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An English language website, hosted in the US, owned by a US company, administered and run by US employees is US focused? It's shocking, I tell you.

The medium is different, but the sentiment is the same: By God I KNOW what this network is for, and you can't have it.

Ironic?

The medium is different, but the sentiment is the same: By God I KNOW what this network is for, and you can't have it.

The Void Captain's Tale by Norman Spinrad has FTL powered by female orgasm. Anybody know of other unorthodox propulsion methods from SF?

Aside from whatever the hell was involved in moving the ships in Cordwainer Smith's stories. Cats fending off meta-dimensional dragons in Space3?

There is the "Infinite Improbability Drive"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technology_in_The_Hitchhiker's_Guide_to_the_Galaxy#Infinite_Improbability_Drive

The Void Captain's Tale by Norman Spinrad has FTL powered by female orgasm. Anybody know of other unorthodox propulsion methods from SF?

Aside from whatever the hell was involved in moving the ships in Cordwainer Smith's stories. Cats fending off meta-dimensional dragons in Space3?

I truly dislike Web-based forums. They require the user to connect to a specific Web site, which is sometimes down. Although Facebook is rarely down, a forum based there requires users to have Facebook accounts; similar requirements exist for other forum hosting services. Threaded discussions are often difficult to follow on Web-based forums, and threads usually cannot be sorted (both are also problems with mailing lists). To find a specific topic or thread, the user must use the forum's own search capability, which is too often rudimentary and insufficient for real-world use. Then, there is the fact that some Web-based forums work well only with certain browsers.

I much prefer the newsgroups hosted by NNTP (network news transfer protocol) servers. There are several NNTP service providers (NSPs), both free and paid; users only have to use one NSP to participate even when other users use other NSPs. That is, users are not required to connect and login to any one specific site.

A number of different NNTP applications also exist, mostly freeware. Those applications generally handle threaded discussions quite well. Search capabilities are built into the applications and are not needed for the newsgroup itself. If spam, flame wars, trolls, and other problems are a concern, a moderated newsgroup is also possible.

If your topic is limited, I would suggest creating an alt.* newsgroup. See the text document at http://ftp.isc.org/pub/usenet/CONFIG/README. However, many NSPs no longer host alt.* newsgroups because so many of them contained child pornography.

If your topic might have broad public appeal, you might consider creating a newsgroup under one of comp.*, news.*, sci.*, humanities.*, rec.*, soc.*, talk.*, or misc.*. See http://www.big-8.org/wiki/Main_Page.

A moderated newsgroup can have more than a single moderator, which would be appropriate if your forum is not related to your own personal Web site. See http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/faqs/mod-pitfalls.html for the negatives of moderated newsgroups. The "Moderator's Handbook" at http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/usefor/other/moderators-handbook is quite old but still useful. See also http://www.big-8.org/wiki/Changing_Moderation_Status.

I truly dislike Web-based forums. They require the user to connect to a specific Web site, which is sometimes down. Although Facebook is rarely down, a forum based there requires users to have Facebook accounts; similar requirements exist for other forum hosting services. Threaded discussions are often difficult to follow on Web-based forums, and threads usually cannot be sorted (both are also problems with mailing lists). To find a specific topic or thread, the user must use the forum's own search capability, which is too often rudimentary and insufficient for real-world use. Then, there is the fact that some Web-based forums work well only with certain browsers.

I much prefer the newsgroups hosted by NNTP (network news transfer protocol) servers. There are several NNTP service providers (NSPs), both free and paid; users only have to use one NSP to participate even when other users use other NSPs. That is, users are not required to connect and login to any one specific site.

A number of different NNTP applications also exist, mostly freeware. Those applications generally handle threaded discussions quite well. Search capabilities are built into the applications and are not needed for the newsgroup itself. If spam, flame wars, trolls, and other problems are a concern, a moderated newsgroup is also possible.

If your topic is limited, I would suggest creating an alt.* newsgroup. See the text document at http://ftp.isc.org/pub/usenet/CONFIG/README. However, many NSPs no longer host alt.* newsgroups because so many of them contained child pornography.

If your topic might have broad public appeal, you might consider creating a newsgroup under one of comp.*, news.*, sci.*, humanities.*, rec.*, soc.*, talk.*, or misc.*. See http://www.big-8.org/wiki/Main_Page.

A moderated newsgroup can have more than a single moderator, which would be appropriate if your forum is not related to your own personal Web site. See http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/faqs/mod-pitfalls.html for the negatives of moderated newsgroups. The "Moderator's Handbook" at http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/usefor/other/moderators-handbook is quite old but still useful. See also http://www.big-8.org/wiki/Changing_Moderation_Status.

Wallet is a Kerberos-based secret management tool. It works well for me.

I was pretty amazed with the beta of Ubuntu 7.10. I even installed it on my system, but after about 30min-1 hour of use, trackerd was consistently keeping my CPU usage up at least 30%. That's not the fault of the Ubuntu team, as they did not write trackerd, but they really do need to be careful about the daemons that they allow to run in the background on a default installation. I don't know what it is there for, but according to this description, it doesn't sound like it is something that a vanilla, desktop installation would want on there. The approach to background processes should be the KISS. On a vanilla desktop installation, only the barest set of such thing should be on there.

I do not want to read machine generated spew. The internet was about humans connecting to humans.

We've been here before with Usenet. It's September all over again.

