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*shrug* It's a place where I can fool around and look like this or this or this.

On the other hand, I don't go there much except for spates of avatar-hacking, because my laptop doesn't run it too well, and the conversation UI is like a bad IRC client. I'd rather go to SL and make something myself than go to WoW and endlessly grind to make a few numbers increase on a server, though.

*shrug* It's a place where I can fool around and look like this or this or this.

On the other hand, I don't go there much except for spates of avatar-hacking, because my laptop doesn't run it too well, and the conversation UI is like a bad IRC client. I'd rather go to SL and make something myself than go to WoW and endlessly grind to make a few numbers increase on a server, though.

For a bit of fun a few years ago I copied down each of the available "moods" and tried to assign ratings to them - to see how true the idea that Livejournal gets angsty EMO types.

The results in 2003 showed that Livejournal is overly negative.

Of the 131 available moods I classed them as 33 positive, 58 negative, and 40 neutral.

Things might be different now if they've expanded the range - I'm not sure - or since my opinion might have changed as some of the moods are pretty hard to qualify.

The other people with LiveJournal accounts are subject to that term, since they have a journal.

LiveJournal also agrees with the reading you disagree with, having indicated so in comments and announcements about a pending correction to the TOS to deal with the problematic areas. See http://community.livejournal.com/lj_ads/2258.html

Brad has addressed this in a recent post to the lj_support community.
http://community.livejournal.com/lj_support/629907 .html

I run an open source project that is building an exchange replacement. http://www.thewybles.com/~charles/oser is the project homepage. It will be highly available (supporting both hardware (cisco/webmux load balancers) and software based load balancing. Along with a whole host of other groupware functionality. I have done high availability e-mail solution deployments. I am in the SoCal area but am willing to travel if necessary. There are others who can help you as well. Your choice. My blog covers a lot of the progress of the project and details. I would be happy to work with you to complete this task. Just e-mail me and we can work out an arrangement.

At least according to Brad FitzPatrick. Basically, the lawyers went a bit bonkers, and the people who were supposed to review it didn't.

For those who don't want to click through:

Regarding the TOS change to ban ad blocking software:

Totally our bad.

We didn't catch that the ad-blocker restriction made it into the final TOS changes. From what I can make of the series of events which led to its inclusion was that we basically passed off our TOS to some lawyers and said, "Update it for advertising". They then mimiced some other sites' advertising policies (which said no ad blockers), and then all the right people who were supposed to review it didn't and it made it live onto the site.

So this is a pre-announcement that a more user-friendly TOS change is on its way.

(After all, we can't even detect that you're even using ad blockers to begin with, so there's no point in us saying you can't. Plus you might not even have control over what's installed on your computer, etc.)

So, yeah, sorry: we messed up.

Porn communities that are good include moviefiles, for RapidShare-hosted movies, kaizersoze125 for a bit of everything (dalibor used to crack site passwords on request, but he's fallen off the edge of the earth of late), user riotclitshave posts a lot of cool stuff, some of which could be considered porn, and the show_your_boobs community is pretty high-traffic, though if you don't like the occasional... larger... woman or man posting, you won't like it. They get all types in there, and I do mean all types.

If you're widening the net to include any blog site, there's a good index of ad-supported amateur porn galleries (which adblock allows you to browse relatively trouble-free) at JazzBabes, with an archive JazzDump.

Enjoy!

Porn communities that are good include moviefiles, for RapidShare-hosted movies, kaizersoze125 for a bit of everything (dalibor used to crack site passwords on request, but he's fallen off the edge of the earth of late), user riotclitshave posts a lot of cool stuff, some of which could be considered porn, and the show_your_boobs community is pretty high-traffic, though if you don't like the occasional... larger... woman or man posting, you won't like it. They get all types in there, and I do mean all types.

If you're widening the net to include any blog site, there's a good index of ad-supported amateur porn galleries (which adblock allows you to browse relatively trouble-free) at JazzBabes, with an archive JazzDump.

Enjoy!

Porn communities that are good include moviefiles, for RapidShare-hosted movies, kaizersoze125 for a bit of everything (dalibor used to crack site passwords on request, but he's fallen off the edge of the earth of late), user riotclitshave posts a lot of cool stuff, some of which could be considered porn, and the show_your_boobs community is pretty high-traffic, though if you don't like the occasional... larger... woman or man posting, you won't like it. They get all types in there, and I do mean all types.

If you're widening the net to include any blog site, there's a good index of ad-supported amateur porn galleries (which adblock allows you to browse relatively trouble-free) at JazzBabes, with an archive JazzDump.

Enjoy!

Porn communities that are good include moviefiles, for RapidShare-hosted movies, kaizersoze125 for a bit of everything (dalibor used to crack site passwords on request, but he's fallen off the edge of the earth of late), user riotclitshave posts a lot of cool stuff, some of which could be considered porn, and the show_your_boobs community is pretty high-traffic, though if you don't like the occasional... larger... woman or man posting, you won't like it. They get all types in there, and I do mean all types.

