Slashdot Mirror

Debian rejects game due to authors opinion on women.

A properly licensed opensource casino video game was
recently posted to the debian bug tracker as a request
for packaging, as is the standard method for pursuing
such things in debian.

The bug was quickly closed, tagged as "won't fix"
The reason given by one of the debian developers
alluded to the authors past anti-feminist remarks:

https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bi...

The piece of software in question is licensed
under the GPL and is one of the only of it's
kind for linux (ascii-art console slot machine software)

Is professing progressive politics now a hard requirement
for being allowed to contribute to free software projects?

------

Debian developers also threatened author with lengthy imprisonment, denied existence of author's contributions

Previously a debian developer, Erich Schubert, claimed that the author of gpcslots had never
contributed anything to opensource, was corrected, replyed to the corrections,
and then deleted the corrections and left up his false claims.
Author has contributed gigabytes of media to opensource, years of programming
work, and has been involved in numerous projects.
http://www.vitavonni.de/blog/2...

Another debian developer, Josselin Mouette, (while bragging that he, JM, had successfuly
campaigned to ban prostitution in france, have Johns arrested, and had run
mafias out of the country) told the author that he was going to have him
arrested by the FBI (van'd) because the author suggested there was no sin
in marrying young girls (and cited a bible verse in support of that).
http://np237.livejournal.com/3...

Speaking of Piers Anthony, have you read Firefly? Or Pornucopia? If not, find them.

also: http://hradzka.livejournal.com...

Debian rejects game due to authors opinion on women.

A properly licensed opensource casino video game was
recently posted to the debian bug tracker as a request
for packaging, as is the standard method for pursuing
such things in debian.

The bug was quickly closed, tagged as "won't fix"
The reason given by one of the debian developers
alluded to the authors past anti-feminist remarks:

https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bi...

The piece of software in question is licensed
under the GPL and is one of the only of it's
kind for linux (ascii-art console slot machine software)

Is professing progressive politics now a hard requirement
for being allowed to contribute to free software projects?

Debian developers also threatened author with lengthy imprisonment, denied existence of author's contributions

Previously a debian developer, Erich Schubert, claimed that the author of gpcslots had never
contributed anything to opensource, was corrected, replyed to the corrections,
and then deleted the corrections and left up his false claims.
Author has contributed gigabytes of media to opensource, years of programming
work, and has been involved in numerous projects.
http://www.vitavonni.de/blog/2...

Another debian developer, Josselin Mouette, (while bragging that he, JM, had successfuly
campaigned to ban prostitution in france, have Johns arrested, and had run
mafias out of the country) told the author that he was going to have him
arrested by the FBI (van'd) because the author suggested there was no sin
in marrying young girls (and cited a bible verse in support of that).
http://np237.livejournal.com/3...

1/ the photographs show a different model of boing (767 instead of 777);

2/ on the photograph, the jet attacks boing from the right side, while it was hit from the left side;

3/ the airline company logo on the photograph and on the actual plane were located at different places;

4/ there's a difference of 12 hours and several minutes between the time indicated on the "photograph" and the time of the actual downing of the boeing;

5/ when comparing the size of the boieng (and that of the "unidentified jet") to the size of the visible landmarks, one arrives to the conclusion that boeing's length is around 6 kilometers, that of a jet - of 1,1 kilometer, and so on;

6/ the "zoomed" part of the photograph is different from the "original": this is because two different maps (one from google map service, the other one from yandex map service) were used for each. you cancheck each land parcel one by one (taken at different months of the year, they show land with crops and land with crops partially removed, respectively);

7/ the position of boeing on the picture, once geolocated, is at about 25 km to the south from the actual place of downing; the jet is another 50 km away;

8/ "zoomed" part shows exactly the same cloud formation that an yandexmap picture taken 2 years ago (and the rest of the map looks identical, too);

there are also other inconsistencies. russian internet is just full of them - it looks like if people were in a kind of contest to find even more.

yet russian television keeps showing those images )

you can read more here (sorry, there's no english translation for yet, which i would be aware of):

http://zyalt.livejournal.com/1...
http://oude-rus.livejournal.co...
http://avmalgin.livejournal.co...
http://v1adis1av.livejournal.c...
http://timberhead.livejournal....

