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Yes, I'm torn too. For it to really be an open source effort (in the sense of not requiring a fairly sizeable centralized $$$ flow), you would need volunteer editors as well as volunteers who contribute raw data. And based on my experience at dmoz.org, it isn't clear to me how well it would work for the OED (dmoz is great in a lot of ways, but there are plenty of problems too with neglected categories and standards which aren't uniform and the like).

But having said all that, the OED would be more useful if it were easier/cheaper to get one's hands on a copy. So the status quo has drawbacks which are more than merely theoretical.

... here.

This will not be a laughing matter in five years. The 2600 DeCSS linking case ruled it is illegal to even link to illegal sites. It's only a matter of time before KPMG's attitudes become de facto.

[begin obligatory slashdot rant] This is truly a bizarre turn of evens as this ruling raises some fundamental questions about intellectual property rights and free speech on the Internet. You would think it is legal to link to a page against the author's permission. You would also think the likes of Madonna and Julia Roberts couldn't steal registered domains containing their names. All of these have been called into doubt as we descend down this slippery slope.

The corporate chokehold on individual freedoms needs greater vigilance. If you asked someone twenty years ago what they thought of random drug testing, stealth eavesdropping techniques, etc., you would probably get a much more appalled response than you would today. What are we in danger of not being appalled about twenty years from now?

More sites on this topic, esp. 46-49 of this ruling.

It'd be good to see something resembling peer review on the web after all.

Don't You Yahoo! ???

Seriously, there is so much out there that lofty goals fall apart for any but the smallest of niches. The original efforts of Yahoo! just couldn't keep pace with 'Net growth, leading to gridlock on entries and deletions and deterioration of its organization and review process.

A more recent attempt, dmoz.org seems to have stagnated under the weight of the Web. All of the specific sections I visit lack moderation, and are about as useful as a random web search ("Gee! I wonder where they get the initial link collections.")

Peer review is a great idea, and does take place, but requires a lot of effort and cooperation to pull off on any scale above microscopic. Been there, done that, got tired.

Other suggestions?

With Java being removed from Windows XP, and AOL poised to start including a Mozilla-based browser in their next version of Internet software, Mozilla could very well become the cross-platform development environment of choice. Keep an eye out for more Mozilla-based projects like this to come.

But as we all know, the web is very different

Is it? have a look at he open directory /adult dirctory http://dmoz.org/Adult or the google version with pagerank (tm) http://directory.google.com/Top/Adult)
I link them becouse they are not on the front pages as to avoid offending people.

Here content is devided into groups much like rating system, now I would not be suprised if this was one of the bigest sources of urls to filter by porn blocker l33t edition for windows xp and many others.
Point is if you where to label sites that have adult content on them adult, schools using the latest l33t edition blocker end up filtering some very informative sites and even if the rating would be more specific (/adult/images vs /adult/sexuality/) school administrators would verry likely not be able to justify giving access to anything in /adult/* and the the makers of bornblocker would still filter it if only becouse it ads just more urls to the "filters over 23059230498089 adult pages" sales slogan

After all, how can you judge wheter you should see something without looking at it?
Movies show it doesnt work all that well even if you rate carefully and on the web it wil be the same.

You are correct in that the media is made up of humans, and prone to make mistakes. But I think you misrepresent the entire situation with this statement, in implying that human error is the most significant factor in misreported news.

If you are not already aware, virtually all major news sources are intimitely tied in with large corporations that have major interests in slanting the media. Bias is a much larger problem than error.

If you check the CNN web page, you most likely see that the anthrax stories overshadow what is happening in Afghanistan. They are taking advantage of the current local scare to distract people from more important events happening elsewhere.

