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This is a reply from Emery Berger. I've added links to the relevant patents in the text of the first letter from MicroQuill.

It's called a literary allusion. And hardly an obscure one, at that (at least not in this community). Go read a book, coward-boy.

That and its much more pedestrian friendly than bicycles... no need to get into the street and getting hit by a bus or idiot speeding down the roads.

My only questions are: Why all the redundancy? Sure, it'd be annoying if a motor failed, but are they expecting that to happen often? Eliminating the extra motors and cpus would bring the cost down considerably.

And the weight too..at 65 lbs, its no lightweight. I have to climb up stairs to my apartment (no handicap ramps here), which I will need to lug the thing up. Eliminating those extra motors will help take a few lbs off of it... perhaps an integrated backstrap for it would help too.

All in all, i'd buy one if it were cheaper.

Well, if they're going to create hoards of furry clones, then we have only one choice:

GIANT ROBOTS.

For war of future, we must have giant robot! Giant robot only hope! US must create giant robot for protection of Future!

Coax works exactly like you describe. Each user can plug themselves in, and you can connect people downstream from yourself. But, whenever you need to disconnect, everyone downstream from you gets cut off... bummer. And, because there are so many connections, your reliability goes down pretty quickly as you wear out your plugs from constant use. Performance gets bad because in order to send information from one end of the chain to the next, you have to talk to everyone in the middle.

So, the current system of hubs and switches was developed to get around these problems. It's technically called Star network (10BaseT) vs a Ring network (Coax, or the system you described). In a star network, it costs more to add additional ports, but each individual port works at top speed, and if one user goes down everyone else stays up. As the marketplace has voted with its dollars, it's much better.

How in the hell was the parent moderated up to 3?
I have seen multiple solutions posted while browsing at moderator level 3. Am I going to have to start browsing at 4 now?

There is no standard in Windows like the FHS, only Microsofts latest guidelines which don't to my knowledge address proper Start menu behaivor. Every app I know that tries to put a shortcut directly in the Start menu gives an option between having it in the start menu, on the desktop, and in the IE launch bar. The exception I've seen is AOL launcher, primarily because it is preinstalled. I will agree that the Windows Start Menu needs a coherent management scheme published.

Limiting your experience to Red Hat and Mandrake and then proclaiming anything about "everyone's guily" is silly. Mandrake is all but another distribution of Red Hat. Might as well make a blanket statement after using Debian and Progeny. There are many statements praising recent Slackware versions for using /opt as part of a solution, for example. Slack is most unlike Red Hat and its many derivatives.

The FSS is not intended to make organizing one's hard drive any easier, but to make distributions less likely to interfere with your organization. That is what makes /usr/local useful. Perhaps the solution for you would involve /usr/local/apps, /usr/local/utils, etc. (/usr/local/etc? :P) Everything you compiled belongs within /usr/local/ if you choose to adhere to the guidelines set out in the FHS. Within that framework, you can organize by function, or whatever else you fancy.

As for the distribution system, I don't see that such arbitrary classification is as useful for filesystem layout as grouping by the application's title. There are better places for those distinctions, like in the "Start Menu". In Windows, ideally, everything is installed into its own directory as much as possible, while the Start Menu is grouped more by user functionality.
In response to the anonymous coward of message #2596088, in Debian, the best place for such things as /usr/internet or /usr/editor exists in the /etc/alternatives directory. Try "man update-alternatives". While /etc/alternatives/infobrowser exists for .html help pages, perhaps there sould be an /etc/alternatives/webbrowser entry.

/home is far from irrelevant. It is the only place where non-sysadmin related files should reside, unless they are being served over a network or removable media. Any non-root user should never have reason to leave /usr/home, provided all PATH environments are properly configured. Keeping personal files scattered throughout /bin directories is a better way to "sure-fire confusion".

The best way to have an organized hard disk is to have a reasonable set of guidelines you follow on filesystem layout. After that, just follow them! The best way to fight entropy, is of course, to do something useful! After you die, then you should emprace entropy. I suspect that the rhetoric of apathy in these two statements garnered your 2 "insightful" moderations. Give me a break, learn some discipline and organization.

