Slashdot Mirror
Slashback: Hagiography, Oracle, Fusion
Even lukewarm fusion would be satisfy me. driggers writes: "I wrote a review of the book "Excess Heat" for /. last year. I thought you might (or might not :) be interested to learn that the U.S. Navy in February 2002 issued Technical Report No. 1862 titled "Thermal and Nuclear Aspects of the Pd/D2O System," Vol. 1 of which summarizes A Decade of Research at Navy Laboratories."
Dr. Frank Gordon, Head, Navigation and Applied Sciences Department, concludes his foreword with the remark, "It is time for the government funding organizations to invest in this research."
If you modify the source you must keep it accurate, like a Mad Lib. An Anonymous Coward writes "I just noticed the biography of Richard M. Stallman, "Free as in Freedom" by Sam Williams is online at oreilly, released under the GNU Free Documentation License."
What vapors rule the modern day Oracle? MarkedMan writes: "The following CNET article outlines Oracle's reply to the State of California's announcement it was canceling a nearly $100 million dollar contract. It should not come as a surprise, as few companies would give up that kind of money without a fight, not to mention the domino effect if they just rolled over. It would be a tacit admission that they ripped off naive customers."
I turn in trajllions of results per day to Brilliant Digital Entertainment. But where's my parade?!
All these stories have been posted before!
Yeah, that's the point. Check the title. It's a Slashback, which is a play on the word "Flashback." In other words, this is where we get to hear about previously-posted stories and their outcomes.
qslack.com
I read it (online), and bought a copy. It's a real biography of a real (if unusual) person.
For those who believe that everything must be perfectly bias-free, yes, it does display bias for free software ideals , but that is because it's telling RMS's (suprisingly successful) underdog story, and "triumph against massive odds" reads this way.
A genuinely informative, insightful book - and readable, too.
I saw a couple copies at my friendly neighborhood Borders, and read about a chapter of it. I was really turned off with the negativity towards Linus Trovalds and various other FS pioneers. The author really went for the throat in the whole GNU/Linux and Open Source vs Free Software issues. I've always found those issues to be the darker side of the Stallman story and would have actually bought the book if it focused more on his work on Emacs, GCC, and the Hurd (I absolute am facinated with the Hurd...).
As it is, it is sitting on a display rack for 20% off without a single copy gone. I'm usually a big defender of Stallman but that book was in really poor taste.
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The article says Oracle is seeing a downturn in sales. Is any of this due to people switching to the open-source alternatives? I'm not a database geek, but from what I understand, the open-source stuff is getting more and more full-featured. Of course a fortune-500 company doesn't care about the extra $$ for Oracle, but I wonder if they're losing out on the lower end...
Find free books.
Notorious Superstars are usually referred to by one name, i.e., Cher, Madonna & Liberace.
Notorious Uber Geeks are usually referred to by their initials by other wannabe geeks, i.e., RMS, ESR & DNA.
Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government.
The book does quote Richard Stallman a lot, naturally, and it is about him, so obviously his views get more space than others. It's a biography, not a history of free software, even if, given RMS' influence, it comes close to being the latter!
Danny.
I have written over 900 book reviews
Oracle is not experiencing any kind of market erosion due to open-source software. Anything you run off PostgreSQL could be ported to Oracle, but you'd probably be a dummy to do so. The reverse is rarely true (except the dummy part).
Breakfast served all day!
Did I miss that link? I feel like Opus when he flipped on the news to hear "...and that is the single most poisonous to penguins item you can find in every household."
The winner of the 500 millionth result, Milada had the odds stacked against her. First, she is a she and we all know what the rates are there in the geek world. Next, she's not from the US (41.5% of SETI contributers are US residents), she's listed as Czech (only about 0.6% of the SETI contributers are Czech residents). And last she's only returned (as of this post) 92 results!
Such a combination is so astronomically unlikely, I think we've found our ET people!
But seriously I'm glad the prize went to someone who's got this unlikely profile, it just proves how truly global and widespread the SETI appeal is. Congratulations to SETI and Milada!
Anybody want a peanut?
You may add a passage of up to five words as a Front-Cover Text, and a passage of up to 25 words as a Back-Cover Text, to the end of the list of Cover Texts in the Modified Version.
Free as in Freedom: As told by Bill Gates
"Your superior intellect is no match for our puny weapons!"
It never ceases to amaze me when interesting anomolous results are discarded by the mainstream community. Yes, 'extraordinary claims require extraordinary proofs'. But closed cell calorimetry is very hard to do right, and the electrodes are tricky to setup.
But bottom line, its an electrochemical cell that exposes dental x-ray film left next to the jar, and tritium is sometimes produced, all while little intermittent hot spots show up on IR.
So what if "its impossible!" Something interesting is happening, and it deserves to be studied properly, not dismissed...
"Weren't there shredding trucks involved with this somehow?"
I tried to shred trucks once; The tyres went ok, even if bits of rubber came flying out of the shredder like a wood chipper, but the chassis just jammed the whole thing up.
I suggest melting trucks instead of shredding them.
graspee
I like to call RMS an idealist whose geek factor and high IQ leaves little room for adequate social skills.
If he was not so adament about his values, we would not be where we are today.
I have an old gnome t-shirt from a long while back, it says "GNU/Linux" on it. I think thats pretty cool, but yer right, GNU/Linux doesnt really roll off the toungue easily and sounds kinda awkward.
But maybe the point is for you to explain to new users is how much debt the linux operating system has to the GNU tools, which if it was not for the tireless efforts of Stallman. Well you know. Anyway.
An example would be, I know a group of people who have been using linux pretty exclusivly for about 4 years now. I said to them "Hey, you know RMS, right.."?
blank look.
"Richard Stallman right? RMS?"
More blank.
So I bascially said, hey this guy is pretty much responsible for this computing environment you have been using, and love so dearly. And they said:
"Oh yeah? How so?" All disbelieving like, looking at me like I was a little crazy to suggest that this RMS character I was telling them about had anything to do with Linux.
This is exactly the point I think of what Stallman is saying, as people come along they are going to be less and less in touch with the values, ideas, philosophies and person behind the movement.
Something which, while we may not all love Stallman or whatever, losing touch with his efforts and ideas are a dangerous thing, cos as he said, at the end of "Revolution OS" its all about making the world a better place.