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The President of India is a symbolic position. The Prime Minister has the real power.

President Kalam is clearly a brilliant man, no question. So, of course he isn't fooled by Microsoft FUD, and he's a security minded hindu nationalist, so naturally he favors open source, which is more secure, and more independent of US influence.

Before he was President, he was the chief scientific advisor to the government for many years (decades, I believe.) He's been a major proponent of high tech military Indian Nationalism; he was the candidate of the hindu nationalist party, the right wing nuts who won't prosecute people for butchering muslims. He's been a major proponent of nuclear proliferation on the subcontinent, as well; he actually designed the missiles that would deliver an Indian nuke.

I wouldn't want Oppenheimer to be President, either:

"Dreams float on an impatient wind, A wind that wants to create a new order. An order of strength and thundering of fire." -- from a poem written by Dr A.P.J. Abdul Kalam

How charmingly Vedic! The thunder and fire theme is reminiscent to some of history's best known rightist demagogues.

A little bio of the man, from a supporter.

So, okay, he's one of us (one of us! one of us!) On the other hand, so is Ted Kaczynski, and I'm sure he favors Linux, too. These are endorsements I could live without.

I wonder what Ghandi would say about the president of India having helped design nuclear missiles?

I suspect he would have something to say about that before getting his shorts in a knot over Microsoft's EULA.

The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami; some of his other books have been reviewed on Slashdot before. Not quite geeky, not quite sci-fi (technically, it's magical realism), but still pretty mind-bending stuff. It's about a guy who loses his cat, then his wife, and all the people and events that happen to him inbetween.

If graphic novels are kosher, then how about High Society by Dave Sim? This is the second Cerebus graphic novel, and arguably one of the best; it centers on Cerebus' run for Prime Minister. In a similar vein, I'd recommend the Bone series by Jeff Smith.

I wish I didn't see the future so clearly sometimes, but I wrote the following a good few years back...

The "No problem Bugroff" license.

Richard Stallman of the Free Software Foundation devised, in addition to some marvelous software, the GNU General Public License (GPL for short). Or the CopyLeft it is sometimes called.

It is quite a revolutionary document, using the "copyright" tool to to protect your right to use free software.

Unfortunately using copyright to protect free software is a lot like using a Jackal to guard the hens.

In fact, various inconveniences relating to this have resulted in modifications such as the LGPL (Library General Public License) and more recently the NPL (Netscape Public License)

I call these matters mere inconveniences, the real damage will occur when the Jackal's, (sorry, I mean lawyers), actually get to test the GPL in court for the first time.

Thus enter my version.

Its very simple.

Entirely consistent.

Completely unrestrictive.

Easy to apply.

The "No problem Bugroff" license is as follows...

The answer to any and every question relating to the copyright, patents, legal issues of Bugroff licensed software is....

Sure, No problem. Don't worry, be happy. Now bugger off.

All portions of this license are important..

• "Sure, no problem." Gives you complete freedom. I mean it. Utterly complete. A bit of a joke really. You have complete freedom anyway.
• "Don't worry, be happy." Apart from being good advice and a good song, it also says :- No matter what anyone else says or does, you still have complete freedom.
• Now bugger off. The only way to get rid of pushy Jackals is to ignore them and not feed them. The GPL is just begging somebody to take it to court. Can't you just see it. Exactly the same thing that happened when some twit (not Linus) registered Linux as his own personal trademark. People got upset, started a fund, and hired, off all ruddy things, a Jackal to try and defend the chicken! Who really benefits from this trademark / patent / copyright thing anyway? The lawyers. Who made it up in the first place? The lawyers.

OK so the last part of the license sounds a bit harsh, but seriously folks, if you are a :-

• Lawyer asking these legalese questions... You should go off and learn an honest trade that will actually contribute to life instead of draining it.
• Programmer asking these legalese questions... You have amazingly powerful tools in your hands and mind, use them to ask and answer the worthwhile questions of life, the universe and everything. Stop mucking about with such legal nonsense and get back to programming.
• User/reader asking these question... Don't worry. Go off and be happy. Have fun. Enjoy what has been created for you.

