Slashdot Mirror

The use of nuclear weapons on hiroshima and nagasaki was tactically unnecessary, it did not decide the war, it only speeded up the ending of it. Especially the second bomb was unnecessary, since the japanese had gotten the message after the first one.

Really? Allied projections for an island-by-island invasion of Japan involved literally millions of casualties of allied personnel and uninvolved civilians. And the Japanese military staged an unsuccessful coup rather than allow Hirohito to surrender after Nagasaki.

I'm still mystified that espionage and anti-terrorism measures, or, from the private sector, vigilantism and lynching hasn't been invoked against spammers. I keep hearing how 90% of all spam is initiated by mere hundreds or thousands of people. Based on the economic costs alone, apparently folks think spammer's lives are worth hundreds of millions of dollars since everyone's willing to do nothing to stop the problem at its source. Not even the US government believes average citizens are worth that much (the average value of a human life for environment cost purposes is ~$6.8M). At what point to would spammers simply become "expendable" given the cost they inflict?

Read about dark suckers.

Read about dark suckers.

I mean after all we give convicted rapists Academy Awards. /end sarcasm

Sorry, but this article is just misinformed crap.

It implies that MMPs are the only type of games still being played on PC, which is dumb. Not only that, it also states that "their growth appears almost stagnant" which is, of course, completely false.

I'm a game developper working on MMPs.
I've been hearing about the demise of the PC as a gaming platform for *years*.
Every year brings its new fad : consoles, cell phones, set top boxes, PDAs, next-gen consoles, online consoles, you name it...

And you know what ?
The PC is still alive and kicking.

And you know why ?
Because as long as PCs are bought, some people will want to buy games to play on them, and some developpers will want to take advantage of a free platform.

A platform where they don't need to beg for development kits.
A platform where they don't have to pay a for the privilege of releasing a game.
A platform where they are free to develop whatever game they wish without going through the hoops of "concept approval" (going through the hoops of a publisher is bad enough).
A platform where their imagination isn't restricted by the DRM crap that console makers are going to shove down everybody's throat.

So maybe all the big action/sports/movie franchise will keep moving on consoles. And who cares really? It's all the same old, boring stuff anyway.
But I'm pretty sure you'll keep on seeing original, cool games appearing on the PC first. And it won't be just the MMP games...

Here's a couple of links to prove my point.

The day the PC as a gaming platform dies, is the day the PC dies.

Learning more math won't help much for understanding the concept of pointers. However, I would definitely recommend a course (or reading a book) about microprocessors, how they work, how they deal with memory access/mapping and stuff. That would probably help you understand that a pointer is not a "physical" object or a value or a string, but simply a reference to this object/value/string in memory. If this reference is erroneous (points to a bad place in memory) then you are in trouble if you try to read from the pointer or write to it.

The most common misunderstanding about pointers is that when you have declared a pointer like this :

int *pMyPtr;

*pMyPtr = 5;

int Value; /* This value is allocated in memory; its contents is not defined yet. */
int Table[10]; /* This table is allocated and exists in memory. Its contents is not initialized. */
int *pMyPtr; /* This is a pointer. It contains an uninitialized address to somewhere in memory. */

/* ... */
pMyPtr = &Value; /* pMyPtr points to the address of Value. Therefore *pMyPtr==Value. */
pMyPtr = &Table[5]; /* pMyPtr points to Table[5], therefore *pMyPtr==Table[5]. */
pMyPtr = Table; /* pMyPtr points to Table[0], therefore *pMyPtr==Table[0]. */

There are a couple of nice pics of craters on earth here.

Sherwin Gooch's Account of John Bardeen's Lecture (Score:1)
by Baldrson (jabowery@netcom.com) on Tuesday December 28, @08:58AM EST
(User Info) http://www.geocities.com/jim_bowery

In any case, I'll check with Sherwin Gooch to see if he has any more direct evidence from Bardeen himself to support the controversial account of the hide-away experimental stand.

I did, and here is Sherwin's response:

Jim,

Thank you for alerting me to your discussion.

To provide a more solid foundation, one should be aware that I heard this story from the horse's mouth.

John Bardeen himself gave a talk one evening at Altgeld Hall on the University of Illinois campus, circa 1978, in which he related various experiences surrounding his inventing the transistor. At the time, people suspected that the scheduling of this presentation may have been related to Bardeen's health.

Professor Bardeen showed us the B&W 16mm film BB&S had made at Bell Labs immediately after they got the first transistor to work (and, presumably, before Bardeen's boss got to work the next morning...) I have seen individual frames and out-takes of this film since, but I don't know if the entire film still exists. The "rolly-cart" with their experimental set-up is plainly in evidence on the film.

It was John Bardeen himself, at Altgeld Hall, who related that his boss had said that the "solid-state amplifying device" which they wanted to develop was "not feasible," and that, "even if it were possible, it would have no practical application." Dr. Bardeen related that sometimes, when his boss stayed at work past 5 p.m., the three of them would become very impatient waiting for him to leave so they could roll their setup out of the coat-closet, and get busy on what they, apparently, thought was the greatest "cool hack" of the day.

I wonder who Bardeen's boss was. His boss should be immortalized in history next to the NASA manager who advised the last engineer withholding approval of the Challenger launch to "put on your management hat!"

One of the anecdotes John Bardeen related was how he had left his set of photographic slides in the taxi which took him to the ceremony to collect his Nobel prize, and all the trouble to which he and the Swedish government had gone in trying to recover them. But their efforts were unsuccessful; the slides were never recovered. Professor Bardeen was extremely apologetic that he didn't have them to use in his presentation, and so we would just have to make-do with his relating the incidents to us.