1/ the photographs show a different model of boing (767 instead of 777);

2/ on the photograph, the jet attacks boing from the right side, while it was hit from the left side;

3/ the airline company logo on the photograph and on the actual plane were located at different places;

4/ there's a difference of 12 hours and several minutes between the time indicated on the "photograph" and the time of the actual downing of the boeing;

5/ when comparing the size of the boieng (and that of the "unidentified jet") to the size of the visible landmarks, one arrives to the conclusion that boeing's length is around 6 kilometers, that of a jet - of 1,1 kilometer, and so on;

6/ the "zoomed" part of the photograph is different from the "original": this is because two different maps (one from google map service, the other one from yandex map service) were used for each. you cancheck each land parcel one by one (taken at different months of the year, they show land with crops and land with crops partially removed, respectively);

7/ the position of boeing on the picture, once geolocated, is at about 25 km to the south from the actual place of downing; the jet is another 50 km away;

8/ "zoomed" part shows exactly the same cloud formation that an yandexmap picture taken 2 years ago (and the rest of the map looks identical, too);

there are also other inconsistencies. russian internet is just full of them - it looks like if people were in a kind of contest to find even more.

yet russian television keeps showing those images )

you can read more here (sorry, there's no english translation for yet, which i would be aware of):

http://zyalt.livejournal.com/1...
http://oude-rus.livejournal.co...
http://avmalgin.livejournal.co...
http://v1adis1av.livejournal.c...
http://timberhead.livejournal....

1/ the photographs show a different model of boing (767 instead of 777);

2/ on the photograph, the jet attacks boing from the right side, while it was hit from the left side;

3/ the airline company logo on the photograph and on the actual plane were located at different places;

4/ there's a difference of 12 hours and several minutes between the time indicated on the "photograph" and the time of the actual downing of the boeing;

5/ when comparing the size of the boieng (and that of the "unidentified jet") to the size of the visible landmarks, one arrives to the conclusion that boeing's length is around 6 kilometers, that of a jet - of 1,1 kilometer, and so on;

6/ the "zoomed" part of the photograph is different from the "original": this is because two different maps (one from google map service, the other one from yandex map service) were used for each. you cancheck each land parcel one by one (taken at different months of the year, they show land with crops and land with crops partially removed, respectively);

7/ the position of boeing on the picture, once geolocated, is at about 25 km to the south from the actual place of downing; the jet is another 50 km away;

8/ "zoomed" part shows exactly the same cloud formation that an yandexmap picture taken 2 years ago (and the rest of the map looks identical, too);

there are also other inconsistencies. russian internet is just full of them - it looks like if people were in a kind of contest to find even more.

yet russian television keeps showing those images )

you can read more here (sorry, there's no english translation for yet, which i would be aware of):

http://zyalt.livejournal.com/1...
http://oude-rus.livejournal.co...
http://avmalgin.livejournal.co...
http://v1adis1av.livejournal.c...
http://timberhead.livejournal....

1/ the photographs show a different model of boing (767 instead of 777);

2/ on the photograph, the jet attacks boing from the right side, while it was hit from the left side;

3/ the airline company logo on the photograph and on the actual plane were located at different places;

4/ there's a difference of 12 hours and several minutes between the time indicated on the "photograph" and the time of the actual downing of the boeing;

5/ when comparing the size of the boieng (and that of the "unidentified jet") to the size of the visible landmarks, one arrives to the conclusion that boeing's length is around 6 kilometers, that of a jet - of 1,1 kilometer, and so on;

6/ the "zoomed" part of the photograph is different from the "original": this is because two different maps (one from google map service, the other one from yandex map service) were used for each. you cancheck each land parcel one by one (taken at different months of the year, they show land with crops and land with crops partially removed, respectively);

7/ the position of boeing on the picture, once geolocated, is at about 25 km to the south from the actual place of downing; the jet is another 50 km away;

8/ "zoomed" part shows exactly the same cloud formation that an yandexmap picture taken 2 years ago (and the rest of the map looks identical, too);

there are also other inconsistencies. russian internet is just full of them - it looks like if people were in a kind of contest to find even more.

yet russian television keeps showing those images )

you can read more here (sorry, there's no english translation for yet, which i would be aware of):

http://zyalt.livejournal.com/1...
http://oude-rus.livejournal.co...
http://avmalgin.livejournal.co...
http://v1adis1av.livejournal.c...
http://timberhead.livejournal....