The problem is that people like the customer the poster was talking about would be even more angered by the idea the name comes from Greek mythology or speaks of a "guardian spirit." Pretty much any spirit is a demon to them, and anything Greek, Roman, or secular is evil. Likewise the "cute cartoon devil" is an image they hate very much, as they feel it is a way for Satan to hide and sneak into your life.

You cannot reason with unreason. They will not allow any justification for such things, because they will see it as rationalizing evil. You and I may disagree with them, but this is the world they choose to live in, and they forcibly resist any suggestion to change (as they have been taught from birth to do).

As for the assertion they do not deserve a computer, well, this person was the poster's customer, so s/he could always have denied them business, but it is a two way street. It is too bad that Jesux appears to be a hoax. I think it would be interesting if someone did something like that. A Christian Open Source Operating system would go over well with those people who seek a "purer" life free of outside influences (and some would say "free from thought" ;) ). Come to think of it, I wonder what the requirements would be for a kosher OS? :)

I don't see it as illegal either, just hilarious.

They respect others IP rights except when they are sued for patent infringement, then they fight other's IP rights to the bitter end.

Or when they lie about others IP rights to their own customers.

Or when they steal others IP outright.

Maybe you missed it, but when the original Matrix came out, anime comparisons were all over. (The whole bullet-time thing, for example, is reminiscent of slowmo anime fight scenes. See, I think, episode seven of "Key the Metal Idol" for an example)

Here's a good comparison, which sometimes focuses on stylistic resemblance to Ghost In the Shell.

Don't forget that, for years, the PADI dive tables were Navy Dive Tables. For a very good history of dive tables, click here. Dive tables are based on the same theories and technology as dive computers. The biggest difference is that they are more prone to human error than are dive computers.

It's great to say "plan your dive and dive your plan", but people are fallible. Your buddy may go a little deeper than he/she intended. You may, because of narcosis, get confused about the maximum time or depth. You or they might have problems that slightly delay your ascent. If you plan to go to 90 feet and you drop a video camera to the bottom at 110, unless you're Bill Gates, you're probably going to go get the camera and cut the dive short. So much for the plan. (I've been a diver for over fifteen years. I've seen everything from divers getting entangled in wrecks to outright equipment failures. Don't reply with some macho explanation of how you can foresee and prevent every error. You can't and if you believe that you can, then you need to stop diving until your ego and testosterone stop affecting your reasoning.)

My buddy and I each bought dive computers at the same time. I made it a point to choose dive computers from different manufacturers so that a sofware flaw in one would not put us at undue risk. We stick close together and always use the more conservative of the two computer readings. Had one of us had a UWATEC computer, we would have noticed the problem immediately when comparing the two computers.

The matrix' is perhaps Dickian, but Dick isn't a 'straight' gnostic himself. They both propagate more like a mix of gnostism and hermetism. Using science to 'crack open the world' is much more a hermetic practice than it is typical for gnostics. The matrix has even more obvious hereticism in it than most of Dicks novels ('as above, so below' for instance: die in the matrix and you die in the real world).

Then there is the fact that gnosticism isn't unchristian in itself; there have been gnostic christians throughout the history of the religion, lots of them in the early period (before orthodox christians wiped them out) some of them in the medieval period (like the french cathars, also wiped out by fellow christians), some in the enlightment (like William Blake) and there is a growing number of gnostic christians today. Of course most of those christian gnostics form the past where burned at the stake for heracy, but so where lots of protestants.

I just keeep a lump of mirror matter around. It couples weakly with regular matter and radiates off most of the heat as mirror photons. Also works great for cooling Pentiums, and you can run cables right through it. I thought all geeks did that.

What a barefaced lie... An accurate historical book? BOOM!........ Sorry, fell off my chair laughing. :) Just for starters, it tells us how world was created in six days, which is obviously bullshit. It also tells us about this guy called Jesus Christ, but for some strange reason he (or she) is not mentioned anywhere else. The fucking son of god went to our planet and nobody bothered to write anything about it, not even a post-it note, until many years passed after he [supposedly] died. Isn't that strange?