With my background in computer music, I found one of the pieces of supporting paraphernalia that Dr. Bardeen didn't lose in Sweden quite interesting. He brought along a transparent plexiglas box, approximately the shape of a 6" cube, with randomly distributed 3/4" or so holes (apparently for cooling?) in the sides. On the top were a number (6 or so) of black SPST N.O. push buttons. A small loudspeaker was mounted inside. (There must have also been a battery of some kind, but I don't recall it.) The box contained a collection of electronic components, their leads soldered to one-another ("tacked together"), and hanging in "free space." (He hadn't bothered to use a prototyping board or connecting strip.) There were resistors, capacitors, possibly some coils, and these ~1" long bar things (which were the transistors), of which there were 3. Dr. Bardeen explained that he had had chosen to build this device because it em

Say you need to make a file over 2GB (very common in video processing) and you stumble across this page. You come away thinking linux doesn't support large files, when really it does. In this case you can scroll all the way to the bottom and the author is nice enough to have timestamped the page - 1998. But still, how do you know whether the old information is outdated? Even if you choose some arbitrary cutoff date ("information after Jan 1, 2003 is likely to be fresh") how do you tell google to only find information after that date? You can't.

Unfortunately there's no easy solution to the problem of outdated information. Useful documentation takes attention and manpower. But perhaps an easily modifiable Wikki-format will encourage more updates and more participation than comparable efforts such as The Linux Documentation Project, which is really just a smattering of FAQs, HOWTO-s, guides, and man pages with no real coherence - full of duplication and stale information.

Since we know Dark Suckers aren't useless, dark matter must exist.

Q.E.D.

The purification rundown is dangerous nonsense. Please mod the parent down.

Challenge-response is considered harmful. Why? For precisely the reasons you're highlighting. Either:

• Spam with spoofed headers is generating challenges to your account. At best this is an annoyance. At worst, a Joe-job.
• Spammers are faking C-R challenges to harvest legitimate, reachable, email addresses.

To those who've called these "legitimate" TMDA (or other) challenges: what is legitimate about sending unsolicited mail to the wrong person, merely because you've received unsolicited mail from someone else?

Then according to your opinion, Asheron's Call, AC2, Planetside, the Sims Online, Eve Online, Everquest: OA and others aren't MMORPGs. I think the current subscriber base is hardly as significant as the intent.
(Source: Sir Bruce's Subscription page)

I know you're trying to make a point, but your numbers are misleading. First of all, the top 10% of wage-earners pay about 67% of the total federal income tax. Also, without stating the top 10%'s income as a percentage of total income earned, the figure is misleading. The top 10% of wage-earners earn 40% of all income.

If you take a step back and look at overall economic income (not just cash income), the top 10% has 40.5% of the pie. Likewise, if you look at the total federal tax (not just income tax) paid by the top 10%, it's only 48.5% of the total collected.

These figures were from 2000 so I'm sure they've actually gone more in favor towards that top 10% given Bush's tax cuts.

Check here for more on the lower quintiles and their respective percentages.

Procmail is your friend. Use it. In conjunction with SpamAssassin, you can filter it off to a folder to go send to SpamCop at your earliest convienence. While SpamCop officially discourages doing so, setting your mail server to reject based on the RBL bl.spamcop.net will save you some work (and money if you're a SpamCop member) by prohibiting mail from sites already reported by several people.

I use exim in conjunction with sa-exim to reject spam that scores high with Spamassassin, and to teergrube the luser. Since I'm the postmaster, I also have sa-exim give all the sa-exim rejected spam to my spam folder to report as well.

I have roughly 30 users. Almost all of them use my site for mail, since doing so is extremely spam hostile thanks to me, with very little inconvienence, if any, to legitimate mailers, which is the way it should be.

On an aside, I also use abuse.net's forwarding service to report hosts infected with viruses to their ISPs. I've been fairly successful, though it could be better. Roughly one third of the ISPs I contact suspend or terminate the user's account for it. I also maintain a net-lsearchable list of the last relay such infected messages go through before hitting my server. Feel free to use it for yourself, it's on my website.

As per Brief History of Pi Calculations by Computers, the current figure is 1.24 trillion by the same Japanese team. In fact, Yasumasa KANADA has broken the record 18 times since 1981. Boy does he have a lot of spare time or what?

I recall seeing a statistical analysis on /. a month or two ago explaining that the MMORPG market was already oversaturated.

by Dave Rickey
2003-09-23

To everything there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heavens:

A time to be born, and a time to die;
a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted;
Ecclesiastes 3:1-2

In his keynote for the first day of the Austin Game Conference, Mark Jacobs divided the history of online games in three eras, with the current era being the Age of Disappointment. I can't really understand the logic for doing so, however. Mark is certainly well-acquainted with the history of online games, he was a part of much of it. But history did not stop when Mythic emerged from the contract-development wilderness with Dark Age of Camelot. There were failed games before DAoC, there have been two successful games since (TSO may have been an underwhelming success, but it only counts as a failure when measured against the expectations that were set for it, if AC was a success then so was TSO). In truth, we are solidly in the growth phase of our market, and our largest related markets have yet to really open up.

That's a bold statement, I know, but I think I can make a good case for it. First, I would refer readers to the MMOG Subsciptions Chart maintained by Bruce Woodcock. Bruce seems to have made good use of his visit to the Austin conference, he has firmed-up figures for quite a few games compared to his earlier versions. Bruce also makes available the source Excel spreadsheet that he uses to generate his chart. A few minutes work with Excel plotting the growth of the US/European OLRPG market makes it pretty clear that the market is seeing continued growth, although with a possibly significant flat spot extending for 6 months prior to the launch of SWG.

