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... The Infinity Ball!

Although...we've got those on Earth! We hit them into little pockets with sticks! And we got higher numbers, too.

And because I destroyed their most devastating weapon, which turned out to be pretty lame, the entire population began to worship me, like unto a god!

Or the Broken Arrow incident in North Carolina.

http://www.ibiblio.org/bomb/

I think we sell the Civil Rights movement a little short when we forget that racism was as acceptable fifty years ago as sexism was in medieval times. No, the movement didn't end racism, but it did at least make it unfashionable; racists at least had to pretend to be interested in "law and order" or "national security" or "enforcement of immigration laws" whatever the dogwhistle is this season.

Eric Raymond describes two kinds of racism, essentially the kind where you think you're racist and the kind where you don't. Being Eric Raymond, he goes on to claim that the latter isn't racism at all, and so racism is over, but hey, it's Eric Raymond. The distinction, I think, is a useful one--what was once as common and universal as the very air is now essentially vanished from our mainstream discourse.

Racism isn't over, not by a long shot, but damn, is it ever not as bad as it used to be.

Where have you been? Our dear and glorious leader Eric Raymond has redefined hacker politics, and we're now all moderate-to-neoconservative. Some of us reject left-right politics altogether, like Eric. And Dr. Breen.

If you thought there was whining aplenty about how there are no conservatives here before the election, you haven't seen anything yet. Soon enough, the vast majority of comments will be complaints modded +5 about how no one's left who's brave enough to stand up against the liberal menace, and if so, they're invariably modded down.

No, it was Kernel Panic in the linked library with the named pipe! Gee.

A couple of years ago, perhaps in retaliation over ESR's publication of the Halloween Documents, Bill Gates apparently used one of the back doors in NT to "borrow" time on the gov'ts orbital mind lasers. Alas, ESR was not wearing his tin foil hat, and now he has sadly been reduced to a raving fucktard.

He _was_ right about Aunt Tilly, but I hope he didn't buy stock in Linspire... Rest in peace, you crazy diamond you.

A couple of years ago, perhaps in retaliation over ESR's publication of the Halloween Documents, Bill Gates apparently used one of the back doors in NT to "borrow" time on the gov'ts orbital mind lasers. Alas, ESR was not wearing his tin foil hat, and now he has sadly been reduced to a raving fucktard.

He _was_ right about Aunt Tilly, but I hope he didn't buy stock in Linspire... Rest in peace, you crazy diamond you.

A couple of years ago, perhaps in retaliation over ESR's publication of the Halloween Documents, Bill Gates apparently used one of the back doors in NT to "borrow" time on the gov'ts orbital mind lasers. Alas, ESR was not wearing his tin foil hat, and now he has sadly been reduced to a raving fucktard.

He _was_ right about Aunt Tilly, but I hope he didn't buy stock in Linspire... Rest in peace, you crazy diamond you.

• Accidents at the 58 experimental sites where speed limits were lowered increased by 5.4 percent.
• Accidents at the 41 experimental sites where speed limits were raised decreased by 6.7 percent.

The logic is that the majority of people are going to drive at a certain speed on any given road regardless (the "85th percentile" rule) and the one doofus going significantly slower than this becomes a very unexpected, slow-moving obstacle which requires people to either hit the anchors suddenly, or attempt to swerve around, both of which are clearly unsafe behaviors.

While most cops won't care about this excuse because they want to maintain a ticket quota, many judges will, assuming no other violation and a good attitude, accept the "I was just keeping up with traffic" line as grounds for dismissal or reduction of a citation. There's a reason for this.

I grant you that this study, and some others like it, mention only accidents and do not discuss or even mention fatalities, but the reduction of total accidents when everyone drives at the 85th percentile is a pretty clear fact. If everyone drove slower this probably wouldn't be the case, but since we aren't going to change the rset of humanity's driving patterns, telling people to drive slower than they should is dubious advice.

Computer literacy is distinct from networking which in turn is distinct from programming [as has been said]. Don't try to teach them all at the same time, and only teach two at the same time at the areas where the two overlap.

The rest of my post is about teaching programming specifically, not the other two (although it may also be relevant to system administration).

Teaching generative models is crucial. What does that mean? It means teaching the causal connections; for one, between what the code says and what it does, and for two between what one piece of code does and what another piece of code does.

