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Education can save them from Aids, kick start the economy, and provide people a way they can network against warlords. Who knows? But it is a resource they must have.

I don't know about Laos. I've never been that far east, and I like to talk only of what I know (you know, like everyone here on Slashdot). But the Internet is not what people need in the jungles of central Africa.

Bill Clinton once came to Africa and decided that what the schools all needed was to be wired. I have no idea whatever came of his plans for this, but the point is, I really didn't understand how he could possibly think the Internet would offer a higher ROI than, say, a few textbooks. Or pencils. Or teachers who had better than a 3rd-world high-school education themselves.

The Onion got it. Not so farfetched as it sounds.

Ok, you asked for it, here's the link

ftp://ftp.uu.net/graphics/NeWS/tnt/pizzatool.6

Pizzatool used the NeWSPrint PostScript to Fax server that Sun was running for a while.

I believe Ross Thompson at Adobe wrote a shell script called "burrito" a year or so later. It faxed orders to La Costania, but it was a command line tool without a graphical user interface and PostScript preview window like PizzaTool. (You could actually spin the pizza preview with the mouse.)

http://www.netfunny.com/rhf/jokes/94q1/burritopgm. html

The first time I faxed a PostScript picture of a pizza to Tony and Alba's, they were quite confused and didn't know what to think, because I had neglected to list the toppings out as text, they were just rendered graphically. So they had to look at the black and white faxed rendering of a pizza, to decypher which toppings I ordered. I took a bug report and fixed the problem by adding the text so they could figure out the subsequent orders.

Here's a video that includes a demo of the spinning pizza in pizzatool (as well as lots of other weird inexplicable stuff)...

Streaming: HyperLook SimCity Demo
Download: HyperLook SimCity Demo

Demonstration of SimCity running under the HyperLook user interface development system, based on NeWS PostScript. Includes a demonstration of editing HyperLook graphics and user interfaces, the HyperLook Cellular Automata Machine, and the HyperLook Happy Tool. Also shows The NeWS Toolkit applications PizzaTool and RasterRap. HyperLook developed by Arthur van Hoff and Don Hopkins at the Turing Institute. SimCity ported to Unix and HyperLook by Don Hopkins. HyperLook Cellular Automata Machine, Happy Tool, The NeWS Toolkit, PizzaTool and Raster Rap developed by Don Hopkins. Demonstration, transcript and close captioning by Don Hopkins. Camera and interview by Abbe Don. Taped at the San Francisco Exploratorium.

-Don

So they are running SUX - has it occured to them that it sounds like SUCKS? Maybe they should take a lead from the former the canadian "Conservative-Reform Alliance Party" ... yes C.R.A.P. and change their name

Yes. It actually happened about a post on rec.humor.funny.
Link...

in Fairbanks

E15: What is the Gazebo story? And what's the Head of Vecna?

Both of these are gaming stories that have been told and retold so many times that they have taken on the air of urban legends--where the original DM is a "friend of my sister-in-law's uncle's second cousin" and if you track that path down, it turns out to be just that, a story. However, in both of these cases, the original tellers are known, the original versions are archived on the web, and both stories really happened!

The Tale of Eric and the Dread Gazebo, by Richard Aronson, is about a player who didn't know that a gazebo is a hutlike building typically found in parks, and had his character attack one. The story was originally written in 1986, and various versions of it can be found all over the web. One such place is the rec.humor.funny webpage; another, with some background into how the story spread, can be found at DreadGazebo.com.

Whereas the tale of Eric and the Gazebo is about how lack of knowledge can be a dangerous thing, The Head of Vecna, by Mark Steuer, is more of a morality tale about how greed can make you stupid. Most *D&D players have heard about the Hand and Eye of Vecna, powerful artifacts which require the owner to cut off his own hand or eye in order to gain the powers. In this case, the characters found what they thought was the Head of Vecna, and ended up with several headless--and thus very dead--characters. The full story can be found at on the web at Stan Berry's webpage.

1. Fools Rush In
2. The Gritty Details

Surely you've heard the story of Polly Nomial?

Seen in rec.humor.funny (by King Ables)
With apologies to Don McLean...

A long, long time ago
I can still remember how computing
used to be worthwhile.

And I knew from the day I was born
that I could make that code perform
and maybe I could do it with some style.

But last September made me shudder,
with every 'nouncement Carly uttered.

Bad news in my In-tray,
I couldn't take one more day.

I can't remember if I sighed when I
read about our latest stride,
something cut me deep inside,
the day the HPWay died.

So

Purge, purge, Ms. Technology Scourge,
Drove my Beetle to the Needle,
Now my job's on the verge.

Them Compaq boys were
drinking Starbuck's and Surge
singing "This'll be the day that we merge,
This'll be the day that we merge."