If you're widening the net to include any blog site, there's a good index of ad-supported amateur porn galleries (which adblock allows you to browse relatively trouble-free) at JazzBabes, with an archive JazzDump.

Enjoy!

I believe the question was, "Would you really give a shit if your LiveJournal suddenly went offline?" Since you're a non-user, your answer isn't really relevant to the question.

In any case, unlike the stereotype, the vast majority of my friends who are also on LiveJournal are actually literate. Some of them have a real flair for writing, and it's nice to read their journal entries.

I take issue with your blanket assertion that "there is nothing interesting on LJ". Perhaps there is nothing interesting for you on LJ. Who the hell wants to read about what's going on in my life? Most people -- you included -- wouldn't. My real-life friends -- those people who I care about and who care about me -- are interested in what's going on. It's boring to anybody else, really.

One account that I find interesting and that might have broad appeal is that of Tolyn. He's a cop in California who has a real knack for telling a story. In my opinion, his earlier entries were more entertaining, but give it a shot.

I have a friend who uses NetBSD for damn near everything with an LJ. (He also interned at Wasabi Systems one summer.) Another friend who works for Akamai has an account. (He had been keeping a journal on his site in static HTML pages, but he redid it with PHP and a database several months before he first got on LJ.) There were a couple other people who decided to move their journals onto their own sites using WordPress or something, but they set up plugins to automatically post their WordPress entries in their LiveJournals because they wanted to make it convenient for the rest of us to read their journal entries. In such a system as you describe, one would have to check n web sites daily, or use an RSS aggregator and lose the benefits of restricted viewing of entries.

And honestly when you mentioned the "If you see this as the first post.... you know what to do" business, I had no idea what you were talking about until someone else in this thread mentioned that those are friends-only journals where people feel the need to announce it in a cutesy way. (There's stuff there, but you have to be logged into an account that they have on their friends list in order to see anything.) Those may be stereotypical LJ users, but they are not representative of all types of LJ users.

Yes, I pay for an account. The extra features are nice to have, and I get the warm fuzzies supporting a GPL project.

I believe the question was, "Would you really give a shit if your LiveJournal suddenly went offline?" Since you're a non-user, your answer isn't really relevant to the question.

In any case, unlike the stereotype, the vast majority of my friends who are also on LiveJournal are actually literate. Some of them have a real flair for writing, and it's nice to read their journal entries.

I take issue with your blanket assertion that "there is nothing interesting on LJ". Perhaps there is nothing interesting for you on LJ. Who the hell wants to read about what's going on in my life? Most people -- you included -- wouldn't. My real-life friends -- those people who I care about and who care about me -- are interested in what's going on. It's boring to anybody else, really.

One account that I find interesting and that might have broad appeal is that of Tolyn. He's a cop in California who has a real knack for telling a story. In my opinion, his earlier entries were more entertaining, but give it a shot.

I have a friend who uses NetBSD for damn near everything with an LJ. (He also interned at Wasabi Systems one summer.) Another friend who works for Akamai has an account. (He had been keeping a journal on his site in static HTML pages, but he redid it with PHP and a database several months before he first got on LJ.) There were a couple other people who decided to move their journals onto their own sites using WordPress or something, but they set up plugins to automatically post their WordPress entries in their LiveJournals because they wanted to make it convenient for the rest of us to read their journal entries. In such a system as you describe, one would have to check n web sites daily, or use an RSS aggregator and lose the benefits of restricted viewing of entries.

And honestly when you mentioned the "If you see this as the first post.... you know what to do" business, I had no idea what you were talking about until someone else in this thread mentioned that those are friends-only journals where people feel the need to announce it in a cutesy way. (There's stuff there, but you have to be logged into an account that they have on their friends list in order to see anything.) Those may be stereotypical LJ users, but they are not representative of all types of LJ users.

Yes, I pay for an account. The extra features are nice to have, and I get the warm fuzzies supporting a GPL project.

I understand what push and pull mean in relation to content. Nonetheless, I think you are overestimating the technical abilities of the average person. What about Joe or Jane User who just wants to keep up on what's happening with their friends and/or wants to keep their friends updated? Somehow, I think you'd have a difficult time convincing that person to buy a domain name, pay for colo or hosting, do some PHP coding, and so on, and so forth. Not to mention that it starts to get somewhat difficult to restrict who can see your journal (yes, I hate the word "blog") entries in the kind of mesh setup you're describing. Then Mr. or Ms. User would need to convince their friends to do the same, minus coding (since it would already be done).

(Irony in this case might dictate the use of the LiveJournal server software itself to run your site.)