And the rest of the book is just as accurate. There are miriads of sources, here is just one of many:
http://www.geocities.com/WestHollywood/Park/6443/b ible/bible_authenticity.html

You want JAD

And for everyone that whines about "Oh, the decompiled code doesn't have pretty names...!" Who cares? You can puzzle through. Say some method in your app server throwing a NullPointerException... "well, where in the method could that be happening... decompile, put some debug here, and here... ah, that's weird, it's needs this obscure session variable, how did that go missing?" Now isn't that better than screaming "GODDAMN IT WHY DOES THIS CRAP KEEP BREAKING!!" and distressing your co-workers?

It's reasonably up to date.

Find your grade school teachers and shoot them. He says it's the most beautiful, but probably not the most practical. Or, even though it's not the most practical, it's the most beautiful. Etc...

Is English a second language for you? Perhaps it is a US idiom, but the construct "if not the most" is pretty commonly used to mean that the object is *possibly* a superlative, but if it is not, it is pretty close, eg (with thanks to google):

Duck and goose hunting has to be one if not the most expensive sport.

The Bottom Line Sauvignon Blanc is one of, if not the most, affordable, enjoyable and food-friendly white wine grapes around today, enjoying wide appeal and wide distribution.

'In England the main object seems to be what is after all one of the most, if not the most, important gastronomic principle..'.

That last link goes into the subject at some length. I could go on, but I think you get the picture.

To be fair, the poster's original comment is unclear because they do not include the "one of the..." construct in their sentence. So it is possible they said what you think they said, only badly, or what others thought they said. Perhaps the original poster should clarify his/her statement.

>This is all well and good, but I don't see how a broken arm is considered excessive force.

It isn't the broken arm, it's the fact the guy had a black belt and should have known better ways to stop the robber without harming him.

Here's a reference.

Defending yourself as a black belt can get you in a LOT of trouble unless you're careful. Especially if the other guy presents no physical threat to you (In the case of a robbery, there may or may not be any such threat. Perhaps they guy just wanted the TV and would leave if he saw the owner or got the TV?).

I'm not a black belt, but when I took Judo (a long time ago) I knew one (my instructor) and he did mention these things, IIRC.

Well, that and whenever a black belt defends himself on COPS, he always gets in deep shit. :-/

ok, someone posted these instructions on how to fix it (http://www.geocities.com/djyayo/PS2errorFAQ.txt) and i followed those instructions to clean the lense on my ps2 (i bought it soon after they came out, so i have no warranty anyways) and it worked like a charm. all of my ps2 blue cd games that didn't work, now work again, as well as all of the dvds that didn't play before.

huzzah!

i kinda feel like kramer when he used that balm during his coffee lawsuit.

"Think about the power of bringing our library to little schools in the middle of Africa," Keller said. "Would it make a difference for those who now have their minds closed to the idea of democracy?"

The question is, while they evolved, did their genome evolve in a direction similar enough to our own to warrant including them in the genus homo?

Actually I think the real question was the species we both forked from in family Homo? I'm not an expert, but I'm pretty sure the Lucy is sometimes considered the earliest or one the ealiest members of the family Homo, but some consider her as part of family Austropithicenae either way, these families only date back 2.5 - 4 Million years, well past the split from our common ancester with chimps/bonobos. If you now reclassify chimps/bonobos as being family Homo, you would I presume have to consider all species since the split with our commmon ancester to also be family Homo.

That sounds like it would having a sweeping impact on the human ancester timeline more significant than on our modern connection with chimps & bonobos.

In my experience, the answer to that question depends where you look. I've always been told it wolves were canis lupus and domestic dogs were canis familiaris, but here's one page that uses the two interchangeably. You can google for "Canis familiaris" or "Canis lupus familiaris" and get plenty of hits either way. If you google for "Canis lupus lupus" and "Canis lupus familiaris", all the resulting hits are in German. Ugh.

I want Google to start including scientific journals.

