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Re:I want to change universe by da5id · 2000-04-26 04:02 · Score: 1 · on Universe's Curvature Measured?

Your comment reminds me of my reaction after reading Flatland (http://eldred.ne.mediaone.net/eaa/FL.HTM).

If you havent read it, do, its funny in a kind of boring way. Here is the Dedication:

To
The Inhabitants of SPACE IN GENERAL
And H.C. IN PARTICULAR
This Work is Dedicated
By a Humble Native of Flatland
In the Hope that
Even as he was Initiated into the Mysteries
Of THREE Dimensions
Having been previously conversant
With ONLY TWO
So the Citizens of that Celestial Region
May aspire yet higher and higher
To the Secrets of FOUR FIVE OR EVEN SIX Dimensions
Thereby contributing
To the Enlargment of THE IMAGINATION
And the possible Development
Of that most and excellent Gift of MODESTY
Among the Superior Races
Of SOLID HUMANITY

BTW, how to you make /. display your text centered in a post? align="center" doesnt seem to work, but I think I have seen it done.

The Uber Nerd

Today's "e-books": ANTIbooks! by mdecerbo · 2000-04-16 04:54 · Score: 2 · on RMS On eBooks

These are antibooks. As the prescient Eric Eldred writes:
an antibook is a book that has been murdered--it has been bought up like private property, enclosed inside a secure hardware lock by strong encryption and digital signatures, wrapped up inside a shrinkwrap software license you have no choice but to accept, copyrighted whether it deserves a new copyright or not and protected by the criminal sanctions of the new laws, delivered directly to consumers over the Internet instead of being sold by used bookstores or browsable on a bookstore shelf, incapable of being lent by public libraries because of all the licensing restrictions, locked up securely so the reader cannot print it out, copy it to a disk to backup or use on another computer or share with anyone else, in fact so locked up it requires proprietary software or hardware to even view the antibook, incapable of being resold because of the shrinkwrap license and the hardware locks, and unable to be accessed for any fair use by scholars or by anyone, including blind readers, if it ever technically reverted to the public domain.

What's more, free e-books are threatened not only by the antibooks and horrors like DMCA, but by copyright extension: media companies want permanent copyright, but they'll settle for extending it by twenty-five years, every twenty-five years, retroactively of course.

See http://eldred.ne.mediaone.net for more on this-- plus free e-books in HTML format.

Today's "e-books": ANTIbooks! by mdecerbo · 2000-04-16 04:54 · Score: 2 · on RMS On eBooks

These are antibooks. As the prescient Eric Eldred writes:
an antibook is a book that has been murdered--it has been bought up like private property, enclosed inside a secure hardware lock by strong encryption and digital signatures, wrapped up inside a shrinkwrap software license you have no choice but to accept, copyrighted whether it deserves a new copyright or not and protected by the criminal sanctions of the new laws, delivered directly to consumers over the Internet instead of being sold by used bookstores or browsable on a bookstore shelf, incapable of being lent by public libraries because of all the licensing restrictions, locked up securely so the reader cannot print it out, copy it to a disk to backup or use on another computer or share with anyone else, in fact so locked up it requires proprietary software or hardware to even view the antibook, incapable of being resold because of the shrinkwrap license and the hardware locks, and unable to be accessed for any fair use by scholars or by anyone, including blind readers, if it ever technically reverted to the public domain.

What's more, free e-books are threatened not only by the antibooks and horrors like DMCA, but by copyright extension: media companies want permanent copyright, but they'll settle for extending it by twenty-five years, every twenty-five years, retroactively of course.

See http://eldred.ne.mediaone.net for more on this-- plus free e-books in HTML format.

Time for Slashdot to take a stand... by Anonymous Coward · 2000-04-05 03:12 · Score: 4 · on MPAA Files Another Injunction Against 2600

The following is a list of all the mirrors from the 2600 site.