Slashdot Mirror
Slashback: Bugfixed, Attribution, Atkins
Go ahead and get this one out of the way. Seth Scali writes: "The decision last week that ruled the Greek ban on video games as unconstitutional has been overturned, and a new trial has been ordered. Story from TheRegister is here. Don't take your GBA on that trip to Athens just yet ..."
It takes a strong man. Reader edrock200 submitted the story about a TiVO mod which could expand system capacity to more than 1000 hours of recording. The story as shown says that 9thTee is the card's developer; edrock200 corrects this "'The QuadCard, like the AirNet and TurboNet adapters also sold through 9thTee, were developed by a TiVo user named Nick Kelsey (known as 'jafa' on the TiVo Community Forum.) 9thTee is the distributor - though I don't want to take anything away from them, they have been remarkably supportive of the TiVo community and they deserve kudos for taking the financial risks of selling these add-ons.'
'It is truly amazing what Nick has been able to do with his electronics expertise.'"
Thanks for the clarification!
The Lizard sleeps with one eye open. An anonymous reader writes "MozillaZine have updated their article on the recently reported minor security bug in Mozilla [Note Slashdot posting]with the news that a fix has been completed. The bug allowed the webmaster of a site to find out where a user went after their site. The fix means that there are again no known security bugs in Mozilla. Presumably, updates to Mozilla-based browsers (Netscape, Galeon, Chimera etc.) will follow."
What about the all-shrimp-and-chili-paste diet? Schlemphfer writes "A few months back, Slashdot featured a NY Times story that talked about the Atkins diet in glowing terms. This week, the Times has published a Jane Brody article raising serious questions about whether Atkins-style diets are dangerous and unsustainable. Brody is one of the most prominent and respected nutrition journalists, so it's worthwhile to read her take on the matter. Brody's article, which cites some important new research, may be an eye-opening read for Slashdot readers who took the plunge with Atkins back in July." (The NYT requires free registration.)
Suddenly everyone is in deadly earnest. Ian Cumming was one of several people to write with evidence of smileys predating the smileys unearthed by Mike Jones of Microsoft Research. He forwarded an informative message from Brian Dear of Birdrock Ventures, which reads in part:
"On the PLATO system, emoticons were much richer -- made using multiple characters displayed on top of each other. It was possible to type, say, a single character, then press SHIFT-space (which moved the cursor exactly one space backwards), then type another character. The second would display on top of the first. You could keep doing this for multiple characters and create many different faces, beer glasses, martini glasses, all kinds of things. And people peppered their emails and notesfile (PLATO's newsgroups) postings with them all the time."
And what is the PLATO system? The short version is this: PLATO was (is) an education-centered computer system developed at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Luckily for you, Dear is writing a book about PLATO. His site is fascinating, and the book promises to be as well. Here is a page showing the richness of PLATO emoticons.
Reader Grant Barrett also writes: "The earliest (not first: you can never precisely say which was first) recorded smiley in print discovered so far was found by etymologist and word researcher Barry Popik who posted this message to the email list of the American Dialect Society. He discusses the yellow smiley face which everyone knows, but this particular smiley is the familiar punctuation-based emoticon. (On a side note, he has uncovered some evidence that Harvey Ball *did not* invent the familiar yellow-faced smiley.)"
That reference puts the typographic smiley all the way back to 1953, and as Barrett mentions, was in print rather than online. He also points out that "ESR's Jargon File cites a 'rival claim by Kevin McKenzie, who seems to have proposed the smiley on the MsgGroup mailing list, April 12 1979.'"
But there's only one groove per side ... To all those who thought that the optical-scanning method for playing vinyl was an elaborate joke, note that you can download the creator's code if you'd like. This is not the easy way to do things, but is one way.
hahaha, you're very funny. Make me laugh some more. :)
The album "The Monty Python Matching Tie and Handkerchief" is supposed to be the first three-sided record. One of the sides has two grooves. I wonder what that would do to the optical scanner....
Apparently, of the rich, by the rich, for the rich.
Well, it's nice that they've fixed a security hole in Mozilla, but when are they going to come out with a new Debian package release? I've never had very good luck with trying to compile Mozilla myself, and I prefer to have as many as possible of the programs running on my system managed automatically by dpkg--and as of this moment, the newest Debian Mozilla even in Unstable is still 1.00-3. (I've tried the snapshot version, and found it too buggy to use.)
I've emailed the package maintainer asking when a new version would be out; I've posted about it to the Mozilla newsgroups; I have yet to get a satisfactory answer as to why the Debian release is one and a half versions behind the times. During the pre-1.0 phase, they could usually be counted on to update to the most recent build within a few days of its release; 1.1 has been out for weeks now and still no sign of improvement!
Editor Emeritus and Senior Writer, TeleRead.org
Atkin's has nothing to do with less of an appettite. I have several close friends on the Atkins diet, one of which eat huge ammounts of bacon and close to 6 eggs per breajfast. And yet he is LOSING WEIGHT.
Why don't you do a little better research instead of whoring for karma with false facts and weak opinions.
Who is Karma whoring? If I was a karma whore, I would probably not flame so many people...
Anyhow, your friend is probably losing just as much lean tissue and water as fat. See my message above.
What you are professing is called anecdotal evidence (look it up). Maybe your friend is losing only fat. Maybe your friend is a freak of nature. Not likely though - likely your friend is losing mostly water.
Robots are everywhere, and they eat old people's medicine for fuel.
What I really hate about Slashback is the "and more" part, it forces me to read on just to be sure I'm not loosing anything... Please post the full abstract!