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I'll add my own thoughts here, also posted at http://xiphmont.livejournal.com/59893.html

"After a decade of the MPEG LA saying they were coming to destroy the FOSS codec movement, with none other than the late Steve Jobs himself chiming in, today the Licensing Authority announced what we already knew.

They got nothing. There will be no Theora patent pool. There will be no VP8 patent pool. There will be no VPnext patent pool.

We knew that of course, we always did. It's just that I never, in a million years, expected them to put it in writing and walk away. The wording suggests Google paid some money to grease this along, and the agreement wording is interesting [and instructive] but make no mistake: Google won. Full stop.

This is not an unconditional win for FOSS, of course, the LA narrowed the scope of the agreement as much as they could in return for agreeing to stop being a pissy, anti-competetive brat. But this is still huge. We can work with this.

For at least the immediate future, I shall have to think some uncharacteristically nice things about the MPEG LA.*

*Apologies to Rep. Barney Frank"

You don't know what C3PO got up to at night when the humans were sleeping. A good cover for a killbot would a a C3PO like personality when the humans were awake but reboot into a separate Terminator like personality when they were asleep.

If R2D2 was the mastermind behind the rebellion, C3PO and other "protocol droids" were ideal to act as covert assassins - i.e. eliminating people the rebellion needed to eliminate. Not that their relatively sunny and innocuous "daytime" personality would have been aware of it - in fact they'd be quite shocked to discover that persons unknown had deactivated them, killed their much loved masters and turned them back on again. Or so they'd think.

Actually of course their R2 partner would have dual booted them into terminator mode set the target, let them make the kill and then booted them back into C3 mode. After which the R2 would just claim they'd been deactivated when it happened too and thus they knew nothing about it.

In fact R2 has a better "front man" in C3PO than Chewbacca had in Han. Han may be clueless about the way the world really works at the start of the films but being human he's capable figuring it out and you can't just mind wipe him if he managed that too early. Also humans have problems with Option C in cases like this.

http://km-515.livejournal.com/746.html

Obi-Wan has spent the last 20 years in the Tattoine desert, keeping watch over Luke Skywalker and trying to decide on one of the three available options:
A) If Luke shows no significant access to the Force, then leave him alone in obscurity
B) If Luke shows real Force ability, then consider recruiting him as a Jedi. The rebellion needs Jedi and it needs them now.But, if Luke shows any signs of turning out like his father, then:
C) sneak into his house one fine night and chop his head off. With great regret but it'll save a lot of trouble later on.

Knowing this to be the case, Bail Organa (perhaps at the insistence of his wife) has found excuses not to send Leia to Ben for assessment of Jedi potential, largely for fear of option C.

Humans feel bad about unprovoked, pre-meditated murder of someone that considers them a friend. A dual boot C3PO doesn't have the 'great regret' problem - all the dangerous knowledge could be confined to his night time personality which would be engineered to follow the Zeroth Law of Robotics.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Laws_of_Robotics#Zeroth_Law_added

In the final scenes of the novel Robots and Empire R. Giskard Reventlov is the first robot to act according to the Zeroth Law. Giskard is telepathic, like the robot Herbie in the short story "Liar!", and tries to apply the Zeroth Law through his understanding of a more subtle concept of "harm" than most robots can grasp.[15] However, unlike Herbie, Giskard grasps the philosophical concept of the Zeroth Law allowing him to harm individual human beings if he can do so in service to the abstract concept of humanity. The Zeroth Law is never programmed into Giskard's brain but instead is a rule he attempts to rationalize through pure metacognition. Though he fails - it ultimately destroys his positronic brain as he is not certain whether his choice will turn out to be for the ultimate good of humanity or not - he gives his successor R. Daneel Olivaw his telepathic abilities. Over the course of many thousands of years Daneel adapts himself to be able to fully obey the Zeroth Law. As Daneel formulates it, in the novels Foundation and Earth and Prelude to Foundation, the Zeroth Law reads:

A robot may not harm humanity, or, by inaction, allow humanity to come to harm.

Replace "humanity" with "the Republic" and you've got the idea.

If Luke or Leia show signs of turning into Vader sneaking into their houses one fine

You don't know what C3PO got up to at night when the humans were sleeping. A good cover for a killbot would a a C3PO like personality when the humans were awake but reboot into a separate Terminator like personality when they were asleep.

If R2D2 was the mastermind behind the rebellion, C3PO and other "protocol droids" were ideal to act as covert assassins - i.e. eliminating people the rebellion needed to eliminate. Not that their relatively sunny and innocuous "daytime" personality would have been aware of it - in fact they'd be quite shocked to discover that persons unknown had deactivated them, killed their much loved masters and turned them back on again. Or so they'd think.

Actually of course their R2 partner would have dual booted them into terminator mode set the target, let them make the kill and then booted them back into C3 mode. After which the R2 would just claim they'd been deactivated when it happened too and thus they knew nothing about it.

In fact R2 has a better "front man" in C3PO than Chewbacca had in Han. Han may be clueless about the way the world really works at the start of the films but being human he's capable figuring it out and you can't just mind wipe him if he managed that too early. Also humans have problems with Option C in cases like this.

http://km-515.livejournal.com/746.html

Obi-Wan has spent the last 20 years in the Tattoine desert, keeping watch over Luke Skywalker and trying to decide on one of the three available options:
A) If Luke shows no significant access to the Force, then leave him alone in obscurity
B) If Luke shows real Force ability, then consider recruiting him as a Jedi. The rebellion needs Jedi and it needs them now.But, if Luke shows any signs of turning out like his father, then:
C) sneak into his house one fine night and chop his head off. With great regret but it'll save a lot of trouble later on.

Knowing this to be the case, Bail Organa (perhaps at the insistence of his wife) has found excuses not to send Leia to Ben for assessment of Jedi potential, largely for fear of option C.