----

As to the solutions that "nobody" has offered to this problem of clutered and unwieldly /bin directories, try browsing at a high moderator number, and see a range from:
1. No problem, who cares what the Filesystem looks like when the Package manager suits your needs;
2. Use one of the automated soltions listed at the Opt Depot like GNU STOW;
3. Keep all "applications" in subirectories in /opt, with appropriate links in /usr/bin. For systems w/package management, make that /usr/local/bin as in #2595732
4. Keep only one symlink for any "application suite" in /usr/bin, which calls the appropriate executable depending on its flag;#2598189
5. My least favorite - expand your PATH variable to include every /bin subdirectory in the /usr hierarchy. ##2595676

Note to self:
##2596072 gives a reference and addresses the shortcoming of current Debian Package Management - concurrent divergent versions of applications.

I was poking around in all of the sites for a few minutes before I found out that the satellites haven't been launched, and aren't scheduled to go up until Feb 2002. The BBC says it's going to be just a few weeks, but the official site says 97 days.

Interesting note from their site: A secondary experiment that GRACE will perform is to examine how the atmosphere affects signals from the Global Possioning Satellites (GPS). Ahhh, another Slashdot hotbutton! This project just keeps looking better and better the more you check it out.

Have you actually had to manage a system that works like this? It's a royal pain in the ass.

Yup, I have. In fact, we've managed all of our UNIX systems that way for the last 8 years or so. It's not a pain in the ass at all.. in fact, with the opt_depot scripts we wrote, we support automagic NFS sharing of packages for all Solaris systems in our laboratory. Indidivual system administrators can choose to use a particular package off of their choice of NFS servers, or they can simply copy the package's directory to their local system.

Using symlinks gives you complete location independence.. all you need is a symlink from your PATH directory to the binaries, and a symlink from the canonical package location (e.g., /opt/depot/xemacs-21.5) to the actual location of the package directory, be it local or be it NFS.

There's a group at NLM who is working on tools and standard practices for managing NFS package archives using RPM, and then using the opt_depot scripts to integrate the package archives with each local system automatically.

There have actually been many, many implementations of this basic idea, each with their own frills and features. I have a comprehensive listing of these programs on our opt_depot page.

Take a look, if you're interested in that sort of thing.. I can think of relatively few ideas that have been implemented and re-implemented so many times.

Many years ago, we wrote a set of Perl utilities for automating symlink maintenance called opt_depot.

It's similar to the original CMU Depot program, but has built in support for linking to a set of NFS package volumes, and can cleanly interoperate with non-depot-managed files in the same file tree.

Cheers, nice review. But...

• "Finally, we have a combat title that actually gives us a taste of what the real thing might be like"

The reviewer needs to go and play Hidden and Dangerous. You crawl on your belly for 20 minutes, then get shot once by a sniper that you can't even see, and just curl up and die. Or, better yet, read "Dulce Et Decorum Est"

Also, both reviews seem to imply that you'll simply zip straight through the single player version, but the multiplayer has enough variety to keep you playing. Hmmm, seeing as how your only option (at launch) is a LAN party, you'd better hope all your friends buy Xboxen as well.

I'll definitely be waiting until after Christmas to decide on an Xbox purchase, and I strongly suggest that everyone else considers making the decision to do likewise rather than playing the "how much is the hype affecting me today" game. ;-)

I have come to realize how unusual it is to be working for a company that is run by people who still enjoy the core activities for which the company was founded. Very early in the lawsuit, a Wolfram Research response to the lawsuit mentioned that Wolfram Research has chosen to remain privately held in order to be free from the obligation to outside stockholders that appears so often to focus corporations inordinately on short-term financial results. Wolfram Research's principals believe that they can take the long and broad view of the corporation's mission, as they could not if they had to satisfy stock analysts and uninvolved stockholders.

The behavior of CRC's representatives this last year has been, for me, convincing evidence of the wisdom of Wolfram Research's strategy. The people at my company believe in what they do, make money doing it, and have fun along the way. I didn't see much fun being had among the CRC people we dealt with.

And then he blisefully continues in the very next paragraph:

We eventually concluded that there was no real business discussion possible. CRC was simply incapable of listening to or evaluating an actual business proposal. So we weighed the costs of continued litigation against the costs of giving CRC some of the cash for which it appeared so hungry. The cash approach won.