Three interesting reads:

• ESR's blog: http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=316
• A study observing students without programming experience answer a test about the semantics of the assignment operation; those who create a model of what assignment does and applies it consistently do better in class than those who don't independent of what the model is (and in particular independent of whether it's the correct model). http://www.cs.mdx.ac.uk/research/PhDArea/saeed/paper1.pdf
• "The Mystery of b := (b = false)", a study about the importance of being able to simulate in your head what the computer does. http://www.cs.washington.edu/homes/reges/mystery/

No matter which languages and tools you teach, and no matter which problems you make the students apply their tools to, help them obtain a generative model, and help them help themselves obtain a generative model.

As for which tools to teach them, I would recommend python. It allows you to go straight to the meat of the matter without having much in the "this part is magic, you're not supposed to understand this". Also, it supports the teaching of multiple paradigms. Procedural and OO programming are its strengths, but you can definitely teach the ideas of functional programming in it as well--it already likes doing things with lazy lists (called generators), such as map-filter-reduce.

There's also a good book, How To Think Like A Computer Scientist, freely available at
http://www.greenteapress.com/thinkpython/thinkCSpy/html/. Be sure to also look in its parent directories.

(There are also other programming paradigms or computational models, such as prolog-style declarative programming, string rewriting systems or cellular automatons; python doesn't lend itself naturally to do those, but it should be simple to write a simple string rewriter; besides, I wouldn't suggest teaching esoteric computation paradigms).

So my vote is Python, How to think like a computer scientist, and a lot of attention to the generative models.

If you need an example of real-world python, I'd suggest the official bittorrent client (it'd also give you a good excuse to talk about networking if you feel like it).

Also, try to take something the students already know how to do and show how they are following an algorithm; make them implement the algorithm. Math should be rich with examples (gaussian elimination, computing derivatives or simplifying expressions), but the examples may also be a bit on the boring side.

From the ORIGINAL version of ZORK in fortran (when the game data files can't be opened):

980 FORMAT(' Suddenly a sinister, wraithlike figure appears before
        1 you'/' seeming to float in the air. In a low, sorrowful voice
        2 he says,'/' "Alas, the very nature of the world has changed,
        3 and the dungeon'/' cannot be found. All must now pass away."
        4 Raising his oaken staff'/' in farewell, he fades into the
        5 spreading darkness. In his place'/' appears a tastefully
        6 lettered sign reading:'//23X,'INITIALIZATION FAILURE'//
        7' The darkness becomes all encompassing, and your vision fails.')
C

http://www.ibiblio.org/pub/academic/computer-science/history/pdp-11/rt/misc/dunsrc/dinit.ftn

http://www.ibiblio.org/ais/siberia.htm

Just when you think you have the job... it's the ghost of usenet postings past: http://www.ibiblio.org/Dave/Dr-Fun/df9601/df960124.jpg

Look at how well a proper minimal Linux distribution can scale to modern hardware! Basic Linux, for example running in a Qemu or bochs install, is more usable in its root'd single-user mode in a networked HAL for connectivity. Vista and Longhorn (and prior XP) just slow everything down when multi-tasking, yet this little thing just flies in its sandbox just fine. If it means anything to anyone, more VM sessions of any minimal OS within Vista would cluster together and be more usable.

There were some really good ones I've read, but they were on government run sites and have been taken down. Here are some articles that indirectly support what I'm saying.

http://www.motorists.org/speedlimits/

A conspicuously biased study from a lobby group. No responsible safety professional would define safety solely in terms of probability of accidents; it has to be scaled according to the severity of the accident. Sure, there may be more likelihood of an accident at low speed than at high speed, but if one results in a dented fender and the other results in me and my family smeared all over the highway then they're hardly equivalent.

http://www.motorists.org/blog/red-light-cameras/red-light-cameras-increase-accidents-5-studies-that-prove-it/

Another biased report from the same lobby group. If you read the report that it links to you will see that "when the casualty accidents at signalised intersections was plotted [...] it can be seen that while there is a small decrease in right-thru accidents in 1989 it is nowhere near the same magnitude of change as at the 41 RLC sites. The drop at the 41 sites was more than 30%" (my emphasis). Again, your lobby group is selectively reporting, only looking at accidents, not the severity (although in this case it doesn't matter much, because the report they cite goes on to say in the conclusions that the quality data available to the study pretty poor, so the conclusions aren't up to much anyway. Something else the lobby group didn't mention).

http://www.ibiblio.org/rdu/sl-irrel.html

Enjoy.

Now that was an interesting study -- but it said nothing about safety, only the standard of enforcement in the USA.

