) is urgently needed.

Open Directory: Open Source Java

(I'm only posting this anonymously because my email inbox is full and I don't want a flood of emails. It doesn't take a genius to find my email addresses, but please don't bother.)

An AC wrote:

what we need now is an example of a slashdot-mirror effect, where a controversial piece of material supressed by the authorities gets so widely distributed that they can't get to every copy of it.

Absolutely. We need a Mirror Central where people can volunteer to host controversial stuff that has been censored. This is no idle speculation - see above for URL. You could have a mailing list which thousands of people could sign up to (obviously not everyone would have the free space to host RealPlayer files, but there would be smaller stuff too) which would send out news about which sites are either:

• Under actual threat of censorship
• Highly likely to be censored (but what criteria would we use for this? Hmmm...)
• Actually have been shut down, but have been mirrored and could use more mirrors.

(Of course, you could get flooded by thousands of people claiming their sleazy website was shut down by Geocities and "It's Censorship!". Without debating whether it was censorship or whether it was justified [Terms of Service anyone?], there is a very simple solution to this - just sort by topic. Those who want to mirror, say, adult banner farms are free to do so - but I don't think there'll be many takers. Once the sleazeballs realise no-one is going to help them, they'll go away - sure, there'll always be the stupid ones, but this is a small price to pay for such a great tool for freedom of speech and expression. Anyway, more about this on the site and in the discussion groups - it's not completely black-and-white.)

You could also have a separate mailing list which would have regular news digests about sites which had been successfully rescued.

The only question is, who hosts Mirror Central? It almost goes without saying that they'll need to have a sufficiently unrestricted Terms of Service for our needs, and quite a hefty chunk of bandwidth. It needs to be a provider who is not easily scared by threats of litigation - and since, judging by their past record, the Church of Scientology might try to get something else about them removed soon, it'll need to be someone who can stand up to them. (!!!!)

Of course Mirror Central would itself be mirrored, but you'd need one or two high-bandwidth main URLs to list it by in search engines and directories - the latter simply don't go in for listing multiple mirrors for the same site.

We could also include sections and software on how to get round blocking software, and could get a huge number of hits by cross-linking with other anti-censorship sites (just think EFF!).

And perhaps it could do with a better name as well...

Right, anyway, time to stop talking and start acting. A search on "censorship mirror" on Metacrawler doesn't bring up any sites like Mirror Central, so it appears that no-one's successfully done this before (or maybe they have but it hasn't had time to show up on Metacrawler yet). Okay, I've just registered http://mirrorcentral.cjb.net as a temporary measure only - just to get the idea going and as a rallying point and a launching point. This redirect URL was working when I tried it just now, but if it isn't, the real URL is http://www.lancs.ac.uk/ug/greenrd/mirror/ . The site will initially contain an intro to what this is and two mailing lists (one for discussion of the idea and co-operating on the site, one for alerts of sites that need mirroring) - once we decide on a cool name we can register a domain name and do some serious site design (but who would everyone trust to be the owner? Hmmm... something to think about. I suppose in the long term you'd want a Mirror Central Foundation or whatever with stated objectives, so that the domain name(s) can't be legally misused by the registrant, but again, it would be good to get this up and running on an ad hoc basis ASAP).

The way I envisage it, Mirror Central wouldn't actually host or contain any mirrors itself. That way, as long as no court is stupid enough to rule that mere linking consitutes copyright infringement, libel etc. or whatever the alleged violation is (unfortunately, this is far from out of the question), mirrors can be attacked one by one but the centre is legally speaking untouchable. And, legalities aside, if we can build up Mirror Central into something really popular and interesting, it could become so popular that shutting it down would cause an unconscionable outcry!

Of course decentralisation is important - the less people rely on one centralised site, the better - mirrors should link to each other so that even if Mirror Central goes down people can still navigate. The license of the Mirror Central directory could be almost exactly the same as the Open Directory license - allowing free use and modification, but requiring an attribution link back to Central.