Here's an interesting and relevant article suggesting that dogs and wolves are more similar than previously believed. Fun parallel.

The "real" happy face

The fundamental problem is control freaks. These are people who have a serious problem with letting people decentralize fundamentals of life. They are the guys who convinced the GI generation to give up their farms and make their boomer kids get money, whether from central government or big corporations, to have fundamentals like food from the grocery store or a place of residence from the landlord or mortgage banker.

NASA is part of this problem and it is not therefore likely to be reformed to allow decentralization of fundamental resources like land.

Nevertheless I'm sure there are lots of guys who still want to work within the system rather than figure out how to dislodge the death-grip on the planet now held by those like NASA bureaucrats or big corporate moguls.

If you guys want to support NASA, I suggest you take a few years living in poverty so you can pass some laws reforming that organization independent of the conflicts of interest arising from any industry or government funding.

I did.

It radically changed the way I view politics, people and the world.

You could, alternatively, listen to guys who actually walked the talk.

If that sounds more appealing to you than spending years in poverty to learn some very hard lessons, then in addition to the above link to my Congressional testimony, you might want to follow the following links for more information:

• National Science Trust: Money For Scientific Information
• A Net Asset Tax Based On The Net Present Value Calculation and Market Democracy
• The First of Many Awards for Ethics Given to Morton Thiokol Engineers Who Opposed the Challenger Launch
• Robert W. Bussard's Submission of My Legislation to Congress
• My Slashdot Article About Rocketry Awards
• My ultracentrifugal rocket engine (Roger Gregory co-inventor) US Patent 6,212,876
• Circa 1990 Usenet Archive on Space Commercialization
• The Nature of Money and Government

The fundamental problem is control freaks. These are people who have a serious problem with letting people decentralize fundamentals of life. They are the guys who convinced the GI generation to give up their farms and make their boomer kids get money, whether from central government or big corporations, to have fundamentals like food from the grocery store or a place of residence from the landlord or mortgage banker.

NASA is part of this problem and it is not therefore likely to be reformed to allow decentralization of fundamental resources like land.

Nevertheless I'm sure there are lots of guys who still want to work within the system rather than figure out how to dislodge the death-grip on the planet now held by those like NASA bureaucrats or big corporate moguls.

If you guys want to support NASA, I suggest you take a few years living in poverty so you can pass some laws reforming that organization independent of the conflicts of interest arising from any industry or government funding.

I did.

It radically changed the way I view politics, people and the world.

You could, alternatively, listen to guys who actually walked the talk.

If that sounds more appealing to you than spending years in poverty to learn some very hard lessons, then in addition to the above link to my Congressional testimony, you might want to follow the following links for more information:

• National Science Trust: Money For Scientific Information
• A Net Asset Tax Based On The Net Present Value Calculation and Market Democracy
• The First of Many Awards for Ethics Given to Morton Thiokol Engineers Who Opposed the Challenger Launch
• Robert W. Bussard's Submission of My Legislation to Congress
• My Slashdot Article About Rocketry Awards
• My ultracentrifugal rocket engine (Roger Gregory co-inventor) US Patent 6,212,876
• Circa 1990 Usenet Archive on Space Commercialization
• The Nature of Money and Government

The fundamental problem is control freaks. These are people who have a serious problem with letting people decentralize fundamentals of life. They are the guys who convinced the GI generation to give up their farms and make their boomer kids get money, whether from central government or big corporations, to have fundamentals like food from the grocery store or a place of residence from the landlord or mortgage banker.

NASA is part of this problem and it is not therefore likely to be reformed to allow decentralization of fundamental resources like land.

Nevertheless I'm sure there are lots of guys who still want to work within the system rather than figure out how to dislodge the death-grip on the planet now held by those like NASA bureaucrats or big corporate moguls.

If you guys want to support NASA, I suggest you take a few years living in poverty so you can pass some laws reforming that organization independent of the conflicts of interest arising from any industry or government funding.

I did.

It radically changed the way I view politics, people and the world.

You could, alternatively, listen to guys who actually walked the talk.