There were some really good ones I've read, but they were on government run sites and have been taken down. Here are some articles that indirectly support what I'm saying.

http://www.motorists.org/speedlimits/
http://www.motorists.org/blog/red-light-cameras/red-light-cameras-increase-accidents-5-studies-that-prove-it/
http://www.ibiblio.org/rdu/sl-irrel.html

Enjoy.

The operative word in GGP was "kills".

You should read the paper you referred to again. It does not say what you say it says. Even then, I think you know that you're cherry-picking one obscure study, from 1992, which doesn't really address the question at hand. And the "here's a clue" thing makes you look like an ass.

Greater speed leads to greater a greater chance of fatalities. Inappropriate speed is anti-social. You want to make yourself the sole arbiter of what the safe speed of a road is. I think you're wrong, and I've got the law and that big fucking metal sign on my side.

Just think about it. Seriously. Have you had a loved one killed in a auto accident? Can you imagine what it's going to feel like when you kill someone because you think you're entitled to go 15% above?

On behalf of everyone who understands the forces involved in a car collision, I'm asking you to just please just slow down and get to your destination 5 minutes later (or at exactly the same time because traffic lights regulated the flow).

Also, ceasing telling people that driving the speed limit is dangerous would be nice, too.

That's funny, because the latest version of DOS that I have is dated September 3, 2006.

Is that too old now?

I've used sourcemage for a about year or so and I absolutely love its package manager, "sorcery". You type "sorcery" in terminal and it opens an ncurses menu where you can set compile flags and other package manager settings. You can also use the same sorcery menu for browsing/installing/upgrading/removing packages but it's really quicker to check out the man pages for "cast", "dispel", "gaze", and "cleanse", and then just use the command line for package management. When sorcery installs packages, it asks a bunch of questions about dependencies and the next time you upgrade the same package, it remembers the dependencies you chose last time.

I also tried lunar recently. Lunar seems to be rather similar to sourcemage, except they call their package manager "lunar", and they have also different names for the other package management commands. Lunar doesn't appear to support rebuilding the whole system, which I like to do after upgrading gcc, glibc, or binutils. In sourcemage I type "sorcery rebuild" and it rebuilds all the installed packages. In lunar the equivalent command "lunar rebuild" didn't seem to do much anything. I also feel that I get much better control over optional dependencies and build options for individual packages in sourcemage, so I decided to dump lunar.

Sourcemage has pretty up-to-date packages: gcc 4.3.1, glibc 2.7, and so on. Openoffice2 (2.4.1) is only available as a binary package. In sourcemage it's really easy to track the latest development versions of KDE4. There are two alternative package collections ("grimoires") that you can choose from: "test" that is updated every day, and "stable" that is updated once every month. And then there's an additional "grimoire" for games ("games") and also one for non-free and/or binary-only packages ("z-rejected"). There are over 5000 source packages available in sourcemage -- that's more than in most other distros. Sourcemage follows a similar policy as slackware: they prefer not to modify upstream packages by adding any distro-specific patches, except when packages fail to compile.

I see currently only two problems in sourcemage: they haven't released a new installer for a while, and they still officially have only xorg version 6.9 (newer versions of xorg are unofficially available, but you need to jump through extra hoops to install one). The sourcemage mailing list discussions suggest that both of these issues might be solved before the end of this summer. In the meanwhile I'm using xorg 1.3.0 that is not overly difficult to install (the instructions can be found in the sourcemage wiki's xorg-howto, under "using old repository").

Here are links to the mailing list archives and xorg-howto, in case anyone is interested to learn more:

http://lists.ibiblio.org/pipermail/sm-discuss/

http://wiki.sourcemage.org/HOWTO-xorg

The Wikipedia distorts the colors and shrinks a 4x8 foot painting to postage stamp size and this is how you make a judgment?

A Pollock Is Sold, Possibly for a Record Price [2006]

For a better example: Lavender Mist No. 1 1950 Oil on canvas, Oil, enamel, and aluminum on canvas. 7x10 feet. National Gallery of Art. Washington, DC.

The depth of a Pollack is not easily captured on screen. You need to visit a gallery.

The element of chance in Pollack's "drip paintings" is no less an illusion than the effects of a representational artist. The colors and materials used in Lavender Mist were consciously chosen and layered to achieve a particular effect.

You don't have to be an art critic to know that Jackson Pollock's true art form was not painting, but rather convincing people that he was an artist. Polock's "art" was typical of the stupid abstract expressionist movement--- intentionally devoid of representational content.

Of course Pollack's drip paintings are devoid of representational content.

