Slashdot Mirror

The song "Happy Birthday to You" is copyrighted. Unauthorized performance or reproduction is a violation of federal law.

I'm not suggesting the people in the article are terrorists, but neither was the husband and wife team that invented the airplane.

Who was the wife, Wilbur or Orville?

Uh, a mile is 5,280 feet. 1 Mile == 1,609.2655 meters, hardly a "defined in terms of", much more a later conversion.

Joseph Swan, from the great city of Sunderland, did.

The light bulb

Edison improved it.

To understand this, you have to harken back to the days when movies were shown continuously in theaters and audiences were allowed to sit through multiple showings of the same movie--the start times were published, and if you came in late you simply sat through the next showing until you came to the point "where you came in." This is not that long ago--I remember when this used to be the practice.

The coming attractions reel would be spliced onto the end of the last reel of the movie, hence trailer. From the perspective of the audience member who arrived on time or a little early, the coming attractions would appear before the feature, even though technically it was at the end.

You concern about the self-serving nature of the post though is well founded. When I wrote the submission (the first of many of the years to ever be posted) I though that it did sound very pretentious. I rewrote it a few times and almost didn't submit. The fact that Dragon Spirit (which has really interesting 'niche' articles IMHO, a nice url - dragon.org - which is easily stumbled upon and a fairly good user interface) had already closed its doors led me to think it wouldn't hurt to list it rather than the many other still operational sites. Belfry is a very good source of web comics and keeps regular information on sites that are abandonded. (If you hadn't noticed or set you user preferences to exclude them, Slashdot has a box dedicated to a selection of geeky comics.)

Frankly, of all the things I said, I didn't expect it to make the cut let alone generate the discussions it did. I was really impressed with the comments on the dillution of Linux mindshare by a profusion of Linux sites (something similar happened to the local LUG while I was secretary - too many user groups, not enough members in any one to sustain them.)

If I wanted to generate traffic for the sites without consideration for the greater theme I believed this this exepmlifies (sorry, more bad spellin') I could have just tried for a submission in the Quickies department. To illustrate the point I was trying to make, see the CensorSheep animation (sorry, yet another Wired link - it's amazing how usefull some 'old' data can be) and pay attention to who is censoring the artwork at the end.

BTW - I am neither affiliated nor deriving benifit from any of the sites I have listed (besides being able to browse and enjoy them. ;)

"I have made this letter longer than usual, only because I have not had the time to make it shorter."

- Blaise Pascal(UselessKnowledge.com)

The Taliban army has dropped a bomb on Omaha, Nebraska this afternoon releasing toxic noxious gas into the air! Read more here!

You need to see what's going on the real world now!!!!