I suggest that you look into independent sources of media as well. They are error prone as well, but at least have a different bias than the conglomerates (unbiased media is a myth):

Independent Media

DMOZ: News -> Alternative Media
ZMag: Left Wing media resources
Indymedia: Non-Corporate news coverage
Guerrilla News Network
Project Censored: Censored news stories
Alternet: Alternative news, opinion, and investigative journalism
MediaChannel: "MediaChannel exists to provide information and diverse perspectives and inspire debate, collaboration, action and citizen engagement"
Common Dreams: "Breaking News & Views for the Progressive Community
The Public i: An Investigative Report of the Center for Public Integrity
Pacifica Network News
The Onion: Media Satire

Media Analysis

"Propaganda" at the University of Washington School of Communication
PROMO: Project on Media Ownership
Military school article on Psychological Operations (PSYOPs)
Media Access Project: "A Non-Profit Public Interest Telecommunications Law Firm
Reporters Committee For Freedom of the Press
FAIR: Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting
The Poynter Institute: What journalists read
Columbia Journalism Review
Who Owns What
People for Better TV: "69 percent of Americans say TV is the most trusted source of information"

LS

Well hopefully he ain't spending his nights with coonhounds. And he is probably not spending his evenings with some murderous English irregulars, who were known by their black hats and tan coats and fought on the side of the crown against the Irish Republicans.

What he is talking about is beer. Originally Black & Tans were a British pub concoction of Stout and IPA mixed in a pint pot(glass). So it is two beers mixed together - one is a dark(pretty much black) porter the other is a light lager(tan). Real Black and Tans are mixed on the spot, poured from two different taps. Depending on the bar's selection and the bartender's talent, every pint is a bit different.

Cheers!

p.s. don't be ordering no Black and Tans in the company of Irish Catholics.

As, while we're at it, might these.

At last -- a use for those AOL free trial CDs.

If you consider "non-technical" to mean "not creating a piece of software or hardware", then the Open Directory Project should count. Like Yahoo's directories, but maintained by volunteers, uses peer review, and the resulting data is useable by anyone under the Free Use License.

If you consider "non-technical" to mean "not creating a piece of software or hardware", then the Open Directory Project should count. Like Yahoo's directories, but maintained by volunteers, uses peer review, and the resulting data is useable by anyone under the Free Use License.

BBC was down for me and I'm UK based (admittedly our 14x2Mbps connection terminates states-side).
I found Slashdot.org and Sky News (UK 'arm' of Fox News) to be the two major sites to stay up - I also applaud Google and ODP for helping me find the few remining news sites that were up - I just wonder what sort of load Google was under compared to sites such as /. ...

In the top-level directory of the SDK, there should be a simple text file named README or README.txt. If it isn't there the user has to go hunting around in a bunch of incomprehensible directories searching for documentation and gets annoyed. This README file should point to the location of the main documentation.

The main documentation should consist of, at minimum, a tutorial and a reference. One of the first things that should show up in the tutorial is a description of the directory hierarchy of the SDK (this could be in the README instead). It seems many SDK creators are so familiar with the structure of their own SDK that they forget to tell their users about it, leaving them to wander about in a sea of incomprehensibly named files and directories. You should describe the purpose of each directory (and possibly even the files inside). If you're developing for Unix or Java, it helps to use a conventional naming scheme for your directories -- bin/, lib/, src/, and so on. (For Windows or Macintosh you might want to use longer, descriptive names if you fear your users will be unfamiliar with terse Unix-style names.)

Some SDK writers just toss a bunch of code examples in a directory somewhere, with no explanation of the who, what, when, where, why and how of using them. (Sometimes they don't even have comments.) The tutorial should have a prose description of the code examples. You want to aim for a literate programming style. Make sure the tutorial is clear to newbies. Have someone read it over before you release it. I don't mean having one of your fellow SDK developers read it for typos (although you can do that as well); have someone unfamiliar with the product read it and make sure it is understandable.

The reference documentation should have complete, detailed explanations of every class/function call/XML element/whatever. If possible, use a standard format appropriate for your platform (e.g., man pages, Javadoc). In all cases you should try to use a format which is as non-proprietary as possible (e.g., HTML is good, PDF is okay, MS Word is pretty dubious).

Other documents may not be mandatory but can be nice to have: a FAQ, a rigorous specification, a style guide, a tool guide.