There are entire cultures whose art is a mastery of abstraction. There are also perfectly intelligible reasons why a Titian can set a modern audience off into gales of laughter.

The right to keep and arm bears

Closing on 7 billion now.

10 billion on my likely death year.

http://www.ibiblio.org/lunarbin/worldpop

http://www.census.gov/ipc/www/popclockworld.html

I completely agree with your first suggestion, Lessons in Electric Circuits by Tony Kuphaldt. I think he's done a fantastic job.

I would also highly recommend The Electronics Club. There are wonderful explanations, example circuits, and a recommended starter kit of parts and components, including suggestions for how to organize everything. It's a great site.

Seriously - make your own kit.

You need:
- Plug in solderless breadboard. Get something reasonably big.
- An assortment of resistors, capacitors, and inductors. Many suppliers sell bags of common values for these.
- Some transistors: get some NPN and PNP small signal bipolar transistors. Get some N and P channel small signal MOSFETs.
- A few 555 timer ICs.
- A handful of 74-series logic ICs (typical quad gates, flip flops, shift registers).

And of course a whole heap of LEDs. You need some blinkenlights when learning.

With this you can look at the 'net - for example, while reading 'Lessons in Electric Circuits' http://www.ibiblio.org/kuphaldt/electricCircuits/ you can devise circuits to expand your knowledge on what you've just read.

You also need at least a reasonable multimeter. As you start getting into stuff that oscillates at more than a few hertz, and if you are enjoying what you're doing, it's worth looking on ebay for a reasonable 2nd hand oscilloscope.

As you get more advanced, you can get microcontrollers, for example, get some Atmel AVR 8 bit microcontrollers - they are supported by GCC and you can make your own parallel programmer with an old printer lead and 4 resistors. Or build a proper computer with external memory - the Z80 microprocessor is still made, and is cheap, and is great for tinkering because it is a 'static' design and run at sub 1Hz clock frequencies where you can see what's happening by putting LEDs on the data and address bus.

Here you go, not a kit but plenty to read and learn. This is where I would start and once you understand it, pick a project and build it from scratch.
http://www.ibiblio.org/kuphaldt/electricCircuits/

Once you have the understanding, you can create printed circuit boards with Eagle (free for non-commercial use)
http://www.cadsoftusa.com/

and have Sparkfun order your PCBs via BatchPCB
http://www.batchpcb.com/

This is how I got into building my own robots, not the ones from kits but scratch build by ordering the parts and doing my own designs.

OK, it's a fridge, but this comic is safe for work and quite funny, and addresses this exact issue.

http://www.ibiblio.org/Dave/Dr-Fun/df200306/df20030604.jpg

Agreed. Show what REAL comp-sci is about:

Photos of the Apollo AGS / LEM Guidance Control control panel.
http://www.ibiblio.org/apollo/Documents/LM-Panel-Sept1968.jpg
Maybe with a snippet of the source code (Luminary 131 and Colossus 249) which were written in assembly, inset in the image?? http://www.ibiblio.org/apollo/hrst/archive/1701b.pdf

2,000 15-bit words of erasable core memory and 36,000 words of read-only ("rope") memory, yet this software helped land men on the moon and got them back to earth!!

How 'bout a shot of the Mars rover, the one that was nearly lost due to a bug, then the VxWorks OS was upgraded from 65 million miles away @ the rate of 2K/sec for three days. "interplanetary roadside assistance!"
http://science.howstuffworks.com/mars-rover1.htm
Designed to run for 3 months, they've run for YEARS!

That is what Computer Science is all about!!

Agreed. Show what REAL comp-sci is about:

Photos of the Apollo AGS / LEM Guidance Control control panel.
http://www.ibiblio.org/apollo/Documents/LM-Panel-Sept1968.jpg
Maybe with a snippet of the source code (Luminary 131 and Colossus 249) which were written in assembly, inset in the image?? http://www.ibiblio.org/apollo/hrst/archive/1701b.pdf

2,000 15-bit words of erasable core memory and 36,000 words of read-only ("rope") memory, yet this software helped land men on the moon and got them back to earth!!

How 'bout a shot of the Mars rover, the one that was nearly lost due to a bug, then the VxWorks OS was upgraded from 65 million miles away @ the rate of 2K/sec for three days. "interplanetary roadside assistance!"
http://science.howstuffworks.com/mars-rover1.htm
Designed to run for 3 months, they've run for YEARS!

That is what Computer Science is all about!!

