Slashdot Mirror

In a report about the Wolfram and Hart Revue a girl writes how she met Ron Glass: "I asked him about the movie (slated for 2005! Squee!), and he said he could not "officially" say that he was going to be in it. And then he smiled."

audacity - multiplatform audio editing
bluewalk - automated bluetooth 'hacking' for Symbian smartphones
dcl - a web-based project mgmt systems
gaim - multiplatform AIM / MSN\Yahoo Messenger clone
gallery PHP/web-based photo gallery
opl-dev - scripting env for Symbian smartphones
s2putty - SSH for Symbian smartphones
semagic - LiveJournal client
sodipodi - multiplatform illustration app
squirrelmail - PHP-based webmail
ultravnc - best VNC client/server for Windows
winscp - SCP (and secure FTP) client for Windows
xplanet - funky app that shows you the earth + current cloud cover

...It's how you do it.

Trust me - I've done it.

I first got deeply into IT when I was living in the Arctic in the early 90s. A few of us got together and brought this wacky thing called the Internet to one of the most remote locations on Earth. People loved it, and even though we worked for peanuts with ridiculously poor resources, we loved every minute of it.

When I moved back 'South', my salary doubled, then increased again. I was working with really clever people, some of whom remain friends to this day. I had the car, the home network, the play time - everything a geek could want.

I'm now working as a volunteer in the South Pacific, trying to make things better for computer users in a tiny island nation. I've been reduced to ridiculously poor resources (I'm composing this over a 56k dial-up line shared over the network by 6 computers). I have been stranded for a week by a passing typhoon, which, incidentally, just destroyed the computer training center I was helping to develop. I have to face the real possibility of deadly malaria, of dengue fever, tropical ulcers, foot-long poisonous centipedes and even sharks. I'm paid a few hundred dollars a month.

... And I'm loving every minute of it.

P.S. You can read an account of my adventures on LiveJournal.

http://alexgal.livejournal.com

Not only are all users automatically RSS producers:
http://www.livejournal.com/users/andrewducker/data /rss/
but you can take any RSS feed and produce a 'user' from it.

I get all my news on:
http://andrewducker.livejournal.com/friends/news/
which aggregates various news sources into one place.

Not only are all users automatically RSS producers:
http://www.livejournal.com/users/andrewducker/data /rss/
but you can take any RSS feed and produce a 'user' from it.

I get all my news on:
http://andrewducker.livejournal.com/friends/news/
which aggregates various news sources into one place.

How is some article by Eric Raymond any different than some OSSpews, article, or some stupid blog?.
Someone says something cool once, or does something interesting once, and they're brought into the geek pantheon forever? Show me the money, or show me the code, or shut up. This is arguably a Troll or Flamebait post, but can someone explain how a non-Linus, non-Andre Hedrick, non-Theo Whatshisname, still gets legitamized?

A similar scam was featured on JWZ's blog the other day. That one used WiFi to get the data out.

You want an example of it being abused?

Yeah. Right.

If you find Ali Abtahi's site interesting, you may also find this kind of interesting, though it hasn't been updated in awhile.

I use those magnets for all sorts of things!

Btw, Other uses for dead drives... Wall art! (Yes, this is the wall of my computer room, hopefully it scares the other drives enough to behave) My Drive Graveyard Yes . there are more than a couple deathstar drives in there.

And, just for the publicity, Fun with Magnets a entry of mine from a couple weeks ago about magnets, and my evil ways with them.

Lots of fun to be had with dead drives. They make great wind chimes too!

The interviewer's blog can be found here, for what it's worth.

I made a post about this in the SCDC livejournal community, which I'll quote here:

Q: So why do people want electronic voting? What are the perceived benefits?

A: Electronic voting is largely popular because of the perception that it will fix problems like those experienced in Florida in the 2000 presidential election. The Help America Vote Act made tons and tons of federal money available for voting technology, and companies like Diebold rushed into production with shoddy products in order to capture marketshare.