Did you write the Book of DOS
And do you believe an albatross
Can really save our company?
Now do you believe in buying time?
Can Compaq save our bottom line?
And can you teach me how write a resume?

For all the words in a much better formated way (thanks lameness filter!) go here

Seen in rec.humor.funny (by King Ables)
With apologies to Don McLean...

A long, long time ago
I can still remember how computing
used to be worthwhile.

And I knew from the day I was born
that I could make that code perform
and maybe I could do it with some style.

But last September made me shudder,
with every 'nouncement Carly uttered.

Bad news in my In-tray,
I couldn't take one more day.

I can't remember if I sighed when I
read about our latest stride,
something cut me deep inside,
the day the HPWay died.

So

Purge, purge, Ms. Technology Scourge,
Drove my Beetle to the Needle,
Now my job's on the verge.

Them Compaq boys were
drinking Starbuck's and Surge
singing "This'll be the day that we merge,
This'll be the day that we merge."

Did you write the Book of DOS
And do you believe an albatross
Can really save our company?
Now do you believe in buying time?
Can Compaq save our bottom line?
And can you teach me how write a resume?

For all the words in a much better formated way (thanks lameness filter!) go here

... to encourage widespread popularity of the Telemarketer Game.

The game all the family can play! Destroy a business model while watching TV! I think that phone companies should provide a service where they announce your Telemarketer Game score after each call. Then we can all post our scores on Slashdot and brag about them.

... to encourage widespread popularity of the Telemarketer Game.

The game all the family can play! Destroy a business model while watching TV! I think that phone companies should provide a service where they announce your Telemarketer Game score after each call. Then we can all post our scores on Slashdot and brag about them.

Followed immediately, of course, by a Visa commercial. "VISA: It's everywhere you want to be."

I guess there's also a lot of women walking around with credit cards up their cunts.

Am I paranoid to imagine that this technology may someday be used in airports to keep cats from boarding flights while carrying small animals?

Everyone knows you can't have any carrion on commercial flights since 9/11...

Reference

In the long-distant past, its only purpose was to transmit information considered vital to the survival of the species. Some people still think that's the only thing it should be used for, but most folks today use it for fun most of the time.

... and the survey is from the Christian Science monitor, even better!

Every time I hear about the IOCCC I'm reminded of this old anecdote:

The highlight of the annual Computer Bowl occurred when Bill Gates, who was a judge, posed the following question to the contestants:

"What contest, held via Usenet, is dedicated to examples of weird, obscure, bizarre, and really bad programming?"

After a moment of silence, Jean-Louis Gassee (ex-honcho at Apple) hit his buzzer and answered "Windows."

Mr. Bill's expression was, in the words of one who was there, "classic."

(source)

Rec.Humour.Funny recently posted an elegant
answer to Asian spam, at least when it originates from China...

I don't want to give it away, read the link, but I promise any Chinese spammer getting this email in reply won't be sending spam for long...

Just remember, they have the great firewall that sniff out words...
How to deal with Chinese spam

Pacific rim hosts dominate the SpamCop statistics.

Well, there's always this tactic...

Ref:
http://www.netfunny.com/rhf/jokes/02/Feb/spam.html

Isn't satire protected against this type of legal action?

Reminds me of the Mastercard "Priceless" incident on the rec.humor.funny newsgroup

Hasn't anyone goat a sense of humour any more (Well, Visa Might.)

Soon it won't be possible to sodomize anything without getting a nastygram?

You stole that comment from a fairly famous rec.humor.funny posting... Software Requirements

Twoflower

Achtung!

ALLES LOOKENSPEEPERS

Das computenmachine is nicht fur gefingerpoken und mittengrabben. Is easy schnappen der springwerk, blownfusen, und poppenoorken mit spittzensparken. Ist nicht fur gewerken by das dummkopfen.

Das rubbernecken signtseeren keepen hands in das pockets--relaxen und watch das blinkenlights.

That's an old joke.

Warranty Card on Purchased Government Offcial. "Dear Special Interest, Congratulations on the purchase of your genuine Government Official[tm]..."

New category? It'd be the first thing I read!

And my suggestion for icon is a little hamster on a wheel, since Hamsters are excellent power sources

*Note: the previous comment in no way endorses the gross misuse of our valuable, reusable hamster resources

Only a few years in jail?
He nearly commited the the biggest crime of all times - with that much computing power, he could've almost converted pi to binary

At the next Usenet Olympiad, let there be a moment of silence in his memory before the traditional lighting of the flame thrower. All in favor, follow-up to alt.test with ME TOO!!! All opposed, spelling flame.

Yes, I offered this with tongue in cheek. But in all honesty, we all owe him a debt of gratitude. The net would not be what it is today without his creation. I have nothing more appropriate to say than "thank you".

Training a computer to act like Van Gogh reminds me of the funniest piece of computer humor I have ever read.