• As a representative of the Free Software Community, participate in mailing list and newsgroup discussions in a professional manner. Refrain from name-calling and use of vulgar language. Consider yourself a member of a virtual corporation with many renowned people like Richard Stallman, Eric Raymond, Bruce Perens and Linus Torvalds as executive officers. Your words will either enhance or degrade the image the reader has of the community as a whole.
• Avoid hyperbole and unsubstantiated claims at all costs. It's unprofessional and will result in unproductive discussions.
• A thoughtful, well-reasoned response to a posting will not only provide insight for your readers, but will also increase their respect for your knowledge and abilities.
• Always remember that if you insult or are disrespectful to someone, their negative experience may be shared with many others. If you do offend someone, please try to make amends.
• Focus on what Free Software has to offer. There is no need to bash the competition. There are thousands of Free Software products that can stand on their own.
• Respect the use of other operating systems. While GNU/Linux is a wonderful platform, it does not meet everyone's needs.
• Refer to other products and platforms by their proper name. There's nothing to be gained by attempting to ridicule a company or its products by using "creative spelling". If we expect respect for Free Software, we must respect other philosophies and business models as well.
• Don't insist that Free Software is the only answer for a particular application. Just as the Free Software community cherishes the freedom that our software provides us, Free Software only solutions would deprive others of their freedom.
• There will be cases where Free Software is not the answer. Be the first to recognize this and offer another solution.

Adapted from http://www.ibiblio.org/pub/linux/docs/HOWTO/Advocacy

• As a representative of the Free Software Community, participate in mailing list and newsgroup discussions in a professional manner. Refrain from name-calling and use of vulgar language. Consider yourself a member of a virtual corporation with many renowned people like Richard Stallman, Eric Raymond, Bruce Perens and Linus Torvalds as executive officers. Your words will either enhance or degrade the image the reader has of the community as a whole.
• Avoid hyperbole and unsubstantiated claims at all costs. It's unprofessional and will result in unproductive discussions.
• A thoughtful, well-reasoned response to a posting will not only provide insight for your readers, but will also increase their respect for your knowledge and abilities.
• Always remember that if you insult or are disrespectful to someone, their negative experience may be shared with many others. If you do offend someone, please try to make amends.
• Focus on what Free Software has to offer. There is no need to bash the competition. There are thousands of Free Software products that can stand on their own.
• Respect the use of other operating systems. While GNU/Linux is a wonderful platform, it does not meet everyone's needs.
• Refer to other products and platforms by their proper name. There's nothing to be gained by attempting to ridicule a company or its products by using "creative spelling". If we expect respect for Free Software, we must respect other philosophies and business models as well.
• Don't insist that Free Software is the only answer for a particular application. Just as the Free Software community cherishes the freedom that our software provides us, Free Software only solutions would deprive others of their freedom.
• There will be cases where Free Software is not the answer. Be the first to recognize this and offer another solution.

Adapted from http://www.ibiblio.org/pub/linux/docs/HOWTO/Advocacy

• As a representative of the Free Software Community, participate in mailing list and newsgroup discussions in a professional manner. Refrain from name-calling and use of vulgar language. Consider yourself a member of a virtual corporation with many renowned people like Richard Stallman, Eric Raymond, Bruce Perens and Linus Torvalds as executive officers. Your words will either enhance or degrade the image the reader has of the community as a whole.
• Avoid hyperbole and unsubstantiated claims at all costs. It's unprofessional and will result in unproductive discussions.
• A thoughtful, well-reasoned response to a posting will not only provide insight for your readers, but will also increase their respect for your knowledge and abilities.
• Always remember that if you insult or are disrespectful to someone, their negative experience may be shared with many others. If you do offend someone, please try to make amends.
• Focus on what Free Software has to offer. There is no need to bash the competition. There are thousands of Free Software products that can stand on their own.
• Respect the use of other operating systems. While GNU/Linux is a wonderful platform, it does not meet everyone's needs.
• Refer to other products and platforms by their proper name. There's nothing to be gained by attempting to ridicule a company or its products by using "creative spelling". If we expect respect for Free Software, we must respect other philosophies and business models as well.
• Don't insist that Free Software is the only answer for a particular application. Just as the Free Software community cherishes the freedom that our software provides us, Free Software only solutions would deprive others of their freedom.
• There will be cases where Free Software is not the answer. Be the first to recognize this and offer another solution.