Hello ? If Wolfram is such a bunch of privately owned old-school in-it-for-the-fun boys, how come the cash approach won ? What happened to all the stuff about short term versus long term ? Didn't do much good to be free of all those "uninvolved stockholders", now did it ?

I used Mathematica in school, and liked it. From now on it's Maxima only, however. Long live the GPL.

It brings up some decent points for both sides. However the paper is definitely shady in some areas. For example, read the section on IDSs if you want a good laugh. (They call Nessus an IDS which is similar to Tripwire.) :P

... as perceived by the Swedish Chef:

Veet its releese-a ooff Qt/Mec, Trulltech hes edded Epple-a Meceentush tu zee leest ooff pletffurms sooppurted by Qt, un imergeeng indoostry stunderd in cruss-pletffurm sufftvere-a defelupment. Eppleeceshun defelupers useeng Qt cun noo terget Mec OoS X veet zee seme-a iese-a, es zeey ere-a coorrently tergeteeng Veendoos, Leenoox, Uneex, und imbedded Leenoox systems. Qt elloos defelupers tu creete-a a seengle-a suoorce-a tree-a thet veell roon oon ell zeese-a mejur pletffurms.

Zeere-a ere-a noomeruoos feetoores inclooded in Qt/Mec, und emung zeese-a is un ixtenseefe-a C++ fremoourk fur OoS X, sooppurt fur zee Eqooa luuk &feel, OopenGL sooppurt, detebese-a sooppurt und reech text sooppurt. Qt/Mec roons neteefe-a oon Mec OoS X, ooff cuoorse-a, und is foolly cerbuneesed.

"Veet zee intrudoocshun ooff Qt/Mec, ve-a cun ooffffer beneffeets tu but oooor ixeesting coostumers und tu Mec users," seys Heeferd Nurd, CEO ooff Trulltech. "Qt defelupers noo hefe-a meelliuns ooff noo users zeey cun terget veet ixeesting Qt eppleeceshuns. Und Mec users noo hes a cumpletely noo set ooff mure-a thun tee thuoosund eppleeceshuns thet cun roon oon zee Meceentush pletffurm."

Iureek Ing, Trulltech's preseedent, seeed Trulltech hed tekee peeens tu insoore-a thet Mec users vuoold feel cumffurteble-a veet Qt eppleeceshuns. "Qt/Mec hes zee Eqooa luuk und feel, su ell Mec users veell feel reeght et hume-a veet prugrems defeluped veet Qt," he-a seeed. "It is ixceeting tu see-a Qt eppleeceshuns roonneeng oon Mec OoS X. Zee Qt fooncshuneleety integreted veet zee cuul luuk und feel zee Eqooa-style-a prufeedes is impresseefe-a."

In eddeeshun tu ell zee ebufe-a-menshuned feetoores, Qt/Mec hes ell zee ilements ooff Qt 3.0. Zee detebese-a cepebeelity geefes Mec defelupers zee ebeelity tu creete-a eppleeceshuns thet ere-a but detebese-a- und pletffurm-independent. Qt Deseegner is noo a foolly-fledged GOoI booeelder veet meeen-veendoo defelupment cepebeelity und, und un integreted C++ ideetur. Qt Leengooist prufeedes iesy trunsleshun ooff Qt GOoIs tu deefffferent lungooeges. Qt Esseestunt ieses brooseeng und feending inffurmeshun in zee Qt Ducoomenteshun.

Qt/Mec is releesed under zee fullooeeng leecences: Zee Qt Pruffesseeunel und Interpreese-a Ideeshuns. Efeeeleble-a fur zee defelupment ooff prupreeetery/cummerceeel sufftvere-a oon Veendoos, Leenoox, Uneex und Mec OoS X Zee Qt Ecedemeec Leecense-a. Elloos schuuls und uneefersities tu ecqooure-a und use-a Qt fur free-a in relefunt cuoorses.