If that sounds more appealing to you than spending years in poverty to learn some very hard lessons, then in addition to the above link to my Congressional testimony, you might want to follow the following links for more information:

• National Science Trust: Money For Scientific Information
• A Net Asset Tax Based On The Net Present Value Calculation and Market Democracy
• The First of Many Awards for Ethics Given to Morton Thiokol Engineers Who Opposed the Challenger Launch
• Robert W. Bussard's Submission of My Legislation to Congress
• My Slashdot Article About Rocketry Awards
• My ultracentrifugal rocket engine (Roger Gregory co-inventor) US Patent 6,212,876
• Circa 1990 Usenet Archive on Space Commercialization
• The Nature of Money and Government

The fundamental problem is control freaks. These are people who have a serious problem with letting people decentralize fundamentals of life. They are the guys who convinced the GI generation to give up their farms and make their boomer kids get money, whether from central government or big corporations, to have fundamentals like food from the grocery store or a place of residence from the landlord or mortgage banker.

NASA is part of this problem and it is not therefore likely to be reformed to allow decentralization of fundamental resources like land.

Nevertheless I'm sure there are lots of guys who still want to work within the system rather than figure out how to dislodge the death-grip on the planet now held by those like NASA bureaucrats or big corporate moguls.

If you guys want to support NASA, I suggest you take a few years living in poverty so you can pass some laws reforming that organization independent of the conflicts of interest arising from any industry or government funding.

I did.

It radically changed the way I view politics, people and the world.

You could, alternatively, listen to guys who actually walked the talk.

If that sounds more appealing to you than spending years in poverty to learn some very hard lessons, then in addition to the above link to my Congressional testimony, you might want to follow the following links for more information:

• National Science Trust: Money For Scientific Information
• A Net Asset Tax Based On The Net Present Value Calculation and Market Democracy
• The First of Many Awards for Ethics Given to Morton Thiokol Engineers Who Opposed the Challenger Launch
• Robert W. Bussard's Submission of My Legislation to Congress
• My Slashdot Article About Rocketry Awards
• My ultracentrifugal rocket engine (Roger Gregory co-inventor) US Patent 6,212,876
• Circa 1990 Usenet Archive on Space Commercialization
• The Nature of Money and Government

The fundamental problem is control freaks. These are people who have a serious problem with letting people decentralize fundamentals of life. They are the guys who convinced the GI generation to give up their farms and make their boomer kids get money, whether from central government or big corporations, to have fundamentals like food from the grocery store or a place of residence from the landlord or mortgage banker.

NASA is part of this problem and it is not therefore likely to be reformed to allow decentralization of fundamental resources like land.

Nevertheless I'm sure there are lots of guys who still want to work within the system rather than figure out how to dislodge the death-grip on the planet now held by those like NASA bureaucrats or big corporate moguls.

If you guys want to support NASA, I suggest you take a few years living in poverty so you can pass some laws reforming that organization independent of the conflicts of interest arising from any industry or government funding.

I did.

It radically changed the way I view politics, people and the world.

You could, alternatively, listen to guys who actually walked the talk.

If that sounds more appealing to you than spending years in poverty to learn some very hard lessons, then in addition to the above link to my Congressional testimony, you might want to follow the following links for more information:

• National Science Trust: Money For Scientific Information
• A Net Asset Tax Based On The Net Present Value Calculation and Market Democracy
• The First of Many Awards for Ethics Given to Morton Thiokol Engineers Who Opposed the Challenger Launch
• Robert W. Bussard's Submission of My Legislation to Congress
• My Slashdot Article About Rocketry Awards
• My ultracentrifugal rocket engine (Roger Gregory co-inventor) US Patent 6,212,876
• Circa 1990 Usenet Archive on Space Commercialization
• The Nature of Money and Government

The fundamental problem is control freaks. These are people who have a serious problem with letting people decentralize fundamentals of life. They are the guys who convinced the GI generation to give up their farms and make their boomer kids get money, whether from central government or big corporations, to have fundamentals like food from the grocery store or a place of residence from the landlord or mortgage banker.

