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"Gates invented the computer language known as Basic while in high school."
I can't tell if you're trolling or joking or what, but if not, you need to learn a bit more about computers.
Bill would have been about 9 years old when that happened.
Sorry; try again!
(Oh, and here's a simple rule to avoid making a fool of yourself in the future: *anything* you can think of relating to electronics or computers has been done in the 60s.)

It's usually instructive in situations like this to consider the historical context of the issues. Here's the original 'Open Letter' from Bill Gates to the hobbyist community

The background here is that a lot of people pirated Bill's Altair BASIC program, and Bill wanted to know where good software was going to come from if people didn't get paid for it.

It may not have been legal or ethical for hobbyists to pirate Altair BASIC back in 1976, but very soon thereafter, Free Software gave us an answer and an alternative: share the source, and the software grows even in the absence of monetary incentive. It is immune to the type of 'theft' that Bill was whining about. 26 years later, we have seen that Free Software isn't just surviving, it's thriving.

Now, along comes GotDotNet, which looks suspiciously like an emulation of Open Source practices... except that the AUP includes a few serious distinctions. One is the assignment of certain important rights to Microsoft that basically let them do whatever the hell they please with the sweat of your brow. Here's a quote of (what looks like) the original license from the discussion at Activewin.com: (Link to the full thread)

By posting Your Stuff, You grant to Microsoft, under all of Your intellectual property and proprietary rights the following worldwide, non-exclusive, perpetual, irrevocable, royalty free, fully paid up rights: (1) to make, use, copy, modify and create derivative works of Your Stuff; (2) to publicly perform or display, import, broadcast, transmit, distribute, license, offer to sell, and sell, rent, lease, and lend copies of Your Stuff (and derivative works thereof); (3) to sublicense to third parties, including the right to sublicense to further third parties; and (ii) You agree You won't commence any legal action against Microsoft or any Participant or Visitor for exercising any of these rights.

Second, You also agree that You will not use the Workspace for any commercial purposes whatsoever. And last but not least, You agree that Microsoft may remove at any time, without notice, the Workspace or any posting to it.

Note the specific lack of compensation for the original programmer (unless you consider the use of GDN itself to be sufficient recompense, but I'm pretty damn sure that GDN isn't going to be buying your groceries and paying the rent). One must ask - if nobody pays the users of GDN, where will the good software come from? Nothing about GDN sounds like hiring programmers to 'flood the hobby market with good software'. It sounds ripping off the community to serve MS's shareholders (eg, Bill).

So what's the point?

I propose that the fundamental corporate culture of Microsoft embodies Gate's attitude as reflected in the 1976 'Open Letter'. This culture is allergic to piracy, because a consumerist revenue cycle is necessary to improve the software.

The Free Software movement has thoroughly refuted Gate's thesis, by making itself independant of the revenue cycle (and therefore is not harmed by 'piracy' as it is usually understood).

Microsoft's obsolete culture cannot change to adopt Free Software practices - the assumptions that Free Software threaten are the very core of their business. If the company were rebuilt from the ground up on Free principles, the entire culture would have to change - essentially resulting in a totally different company that happens to have the same name.

Since Microsoft cannot adopt free software practices, Microsoft can only regard Free Software as a competing producer of software, taking market share away from them, and therefore, a deadly threat.

Since Microsoft itself regards Free Software as a threat, it seems to follow that nobody else who depends on revenue streams to survive, would ever want to use a system that resembles a Free Software ecology (like GDN), as they would deprive the producer of that stream.

Producers of free software should similarly be suspicious of a system governed by a legal agreement written by someone who considers them to be a deadly enemy.

Therefore, Microsoft's own pseudo-Free intiatives (such as GotDotNet, the Shared Source license, and the Software Choice initiative) are probably (a) Shams that will perpetuate Microsoft's revenue stream at the expense of the rights of members of the community, and/or (b) exceedingly stupid mistakes on Microsoft's part.

In the absence of further evidence (especially since GDN is slashdotted and I can't read the text of the new license), it is impossible to tell to which degree GDN (or any other pseudo-Free effort by Microsoft) will be (a) or (b). In either case, it seems imprudent for users or programmers - whether they produce in open or closed software - to place their trust in these intiatives.

I wonder, as an aside, if Bill himself ever paid anything to the original inventors of BASIC, a pair of researchers at Dartmouth University. So I wonder if Bill's logic reflexively implies that he stole BASIC from Kemeny and Kurtz. Gee. Where will the good ideas come from? Oh, wait academia has been going as a not-for-profit institution for centuries. You may have heard of some of their other 'products' - the theory of universal gravitation, electricty, the rabies vaccine...

Here's an unsolvable instance

It's basically normally sorted, but with aces, twos and eights on the first two rows. Nines and sixes are at the bottom and you can't climb up high enough to get to the aces.