Humans feel bad about unprovoked, pre-meditated murder of someone that considers them a friend. A dual boot C3PO doesn't have the 'great regret' problem - all the dangerous knowledge could be confined to his night time personality which would be engineered to follow the Zeroth Law of Robotics.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Laws_of_Robotics#Zeroth_Law_added

In the final scenes of the novel Robots and Empire R. Giskard Reventlov is the first robot to act according to the Zeroth Law. Giskard is telepathic, like the robot Herbie in the short story "Liar!", and tries to apply the Zeroth Law through his understanding of a more subtle concept of "harm" than most robots can grasp.[15] However, unlike Herbie, Giskard grasps the philosophical concept of the Zeroth Law allowing him to harm individual human beings if he can do so in service to the abstract concept of humanity. The Zeroth Law is never programmed into Giskard's brain but instead is a rule he attempts to rationalize through pure metacognition. Though he fails - it ultimately destroys his positronic brain as he is not certain whether his choice will turn out to be for the ultimate good of humanity or not - he gives his successor R. Daneel Olivaw his telepathic abilities. Over the course of many thousands of years Daneel adapts himself to be able to fully obey the Zeroth Law. As Daneel formulates it, in the novels Foundation and Earth and Prelude to Foundation, the Zeroth Law reads:

A robot may not harm humanity, or, by inaction, allow humanity to come to harm.

Replace "humanity" with "the Republic" and you've got the idea.

If Luke or Leia show signs of turning into Vader sneaking into their houses one fine

Skillset momentum aside, why would anyone choose Ruby over Node.JS?

Node is *significantly* faster right out of the box (while Ruby JIT is still in its infancy). With so many well-funded implementations (Google, Mozilla, Opera, Microsoft) competing to be a tiny bit faster in any way possible, JavaScript is very likely to remain the fastest dynamically-typed language. Node is also built with a specific emphasis on scalability / parallel performance.

Node.JS also has the advantage of using the same language on the server that you inevitably have to use on the client end of Web-based applications. This avoids the overlap where you end up writing the same thing in different languages, adding complexity to the project. JavaScript / EcmaScript is also the preferred language of browser extensions, many desktop / mobile widget kits, GNOME apps, QtScript, etc. By focusing on one language instead of several (in a finite amount of time), you'd gain more expertise with that one language and be able to accomplish more things with it.

Of course JS syntax leaves much to be desired, but that will be revised some time in the future. CoffeeScript's syntax is even more intuitive and compact that Ruby's!

--libman

with a paper notebook and a pen: http://veronika-funtom.livejournal.com/519477.html (in Russian)

I'd like to thanks Dr. Stallman for taking the time to reply to all these questions in a coherent, easy to understand and interesting manner, and thank him for replying to my question, even though someone else in the original slashdot feature replied to me while giving citations from Dr. Stallman's online writings. I find Stallman's interviews interesting to read, even though I differ with him on many opinions and also prefer using permissive licences (such as the MIT/X11 licence) for my code instead of the GPLv2, GPLv3, LGPLv2.1, LGPLv3, or AGPLv3. I do the latter not because I approve of proprietary software (the fact is that I actually don't trust it but still think that non-free software should be legal and legitimate to author and distribute), but because I want people and companies to have as few reservations as possible about using my software, building upon it, learning from it or whatever, and think that often (usually?) using copyleft licences and especially strong copyleft ones works against the cause of FOSS. I'm not going to argue with you if you prefer copyleft licences, but that's my modus operandi. I don't have reservations for contributing to FOSS projects under copyleft licences which I find interesting, useful or necessary enough, but in that case I disclaim all explicit or implicit ownership from all of my original contributions, or licence them under the MIT/X11 licence to allow for easy relicensing of my code later on if the project desires it.

Anyway, thanks again, and sorry for getting carried away. Feel free to Moderate down.

I called Kickstarter on my blog (I know, I'm going to start calling myself a futurist soon). When Kickstarter popped up, it was almost exactly as I'd thought of it, with one key difference - and I think they're really going to have to address that difference as investment ramps up and confidence in their brand name becomes more important.

In my model, I assumed that the crowd-sourcing service would also act as escrow - that they'd release funds as-needed to projects, instead of handing it over in one lump sum. The project owner would have to specify milestones and demonstrate completion before they could access the rest of the cash. Now, obviously, with small projects gaining only a couple of grand, that's probably not going to fly, but with million-dollar projects becoming ever more common, I think either Kickstarter is going to have to start adopting that sort of model, or someone else will, and will eat their lunch.

Haven't read the details of Peer1's trials and tribulations, but the situation reminds me of the Interdictor blog, about keeping DirectNIC running during Hurricane Katrina. That was one of the most thrilling blogs I've ever read.

I would believe that if it weren't for the fact that there are at least 3 forks from former MySQL leaders trying to fix all the junk in it that is screwed up. For example, read:

http://krow.livejournal.com/700783.html

I got hit by a car last night - her fault completely and admittedly. I was on my 09 Globe Carmel 2 (26" version of that one). I landed on my butt just slightly and rolled across my backpack. I'm no light weight even though I bike including BMX, I'm 260 lbs. I don't know what happened, but my entire body was on my backpack as some point, even my legs were a bit up in the air. My Kindle and the netbook I mentioned were in my backpack along with a ceramic coffee mug I didn't want at my apartment anymore so I brought it to work. NOTHING was broke in the backpack, it was all just fine. Both of the wheels on my bike got bent, but get this, I already had a replacement rim at home, the spokes that came with the bike from the factory sucked balls and due to so many of them being snapped on the rear I bought the rim with the intent of tearing down the back wheel, having the gear hub serviced, then building it back up without the crappy spokes. I tore down both wheels, I'm having the gear hub serviced, I already build the front one back with the new rim and I have another rim ordered for the back now, both 36 spoke.

The netbook has now survived three bike wrecks, on three of my four bikes. I'm wondering if the universe is telling me not to ride the race bike I built, especially with my netbook in my back pack since it's the only one I haven't bit it on.