1/ the photographs show a different model of boing (767 instead of 777);

2/ on the photograph, the jet attacks boing from the right side, while it was hit from the left side;

3/ the airline company logo on the photograph and on the actual plane were located at different places;

4/ there's a difference of 12 hours and several minutes between the time indicated on the "photograph" and the time of the actual downing of the boeing;

5/ when comparing the size of the boieng (and that of the "unidentified jet") to the size of the visible landmarks, one arrives to the conclusion that boeing's length is around 6 kilometers, that of a jet - of 1,1 kilometer, and so on;

6/ the "zoomed" part of the photograph is different from the "original": this is because two different maps (one from google map service, the other one from yandex map service) were used for each. you cancheck each land parcel one by one (taken at different months of the year, they show land with crops and land with crops partially removed, respectively);

7/ the position of boeing on the picture, once geolocated, is at about 25 km to the south from the actual place of downing; the jet is another 50 km away;

8/ "zoomed" part shows exactly the same cloud formation that an yandexmap picture taken 2 years ago (and the rest of the map looks identical, too);

there are also other inconsistencies. russian internet is just full of them - it looks like if people were in a kind of contest to find even more.

yet russian television keeps showing those images )

you can read more here (sorry, there's no english translation for yet, which i would be aware of):

http://zyalt.livejournal.com/1...
http://oude-rus.livejournal.co...
http://avmalgin.livejournal.co...
http://v1adis1av.livejournal.c...
http://timberhead.livejournal....

Well, since you've asked - yes, of course it is!

If you found a physical piece of mail in your mail box, with a hand typed letter stating in detail how you were going to get raped and murdered tonight, you wouldn't take it seriously?

No. I'd probably just call the cops and let them do their job (check for prints, etc., if they felt it was warranted) but I'd still take the dogs out for a walk before bedtime, and I doubt that I'd have a problem sleeping. Anonymous threats are from cowards, whether they're on the 'net or in my bail box.

Then again, maybe not even call the cops. The last time someone threatened to put a bullet in my head, I told him "You and what army?" and continued walking my dogs without ever reporting it. Threats are just that - threats. Same as death threats - the ones who are serious about killing you won't threaten you first. They're threatening because they want something from you, or to get you to do something. That won't happen if they kill you, will it?

How is an anonymous online message, stating your home address, any different?

How does anyone having your address suddenly make threats "more real." I've posted my address elsewhere in this discussion - so far, no unexpected mail. But everyone's address is publicly searchable in SO many ways - municipal tax records, court records, business registration records, marriages, divorces, whatever ... so what? Talk about over-dramatization. The more I look into this mess, the less Ms. Wu has any credibility. On the Huffpost interview (posted the link elsewhere) she claims to have been a journalist and also studied law - but there is no evidence of this, under her current or former name. And her legal claims in that interview were ridiculous.

So, failed journalist, failed at law, and now a failed "feminist" (take a look at the objectification of females in this game - see the background images on her website

Doesn't exactly resonate with this quote - second entry from the top

When I watch drag queens, I can't help but feel insulted - as if that offensive cartoon is what they think feminine truth is

The female characters on her website and in her game look like they were designed by horny adolescent boys for horny adolescent boys. And 4 years to develop a free game with an expected game play time of 2 to 3 hours using the unreal engine?

Wu should go back to complaining about how gay men are competing with women for penis:

I don't especially feel that gays are allies when it comes to women. I think that we usually get along well, but I have occasionally felt that gays see us primarily as competition for the penis

.

I only found this earlier today, but it pretty much tears it for me. For a transsexual, Ms. Wu makes some rather odd observations. From her Livejournal account

I watched LOGO, our nationwide channel for gay issues, for the first time this morning. I walked away from the experience feeling it was incredibly pandering and solipsistic. It got me thinking about voices in the media and minority rights.

Let me preface this blog by saying that I think gay rights are the preeminent moral issue of our time, the modern equivalent of slavery. It's one of the top three issues I vote on, and I fully intend to go to demonstrate in Denver's gay pride parade in two weeks. It bothers me deeply that 1/10th of America's population are treated like 2nd class citizens.

That said, I think it's an error to see women's issues and gay issues as synonymous.