NASA is part of this problem and it is not therefore likely to be reformed to allow decentralization of fundamental resources like land.

Nevertheless I'm sure there are lots of guys who still want to work within the system rather than figure out how to dislodge the death-grip on the planet now held by those like NASA bureaucrats or big corporate moguls.

If you guys want to support NASA, I suggest you take a few years living in poverty so you can pass some laws reforming that organization independent of the conflicts of interest arising from any industry or government funding.

I did.

It radically changed the way I view politics, people and the world.

You could, alternatively, listen to guys who actually walked the talk.

If that sounds more appealing to you than spending years in poverty to learn some very hard lessons, then in addition to the above link to my Congressional testimony, you might want to follow the following links for more information:

• National Science Trust: Money For Scientific Information
• A Net Asset Tax Based On The Net Present Value Calculation and Market Democracy
• The First of Many Awards for Ethics Given to Morton Thiokol Engineers Who Opposed the Challenger Launch
• Robert W. Bussard's Submission of My Legislation to Congress
• My Slashdot Article About Rocketry Awards
• My ultracentrifugal rocket engine (Roger Gregory co-inventor) US Patent 6,212,876
• Circa 1990 Usenet Archive on Space Commercialization
• The Nature of Money and Government

Harley Davidson Sportster rental: $75 / day
Harley Davidson Sportster retail price : $5,975

Segway retail price: $4,950
Segway rental price: $60 for 90 minutes.

My first job out of University was working as a computer operator at a wind tunnel.

We did lots of commerical and military stuff, and I'm really not surprised to find the F117 and a few other machines that I prolly shouldn't mention not on their list of aircraft we helped build.

For a young geek in Western New York, this was a radically cool job. When I started working there we used a bunch of IBM 1401's, at the time their largest single installation of these machines.

Later we became a DEC shop, and beta tested their PDP 11/70 series of machines.

Prolly the neatest thing - aside from the computers that is - were the models. There were a group of craftsman that would carefully, over a period of months and sometimes years, hand craft these incredibly accurate models of the various aircraft.

But they weren't just static models, being integrated with hundreds of air pressure sensors.

I worked on what was called the 'Data Reduction Team'; our machines captured, in real time, data from these sensors and later we could model the prototype aircrafts performance - should it be built that is!

Far cheaper to spend a few months in a wind tunnel testing various models then to build the real thing and have it crash.

When working we were a 24/7 shop, and although the money was good, that was the rub. The biz was largely defense driven, and after a few years I got tired of the binge and purge nature of working in defense.

But the story had a happy ending, as I landed a gig at Bell Labs and never looked at the defense industry again.

Is there scope in the market for a non sex based matchmaking service, a 'FindPeer' service to encourage one on one peer (or coach or mentor) based short relationships? I did a rough spec and
wiki page on such a service but at 10 hits from google in 4 months maybe it is not worth more investigation without more marketing!

Most newsgroups and slashdot items seldom lead to interesting one on one discussion except perhaps for aggressive self opinionated 'experts' (allegedly).

FYI I may have time for some one on one discussion but not necessarily to join an open source programming project, and the local linux group does not seem approachable enough for this purpose. Also the peer development may not necessarily be in the computing field.

Signed a meek want-to-be peer developed with 10 years developer experience.

A viable alternative to the shuttle was on the drawing board as far back as the late 1980s. HOTOL (Horizontal Take-Off and Landing), similar in appearance to current generation supersonic aircraft was designed by British rocket veteran Alan Bond.

Unfortunately, as soon as Bond had designed the revolutionary air-breathing engine that the project was based on, it was classified by the British government. Score one for stupid politics. So, perhaps the best rocketry engine designed never got built.

Later, HOTOL variants and derivatives were proposed, including an Anglo-Russian project called Interim HOTOL.

Here are a few related links to check out, most of which contain illustrations of what the orbiter would have looked like:

HOTOL
HOTOL and Interim HOTOL
Wikipedia entry for HOTOL

Google search for "HOTOL"

Of course, HOTOL and HOTOL-derived orbiters are still a viable alternative today. Air-breathing engines seem to be the logical next step.