$ man condom
CONDOM(1) EUNUCH Programmer's Manual CONDOM(1)

NAME
condom - Protection against viruses and prevention of child
processes

SYNOPSIS
condom [options] [processid]

DESCRIPTION
_condom_ provides protection against System Transmitted
Viruses (STVs) that may invade your system. Although the spread of
such viruses across a network can only be abated by aware and cautious
users, condom is the only highly-effective means of preventing
viruses from entering your system (see celibacy(1)). Any data passed
to condom by the protected process will be blocked, as specified by
the value of the -s option (see OPTIONS below). condom is known to
defend against the following viruses and other malicious
afflictions...

o AIDS
o Herpes Simplex (genital varieties)
o Syphilis
o Crabs
o Genital warts
o Gonhorrea
o Chlamydia
o Michelangelo
o Jerusalem

When used alone or in conjunction with pill(1), sponge(1),
foam(1), and/or setiud(3), condom also prevents the conception of a
child process. If invoked from within a synchronous process, condom
has, by default, an 80% chance of preventing the external processes
from becoming parent processes (see the -s option below). When other
process contraceptives are used, the chance of preventing a child
process from being forked becomes much greater. See pill(1),
sponge(1), foam(1), and setiud(3) for more information.
If no options are given, the current user's login process (as
determined by the environment variable USER) is protected with a
Trojan rough-cut latex condom without a reservoir tip. The optional
'processid' argument is an integer specifying the process to protect.
NOTE: condom may only be used with a hard disk. condom
will terminate abnormally with exit code -1 if used with a floppy
disk (see DIAGNOSTICS below).
...
Read the rest from http://www.netfunny.com/rhf/jokes/92q4/condomman.h tml

- grunby

Go read the original story here, by Mark Twain.

And while alternatives exist, they "may eventually succumb to the might of the RIAA, which is already making noises about targeting software developers, ISPs and individual users of the network with lawsuits."

"The BBC is reporting that cDc is releasing a new Peekabooty software in July which will defeat totalitarian governments and law enforcement from their current monitoring efforts. The article states: 'A group of hackers are developing a web browser that it claims will make it easier for people to circumvent censorship and avoid the attentions of law enforcers. The software, which is due to be unveiled in July, uses a combination of encryption and a Gnutella-like network...'"

The software, which is due to be unveiled in July, uses a combination of encryption and a Gnutella-like network...'

• an ISP can't possibly feel itself justified in shutting down anyone shoving gigabits through the Gnutella port (you've already heard about this probably...), and
• so the Government can't try to stop Gnutella (company?) from distributing Gnutella software (it wouldn't matter if it did: Gnutella's already out there and since it's P2P the government can't do anything to get gnutella company to shut down the service, but:)
• Or worse, to try to go after the users and to make it illegal to use gnutella! (Which isn't so farfetched...)

For this reason alone, all of us should start doing all of our surfing through this new system as soon as it's featurey enough.

Besides, at the very least, if we started doing that, then whatever we do websurf will be hidden from our ISP by being encrypted, and documents will probably come over much faster under a distributed system. Well, static documents would at least. Maybe this system would also serve to route you around faster, mimicking IPV6, so we could still do better to use it than surf straight. There's no limit to how much good we could get from doing all of our surfing through a distributed, encrypted system, and since the fact that it would make piracy easy is an inherent but small side-effect, it would mean that no one could stop it.
Long Live the Freeedom to Rip Artists Off!

(Which I happen to disagree with, but to a far less extent than I do with the RIAA's trying to force us not to share our files. If artists included an address to send money to in the extended descriptions fields of their MP3's [yes, artists should distribute their own mp3s], I know that I for one would take advantage of it and give them their due. As it is, it's far too much trouble and far too much of what I would pay would go straight to the record industry's pocket. That reminds me of a joke, which is actually a good analogy for why we share name-brand artists instead of no-name artists, even though name-brand artists are being whored out by the record industry.)

~

And while alternatives exist, they "may eventually succumb to the might of the RIAA, which is already making noises about targeting software developers, ISPs and individual users of the network with lawsuits."

"The BBC is reporting that cDc is releasing a new Peekabooty software in July which will defeat totalitarian governments and law enforcement from their current monitoring efforts. The article states: 'A group of hackers are developing a web browser that it claims will make it easier for people to circumvent censorship and avoid the attentions of law enforcers. The software, which is due to be unveiled in July, uses a combination of encryption and a Gnutella-like network...'"

The software, which is due to be unveiled in July, uses a combination of encryption and a Gnutella-like network...'

• an ISP can't possibly feel itself justified in shutting down anyone shoving gigabits through the Gnutella port (you've already heard about this probably...), and
• so the Government can't try to stop Gnutella (company?) from distributing Gnutella software (it wouldn't matter if it did: Gnutella's already out there and since it's P2P the government can't do anything to get gnutella company to shut down the service, but:)
• Or worse, to try to go after the users and to make it illegal to use gnutella! (Which isn't so farfetched...)