It would actually be extremely simple to write software to find a way in to the "mirror web", even if a large number of sites including Mirror Central were down - you could either use special keywords invented for this specific purpose thru search engines to find a way in, or just simple polling, or both.

[This was added at both top and bottom because /. truncates long comments] Could anyone help out with this? I can't do this on my own - I've got piles of coursework to do already! To help in any way, however big or small, please visit the temporary page at http://www.lancs.ac.uk/ug/greenrd/mirror/ and sign up to the discuss mailing list or forum. Thanks!

--
Robin Green

There seems to be a bit of confusion about exactly what this software offers over the standard SSH. Hopefully I can help clear it up a bit.

• Licensing

  SSH1 comes with a license which is rather ambiguous about commercial use. The most common interpretation is that it's OK to use it commercially so long as one isn't making a profit directly off it. (e.g. charging people for the software.) SSH2 is much clearer-- in order to use SSH2 in a business you must use the closed-source, $400-a-server version from DataFellows.

  Here is the vague portion of the SSH1 license:

  Companies are permitted to use this program as long as it is not used for revenue-generating purposes. For example, an Internet service provider is allowed to install this program on their systems and permit clients to use SSH to connect; however, actively distributing SSH to clients for the purpose of providing added value requires separate licensing.

• Compatibility

  SSH2 clients cannot talk to SSH1 servers. This was by design in an attempt to drive people to upgrade to the new protocol. SSH1 clients are able to talk to SSH2 servers.

• Patents

  The IDEA (default) algorithm is patented and requires a license to use commercially. The RSA algorithm is also patented, but that patent has either expired or is about to expire. If one can find a copy of "rsaref", formerly offered freely from RSA's FTP site, then one can use it instead of the internal RSA algorithm to work around this little hurdle.

One reason there is demand for another implementation of the SSH protocol is so that people in small businesses can continue to use SSH while still maintaining access to the source code and also staying $400/server closer to being profitable.

Given the incompatibility of the clients, upgrading from SSH1 to SSH2 requires a flag day upon which day every client and server must be simultaneously upgraded to SSH2. Trying to upgrade in stages results in those with SSH2 unable to connect to SSH1 servers. It is possible to install both versions of the client, but the user will have to be the one "failing over" to the other version. Irritating at best, costly and time-consuming at worst.

For more information about SSH implementations, check out the Open Directory Project's SSH Category.

I read TBG before Neverness; fortunately, I read the two a few years apart so that TBG didn't ruin Neverness for me. Both are very good. I haven't finished the series yet; they're hard books to find.

Other SF authors in the same vein, writing literate SF, are the aforementioned Ia in Banks (make sure you consider this website), the well-known Ste phen R. Donaldson and Dan Simmons (in particular his Hyperion series). Iain Banks writes non-genre fiction as Iain M. Banks and is hugely popular in the UK. Donaldson, lambasted and praised for his Unbeliever Chronicles, also wrote The Gap Series, a dark DF space opera based on the Ring Cycle. Simmons writes a lot of horror and other dark fiction.

Another author in the vein is Steven Brust (whose Taltos series is his masterwork), as well as the other members of his writing circle, the Pre-Joycean Fellowship, including Emma Bull.

Another fine but relatively obscure author is the powerful writer George Alec Effinger. Lordy lordy, is this man good. If I'm not mistaken, he's also worked on comix with Neil Gaiman and wrote for the supercool SF cartoon Galaxy Rangers, along with another great author, Tom De Haven.

More old-school authors who wrote very post-modern SF include the amazing Avram Davidson (check out the great Treasury) who wrote primarily short stories, and the odd and great Polish author Stanislaw Lem (whose career began in 1951 and continues to this day). Starting from Lem, you get into the great European (including S. America) "fantastic philosophers" Borges and Calvino. And if you like them, then you're sure to like Pynchon, and so on to David Foster Wallace and Don DeLillo, who all write SF-tinged fiction.