I hadn't heard of Lilina, so I Googled for it. As one of my friends recently pointed out, however, the LiveJournal "friends" system is actually an RSS aggregator. (It's also a basis for permissions-based granting of read access, doing double duty.)

For what it's worth, I too used to think LiveJournal was silly. Then, one of my friends from before I moved across the country (many of us hang out in our own crappy little IRC channel and have for quite a while now) mentioned that he was creating an account because many of the people in his new social group (he had just moved to another city) had journals, and he would find it convenient to be able to read their journals all on one page. Shortly after that, I found that many of the people that I was meeting had LiveJournal accounts, so I gave it a try myself. I liked it.

If you don't like it, that's fine. I find it convenient. You're entitled to your opinion, just as I'm entitled to mine.

Users barely need to know anything about computers to keep a LiveJournal. Hosting your own blog is an order of magnitude more complex.

Anyone can use LJ as a private journal there that can be updated anywhere.

LJ's friends-only feature makes it a great way for friends to keep in touch.

...and, to answer the question “Is there anything good there”, here's an answer Slashdotters might appreciate:

• Jamie Zawinsky
• Bram Cohen

Users barely need to know anything about computers to keep a LiveJournal. Hosting your own blog is an order of magnitude more complex.

Anyone can use LJ as a private journal there that can be updated anywhere.

LJ's friends-only feature makes it a great way for friends to keep in touch.

...and, to answer the question “Is there anything good there”, here's an answer Slashdotters might appreciate:

• Jamie Zawinsky
• Bram Cohen

It's becoming more and more common to set up biodiesel plants next to meat rendering facilities.

The last article I read about the process in Discover stated that the current cost to buy the animal wasted and turn it to biodiesel was about $100 per barrel. With oil hitting $70 per barrel, we're a good way towards making this technology economically viable.

Any audio or video events must be expressly triggered by user click behavior within the ad unit.

GP said: LJ has paid accounts and paid for their servers and setup years ago. its just upkeep now.

P said: Yeah, 'cause there aren't any expansion or maintenance or bandwidth or colocation facility costs to running a website, are there?

Well, it's not like memberships are a one-time thing; people have to keep paying for it. Even I know multiple people in a single group of friends that pay for LiveJournal, and it's a yearly thing that they pay it in.

Of course, that's kindof moot to this whole discussion, isn't it? The bit in question is how they've decided to offer users the choice of having ads in return for getting the kind of benefits (less restrictions on page modifications, more icons, blah blah blah) that paid-accounts get. The part I find offensive about this is just the fact that, well, they pledged never to do this. You can read what their "Social Contract" used to be over at archive.org, since they've changed it now. They said that these were "promises that we will keep" . . . although they have apparently been laying contingencies since at least January 2001, saying that "LiveJournal.com reserves the right to run advertisements and promotions on LiveJournal.com journals in the future".

A good example of saying one thing while in the fine print saying the opposite in much more legal terms.

Slashdot is eating the html code for the archive.org links, making even the entire formatting of my comment screwy, so here's the bare URLs.

The Social Contract: http://web.archive.org/web/20040401175244/http://w ww.livejournal.com/site/contract.bml
The Terms of Service circa Jan 2001: http://web.archive.org/web/20010126132600/http://w ww.livejournal.com/legal/tos.bml

Man, slashcode sure does some weird stuff sometimes. This is what it looks like if I try to do one of those URLs as a link:

Why don't you click over http://www.livejournal.com/site/contract.bml>here, maybe?

You have to 'get' Livejournal. It doesn't have the buzz that Facebook and Myspace do, but it really needs more credit. It has a huge community of bloggers, but unlike Blogger/Wordpress/MovableType/etc. bloggers, the LJ community is inward facing (like Myspace and Facebook). Unlike Myspace and Facebook, LiveJournal had very early support for APIs and RSS/Atom syndication and they make it possible for even free journals to cleanly insert their custom CSS inside the HEAD where it belongs. In other words, they're pretty unique.

Most important about that uniqueness was the contempt Brad Fitzpatrick (founder) had/has for advertising. See his post here. So Livejournal adding ads, even if they are opt-in (the free / no-ads option is still available; the ads just get you the features that were previously for Paid accounts only) - is a big deal for LiveJournal.

Now, finally my point - the B. part of that ackward ToS means this for LJ users: "Don't post scripts to LJ-nifty," a community on LiveJournal where quasi-crafty scripts are frequently posted. That's what they're talking about without talking about it. Lawyers just don't know how to get to the point. ... And neither do I, so carry on.

You have to 'get' Livejournal. It doesn't have the buzz that Facebook and Myspace do, but it really needs more credit. It has a huge community of bloggers, but unlike Blogger/Wordpress/MovableType/etc. bloggers, the LJ community is inward facing (like Myspace and Facebook). Unlike Myspace and Facebook, LiveJournal had very early support for APIs and RSS/Atom syndication and they make it possible for even free journals to cleanly insert their custom CSS inside the HEAD where it belongs. In other words, they're pretty unique.