I don't especially feel that gays are allies when it comes to women. I think that we usually get along well, but I have occasionally felt that gays see us primarily as competition for the penis. When I watch drag queens, I can't help but feel insulted - as if that offensive cartoon is what they think feminine truth is.

There are so many issues women have that gay men never have to think about. Our increased health care costs, equal pay issues, access to reproductive health care and the threat of rape and violence. Concordantly, there are many gay issues that don't affect me - I've never had to worry that society didn't approve of my sexuality or marriage rights.

It does help that our enemies are the same, the fundamentalist conservatives that would deny us the right to make our own choices. The lunatic fringe would deny me the right to make choices about my body, and they'd just as quickly send the gays off to sexual reeducation camp. We are united against the patriarchal oppressors that think they know what's best for us.

There are some transsexuals who go to the extreme of trying to conform to what they see as "real woman's behavior" (which means adhering to stereotypes), by criticizing others in the LGBTt community, so as to deflect suspicion away from them. Same as there are gay politicians and preachers who get up on the pulpit and denounce same-sex marriage and homosexuality as sins.

This is not over-compensation. This is a dysfunctional behavior - putting down others so as to fit in with the crowd is the least part of it.

And for someone claiming to be trying to stand up for women, have you seen the hypersexualized women characters on her own web site? Skinny waists that would beat a Barbie Doll, overly-broad hips, at a time when we're trying to encourage girls (and women) to have more realistic expectations by not photoshopping 50 pounds off here, 20 pounds on there ... and she's offended by the way drag queens portray women???

Enough is enough.. We've been trolled.

I've been converted over the years into thinking that add-ons are actually a bad idea in general (there may be exceptions but they are exceptional).

The more powerful the extension model, the more incredible design constraints you introduce into the host application.

In other words, the ability to have an extension is itself bloat, even if you never install that extension. It is potentially more bloat than building it in along with an "off" switch.

This said, maybe the Firefox extension model is already rich enough to do this at the same performance as building it in, which means the cost is already sunk.

As for options, honestly -- there is some call for user-configuration, but not that much. Most users never change the defaults no matter what, and of the remaining, it's so often not worth it.

I used to think another option was a pure net gain. Now I see every option as a big negative that has to be overwhelmed by its sheer importance. http://udrepper.livejournal.co...

OpenH264 only ships with a video decoder, no AAC audio decoder. The hack Cisco made with OpenH264 won't work, as the AAC licensing pool company removed caps. For WebRTC, this is no problem, as opus will be used as audio encoding.
But MP4 won't work. Perhaps there is potential for a matroska-based h.264+opus format, as when IE and safari (which don't have opus for the audio element yet) implement WebRTC, they need opus encoders and decoders. Then its only a small step to support this mixed format.

Actions: cancellation of the Law about the languages. Media censorship. Lots of nazi scum in SNBO. President openly supporting OUN-UPA. Enough?

And since we're on a topic of conspiracies: http://fox-talleyrand.livejour... - so the SBU know about the downed plane BEFORE it was downed. Whoops.

This particular report was actually a copy of the message from Strelok's message board. It was erased from there, but traces of it were left in Yandex cache.

You could base the monument off of Flashpoint's alternative universe superman, who was imprisoned in a bunker far away from the sun for his entire life (where he sickened and weakened).

http://ic.pics.livejournal.com/kiggy007/12982942/28852/28852_300.jpg

Current support is accomplished by interfacing to the OS, the cisco binaries are not out yet, but we can hope. And then Mozilla would still need to implement it and then it would take at least 12 weeks until it is tested and ships to the users.

And for the lazy readers, here's the webcomic version. ;-)

Yep. There's a strong correlation between being in a car and having a car accident but we're not trying to ban cars, are we?

PS: http://tallguywrites.livejourn...

Um, no. It wouldn't.

http://tallguywrites.livejourn...

Please calm down. Calling people who express opinions you dislike Nazis is a pathetic and cheap failure.

You're right, disagreeable opinions do not make one a nationalist bigot. But assigning blame on the basis of ethnic identity does.

. I believe the quoted material is crude and invokes criticism though i can only find the quote and not the original

Here is the original.

...although i might wait anyway until mozilla resolves concerns raised at http://pavelmachek.livejournal.com/120952.html (mentioned in http://tech.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=4681671&cid=45995645)

Including speed. And you still can't download the information that is actually useful. Ouch. http://pavelmachek.livejournal.com/120952.html

Common Joe called attention to this letter. Perhaps you shouldn't buy a copy.