The user should not have to modify files in the SDK directory itself. I always like to keep a software package as pristine as possible, so I don't have to keep wondering whether I screwed up some configuration file or not. If you must have files modified in the SDK directory structure, keep it confined to as small a location as possible (a single configuration file, or at least a single conf/ or etc/ directory). Make sure it is easy for the user to compile/execute their own files/programs outside of the SDK directory.

If you plan on making releases (especially beta releases) often, it is nice if users can have multiple versions of the SDK installed at the same time. Also, try not to completely reorganize the SDK with every new release. Pick an organization and stick to it.

Java robot-programming systems have been around for a few years. My room mate created one three years ago called
J Robots. His inspiration was the C-Robots which many people have already mentioned in their comments.

There are a few other Java robot systems listed on Dmoz.org.

The following list will keep you occupied about IPv6 for some time... oh just for the record ams-ix is doing NATIVE IPv6 since 1998 now... alongside NSPIXP6 and PAIX and some others to be found at v6nap.net.

First two nice repositories where you can find almost anything IPv6 related:
IPv6 News and Links (hs247)
Open Directory Project Computers/Internet/Protocols/IP/IPng/

And some others important ones which can also be found there:
6bone
Belnet
Bieringer's Linux IPv6 FAQ
Euronet Belgium
IPng
KAME
Kitame's Debian IPv6 Packages
Microsoft IPv6
PuTTY IPv6
SiXXS
Sun Solaris IPv6
Surfnet IPv6
Trumpet IPv6

IPv6 for the future (or something advocating like that :)

Any idea whether this will have an effect on Mozilla or the Open Directory Project?

Tim

All about Buran:
http://dmoz.org/Science/Technology/Spa ce/Space_Shuttle/Buran,_Russian_Space_Shuttle/

And a *real* one for sale! (Er, my Russian is a little rusty, but it says "For Sale" in English...)
http://www.buran.ru/htm/forsale.htm

And apparently, the program isn't dead, anymore:
http://www.spacedaily.com/news/russia- space-general-01m.html

text sizing:
CTRL+
Or
CTRL-
to enlarge text or make it smaller. great feature
Keywords:
edit bookmarks, pick a bookmark and pick properties, add a keyword. say 'sd' for slashdot.org. then type in the location box (ctrl L gets you focused on the location box) type sd and hit enter, you'll be whisked away to slashdot.org.
SideBar Tabs:
A great way to have quick acces to web tools like mapquest or an online dictionary. see the sidebar directory at:http://dmoz.org/Netscape/Sidebar/

The category is probably a bit too large for a new editor to be accepted easily, but the subcategories would make a great place to apply. Even though it is fairly well maintained at this point, none of it has a listed editor. There are three more sites waiting in the unreviewed queue there too.

The category is probably a bit too large for a new editor to be accepted easily, but the subcategories would make a great place to apply. Even though it is fairly well maintained at this point, none of it has a listed editor. There are three more sites waiting in the unreviewed queue there too.

How many virus writers go on to live normal, productive lives? How many never write another virus?

(Ah, to heck with it. Kill 'em all and let DoS sort 'em out!)

Tim

I urge you to look through, find an series that you like and apply to be an editor.

I urge you to look through, find an series that you like and apply to be an editor.

I urge you to look through, find an series that you like and apply to be an editor.

Is there a PHP class or something that everyone's using for this? I saw a couple offerings at freshmeat that relates to ODP and some some tools and code are here, but I'm curious what most people are using.

W
-------------------

The Open Directory Project lists several Linux game programming sites. However, there are only six listed and two more waiting to be reviewed. If you are interested in linux game programming and building an open directory, you should apply to maintain the category. Book reviews such as this one and many undiscovered web sites are waiting for somebody like you.

The Open Directory Project lists several Linux game programming sites. However, there are only six listed and two more waiting to be reviewed. If you are interested in linux game programming and building an open directory, you should apply to maintain the category. Book reviews such as this one and many undiscovered web sites are waiting for somebody like you.

The Open Directory Project lists several Linux game programming sites. However, there are only six listed and two more waiting to be reviewed. If you are interested in linux game programming and building an open directory, you should apply to maintain the category. Book reviews such as this one and many undiscovered web sites are waiting for somebody like you.