Most important about that uniqueness was the contempt Brad Fitzpatrick (founder) had/has for advertising. See his post here. So Livejournal adding ads, even if they are opt-in (the free / no-ads option is still available; the ads just get you the features that were previously for Paid accounts only) - is a big deal for LiveJournal.

Now, finally my point - the B. part of that ackward ToS means this for LJ users: "Don't post scripts to LJ-nifty," a community on LiveJournal where quasi-crafty scripts are frequently posted. That's what they're talking about without talking about it. Lawyers just don't know how to get to the point. ... And neither do I, so carry on.

You have to 'get' Livejournal. It doesn't have the buzz that Facebook and Myspace do, but it really needs more credit. It has a huge community of bloggers, but unlike Blogger/Wordpress/MovableType/etc. bloggers, the LJ community is inward facing (like Myspace and Facebook). Unlike Myspace and Facebook, LiveJournal had very early support for APIs and RSS/Atom syndication and they make it possible for even free journals to cleanly insert their custom CSS inside the HEAD where it belongs. In other words, they're pretty unique.

Most important about that uniqueness was the contempt Brad Fitzpatrick (founder) had/has for advertising. See his post here. So Livejournal adding ads, even if they are opt-in (the free / no-ads option is still available; the ads just get you the features that were previously for Paid accounts only) - is a big deal for LiveJournal.

Now, finally my point - the B. part of that ackward ToS means this for LJ users: "Don't post scripts to LJ-nifty," a community on LiveJournal where quasi-crafty scripts are frequently posted. That's what they're talking about without talking about it. Lawyers just don't know how to get to the point. ... And neither do I, so carry on.

Might I suggest Color_Theory too?

Most of the value in Livejournal comes from the community and networking aspect. Here are a couple of photography communities I find interesting:

http://community.livejournal.com/texture/
http://community.livejournal.com/urban_decay/

There are many others, as well.

Most of the value in Livejournal comes from the community and networking aspect. Here are a couple of photography communities I find interesting:

http://community.livejournal.com/texture/
http://community.livejournal.com/urban_decay/

There are many others, as well.

A first reading of the ToS suggests that it is just journal *owners* who are banned from using styles etc to hide the ads from everyone. There's nothing to say that people *reading* the journal can't be running ad-blocking.

You sure?

The relevant clause:

17. Employ tactics and/or technologies to prevent the full and complete delivery or display of advertisements on LiveJournal pages. These include, but are not limited to, the following:

1. Making journal style changes, customizations, or overrides that effectively block or substantially impair the display of advertisements on a Sponsored+ account's Content or other pages within the Service.

2. Employing and/or providing software programs, browser scripts, or other technologies that serve to block or substantially impair the display of advertisements on LiveJournal pages.

I. ACCEPTANCE OF TERMS

LiveJournal, Inc., dba LiveJournal.com, ("LiveJournal") provides the following service to you, subject to these Terms of Service ("TOS"), which may be updated periodically without prior notice. You can review the current version of the TOS at: http://www.livejournal.com/legal/tos.bml. Failure to comply with these TOS may result in account revocation.

II. DESCRIPTION OF SERVICE

LiveJournal is a web-based service that allows its users to create and update online journals (herein referred to as "LiveJournal", or the "Service"). The Service may be used through a web browser or by the use of downloadable clients (the "Software"). Once registered with LiveJournal, each user receives his or her own journal space to post text, data, messages, or information concerning or linked to software, music, sound, photography, graphics, and video (the "Content"). This Content may reside on LiveJournal's servers or on the servers of a third party.

It was in the August issue of South Africa Computer Magazine. I put some scans of it up on my blog a few months later, I think they're still up there.

In a sense, the Online Encyclopedia of Integer Sequences, hosted by AT&T Research, does this job already.

With over 100,000 web pages, searchable, with posters' email addresses given, and both internal and external hotlinks and citations to hardcopy literature, this has been the leading collaborationware in Mathematics. The Online Encyclopedia of Integer Sequences (or OEIS) recently faced a problem with increasing numbers of clueless postings.

The distinguished panel of editors, under Dr. Neil J. A. Sloane, first added a keyword of "probation." Submissions so tagged, unless okayed by an editor, are deleted after a reasonable time. At my urging, citing the history of Slashdot, they even more recently adopted the keyword "less" -- meaning less than interesting, but better than probation. "Less" sequences stay in the database, but are given minimum priority in searches.

Similarly, MathWorld is a form of collaborationware or pseudowiki. Although edited by Dr. Eric W. Weisstein and his staff, it encourages submission by form from anyone, and posts attribution to such submissions, and lists of contributors.