See an excellent rant:
http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/writing/rant.html

This sounds like a demeaning, brutal job. Almost like a factory for addition. Can you imagine what these folks talked about when they went home at night?
"Had a bunch of sevens at the plant today. Thought we never add them all up."
There's a slide-rule connection here. Oddly enough, numbers that couldn't be computed on a slide rule were deemed irrational. For those interested in slide rules, Here's a short history of the slide rule and here's a guy's collection of slide rules

Microsoft Taken To Task On Hiring Practices

In my early college years, shortly after I discovered the 'net, I got involved with a number of writing communities...writing Robotech fanfic, writing alt.pub.dragons-inn and alt.pub.havens-rest series, and eventually the Superguy listserv. And it certainly did improve my writing, over time.

The secret is practice and peer review. That's the best way to build writing skill, whether the Internet is involved or not. The Internet makes it easier, that's all.

Well, all right, I was exaggerating slightly (I probably just need to reinstall Windows is likely what the trouble is) but the truth is, I'm feeling kind of bitter about having been waiting for Half-Life II all this time (I even wrote a chapter of Half-Life fanfic for crying out loud) and I don't know when I'm ever going to get to play it. Sigh.

Huh. Maybe I should write more chapters in Whole-Life, the Half-Life fanfic I began but only wrote one chapter.

Larry and others at google has said this in the past. Although I can't find proof on Google's web site (darn lousy search engine they use ;-), I did find this in an article on SearchEngineWorld:

Google examines link structures all over the web. By doing so, it can give every page a popularity rating known as "PageRank" (named after Google cofounder Larry Page). When you do a search, URLs with high PageRanks are more likely to be listed first. However, this will only happen if the pages also match other criteria, such as containing your search terms or being identified as being relevant to your search terms by analyzing the context of links.

According to this article, it was originally called "BackRub":

Google began as a search engine called BackRub. It was so named for what was its, (at the time), unique ability to analyze the "back links" pointing to and from a given website as part of its algorithms to search results. This approach to link analysis gained BackRub a growing reputation among those who had seen the technology. Today this technology is know as Google's patented "PageRanks" technology.

Another reference: http://www.eyrie.org/~zednenem/2002/08/30/

Herman's head was a great show!

A couple of great links about the show:
A Complete Overview

A Big Resource

His response was to look at the audience and say, "Yes! Yes, there will be an Evil Dead IV!"

Then he paused for a few seconds, long enough for the applause and cheering to die down, and added, "...when monkeys fly out of my butt!!!"

The crowd went wild.

> The web only has "forums" not true communities. There is no real interaction on the web,
> just reaction. Without ongoing interaction, there can't be any form of community,
> because no one knows how to work and be with one another, they just know how to anticipate
> and react to the actions of each other. It's a difference.

Yes, which is why -- repeat after me -- the web is not the internet. Yes, "the web" is mostly a non-interactive, eyeball-driven, point-and-drool, entertainment-for-the-masses medium. I'd say that /. and k5 and other community-driven weblogs are the closest you'll find to breaking that paradigm. On the web.

However, there's still Usenet, there's still MOO, there's still email ... there's still a lot of things. I wouldn't knock the idea of a "virtual community" that quickly. Most of the people I consider my closest friends in the world are part of my "online" community.

Personally, I think that Russ Allbery said it best. If people haven't read his "Rant about Usenet", then I don't think they can quite see just how deeply community *can* run.

Russ Allbery's A Rant. I don't know that it's profoundly affected anything, but there's a good chunk of what's good and bad about Usenet and why anyone should care in there.

I don't suppose anyone's written up a howto for upgrading out-of-the-box (or, rather, off-of-the-Cheapbytes-disk) Red Hat 5.2 to use kernel 2.2.X? I've heard some word that not all of RH5.2's components were recent enough, and I'd like to know what I'd need to change out.

Thanks...

Robotech_Master

Mr. Katz, I can sympathize with your plight. I, myself, have never had a computer upgrade or construction go right without considerable difficulties.

Even so, if you receive something broken, the most sensible thing to do is send it back to the vendor . Some vendors will ship you a replacement even before they get the defective machine back, if you're that impatient. They'll usually make it good for you free of charge. Take it from a guy who gets really impatient himself.

It's no wonder you have such vehement detractors...

(P.S.--find someone, anyone, to proof your columns for you before you post them. That's two in a row with rather serious editing glitches in them. I'd happily volunteer for the task if you like--email me at robotech@eyrie.org.)

This is not the first time this has happened. It wasn't too long ago that Bruce Perens was ranting about some of the same things Scoop is complaining about. I just got done reading all the shit ESR is taking here in a piece he wrote for our enjoyment. It makes me ill.

If this continues on like this as our community grows larger, the core people will slowly fade away and we'll be left with nothing. There are so many people that put so much of their blood, sweat and tears into all of this without any thought of getting anything back. More and more there are a bunch of leaches that only know that Linux is some kind of warez thats legal!

Please read A usenet Rant for some of the best writing i've ever seen on something similar to this. Usenet is dying a slow and painful death and I can't remember the last time i read alt.*. Its all so full of spam its worthless.

If we aren't careful the so called Open Source movement will end up the same way. Maybe its time to go back to the Cathedral, because the masses out in the bazaar are rioting without any control, running amok in the stalls stealing and breaking all the samples.

If any of you are out there listening. Thank you from the bottom of my heart. ESR, RMS, Linus, Alan, CmdrTaco, Scoop, JWZ, Bruce and all the others... You have made something truly great and I hope you are never discouraged. Someday I hope I can repay all of you for your hard work and give back to the community you started.

Thanks,
Matthew I. Michie