I'm wondering how much time (not to mention cpu cycles) these guys could have saved if these guys had hacked a much simpler operating system ? Perhaps using some old-school PD source such as Tom Poindexter's Crobots or perhaps or one of it's various mutant prodginy such as the linux based C-Robots ?

Freshmeat Categories:
http://freshmeat.net/browse/214/
(Microsoft/MS-DOS & Windows Sub-categories)

Sourceforge Category:
http://sourceforge.net/softwaremap/trove_list.php? form_cat=230

Of course, where you can't find projects to fulfill your needs, of course one would want to look at Freeware/Public Domain and Shareware programs. Although, I would hope that eventually a number of these programmers would be willing to opensource their projects.
http://dmoz.org/Computers/Software/Freeware/
http://dmoz.org/Computers/Software/Shareware/
I highly recommend the following Freeware (for non-commercial use) graphics viewer/editor:
http://www.irfanview.com/

Freshmeat Categories:
http://freshmeat.net/browse/214/
(Microsoft/MS-DOS & Windows Sub-categories)

Sourceforge Category:
http://sourceforge.net/softwaremap/trove_list.php? form_cat=230

Of course, where you can't find projects to fulfill your needs, of course one would want to look at Freeware/Public Domain and Shareware programs. Although, I would hope that eventually a number of these programmers would be willing to opensource their projects.
http://dmoz.org/Computers/Software/Freeware/
http://dmoz.org/Computers/Software/Shareware/
I highly recommend the following Freeware (for non-commercial use) graphics viewer/editor:
http://www.irfanview.com/

NAMN (the North American Meteor Network) or the IMO (International Meteor Organisation, which is actually amateur - same as NAMN) are good starting points, or try the Google Directory or DMOZ Open Directory meteor sections for much more background reading. I strongly, strongly recommend doing some research before November, getting a bit of practice in, then do what I've done - book some time off work! :-)

--
"I'm not downloaded, I'm just loaded and down"

I've found that using bookmarklets, especially on complex sites, is a good way to stress-test a browser's JavaScript and DOM code. You can get various bookmarklets at my site and at other sites.

A while ago there was a program which allowed users [emphasis mine] to add commentary...

Now, there is a program that allows Microsoft to add commentary (if you accept that the redirected page is "commentary"). If the Smart Tags thing pulled tags from DMOZ that were created by users I'm sure no one would have a problem with it. People have a very large problem with the new links being controlled by Microsoft.

There's a big difference between a community adding stuff that one would hope they believe are interesting to others (eg, Slashdot users and comments) and a large company adding information that can almost guaranteed be slanted towards themselves. That's the reason people have issues with this.

It should be noted that while third parties can add links, it's highly unlikely that the average user would ever bother grabbing these new links, so it's highly likely that most users wind up with the default Microsoft links.

--

I guess anyone could do so, if they actually read the god damn site.

--

Well, I just checked and they do give credit in the very first paragraph. Either you didn't read carefully or they read your comment and revised their web site in the FOUR MINUTES since you posted. Wow! That's on the ball! :-)

http://dmoz.org/socialcontract.html first paragraph: [...] inspired by, derived from, the Debian Social Contract [...]

-----------

That was several years ago, though. I recently checked back to see how the project was going, and it's *huge*. DMOZ is robust enough to compete with Yahoo, but without the bells, whistles, banners, portal features, and other crap that make Yahoo so bloated.

So check out DMOZ. You might, like me, make it your usual search directory.

Geocaching(which is now trademarked by geocaching.com), or gps stashing, or whatever you want to call it was born on a newsgroup, sites started springing up listing stash information. Geocaching.com came into the scene and became THE geocaching site for a few reasons, first and foremost it was much slicker than any other cache site, second because there was quite a media blitz. Now I don't want to tarnish the excellent work Jeremy Irish on geocaching.com, but some of the things he has done really make me (and a few others, though not a majority) really angry. He formed a business to own the site, which should have raised a few eyebrows, but people were too busy mutually masturbating at what a great site geocaching.com was.