And the list goes on.

I read TBG before Neverness; fortunately, I read the two a few years apart so that TBG didn't ruin Neverness for me. Both are very good. I haven't finished the series yet; they're hard books to find.

Other SF authors in the same vein, writing literate SF, are the aforementioned Ia in Banks (make sure you consider this website), the well-known Ste phen R. Donaldson and Dan Simmons (in particular his Hyperion series). Iain Banks writes non-genre fiction as Iain M. Banks and is hugely popular in the UK. Donaldson, lambasted and praised for his Unbeliever Chronicles, also wrote The Gap Series, a dark DF space opera based on the Ring Cycle. Simmons writes a lot of horror and other dark fiction.

Another author in the vein is Steven Brust (whose Taltos series is his masterwork), as well as the other members of his writing circle, the Pre-Joycean Fellowship, including Emma Bull.

Another fine but relatively obscure author is the powerful writer George Alec Effinger. Lordy lordy, is this man good. If I'm not mistaken, he's also worked on comix with Neil Gaiman and wrote for the supercool SF cartoon Galaxy Rangers, along with another great author, Tom De Haven.

More old-school authors who wrote very post-modern SF include the amazing Avram Davidson (check out the great Treasury) who wrote primarily short stories, and the odd and great Polish author Stanislaw Lem (whose career began in 1951 and continues to this day). Starting from Lem, you get into the great European (including S. America) "fantastic philosophers" Borges and Calvino. And if you like them, then you're sure to like Pynchon, and so on to David Foster Wallace and Don DeLillo, who all write SF-tinged fiction.

And the list goes on.

I read TBG before Neverness; fortunately, I read the two a few years apart so that TBG didn't ruin Neverness for me. Both are very good. I haven't finished the series yet; they're hard books to find.

Other SF authors in the same vein, writing literate SF, are the aforementioned Ia in Banks (make sure you consider this website), the well-known Ste phen R. Donaldson and Dan Simmons (in particular his Hyperion series). Iain Banks writes non-genre fiction as Iain M. Banks and is hugely popular in the UK. Donaldson, lambasted and praised for his Unbeliever Chronicles, also wrote The Gap Series, a dark DF space opera based on the Ring Cycle. Simmons writes a lot of horror and other dark fiction.

Another author in the vein is Steven Brust (whose Taltos series is his masterwork), as well as the other members of his writing circle, the Pre-Joycean Fellowship, including Emma Bull.

Another fine but relatively obscure author is the powerful writer George Alec Effinger. Lordy lordy, is this man good. If I'm not mistaken, he's also worked on comix with Neil Gaiman and wrote for the supercool SF cartoon Galaxy Rangers, along with another great author, Tom De Haven.

More old-school authors who wrote very post-modern SF include the amazing Avram Davidson (check out the great Treasury) who wrote primarily short stories, and the odd and great Polish author Stanislaw Lem (whose career began in 1951 and continues to this day). Starting from Lem, you get into the great European (including S. America) "fantastic philosophers" Borges and Calvino. And if you like them, then you're sure to like Pynchon, and so on to David Foster Wallace and Don DeLillo, who all write SF-tinged fiction.

And the list goes on.

I read TBG before Neverness; fortunately, I read the two a few years apart so that TBG didn't ruin Neverness for me. Both are very good. I haven't finished the series yet; they're hard books to find.

Other SF authors in the same vein, writing literate SF, are the aforementioned Ia in Banks (make sure you consider this website), the well-known Ste phen R. Donaldson and Dan Simmons (in particular his Hyperion series). Iain Banks writes non-genre fiction as Iain M. Banks and is hugely popular in the UK. Donaldson, lambasted and praised for his Unbeliever Chronicles, also wrote The Gap Series, a dark DF space opera based on the Ring Cycle. Simmons writes a lot of horror and other dark fiction.

