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...hegemity.

Sorry, the english language is not open source. You do not get to add and remove as you see fit. I believe the word you were looking for is hegomony.

They are starting to see that free software is better software and always will be. Better software does make for a lower total cost of ownership as it eliminates the intentional waste propriatory software vendors are famous for.

And no, it doesn't. People don't run mission critical applications off software that doesn't have some sort of support contract, the only exception being possibly apache because of it's insanely large and good track record. You just aren't in business.

"My fellow Merkins..."

To me moderation in the technical sense means one of two things.

1) Messages are reviewed by a moderating team before being publicly posted such as mailing lists

2) Messages are freely posted but a moderating team montiors them and removes ones that do not abide by the terms of use.

a better definition, imho.

When I find my webserver compromised and used as a warez server, are you saying I shouldn't lock it down because this will " undoubtedly upset someone with the means to launch an attack equivalent to the attacks {I} suffered recently"??

nobody is compromising their servers when they share files, and warez aren't stored on their servers. the network itself has no connection with the alleged filetrading.

I can speculate why they are enforcing this policy. When you run a community service where time, money, resources and effort are donnated by a large number of people for a certain purpose and a large number of the users use it for an entirely differnet purpose, costing you a lot of resources, and then also attack the service so that user you want to support can't use it, I guess I personally would be a little pissed.

the people attacking the servers aren't the people who are doing the filesharing. the people doing the filesharing are the people just minding their own business, using dalnet as a starting point for whatever it is they do online.

The users they want are the users that want the services DALnet was originally designed for.

who are you to say what dalnet wants? believe me, if filesharing was putting such a huge strain load on the servers, it would have been stopped years ago.

Do you think losing lots of hangers on is really going to worry them - every user on the system costs some supporter of DALnet money somewhere, its not like a membership site where they get revenue. Explain to me if I run a DALnet server why exactly I should be worried about losing users that use my box to swap warez, p0rn or coordinate a Sub7 attack on another machine?

yes. you can't have an irc network without users. you can set up servers, sure. but if there's nobody on them, you're wasting your time.

DALNet is a free service, they are not required to provide YOU with what YOU want, they are not a government aganecy or a paid membership site. YOU have a choice of IRC servers, and if you don't like any of them go ahead and set your own up.

yes, dalnet is free. no, they're not required to provide me what i want. i do have a choice of irc servers. this is irrelevant.

the point is, dalnet is trying to accomplish something unreasonable. it's going to upset a lot of people, and will almost certainly provoke another barrage of attacks on their network. that to me seems like a silly tradeoff..lose a tiny amount of load on the servers caused by filesharing channels, and prompt another series of attacks, crippling their servers again

where's the payoff?

You are right. Because as we all know, a group of people who get together to play music does not fit the definition of band.

These things are blank looking, with a few sparse buttons....They all look equally boring.

I think the term you're searching for is elegant:

"A designer knows he has achieved perfection not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away."

1) Microsoft are getting into bed with government through the back door (no pun intended)
2) Bush is short-sighted enough to thing that the person who is head of Microsoft security will bring better security than a team of specialists. Oh wait, one person is better because he can call them a czar. Buzzword-me-do.

I don't raise this issue to suggest any such event occurred with the Columbia disaster, but to provide some additional insight into the performance envelope of current technology.

As an additional note, he also said that the first generation of air-to-air radar systems on jet fighters could detect objects in orbit around the planet. He went on to say that subsequent revisions implemented system to block detection of objects above a certain, unspecified, altitude. If you think about it, this makes sense, as there is no magical barrier at the edge of the atmosphere blocking radar-wavelength electromagnetic signals. The ionosphere aproximately 250 miles above the Earth; the space shuttle flies between 200 to 240 miles above the Earth.

That moment of quiet reflection is prayer. No God required.

prayer (prâr)
n.

1.
1. A reverent petition made to God, a god, or another object of worship.
2. The act of making a reverent petition to God, a god, or another object of worship.
2. An act of communion with God, a god, or another object of worship, such as in devotion, confession, praise, or thanksgiving: One evening a week, the family would join together in prayer.
3. A specially worded form used to address God, a god, or another object of worship.
4. prayers A religious observance in which praying predominates: morning prayers.
5.
1. A fervent request: Her prayer for rain was granted at last.
2. The thing requested: His safe arrival was their only prayer.
6. The slightest chance or hope: In a storm the mountain climbers won't have a prayer.
7. Law.
1. The request of a complainant, as stated in a complaint or in equity, that the court grant the aid or relief solicited.
2. The section of the complaint or bill that contains this request.