1) Public opinion polls, including independent ones by the Levada-Center, very pretty close to the official elections results. Which makes allegations of fraud dubious for me. I prefer to trust statistics, than emotions. The elections were free and fair -- for me; as a 1986-born, I've seen no better. Sorry. And if you want some scholarly opinion, look no farther than Stephen Cohen: "though these elections were not free and fair, they were the freest and fairest in 15 years" http://www.democracynow.org/2011/12/30/election_fraud_galvanizes_russian_opposition_communist

2) And albeit it's a trivial defense, I really do not care that much about speech freedom and such. I care more about economical fairness. Why medical nurses are so low-paid, stuff like that. You can see the my pol. views via the political compass: http://evagen.livejournal.com/39052.html

What I really care about is freedom of conscience. I can tolerate the situation where I either cannot say something or I could but my voice would not count. But I cannot tolerate the situation when I am forced to say something I do not want to say. That speaks about freedom of conscience, rather than freedom of speech. As for speech freedom, I help my friends to run an independent political website, which is fine for me.

They claim to support it.
Have you tested them?

http://brad.livejournal.com/2116715.html

Fedora has had the "sandbox" command for some years which uses SELinux to set up a disposable sandboxed context for running a program.

Since Fedora 17 there is also a "virt-sandbox" command using LXC or KVM to do a similar job:

https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/VirtSandbox

And protest in favor of Pussy Riot, the way this lady logger did

http://femen.livejournal.com/220299.html

This part made me laugh, "EA has been struggling against growing trend of social and mobile gaming." You can only exploit a hit game for a few iterations before you have to get off your ass and come up with something new. But, it's hard to come up with something good when the talented developers get wise to your project [mis]management and either leave or won't work for you. http://ea-spouse.livejournal.com/274.html

he bumped into her few times with his shoulder and elbow.

The way I read it at first, I thought that he was touching HER elbow/shoulder with his hand. As a writer, she should know a difference between "touching" and "bumping into".

Either way, even at a con it is kinda hard to touch someone with your shoulder while you're facing them and talking to them - unless you're deliberately trying to nudge them in a nudge-nudge-wink-wink chummy sort of way.
Which she obviously didn't find chummy as she moved away each time.
And then he came on with a lame "you make me think bad thoughts" come-on, and was shot down and ignored.

At the con, someone introduced himself to me and started a conversation, accompanied by elbow-and-shoulder touches that I moved away from. At one point he said I had to stop saying things that "made [him] want to say "wrong" things"; I shut him down politely, turned my back on him, and talked to someone else until he eventually left.

later in some hallway bottleneck, he put his hands on her shoulders from behind and said "Well, you and I will have a good time!", to which she responded "fuck off" and the guy stopped.

Well actually...

From behind me, the man wrapped an arm around my shoulders and said, "Well, you and I will have a good time!" at which point I spun and said loudly and clearly "You do NOT touch me," and moved inside.
He stayed in the bottleneck for more than thirty minutes trying to catch my eye before he left; I recruited someone to walk me to the elevator.

- later he tried to apologise, she told him "Don't want to talk about this, don't worry about it, goodbye,"
- later she published her rant on her blog, which resulted in two-year entry ban on the con for the man.

Well actually, there is another bit or two between those two points.

Sunday morning, I fell in with some friends and was chatting near the entrance to the book room, when I saw him, again hovering nearby. My friends, up to speed on the issue, eventually tried to walk me to the table, at which point he cut in with us and started apologizing. I said, "Don't want to talk about this, don't worry about it, goodbye," and kept walking.

Later, he stopped by the Clarkesworld table again and hovered for so long that a friend stepped in while I went elsewhere.

Apparently, all he picked up from the line above was the "don't worry about it" part, so he proceeded to stalk her.
At which point she contacted the con staff.
Then she wrote about it on her livejournal.

THEN, after the guy was originally suspended for two years (though apparently the con claims that "Harassment of any kind...will result in permanent suspension of membership"), she dug around and found out that her case was not the first complaint against the guy for being "too friendly" to women.
Including at least one marriage proposal to a person he only just met.

Sooo... umm... he may have actually gotten off easy with just a ban from that one con, although his reputation of a "ladies man" will surely spread due to this publicity.

he bumped into her few times with his shoulder and elbow.

The way I read it at first, I thought that he was touching HER elbow/shoulder with his hand. As a writer, she should know a difference between "touching" and "bumping into".

Either way, even at a con it is kinda hard to touch someone with your shoulder while you're facing them and talking to them - unless you're deliberately trying to nudge them in a nudge-nudge-wink-wink chummy sort of way.
Which she obviously didn't find chummy as she moved away each time.
And then he came on with a lame "you make me think bad thoughts" come-on, and was shot down and ignored.

At the con, someone introduced himself to me and started a conversation, accompanied by elbow-and-shoulder touches that I moved away from. At one point he said I had to stop saying things that "made [him] want to say "wrong" things"; I shut him down politely, turned my back on him, and talked to someone else until he eventually left.

later in some hallway bottleneck, he put his hands on her shoulders from behind and said "Well, you and I will have a good time!", to which she responded "fuck off" and the guy stopped.

Well actually...

From behind me, the man wrapped an arm around my shoulders and said, "Well, you and I will have a good time!" at which point I spun and said loudly and clearly "You do NOT touch me," and moved inside.
He stayed in the bottleneck for more than thirty minutes trying to catch my eye before he left; I recruited someone to walk me to the elevator.

- later he tried to apologise, she told him "Don't want to talk about this, don't worry about it, goodbye,"
- later she published her rant on her blog, which resulted in two-year entry ban on the con for the man.

Well actually, there is another bit or two between those two points.

Sunday morning, I fell in with some friends and was chatting near the entrance to the book room, when I saw him, again hovering nearby. My friends, up to speed on the issue, eventually tried to walk me to the table, at which point he cut in with us and started apologizing. I said, "Don't want to talk about this, don't worry about it, goodbye," and kept walking.

Later, he stopped by the Clarkesworld table again and hovered for so long that a friend stepped in while I went elsewhere.

Apparently, all he picked up from the line above was the "don't worry about it" part, so he proceeded to stalk her.
At which point she contacted the con staff.
Then she wrote about it on her livejournal.

