Slashdot Mirror
Slashback: Things, Stuff, Items
Fitting tributes? SEWilco writes "New Scientist reports that an asteroid was officially named "18610 Arthurdent" on May 9; it is not known if Douglas Adams heard of it before he died May 11."
And dclydew writes "We at Binary Freedom would like to propose "Towel Day." May 25, two weeks after Douglas Adams' passing, all fans worldwide are encouraged to carry a towel around for the day."
It would be nice to see Thursday renamed as well.
Wait till the Jedi control the Senate. Slightly aging news, but CuriousGeorge113 writes "According to this Theage.com.au article, the Australian Government has issued yet another warning to Star Wars fans intent on writing in 'Jedi' as their religion in the upcoming census. It appears that this e-mail is beginning to pick up some steam."
Join the parade. Macki writes "Three weeks ago, Ford Motor Company sued 2600 over a DNS entry pointing FuckGeneralMotors.com at the Ford website. A hearing is set for May 18th in Detroit. Supporters are invited to join a caravan to Detroit that will go through up state New York and Canada in time for the hearing. A motion has already been filed for a protective order from legal shenanigans while in Michigan-- it's a good read and gives a thorough run-down of the case."
Open for the public, yes. Delphion may be about to start charging for certain of its formerly free services, but my note that the USPTO should put more documents on the Web was too harsh. A USPTO employee helpfully wrote:
"The United States Patent and Trademark Office offers the entire USPTO Patent database online for free (we've been doing this for some time now) -- just click any of the Search Patents links to get started.You can search text for all patents since 1976 and view images of all patents since 1790 (except those files lost in the early Patent Office fires and fractional patents). We have the entire available patent database on line. You will need a TIFF image browser plugin (we offer a link to a free plugin on our site).
We also offer Patent Application Publications online. These are pending patent applications received after the new rules went into effect (from March 15 2001 through the present weekly issue). The database consists of the full text of US published applications (including new utility and plant). The full text of a published application includes all bibliographic data, such as the inventor's name, the published application's title, and the assignee's name, as well as the abstract, the full description of the invention, and the claims. All of the words (text) in the publication are searchable."
Thanks for the information. Sorry for being the source of FUD. Now where are the searchable PDFs? :)
Hmm.
Any estimates on the size of the USPTO's patent database? If it's something that could reasonably fit on a few hundred CDROMs, it might be worth asking them to think about distributing it.
Having an on-site copy of the database for searching and data-mining at your local university or large company's library would raise very interesting applications. Write the correct tools, and you could easily see what the state-of-the-IP-art is in any given field, and I'm sure that organizations like the EFF would like an easier way to peer-review the patent database, too.
OTOH, if you'd need the proverbial 747 full of CDs, this wouldn't be practical.
What I find shocking/funny is that someone pointing out that New Zealand and Australia are two different countries is considered +5 insightful! (and that its necessary at all!)
I guess now its "News for Nerds, and Computer Folks Who Never Looked at a Globe".
Next up: Georgia! It's both a state AND a country!
---------------------------------------------
Recursive: Adj. See Recursive.
so, the Oz government is really saying "I find your choice of faith... disturbing."?
dave
No, no... the really disturbing part is
"Yes, of course they're anonymous. Unless we don't like the answers, then we hunt you down and fine the shit out of you."
Anyone else notice this bit? Isn't there something very, very wrong with looking at census results before stripping off the identifying information?
-grendel drago
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
Unlike most people here, I actually contacted the ABS (Australian Bureau of Statistics, the organisation that does the census to ask about this. The $1,000 fine for putting false information on the census is an actual penalty. The key issue, though, is knowingly providing false or misleading information. You don't have to answer the religion question if you don't want to. However, if you do ansewr it, you must answer truthfully. Jedi would be a legitimate answer if you can demonstrate a clear belief structure or if you can show that you try to live your life according to those precepts.
The information about religion is used by the government for distribution of funds. For example, a area surveyed with a high number of Orthodox Jews will see a lot of community funding going to Orthodox Synagogues. People who deliberately falsify their religion interferes with this process (making it more difficult for the ABS, which is only trying to do their best).
This isn't a case of 'the man' trying to shut people down. It's a case of a bunch of idiots thinking they're protesting (because they received chain mail that's been circultating since the NZ census - duh) when all they're actually doing is screwing up funding for other people in their community. If you don't want to answer, don't. What's the point? It doesn't matter how many people put Jedi down, it's not recognised as a religion. Before the devil's advocates come out the woodwork, it is not a religion that people currently follow. People could probably build a belief structure around it, but I doubt you could show active Jedi belief. You might as well say Trekkies are religious.
For the record, the person I spoke to at the ABS was very helpful and friendly.
This is your life, and it's ending one minute at a time.
yup you're right - if you're allowed to claim you believe you're haunted by prehistoric murdered space aliens and that exorcizing them will give you powers over matter and energy surely you must be able to claim you belive little latex guys with an hand stuck up their butt can teach you to do the same thing (and at $7.50 a pop it's way cheaper than the Co$ alternative)
Your sad devotion to that ancient religion hasn't conjured up the stolen data plans nor given you clairvoyance enough to find the location of the rebel's hidden forghhghhhg.
Someone you trust is one of us.
If there were really a group of people, however small, following 'Jedi' then it should be (and would be) allowed on the census. But there is not; there is simply a bunch of people that think a stupid stunt like this is 'beating the system'.
So, I wrote in "Linux". After all, we have a diety (Linus), a satan figure (Gates), rituals (compiling the kernel) and wars (KDE/Gnome).