One of my favorite quotes was spoken by JFK in 1962 when he said,

"We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard."

(Correct me if this is misquoted, I found this version of the quote on the internet.)

Maybe we should have taken Kennedy's words to heart. Maybe we should not have given up so easily on the now canceled and extremely difficult Venture Star project.

From all the bits of news I've read, it sounds like the heat shielding tiles of the space shuttle may have catostrophically failed today. It may have been due to the impact of a piece of foam from the main fuel tank shortly after launch. Apparently the final voice communication from the astronauts was something regarding tire pressure. I speculate that if the heat shield were compromised on reentry, that tire pressure could have gone up due to heat exposure. This would have triggered sensors and informed the crew of a problem seconds before something exploded. The explosion could have been tires or could have been fuel or anything else under pressure or flammable. The shuttle is made of lightweight materials, so any explosion would be disastorous. (Im not saying that lightweight materials aren't strong, but the engineering thresholds probably dont permit NASA from making an explosion proof shuttle; especially considering it was designed in the 1970's.

I read a while back that one of the primary objectives of the Venture Star project was to eliminate the need for heat shielding tiles (which may have catostrophically failed on the Columbia today). Inspecting these space shuttle tiles, if I recall, costs NASA $70,000,000 and a huge number of man years per shuttle mission! Another aim of the Venture Star project was to eliminate external fuel tanks and rocket boosters. The rocket boosters were responsible for the Challenger disaster and now the main fuel tank may have been the cause of the heat shield failure.

Let us not forget one of the main discoveris of this Columbia mission... the burning of Brazillian rainforest is contributing to global climate change.

Dont be fooled by those who say this event will stop manned missions to space. I think this will someday drive us to create much more advanced vehicles. Manned missions are not a practical way to explore space or do science, but heck, I wouldn't mind checking out another planet...or looking back at my planet from far away even if I die doing it. Maybe we need a space tourism agency, with goals separate and apart from NASA.

PS. The quote is an excellent example of chiasmus

The book is compiled from Wordsmith.Org's "A Word A Day"; Dictionary.com's word of the day is completely different.

(But yes, both lists do have free online archives.)

How do you define the term 'Software Engineering'?

-I use dictionary.com and you should too -- it has a good definition and links to others, check here

Can you compare Software Engineering to other disciplines?

-Umm. yes I can.

What sets a 'Software Engineer' apart from the rest of the crowd?

-I guess that would almost entirely depend on the crowd.

I believe the word you're looking for is eschew.

Even the most callypygic individuals will succumb to steatopygia in time.

I think AWAD on Slashdot is a great idea. As the first word, I suggest:

hacker n.

1. One who is proficient at using or programming a computer; a computer buff.
2. One who uses programming skills to gain illegal access to a computer network or file.
3. One who enthusiastically pursues a game or sport: a weekend tennis hacker.

That's been debated for far too long. And as for the argument that use define word meanings, dictionaries don't, that's basically shooting yourself in the foot, as everyone and his brother using "hacker" as in "cracker" is what prudists are arguing against in the first place.

Runner-ups: computer science, operating system, free, theft, intellectual property.

I have a nagging feeling that all the stuff being debated daily on Slashdot could be easily settled in a day or two if we could just agree on what certain keywords mean.

Formication. Something you don't want your parents to catch you doing?

The archives of AWAD is located here. What's the point of linking to the main site?

I'll probably buy that book just because I love the service they provide (for free) so much, but really, it's all in the archives if you want to spare a few bucks.

My favorite: omphaloskepsis.

Callipygian I wouldn't even have imagined that there would be a word for it.

defenestrate

More importantly, "viruses" is plural for virus, not "virii".

Not really. "Price point" is a phrase that means the price compared to other possible prices, see here.

Well, if we're going to be anal about it, the primary definition of the word "company" is: "A group of persons". So a non-commercial company is not an oxymoron.

Irony See 2.

When everyone else is always wrong, you might want to reexamine your assumptions.

That said, maybe the word "death" is too negative. It's more of a Beachball of Thought, or a Beachball of One of These Words. (My favorite: Beachball of Rumination.)

Then, when it appears and won't go away, because a program has crashed, it's just a Beachball of Eternal Rumination.

Now, when you get the white-on-black text scrolling down the screen and the mouse cursor disappears, that's the time to start throwing around the word "death".

Except in Great Britain, where it's "licence".

Dictionary.com lists it as an alternate spelling. Apple is not immune to these things, but it happens so rarely that you'd best check thrice to ensure an untrod-upon crank.

cite

Just thought I'd mention that it's "sieve," not "siv."