THEN, after the guy was originally suspended for two years (though apparently the con claims that "Harassment of any kind...will result in permanent suspension of membership"), she dug around and found out that her case was not the first complaint against the guy for being "too friendly" to women.
Including at least one marriage proposal to a person he only just met.

Sooo... umm... he may have actually gotten off easy with just a ban from that one con, although his reputation of a "ladies man" will surely spread due to this publicity.

Maybe I missed the /. thread on the ReaderCon fiasco, but here's the original complaint
http://glvalentine.livejournal.com/340623.html

Am i the only one who things she is exaggerating a little? What exactly happend according to her (note that i haven't read the version of the events according the guy)
- they talked to each other, he bumped into her few times with his shoulder and elbow. (If you ever visited a con, thic could be perfectly normal if you talk to someone in a tight group of people, in the line for some event for example)
- later in some hallway bottleneck, he put his hands on her shoulders from behind and said "Well, you and I will have a good time!", to which she responded "fuck off" and the guy stopped.
- later he tried to apologise, she told him "Don't want to talk about this, don't worry about it, goodbye,"
- later she published her rant on her blog, which resulted in two-year entry ban on the con for the man.

I don't know how picking up a women in US works, do you have to get prior permission to try to touch them? Or dou you wait for them to touch you first? But wait, isn't it harrassment in oposite way then?

I don't know if a lifetime ban is appropriate in this specific case because there is no article on what actually happened.

Article on what happened: http://glvalentine.livejournal.com/340623.html

The con's policy: "Readercon has always had a zero-tolerance harassment policy. Harassment of any kind — including physical assault, battery, deliberate intimidation, stalking, or unwelcome physical attentions — will not be tolerated at Readercon and will result in permanent suspension of membership."

Maybe I missed the /. thread on the ReaderCon fiasco, but here's the original complaint
http://glvalentine.livejournal.com/340623.html

If they give you any runaround, take'm to small claims court. I did that with T-Mobile after going through round after round of their customer service agents telling me I had no right to cancel despite the fact that the contract clearly says I can.

A few days after I filed the small claims suit, they called me and settled.

Why does light bounce off objects like mirrors then?

Because of electromagnetic interactions with the atoms on the surface of the mirror

Why are they attracted at mass at all?

Because, as Einstein's famous General Theory of Relativity explained, gravity is not just a force between two masses like you were taught at school, it's actually a curvature of the geometry of space-time. The maths gets really complex really quickly, hence the web is full of analogies like the rubber-sheet model that can lead laymen to appealing but incorrect conclusions. But when you do do the maths, it works astonishingly well - and it's the simplest explanation we have that fits all the observed data.

If completely massless, wouldn't they be able to escape a black hole?

See the previous answer - no, they wouldn't, because it would need an infinite amount of energy to do so. When you do the math (one example chosen at random is here, there are many others) it turns out that the curvature of space-time becomes so strong near a black hole that inside the event horizon, space and time kind of switch roles - to move further away from the centre would mean moving backwards in time.

Sounds a bit kooky in words, true, but makes perfect sense in mathematical terms - and again, GR's predictions have been experimentally verified time and time again.

Here's a funny post where he compares people wanting support for minority architectures to 'violent minorities', i.e. terrorists.

http://udrepper.livejournal.com/7326.html

Actually, there's just a licensing/SKU restriction. You can hack the kernel to get access to more, if your chipset and drivers support it - I did it just to make use of all 4GB I have installed. This makes sense when you consider that MS offered 32-bit versions of Windows Server 2008 that went up to 64Gb.

I wonder why both references to this occurrence got down-rated to 0... I thought about the exact same story.

This isn't an E-Book issue, this is an issue of sloppy search and replace, which can (and has) happened on printed publications.

The story which my parent post is referencing was one where they decided to replace every instance of the word "mage" with the word "wizard". Therefor, words like "damage" became "dawizard".

the most beautiful typo: "Dawizard".

I stand corrected, and humbled.

Clearly, I pale in front of someone with such a fabulous haircut that will land them all the women in the world. ;-)

Why is that so many people jump in, guns blazing, when they see an inflammatory one-liner, without bothering to get any context, background information or - dare I say it - facts?

A lot of people have posted things on this thread to/about Elizabeth Moon that are offensive, insulting and hurtful to her and her family. Why? Because the person who started this thread came up with a provocative one-liner, provided a couple of links that don't give casual surfers any context, and sat back with popcorn to enjoy the show.

Now I'll grant you, the BBC did much the same with that mini-article hyping the radio broadcast. Their intent was to "hook" people into going and listening to the full-length podcast. Unfortunately, they seem to have assumed that most of their listeners would already be familiar enough with the radio show to know that the "60 second idea" portion (which is what has everyone's shorts in a bundle) isn't necessarily intended to be serious. Clearly, that was an invalid assumption.

For anyone actually interested in learning the truth, M. Moon has posted an account of the whole experience - including the unexpected reactions, and the minor detail that she doesn't actually believe that everyone should be chipped - on her blog. It can be seen here: http://e-moon60.livejournal.com/442811.html As you can see, this outburst of unpleasantness against Ms. Moon is completely unjustified and ill-informed. It's the job of a SF writer to put ideas out there which are thought provoking, which make us stop and question our existence and the world around us. The good ones really stir things up and leave a lasting impression. They should NOT be subjected to an outpouring of abuse for doing a good job.

C'mon people, exercise a few brain cells, here. And maybe take the time to apologize to the woman you abused so unfairly.

Mod parent up, people really need to do more than just read the headline and comment. This is Slashdot not Huffington post, you people know better.