There's a classic progression of the acceptance of innovation/market growth, which is pretty widely accepted these days. It runs "Innovator" (4%), "Early Adopter" (12%), "Early Majority" (34%), "Late Majority" (34%), "Late Adopter" (12%) and "Laggards" (4%). If you plot that curve against that from Sir Bruce's chart, you get the inescapable conclusion that the US/European OLRPG (I'm using that outdated abbreviation deliberately) market is somewhere in the Early Majority phase. Where in that phase is hard to say, but at any rate the market (at around 1.4 million subscriptions) is no more than halfway done with its growth, and correspondingly at least 4 years short of effectively flat market growth ("A growing market forgives a lot of sins." Yes, quoting myself is bad form, but at any rate the market is growing and that growth is fueling a lot of misplaced effort and allowing a lot of mistakes to be washed away with a shot from the newbie hose. For the next few years, good games will succeed and bad games will fail, just as they have been doing for the last 5 years. After that, things gets interesting.

No game has, to my knowledge, ever seen more than a 15% drop in subscribers due solely to the release of a competitor. Even SWG has created barely a blip in the subscriber counts for the already existing games. What is typically seen is a few months of increasing churn and reduced re-subscription leading up to the expected release, followed by a slow decline in churn and increase in re-subscription back to near the starting level. Rather than wholesale exodus, what is seen is a collective "Waiting for Game X" that results in a slight depression of the subscriber base. Nowhere was his more pronounced than with SWG, which cast a near zero-growth shadow over the entire OLRPG market for more than 6 months. But the main thing here is that nothing happens *quickly*, trends develop slowly and can be hard to spot. However, the market shows classic growth profiles that are fairly easy to project into the future.

If I'm tip-toeing around

Well, one major problem is that the uranium sources in the world are slowly draining. So fission nuclear power has no more of a future than fossiles.

A question that strikes me even more is whether the earth will survive for another 100+years. Here's just one of the zillion doomsday theories.

No, UO isn't a big enough name on the MMORPG market. Everquest is number one, but I predict, especially based on statistics from this chart that both UO and EQ will meet their demise within a year. Not a total failure of course, just a dramatic drop in subscribers or at least in growth. Want big names? Final Fantasy XI. Star Wars Galaxies. Those are big names. Everyone knows what Star Wars is and almost everyone knows what Final Fantasy is. They'll dominate the MMORPG market while obscure-titled names like Everquest and Ultima Online are left in the dust.

Is that the way it should be? No.. but that's probably the way it will be. Consumers buy into titles more than anything else.

Kite Aerial Photography
Mosaics of kite aerial photographs
Aerial photography using a balloon at Burning Man
Other types of aerial photography (balloon, helicopter, kite, even periscope!)

There's a section in the analysis on expansions, where he comes to the conclusion that expansions aren't a significant impact on subscriber growth, although he also notes at many points that a particular MMOG experiences growth of small or significant value in the subscriber base due to the release of an expansion. I'd be interested in seeing more analysis on this really.

To continue with conjecture, I somewhat feel that the release of expansions is beneficial from a marketing standpoint, but they would likely benefit even more if as Bruce Woodcock said they contain "substantial new features" and also if there was some benefit to existing customers and no large buy-in penalty to new customers (though at least with EQ you can generally buy the entire series for only a slightly inflated price, I saw the Gold Box when Planes of Power was released for $60. Of course I said 'Hmm $60 * 5 accounts for a game I don't really play anymore. I guess not.)

The problem is that judging by your posts and the fact that you publicly display your email address (jmattj@ix.netcom.com), I can't believe that you are smart enough to infer the licensing/dividend connection on your own.

Linus Torvalds:
That's a real can of worms. Patents, especially software patents, are the worst thing that can happen to freely available software. It's just too dangerous to let people do patents on something that is fundamental research, in many cases, or patent a series of numbers like you mentioned. It does not make sense, and it's sad that it's allowed, and it's a real problem.

The only real solution is to

Hope that the patent expires which takes a long time or
That you create something that is obviously better and patent-free.
And by being patent free you find others who are willing to support your sales [?] and just make sure that maybe Pantone ® will be there in five years time, but there will be something else too. I'm sorry, there's not much you can do unless you want to spend a lot of money on trying to convince politicians to make certain things illegal.

Presumably, most people here have a fair familiarity with the MMORPG (Massively Multiplayer Online Roleplaying Game) phenomenon, but here's a rundown of the major products out there from my bookmarks, for anyone who's interested but not wholly informed. Feel free to correct any of this if my understanding of any of these games is in any way flawed:

Anarchy Online
Asheron's Call
Dark Age of Camelot
Everquest
Shadowbane (just released - very buggy)
A Tale in the Desert
Ultima Online

Horizons
Eve Online (final beta - close to release)
City of Heroes
Dragon Empires (in beta)
Everquest 2 (in development)
Lineage II (in development)
Star Wars Galaxies (closed beta)
Imperator (very early development)
World of Warcraft (very early development)

Most of these games don't release specific subscriber base numbers. However, a series of very good guesses is compiled here.

Indeed that's a round number, that's the furthest to the future a date can be when using a 32-bit millisecond counter starting from the Unix epoch (00:00 Jan 1, 1970)

Spooky. :)

I had never heard of this (and I lived in rural Alberta for much of my life) so I hunted around and found this. Just thought I would share it.

Here is a less amusing but more informative site about it as well.

Farming is dangerous work. Between the War Amps commercials ("I lost my arms playing around a thresher!") and the possibility of falling into a grain silo and drowning, it's dangerous enough without adding the whole "exploding silo's" to the mix.

It's hard, easy to go bankrupt, and dangerous. I have nothing but respect for the people that take on that profession.

Y2.038k == 32-bit time counter at one tick per second since 1970 runs out of ticks (to be exact, 19-January-2038 at 3:14:08 AM GMT).