Please note that I did not tell you to learn to spell or anything like so many here, I was just trying to help.

I have no advice on game programming.

I think what the original poster (of the article) meant was to use vulturous:

vulturous

adj : living by preying on other animals especially by catching living prey; "a predatory bird"; "the rapacious wolf"; "raptorial birds"; "ravening wolves"; "a vulturine taste for offal" [syn: predatory, rapacious, raptorial, ravening, vulturine]

I think what the original poster (of the article) meant was to use vulturous:

vulturous

adj : living by preying on other animals especially by catching living prey; "a predatory bird"; "the rapacious wolf"; "raptorial birds"; "ravening wolves"; "a vulturine taste for offal" [syn: predatory, rapacious, raptorial, ravening, vulturine]

I think what the original poster (of the article) meant was to use vulturous:

vulturous

adj : living by preying on other animals especially by catching living prey; "a predatory bird"; "the rapacious wolf"; "raptorial birds"; "ravening wolves"; "a vulturine taste for offal" [syn: predatory, rapacious, raptorial, ravening, vulturine]

I think what the original poster (of the article) meant was to use vulturous:

vulturous

adj : living by preying on other animals especially by catching living prey; "a predatory bird"; "the rapacious wolf"; "raptorial birds"; "ravening wolves"; "a vulturine taste for offal" [syn: predatory, rapacious, raptorial, ravening, vulturine]

I think what the original poster (of the article) meant was to use vulturous:

vulturous

adj : living by preying on other animals especially by catching living prey; "a predatory bird"; "the rapacious wolf"; "raptorial birds"; "ravening wolves"; "a vulturine taste for offal" [syn: predatory, rapacious, raptorial, ravening, vulturine]

I've been to a /. meatup. Vat a sausage party! It was at Swen's Swankatorium. Da Sveedish chef came to our table and he said "dork,dork,dork!"

If only the solution was for some of these people to get a life and a girl.... This is and always will be their lives--what with the R.R. Martin and the smiting and the ay yi yi. That's who they are. Page-loading speed, karma whoring, and modbombing conspiracy theories must never go away. That's what gives the Open Source community its *cough*strength*cough*.

What we need here is a little focus. I've been to the other site too. The way I understand it, one of them is bad. But I can never tell which one so I keep hopping back and forth looking for one with spunk. I am impressed with the ability of the alleged kabal to even put up with some of the twits that inhabit this place. And I am also confounded by some of the twits' twixotry (cf.) when it comes to running shit. [haughtily] Scalable indeed.

You enjoyed /. but now you don't? And it's the rulers' fault? How about all you fscknuts go back to doing something you enjoy instead of getting pissed off at something you don't. The magnitude of this revelation is unnerving, even to me, Comic Book Man. Same for the nation. If you wanna do a wunnie while d/l'ing Ween on your wireless broadband, screw the fascists. If enough citizens can just blow off all this pent up antipathy, the people in charge will have no choice but to mellow out as well.

[group hug for a group blog]

Damn! It's good to get that off my chest!

PS [refrain] Jam your Rumsfeld up your Ashcroft, W.

PPS I wasted an hour on this?!

If you want to have longevity in the IT field, learn how to solve problems first, then how to do it in software.

I don't have any worries, myself, because there will always be a place for people who can cut to the core of a problem and have insights into the key issues, in a broad range of fields.

Actually coding up the solution, though, is a S.M.O.P.

In case it isn't obvious to some of the above described individuals, this is satire. Let me rephrase that: a joke.

;-)

Just take a look at the music you download now. Sure, you may occasionally and self-righteously download the occasional legitimate "teaser" track released legally, or some free songs from no-talent "independent" artists who are giving away their wares because no one in their right mind would pay for them. But you know that almost all of what you download was recorded, produced, distributed, and marketed by the very recording companies you claim to despise, and would never have been committed to disc were there not the possibility of profiting from exclusive distribution rights to their product.

I don't know about you, but about half of the non-radio music I listen to is very eclectic. The rest of it is the stuff that the RIAA tends to sponsor.

I also find that when I pay $15 for a CD, I only ever listen to maybe 3 of the 12-20 songs on it (with a few notable exceptions), and most of these songs I have never heard of in the first place - for good reason. I don't like paying that much money to get only a few songs.

I understand what you're saying, and I'm inclined to agree with your statement, however, my use of the word 'misinterpreting' is still correct.