Adapted from http://www.ibiblio.org/pub/linux/docs/HOWTO/Advocacy

• As a representative of the Free Software Community, participate in mailing list and newsgroup discussions in a professional manner. Refrain from name-calling and use of vulgar language. Consider yourself a member of a virtual corporation with many renowned people like Richard Stallman, Eric Raymond, Bruce Perens and Linus Torvalds as executive officers. Your words will either enhance or degrade the image the reader has of the community as a whole.
• Avoid hyperbole and unsubstantiated claims at all costs. It's unprofessional and will result in unproductive discussions.
• A thoughtful, well-reasoned response to a posting will not only provide insight for your readers, but will also increase their respect for your knowledge and abilities.
• Always remember that if you insult or are disrespectful to someone, their negative experience may be shared with many others. If you do offend someone, please try to make amends.
• Focus on what Free Software has to offer. There is no need to bash the competition. There are thousands of Free Software products that can stand on their own.
• Respect the use of other operating systems. While GNU/Linux is a wonderful platform, it does not meet everyone's needs.
• Refer to other products and platforms by their proper name. There's nothing to be gained by attempting to ridicule a company or its products by using "creative spelling". If we expect respect for Free Software, we must respect other philosophies and business models as well.
• Don't insist that Free Software is the only answer for a particular application. Just as the Free Software community cherishes the freedom that our software provides us, Free Software only solutions would deprive others of their freedom.
• There will be cases where Free Software is not the answer. Be the first to recognize this and offer another solution.

Adapted from http://www.ibiblio.org/pub/linux/docs/HOWTO/Advocacy

A few years ago, a baboon snatched a live human baby, tore open its skull, and ate its brain, in full view of the baby's mother. A source.

Now, as a strict materialist, I see no reason to think that this baboon does--or should--feel any remorse for its actions. They were clearly the result of mindless evolutionary processes, just like your own feelings about animal experiments. You feel bad because your species' biological evolution compels you to feel bad. With any luck, it will also compel you to feel better, knowing that my own amused disdain for your feelings is also a simple biological compulsion.

• As a representative of the Linux community, participate in mailing list and newsgroup discussions in a professional manner. Refrain from name-calling and use of vulgar language. Consider yourself a member of a virtual corporation with Mr. Torvalds as your Chief Executive Officer. Your words will either enhance or degrade the image the reader has of the Linux community.
• Avoid hyperbole and unsubstantiated claims at all costs. It's unprofessional and will result in unproductive discussions.
• A thoughtful, well-reasoned response to a posting will not only provide insight for your readers, but will also increase their respect for your knowledge and abilities.
• Always remember that if you insult or are disrespectful to someone, their negative experience may be shared with many others. If you do offend someone, please try to make amends.
• Focus on what Linux has to offer. There is no need to bash the competition. Linux is a good, solid product that stands on its own.
• Respect the use of other operating systems. While Linux is a wonderful platform, it does not meet everyone's needs.
• Refer to another product by its proper name. There's nothing to be gained by attempting to ridicule a company or its products by using "creative spelling". If we expect respect for Linux, we must respect other products.
• Give credit where credit is due. Linux is just the kernel. Without the efforts of people involved with the GNU project , MIT, Berkeley and others too numerous to mention, the Linux kernel would not be very useful to most people.
• Don't insist that Linux is the only answer for a particular application. Just as the Linux community cherishes the freedom that Linux provides them, Linux only solutions would deprive others of their freedom.
• There will be cases where Linux is not the answer. Be the first to recognize this and offer another solution.

From http://www.ibiblio.org/pub/linux/docs/HOWTO/Advocacy

Lessons in Electric Circuts

Seriously. In conjunction with Socratic Electronics, it should give you a great start.

Lessons in Electric Circuts

Seriously. In conjunction with Socratic Electronics, it should give you a great start.

Outside of poetry, songs and short stories it's almost unheard of - it's especially uncommon in literary fiction (books considered to have "literary merit," which itself is an ambiguous term - essentially a work of art, which means different things to different people). The only instance of second person I remember directly is the short story "The Haunted Mind" in Nathaniel Hawthorne's Twice Told Tales.

Interactive fiction is probably the most common way to see second person (e.g. Choose Your Own Adventure books), but those would lack literary merit in the opinion of most critics.

A reasoned plea for federalism means I'm an intellectual midget? The Gramscian Damage is worse than I feared.

I've heard this before, this and there are many other reasons that don't make a pure Bussard ramjet possible. A few years ago I came across these guys. While I don't know how realistic their ship but one thing that did catch my eye was this.

I was especially fascinated by how they address the fuel problem. They created something called an acceleration track. The idea is that fuel is launched before the ship is in packages. The ship would over take each fuel and supply package as it left the system. I always thought that was a elegant solution to the fuel and supply problem.