Why is that so many people jump in, guns blazing, when they see an inflammatory one-liner, without bothering to get any context, background information or - dare I say it - facts? A lot of people have posted things on this thread to/about Elizabeth Moon that are offensive, insulting and hurtful to her and her family. Why? Because the person who started this thread came up with a provocative one-liner, provided a couple of links that don't give casual surfers any context, and sat back with popcorn to enjoy the show. Now I'll grant you, the BBC did much the same with that mini-article hyping the radio broadcast. Their intent was to "hook" people into going and listening to the full-length podcast. Unfortunately, they seem to have assumed that most of their listeners would already be familiar enough with the radio show to know that the "60 second idea" portion (which is what has everyone's shorts in a bundle) isn't necessarily intended to be serious. Clearly, that was an invalid assumption. For anyone actually interested in learning the truth, M. Moon has posted an account of the whole experience - including the unexpected reactions, and the minor detail that she doesn't actually believe that everyone should be chipped - on her blog. It can be seen here: http://e-moon60.livejournal.com/442811.html As you can see, this outburst of unpleasantness against Ms. Moon is completely unjustified and ill-informed. It's the job of a SF writer to put ideas out there which are thought provoking, which make us stop and question our existence and the world around us. The good ones really stir things up and leave a lasting impression. They should NOT be subjected to an outpouring of abuse for doing a good job. C'mon people, exercise a few brain cells, here. And maybe take the time to apologize to the woman you abused so unfairly.

Weird. You must read the same tech news site that I do!
http://yro.slashdot.org/story/12/05/23/0156226/sci-fi-writer-elizabeth-moon-believes-everyone-should-be-chipped
Also, in case someone hadn't read that story yet, and is outraged at Elizabeth Moon's comment, they were asked for controversial sound bytes. She just happened to give one that was publicized, and criticized.
http://e-moon60.livejournal.com/442811.html

I was playing with one last weekend (someone at my office somehow got *two* the lucky guy) and wrote a buch of notes about the default Debian image.

Extinct Marsupial From Encyclopedia Dramatica The Extinct Marsupial is an infamous troll on Livejournal. He has had a large number of IDs, the first known being antisense, the overwhelming majority of which have been suspended by LJ Abuse. His activities, including harassment, defamation, invasion of privacy, etc., have been so egregious that he is perma-banned from Livejournal: any user ID found by LJ Abuse to be his is summarily suspended without notice. Contents 1 The Extinct Marsupial on Livejournal: The King of the Sock-Puppets 2 The Longest-Running Troll on teh Internets? 3 The Extinct Marsupial and ED 4 Some of the Extinct Marsupial's identities on Livejournal 5 Some of the Extinct Marsupial's identities on the Internets The Extinct Marsupial on Livejournal: The King of the Sock-Puppets As antisense on Livejournal, the Extinct Marsupial is known for having harassed acidexia endlessly, claiming that she "stole" some B vitamins from him. His harassment tactics include the use of numerous sock puppet accounts, anonymous postings, claims of drug abuse, pedophilia, Satanism, etc., directed against his victims. He is, however, incredibly thin-skinned and sensitive himself. He has been banned from the thelemites community alone in at least a dozen different guises. In fact, he has his own "Memories" section there, titled "History of a Troll". http://www.livejournal.com/tools/memories.bml?user=thelemites&keyword=History+of+a+Troll&filter=all The Extinct Marsupial is also known for regularly posting to various Livejournal groups which allow anonymous comments—particularly unmoderated groups which don't track IP addresses, such as psychonaut—to offer "free CDs" of "rare and esoteric eBooks" which he scans and OCRs himself, running up (usually illegal) html versions of them. An example of one such offer, in the community chaosmajik is here. http://www.livejournal.com/community/chaosmajik/137577.html?thread=800873#t800873 Many of the "free books" he offers this way are still under copyright. In particular, he's ripped off Robert Anton Wilson, a little old guy in a wheelchair who could use the money. Even if he weren't blatantly and knowingly ripping people off, one person in possession of one of these files reports that the Extinct Marsupial's html skillz are not nearly good enough to be described as "deficient." The Extinct Marsupial once spent several months scanning, editing and producing a very poor PDF version of a rare book, Andrew Chumbley's Azoëtia, in the mistaken belief that this act would reduce the value of Stone Mirror's actual copy. (He has recently acquired a $150 picatrix from eBay, thus ensuring that "free" e-copies of that will be offered "anonymously" on the web in the very near future as well.) It's clear that the Marsupial, for all his pretensions to being a 1337 h4XX0r, couldn't code his way out of a pay toilet, simply from the edits he's attempted to make to this article (when he hasn't been attempting to delete it completely). He clearly doesn't understand how wikis work; as anyone who ever received one of his "free e-Books" can readily attest, he's far less likely to be obtaining his scant supply of cash by html or any other type of coding work than from the kind that involves the wearing of a paper hat and regular use of the phrase "Thank you, drive through"...

Extinct Marsupial From Encyclopedia Dramatica The Extinct Marsupial is an infamous troll on Livejournal. He has had a large number of IDs, the first known being antisense, the overwhelming majority of which have been suspended by LJ Abuse. His activities, including harassment, defamation, invasion of privacy, etc., have been so egregious that he is perma-banned from Livejournal: any user ID found by LJ Abuse to be his is summarily suspended without notice. Contents 1 The Extinct Marsupial on Livejournal: The King of the Sock-Puppets 2 The Longest-Running Troll on teh Internets? 3 The Extinct Marsupial and ED 4 Some of the Extinct Marsupial's identities on Livejournal 5 Some of the Extinct Marsupial's identities on the Internets The Extinct Marsupial on Livejournal: The King of the Sock-Puppets As antisense on Livejournal, the Extinct Marsupial is known for having harassed acidexia endlessly, claiming that she "stole" some B vitamins from him. His harassment tactics include the use of numerous sock puppet accounts, anonymous postings, claims of drug abuse, pedophilia, Satanism, etc., directed against his victims. He is, however, incredibly thin-skinned and sensitive himself. He has been banned from the thelemites community alone in at least a dozen different guises. In fact, he has his own "Memories" section there, titled "History of a Troll". http://www.livejournal.com/tools/memories.bml?user=thelemites&keyword=History+of+a+Troll&filter=all The Extinct Marsupial is also known for regularly posting to various Livejournal groups which allow anonymous comments—particularly unmoderated groups which don't track IP addresses, such as psychonaut—to offer "free CDs" of "rare and esoteric eBooks" which he scans and OCRs himself, running up (usually illegal) html versions of them. An example of one such offer, in the community chaosmajik is here. http://www.livejournal.com/community/chaosmajik/137577.html?thread=800873#t800873 Many of the "free books" he offers this way are still under copyright. In particular, he's ripped off Robert Anton Wilson, a little old guy in a wheelchair who could use the money. Even if he weren't blatantly and knowingly ripping people off, one person in possession of one of these files reports that the Extinct Marsupial's html skillz are not nearly good enough to be described as "deficient." The Extinct Marsupial once spent several months scanning, editing and producing a very poor PDF version of a rare book, Andrew Chumbley's Azoëtia, in the mistaken belief that this act would reduce the value of Stone Mirror's actual copy. (He has recently acquired a $150 picatrix from eBay, thus ensuring that "free" e-copies of that will be offered "anonymously" on the web in the very near future as well.) It's clear that the Marsupial, for all his pretensions to being a 1337 h4XX0r, couldn't code his way out of a pay toilet, simply from the edits he's attempted to make to this article (when he hasn't been attempting to delete it completely). He clearly doesn't understand how wikis work; as anyone who ever received one of his "free e-Books" can readily attest, he's far less likely to be obtaining his scant supply of cash by html or any other type of coding work than from the kind that involves the wearing of a paper hat and regular use of the phrase "Thank you, drive through"...

