Slashback: Blender, Pictures, Servitude

Tonight, the updates and addenda continue apace, with more on the Anti-Unix Unix server, the possible future of Blender, Steve Mann's treatment at the hands of Air Canada, and an interesting consequence of Linux's popularity in Russia. Read below to enjoy.

Is your Blender still under warranty? Myriad writes: "NaN, the publishers of the free cross-platform 3D modeling and rendering package Blender, may not be as dead as was previously reported here on Slashdot. While Blender remains unavailable for download, some of the websites functionality has returned along with the notice "NaN is currently undergoing a re-organization of the company...and are working to restore wider operations as soon as possible." Hopefully they will manage to bring back Blender!"

"I only read Computerra for the pictures." Natalie Shahova writes: "As the translator of Just for Fun, I had to contact Linus by email in order to clarify some issues. This way we got virtually acquainted, and Linus agreed to give me an interview. Its Russian version was published in Computerra on March 26, but the original is - as you might guess - in English. As far as I know, Linus Torvalds has never given an interview to a Russian journalist before. Knowing from Just for Fun that Linus is tired of questions about Linux and open source, I chose some other subjects that interest me as a professional translator: languages, emigration, fiction, etc." A fun interview, with some amusing pictures, too (only in the Russian version). Thanks, Natalie!

Wasn't Windows NT 'More UNIX than UNIX'? thelizman writes: "C|Net is reporting that the joint Microsoft and Unisys website attacking Unix has been experiencing problems all day. Now, normally I would venture an evil laugh, but in light of yesterdays revelation here on /. about the site being FreeBSD powered, could this merely reinforce Microsoft's point? Not likely, since it was quickly switched over to IIS running on Windows 2000, and that's when the problem seems to have started."

What time is it when an elephant dances on your computer? Tom Veil writes: "Minor editorial changes have been made on the article "When Elephants Dance" (referenced earlier by Slashdot). The most interesting change adds one more step to the solution, suggesting that the DMCA must be repealed. A comment is also made as to how fair use is already protected, and thus 'there is no need for additional action in this area.'"

And thanks for flying Air Canada -- Have a nice day. steveha writes: "Linux Journal has more on cyborg Steve Mann's troubles with Air Canada. Over $100,000 in equipment damage, and possible... brain damage?!? Not good."

Comments

Re:Anti-Unix site running IIS now?

[beebware]

Hmm...I can't do finger printing at the moment, but here's the results of a port scan:
www.wehavethewayout.com=130.94.214.143
Open ports: 21 (FTP Control:Microsoft FTP Service version 5.0), 25 (SMTP: Relay not authorized error), 80 (WWW: Microsoft IIS5.0/403 Access Forbidden), 110 (POP3), 389 (LDAP), 443 (HTTPS), 1433 (Microsoft SQL Server), 1755 (MS-Streaming), 1801 (Microsoft Message Queue), 2103 (Zephyr serv-hm connection), 2105 (MiniPay) AND (to round off all the nice open ports): 5900 (VNC!!!: no Terminal Services eh Microsoft?).
Talk about leaving the doors unlocked... Now if I could be bothered trying standard passwords we can see if they actually bothered closing the doors as well!
It's mainly Unisys to blame (according to the DNS records), but that is becoming a laugh a minute anyway!

the russian "translation" is very different!

[dunkelfalke]

i don't know how nataliya translated the text but sometime linus' sentences are given a different meaning. the best example is imho the last sentence.

the english one:
I don't think I have any special messages at all. I think the only "message" in my book was the tongue-in-cheek "Party on, Dude!"

and here is the russian one:
I definitely don't want to give a message to anybody. The most important thing in my book is its cool ending: "Let's rock, pal?"

this is just one of many examples.
A small info: i am a native russian speaker although i live in germany since 1993.

Re:the russian "translation" is very different!

[achurch]

The important question is whether the Russian text imparts the same meaning and nuances to a native Russian reader as the English text does to an English reader--not whether the words happen to match up. I don't know any Russian, so I can't speak for this particular case, but I do speak fluent Japanese, and I have seen far too many "translations" that rely too heavily on dictionaries and end up missing critical points because of it. (Those who have played console games, particularly in the 8/16-bit era, will probably remember the frequency of unnatural English text in those games; one good example is "it's dangerous", which is a literal--and incorrect--translation of the Japanese word used to mean "look out!".) The better translation is not the one with the most word-for-word matches, but the one that causes readers in both languages to think the same thing. And with all due respect, I think it's difficult to judge that without a fluent knowledge of both languages involved.

It's also worth noting that it simply isn't possible to express some concepts in some languages, because the culture/society the language is used in simply doesn't have the concept in the first place. For example, Japanese has numerous words for expressing interpersonal relationships (such as nearly a dozen first-person singular pronouns, each with a different connotation); while you can approximate the meaning of those in English by playing games with sentence structure and the like, you can't get exactly the same nuance because English simply doesn't use the same concept set as Japanese does. So there will always be some inaccuracies in any translation, especially with colloquialisms like "party on, dude!"; the object is to keep them as few and as small as possible--again. in terms of the effect on the reader.

Of course, translating a Russian translation back into English is going to result in even more inaccuracies, like converting an MP3 file to Ogg Vorbis and then back to MP3 again; just because the final result sounds bad doesn't necessarily mean that the original or intermediate result are also bad.

He was wearing some pretty odd gear.

[Christopher Thomas]

Why should this guy have to go through any trouble at all? He wasn't wearing anything that could be construed as a bomb or a weapon of any kind.

Unless he's changed it very recently, his gear looks like a fanny pack filled with gutted computer parts, with misc. cables going out to various peripherals, many with visible PCBs and so forth.

He may have cleaned it up a bit, but take this and add a reasonable-sized battery, and you have a rig that looks a lot like your "ACME Personal Bomb" from any action movie from the past decade or two.

Add to this the fact that Prof. Mann is a bit on the eccentric side and that he would very likely have gotten pushy with the guards when they challenged him (trust me on this one), and what you have is a recipe for a really bad day (and a really golden publicity opportunity, which was probably the plan).