I've heard this before, this and there are many other reasons that don't make a pure Bussard ramjet possible. A few years ago I came across these guys. While I don't know how realistic their ship but one thing that did catch my eye was this.

I was especially fascinated by how they address the fuel problem. They created something called an acceleration track. The idea is that fuel is launched before the ship is in packages. The ship would over take each fuel and supply package as it left the system. I always thought that was a elegant solution to the fuel and supply problem.

I came up with this proof-of-concept idea for a similar site to Wikileaks, RecordQuest. I wanted reporters to more widely adopt BitTorrent as a protocol for sharing public records that they get during their reporting. I made a very puny Drupal install, thinking that I was going to work on it after I got my Master's (where I researched the idea). Then I got hired to run a corporate malfeasance wiki called Crocodyl, which has a similar feel, but we haven't gotten BitTorrent implemented yet.

I think a good revenue model could be to charge money for downloads, but offer the BitTorrent download for free. That way you are encouraging the public to use a free protocol to download public interest information, which should be free. You also could profit from people who want to get the information, but won't (for some reason) install a BitTorrent application. You could offer a really good text description of the contents of the documents (leaks, records or whatever) but if they want to see the original, they have to use BitTorrent or pay. Also, such a system should use Osprey, which if you haven't heard of it, is a BitTorrent tracker developed by ibiblio, and hosts a permanent seed on the server, thus negating the one fatal flaw of BitTorrent, which is not being able to get the file because no one is seeding.

I came up with this proof-of-concept idea for a similar site to Wikileaks, RecordQuest. I wanted reporters to more widely adopt BitTorrent as a protocol for sharing public records that they get during their reporting. I made a very puny Drupal install, thinking that I was going to work on it after I got my Master's (where I researched the idea). Then I got hired to run a corporate malfeasance wiki called Crocodyl, which has a similar feel, but we haven't gotten BitTorrent implemented yet.

I think a good revenue model could be to charge money for downloads, but offer the BitTorrent download for free. That way you are encouraging the public to use a free protocol to download public interest information, which should be free. You also could profit from people who want to get the information, but won't (for some reason) install a BitTorrent application. You could offer a really good text description of the contents of the documents (leaks, records or whatever) but if they want to see the original, they have to use BitTorrent or pay. Also, such a system should use Osprey, which if you haven't heard of it, is a BitTorrent tracker developed by ibiblio, and hosts a permanent seed on the server, thus negating the one fatal flaw of BitTorrent, which is not being able to get the file because no one is seeding.

• As a representative of the Linux community, participate in mailing list and newsgroup discussions in a professional manner. Refrain from name-calling and use of vulgar language. Consider yourself a member of a virtual corporation with Mr. Torvalds as your Chief Executive Officer. Your words will either enhance or degrade the image the reader has of the Linux community.
• Avoid hyperbole and unsubstantiated claims at all costs. It's unprofessional and will result in unproductive discussions.
• A thoughtful, well-reasoned response to a posting will not only provide insight for your readers, but will also increase their respect for your knowledge and abilities.
• Always remember that if you insult or are disrespectful to someone, their negative experience may be shared with many others. If you do offend someone, please try to make amends.
• Focus on what Linux has to offer. There is no need to bash the competition. Linux is a good, solid product that stands on its own.
• Respect the use of other operating systems. While Linux is a wonderful platform, it does not meet everyone's needs.
• Refer to another product by its proper name. There's nothing to be gained by attempting to ridicule a company or its products by using "creative spelling". If we expect respect for Linux, we must respect other products.
• Give credit where credit is due. Linux is just the kernel. Without the efforts of people involved with the GNU project , MIT, Berkeley and others too numerous to mention, the Linux kernel would not be very useful to most people.
• Don't insist that Linux is the only answer for a particular application. Just as the Linux community cherishes the freedom that Linux provides them, Linux only solutions would deprive others of their freedom.
• There will be cases where Linux is not the answer. Be the first to recognize this and offer another solution.