Another author in the vein is Steven Brust (whose Taltos series is his masterwork), as well as the other members of his writing circle, the Pre-Joycean Fellowship, including Emma Bull.

Another fine but relatively obscure author is the powerful writer George Alec Effinger. Lordy lordy, is this man good. If I'm not mistaken, he's also worked on comix with Neil Gaiman and wrote for the supercool SF cartoon Galaxy Rangers, along with another great author, Tom De Haven.

More old-school authors who wrote very post-modern SF include the amazing Avram Davidson (check out the great Treasury) who wrote primarily short stories, and the odd and great Polish author Stanislaw Lem (whose career began in 1951 and continues to this day). Starting from Lem, you get into the great European (including S. America) "fantastic philosophers" Borges and Calvino. And if you like them, then you're sure to like Pynchon, and so on to David Foster Wallace and Don DeLillo, who all write SF-tinged fiction.

And the list goes on.

I read TBG before Neverness; fortunately, I read the two a few years apart so that TBG didn't ruin Neverness for me. Both are very good. I haven't finished the series yet; they're hard books to find.

Other SF authors in the same vein, writing literate SF, are the aforementioned Ia in Banks (make sure you consider this website), the well-known Ste phen R. Donaldson and Dan Simmons (in particular his Hyperion series). Iain Banks writes non-genre fiction as Iain M. Banks and is hugely popular in the UK. Donaldson, lambasted and praised for his Unbeliever Chronicles, also wrote The Gap Series, a dark DF space opera based on the Ring Cycle. Simmons writes a lot of horror and other dark fiction.

Another author in the vein is Steven Brust (whose Taltos series is his masterwork), as well as the other members of his writing circle, the Pre-Joycean Fellowship, including Emma Bull.

Another fine but relatively obscure author is the powerful writer George Alec Effinger. Lordy lordy, is this man good. If I'm not mistaken, he's also worked on comix with Neil Gaiman and wrote for the supercool SF cartoon Galaxy Rangers, along with another great author, Tom De Haven.

More old-school authors who wrote very post-modern SF include the amazing Avram Davidson (check out the great Treasury) who wrote primarily short stories, and the odd and great Polish author Stanislaw Lem (whose career began in 1951 and continues to this day). Starting from Lem, you get into the great European (including S. America) "fantastic philosophers" Borges and Calvino. And if you like them, then you're sure to like Pynchon, and so on to David Foster Wallace and Don DeLillo, who all write SF-tinged fiction.

And the list goes on.

I read TBG before Neverness; fortunately, I read the two a few years apart so that TBG didn't ruin Neverness for me. Both are very good. I haven't finished the series yet; they're hard books to find.

Other SF authors in the same vein, writing literate SF, are the aforementioned Ia in Banks (make sure you consider this website), the well-known Ste phen R. Donaldson and Dan Simmons (in particular his Hyperion series). Iain Banks writes non-genre fiction as Iain M. Banks and is hugely popular in the UK. Donaldson, lambasted and praised for his Unbeliever Chronicles, also wrote The Gap Series, a dark DF space opera based on the Ring Cycle. Simmons writes a lot of horror and other dark fiction.

Another author in the vein is Steven Brust (whose Taltos series is his masterwork), as well as the other members of his writing circle, the Pre-Joycean Fellowship, including Emma Bull.

Another fine but relatively obscure author is the powerful writer George Alec Effinger. Lordy lordy, is this man good. If I'm not mistaken, he's also worked on comix with Neil Gaiman and wrote for the supercool SF cartoon Galaxy Rangers, along with another great author, Tom De Haven.

More old-school authors who wrote very post-modern SF include the amazing Avram Davidson (check out the great Treasury) who wrote primarily short stories, and the odd and great Polish author Stanislaw Lem (whose career began in 1951 and continues to this day). Starting from Lem, you get into the great European (including S. America) "fantastic philosophers" Borges and Calvino. And if you like them, then you're sure to like Pynchon, and so on to David Foster Wallace and Don DeLillo, who all write SF-tinged fiction.