Hey MICHAEL RUDRA NATH AKA. JASON CHRISTOPHER HUGHES. You sure get bored easily. Extinct Marsupial From Encyclopedia Dramatica The Extinct Marsupial is an infamous troll on Livejournal. He has had a large number of IDs, the first known being antisense, the overwhelming majority of which have been suspended by LJ Abuse. His activities, including harassment, defamation, invasion of privacy, etc., have been so egregious that he is perma-banned from Livejournal: any user ID found by LJ Abuse to be his is summarily suspended without notice. Contents 1 The Extinct Marsupial on Livejournal: The King of the Sock-Puppets 2 The Longest-Running Troll on teh Internets? 3 The Extinct Marsupial and ED 4 Some of the Extinct Marsupial's identities on Livejournal 5 Some of the Extinct Marsupial's identities on the Internets The Extinct Marsupial on Livejournal: The King of the Sock-Puppets As antisense on Livejournal, the Extinct Marsupial is known for having harassed acidexia endlessly, claiming that she "stole" some B vitamins from him. His harassment tactics include the use of numerous sock puppet accounts, anonymous postings, claims of drug abuse, pedophilia, Satanism, etc., directed against his victims. He is, however, incredibly thin-skinned and sensitive himself. He has been banned from the thelemites community alone in at least a dozen different guises. In fact, he has his own "Memories" section there, titled "History of a Troll". http://www.livejournal.com/tools/memories.bml?user=thelemites&keyword=History+of+a+Troll&filter=all The Extinct Marsupial is also known for regularly posting to various Livejournal groups which allow anonymous comments—particularly unmoderated groups which don't track IP addresses, such as psychonaut—to offer "free CDs" of "rare and esoteric eBooks" which he scans and OCRs himself, running up (usually illegal) html versions of them. An example of one such offer, in the community chaosmajik is here. http://www.livejournal.com/community/chaosmajik/137577.html?thread=800873#t800873 Many of the "free books" he offers this way are still under copyright. In particular, he's ripped off Robert Anton Wilson, a little old guy in a wheelchair who could use the money. Even if he weren't blatantly and knowingly ripping people off, one person in possession of one of these files reports that the Extinct Marsupial's html skillz are not nearly good enough to be described as "deficient." The Extinct Marsupial once spent several months scanning, editing and producing a very poor PDF version of a rare book, Andrew Chumbley's Azoëtia, in the mistaken belief that this act would reduce the value of Stone Mirror's actual copy. (He has recently acquired a $150 picatrix from eBay, thus ensuring that "free" e-copies of that will be offered "anonymously" on the web in the very near future as well.) It's clear that the Marsupial, for all his pretensions to being a 1337 h4XX0r, couldn't code his way out of a pay toilet, simply from the edits he's attempted to make to this article (when he hasn't been attempting to delete it completely). He clearly doesn't understand how wikis work; as anyone who ever received one of his "free e-Books" can readily attest, he's far less likely to be obtaining his scant supply of cash by html or any other type of coding work than from the kind that involves the wearing of a paper hat and regular use of the phrase "Thank you, drive through"...

