Slashdot Mirror

"After five days, Disk BASIC was up and running on the Altair"

Only after 'Gates obtained the source code for a version of Basic from DECUS, a DEC user's group'

--

Bill G on ACID &-)

All the symptoms you mention, i.e. chest pains, stomach pains and pains on his upper left abdomen...chest x-ray, clear...blood tests, clear...[a]cid [r]eflux damage fit very well into the larger picture of the often misunderstood, and unrecognized, coeliac disease. Your uncle should go through the appropriate tests for transglutaminase IgG and anti-gliadin IgG antibodies and/or try a gluten-free diet. From what you tell about his story, I would presume he didn't do so up to now and no doctor even came up with the idea. That's why it takes between 7 and 14 years on average to get the right diagnosis... http://collection.nlc-bnc.ca/100/201/300/cdn_medic al_association/cmaj/vol-157/issue-5/0547.htm (And the already-dead probably aren't counted at all.)

I would but the parent's facts are a little off.

King Pierre first obtained power in 1968 after a bloody internal power stuggle within the palace. This reign was interupted by a short period (June 1979 through March 1980) of insurrection led by Joe Clarke. King Pierre was then able to muster the proper forces and return to power until March of 1984. At this time, an squable within the royal family led to a distant cousin, John Turner, briefly (June 1984 through Spetember 1984) seized power.

Turner was violently overthrown in September 1984 by Brian Mulroney (some said he was Ronnald Reagan's bastard brother). Mulroney held power until June 1993 at which time tensions within the country had reached a boiling point. Mulroney, realizing his days were numbered, installed Kim Campbell as puppet leader.

Lady Kim was able to hold power for a remarkable 4 months until deposed in November of 1993 by Prince Jean Chretien, a close cousin of the former King Pierre.

Prince Jean was able to rule with an iron fist until December 2003 when he was deposed by Duke Paul Martin in a bloody internal power struggle whose waves are still agitating the normally placid Canadian politcal waters.

For details, please see this site.

You are sort of right in the sense that Britain did send troops from its colonies into the neighboring US as part of a border dispute in 1812.

Also, as evidenced by its very name, the war of Texas Independance occured prior to Texas being part of the US- as such, the US not directly involved, and no troops invaded land that was part of the US at the time.

It is very interesting how the subject of this war is taught in the three countries. Canadians seem to think 'they' defeated the US, in the US it's referred to as a draw but notable for Britain's recognition of its nationhood, and in Great Britain if it's mentioned at all it's a brief footnote on the far more important Napoleonic wars.

I'm not trying to sound anti-American, just offering a non-American perspective.

The field of microprocessors has a similar controversy. Intel frequently portrays itself as the inventor of the microprocessor because, supposedly, Ted Hoff and Frederico Faggin invented it when they were Intel employees.

In 1978, the United States Patent Office (USPTO) granted Texas Instruments a patent for a version of a microprocessor developed by Gary Boone, an employee. He had filed the patent in 1971.

In 1990, the USPTO granted Gilbert Hyatt a patent on another version of a microprocessor; he had initially filed the patent in 1970. His work pre-dates the work by Hoff and Faggin.

In 1996, the USPTO rescinded the patent granted to Hyatt and designated Gary Boone as the official inventor of the microprocessor. In short, neither Hoff nor Faggin are the first inventors of the microprocessor, yet we in the Slashdot community have heaped undeserved praise on them.

For further information, please read "Micro, Micro: Who Made The Micro?", "1970s -- The Altair/Apple Era", and "Processor Talk".

... from the desk of the reporter

Did said biology teacher acquire the power to clean dishes telekinetically?

I'm not saying the American system is the best, but if Canada's system was sufficient, why are Canadian citizens paying money to be treated in the US?

Here's an interesting read: http://collection.nlc-bnc.ca/100/201/300/cdn_medic al_association/cmaj/vol-159/issue-11/1395.htm

A few quotes from the article:

When they discussed medicare's underlying values, Avery described the system as "legislated mediocrity" and Decter called it a "social good." They even disagreed on the extent of the role of the private sector in Canadian health care. Avery contended that "over $1 billion of American health care is purchased by Canadians who cross the border because they don't trust the system here,"

First of all, when they talk of "compliance," that can only mean that there will be ways of providing encryption that the government doesn't allow. That's some hub right there, bub.

Even if the registration process is completely non-discriminatory, any mandatory registration/compliance scheme will still impose cost on the providers, and push some of them out of the market. (addressed by the excellent book "What everyone should know about economics and prosperity", readable online.) We all know that the point of many regulatory regimes isn't to ensure quality or protect the public (both dubious goals anyway), but simply to reduce the instances of the regulated activity (classic example being "sin taxes".) We should not sit back and hope that these costs will be low. Even if such regulation did not obliterate encryption, there's a very real possibility that the costs of the registration scheme would restrict how it is effectively used. Everyone should be wary of any talk of mandatory registration and compliance -- open source developers especially.

And even if neither of the above were to play out, there is still good reason to resist mandatory registration of encryption providers. Lawrence Lessig raised this issue in "Code and other laws of cyberspace," (reviewed on /.). One of the many wonderful things about the internet (as we know it today) is the fact that essentially any individual can publish, quickly, at negligible cost, and without asking leave of any government agency. This has made censorship vastly more difficult than it was when publishing was carried out only by a few large, visible, stationary-target companies. I can't recall if he applied the point to other areas of endevour as well, but even if he didn't, we can: imposing mandatory registration on encryption providers would make the currently dizzying whack-the-mole board into a nice, indexed collection of slow-moving targets. I don't want that, do you?

These undesirable qualities are part and parcel of mandatory registration/certification regimes. I defy you to propose one that doesn't exhibit them.

>Vinyl provided better "sampling rates"

Snap, crackle, and pop aren't just the names of Rice Krispies, they're also the names of just some of the problems of vinyl.

And lets not forget warp and warble, these aren't Mork and Mindy's sidekicks.

Read this.

While technically, as with any analogue medium, an absolutely perfect copy could be made with vynil and played with a laser, but at $20k you can get pro audio gear that far outpaces anything vynil can do more than once (maybe less if the mocules making up the very high end of the spectrum [which some people seem to think they can hear, but scientifically can't] are rubbed off by the paper cover given to so many records).

96 kHz/24-bit pro audio gear outpaces anything anyone really thinks vynil can do more than once, and, more importantly, can even reproduce much of the non-listenable-to-humans-but-my-dog-hears-it part of the audio spectrum. I only mention this because I was once flamed by a few vynil boosters because I suggested that hard science disproves the fact that noise outside of our hearing range has any effect on us.

Either way, CD has it in the bag in terms of a pleasing mix of quality, price, and reproducibility, and for anyone wanting that ethereal listening experience, there's SACD which outpaces any and all reproducible vynil results I can think of.

The only reason to use vynil today is because you either have the record on it already, or you're a real DJ and want to mix the "proper" way (not that there isn't great software out there for that as-is, like PCDJ and Traktor).

Oh, and just to note, all the vynil you bought will sound worse than a CD in the future. Sure it beats most any other analogue medium in longetivity, and even beats a CDR for the length of time it can sit on a shelf, but just as with all analogue mediums, any wear whatsoever degrades sound quality and the inability to make successive copies without degrading the sound means vynil is effectively dead for pro audio.

Next on the chopping block: Why CCDs beat Film, and how people argue that seeing silver nitrate molecules is better on the eyes. :-)

Just my 2 cents on why vynil is unaffordable and uncessary...