Ebuoot Trulltech:
Trulltech is zee creetur ooff Qt, a C++ cruss-pletffurm foolly oobject-ooreeented eppleeceshun fremoourk thet inebles repeed booeelding ooff stete-a-ooff-zee-ert GOoI eppleeceshuns fur Meecrusufft Veendoos, Leenoox/Uneex, Mec OoS X und imbedded Leenoox pletffurms. Qt hes furmed zee besees ooff muny sooccessffool cummerceeel eppleeceshuns vurldveede-a, und ves used tu defelup zee oopee suoorce-a, KDE desktup infurunment. Trulltech is heedqooertered in Ooslu, Nurvey, veet ooffffeeces in Breesbune-a, Oostreleea, und Sunta Clera, Celeeffurnia. Mure-a ebuoot Trulltech cun be-a fuoond oon zee Vurld Veede-a Veb et vvv.trulltech.cum. Bork Bork Bork!

But Jon, you are not thinking like a marketing manager. You said, Microsoft's control of the clients will still allow them to push the client away...

Your manner of looking at the future is helping something bad happen instead of something good. You and I both don't know what will happen. There are two steps: 1) open source gets the software, and 2) open source people find some way to keep Microsoft from being abusive.

Yes, number 2 is difficult, but it is not impossible. Neither of us know what will happen. There are perhaps 30 legal cases against Microsoft now. I have heard that at least one of them is investigating Microsoft's secret file formats and protocols. It seems likely that what Microsoft is doing is so anti-competitive that it is against anti-trust law.

It could happen that Microsoft is required by a court to publish all its secret protocols. If not, would you give $300 to support a case against Microsoft? I would. I think there are others who would give money also.

The world does not handle abusiveness well. We should not let abusers run our lives.

If you think like a marketing man, you will think positively. Eventually, open source will find a way.

You have the same problem closer to home. Ganymede is being under-sold. This is VERY important!!!! It isn't only you. Most open source people are under-selling their work.

Your said at the bottom of your first post, "Ganymede, a GPL'ed metadirectory for UNIX." There are a lot of people who don't know what a metadirectory is.

You web site says, " GANYMEDE is a portable and customizable network directory management system

Someone who thinks like a marketing manager will sell the benefit: Ganymede makes managing a large network far easier. Manage up to 20,000 computers remotely, from ONE computer.

Jon, respectfully, you are too modest.

But Jon, you are not thinking like a marketing manager. You said, Microsoft's control of the clients will still allow them to push the client away...

Your manner of looking at the future is helping something bad happen instead of something good. You and I both don't know what will happen. There are two steps: 1) open source gets the software, and 2) open source people find some way to keep Microsoft from being abusive.

Yes, number 2 is difficult, but it is not impossible. Neither of us know what will happen. There are perhaps 30 legal cases against Microsoft now. I have heard that at least one of them is investigating Microsoft's secret file formats and protocols. It seems likely that what Microsoft is doing is so anti-competitive that it is against anti-trust law.

It could happen that Microsoft is required by a court to publish all its secret protocols. If not, would you give $300 to support a case against Microsoft? I would. I think there are others who would give money also.

The world does not handle abusiveness well. We should not let abusers run our lives.

If you think like a marketing man, you will think positively. Eventually, open source will find a way.

You have the same problem closer to home. Ganymede is being under-sold. This is VERY important!!!! It isn't only you. Most open source people are under-selling their work.

Your said at the bottom of your first post, "Ganymede, a GPL'ed metadirectory for UNIX." There are a lot of people who don't know what a metadirectory is.

You web site says, " GANYMEDE is a portable and customizable network directory management system

Someone who thinks like a marketing manager will sell the benefit: Ganymede makes managing a large network far easier. Manage up to 20,000 computers remotely, from ONE computer.

Jon, respectfully, you are too modest.

But Jon, you are not thinking like a marketing manager. You said, Microsoft's control of the clients will still allow them to push the client away...

Your manner of looking at the future is helping something bad happen instead of something good. You and I both don't know what will happen. There are two steps: 1) open source gets the software, and 2) open source people find some way to keep Microsoft from being abusive.

Yes, number 2 is difficult, but it is not impossible. Neither of us know what will happen. There are perhaps 30 legal cases against Microsoft now. I have heard that at least one of them is investigating Microsoft's secret file formats and protocols. It seems likely that what Microsoft is doing is so anti-competitive that it is against anti-trust law.

It could happen that Microsoft is required by a court to publish all its secret protocols. If not, would you give $300 to support a case against Microsoft? I would. I think there are others who would give money also.