The phrase "drank the Kool-Aid" is a reference to the cults whose followers drank poisoned Kool-Aid to commit suicide, because they were true believers in the cult and its charismatic leader. So to "drink the Kool-Aid" means you believe enough to stake your life on that belief.

1. Most of the original ideas for D&D came from Dave Arneson and others. Mr. Gygax simply put them together into a book.

2. Dave Arneson and E. Gary Gygax had a grave difference in opinion about how to run TSR and so Mr. Arneson left. However, he made sure his lawyers made it clear that he would continue to receive benefits (such as money) from his previous work. The Monster Manual in particular.
2a. Years later TSR came out with Monster Manual 2 and several other hardback books. They also stopped paying Dave Arneson his royalties. Mr. Arneson did not like this and so he sued. Unlike M.A. Barker though, Mr. Arneson was rich enough to force TSR to begin paying him again. Eventually thought, TSR bought Mr. Arneson out completely. To read about this go to D&D History or do a google search or go to the newsgroup on D&D (D&D FAQ).

3. TSR, over the years, ripped off many ideas et al from people. One story in particular stands out. M.A. Barker's "Empire of the Petal Throne" was released by TSR minus it's copyright notice. Mr. Barker did not notice this right off and by the time it was brought to his attention TSR used an obscure copyright technical issue (since modified by Congress) to assume total control over Mr. Barker's work. Mr. Barker (of course) filed suit and went bankrupt trying to get his work back. Years later, a Mr. Lou Zaukie (spelling?) - the inventor of the high impact die and friend of Mr. Barker - convinced TSR to sell the rights to him and Mr. Zaukie returned the rights to Mr. Barker. Who has since gone on to print the rules again as well as to produce other tomes.

4. The heires to the Flash Gordon fortune, who happened to be nuts over D&D, was the person who bought up most of TSR's outstanding stock and kicked Mr. Gygax out of TSR. (This is mainly what I read and heard about many years ago so take it with a grain of salt.) From what I heard, Mr. Gygax kicked out several of the people this lady liked from TSR and in a fit of revenge she did this.

5. Then came several years of nothing new from TSR and, according to accounting records, TSR went heavily in debt as the heiress sucked all of the money out of TSR in order to build some sort of an amusement park dedicated to Flash Gordon. The amusement park deal went sour and she went shopping for someone to buy TSR. Especially since most of the creative people either were not allowed to finish works and/or left when Mr. Gygax left. (Some to other companies and some with Mr. Gygax - according to other reports.)

6. Then, from left field we have Wizards of the Coast. WotC originally was another company. TSR put them out of business. So they had to re-invent their company and did so using a novel idea - playing cards like you would D&D. WotC's revenge was that they bought TSR from the heiress (who, from some accounts had doctored the books so TSR looked like it was a great thing to buy but subsequently WotC found out that all of this inventory TSR had was rotting in various warehouses because no one was buying it anymore since it was so outdated.).

7. So now we come to the latest chapter in TSR's history. Hasbro bought WotC recently. Just when WotC was beginning to breath new life into TSR; Hasbro and WotC's owner had a falling out. As of today, Hasbro has sold off most (if not all) of the electronic/computer software related to both WotC and TSR games. Only the board/book rights are left and Hasbro has let it be known that they are not looking exactly - but would not be against having offers made to buy WotC/TSR.

But that's just some of the past history of Mr. Gygax and TSR. :-)

http://www.cs.ruu.nl/wais/html/na-dir/internationa lization/programming-faq.html

Not true. It did, however, come close to happening..

MSNBC

More MSNBC

ZDnet

Cancerpage.com

More recent idg.net story supposedly proving the link

One relating to cell towers which mentions the phones

Ok, there's LOT's of studies going on, and most of them are highly political in my opinion.

Most of them also seem to ignore the fact that RF is RF. Changing what "mode" it's in isn't going to change the physical nature of the signal. All digital cell phones do is use a a/d convertor to convert your voice to a digital form, then it's serialized into a form that can be transmitted on a antenna. This usually means somewhere it get's translated to audio that sounds a little like a modem.

Also, RF has been around since BEFORE we were. Sure, humans have only been pumping out RF for about 80 years, but the earth, the planets and the sun ALL produced some form of RF or EM radiation. We are exposed to it everyday.

One last link describes brain cancer and the fact that noone knows WHAT causes it yet. My point is, scientists too often will point to new technology as the cause of something that just might be a cyclical thing in nature that can not be explained. Why do some people get cancer when they follow the American Cancer Society diet and exercise regimen and have no risk factors (family history of, working in a risky environment..etc.)? Noone knows. Noone will ever know the entire story on this one. All I do know is noone has proven beyond a shadow of a doubt either way. I will assume, for my use, that it doesn't cause it for now mainly because there are more studies refuting the link then studies with HARD evidence proving the link. I also fully believe once this has been studied more, that more people will come to believe as I have. I and many others await those studies. Also, this givesme one less thing to worry about, which helps my stress level! :)

I've worked as a camp counsellor at Compucamp, a summer computer camp for kids, for the last two years, so I know exactly what you're doing here. (see www.compucamp.ca)

This is how our program works: The camps are one week long, and each has a "theme". They're broken up by age groups.