It's never too late to start doing the right thing.

If the new SimCity adds an offline mode, and you're a SimCity gamer, you should support it, and shun other games that are needlessly connected.

Disagree for two reasons. 1) Once I despise a company so much that I boycott them, then I'm boycotting them until they proved to me they have made real changes to their management structure and their attitude. How many times have companies suddenly "wised up" only to do something worse on their next game? EA is among the worst of those offenders. Even if they did a 180 tomorrow, I'll be watching for years before I buy anything from EA. I know there will always be people who think like you so most companies with this crap attitude do have the chance to redeem themselves. Even if EA went under, I wouldn't feel bad for the management at all. I'm not even sure I'd feel bad for the programmers and artists... which brings me to point 2.

2) EA has treated their employees so bad, a wife got online and wrote a very shaming letter back in 2004. They aren't the only guilty company either. Has it gotten better? I haven't heard anything saying how things have improved. In fact, I generally keep reading how bad it is to work in the AAA gaming industry. I even know someone personally who works in the AAA gaming industry and he recently mentioned something about mold issues in the office where he was expected to work and it caused him to get very sick. (It wasn't EA.)

You're entitled to your opinion, but I think you should not support SimCity until EA cleans up its act. If the company goes under, let it be a message to the other companies to clean up their acts. If they all go under, then that gives the little companies an opportunity to thrive -- something which I think is badly needed.

X doesn't need to run as root any more. There are other ways due to people like this guy.

Here is a pix of my son's room with a 3000k 800 lumen bulb:

I think the light looks bright white, with plenty of light.

http://mrflash818.livejournal.com/142140.html

Lol! Are you for real..? There's a big difference between trying to dissuade someone from believing something, and prohibiting them from believing it. An "oppressor" would attempt the latter.

I guess Christians don't like being put on the defensive. Tough luck, turnabout is fair play!

Plus that's only for the major browsers - are all the many obscure ones supposed to go begging for a free license and sublicensing (hah!) rights too? The only way out of this would be for the MPEG LA to simply relinquish all patent rights entirely, and that's not going to happen.

Or someone like Cisco commits to releasing H.264 builds that everyone can use. Yes, it relies on Cisco keeping to its commitment and, yes, it's a binary blob, but it is one alternative for licensed H.264 distribution that's being actively pursued. It is, of course, less useful without AAC but Brendan Eich seems to think there maybe some possibility of doing something similar with AAC. Some links:

http://www.openh264.org/
https://brendaneich.com/2013/10/ciscos-h-264-good-news/
http://xiphmont.livejournal.com/61927.html

Postgres has JSON support as of 9.2. Some people say it's faster than MongoDB. There's also plv8 if you want to use javascript for your stored procedures. (since javascript doesn't have integers (only floating point), I'd be a little concerned about that).

Are we getting to where we could create this? IF we can replace blood completely or in part with a substance that has nanites that accomplish some tasks better - perhaps we're ready for SmartBlood.

From a blog synopsizing the technology[1]:

SmartBlood is a suspension of nanomachines that can, among its other abilities, instantly clot severe wounds. It has an increased oxygen-carrying capability, four times greater than ordinary human blood. In this, Scalzi is being very conservative. The "respirocytes" designed by Robert Freitas (1998) are cell-sized pressure tanks that can carry thousands of times the oxygen of an equivalent volume of erythrocytes. But perhaps the CDF doesn't possess full Drexlerian diamondoid nano tech.

[1] http://underbase.livejournal.com/49019.html

Beyond the official announcements, I strongly recommend reading Monty's comments on the issue.

Always the way.

I'll just recomment this from yesterday:

So many burnt-up, cynical admins who think that they can just do what they want and abuse people - because they pretty much can. Look at the way Toddst1 treats people as a great example of how crappy Wikipedia culture really is.

Every time I see a story about Wikipedia, I remember this from years ago. And I chuckle, because that corrupt place hasn't changed one bit since. They have a new crop of Essjays now, and the Durova List behavior is alive and well too.