I contend that web-based systems have substantially affected the practice of Mathematics. Social mechanisms such as pioneered by Slashdot contribute to weeding out useless from interesting contributions. As with Wikipedia, one's academic credentials mean nothing here. What matters is the quality of one's submissions, as evaluated by one's online peers.

There also many fine Math blogs, but that's another topic.

-- Jonathan Vos Post

Photo-referencing is really common in comics nowadays. Any illustrator could photo-reference, but it seems like now they just surf porn sites (well Greg Land does anyways) and then use Photoshop to create their panels.
This can be good, such as Alex Maleev's work on Daredevil, or not so good, such as Greg Land's work on Ultimate Fantastic Four.

Greg Land gets some hate in a few places:
http://www.shortpacked.com/d/20060215.html
http://community.livejournal.com/scans_daily/11917 44.html

And while there are more comics out there now that go for the photo-referencing, the vast majority still don't. Comic shelves seem to have room for lots of different styles, and this is just one more.

• Finished searching for:
  Linux
  
• Total instances found:
  0

Well if you make ubuntu work on this setup i am of to by a mac. Anybody knows?

You've been able to boot linux on the intel macs for some time now.

And it looks like someone has ubuntu running on them allready

However, I think you're not going to have everything working perfectly, I think the video drivers will only be 2d, your remote won't work, nor will the CD eject button, etc etc etc.

If you've got a bit of money & just want ubuntu, buy hardware from a vendor who supports linux.

If you want OS X and Ubuntu, still buy hardware from a vendor who supports linux - but also wait until you can buy copies of OS X tiger that are not tied to the new macbook or iMacs & install that on your generic hardware.

"Now, a hand-cranked machine doesn't target this market as much as the rural areas, true. Which makes it, ultimately [...] An ineffective tool of socio-economic development through technology[.] "

Full marks for arguing from fact and direct observation. It feels like a blessing to see this. I will take issue with your conclusions, though.

But first, credit where credit is due. Your arguments about focusing on urban areas is valid and I too have seen good results from starting there. Someone else argued above that it's more important to focus on commodification and supply-chain issues than it is to develop one-trick ponies such as this. I'm prone to agree, though only provisionally.

What you've described goes to the heart of critical elements of how computers can be used to improve conditions in developing countries, but I suspect that you're a little too close to your particular circumstances to see that there actually is a place for community-based computer resources.

I work in the Pacific Islands region, where poor communications lead to a great many problems, including urban drift, social breakdown, rampant, unchecked corruption to name just a few. Having low-power, robust systems available for use in such circumstances helps to tie communities in to the larger scale - and as you rightly state, more efficient - systems in place in urban areas.

So to be clear, you're dead right that it makes sense to focus on urban populations and to put a good deal of effort into simply making computers affordable. But that's not all there is to it. There is a place for robust, low-power, shared computing and communications resources in rural areas.

That said, the solution that Intel is hyping does not seem appropriate, for one simple reason: Rather than properly address heat and power issues, they simply added a fan and put in a dust guard. This is not what I call innovation. It smacks of design by management who know nothing about the problem they're trying to solve.

FWIW, the power requirements we have for deployment in remote areas is maximum 20W per machine. That's about 80% lower than Intel is offering. That alone makes it a non-starter. Apple does it with their Mac Mini, so we know it's possible.

P.S. Read your blog entry about OLPC with interest. Here's a link to my somewhat different take on the same issue.

Keeping with the Nordic theme, Valgrind was chosen. Valgrind is the name of the main entrance to Valhalla
(the Hall of the Chosen Slain in Asgard). Over this entrance there resides a wolf and over it there is the head
of a boar and on it perches a huge eagle, whose eyes can see to the far regions of the nine worlds. Only those
judged worthy by the guardians are allowed to pass through Valgrind. All others are refused entrance.

Look what this "joke" did to my friend here!

Here's soem little ponies for you lot,

I was amused to see a story about me in a slashdot entry. Certainly I have some opinions on the Amazon blogging issue :-)

Here's my homepage (including my notes about the Seattle P-I article) and here's my blog entry about this. I'll continue revising it.

-ted (I left Amazon earlier this year)

Read the sad tale

The biggest problem facing independent distribution is the signal-to-noise ratio. It's easy enough these days to make a movie, CD, app, or any other sort of media and distribute it -- and people are doing that nonstop. On any college campus, there are more artistic events than crowds to attend them. The problem is sorting out the good stuff and delivering it to passive consumers.

Old Media established itself performing that service. Now, it's becoming clear that we don't really need them to do it for us, with mainstream music and Hollywood blockbusters becoming ever more WTF-ish and handy Web apps making the task of finding high-quality independent stuff ever easier. I don't think consumers a whole see these copyrights as being anywhere near as valuable as the corporate owners do. Remember that Netscape used to sell for $40 [didn't check fact at all], videotapes used to sell for aroun $99, and a CD with one good song would sell for $20 (as opposed to $0.99 on iTunes). I'm suggesting that a media copyright isn't a perfect monopoly: As competitive, free and independent media proliferates, the value of a media copyright approaches zero.