Of course, the irony is that with paperless (read: un-auditable) machines, there is both an increased risk of vote-counting problems (as the Diebold e-mail archive demonstrates) and NO MECHANISM to recount the votes. In other words, if another Florida happens, we'll basically just have to flip a coin.

One of the most important arguments in favor of electronic voting machines is that they will enable the disabled to vote unassisted. For instance, DRE's can tell blind people the options through headphones. This is a noble goal, and it is a valid reason to want to have electronic voting machines. The thing is, why is it not sufficient to make an electronic ballot-printing machine, which then could be verified by a blind person using a simple barcode scanner, or which could be printed with raised letters? Why must the voting be completely electronic (i.e. Direct Recording Electronic)? Is it right to say that just because a blind person may not be able to verify a printed paper ballot on their own, that nobody else should be allowed to verify their votes either? There are certainly ways that ballots could be designed that would allow blind people to verify their votes without assistance, but even if this were impossible, that wouldn't be a good reason to eliminate paper ballots, it is merely an argument for machines that aid in filling out and verifying the ballots.

Finally, there are the arguments that electronic voting allows us to tally votes cheaper and quicker. My response is that we should take the time and money to get our elections right. Also, DRE's aren't more efficient at tallying our votes if they don't record our votes at all.

Unless we can build an electronic voting system that can meet these specifications before the 2004 election, I have little confidence in any vote cast using DRE's, and I recommend at least a temporary return to old-fashioned hand-written and hand-counted paper ballots.

I'd give my left nut for some mod points right now. Except that CmdrTaco probably has even less use for my left nut than I do.

My experience with fanfiction predates the internet (not the DARPAnet, however). The one real advantage that some of these fanfiction sites such as Sugarquill have over other sites and just writing in your journal is the extensive editing process. Jenkins is correct to put a lot of emphasis on the editorial process: it's what can make fanfiction writing into a real learning experience!

The internet makes fanfiction reviewing and editing a quicker process. Think back to the days when we sent typescripts back and forth by mail! Nowadays internet writers can afford the luxury of several "beta-readers" all in the time it would take oldtime fans to get the first editorial review from one fanzine publisher.

True, many writers don't take advantage of beta-readers. They just dump their stories up at websites like Fanfiction.Net in all their first-draft horror. Then they often get savagely mocked by disappointed readers. Savvy fans learn to prefer the sites which practice some sort of review process.

As far as Visual Studio.NET goes, the complete lack of refactoring makes it a non-option. I recently asked a colleage how to do it, and he had been on VS.NET for so long he didn't even know what refactoring meant. Apparently it's become common practise to use "find and replace in files" to perform refactoring (find next match, check if it's the right kind of object, rename if it is, don't if it isn't, repeat until the refactoring job is complete 2 hours later.)

Eclipse and IDEA can both do it, and both have good code generation, and these convenience features are the main reason I use a proper IDE, as opposed to GVim. I guess autocompletion of methods and variable names come under this category too, though I've discovered IDEA has more clue in that department, completing the names of far more things, such as unnamed variables and the like.

My beef with Eclipse not looking like other Windows apps is that Eclipse fans claim loudly that it does. Strangely enough, it did no such thing the last time I tried it. I guess IDEA has an issue too but nothing which wouldn't be fixed by one line of code adding the Windows look and feel to the list of valid looks and feels.

Yeah, I think that's an extremely good question. Has anyone heard about how this applies to people who have taken apart their iBook after the warranty had expired?

Here are the Journal entries from the Slashdot candidate, Jamie. Classy guy, and I sure hope the Slashdot story didn't nix his chances.

Jan. 21st, 2004
03:37 am

Alas, my journey soon comes to an end...or possibly to a new beginning.

In just a few hours, I leave for San Diego. I can't sleep. I can't relax. I can't think. I'm a giddy/nervous/excited mess. The best way I can describe it is like sitting blindfolded on a chair with my hands and feet bound tight as others around me sing and dance and celebrate. Oh, how I can't wait to open my eyes and see all the wonderment that awaits me.