And the list goes on.

I read TBG before Neverness; fortunately, I read the two a few years apart so that TBG didn't ruin Neverness for me. Both are very good. I haven't finished the series yet; they're hard books to find.

Other SF authors in the same vein, writing literate SF, are the aforementioned Ia in Banks (make sure you consider this website), the well-known Ste phen R. Donaldson and Dan Simmons (in particular his Hyperion series). Iain Banks writes non-genre fiction as Iain M. Banks and is hugely popular in the UK. Donaldson, lambasted and praised for his Unbeliever Chronicles, also wrote The Gap Series, a dark DF space opera based on the Ring Cycle. Simmons writes a lot of horror and other dark fiction.

Another author in the vein is Steven Brust (whose Taltos series is his masterwork), as well as the other members of his writing circle, the Pre-Joycean Fellowship, including Emma Bull.

Another fine but relatively obscure author is the powerful writer George Alec Effinger. Lordy lordy, is this man good. If I'm not mistaken, he's also worked on comix with Neil Gaiman and wrote for the supercool SF cartoon Galaxy Rangers, along with another great author, Tom De Haven.

More old-school authors who wrote very post-modern SF include the amazing Avram Davidson (check out the great Treasury) who wrote primarily short stories, and the odd and great Polish author Stanislaw Lem (whose career began in 1951 and continues to this day). Starting from Lem, you get into the great European (including S. America) "fantastic philosophers" Borges and Calvino. And if you like them, then you're sure to like Pynchon, and so on to David Foster Wallace and Don DeLillo, who all write SF-tinged fiction.

And the list goes on.

I read TBG before Neverness; fortunately, I read the two a few years apart so that TBG didn't ruin Neverness for me. Both are very good. I haven't finished the series yet; they're hard books to find.

Other SF authors in the same vein, writing literate SF, are the aforementioned Ia in Banks (make sure you consider this website), the well-known Ste phen R. Donaldson and Dan Simmons (in particular his Hyperion series). Iain Banks writes non-genre fiction as Iain M. Banks and is hugely popular in the UK. Donaldson, lambasted and praised for his Unbeliever Chronicles, also wrote The Gap Series, a dark DF space opera based on the Ring Cycle. Simmons writes a lot of horror and other dark fiction.

Another author in the vein is Steven Brust (whose Taltos series is his masterwork), as well as the other members of his writing circle, the Pre-Joycean Fellowship, including Emma Bull.

Another fine but relatively obscure author is the powerful writer George Alec Effinger. Lordy lordy, is this man good. If I'm not mistaken, he's also worked on comix with Neil Gaiman and wrote for the supercool SF cartoon Galaxy Rangers, along with another great author, Tom De Haven.

More old-school authors who wrote very post-modern SF include the amazing Avram Davidson (check out the great Treasury) who wrote primarily short stories, and the odd and great Polish author Stanislaw Lem (whose career began in 1951 and continues to this day). Starting from Lem, you get into the great European (including S. America) "fantastic philosophers" Borges and Calvino. And if you like them, then you're sure to like Pynchon, and so on to David Foster Wallace and Don DeLillo, who all write SF-tinged fiction.

And the list goes on.

I read TBG before Neverness; fortunately, I read the two a few years apart so that TBG didn't ruin Neverness for me. Both are very good. I haven't finished the series yet; they're hard books to find.

Other SF authors in the same vein, writing literate SF, are the aforementioned Ia in Banks (make sure you consider this website), the well-known Ste phen R. Donaldson and Dan Simmons (in particular his Hyperion series). Iain Banks writes non-genre fiction as Iain M. Banks and is hugely popular in the UK. Donaldson, lambasted and praised for his Unbeliever Chronicles, also wrote The Gap Series, a dark DF space opera based on the Ring Cycle. Simmons writes a lot of horror and other dark fiction.