The reason they are losing participation is because those at the top - the Toddst1's of Wikipedia who run things - DO NOT WANT there to be participation. They want to keep anyone new away, so that their existing friends who "WP:OWN" (look it up) various articles can maintain control. The more new people come, the more likely it is that consensus will actually overturn bad edits and POV editing perpetrated by organized POV editing groups who maintain a list of "interested editors" to aim at an article where someone differs on their POV edits, poised to attack and overwhelm with multiple admins ready to instantly issue blocks as needed.

No kidding. So many burnt-up, cynical admins who think that they can just do what they want and abuse people - because they pretty much can. Look at the way Toddst1 treats people as a great example of how crappy Wikipedia culture really is.

Every time I see a story about Wikipedia, I remember this from years ago. And I chuckle, because that corrupt place hasn't changed one bit since. They have a new crop of Essjays now, and the Durova List behavior is alive and well too.

I think it is past time for CPUs to provide hardware random numbers. Via CPUs have done this for years, but Via CPUs are just too slow for most uses. (I used to run my mail server on a Via C3... I am a lot happier now that my server runs on an AMD low-power dual-core.)

Recent Intel chips do have some sort of random number generator (RdRand).

Hardware RNG accessories are available but expensive.

There is the LavaRnd project, which I think is really darn cool. However, I downloaded the source code, and it hasn't been updated since 2003... a decade later, GCC won't even compile the code. (GCC now issues warnings about some of the code and they set the "treat warnings as errors" flag. I didn't experiment with disabling that flag and trying the code out.) Also, the supported hardware list is a short list of decade-old webcams.

(Note: this would be a good project for a high school student or college student who knows C: update LavaRnd so it builds with GCC or Clang, get it working with at least one currently-available webcam, and write a report about it.)

The Raspberry Pi has a hardware RNG as part of the system-on-a-chip, and Linux on the Pi supports it. You could set one up as a randomness server to your VMs, and that would be quite inexpensive. At least the VMs could reseed their PRNGs with random values pulled from the Pi.

http://vk5tu.livejournal.com/43059.html

If you have a sound device, Audio Entropy Daemon may work.

http://www.vanheusden.com/aed/

P.S. Haveged looks interesting... I just discovered it and I don't know how well it actually works.

https://www.digitalocean.com/community/articles/how-to-setup-additional-entropy-for-cloud-servers-using-haveged

I got ran over a little less than a year ago also, and yes it was somone running a red light in an SUV. I nearly got hit again six months ago, by a guy in a Lincoln also running a red light.

When I can no longer make posts like this one this guy might have some room to say something, until then he can stuff it.

(BTW, when I made that post I had biked to work less than 5 times total, now it's the standard way to travel)

Slashdot has posted quite a few non-church related vaccine-stupidity stories.

Admittedly religious people seem to have a predilection for believing stuff some idiot tells them, but lots of other people do too. In the former case the idiots wear robes. In the latter they often wear... not much. (NSFW, if you couldn't figure that out)

I have both a G3 Kindle (Kindle Keyboard) and a Nook Simple Touch.

My Nook Simple Touch is more versatile right off the bat since it does ePub and can support Adobe's DRM. First thing I did to the thing was root it. It was great rooted, I could access my entire Kindle library save for the one audio book, and I was even able to make the page turn buttons work for it. With the limitation that the buttons worked for Kindle or Nook books but not both at the same time (grumble grumble). I was also able to get it to access my entire Google Book library with an old pre-"play" version of the app without resorting to the Adobe stuff.

After playing with the Nook, the Kindle, Calibre, and the Adobe management stuff in my Windows virtual machine I was able to get all my books save for the Kindle DRMed ones on the Nook anyway without the root. I went ahead and unrooted it. The Nooks battery doesn't seem to last as long as the Kindle's, but it's physically smaller. All in all I would say it was the cheaper, supperior device. I don't really care for touch screen, but it does make the whole device more compact since it doesn't need external controls, they just shaved that area off the bottom in comparison to the Kindle, even the modern 4th Gen Kindle.

Now I get my books from multiple sources, I still use Amazon, I pick up good deals on Google, I'm a Humble Bundle junkie having bought both of their ebook offerings, and I even pick up one from Barnes and Noble occasionally. They do seem to be the least deal and price concious of the bunch, but they have the occasional exclusive.

I have both a G3 Kindle (Kindle Keyboard) and a Nook Simple Touch.