I thank you all for the outrageous support you've given me and hope I don't let you down. This whole experience has truly been remarkable.

Jan. 25th, 2004
10:07 pm

I made it home safe and sound tonight. I'm so lucky to have had my friends Matt, Tim & Howie along with me. Seriously, I really am not sure how the whole trip would have turned out had you not been there for me.

I didn't get the job, but I sure did have fun trying for it. I'll need a little while to compose my thoughts, but you'll be sure to hear from me with all the details soon. Congratulations to Nathan, Kristi and Aaron. I'm quite fortunate to have been surrounded by such talented and fun people during the competition. I will have fond memories of all the contestants and will smile many times as I think of them in the future.

I'll try to post pics of all the final creations from all the contestants on my website within a few days.

Thank you again to everyone for their encouragement and enthusiasm. I hope to see many of you over the coming weeks.

That's exactly how my system is set up. (Well, except for the "Profit!" part.) But this one has a typical spamassassin score of only 3.0 and walks straight through greylisting. Read more on my blog.

CPU frequency: 512-fold
RAM: 4096-fold
Removable storage: 1792-fold
VRAM: 3066-fold
Network speed: 4551-fold
Mouse buttons: 1-fold
Price: 1.015-fold

As it happens, while advising a friend on how much memory to buy in 2004, I had just looked at how Apple's nominal RAM stacks up against Moore's Law. Pretty much confirmed, if you ask me:

1976: $ 666, 8 kB ( Apple I)
1980: $1200, 32 kB (Apple II+)
1984: $2500, 128 kB (Macintosh)
1987: $2000, 512 kB (Macintosh 512k)
1990: $1500, 2 MB (Macintosh Classic)
1993: $1440, 8 MB (Macintosh Quadra)
1998: $1300, 32 MB (iMac G3)
2001: $1500, 128 MB (iBook G3)
2004: ?

Baby Got Rack.

Unfortunately I cannot claim credit for this.

The whole thing (also available in Greek)

ronebofh has a message on his blog:
In case anyone wants to join the Google-affiliated Friendster knockoff, Orkut, let me know and i'll invite you.

I emailed him, to be invited, but he rejected me because he didn't know me. It seems like an open invitation. I don't understand. Nobody loves me. :(

Friendster and Orkut

A few days ago ronebofh handed me an invite to Orkut, Google's new Friendster clone. I played with this for about 48 hours, adding and inviting various friends to my network and reading the messages that percolated through the network -- probably the only feature of Orkut I'll get much use out of. I'm a married person, not looking for a date, and not living in the Bay Area.

The topic of every message: Orkut itself. According to one message, any random friendless person can conveniently post a message that reaches thousands of users via their friend "networks." In other words, insanely convenient spammage. Another poster replied that this sort of endless nitpicking is sure to turn Orkut into yet another "hippie echo chamber." I think they opened for the Flaming Lips last week at the Trocadero.

Tonight Orkut has been shut down to "implement some improvements and upgrades suggested by users." In their defense, the Google staff point out that Orkut is in beta and they did warn us this sort of thing could happen. Ticked off, I decided to check out Friendster, which I somehow skipped up until now.

When I got to Friendster's site, I was surprised to see that Friendster also describes itself as a "beta" version. And that gave me some sympathy for the Orkut administrators, who are only trying to use the word "beta" to mean what "beta" is supposed to mean:

• Beta means "outsiders are welcome to play with this, but don't trust it with your life."
• Beta means "we have run out of ways to break it ourselves and really need some outside input now."
• Beta means "if something breaks, that's good; give us specific and detailed feedback, and don't whine."

But "beta" is not the most offensive phrase on the Friendster home page. "Patent pending" is much worse. A patent on online social networking? I'd laugh if it wasn't so... no, wait, I am laughing. Give me a break, here. Surely this is nonsense no one takes seriously. Right?