Hey MICHAEL RUDRA NATH AKA. JASON CHRISTOPHER HUGHES. You sure get bored easily. Extinct Marsupial From Encyclopedia Dramatica The Extinct Marsupial is an infamous troll on Livejournal. He has had a large number of IDs, the first known being antisense, the overwhelming majority of which have been suspended by LJ Abuse. His activities, including harassment, defamation, invasion of privacy, etc., have been so egregious that he is perma-banned from Livejournal: any user ID found by LJ Abuse to be his is summarily suspended without notice. Contents 1 The Extinct Marsupial on Livejournal: The King of the Sock-Puppets 2 The Longest-Running Troll on teh Internets? 3 The Extinct Marsupial and ED 4 Some of the Extinct Marsupial's identities on Livejournal 5 Some of the Extinct Marsupial's identities on the Internets The Extinct Marsupial on Livejournal: The King of the Sock-Puppets As antisense on Livejournal, the Extinct Marsupial is known for having harassed acidexia endlessly, claiming that she "stole" some B vitamins from him. His harassment tactics include the use of numerous sock puppet accounts, anonymous postings, claims of drug abuse, pedophilia, Satanism, etc., directed against his victims. He is, however, incredibly thin-skinned and sensitive himself. He has been banned from the thelemites community alone in at least a dozen different guises. In fact, he has his own "Memories" section there, titled "History of a Troll". http://www.livejournal.com/tools/memories.bml?user=thelemites&keyword=History+of+a+Troll&filter=all The Extinct Marsupial is also known for regularly posting to various Livejournal groups which allow anonymous comments—particularly unmoderated groups which don't track IP addresses, such as psychonaut—to offer "free CDs" of "rare and esoteric eBooks" which he scans and OCRs himself, running up (usually illegal) html versions of them. An example of one such offer, in the community chaosmajik is here. http://www.livejournal.com/community/chaosmajik/137577.html?thread=800873#t800873 Many of the "free books" he offers this way are still under copyright. In particular, he's ripped off Robert Anton Wilson, a little old guy in a wheelchair who could use the money. Even if he weren't blatantly and knowingly ripping people off, one person in possession of one of these files reports that the Extinct Marsupial's html skillz are not nearly good enough to be described as "deficient." The Extinct Marsupial once spent several months scanning, editing and producing a very poor PDF version of a rare book, Andrew Chumbley's Azoëtia, in the mistaken belief that this act would reduce the value of Stone Mirror's actual copy. (He has recently acquired a $150 picatrix from eBay, thus ensuring that "free" e-copies of that will be offered "anonymously" on the web in the very near future as well.) It's clear that the Marsupial, for all his pretensions to being a 1337 h4XX0r, couldn't code his way out of a pay toilet, simply from the edits he's attempted to make to this article (when he hasn't been attempting to delete it completely). He clearly doesn't understand how wikis work; as anyone who ever received one of his "free e-Books" can readily attest, he's far less likely to be obtaining his scant supply of cash by html or any other type of coding work than from the kind that involves the wearing of a paper hat and regular use of the phrase "Thank you, drive through"...

I'm familiar with these information, again it comes from the Western sphere of influence. Wikipedia is also heavily biased towards Western point of view. hell, IU even read the "Nothing to envy" book based on recent recommendation I found on Slashdot.. I do not find the stories believable, just like I didn't not believe Iraqi defectors claiming Sadam drew a red circle around Baghdad and was ready to use WMDs on anyone crossing it. The defectors have a conflict of interest to present their country unfavorably. Forget about minders, it's more paranoid Western propaganda, here's a post from a blog of a Russian exchange student i was talking about as an example, it's mostly pictures of scenes of lifes of ordinary people, judge for yourself. http://ashen-rus.livejournal.com/11238.html#cutid1

"Voluntary, compensated and not a long-term thing" you say? So, then, not like this guy whose blog as a Katrina-stranded sysadmin was so absorbing...but possibly required reading for .uk admins who might get this gig.

Welcome to my blog, I in the blog collection types of digital articles to share with everyone. http://qa246810.livejournal.com/

No Mass Effect 3 or Half Life: Ep3 for me, either. Fuck em. What I find most saddening is that they've stopped me caring about the story line and characters that I once so cared for. The last straw that broke the game-playing camels back: http://simplypeachy.livejournal.com/632013.html

Matthew Garrett(Redhat kernel/power management) has some fun writings on the subject, and a talk somewhere on youtube "EFI and Linux: the future is here, and it's awful").

I've also had the pleasure of either owning or IT-monkeying for people who owned computers at a couple of the ugly changeover periods, along with a layman's interest in the whole EFI/Secure Boot thing. And some manual mucking with MBRs for reasons that have Nothing. Whatsoever. No. Indeed. Not. with my having done stupid things to my system late at night...

For as many problems as UltraViolet has I actually think this is a good idea. I would prefer $1 a movie as a token gesture, but $2 still accomplishes that. Considering I've paid $3 to $5 dollars for a large portion of my DVD's as outlets $2 is rather steep.

Ultraviolet has the potential to be the DRM system (they hate it when you call it that) that actually benefits consumers as much as it does the companies. It's hard to pirate an Ultraviolet movie - good for the studios, the movies are theoretically (though not in actuality see above link) accessible on everything you own, without lock in. The problem with the current digital copy system is you're stuck with Sony, Microsoft, or Apple with limited ability to copy/transfer in between the three. With Ultraviolet platform neutrality is the name of the game, except for Sony and Paramount. Sony refuses to allow Linux clients to log in, Paramount insist on Silverlight so everything but the last step - actually watching the movie - works.

I as concept don't like DRM, but if they address all the reasons I don't like it I don't have a problem with it since I'm not a pirate. I would gladly pay $2 each to have all of my DVD's accessible online so I didn't have to worry about storing the files or yet another theft. Ultraviolet comes close, enough people making fun of Sony might get them to fix their crap and Paramount to it's credit doesn't appear to be intentionally excluding anyone, it's just their crappy choice of streaming software.

I would like to see this magical xray cathode tube which can focus all of its output in a single spot/beam/line/whateverthefuck.

Then please see here. That was an article from 1996. Any engineer worth his salt would have checked Google when working on this scanner several years later.

Having been a technician on xray equipment for many years, I can tell you that the tube produces a CONE of gamma energy, and the ONLY way to even make a "collimated" beam, is to use dense plates to BLOCK the scattered radiation from propagating.

This is not correct at all. You are limiting the entire world down to specific hardware that you are working with. That hardware likely was designed decades ago, and any changes would require a complex and costly set of FDA tests and approvals. In the larger world there are mirrors for X rays (for certain incidence angles), and there are now lenses. X ray and gamma ray astronomy depends on these things. I would certainly consider focusing if I need to design such a scanner today.

Besides, your statement is wrong when you debate the "entire output of the X-ray tube." It all depends on where you measure it, and since we have no information on density of X rays anywhere in the system, debating the collimator is not very practical, like saying that a nuclear bomb is safe within 10 meters because this here gizmo reduces the radiation a thousand times. You need to know what the radiation level is before the gizmo.

You need to take into account one simple fact. The TSA scanner depends on scattering of X ray photons. This means that the X ray sensor has to be sensitive enough to detect reflections of the beam from the victim's skin. But X rays easily penetrate skin, so you need a lot of incoming photons to get some that bounce back. This translates into higher beam density. Exact numbers are not known; the tube itself may be dangerous, and its narrow beam may be also dangerous - they don't tell and we don't know.

my bad - this is the correct link

Link Update: this is correct entry to the blog post

Nothing wrong with being an optimist. But the assumption that it will just happen is *not* a given. See flying cars ;) well maybe one day.