Orignally most geocaching discussion happened on an egroup mailing list called gpsstash. Every month or two someone would ask for a downloadable list of waypoints. The request would get ignored most of the time, other times they would get brushed off by Jeremy saying that it would allow people to maintain their own copy of the info and it might go stale. In response, someone wrote a perl script to slurp info off of the site (but did not distribute it) and Jeremy responded that any attempt to slurp data off of the site would be met with legal action. Well, people continued to ask for the feature but nothing happened.

Jeremy also declared the original mailing list dead, and started hosting his own list (with alot less features, I might add.) Once again, nobody cared. Another revealing incident happened when somebody (not Buxley) made a graphic map of his state locations of stashes on it. Immediately Jeremy unveiled HIS maps.

Buxley was evidently the first to create a fully functional wold-wide map site, and then one day Jeremy decides to threaten legal action against it. FINALLY people realize that Jeremy's absolute control is a Bad ThingTM, and come out of the woodwork to complain about it. After much discussion between all parties involved Jeremy has said that he will make info available on certain caches on an opt-in basis. His excuse for not doing it before was that people may end up with stale data if there isn't a central distribution point. I have suggested that he release it under the Open Directory License, which maintains a central distribution site, and prohibits commercial use, but my post has been ignored.

To summarize, geocaching.com is a great site, but its administrator doesn't play well with others and want's to run the whole show.

It always amazes me how supposedly qualified and skilled people can ask questions before making any effort to do background research. Not only does it show an inability to solve problems, but also prevents the questioner from supplying all the relevant information.

I asked Google a couple of questions and came up with GameDev.net and GameDeveloper.net, and especially the game design category at dmoz.org. Needless to say these link to a wealth of information on the topic.

I could be mistaken, but you seem to be referring to Isometric Mapping, which is a 2D, not a 3D technique. A little Googlification of that keyword should produce more interesting stuff. this article discusses formats for a map file, and this one considers data structures and memory.

Of course, the most important question is: how are you going to USE the data? Your choice of a data structure must be based on data use, especially in a real-time game where effeciency is important. Memory requirements will become a third factor for consideration.

In general when dealing with isometric maps, you model a flyweight multilayer grid. This means the basic map is broken into a 2D grid of tiles (rectangular or hexagonal), each tile is split into several ordered layers, and the information about each tile is for the most part shared with all other tiles of the same nature (the flyweight design pattern).

The most common question about data structures is whether to use a 3-dimensional array (tile-x, tile-y, layer) or to a 2-dimensional array (tile-x, tile-y) with the tile itself holding an array of layer information.

When working with very few layers, or in a situation where the information in a particular layer must be accessessed in an iterative fashion, the 3-d array tends to be better. For many layers, or a case where the information for a particular layer does not need to be filtered out as a separate grid, a 2-d map with dynamic data structures for the layer information will keep memory requirements down, and follow good design principles (don't keep multiple data structures in sync - split the data into objects).

Good luck ... now go and do your own work before asking more questions.

Twylite

The retrieval section is here.

So, you can subscribe to XMR for $9.95 per month, not including the one-off expense of replacing all your old audio equipment with XM-Ready equipment. Or, assuming you already have a computer, you can put the money into a decent Internet connection, and listen to a gazillion radio stations worldwide for free.

I know it's easy to predict the death of one technology when another comes along, and (for example) it's clear that TV hasn't killed radio yet. But considering that a fair number of Americans have Internet access already, if they put the cost of XMR access into improving the bandwidth into their house, they'd be getting radio freedom XMR users could only dream of.

M

By contrast, deaths due to traditional herbal remedies are so rare they're hard to find. I'm not dismissing modern medicine entirely - far from it - I'm just pointing out some disturbing facts.