Wrong, wrong, wrong, according to this news.com story. sixdegrees patented online "social networking" sites in 2001. Two Friendster-like sites have acquired the patent. Now everyone in the field is furiously writing patent applications.

I'd like to invite you all over for a beer, but I can't afford the intellectual property fees.

Friendster and Orkut

A few days ago ronebofh handed me an invite to Orkut, Google's new Friendster clone. I played with this for about 48 hours, adding and inviting various friends to my network and reading the messages that percolated through the network -- probably the only feature of Orkut I'll get much use out of. I'm a married person, not looking for a date, and not living in the Bay Area.

The topic of every message: Orkut itself. According to one message, any random friendless person can conveniently post a message that reaches thousands of users via their friend "networks." In other words, insanely convenient spammage. Another poster replied that this sort of endless nitpicking is sure to turn Orkut into yet another "hippie echo chamber." I think they opened for the Flaming Lips last week at the Trocadero.

Tonight Orkut has been shut down to "implement some improvements and upgrades suggested by users." In their defense, the Google staff point out that Orkut is in beta and they did warn us this sort of thing could happen. Ticked off, I decided to check out Friendster, which I somehow skipped up until now.

When I got to Friendster's site, I was surprised to see that Friendster also describes itself as a "beta" version. And that gave me some sympathy for the Orkut administrators, who are only trying to use the word "beta" to mean what "beta" is supposed to mean:

• Beta means "outsiders are welcome to play with this, but don't trust it with your life."
• Beta means "we have run out of ways to break it ourselves and really need some outside input now."
• Beta means "if something breaks, that's good; give us specific and detailed feedback, and don't whine."

But "beta" is not the most offensive phrase on the Friendster home page. "Patent pending" is much worse. A patent on online social networking? I'd laugh if it wasn't so... no, wait, I am laughing. Give me a break, here. Surely this is nonsense no one takes seriously. Right?

Wrong, wrong, wrong, according to this news.com story. sixdegrees patented online "social networking" sites in 2001. Two Friendster-like sites have acquired the patent. Now everyone in the field is furiously writing patent applications.

I'd like to invite you all over for a beer, but I can't afford the intellectual property fees.

Someone on slashdot asks, " Why is it still called X-Windows?".

Predictably, the first reply says: "It isn't. It's called 'The X Window System.' Or simply 'X'. 'X Windows' is a misnomer."

He didn't ask why it is "X-Windows". He asked why it's called "X-Windows". You're wrong that it isn't called "X-Windows". It is! It's just that it isn't "X-Windows". Being something is independent of being called something.

The answer to the question 'Why is it still called X-Windows?' is: It's still called X-Windows in order to annoy the X-Windows Fanatics, who take it upon themselves to correct you every time you call it X-Windows. That's why it's called X-Windows.

Things That Happen When You Say 'X Windows'

THE OFFICAL NAMES

The official names of the software described herein are:

X
X Window System
X Version 11
X Window System, Version 11
X11

Note that the phrases X.11, X-11, X Windows or any permutation thereof, are explicitly excluded from this list and should not be used to describe the X Window System (window system should be thought of as one word).

The above should be enough to scare anyone into using the proper terminology, but sadly enough, it's not. Recently, certain people, lacking sufficient motivation to change their speech patterns, have fallen victim to various 'accidents', or 'misfortune'. I've compiled a short list of happenings, some of which I have witnessed, others which remain heresay. I'm not claiming any direct connection between their speech habits and the reported incidents, but you be the judge... And woe betide any who set the cursed phrase into print!

You are forced to explain toolkit programming to X neophytes.

Bob Schiefler says, "You should know better than that!"

The Power Supply (and unknown boards) on your workstation mysteriously give up the ghost.

Ditto for the controller board for the disk on your new Sun.

Your hair falls out.

xmh refuses to come up in a useful size, no matter what you fiddle.