My Nook Simple Touch is more versatile right off the bat since it does ePub and can support Adobe's DRM. First thing I did to the thing was root it. It was great rooted, I could access my entire Kindle library save for the one audio book, and I was even able to make the page turn buttons work for it. With the limitation that the buttons worked for Kindle or Nook books but not both at the same time (grumble grumble). I was also able to get it to access my entire Google Book library with an old pre-"play" version of the app without resorting to the Adobe stuff.

After playing with the Nook, the Kindle, Calibre, and the Adobe management stuff in my Windows virtual machine I was able to get all my books save for the Kindle DRMed ones on the Nook anyway without the root. I went ahead and unrooted it. The Nooks battery doesn't seem to last as long as the Kindle's, but it's physically smaller. All in all I would say it was the cheaper, supperior device. I don't really care for touch screen, but it does make the whole device more compact since it doesn't need external controls, they just shaved that area off the bottom in comparison to the Kindle, even the modern 4th Gen Kindle.

Now I get my books from multiple sources, I still use Amazon, I pick up good deals on Google, I'm a Humble Bundle junkie having bought both of their ebook offerings, and I even pick up one from Barnes and Noble occasionally. They do seem to be the least deal and price concious of the bunch, but they have the occasional exclusive.

I don't really care what that shitwitted liar Jimbulb says, or for that matter what lying assholes like you say. "waah we will fix it", I gave up editing in 2008 and I occasionally check it when a result comes up in google search, you assholes ran off people left and right back then and you're still doing it today.

Here's an idea, you go back and look at the shit that was done on wikipedia in 2007: http://parkerpeters.livejournal.com/

Now, look at what happens on wikipedia today.

Same.

Exact.

Shit.

You have your "wikiproject conservatism" acting as a sockpuppet farm coordinating with the Heritage Foundation, and you shitwits don't see the conflict of interest problem. You have a system designed to never, ever give any editor a fair hearing once they are accused of being a "sockpuppet" and where reporting misbehavior by others is as likely to just get their pet admin coming over to block/ban you instead outside of policy, with none of the corrupt fools who do "block review" ever coming back with any answer other than "obvious sockpuppet, ban" or "fuck you you didn't genuflect deep enough and suck my cock fool."

Someone tried to show what was going on with Phyllis Schafly article, and your friendly neighborhood gestapo deleted it from discussion: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk:Phyllis_Schlafly&action=history

It's not the editors - it's the admins. Less and less, but the ones that remain are totally corrupt and beyond redemption.

This is how bad it was in 2007 and if anything, it's actually gotten worse since with the addition of further negatory policies.

Want to prove you're NOT a sockpuppet? There is no technical way to do so - guilty until proven innocent.
Want to show that an admin's block was against policy? "Oh don't talk about others behavior and you can't get unblocked by proving it was a bad block, you have to kiss ass and grovel." Just saying the words "this block violates policy" is enough to get your talk page locked. And their little "email request to be unblocked?" system is a joke, while their Freenode IRC room for the same is manned by 6 admins who are the worst of the worst of the worst.

Trying to add New York Times-reported profile information on someone involved in politics that an admin is protecting? Instant banhammer. Most recently they've been letting Phyllis Schlafly's son (not joking, his username is "Schlafly") edit her article via sockpuppet addresses and maintain ruthless control of it, keeping some of her most disgusting and racist behavior out of the article despite widespread media coverage.

Power corrupts. Petty power corrupts absolutely. There is nobody more invested in petty power, or more corrupt to the very core, than a wikipedia admin.

More likely you'll teach the students why wikipedia should never be used by anyone, ever, the very first time they get into an argument with an admin and out comes the corrupt behavior and [[WP:OWN]] issues and instant unthinking banhammer attitude.

And the original author gets a sense of ownership of the topic.

The worst problems on wikipedia right now are the same as 5 years ago. Small cliques of users or single users who have friends/pet admins who "own" various articles, playing defensive games and provocation games against any user who comes to try to improve the article.

Years and years ago, and nothing has changed at wikipedia. It's still the same corrupt culture, still the same behavior, still the same old "guilty until proven innocent, oh wait there is absolutely NO way to ever prove innocence" when those corrupt shitbags known as admins get involved.

I have a simple solution: Follow me around for a day (and a night).

Watch when the new guy gets ignored by his team members and forgets that Google exists so he comes to us expecting days of basic training on how to do his job.