Another author in the vein is Steven Brust (whose Taltos series is his masterwork), as well as the other members of his writing circle, the Pre-Joycean Fellowship, including Emma Bull.

Another fine but relatively obscure author is the powerful writer George Alec Effinger. Lordy lordy, is this man good. If I'm not mistaken, he's also worked on comix with Neil Gaiman and wrote for the supercool SF cartoon Galaxy Rangers, along with another great author, Tom De Haven.

More old-school authors who wrote very post-modern SF include the amazing Avram Davidson (check out the great Treasury) who wrote primarily short stories, and the odd and great Polish author Stanislaw Lem (whose career began in 1951 and continues to this day). Starting from Lem, you get into the great European (including S. America) "fantastic philosophers" Borges and Calvino. And if you like them, then you're sure to like Pynchon, and so on to David Foster Wallace and Don DeLillo, who all write SF-tinged fiction.

And the list goes on.

I read TBG before Neverness; fortunately, I read the two a few years apart so that TBG didn't ruin Neverness for me. Both are very good. I haven't finished the series yet; they're hard books to find.

Other SF authors in the same vein, writing literate SF, are the aforementioned Ia in Banks (make sure you consider this website), the well-known Ste phen R. Donaldson and Dan Simmons (in particular his Hyperion series). Iain Banks writes non-genre fiction as Iain M. Banks and is hugely popular in the UK. Donaldson, lambasted and praised for his Unbeliever Chronicles, also wrote The Gap Series, a dark DF space opera based on the Ring Cycle. Simmons writes a lot of horror and other dark fiction.

Another author in the vein is Steven Brust (whose Taltos series is his masterwork), as well as the other members of his writing circle, the Pre-Joycean Fellowship, including Emma Bull.

Another fine but relatively obscure author is the powerful writer George Alec Effinger. Lordy lordy, is this man good. If I'm not mistaken, he's also worked on comix with Neil Gaiman and wrote for the supercool SF cartoon Galaxy Rangers, along with another great author, Tom De Haven.

More old-school authors who wrote very post-modern SF include the amazing Avram Davidson (check out the great Treasury) who wrote primarily short stories, and the odd and great Polish author Stanislaw Lem (whose career began in 1951 and continues to this day). Starting from Lem, you get into the great European (including S. America) "fantastic philosophers" Borges and Calvino. And if you like them, then you're sure to like Pynchon, and so on to David Foster Wallace and Don DeLillo, who all write SF-tinged fiction.

And the list goes on.

I read TBG before Neverness; fortunately, I read the two a few years apart so that TBG didn't ruin Neverness for me. Both are very good. I haven't finished the series yet; they're hard books to find.

Other SF authors in the same vein, writing literate SF, are the aforementioned Ia in Banks (make sure you consider this website), the well-known Ste phen R. Donaldson and Dan Simmons (in particular his Hyperion series). Iain Banks writes non-genre fiction as Iain M. Banks and is hugely popular in the UK. Donaldson, lambasted and praised for his Unbeliever Chronicles, also wrote The Gap Series, a dark DF space opera based on the Ring Cycle. Simmons writes a lot of horror and other dark fiction.

Another author in the vein is Steven Brust (whose Taltos series is his masterwork), as well as the other members of his writing circle, the Pre-Joycean Fellowship, including Emma Bull.

Another fine but relatively obscure author is the powerful writer George Alec Effinger. Lordy lordy, is this man good. If I'm not mistaken, he's also worked on comix with Neil Gaiman and wrote for the supercool SF cartoon Galaxy Rangers, along with another great author, Tom De Haven.

More old-school authors who wrote very post-modern SF include the amazing Avram Davidson (check out the great Treasury) who wrote primarily short stories, and the odd and great Polish author Stanislaw Lem (whose career began in 1951 and continues to this day). Starting from Lem, you get into the great European (including S. America) "fantastic philosophers" Borges and Calvino. And if you like them, then you're sure to like Pynchon, and so on to David Foster Wallace and Don DeLillo, who all write SF-tinged fiction.