The world does not handle abusiveness well. We should not let abusers run our lives.

If you think like a marketing man, you will think positively. Eventually, open source will find a way.

You have the same problem closer to home. Ganymede is being under-sold. This is VERY important!!!! It isn't only you. Most open source people are under-selling their work.

Your said at the bottom of your first post, "Ganymede, a GPL'ed metadirectory for UNIX." There are a lot of people who don't know what a metadirectory is.

You web site says, " GANYMEDE is a portable and customizable network directory management system

Someone who thinks like a marketing manager will sell the benefit: Ganymede makes managing a large network far easier. Manage up to 20,000 computers remotely, from ONE computer.

Jon, respectfully, you are too modest.

Is that a Boston Boskonian, or a Springfield Boskonian?

No, this kind of Boskonian.

Or, more specifically, this kind.

"4. I'll just let the pictures speak for themselves:"

FWIW, here's my GNOME desktop (full size, 1Mb .png) (half size, .5Mb .png).

Wallpaper: Propaganda.

Panels: The main panel has been moved to the left vertical edge; it's "invisible" because it has the same background as the wallpaper. In the lower right is a dynamically sized panel for the task manager (it grows and shrinks as I open and close applications).

W/M: Sawfish.

Themes: GTK+ is using the "dark and dangerous" Cyrus pixmap theme. Sawfish is using a theme that I hacked from the components of Enlightenment's ShinyMetal theme, with some changes to make it look more like Cyrus. In addition to the usual stuff it has buttons for windowshading and for maximizing horizontally or vertically either independently or in conjunction.

At the upper right is the gkrellm system monitor, which uses custom GTK+ themes. I haven't bothered trying to hack one to match Cyrus yet.

My desktop is usually much more cluttered than this, as can be seen by all the minimized apps in the task manager.

Bobby Bryant
Austin, Texas

"4. I'll just let the pictures speak for themselves:"

FWIW, here's my GNOME desktop (full size, 1Mb .png) (half size, .5Mb .png).

Wallpaper: Propaganda.

Panels: The main panel has been moved to the left vertical edge; it's "invisible" because it has the same background as the wallpaper. In the lower right is a dynamically sized panel for the task manager (it grows and shrinks as I open and close applications).

W/M: Sawfish.

Themes: GTK+ is using the "dark and dangerous" Cyrus pixmap theme. Sawfish is using a theme that I hacked from the components of Enlightenment's ShinyMetal theme, with some changes to make it look more like Cyrus. In addition to the usual stuff it has buttons for windowshading and for maximizing horizontally or vertically either independently or in conjunction.

At the upper right is the gkrellm system monitor, which uses custom GTK+ themes. I haven't bothered trying to hack one to match Cyrus yet.

My desktop is usually much more cluttered than this, as can be seen by all the minimized apps in the task manager.

Bobby Bryant
Austin, Texas

ethernet 5-4-3 rule
MAX:
5 segments (100meters long, 350 feet each),
4 repeaters and,
3 populated segments ie. of the 5, only 3 can have hosts on them, the other 2 are runs between

This is due to latency, signal degridation etc. so cat v definately wont work

now this all changes for fiber, 1500m + depending on the type..

check out Charles Spurgeon's Ethernet Site for more info

Actually, if you are looking for less complicated tree and table components, check out the ones included with Ganymede.

I wrote them because I needed them for Ganymede development, and Swing hadn't quite come along yet. I kept them because they are simple to use, they are pretty high performance, and you can do fancy tricks like node dragging ihttp://www.arlut.utexas.edu/gash2/doc/javadoc/arl ut/csd/JTable/baseTable.htmln the tree with little-to-no effort.

You can read the Javadocs on them here and here.

They are licensed under GPL, along with the rest of Ganymede.

Actually, if you are looking for less complicated tree and table components, check out the ones included with Ganymede.

I wrote them because I needed them for Ganymede development, and Swing hadn't quite come along yet. I kept them because they are simple to use, they are pretty high performance, and you can do fancy tricks like node dragging ihttp://www.arlut.utexas.edu/gash2/doc/javadoc/arl ut/csd/JTable/baseTable.htmln the tree with little-to-no effort.

You can read the Javadocs on them here and here.

They are licensed under GPL, along with the rest of Ganymede.