Steve Wozniak, the (co)founder of Apple Computers, once remarked that he thought every one would write the software he or she needed, and people would be free of the big software companies forever! While many quality open source applications are available, there are still many software niches where open source alternatives are either nonexistent or lacking compared to a commercial alternative.

It gets better every year. I've found OOo even more effective than MS Office, at a company where everyone else is using MS Office. That's nuts.

When desktop publishing software became affordable, some analysts predicted that every person could have their own magazine; this is not the case.

Note the following:

• Blogger
• Livejournal
• Myspace
• Purevolume
• MP3.com [RIP]
• CurrentTV
• How are you unable to find pr0n online?

Yes, the analysts were wrong: Everyone actually has several of their own magazines now. The problem is that media isn't worth what it used be. So media companies struggle to hold onto the most valuable things they have, while consumers see less and less importance in any single item.

Which only serves as further proof of the approaching singularity.

Only nine years away. Can't wait till I get my hoverboard.

If what I've read here http://gregdek.livejournal.com/4008.html is true then they would be opening a huge can of worms. Of course I'll feel better when OIN is fully explained and more out in the open. It would be sweet revenge to have the threat of business crippling lawsuits available to OSS projects.

Fedora's Greg DeKoenigsberg has finally posted a explanation on why Redhat has now included Mono in Fedora Core 5:

Fedora and Mono and OIN -- clarifications
Sorry for referring to a magazine article that most people can't actually get to. My mistake.

Let me give a little bit more detail, for the benefit of those who can't read the article in Linux Magazine.

1. What is OIN, and why do they matter?

OIN is the Open Invention Network. Prominent members include Red Hat, Sony, Novell, IBM, and Philips. (If I've left out your prominent organization, sorry.)

The idea behind OIN: throw a bunch of patents in a pool. Make those patents available to open source developers, and to companies who support open source developers.

More importantly: pool those patents to counterattack companies who might accuse us of infringing *their* patents.

One of the biggest weapons in OIN is the set of Commerce One patents. Basically, Commerce One got lots of potentially scary patents on e-commerce stuff, and then they went bankrupt -- and the question "who's going to buy the Commerce One patents" was hot for a while. When a mystery buyer scooped them up, it was big news in certain circles.

Turned out that the buyer was Novell. And they turned around and contributed them to the OIN pool. Well-deserved kudos to Novell.

For those who prefer the "nuclear patent war" analogy: OIN is the NATO of software patents -- and the Commerce One patents are ICBMs.

2. Where does Mono fit in?

Mono is on the OIN list of "protected patents". Meaning, "if someone sues you for allegedly infringing a patent on this list, you can use any of the patents in OIN's arsenal to go after them."

3. Why couldn't you tell us this in January, when you first dropped Mono into Fedora trees?

The existance of OIN has been public knowledge for a while, but the specific applicatations that were to be protected were not. (And applicatations is a funny typo, so I'm leaving it in.)

We were waiting for OIN to publish their "protected list" of applicatations. We didn't want to jump the gun. We started putting Mono stuff into our trees in January with the belief that OIN would be publishing their "protected list" any day now... any day now... any day now. For whatever reasons (good reasons, I'm sure), that didn't happen as quickly as we expected. By then we were committed to putting Mono into FC5, though, and so we had to make an uncomfortable public statement about "certain business issues" and so forth.

I don't actually know whether OIN *has* published this list -- going to openinventionnetwork.com doesn't show this list anywhere -- but since our lawyer is now comfortable listing them in a magazine article, that's good enough for me. :)

Hope this clears things up a little.

Disclaimer: I AM NOT A LAWYER. I AM NOT GIVING ANYONE LEGAL ADVICE. I AM MERELY EXPLAINING RED HAT'S POSITION FOR OTHER LAYMEN LIKE MYSELF. MARK WEBBINK'S ARTICLE IN LINUX MAGAZINE IS MUCH BETTER, IF YOU CAN GET A COPY OF IT. SORRY FOR SHOUTING. HAVE A GOOD DAY.

Also see what Risk to USERS of open source from patent claims?

I really can't understand what is wrong with a simple text file.

Oh, there's nothing wrong with a "simple text file". It's just that there's like six different kinds of "simple text files" used by Mozilla. One of them is not "simple" either, it's really damn stupid, actually.

And Mozilla certainly doesn't use "simple text files". The moment you throw XML in it, it turns non-trivial. And as for Mork mentioned above, well, I challenge you to come up an "Art of Unix Programming" solution that's better than this.

Plus, as everyone who has programmed anything knows, "simple" text files, ultimately, aren't.