For this reason alone, all of us should start doing all of our surfing through this new system as soon as it's featurey enough.

Besides, at the very least, if we started doing that, then whatever we do websurf will be hidden from our ISP by being encrypted, and documents will probably come over much faster under a distributed system. Well, static documents would at least. Maybe this system would also serve to route you around faster, mimicking IPV6, so we could still do better to use it than surf straight. There's no limit to how much good we could get from doing all of our surfing through a distributed, encrypted system, and since the fact that it would make piracy easy is an inherent but small side-effect, it would mean that no one could stop it.
Long Live the Freeedom to Rip Artists Off!

(Which I happen to disagree with, but to a far less extent than I do with the RIAA's trying to force us not to share our files. If artists included an address to send money to in the extended descriptions fields of their MP3's [yes, artists should distribute their own mp3s], I know that I for one would take advantage of it and give them their due. As it is, it's far too much trouble and far too much of what I would pay would go straight to the record industry's pocket. That reminds me of a joke, which is actually a good analogy for why we share name-brand artists instead of no-name artists, even though name-brand artists are being whored out by the record industry.)

~

The software, which is due to be unveiled in July, uses a combination of encryption and a Gnutella-like network...'

• an ISP can't possibly feel itself justified in shutting down anyone shoving gigabits through the Gnutella port (you've already heard about this probably...), and
• so the Government can't try to stop Gnutella (company?) from distributing Gnutella software (it wouldn't matter if it did: Gnutella's already out there and since it's P2P the government can't do anything to get gnutella company to shut down the service, but:)
• Or worse, to try to go after the users and to make it illegal to use gnutella! (Which isn't so farfetched...)

For this reason alone, all of us should start doing all of our surfing through this new system as soon as it's featurey enough.

Besides, at the very least, if we started doing that, then whatever we do websurf will be hidden from our ISP by being encrypted, and documents will probably come over much faster under a distributed system. Well, static documents would at least. Maybe this system would also serve to route you around faster, mimicking IPV6, so we could still do better to use it than surf straight. There's no limit to how much good we could get from doing all of our surfing through a distributed, encrypted system, and since the fact that it would make piracy easy is an inherent but small side-effect, it would mean that no one could stop it.
Long Live the Freeedom to Rip Artists Off!

(Which I happen to disagree with, but to a far less extent than I do with the RIAA's trying to force us not to share our files. If artists included an address to send money to in the extended descriptions fields of their MP3's [yes, artists should distribute their own mp3s], I know that I for one would take advantage of it and give them their due. As it is, it's far too much trouble and far too much of what I would pay would go straight to the record industry's pocket. That reminds me of a joke, which is actually a good analogy for why we share name-brand artists instead of no-name artists, even though name-brand artists are being whored out by the record industry.)
~

Watch out, you may get sued.

If you read MasterCard's threat, you run into the absurdity that they trademarked their phrase not once, but twice. Then if you look closer, you see that they are different. One breaks the two clauses up with a comma; the other with a period.

So it's simple. If you want to do this sort of thing in such a way that even MasterCard's boneheaded lawyers will lose their means of questioning it, just separate those clauses with a semicolon, as in this sentence, which I donate to the public:

"There are some things money can't buy; for everything else there's MasterCard."

--Blair
"ALL YOUR DOLLAR ARE BELONG TO US"

(Apologies to Brad Templeton.)

//jbaltz
--

I'd like to get a copy of AlienUX for my box at home.

It's not as well coded as you might hope. See: CERT Advisory CA-96.13.

After reading the post, there were a couple of followups where teachers asked this question on some tests:
Test Questions 1
Test Questions 2

After reading the post, there were a couple of followups where teachers asked this question on some tests:
Test Questions 1
Test Questions 2

After reading the post, there were a couple of followups where teachers asked this question on some tests:
Test Questions 1
Test Questions 2

You know, it's really tough sometimes to figure out who to cheer for (yes, that's a parody, but with not a little basis in reality).

On a more serious note, isn't the phrase "bake-off" sufficiently descriptive that it may contradict guidelines on what is and isn't trademarkable? As the OSI found with their failed attempt to secure the "Open Source" trademark?

What part of "Gestalt" don't you understand?

I wish it would work that way in real life.

--

STOP VOTER FRAUD! Unless, of course, a Democrat benefits.

You might find it easier to use a laser pointer to do that. However it is somewhat similar to an already patented application for for the device to tease cats. So chances are you might get some patent lawyer after you for doing it.

Yes, Pluto is still a planet.

Perhaps one of the candidates will pledge to shut down the USPTO until such time as they get a clue...

Perhaps one of the candidates will pledge to shut down the USPTO until such time as they get a clue...