The word misinterpreting means:

1. To interpret inaccurately.
2. To explain inaccurately.

In this case, my usage would be correct. We both understand the malice that Labels have against its consumers, but that doesn't mean that they are correct in that thinking. If the goal is to find out why CD sales are down, then any excuse that doesn't accurately explain the drop in CD sales would be a misinterpretation of the statistics. In my opinion, as stated in my original post, the RIAA is, in fact, misinterpreting its own statistics.

Might I suggest that you spend some time learning about what 'theft' is.

I don't know about him but I've done that.

Where does this idea that it has to 'deprive' someone of something come from?

I guess that question is your way of admitting that you have not spent any time learning about what theft is :)

Here are some links you might want to start with :

A dictionary defintion of theft"

Another dictionary definition of theft

UK Theft Act 1968

Utah criminal code

The meaning of theft is very well established. A key part of it is intending to deprive the righful owner of their property.

HTH

Since they don't use a ball and don't play with their feet

2. Sports.
a. Any of various rounded, movable objects used in various athletic activities and games.

Yes. Just like "matrices" is the plural of "matrix". Not that the words have a similar etymology - according to dictionary.com it's, in the authors' words, "A weak pun on Multics".

i think a highway costs somethign insane like $250,000 a foot for a 6 lane highway

Insightful my ass. '[T]he National Science Foundation in Virginia... is funding the $12-million project.' This ain't an American Thru-way, it's a one-lane ice road. A highway.

"make it easier for buglers and terrorists"

That's right! Watch out, you buglers! Your renditions of Taps, Reveille, and Charge might be seriously scrutinized by the Department of Homeland Security!

Oh, wait, you meant burglars... never mind...

I think you have missed some key points in the definition of 'dictator'. Maybe this will help. Keep in mind that our government was carefully designed so that NOBODY would have 'absolute power' or be able to rule 'unconstrained by law'.

Over the past 12 years, Saddam has defied numerous international resolutions to disarm- each one with an ultimatum of the use of force. So how is our current president responsible for this again?

This war is about national security. Look how Mr Clinton screwed up North Korea for an example of how you shouldn't treat a crazy leader that has the means to research weapons of mass destruction.

Even if this was only about oil (which it isn't), fossil fuels do a lot more than power our SUV's- they are vital to sustaining and enhancing life, and they are worth defending.

It kills me that people think we need to leave such important issues of national security up to the UN Security council. France is going to stand in our way of defending ourselves? Good Lord. France doesn't even defend itself ("We surrender!").

You're a peer, you reviewed it, you found a problem. Why didn't you correct it?

He did not review it. He stumbled on something glaringly obvious that written by someone who didn't have any clue what they were talking about.

Speaking of which: Dictionary.com says it has six entries found for review. The VERY FIRST DEFINITION which comes up: "To look over, study, or examine again." And the third: "To examine with an eye to criticism or correction: reviewed the research findings."

He is a peer, he did review it, he did find a problem, he should have corrected it, but he was too lazy. It is just that simple. It's okay to be lazy, he has no obligation to edit the wikipedia, but he's bitching about something he could have fixed in (I hope) less than a minute. It would have taken him little more effort to fix it there (assuming he needed to create an account) than it took him to bitch about it here.

he definition is here

The closest definition to your is Of or relating to the central government of a federation as distinct from the governments of its member units.

But then that would only be the case if this decision were related to the san-Francisco central government, rather then any of SF's subunits. Since SF has no sub units, it does not apply.

In fact, federal is most often used to contrast the nature of the government described to 'local' governments. I.E federal vs. state. A city government is not a federal government at all. In fact, it's almost the exact opposite.

Besides, its clear from the context that the author meant 'democratic' or something, not 'federal', which is even more ironic since the original Federalists (in US history) were far less democratically inclined then their opponents, the Democratic Republicans.

If you're so "verbal", why can't you spell "sight-read" correctly?

You're not getting my point. This is not about government regulations or statistical trends. This is about personal choices and some people choose to drive a thrifty car, and other people choose to move closer to work. Blaming the SUV as a group is just stereotyping, and if you look that up, you'll see the first meaning "A conventional, formulaic, and oversimplified conception, opinion, or image". Oversimplified, as in 'SUVs are to blame for this' focussing on one overall statistic and forgetting that miles driven matter too and that not all SUVs use more gas than all cars.

Statistics don't prove any specifics, they help to simplify reality, that's all they do. You yourself are abusing the statistics to basically say that that cadillac is better than that escape, because it falls in a group with a better CAFE. But if they made a group for the cadillac, it would have a lower CAFE than a group for the CAFE.

The SUV+driver combination may well be more efficient than the car behind it if the driver behind it has a 60 minute commute and the SUV driver a 10 minute commute.

Perfer?

from dictionary.com:

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