Value must be signed because signed arithmetic is widely done on it, so making it unsigned won't work. Value is traditionally `long' so not a problem on 64-bit machines (like Alpha) for a while but major hassles with old software (that doesn't use time_t type) on 32-bit machines.

Now it is true that productivity in the US has grown faster than real compensation, and the beneficiaries of this excess are the stock holders (over 50% of Americans now).

Personally, I think it would be better if the government would allow us to put our 12% of income towards investments (stocks, bonds, etc.) rather than the Ponzi scheme called Social Security...

Nope, breeder reactors take care of that problem. It'll give quite enough fuel to last much longer than a century

Well, at least it'll take a long time when they're trying to factor the number by running random (!) trial division (!!!). Come on, nobody in their right minds factor large numbers that way. :-) Check this page about ECM factoring instead. :-)

/* Steinar */

Preview, goddamn it. Here is the link.

Strange.
I put the start button in that position in Windows 95 several years ago.
(Old picture.)

The Department of Redundancy Department! (With apologies to Richard Lederer...)

A few years ago Karsten Self posted an excellent analysis of the economic effects of piracy on software distribution. He posted this online and has lightly edited it since. On Software "Piracy", Lies, BSA, Microsoft, Rocks, and Hard Penguins is the article, and it is well worth the read.

I can't beleive that ./ is now contributing to the increasingly dated notion that light exists.
Dark Sucker Theory Page

Interesting essay on the Y2038 problem, and probably human nature, at Roger Wilcox's Y2038 page, http://pw1.netcom.com/~rogermw/Y2038.html

The rest of the world, huh? A large part of the world is continually in conflict with the US. They attack with trade disputes, rude waiters and well built cars. They are fundamentally rational, civilised people that we get along with just fine. I still would not willingly place myself under their courts. The "rest of the world" is scary. It's made up of people who spend all their time at protests waving silly posters. It's made up of people who have been called terrorists for so long that they think the word "terrorist" is just what you call someone you don't like. It's made up of people who think my wife deserves to die because she doesn't wear a veil. Those people control governments, and votes in the UN.

I won't submit to their idea of anything. The government knows that they'll have serious problems with the military if they allow this. We've already got bullshit SOFAs to deal with. Voluntary subjection to an international court will be too much of a sellout.

I am surprised nobody has posted the "Dark Suckers" joke in response to this yet.

Screw it, here it is

For years, it has been believed that electric bulbs emit light, but recent information has proved otherwise. Electric bulbs don't emit light; they suck dark. Thus, we call these bulbs Dark Suckers. The Dark Sucker Theory and the existence of dark suckers prove that dark has mass and is heavier than light.
First, the basis of the Dark Sucker Theory is that electric bulbs suck dark. For example, take the Dark Sucker in the room you are in. There is much less dark right next to it than there is elsewhere. The larger the Dark Sucker, the greater its capacity to suck dark. Dark Suckers in the parking lot have a much greater capacity to suck dark than the ones in this room.

So with all things, Dark Suckers don't last forever. Once they are full of dark, they can no longer suck. This is proven by the dark spot on a full Dark Sucker.

A candle is a primitive Dark Sucker. A new candle has a white wick. You can see that after the first use, the wick turns black, representing all the dark that has been sucked into it. If you put a pencil next to the wick of an operating candle, it will turn black. This is because it got in the way of the dark flowing into the candle. One of the disadvantages of these primitive Dark Suckers is their limited range.

There are also portable Dark Suckers. In these, the bulbs can't handle all the dark by themselves and must be aided by a Dark Storage Unit. When the Dark Storage Unit is full, it must be either emptied or replaced before the portable Dark Sucker can operate again.

Dark has mass. When dark goes into a Dark Sucker, friction from the mass generates heat. Thus, it is not wise to touch an operating Dark Sucker. Candles present a special problem as the mass must travel into a solid wick instead of through clear glass. This generates a great amount of heat and therefore it's not wise to touch an operating candle.

Also, dark is heavier than light. If you were to swim just below the surface of the lake, you would see a lot of light. If you were to slowly swim deeper and deeper, you would notice it getting darker and darker. When you get really deep, you would be in total darkness. This is because the heavier dark sinks to the bottom of the lake and the lighter light floats at the top. The is why it is called light.

Finally, we must prove that dark is faster than light. If you were to stand in a lit room in front of a closed, dark closet, and slowly opened the closet door, you would see the light slowly enter the closet. But since dark is so fast, you would not be able to see the dark leave the closet.

Next time you see an electric bulb, remember that it is a Dark Sucker.


'Stolen' from here

and of course for every good Hoax theory that has to be an expository page going into more depth.

Which can be found here

We review Stranger in a Strange Land, followed by The Book of Kells, then the Res Gestae, then The Rosetta Stone.... Come on! This book bored me to near-death 21 years ago. It was a long grinding-down of the soul, like Catcher in the Rye.
I appreciate the effort of the review, and all, but by now, anybody likely to be on /.(literate, intelligent, older than 12 years) should have already been exposed to it.