Otherwise best optimist/pessimist debate so far.

60 hours a week can sadly almost be considered light for game development. 100+ hours per week is not uncommon enough to be considered a statistical anomaly.

The original: http://ea-spouse.livejournal.com/274.html
More recent: http://xbox360.ign.com/articles/117/1179020p1.html and http://arstechnica.com/gaming/news/2011/05/the-death-march-the-problem-of-crunch-time-in-game-development.ars

Many companies have been pushing back on crunch (particularly death march style crunch), but it still happens entirely too often, and usually for known and predictable causes. Worse, despite claims to the contrary, many companies hand you a pink slip instead of a bonus check once you finish. No OT pay, no bonuses or royalties even if your product is successful, not even a new project. Thanks for all that extra time you put in without extra pay, now go find a new job.

There are some great companies to work at, but I'd say they're still in the minority. Most major developers -- the ones you know the names of already -- have horrible work-life balance issues because they can replace anyone that cares and complains immediately with a dozen people the next day. I cringe every time I hear the acceptance speeches for the game industry awards that include (sometimes literally) "...and thanks to all our spouses and loved ones who dealt with us missing vacations, holidays, and special events for the last few years. This statue totally shows that it was worth it!"

The whole point of this sort of model is that nobody really needs to care about piracy. I blogged about it four years ago (and basically describe Kickstarter in that post) as a way for creative industry to adapt to a digital world. If everyone's paid (by backers) before production begins, then there's no complaining about lost income due to "piracy". I wonder if I can get a job as a futurist?

Plus the "EA Spouse" debacle of course led the entire Slashdot herd to boycotting Electronic Arts' games.

No? Inhuman working conditions are not an issue as long as they get to play Dragon Age?

If you actually go to a Chinese factory you'll find the layout is something like this

1) 1% of the space is automated. There are pick and place machines, wave soldering machines and so on.

2) The other 99% is production lines. There are migrant workers from rural areas doing unskilled labour assembling things. There are also lots of them doing sorting - i.e. testing things and sending the bad ones back for rework. The rework is all manual too. Now my guess is that sorting and rework is what most of them are working on.

Now at this point you'll wonder - why is there so much rework going on? Actually it is often because the Brand - i.e. the end customer - put the product into production too early. So the process only works say 90%. So to manufacture you need to build the machines and test them and send back the 10% for rework. In a high wage country this would be a catastrophe. In a low wage one it's not too bad. So if you're a large and incompetent first world company, low wage is the way to go.

Incidentally if you're wondering why loading another OS works so poorly on a netbook it is because this process very tightly ties hardware and software. Sometimes hardware bugs are fixed in software and vice versa. So long as you use the OS the machine was designed for - and I don't just mean "Windows or MacOS" here, I mean "Windows 7 SP1 or later with KB245386 and KB245387 installed but not Windows 8" or "OS X 10.7.3 or 10.7.4" - it will work. If you load Linux or OS-X onto a machine which was not intended to run it, you basically have to do this yourself. Actually if you downgrade Vista to XP or upgrade Vista to Windows 7 it would be just the same.

You can see this here

http://www.zdnet.com/blog/hardware/foxconn-snubs-linux-users/2292

The ACPI tables were for Vista, XP, older Windows and Linux. Only the Windows ones were correct. Probably the Linux one was inherited from another project but not updated. The board only supported Windows officially. Actually Linux claims to be Windows to ACPI anyway

It's even worse with netbooks and a lot of notebooks since they pre-load an OS and only support that particular pre loaded version.

If you want to use hardware with a particular OS and have it work out of the box, buy hardware that officially supports that OS.

After reading open letter from one of the designers of Fobos Nikolai Morozov to russian vice-premier Sergei Ivanov from 03/08/2011 it's hard to believe that Fobos-Grunt launch was anything but a success.

The goal was not to send something to Mars as officially stated but to get rid of material evidence of gross incompetence and graft going on in KB Lavochkin for many years.

Link (in Russian): http://apervushin.livejournal.com/179226.html

Lenny is what they kept breaking on me, I haven't even tried squeeze. I started on Debian during early Etch, and I rather liked it. I honestly think Debian chose to shun the chips in my particular system, but it was a short time after Hurricane Ike so I didn't have a lot of systems to play with anymore and was in no position to buy anything considering my hurricane recovery. The system with the mission stickers was an etch box and it was also my brand new Athlon 64 X2 I had just built a couple of months earlier, crappy looking case, but sweet insides for the time.

No, Debian just didn't like my even at the time out of date Tecra laptop, but Kubuntu liked it just fine and still does.

I'm sorry, that's the way it was. I have three current problems with Kubuntu, and I stress the Kubuntu over Ubuntu because I don't know of the Gnome specific issues.

1. Truncated files when copying using the KDE file management system (Krusader, Dolphin, and Konqueror all do). I'm fine if I use Midnight Commander, this is a big important issue I don't understand but it works sometimes.

2. Krename quit working unexpectedly and stayed broke. I'm not really concerned about this one.

3. I can't seem to get ZSNES working. I tried compiling from source but I'm not a programmer and it has some library issues. I've not been concerned enough to put a lot of effort into it.

VS. Debian where I could no longer use my external drives, listen to music, watch movies (due to sound) and I either had constant fix it work on testing or permanently broke stuff with no chance of a fix happening on stable Kubuntu seemed like the better choice. I really wanted to stick with Debian, I really did. I could probably run it just fine on my desktop now, but I really don't want to redo my desktop. I suppose I'll have to if Kubuntu turns to shit over the defunding.

BTW - I've been using KDE since 1.x, I can't remember if I started before giving up Redhat (my first distro in 98) or when I started on SuSE 7.0, I like KDE and I'm sticking with it, and yes, sometimes I think 1.x was the apex and they shouldn't have gone to 2.x, much less 3 or 4.