From http://www.ibiblio.org/pub/linux/docs/HOWTO/Advocacy

• As a representative of the Linux community, participate in mailing list and newsgroup discussions in a professional manner. Refrain from name-calling and use of vulgar language. Consider yourself a member of a virtual corporation with Mr. Torvalds as your Chief Executive Officer. Your words will either enhance or degrade the image the reader has of the Linux community.
• Avoid hyperbole and unsubstantiated claims at all costs. It's unprofessional and will result in unproductive discussions.
• A thoughtful, well-reasoned response to a posting will not only provide insight for your readers, but will also increase their respect for your knowledge and abilities.
• Always remember that if you insult or are disrespectful to someone, their negative experience may be shared with many others. If you do offend someone, please try to make amends.
• Focus on what Linux has to offer. There is no need to bash the competition. Linux is a good, solid product that stands on its own.
• Respect the use of other operating systems. While Linux is a wonderful platform, it does not meet everyone's needs.
• Refer to another product by its proper name. There's nothing to be gained by attempting to ridicule a company or its products by using "creative spelling". If we expect respect for Linux, we must respect other products.
• Give credit where credit is due. Linux is just the kernel. Without the efforts of people involved with the GNU project , MIT, Berkeley and others too numerous to mention, the Linux kernel would not be very useful to most people.
• Don't insist that Linux is the only answer for a particular application. Just as the Linux community cherishes the freedom that Linux provides them, Linux only solutions would deprive others of their freedom.
• There will be cases where Linux is not the answer. Be the first to recognize this and offer another solution.

From http://www.ibiblio.org/pub/linux/docs/HOWTO/Advocacy

Well, you make an awfully large assertion here:

"The earth can support 6 billion modern people. It already does. It cannot support 6 billion cave-men."

My question: Why not? If carbon emissions and people's impact on their environment in the modern age is having such a disastrous impact on the earth, wouldn't it actually be MORE sustainable to have 6.8 billion people worldwide living a subsistence style of living like some of the native peoples of Alaska? Or to put my questions another way, how are you determining that it is necessary for modern man to require the vast resource usages of today when all a caveman (like myself - hehe) would need is some flint, some spears, and some agriculture to get along in life? After all, all we really need to simply stay alive is food, water, clothing, and shelter - and only at a very basic level at that.

I don't think this level of illogical fanaticism about environmentalism by this Alaskan town has been well thought out. I would postulate that indeed the earth COULD provide for 6.8 billion cavemen even better than "modern" man because the resource demands on it would be LESS, not more.

There are many valid configurations within the game that can never be reached without setting it that way to begin with.

Conway's Game of Life (which I remember programming on a ZX-80 computer, good grief) is an extremely limited set of rules compared to the Universe's - it specifically doesn't allow for randomness - all configurations of the game can be reached if the initial conditions are randomly set.

For your viewing pleasure ...

Slackware? Tha had Slackware? Eeee, tha were reet lucki. We had to mek do wi' SLS, wi' thirty-something floppy disks. Aye, an we loved it!

"can we get a screenshot?"

Here ya go.

• As a representative of the Linux community, participate in mailing list and newsgroup discussions in a professional manner. Refrain from name-calling and use of vulgar language. Consider yourself a member of a virtual corporation with Mr. Torvalds as your Chief Executive Officer. Your words will either enhance or degrade the image the reader has of the Linux community.
• Avoid hyperbole and unsubstantiated claims at all costs. It's unprofessional and will result in unproductive discussions.
• A thoughtful, well-reasoned response to a posting will not only provide insight for your readers, but will also increase their respect for your knowledge and abilities.
• Always remember that if you insult or are disrespectful to someone, their negative experience may be shared with many others. If you do offend someone, please try to make amends.
• Focus on what Linux has to offer. There is no need to bash the competition. Linux is a good, solid product that stands on its own.
• Respect the use of other operating systems. While Linux is a wonderful platform, it does not meet everyone's needs.
• Refer to another product by its proper name. There's nothing to be gained by attempting to ridicule a company or its products by using "creative spelling". If we expect respect for Linux, we must respect other products.
• Give credit where credit is due. Linux is just the kernel. Without the efforts of people involved with the GNU project , MIT, Berkeley and others too numerous to mention, the Linux kernel would not be very useful to most people.
• Don't insist that Linux is the only answer for a particular application. Just as the Linux community cherishes the freedom that Linux provides them, Linux only solutions would deprive others of their freedom.
• There will be cases where Linux is not the answer. Be the first to recognize this and offer another solution.

From http://www.ibiblio.org/pub/linux/docs/HOWTO/Advocacy

As a tabletop RPG - shadowrun was one of the games that I will always have a fondness in my heart for. The rules were cryptic, battles took forever, but that didn't seem to make a difference. The world was described so clearly with so many things that were logically futuristic it didn't seem like were you playing a fantasy sci-fi game - you were just role playing in the future.

Neither was I willing to purchase just to play a game that would probably ruin my memory of the weekends rolling dice.