dominik@schnitzer.at, mozparty-at-subscribe@relax.ath.cx, dominik@schnitzer.at, david_markvica@web.de, johannes_richter@gmx.net, kairo@kairo.at, rossi@chello.at, markush@world-direct.com, cbiesinger@web.de, jenskager@gmx.net, jo-at-mt@gmx.net, johann.petrak@gmx.at, dviper01@gmx.net, simon@simonschwaighofer.net, dreckskerl@glump.at, wt-lists@trexler.at, dusty@strike.wu-wien.ac.at, kasparhauserjr@hotmail.com, b.schallar@gmx.net, mutato@libero.it, phil@goli.at, diddalick@gmx.net, studio@paw8.com, croco@utanet.at, petru@paler.net, jlemmerer@node.at, bigkub@time2change.at, patrick@seher-it.at, ronald@hartwig.at, mozilla_party@webterminate.com, stefan@kleinhans.it, horst.jens@gmx.at, jjan@gibts.net, mjahn@agency.at, gpoul@gnu.org, green@eggs.ham, gerhard.hipfinger@openforce.at, mailto:moz@moz.org>, florianweinwurm@yahoo.com, christian@precht-jensen.dk, Bill_Gates@microsoft.com, Tux_the_penguin@linux.rules.microsoft.sux.open.sou rce.is.the.way.to.go.net, domi@schnitzer.at, joe_ringmaster@gmx.at, sifu@isohypse.org, dk@perm.ru, nobandwidth@bigpond.com, nobandwidth@bigpond.com, luke@strangemonkey.com, mrundataker@optushome.com.au, mcgarry@tig.com.au, chris@think.net.au, Mathias.Burbach@Bigfoot.com, acuteparanoia@optushome.com.au, syzh401@cse.unsw.edu.au, maillist@jasonlim.com, ram@digitalmethod.org, jason@sydneypubguide.net, geek@digitalone.com.au, curious@ihug.com.au, bill@maidment.com.au, kristof@staesis.org, bill@microsoft.com, belle@netset.net.au, ksosez@softhome.net, jruderman@hmc.edu, andyed@surfmind.com, down8@yahoo.com, mozparty@sigkill.com, bulbul@ucla.edu, gavin-mozparty@doughtie.com, roger@digitalfountain.com, matt@linuxschooltorrance.com, mozparty@ventura.nu, rombouts@compuserve.com, ian@freenetproject.org, tristanreid@yahoo.com, groovefx@yahoo.com, jj@lacasabonita.com, gmoudry@hotmail.com, eyezero@yahoo.com, ian@primewave.net, jlawson7@adelphia.net, el_arturo@att.net, janie@freenetproject.org, 145371217@numenor.net, infinite_8_monkey@yahoo.com, charshman@divus.org, mozparty@shadowlurker.net, john@marinapacific.com, ilanterrell@yahoo.com, aafes@psu.edu, bustamam98@yahoo.com, mozparty@myunixbox.com, yaten@sbcglobal.net, joelinux@pacificnet.net, dgc@penguino.net, poserskater69@yahoo.com, lheartb@hotmail.com, ncmother@zimage.com, daniel@likeicare.com, digital.evil@lycos.com, cjeburke@yahoo.com, jblow@hotmail.com, zachary.anthony@verizon.net, boogah@23.org, mebelost@yahoo.com, nickkricheff@netscape.net, mikemcg@ucla.edu, gogomozilla@denofslack.net, mike@mm1.com, seanmcoleman@attbi.com, jsm@bigfoot.com, hoarycripple@crippl3.net, mozparty@nslu.x.myxomop.com, mozparty@camworld.com, mozpartyNYC@isoga.net, ccarlen@netscape.com, h@rediffmail.com, lefever@rcn.com, tedjackson@accounting.org, darren@ny.com, marlon@nyc.com, plui@hyperreal.org, dzeluff@zeluff.com, joel@natividads.com, ken@bigbadapple.com, treebeard@treebeard.net, florent@nyc.com, chad@macristy.com, spud@montelshow.com, gbman_of_gvill@yahoo.com, eam-mozparty@learningpatterns.com, pkrause@primavera.com, tossoffus@yahoo.com, ryan@pantz.com, nichomof@eecs.tulane.edu, billg@microsoft.com, DevilsRejection@msn.com, petergunn@hotmail.com, bagerj@sullcrom.com, isaac@structuredsystems.net, bobk@panix.com, ngellner@hotmail.com, luke@sigterm.org, vivake@yahoo.com, jon@mediavortex.com, groovefx@yahoo.com, brendan@sighup.net, jds@panix.com, bluerose@bluerose.com, chris@allermann.net, dimkal@yahoo.com, preppyl@yahoo.com, blujoker@blujoker.net, nowell_h@hotmail.com, aragorn@cs.stanford.edu, treed@cpr.com, brt204@nyu.edu, andreas@antonopoulos.com, dj@randomwalks.com, lists@pote.com, mike@mhudack.com, reliable57@yahoo.com, jared@geek-boy.com, ondadl@mac.com, floss@myrealbox.com, xod@thestonecutters.net, mozilla@sectae.net, tywonm@screamingmedia.com, Odin_NT@hotmail.com, crooney@panix.com, bg25222@binghamton.edu, eugenem@brainlink.com, dave@downneck.net, romspace@mac.com, sdaejo@yahoo.com, masseo1@yahoo.com, jim@fearandloathing.net, mike@mjoy.us, miles@openly.com, LuciferSD@hotmail.com, nsdilwor@intertechmedia.com, chrisdowden@yahoo.com, pgs10@columbia.edu, sbrennan@ovid.com, lthomiso@rcn.com, paralox@paralox.ath.cx, Jester_458@yahoo.com, jsadove@beltion.net, stuehmke@yahoo.com, mike@realfx.com, alex@risky-roosky.com, shava@efn.org, kra10@columbia.edu, saihung@ix.netcom.com, gropo@mac.com, scottnym@yahoo.com, shaas@vibe.com, roon_toon@hotmail.com, ajaygautam@yahoo.com, jhdaly@mindspring.com, manuel@sphinx.ms, very_itchy_rash@yahoo.com, emeldrum@drew.edu, jeld@mindless.com, as867@columbia.edu, slams@penguin.rutgers.edu, wassa@columbia.edu, tony@vegan.net, zilla@bibliotrack.com, zeno_lee@hotmail.com, fosh@fishnet.cx, linux@gpl.us, jblow@hotmail.com, dkrook@hotmail.com, ivesti@yahoo.com, arek@arekwyderka.com, bljoechang@yahoo.com, brian@tribrothers.com, sparky@marklife.org, charles@softwareprototypes.com, scottkundla@hotmail.com, ccharabaruk@meldstar.com, ian@pottinger.ca, netdemonz@yahoo.com, diatribe@mailcity.com, nick@tomkinet.com, shawnlin@yahoo.com, sculley@pathcom.com, herd.killing@rogers.com, dave@renouf.com, aliyamin@hotmail.com, aswitzer@ispgn.com, netm0nkey@ispgn.com, hyakugei@hotmail.com, geduggan.mozparty@peri.csclub.uwaterloo.ca, lwhite@darkfires.ca, jorel@the-wire.com, js@tap.net, davew@tap.net, tmh@whitefang.com, vid_mozillaparty@zooid.org, anon@foolswisdom.org, morris_mk@yahoo.ca, colinmc@idirect.com, marcus.brubaker@utoronto.ca, akish@kishcom.com, nconway@klamath.dyndns.org, jason@thegeekcave.com, rampaging_simian@hotmail.com, garret@sirsonic.com, piowie@myrealbox.com, m5m5m@yahoo.com, ivan.brovko@net-sweeper.com, returnofthedorks@hotmail.com, axxackall@yahoo.com, tednye@sympatico.ca, darren.fuller@bell.ca, jbailey@nisa.net, swangeo@yahoo.ca, Hercynium@yahoo.com, cinetron@passport.ca, jotaroh@hotmail.com, aghajani@principle.com, fzv@yahoo.com, rocketmail_com@rocketmail.com, foo@bar.com, wolfe@alt.net, drew@xyzzy.dhs.org, jimmiejaz@nixhelp.net, bofh@swma.net, nilesh_mehta@email.com, mslack@rogers.com, m-cahill@rogers.com, tworkowski@sympatico.ca, george@openlight.com, irina@openlight.com, ilia@lobsanov.com, rjs@tao.ca, paul-mp@it.ca, alvarolists@aycuens.com, xan@dimensis.com, ike@lab.org, miguel@asiinfo.net, marevalo@marevalo.net, iolalla@yahoo.com, peluz0n@justice.com, weeddeveloper@yahoo.com, alfonsobugs@terra.es, sgala@apache.org, z_gringo@hotmail.com, santiz@madritel.es, murphy@litio.net, fox@mozilla.gr.jp, party@mozilla.org.uk, danj@fledgeling.com, fun@thingy.apana.org.au, moz@the-allens.net, onelists@hotmail.com, joel@fysh.org, simon.mozilla-party-if-its-in-central-london@rumbl e.net, bigboyjim@excite.com, andrew.and.friends.iff.central.london@sent.freeser ve.co.uk, itwillbecentrallondon@mozilla.org.uk, noahsark2x2@tiscali.co.uk, mmm-central-london@smileyben.com, jonathan-for-central-london@peepo.com, dave-Party-in-Central-London@dgta.co.uk, DJGMOL@netscape.net, srick@europe.yahoo-inc.com, moz-party@zpok.demon.co.uk, moz-party-central-london@trickofthelight.org, marc@brosystems.com, party@budge.net, rillian@telus.net, uphillsurfer@hotmail.com, edward@debian.org, mozilla@robertbrook.com, reagan@technomoose.com, lew@saltbeefsandwich.co.uk, osama@afghanistan.com, barking@insaneworld.org.uk, john@billabong-media.com, leith@cs.bu.edu, mozparty@noseynick.org, jonasj@jonasj.dk, bugzilla@kenneth.dk, chr_damsgaard@hotmail.com, alring@email.com, hp.grondal@get2net.dk, martin@marquentein.dk, Lovechild@foolclan.com, Kim@schulz.dk, kl@vsen.dk, mbendix@dunghill.dk, schnitzer.at@tange.dk, tommy@svindel.net, moz10@pbb.dk, dezral@despammed.com, nick@tioka.com, ask@fujang.dk, gecko@c.dk, spam@deck.dk, bugzilla@gemal.dk, b@bogdan.dk, kenneth@gnu.org, jee@email.dk, daniel@rtfm.dk, umfalvo@yahoo.com, christian@ostenfeld.dk, xor@ivwnet.com, Jason@screaminweb.com, alex@spamcop.net, dustym@riseup.net, rmcgee1@earthlink.net, dr_zeus@hotmail.com, chris.lozano@myrealbox.com, looney_binn@yahoo(dot)com, apendell@attbi.com, dantrevino@wrevolution.org, fireball1244@mac.com, tommyo@hargray.com, natas@redtailboa.net, emmett_in_dallas@yahoo.com, razzbuten@yahoo.com, igdavis@truculent-telephone.org, foobar@null.net, bob@kludgebox.com, cgrimland@yahoo.com, ghamlett@swbell.net, bgood@inceptual.com, slot0k@pogox.org, kwhudson@netin.com, jimjamjoh@softhome.net, jimmys@utdallas.edu, charlesv@mfos.org chris@focus2.com