Actually, if you are looking for less complicated tree and table components, check out the ones included with Ganymede.

I wrote them because I needed them for Ganymede development, and Swing hadn't quite come along yet. I kept them because they are simple to use, they are pretty high performance, and you can do fancy tricks like node dragging ihttp://www.arlut.utexas.edu/gash2/doc/javadoc/arl ut/csd/JTable/baseTable.htmln the tree with little-to-no effort.

You can read the Javadocs on them here and here.

They are licensed under GPL, along with the rest of Ganymede.

The delivering of food to the Afghanistan people is very helpfull indeed, very helpful as a PR-instrument to the US-government.
What are the real reasons behind the war ? Think for yourselves instead of believing CNN (Which is only interested in advertisement-money, not in delivering the full story)
Who is in control of The US anyway ? Who funded BOTH candidates for
US-presidency ? Answer : the Oil-industry, which is very keen on taking
control of more Oil-wells located in the middle east.
THINK FOR YOURSELVES : BE CRITICAL,SURF THE NET,FIND OUT ABOUT HISTORY AND MAKE UP YOUR MIND.
some examples :
http://www.fair.org/media-beat/010925.html
http://uts.cc.utexas.edu/~rjensen/freelance/attack 10.htm
http:/212.113.72.149/php/MyPHPNuke/html/article.ph p?sid=8&mode=thread
&order=0"

okay, i'm no EE, and not much of an art student, but i drew a little diagram of how i think this could be implemented. feel free to get rich making one, but if you do, i want one! :) ...add a HEPA filter, and it'd make a great air purifier, too... :)

if the ad campaign here is as funny as the japanese one .

There's probably lots of people here too young to recall what a great orator Reagan was. He was routinely on primetime television, and people placed incredible value on what he said.

A topical and interesting example Statement on the Fourth Anniversary of the Soviet Invasion of Afghanistan I had vauge memories of this speech, so I looked it up. Somehow I doubt I'll recall anything GW Bush said 20 years after the fact.

Afghanistan's freedom fighters -- the resistance or mujahidin -- represent an indigenous movement that swept through their mountainous land to challenge a foreign military power threatening their religion and their very way of life. With little in the way of arms or organization, the vast majority of the Afghan people have demonstrated that they will not be dominated and that they are prepared to give their lives for independence and freedom. The price they have so willingly paid is incalculable.

Let all of us who live in lands of freedom, along with those who dream of doing so, take inspiration from the spirit and courage of the Afghan patriots. Let us resolve that their quest for freedom will prevail, and that Afghanistan will become, once again, an independent member of the family of nations. -- Ronald Reagan

Not the exact quote, but interesting in light of current events:

Reagan's Statement on the Fourth Anniversary of the Soviet Invasion of Afghanistan

Frankly, it pales in comparison with other Reagan 'classics' like "Ketchup is a vegetable", "Trees cause pollution", and "The Bombing will commence in 5 minutes".

The Universtiy of Texas has a list of their undergraduate lab machines on line. (The page isn't exact, an on-line probe shows 79 Linux boxes in the "public" group right now.)

Add to this about 200 more "private" Linux systems for the professors' and grad students' desktops.

ruptime shows 513 systems on the common filesystem, which includes all the "public" systems and lots of the "private" systems, though some portion of that number will be brand-name Unix and some will be lab machines used more for batch processing than for desktops. Still, that is 513 Linux/Unix boxes of some type, of which an estimated 300 are Linux boxes deployed for desktop use.

Overall, they have 2000-3000 active accounts on the combined Linux/Unix login, though many of those will be for undergraduates who do not use it unless they have to.

If you want to stop giving any penny to micro$oft before they take over the internet, take a look at all the companies you can boycott.

Some examples are NCompass, Commerce one, Audible, Corel, LinkExchange, Hitachi, Firefly, Dreamworks, Hotmail, WebTV, Realnames, Verisign, CompUSA, Keen, Radioshack, Expedia, Akamaï, Concentric, WebMD, Nextel, Portugal Telecom, Qwest, Apple, RealNetworks, Comcast, NBC, UUNET.

I also suggest that you read the 12 steps to stop using M$. Very thorough, a MUST.