You inexplicitly lose both of your complete Ultrix Doc sets.

R2 won't build.

Bob Schiefler says "Type 'man X'".

Your nifty new X screen saver just won't go away.

The window you're working in loses input focus. Permanently

-Don

Coincidentally, I had posted this on my blog only yesterday. Read comments.

I renounced my moderatorship at spymac and never came back after finding the site's owners get their funding from large scale spamming

Honors you. (Originally from here it seems.)

This woman is a conniving bitch.

This woman is a conniving bitch.

This woman is a conniving bitch.

Most spammers use the opt out list to sell to other spammers.

Scott Richter clames to be all for the anti-spam laws and runs a strictly opt in operation.
However this seams highly unlikely when he is also listed as one of the top spammers.

Refrence links:
Why Scott Richter is Doomed
PC world artical on spam
Microsoft artical This one on the illegal activitys of Scott Richter.

Scott Richter clames he's folowing all the rules but evedence suggests otherwise.

LiveJournal is publishing SPF records since they got joe-jobbed a few months back:

marnanel@spectrum:~$ dig livejournal.com txt
[...]
;; ANSWER SECTION:
livejournal.com. 3153 IN TXT "v=spf1 a mx ip4:66.150.15.140 ?all"

(PS: I'm nothing to do with LJ other than being a satisfied user.)

LiveJournal is publishing SPF records since they got joe-jobbed a few months back:

marnanel@spectrum:~$ dig livejournal.com txt
[...]
;; ANSWER SECTION:
livejournal.com. 3153 IN TXT "v=spf1 a mx ip4:66.150.15.140 ?all"

(PS: I'm nothing to do with LJ other than being a satisfied user.)

It may just be a symptom of my generation, but I really think the reason we need a moon base is obvious.

I take it as a given that we need to establish a self-sufficient human presence off of this planet; we are screwing this one up at a amazing rate, and so many things exist that can destroy the race in a relatively short period of time it's ridiculous; from Planet killer asteroids, to mutant Ebola, to a new cold war, to killing all the plankton which produce the majority of our oxygen... etc.

In order to have a self -sufficient human presence in space, raw materials are going to be necessary; it's stupid to boost all the construction materials out of the earth's gravity well, when we can just mine the moon; alternately, I could see towing a asteroid to a LaGrange point, but that's possibly beyond us currently.

Once we have the moon, we have it all; a electromagnetic catapult to put processed raw materials back into orbit or shoot them to the earth would easily pay off the cost of putting a base there. The only problem I can see would be water, if ice turns out to not exist at the poles as some think (I don't); the easy availability of selenium, and abundant Solar power, should make making our own water out of elemental H & O a snap.

And, the best argument; President-for-life Bush will be able to drop gigantic canisters of rock anywhere on the planet he wants to suppress dissidents terrorists! peace in our time!.

Which is why I'm encouraging my kids to either pursue mechanical engineering or aerospace tech; I want them OFF this planet as soon as its possible.

$5 million in revenue is nothing. Livejournal cleared $2 million in revenues last year. Then again, Livejournal is providing a useful service. SCO, well, that's debateable.

Let's start with a test: Do you have any opinions that you would be reluctant to express in front of a group of your peers?

If the answer is no, you might want to stop and think about that. If everything you believe is something you're supposed to believe, could that possibly be a coincidence? Odds are it isn't. Odds are you just think whatever you're told.

The other alternative would be that you independently considered every question and came up with the exact same answers that are now considered acceptable. That seems unlikely, because you'd also have to make the same mistakes. Mapmakers deliberately put slight mistakes in their maps so they can tell when someone copies them. If another map has the same mistake, that's very convincing evidence.

This is the test that I regularly apply to my own beliefs and which regularly causes my friends to sigh in frustration. There he goes... again. It's great having friends that still love you after you challenge every belief that you share with them. Sometimes I find out that our shared belief rested on a strong foundation of experience and/or tradition, but usually I find out that we've just been thinking what we've been told to think.