jest6r@hotmail.com steve@ncc.com, usrg@mail.utexas.edu, steve@deltos.com, alex@avengergear.com, mkoenecke@alum.haverford.edu langley@hex.net mordred@inaugust.com swapan@yahoo.com drosoph@hotmail.com, goulash1@mac.com, ean@brainfood.com, vj@vj.com lpret42@hotmail.com bugoff@hotmail.com chad@digitaltriage.net, stewart@digitaltriage.net scottvr01@yahoo.com adam@dfwuptime.com dsaint@gnumatt.org naltrexone42@yahoo.com, webmaster@bast.net, tommyo@hargray.com, ladd@kryp.to, jtaylor5@bayou.uh.edu, jgschmitz@linuxmail.org, enslaver@enslaver.com edfierro@yahoo.com, moz@photonsphere.com, rayw@fuckmicrosoft.com, rfmobile@swbell.net, kevin@unif.com trident5@bigfoot.com Erik_Osterholm@ieee.org, tmunson@houston.rr.com, alessi_brand@hotmail.com, rballa1@lsu.edu, wasted@kewlhair.com, jofficer@martinapparatus.com, idiot@mylinuxisp.com, j0sh01@ev1.net faust@wintermarket.org bouncer@hotmonkeyporn.com tk-mozparty_@perljam.net janisch@students.zcu.cz, aha@pinknet.cz kuzi@atlas.cz scat@reboot.cz, petr@dousa.cz, ruzicka@core.cz, roman@management.cz, hojan@students.zcu.cz, tille@soti.org, cas.tuyn@hetnet.nl, aeon@pandora.be, sensi_millia2000@yahoo.com, crypto@shiftat.com, jan.fabry@vsknet.be, monkeyboy@fruru.com, adulau@foo.be, johan@linux.be, karu@pobox.com, soggie@soti.org nick@tomkinet.com, why_are_you_too_lazy_to_drive_1_hour_to_toronto@yo u_lazy.com try_grammer_class_a_while@get_a_life.com john@interlynx.ca asharp@axo.cc, unionstation@ryder.ca, prade@hotmail.com, 2600@hamilton2600.ca, chris.lozano@myrealbox.com, dantrevino@wrevolution.org, jksteinhauer@netscape.net, i_love_junk_email@yahoo.com, cmiller@surfsouth.com, jan@bestbytes.de, me@phillipoertel.com, sebastian@pixelsalon.de, ccozan@andtek.com, ben@itlib.de, martin.ament@gmx.de, pulsar@highteq.net, muid@gmx.de, cedi@zooomclan.org, soapy@soapy.ch, deep_blue_ocean@gmx.ch, stamp@zooomclan.org, hans@switzerland.com, milamber@zooomclan.org, mtettea@switzerland.com, cylander@zooomclan.org, duke@zooomclan.org, pegirun@gmx.ch, pilif@pilif.ch, mlati@yahoo.com, Mozillzooom@holophrastic.com, erichiseli@yahoo.com, la_burdet@yahoo.com, rkoerber@gmx.de, dotzmasta@hotmail.com, B.Eckstein@cli.de, rtfm@linux.de, info@phosmo.de, gz@disintegrated.de, byronbay@gmx.de, stiwi@mac.com, mage@koeln.netsurf.de, mozilla@portfolio16.de, wrede@fh-aachen.de, ilikemozilla@html.de, cloud@final-fantasy.de, sfricke@sfricke.de, info@flossbau.de, no@dom.de, julian.suschlik@gmx.net, omero@m4d.sm, lapo@lapo.it, alcor78@email.it, info@fuelcat.it, mutato@libero.it, ildella@inwind.it, a.marabini@spinthehumanfactor.com, uomoman@criticalbit.com, thefl74@netscape.net, elbardo@libero.it, clem131@libero.it, t-i-e@bigfoot.com, gng74@libero.it, moz.party.20.gnes@spamgourmet.com, ema.cerqui@libero.it, ubertob@tin.it, mozparty.20.anagoor@spamgourmet.com, gianpaolo@preciso.net, ian@deepsky.com, marco@porciletto.org, planetx2100@hotmail.com, billabong@tiscalinet.it, piofree@libero.it, skunkyboy@tiscalinet.it, vincenzo@mondopiccolo.net, macmatteo@interfree.it, contreras@jce.it, hereandnow@libero.it, pza@students.cs.mu.oz.au, caedwa@students.cs.mu.oz.au, mgi@students.cs.mu.oz.au, bah@humbug.net, mfp@cs.mu.oz.au, nospamplease@indevelopment.org, peter@simplyit.screaming,net, pmj@users.sf.net, xanni@sericyb.com.au, agh@kalcium-is.com, felicityconsult@ozemail.com.au, lucas@lucaschan.com, andrewg@nopninjas.com, andym@abnormal.com, ts@meme.com.au, jasonpell@hotmail.com, syngin@gimp.org, mhammond@skippinet.com.au, szutshi@devraj.org, rmoonen@bigpond.net.au, fawad@fawad.net, ufs@softhome.net, kotrade@yahoo.com, ben@benscorp.com, stevesmith@columbus.rr.com, kkimmelosu@yahoo.com, neal.lindsay@peaofohio.com, pat@linuxcolumbus.com, chrisbaker@iname.com, hiroki2c@yahoo.com, seth@remor.com, jsohn@columbus.rr.com, ross@nanonet.net, mark@cushman.net, swinghammer.2@osu.edu, roberto.12@osu.edu, farhat@hotmail.com, pgunn@dachte.org, jwagner@gcfn.org, bp@osc.edu, joepletch@postmark.net, dsherman@iwaynet.net, glenn@uniqsys.com, bernstein.46@osu.edu, trent_reznor@nothing.com, erikniklas@bobanddoug.com, walters@gnu.org, timo@bolverk.net, annek25@aol.com, jlamb@leader.com, bart@osc.edu, jason@mcvetta.org