I saw the last stanza quoted in an op-ed piece: from Rudyard Kipling's The Young British Soldier

When you're wounded and left on Afghanistan's plains,
And the women come out to cut up what remains,
Jest roll to your rifle and blow out your brains
An' go to your Gawd like a soldier.

Personally, I'd like to sit back and watch Michael Caine's and Sean Connery's fine performances in The Man Who Would Be King again, but I'd like to throw a little historical perspective into the current crisis. I think the Afghans have been pissed off at the West ever since it was conquered by some Greek dude named Alexander. Of course the British didn't help the West with it's more recent activities either. Afghanistan really has a fascinating history, just as much as Iraq does. It's too bad they are both ruled over by despotic regimes. I am particularly taken with the first paragraph from this essay on Kipling's Imperialism:

In Kipling's work, as in his life, the British Empire assumed a complex mythical or legendary function, which he passed on to his readers. It was a positive force in the sense that it ordered and unified his creativity, and a negative one to the extent that it limited his perspective. In life he seems to have thought of it very much as one might have thought of the earlier Roman Empire: its purpose was to maintain stability, order, and peace amongst the heathen, to relieve famine, provide medical assistance, to abolish slavery, to construct the physical and the psychological groundwork for "civilization," and to protect the mother country. It was an island of security in a chaotic world. (And in fact, when the Empire did eventually dissolve, many of the worst nightmares of the Imperialists came to pass--in the slaughter which marked the partition of India, for example).

And while you're at it take a gander at Kipling's Imperialist apologist masterpiece The White Man's Burden

This war on terrorism is going to require of us a true understanding of our enemies and not to make the same mistakes others have before us in dealing with them. I will close my comments with the last stanza of that poem as well (believe me, the irony is not lost on me).

Take up the White Man's burden!
Have done with childish days--
The lightly-proffered laurel,
The easy ungrudged praise:
Comes now, to search your manhood
Through all the thankless years,
Cold, edged with dear-bought wisdom,
The judgment of your peers.

It's standard procedure in the U.S. Army to order "route step" (unsynchronized marching) while crossing a bridge. I suspect the bit about sympathetic vibrations causing a bridge to collapse is mostly an urban legend, at least for modern bridges. This page describes a structural failure of a hotel walkway during a dance. From what I remember, the cause was found to be inadequate design and construction of the walkway.

While working on a grant at SDSU, I heard of an instructor in Maryland who found that her students who used a DOS-based PC to write english papers received better grades then did the Apple Mac counterparts.

As several readers have pointed out, the map bright spots are closely matched with population/industrialization concentrations. And they mostly seem to make sense, except why in the heck are the Falkland Islands (off the East coast of Argentina) so damned bright? I mean, really, the Islands have an ordinarily resident population of 2,221 people.

Maybe the UK used some secret weapons during the 1982 war that left those bright spots behind?

As several readers have pointed out, the map bright spots are closely matched with population/industrialization concentrations. And they mostly seem to make sense, except why in the heck are the Falkland Islands (off the East coast of Argentina) so damned bright? I mean, really, the Islands have an ordinarily resident population of 2,221 people.

Maybe the UK used some secret weapons during the 1982 war that left those bright spots behind?

"IMHO, if you haven't read Knuth's work, you aren't a programmer."

There are plenty of people out there who've read (and even understood) Knuth's books, yet who still write horrible spaghetti code. [...] At the same time, I have seen plenty of good (even "very good") software engineers who have never even seen Knuth's books.

If you haven't read E.W.Dijkstra's work, you're not a programmer. Help yourself.

Once again, x-thousand other webcomics got passed over, too... many of them better than Sluggy et al, but not so long-lived or well-hyped. Comics like Irritability and Zebra Girl are pretty much unheard-of, but are quality stuff. Unfortunately, they aren't as media-friendly as Sluggy or User Friendly.

So, with all due respect, quit yer complainin'. ;-) There are a lot of webcomics being "forgotten," not just your favourites.

JOSH.

Actually, Sun has provided a couple of different ways to integrate their JVM into IE and Netscape 4. There's the Java Plug-in, which makes it possible to write applets that will be run inside an add-on Sun JVM.

Even better, there is now the Java Web Start application manager utility, which provides great support for deploying Java based applets and applications to people's desktops.