So why are gene interactions so hot, yet medicine interactions so neglected in research? And why, for that matter do so few people know that they could substantially reduce their risk of heart disease and cancer by going vegetarian or vegan? Surely the governments of the world should be funding research and education on these two topics on a massive scale - it could save thousands upon thousands of lives - and even from a callous economic point of view, the savings in terms of medicaid and lost economic productivity due to ill-health would be huge! In fact, official guidelines still endorse a meat-based diet despite the well-known health risks, and there is NO serious attempt to co-ordinate drug safety information between regulatory bodies internationally. That's right, none - regulatory bodies in the UK often ignore bans in the US, and vice-versa. What's more, the support for even collating data on side effects of medicines at a government level is poor - particularly in the UK.

The reason is the same in both cases, and it's very simple. Profit. Profit for the drugs companies, to be precise. Pharamaceutical corps profit from ill-health, and they don't exactly relish the idea of their drugs getting banned or contraindicated for safety reasons, either. Campaign funds, and the revolving door between the FDA and the drugs/biotech industries helps keep the government in line. For more info see http://www.drrath.com/

*sniff* *sniff*

There be trolls here. But given the fact there are gullible people who will buy into the conspiracy you push...

First, take a look at:

Where you see how many developers of OpenBSD are in the "American" sector.

Next, take a look at:

BTW, what outside independent group has reviewed M$ code, or DEC code, or Sun code, or AIX code...

I suppose you don't consult to the feds, since they use xbsd (DOJ uses OpenBSD).

As an expert on operating systems, you should be aware that the common commercial vendors are full of bugs and security holes. By telling your customers that they are safe because they are using American/commercial products, you are doing them a disservice.

How could you trust the agenda of an outside independent code review. After all, they might be just as anti-American!

I truly hope you make it as an anti-xbsd consultant. Good luck.

i say we just all use IPs and the open directory project and forget domain names... that way there wouldnt be these stupid legal disputes and all that.

just submit your info into it and BOOM youre listed. i think this would give the net a much more level playing field, as well as letting other protocols accessed... say i want to list my gopher and hotline IP's, i could put them in appropriate places =]

-----------
MOVE 'SIG'.

Uhh, so Yahoo is selling porn. Big deal. It's not like no one has thought of sellig porn online before. Sheesh.

Alex Bischoff
---

Sorry..
-------------------

It also doesn't answer the question: how is Open-Source Directory anything more than a slightly less-Unix, slightly more-OSS, version of Freshmeat? No, they aren't the same, but I fail to see the significant difference. There is Windows software on Freshmeat, and you can view just the Free software, if that's all you are interested in. I'm not worried about OSD dilluting Freshmeat -- mostly because I really don't see why someone would look on OSD instead of Freshmeat, or why someone would post their app there.

You could also push forward a well-organized directory of OSS under the Open Directory... then people would really be likely to see it, even if they didn't know to look for it.

It's nice to see that the folks at this Open Source Directory are modeling the software categories after Sourceforge'.s Software/application taxonomies typically vary from site-to-site and distribution-to-distribution. While I appreciate that all the site maintainers out there take time to organize information about software applications, the diversity makes it difficult to synthesize materials from multiple sources. I applaud this directory's deference to a previously-existing taxonomy.

A while back, I started creating a list of software categorization schemes/systems relevent to Linuxland:

http://freshmeat.net/browse/627/
http://apps.kde.com/na/2/categories&nav=f
http://sourceforge.net/softwaremap/trove_list.php
http://dmoz.org/Computers/Software/
http://dir.yahoo.com/Computers_and_Internet/Softwa re/
http://ftp.us.debian.org/debian/dists/potato/main/ binary-i386/
ftp://ftp.ibiblio.org/pub/Linux/
http://www.gnu.org/gnulist/production/index.html
http://www.userfriendly.net/linux/RPM/Groups.html
http://www.cpan.org/modules/by-category/
http://www.freebsd.org/ports/
ftp://ftp.isi.edu/in-notes/iana/assignments/media- types/media-types
http://www.pathname.com/fhs/
http://www.labs.redhat.com/gug/users-guide/main-me nu.html
http://www.linux.com/links/Software/

Hell, /. needs a LaTeX parser so that these math equations are more readable!

1 - wp^2 / w^2