Read the link from the link -- when an unauthorised copy of something is distributed, the copyright holder is competing against a modified version of their own material.

This is exactly what the GPL was set up to prevent: having to compete with someone selling a version of something you wrote.

My university email account had been flooded with spam about a year ago, and I went to the sysadmin, trying to get a new account. However, he suggested that I try spamgard 0.5 that they had already installed (but not activated by default).

It does everything except 3, and a non-random "password" for 4.

It does an excellent work on filtering out spam. Acutally I allowed only email sent from within the university domain, plus a selected few.

Any email that is not in my approved list gets bounced back to the sender (or reply-to) telling them that they must use a special password in the subject line in order to get past the filter.

However, none of them cared. None of them even read the password and use that in the subject. I actually received *more* spam than usual (it kept a log, so I know), but a good thing that they were filtered out.

The next step with eliminating the extra flood of spam was to bounce the email with the format exactly like as if my account wasn't even there, give or take a few messages. To this day, the only filtered out email were my friends sending email to me from outside the domain (oops :)

It used to be on ftp://ftp.netcom.com/pub/wj/wje/release , but I guess Earthlink took over.

Actually, I don't think the BSA counts hard drives per se, but their method for estimating piracy (as of May 2001) was (essentially) to count the number of PC's shipped, then compare the number of applications they *think* will be installed per PC to the (number shipped pre-installed + number bought in stores). (See especially pages 8-9 in the PDF file.) People have been complaining about this for a while, but it's the BSA's stated position not to back down (since that would lead to lower piracy figures and less public outcry).

The BSA claims to have "softened" since the 1997 article, but I doubt it, considering that a year ago they were still sending out anti-piracy letters threatening clandestine raids, etc. Microsoft was helping them, and people were complaining about it. They basically pick random companies, threaten to sue them out of existence, and simultaneously try to get employees to turn them in. I doubt much has changed since then.

Anyway, I've strayed off topic from your off topic post. :-) Back to the original question, they count PC sales (and probably motherboards, etc. too) so yes all our Linux/FreeBSD/whatever home built computers are counted in the piracy figures. Also, I know MS OEM license agreements won't let companies that sell Windows sell blank computers because "they're sure to pirate Windows." MS has recently started charging for Visual Studio along with MSDN because "everyone who buys MSDN will use Visual Studio, so we might as well charge them for it." Etc.

I'd like to thank my good friend google for helping me along with this post. :-)

Here are the answers.
(note: these are links to funny science theories. Don't take it seriously. And don't stop ingesting DMHO.)

so-called "light sources" are really dark suckers, that "light" is nothing more than the absence of darkness, and that it is darkness, not light, which is the fundamental radiative transport mechanism of the universe.

This page is funny, specially when you know DHMO is water.

Anything that brings us closer to proving Dark Sucker Theory is okay in my book.

If you're interested in this sort of thing, you'd can get a good feel for the existing work in the field from:

• InteractiveStory.net - Michael Mateas and Andrew Stern's interactive drama/believable agent project, and obligatory huge page o'links.
• Oz - The Oz project at CMU
• Erasmatron@Robotwisdom - Jorn Barger's excellent thumbnail sketch of Crawford's writings. In most cases, Jorn's synopsis is hyperlinked to the related page on erazmatazz

Selmer Bringsjord and David Ferrucci, Artificial Intelligence and Literary Creativity: Inside the Mind of Brutus, A Storytelling Machine, August 30, 1999.

Nicolas Szilas, Interactive Drama on Computer: Beyond Linear Narrative, 1999.

Antonio Furtado, Angelo Ciarlini, Plots of Narratives Over Temporal Databases, 1997.

Barbara Hayes-Roth, Robert van Gent, Story-marking with improvisational puppets, 1997.

W. Scott Neal Reilly, A methodology for building believable social agents, 1997.

IMHO, interactive storytelling is one of the most interesting cross-discipline computational problems out there.

From Mechanical Metallurgy by George E. Deiter 3rd Ed.

The hardness of a material is a poorly defined term which has many meanings depending upon the experience of the person involved. In general, hardness usually implies a resistance to deformation, and for metals the property is a measure of their resistance to permanent or plastic deformation. To a person concerned with the mechanics of material testing, hardness is most likely to mean the resistance to indentation, and to the design engineer it often means an easily measured and specified quantity which indicated something about the strength and heat treatment of the metal.

After that the chapter briefly discusses how the different tests work, and some light derivation including a special case of finding the tensile strength. (Incidently, this conversation is why I provided a link to Powell's collection of Mechanics of Materials texts; I wanted to avoid it.) A link to convert hardnesses for steel into tensile strength. I might remark that given strength is simply a load over an area for a certain event, and any hardness test also uses a load over a slightly more complicated area (with some other considerations) one might readily and correctly assume they can be related. I might further add, that MY contention that strength and hardness are related is not even addressed in any of your definitions. I feel little need to offer anything in the way of proof, but since you seem to require it, this web site might be illuminating. Also any materials, and most mechanical, engineering departments will have a similar poster in their hardness testing labs.

Don't think me cruel, as I don't intend it in this fashion, but I had noticed the ASM site had a section called "Ask ASM" where you can pose questions, and thought it clearly marked. I suppose you could also write your local physics, mechanical, civil, or materials engineering departments as they almost certainly answer all sorts of questions. They are typically given to grad students to answer in math and physics departments.

I'm sorry you didn't see the value in links that I hoped you would find useful. I tried my best to keep everything simple and accurate, I hoped others would find it interesting. But it would seem you have little if any interest in finding answers, which is fine. But if you're not going to seek illumination beyond that of a poor dictionary, for the life of me I can't see why you quibble with mine. The fact is they created a new phase of steel (I took this as an obvious point from the press release, clearly I was in error). If you still believe they did not, you MUST also believe glass and quartz are the same. Which is your perogative. A new phase is better than simply a new alloy, as their figure of 16 GPa certainly shows. As a final token, here is a Iron-Carbon (Steel) phase diagram, note the lack of an amorphous phase (I realize it is quite busy, but it at least shows what steel fundementally is). In closing, you see what everyone else does, what you want to. Maybe this is what I get for picking nits.