This will also almost certainly kill any chance of reusage of bookmark data by other programs

Au contraire, this will make reuse of bookmark data much simpler. Just load up your sqlite driver in your favorite scripting language and do a few SQL commands. Perl, Ruby and Python are already well supported.

Broken I guess in terms of "doing the right thing",
but I have burned with cdrecord on 2.6.13 like this:

    $ cdrecord dev=ATA -scanbus
    $ cdrecord dev=ATA:1,0,0 ..

see this discussion:

http://community.livejournal.com/debian/186598.htm l

"Besides, unlike a cellphone, the crank-powered laptop is very useful even with no infrastructure - you can store an entire library of information on it."

Thank you so much for having a clue. Seriously. I work in development, specialising in communications, and I run into this silly reductionism so often it sometimes makes me want to scream. I don't know why it doesn't occur to more people, but power generation is a problem in most of the world, and with oil prices (and supply) what they are, things are only going to get worse. Charging (or disposing of) batteries is a real problem where I live. Rather than trade in my crank-powered laptop for a mobile, I'd rather run a crank-powered mobile (okay, VOIP) from my laptop.

The exclusionary logic that states 'mobiles are more effective than PCs; let's forget about PCs' is not only wrong in the assumption, it's wrong in the conclusion. Mobile telephony is great. It has tremendous value in the developing world, where laying out copper simply cannot happen. But guess what? Computers are great too. So let's try something really crazy, a-and - stay with me here - do both.

Remember folks, an educated public is BAD for any government trying to maintain control. Those pesky "educated" folks have a tendency to gum up the works. They're BAD for the country, and thus must be stopped.

The best way to d this if course is to ensure that Only the wealthy can get decent educations. That way anyone who doesn't fit the mold can simply find their business opportunities dry up. The, and their degenerate ideas, will be dead and gone withing a generation!

Isn't it brilliant?

Besides, a lead in science and technology is overrated. Remember, the US is trying to DESTROY the middle class in order to create a cheap labor pool in order to compete with China.

And don't worry. China's camps of political dissident slave labor will be equaled in the US. There's just the issue of deciding who, aside from the Muslims, to lock up in the forced labor camper.

Long live President Bush!

Death to the 22nd Amendment!

Well, around here you don't get paid when you're on strike -- and that's the first I've ever heard of someone getting any money from a strike that wasn't discounted from their union dues. I highly doubt every union has that sweet of a deal. Strikes are always a last resort - usually everyone leaves worse off than when they began.

Concerning the 'natural' ocurrance of 40 hour work weeks, tell that to every salaried tech person that has had to work a 60 hour week. And don't tell me that game development isn't skilled labour either.

In a similar vein as to what America's founding fathers proclaimed, if we don't stand up and demand our fair share of rights and dues, people will always walk over us. The market is extremely poor at providing solutions to social issues, given how relatively cheap human beings are.

You have to read this as well.

A week or two ago I was watching the Colbert Report (a spin-off of the Daily Show), and was highly amused by a little fireside chat by Colbert about the release of Dungeons & Dragons Online. Here's a transcript (and video):

Earlier this week marked the introduction of Dungeons and Dragons: Storm Reach a new on-line version of the popular swords and sorcery game. I myself played a lot of the D and D way back when. Actually I once met Len Lakofka at Gen Con Ten.
[pause] Anybody?
[applause]

I'll never forget when I lost *Faraneeth, my level 21 Lawful Good Paladin. Heh. I know, that's redundant. He was on a campaign searching for Tenser, wizard of the Circle of Light, on rout from the *Shel-du-mar valley to the *Filronian Peninsula. He got cornered by a Displacer Beast and a Mind Flayer and he failed to save against Psionic attack. See, he'd already lost a lot of hit points battling a Beholder and the cleric in the party couldn't regenerate enough hit points with his Heal Light Wounds spell. All in all a sad day in *Badabascore.

But I gave up D&D in 1984. My parents were concerned I was being possessed by demons. So one summer they sent me to an exorcism day camp. Eight weeks of sailing, casting out the devils within me and making lanyards did the trick. Oh, and I got a girlfriend.

Anyway, it is the end of an era. And as the cyber-elves and the e-wizards log onto the digital dungeon, I sadly place on my shelf these now obsolete polyhedral dice. The good news is with D&D now on the inter net, the social outcasts of today's junior high schools are relieved of the agony of any human contact.

Enjoy your magnificent isolation.

Don't forget to bathe.

There's definitely a good bit of that which had to have been written by somebody pretty familiar with D&D. I was pleased to find that Colbert himself actually played for a few years back in high school, as mentioned in this Onion AV Club interview:

AVC: You were into Dungeons & Dragons as a kid, were you not?

SC: Yeah, I really was. I started playing in seventh grade, 1977. And I played incessantly, 'til probably 1981--four years.

AVC: What's the appeal?