Will they put all of John Travolta's movies on self destructable media? Please please please...

Will there be an old guy counting down the seconds before it self-destructs ?

And will the disk start to smoke?

Maybe they will sell models of it at Flag-o-Rama. Isn't that Confeddy Freddy cute?

Just so we don't /. this fabulous site, i've kindly pasted the contents here for your viewing.

Section 1 - Trolling techniques

There are techniques used by successful trolls to elicit the maximum amount of responses from unthinking /.ers. This section is dedicated to explaining how to use these in the course of your trolls. Remember though, a great troll can break any or all of these and still be successful...

* Timing

Because you're posting as an AC, your troll will generally be ignored in favour of posters using their accounts, and so getting in early is essential. A good guideline is to get into the first 20 posts, so that people reading the article will see the troll before it is swamped out. One way of increasing the speed with which you get your troll into play is to prepare them beforehand, and then quickly customise them for the current article. This is easier than it sounds since /. typically repeats stories with small variations and runs lots of similar stories.

Note that this is why Jon Katz stories are pretty worthless as trolling material - by the time you've found the article and prepared a troll there's already 50+ posts on it, most of them flaming Jon Katz anyway :)
* Exposure

Once you've got your troll in, you need people to actually read it. You also want replies - /.ers are more likely to read your troll if it starts a large thread. You also want to remember that some people have set their comment thresholds to values higher than 0 - to get the attention of these you either want to get your post moderated up (see Style, below) or get a reply which gets moderated up to 4 or 5, in which case your troll becomes visible to all.
* Accounts

An alternative to the time-honoured tradition of AC trolling is that of creating a "troll" account. This gives you the advantage of posting at 1 rather than 0, and slashbots are more likely to take you seriously, especially if you at least sound reasonable. If you do this, try to avoid posting stuff where it is obvious you're a troll under the account - post it anoymously instead - some slightly more canny readers actually check your user info before they reply. Not many though :)

The ultimate goal of the troll account is to secure the +1 bonus, which is currently received once you hit 26 points of Karma. To get there, employ the techniques of karma whoring that we see every day on /. and watch the karma roll in. And of course once you get the +1 bonus, the world is your oyster in terms of /. Posts made at a default of 2 hit even those people with the threshold of 2, are more likely to get moderated up even further if they are at all coherent, and people tend to lose their critical thinking abilities in the face of the +1 bonus. Milk it for all it's worth.
* Layout

To get people reading it a troll needs to be easily readable. Make sure you break it down into easily digestible paragraphs, use HTML tags where appropriate (but always make sure you close them properly) and use whitespace appropriately.
* Size

Generally a troll shouldn't be too short, otherwise it'll get lost in the crowd. A workable minimum is a couple of medium paragraphs. Conversely, it shouldn't be too long, or no-one will bother to read it. Keep it to a happy medium.
* Spelling

Whilst spelling is important if you want the troll to be taken "seriously", key spelling mistakes can draw out the spelling zealots, especially if you mis-spell the name of a venerated /. hero, like Linus Torveldes or Richard Strawlman (thanks dmg). Related to this is the use of the wrong word, explaining an

Paul Terwilliger, director of product development at Sequoia Voting Systems

A brother, perhaps, of one Robert Underdunk Terwilliger, a man known to have rigged at least one election, as well as having been convicted of attempteed murder!!!

Carl Sagan wasn't really respected in the fields of science as many would like for us to believe. He had popular "propoganda" like shows on PBS more to promote his books than anything. The movie "Contact" gave him a little recognition only because the movie was made believable (and bias I might add)

Most scientists will tell you the Carl Sagan coined phrase "If just one in a Billion, then one in that billion...." isn't plausible. (More logical fallacy) Most TRUELY academic scientists will tell you there seems to be "some" evidence of a creator or at the very least a "lottery for life". So, the chances are actually incalculable. Lottery = your chances in getting picked out the pool may be one in a million, but your chances of picking the right number on the right day and being that one in a million are impossible odds. Then you have the odds of actually claiming your prize and meeting the eligibility/legitimacy of the prize.