Never answer a question directly. Require your Padawan to ALWAYS ASK THE DUCK before they bother you. If the duck can't answer the question, then it is okay to ask you. If you don't know the answer, then YOU need to ask the duck. Learn this lesson, you must.

Don't know about your other sources, but the Soviet Story is nothing more than a propagandist fake which was totally debunked long time ago. For starters, it has photos from Nazi camps that are presented as photos from Gulag photos from Russia during the Civic War that are presented as photos of Ukrainian famine that was 10 years after that, etc. Most of the numbers presented in it differ with academic sources by orders of magnitude, etc. etc.

The movie is so out of touch with reality that it proves that you know very little about Soviet history.

When T-Mobile did this last year, I had to sue them in small claims court to get my ETF waived.

His skill as a writer is really astounding, that's what I love about his work. No slouch in the pure imagination department, either, but the wordsmithery and depth of his craft really set him above so many SF writers. And let's not forget that he played a crucial role in creating Pringles, too.

In major cities here in the US you can call the police and hope they come Chicago or in the rural areas you can wait hours for some type of law enforcement to show up.

This is the UK transposed on Texas

Texas is (along with being awesome) just one of the 50 states we have. You also have 248,950,295 less people than us. There are roughly 1.1 million city, state and federal officers at any given time. In the US in 2010 there were 1.26 million Violent Crimes and in the UK in 2010 there were 2.1 million Violent Crimes

Math is cool

In Russia Wikipedia is giving up to the political pressure to remove or edit a page on Cannabis smoking (Russian version of the page).

I can't fully understand what exactly on that page provoked the government reaction, but apparently there are a number of pages that the Russian gov't is set against (suicide, methamphetamine, bong, amphetamine, The Complete Manual of Suicide - the page on a Japanese book).

In any case, the Russian government is engaged in censorship against Internet sites and other "extremist" materials, which include books, articles, music, images, etc.

Apparently too many people around the world just can't come to grips with the fact that trying to stop proliferation of information on the Net is a stupid idea, but hey, laws don't have to be intelligent. Intelligence is not a prerequisite for survival, apparently it's also not a prerequisite for governing.

As I noted in a a post to the Creative Commons "cc-community" mailing list, while the software ("open source", "free software", "FOSS", "FLOSS", "open specs", "open protocols") industry and software users have (mostly) got the memo regarding the requirement to be open, and the music industry closely followed suit due to YouTube and other developments, there's still a lot of resistance from the film/movie industry. Nevertheless, I believe that whether they proclaim to currently like it or not, they will also embrace “openness” (also meaning honesty, transparency, lack of resentment, trust, etc.), and adapt to a newer business model based on the Internet, and other means.

One thing people should understand is that the fight for freedom and openness is not about getting rid of "big business". There will likely always be big businesses, because some companies are smarter than others and grow more, and there's nothing necessarily wrong with a big corporation, as long as it doesn't violate basic, objective, ethical principles such as initiatory force, threat of force or fraud against a person or their physical property, which corporations don't usually do (as opposed to many government agencies in the past and present). So if you were hoping that Walt Disney Corp. or Warner Bros or whoever will disappear, you will most likely be disappointed. However, I believe and hope we will see the day when the characters of them will be under the Public Domain or a liberal Creative Commons licence (at least in effect), simply because this makes business sense.

Naturally, there's still a long road to go, even in mostly won battles such as the software or music industry: YouTube ended up having to block all videos containing music for German IPs after a German musical cartel demanded they pay royalties; many YouTube remixes/etc. have been removed or made country-specific due to copyright claims; and it seems like a lot of content (Last.fm, Amazon.com mp3 sales, etc.) is only available to USA residents. We should try to convince the music industry and other industries that it makes perfect business sense to avoid such silly measures, which only encourage piracy. Most artists nowadays make most of their money not from selling actual copies of the songs, and the labels who signed them have adapted to this new reality, but given that I wanted to buy a song I liked from Amazon.com and couldn't and after a long time met someone one IRC who let me download it from his huge collection of mp3 (without paying), something here is definitely wrong. DRM and locality restrictions etc. end up hurting sales more than they encourage them, and the pirates don't care anyway, and it's time the media (audio, video, books, software, etc.) industries realise this.

A story from the trenches circa 2004 when Simcity 4 was still fresh.