The preschoolers and kindergarteners basically just play games all week, but we introduce them to some basic drawing and word processing programs (try to get them to see just how big you can make a font in MS Write). The drawing program we use, Drawing For Children, is absolutely great for the really young ones, and can be found at http://www.cs.ruu.nl/~markov/kids/draw/.

The age 7-9 group learn basic Frontpage skills and throw together a webpage, as well as learn the basics of Paint Shop Pro. We also open up Nerf Arena Blast to them, which is a game based on the Unreal Tournament engine, but with nerf weapons. Really nice game.

The most popular camp so far is the graphics camp, where the entire camp is divided into two groups, and they actually produce their own short movie (usually about 1:30 in length). They learn to use morphing software, advanced Paint Shop Pro, and video editing using Videowave. We also let them have some fun with an old version of Bryce 3d.

However, the one key element to all of this: don't put them on the computer for 8 hours straight!!! The way we worked was we had 16 computers and usually 30 kids (maximum per camp was 32). While one half was on computer, the other half was playing games outside, doing crafts, and other things. We took them swimming every Thursday, we had a water fight every Friday. If they're on the computers too long, it gets very nasty!

Beyond that, I hope you have fun as a camp counsellor. Please feel free to e-mail me here if you have any other concerns about your camp, as I've seen it all. :-)

...then take a look at Eric Meijer's CGI library in Haskell. Using Haskell gives you all the power of a modern, pure, powerful, strongly-typed functional language [oh well, that's lost 99.9% of the audience.] Read the paper here and you can find the source here. With the forthcoming .NET integration this should become easy to integrate with all the other stuff a web site has to deal with.

What about the old cell phones? What about pagers? What about those new Palm VII (which ever one buildin a phone)? What about those 900 MHz home use cordless phone?

Here are some links to related materials found on the web...
Cellular Phone Antennas and Human Health by Medical Collage of Wisconsin
How a Cell Phone Works by How Stuff Works.
How a Digital Cell Phone Works by How Stuff Works.
Is your cell phone killing you? from ZDNet November 30, 1999.
Cell Phone Antennas & Health FAQs from Institute of Information and Computing Sciences.

What about the old cell phones? What about pagers? What about those new Palm VII (which ever one buildin a phone)? What about those 900 MHz home use cordless phone?

Here are some links to related materials found on the web...
Cellular Phone Antennas and Human Health by Medical Collage of Wisconsin
How a Cell Phone Works by How Stuff Works.
How a Digital Cell Phone Works by How Stuff Works.
Is your cell phone killing you? from ZDNet November 30, 1999.
Cell Phone Antennas & Health FAQs from Institute of Information and Computing Sciences.

There is this Dutch guy who made this drawing program called Drape. It's inspired by Logo and L-Systems. It's completely visual oriented. You "drag and drop" drawing actions (draw line, change direction, change color, go back etc) on a time line. You're able to define subroutines and variables. You can run your drawing in "debug-mode" (step by step).
It's freeware, it's very funny and it has a lot of basic concepts regarding programming, without the troubles of typing textual languages. You can find it at this guy's website.

Arleo

BTW, XP-LOGO implementations are still being made by the MIT, called Starlogo

From the rec.arts.henson+ muppets FAQ :

"In the fall of 1989, the Walt Disney Company entered into negotiations to acquire The Jim Henson Company (then Jim Henson Productions) and the Muppets. Jim Henson died during the negotiations, and the deal eventually fell through. However, the JHC and Disney have sometimes worked together, such as for the (wonderful) MuppetVision 3-D at Disney/MGM studios in Orlando."

BTW, does anyone know what happened to Muppets.com?

Laurence (not Lawrence) Godfrey was a net legend years ago. Aside from flaming some of his more nasty comments I thought he was pretty harmless. Oh sure, he talked about suing everyone, but I didn't really believe it.

Now this?

Never underestimate the effect that a single nut with a lawyer. :-(

Welcome to the dark ages, Britain. Just as something was being done about access costs for being online, you have now been censored. I just wonder how long it will be until The Register is forced to relocate...

Ben

I remember this asshole. What a jerk!

He was even a net-legend.

I guess a legend with a lawyer can set an unfortunate precedent... :-(

Regards,
Ben

The article may imply that they are wasting money because they don't know what they are doing, but it also states flat out that anti-gravity would violate laws of physics, and that the higher ups have puny brains when it comes to physics.

Take a look at the sci.skeptic FAQ where all this nonsense is harshly treated. The relevant section of the FAQ is section 8.8 - almost at the bottom of the page.

You can probably find other mirrors of the FAQ.