Amino acids, planet size, PRECISE planetary evolution, distance from a sun, atmosphere, OTHER life, moons and magnetic/gravtational forces all contribute to life existing. Not a single scientists has been able to prove 100% that life exists elsewhere, only propoganda and conjecture.

Euro notesfor the US citizens who might not have seen them yet...
Swiss banknotes also a favorite of drug dealers... Please notice that they include many security features (like euros) and the 4 national languages (the fourth one is spoken by only 30000-50000 people).
Notice the 1000 (~650 $) francs note, highest bill in circulation in the world. You can buy your car in switzerland and not even look like you have much money in your wallet... These are always carefully checked...
Lastly the new 20 pesos bill from México (third from the top). It's polymer based and includes a little transparent window... Supposedly undestroyable (except by fire...)

I did clean the lens, but that isn't the problem-- it's due to faulty hardware in the first product shipment, there appears to be a class action lawsuit.

Bah! If people think The Matrix has Christian parallels, they should check out Chrono Trigger (an old SNES RPG, IMHO one of the best RPGs ever). Or at least look at this site: The Chrono Trigger Testament.

Funny, the allegory I saw in the Matrix was capitalism. The humans in their pods are the wage slaves and the machines living off them are the capitalist elite. The matrix is the corporate media working to hide the true nature of their situation from slaves and keep them distracted and entertained. The agents are the police using violence to control those you question the system. This all works on many levels since the "reality" that the matrix is simulating is a capitalist society itself.

While it is likely that this allegory is "probably inadvertent" seeing as Hollywood is part of the Matrix of the real world and not prone to spreading such thoughtcrime, it may be that the original idea came from someone who had this allegory in mind and some of it has survived in the Wachowski brothers script.

In addition the all the religious conections the film also seems to appeal to fans of Nietzsche, so perhaps in the end the reason for its popularity is that it has something for everyone in it and it is subtle enough not to push any of its possible messages down anyones throat.

http://geocities.com/ilikespaghettiandmeatballs/xb oxpsx.htm

In much the same way as 6 degrees of kevin bacon works, I'd venture to say that you can find more than half of all useful web sites within six degrees of web linking. The interesting thing will be that blogs do form their own little distinct cluster. This also applies to other aspects of computer networks, as well as certain human beings.

You could try NTLM Authorization Proxy Server. It works as a proxy performing NTLM authentication.I have been using it for the last year without problems.

this man is an impostor!

Check out the NTLM authorization proxy server here.

That's what I use.

* FF9 should not be on the top 25 - horribly unoriginal, bad gameplay, bad characters.

* FF8 is best in the series.

* FF8 has best gameplay, no random encounters after getting Enc None (very early), no levelling up needed. Random encounters are bad, and an artifact of primitive technology of times past.

* FF8 has best characters. Squall much more realistic than others. Play Rameses (an IF game) using Frotz to understand his character better.

* FF6 is only good for the first half, gets very boring in World of Ruin. PC rpgs do no linearity better. FF6 should be ranked about 10th at best, not 1st.

* FFX is underrated, should be much higher. Excellent story, only FF7 has better (although FF7 is quite bad at everything else)

* Chrono Trigger is also overrated.

I have concluded that beyond the trivial, trees have outgrown their usefulness in file systems. Trees force static, artificial taxonomies on things which really need a more flexible, multi-perspective (multi-factor) way of looking at them.

I have been kicking around set-based file systems, possibly built around relational technology. Microsoft has been kicking around the death of trees also in their future file systems.

If you're playing DDR on a playstation, you just grab a $5 knockoff playstation controller and wire to the button connectors on the circuit board. I did this, using heavy modifications on the design found here. If you're playing on the PC, I think you can then just get an adapter to convert the playstation controller to USB.

Why do people live in places like this when they get hit _every year_ by tornados?

Impossible, and it's been discussed over and over again in the various newsgroups whenever this week's "Shuttle To The Moon" thread starts up.