And the list goes on.

Infoseek shows up as one of "First and Fast" after you read through the insulting, self-congratulatory ad and tell them, "Yes, you jerks, I really did mean to search for what I searched for."

It turns up also in "Computers > Internet > WWW > Searching the Web > Search Engines > General" because that is an Open Directory Project category. See the invitation at the bottom to become an editor?

Or, if you take the link to "Web Pages" (i.e., skip your babysitting, skip categories, skip press releases, just give me the best matching pages), Infoseek's main page is the top hit.

If you haven't already, check out the Open Directory Project at www.dmoz.org. It's like Yahoo!, only fluff-free, and volunteer-edited, so it's about as up-to-date as such things get. Because it is volunteer-edited, it tends to be spotty -- some areas are really well done and thorough, others not so much so. Overall, I find it meets my needs better than anywhere else does. And, in the grand tradition of open source, if I look for something and can't find it there, if I find it elsewhere, I can add it into the directory, so no one else has to suffer from the lack.

Yes, HotBot is running on NT, blah blah blah... but it is the best search engine I have ever seen. Click on the Advanced button ("More Search Options"), and you're presented with a lot of different options, like searching for a file with a certain date, in a certain language, and even by domain. The engine supports just about every piece of syntax you can think of.

Even the link farm isn't too bad. They seem to have some kind of agreement with the Open Directory, as that is where the directory links come from.

Of course, they still use redirection links when you click on the search results...

No, I don't work for them. :)

--

If you're interested in evidence which might contradict that view, including official UNICEF reports, try here.

--

The Big U is based on Stephenson's experiences at Boston University, whose campus is actually responsible for student deaths in that it compels them to cross a throughway to get anywhere, leading to a few hit-and-runs every so often.

Here's a Neal Stephenson FAQ: this one at dmoz which quotes Neal as saying that "Big U" will be reprinted "Over my dead body." Later quotes have him saying he doesn't want the resources necessary to publish a book wasted on the "Big U", but it may happen just to keep people from spending $200 on the book.

There are a bunch of nice profiles/interviews on him out there; check out dmoz's comprehensive
listing.

The Big U is based on Stephenson's experiences at Boston University, whose campus is actually responsible for student deaths in that it compels them to cross a throughway to get anywhere, leading to a few hit-and-runs every so often.

Here's a Neal Stephenson FAQ: this one at dmoz which quotes Neal as saying that "Big U" will be reprinted "Over my dead body." Later quotes have him saying he doesn't want the resources necessary to publish a book wasted on the "Big U", but it may happen just to keep people from spending $200 on the book.

There are a bunch of nice profiles/interviews on him out there; check out dmoz's comprehensive
listing.

Anyway, you're wondering why I'm posting this under here, it's because all you have to do is to type 'more evil than satan himself' in a Netscape URL bar (if you're running a recent version) and you get the same search results, so I guess that's what Netscape mean by 'Smart Browsing'! What's funnier is that if you download the Netscape Tuneup for IE (available from http://home.netscape.com/smartupdate/ if you're running IE). This'll make the same search result appear by typing in the search query in an IE browser! I haven't tried the IE one however as I'm running Linux.
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Not really. Simula is generally considered to be the first object-oriented language (i.e. being built around the notion of classes: entities which encompass both data and behaviour). It builds on Algol60 and was defined in 1967; it predates both C and Pascal which are early seventies.

Object-orientation gained popularity through SmallTalk (late seventies).

C++ isn't a pure OO language; it's a procedural/OO hybrid language due to being based on C. It's unwieldyness isn't explained by this. Other OO and OO/hybrid languages (say Objective C which was a stronger influence on Java's OO nature than C++) are a lot less unwieldy.

Nowadays, Object Orientation and OO programming are popular because they allow for a more natural modelling of problem domains and implementations of solutions than the procedural approach which makes it possible to deal with larger problem sizes.