We use these methods to deploy Ganymede to folks here at the laboratory, and everything works great, be it in IE, Netscape 4, or whatever.

Some Links to DC-X:

• NASA's DC-X history page
• Video of DC-X flights
• The DC-X fuselage builder's page on DC-X

The really sad thing is, we'd likely almost be at the operational SSTO stage now, if we hadn't killed DC-X. . ..

I believe there is a reference to it in this book: Cultural Logics and Global Economies: Maya Identity in Thought and Practice. In any case you could contact the author of that book, Edward Fischer, and ask him if he knows of any publiations on the subject. He is the one who discussed this in a class I took.

We recently implemented Clyde Hoover's npasswd password validation program, which does all kinds of password quality checks and a password history function, to prevent users from re-using their old passwords. We have incorporated npasswd into Ganymede here, along with a password aging function, and boy, what a change for our users. Users really can't have easy passwords any more, they have to change them regularly, and they can't re-use old passwords. The sysadmins in charge of network security here love it, because the odds that our users are using the same password for our network that they are using for Amazon and Slashdot is now dramatically reduced.

Npasswd is very good at what it does. Npasswd supports checks against account information and a wide variety of dictionary files, with character transpositions, reverals, etc. No more 'us3rname' passwords for our users. Here's a partial list of the dictionaries that Ganymede with npasswd checks against in our environment:

• Antworth -- Big dictionary, includes many inflected forms
• CIS -- Words and names from Current Index to Statistics (partial)
• CRL-Words -- Dictionary from Center for Research in Lexicography
• Congress -- Names and nicknames of U. S. Congressmen
• Domains -- Internet domains
• Ethnologue -- Words from the "Ethnologue Database"
• Family-Names -- Common family surnames
• Given-Names -- Common first names
• Jargon -- Words from the Jargon File
• Movies -- Characters, actors, and titles from thousands of movies
• Python -- Words and names from M. P. scripts
• Roget-Words -- Words from 1911 R's Thesaurus
• Trek -- Words and names from Star Trek plot summaries
• Zipcodes -- Town and city names for all U. S. post offices

If anyone here wants to make sure your users are using strong passwords, run don't walk and get npasswd, I say.

Just curious, what government do you work for...?!? State, federal, what?

I work for Texas at the University of Texas. We are given 40 of training that we come up with and get approved by the department head. Other than that, it's just up to us to make sure the cost is reasonable and it is along our type of work. If possible, I would like to see about doing the 20/20 program. I currently do this (work half time during the school year and full time during the summer) but would like to get a full pay check...half time just isn't enough money sometimes. I would be happy to work for them X years after I graduate to be able to have a little more money now...can you forward me some info to Benton.Wink@Bus.UTexas.edu ?? Thanks!

Cells in the retina have a recovery time of ~30 milliseconds. Do the math.

(If "80 FPS" seems choppy to you, it is because this is an average. The framerate only has to dip below 30 or so for a hundred milliseconds or so to be detectable.)

Here's a link from google

In keeping with national policy, the study did not consider offensive biological weapons; however, the committee believes that all biotechnology development should be undertaken with defenses against such weapons in mind.

In keeping with national policy, the study did not consider offensive biological weapons; however, the committee believes that all biotechnology development should be undertaken with defenses against such weapons in mind.

See http://stardate.utexas.edu/resources/ssguide/sun.h tml

It is exciting to see a solar eclipse for 15 minutest, and then spend the balance of the time exploring a very interesting continent.

Too bad I couldn't go.

[Is there] really anybody here, that thinks the first language makes a difference? I started with left-taught BASIC ...

To this Edsger W. Dijkstra rebutts with this:

It is practically impossible to teach good programming style to students that have had prior exposure to BASIC; as potential programmers they are mentally mutilated beyond hope of regeneration.

and this:

The use of COBOL cripples the mind; its teaching should, therefore, be regarded as a criminal offense.

Don Negro

I did learn here that commercial hemp operations could be devastating to marijuana production. I learned here that marijuana pollen does have forensic value to law enforcement. I learned here that in Spain, "the hemp pollen count is broadcast on the nightly TV news" as some people are allergic.

Hopefully, I will have learned from your most encouraging comment to contribute to Slashdot in a botanically-friendly fashion.