SC: It's a fantasy role-playing game. If you're familiar with the works of Tolkien or Stephen R. Donaldson or Poul Anderson or any of the guys who wrote really good fantasy stuff, those worlds stood up. It's an opportunity to assume a persona. Who really wants to be themselves when they're teenagers? And you get to be heroic and have adventures. And it's an incredibly fun game. They have arcane rules and complex societies and they're open-ended and limitless, kind of like life. For somebody who eventually became an actor, it was interesting to have done that for so many years, because acting is role-playing. You assume a character, and you have to stay in them over years, and you create histories, and you apply your powers. It's good improvisation with agreed rules before you go in.

On a tangential note, Colbert is the only person/source I can think of that successfully managed to predict 5/5 Oscar winners. Heck, he even got Crash.

A week or two ago I was watching the Colbert Report (a spin-off of the Daily Show), and was highly amused by a little fireside chat by Colbert about the release of Dungeons & Dragons Online. Here's a transcript (and video):

Earlier this week marked the introduction of Dungeons and Dragons: Storm Reach a new on-line version of the popular swords and sorcery game. I myself played a lot of the D and D way back when. Actually I once met Len Lakofka at Gen Con Ten.
[pause] Anybody?
[applause]

I'll never forget when I lost *Faraneeth, my level 21 Lawful Good Paladin. Heh. I know, that's redundant. He was on a campaign searching for Tenser, wizard of the Circle of Light, on rout from the *Shel-du-mar valley to the *Filronian Peninsula. He got cornered by a Displacer Beast and a Mind Flayer and he failed to save against Psionic attack. See, he'd already lost a lot of hit points battling a Beholder and the cleric in the party couldn't regenerate enough hit points with his Heal Light Wounds spell. All in all a sad day in *Badabascore.

But I gave up D&D in 1984. My parents were concerned I was being possessed by demons. So one summer they sent me to an exorcism day camp. Eight weeks of sailing, casting out the devils within me and making lanyards did the trick. Oh, and I got a girlfriend.

Anyway, it is the end of an era. And as the cyber-elves and the e-wizards log onto the digital dungeon, I sadly place on my shelf these now obsolete polyhedral dice. The good news is with D&D now on the inter net, the social outcasts of today's junior high schools are relieved of the agony of any human contact.

Enjoy your magnificent isolation.

Don't forget to bathe.

There's definitely a good bit of that which had to have been written by somebody pretty familiar with D&D. I was pleased to find that Colbert himself actually played for a few years back in high school, as mentioned in this Onion AV Club interview:

AVC: You were into Dungeons & Dragons as a kid, were you not?

SC: Yeah, I really was. I started playing in seventh grade, 1977. And I played incessantly, 'til probably 1981--four years.

AVC: What's the appeal?

SC: It's a fantasy role-playing game. If you're familiar with the works of Tolkien or Stephen R. Donaldson or Poul Anderson or any of the guys who wrote really good fantasy stuff, those worlds stood up. It's an opportunity to assume a persona. Who really wants to be themselves when they're teenagers? And you get to be heroic and have adventures. And it's an incredibly fun game. They have arcane rules and complex societies and they're open-ended and limitless, kind of like life. For somebody who eventually became an actor, it was interesting to have done that for so many years, because acting is role-playing. You assume a character, and you have to stay in them over years, and you create histories, and you apply your powers. It's good improvisation with agreed rules before you go in.

On a tangential note, Colbert is the only person/source I can think of that successfully managed to predict 5/5 Oscar winners. Heck, he even got Crash.

myopenid.com's front page may not always redirect to HTTPS, but www.myopenid.com/signin does, which is what you'll see if you use your OpenID to log in to another web site.

HTTPS has not been encouraged for consumer-server communication because it seems as if many web hosts are sadly lacking SSL-enabled http fetching libraries. So if you can poison the DNS server of the consuming site (not just the user agent's), you can attack accounts on that consumer. Solutions there would be to use HTTPS for that communicaton (but, as you say, likely to break with things as they are) or use more secure DNS (what ever happened to DNSSEC?).

So, uh, how likely is someone to launch a successful DNS poisoning attack in order to crack accounts on your photo sharing host? No, it's not impossible, so maybe you shouldn't use it on that swiss bank account, but it's far from trivial. And is it any easier to do that than it is to attack the current standard for web service login, the e-mail confirmation? No, SMTP uses unsigned communication and DNS too.

Which means you get something that's as secure as the current system, is *more* resistant to phishing in some ways (since you should only ever be giving your credentials to your OpenID server and not sharing your password with every blog and phpBB you run across), relieves users of the headache of password management, relieves a lot of the headache of account management for small web applications (I can authorize http://frank.livejournal.com/ to edit pages on my Instiki *without* requiring Frank to go through a sign-up process at my site), provides a namespace for account identifiers that we can build some cool trust systems on top of ... and yes, it's vulnerable to some of the same attacks as the current technology. That still sounds like a win to me.