If you don't have friends like I do, Graham mentions other ways to seek out heresy besides "The Conformist Test":

Trouble: look for things people say and get in trouble for.
Heresy: look for the label 'heresy' in any one of it's forms ("indecent", "unamerican", "defeatist"). New ones are created to silence current heresy.
Time and Space: compare heresies between cultures separated by time or space. If one culture has a heresy another doesn't than it is likely the heresy is mistaken. For example, taboos against murder are nearly universal.
Prigs: find prigs, subtract lived experiences and examine their thoughts. Kids and teenagers are the best repositories for complete mint collections of taboos.
Mechanism: examine how taboos are created. "To launch a taboo, a group has to be poised halfway between weakness and power. A confident group doesn't need taboos to protect it... And yet a group has to be powerful enough to enforce a taboo" The taboo breakers on the otherhand "will be driven by ambition: self-consciously cool people who want to distinguish themselves from the common herd."

Another rather heretic point Graham makes is that, "Kids' heads are repositories of all our taboos. It seems fitting to us that kids' ideas should be bright and clean. The picture we give them of the world is not merely simplified, to suit their developing minds, but sanitized as well, to suit our ideas of what kids ought to think."

I would however questions Graham's belief that, "there seems a clear correlation between intelligence and willingness to consider shocking ideas. This isn't just because smart people actively work to find holes in conventional thinking. I think conventions also have less hold over them to start with. You can see that in the way they dress." This seems like an assumption that needs to be broken heretically. There are many smart people that use their intelligence to reinforce convention or shape convention to suit their needs. I do think that some people are more 'disruptively intelligent" than others. They have an easier time than others ignoring or challenging convention. For example, people that are classically 'mentally challenged' generally challenge convention more than average. I would argue that their intelligence is just different from the average - they are more intelligent in certain

I've received great enjoyment from just browsing the Wikipedia articles. I've never just "donated" to a website before (though I've bought paid services at a couple, for example LiveJournal), but Wikipedia is an excellent project, and I felt it deserved a couple bucks. I'm poor as shit at the moment, so I couldn't spare much, but, as the submission says, I don't really need that candy bar. :)

Just like the T-shirt says

I think those ads are misleading...

I wrote an essay almost on this subject, about whether or not it should be illegal. I wrote it from a US of A standpoint, considering the first amendment. I won't pretend that it's full of deep thought or anything. I spoke in defense of virtual child pornography. You can read my essay here on livejournal. (I'm too cheap to pay for hosting on top of my cable internet access, and I don't have a static IP at home because comcast is stingy like that.)

Though I only really address the issue of legality in the article, I personally believe that virtual child porn is a good thing in some ways. You are not going to stop pedophilia by outlawing all the sexual outlets of those who are pedophiles. It is my opinion that by doing so you will actually increase the crimes committed by pedophiles by denying them their outlet. But, enough here, read my lj if you want more. And I am more than willing to debate the issue there rather than here, though you will need to be a registered user to comment in my lj (Some poser posted a nasty reply to one of my rants which didn't even address the issues, just so they could call me a dick, so I had to remove anonymous posting.)

It's a Li+ battery, good for around 500 charges. That's about 1.5yrs battery lifetime on your iPod if you use it every day, like I do.

Recently, I did a battery replacement on my iPod. I wrote about it here in my journal.

For people who claim to be all for working on your own hardware, you're all getting pretty bitchy about performing a five-minute, three step process.

Oh, and my battery cost me half of what Apple is charging. So nyah.

And here it is done the right way.

And for caching we all know about memcached, right? slashdot. uses it, and so does Livejournal.

yeah, I can't format my a href tags.

livejournal

it's been 1 minute since i last posted a reply...

That ex-Netscape programmer is JWZ himself, and the actual journal page (with lots of interesting comments) is here.

I just found a journal entry by an ex-Netscape programmer claiming this makes him "want to cry".