Slashdot Mirror
Slashback: Tableturkey, Stromlo, Mandrake
The silver lining.dragonsister writes "Regarding the recent slashdot story on Mount Stromlo Observatory being hit by fire, it seems the damage is not nearly as extensive as it might have been. The Australian National University has posted details here. In particular, the office buildings were spared, meaning that the work of staff and students is safe, and the many years worth of data collected should still be usable. The main question remaining in my mind is whether or not there were backups of the data on the computers that were actually located in the telescope buildings themselves, as these contained information crucial to the interpretation of some of the data. The importance of off-site backups has just been demonstrated. Everybody backup now!"
And blakduk writes "We were able to enter the site and retrieve computing equipment that survived the fire. This enabled us to set up our servers and have all staff back on-line within 24 hours."
Other than that, how was the parade? Back in November, I posted an article about the DocuNote, an inexpensive tablet PC available with Linux. According to richardbondi , maybe "cheap" would be a better word. He writes:
"I bought one, it arrived today. It was clearly used, not new, and didn't work. If you tilted it, it hung. I gave up after a dozen reboots. Only purchasable from www.microsono.com, where all sales are final.The handwriting recognition software turned out to be trialware.
And although the stepupcomputing.com site says it works with Windows 2000, it came with a note that said now it has to be OEM installed.
One user's bad experience -- bad hardware, deceptive advertising re software."
Looks nice over two monitors, too. Znonymous Coward writes "Mandrake is trying to prove it's not dead yet. Yesterday[Note: the 19th, that is], they released Beta 2 of Mandrake 9.1. You can get the 2 ISO images from the usual mirrors." There's a (critical but mostly positive) review of this 2nd beta running at DistroWatch, too.
Once this starts it always gets messy. Per Hansson writes
"Yesterday we at Techspot posted a Interview with Nvidia plus high-resolution pictures of the Geforce FX.A few sites rightfully claimed that this material had been stolen from Nordichardware however this was not the case, we interviewed Nvidia at the same time and therefore our Interviews looks so similar."
Anton Nilsson, assistant editor in chief of Nordic Hardware writes, in contrast,
"... [I]t seems as if they have used my material as found here.I've spoken to the TechSpot staff and the person who reported the news item to you and it seems as if they overheard me doing my interview with nVidia at Comdex. Since they didn't want to bug nVidia with the same questions again they later on read the interview at my page and then posted it on theirs. Still that doesn't make up a fair excuse in my opinion."
You'll have to make up your own mind on this.
W00T!!!!!!! I RULE!
Hello,
I just spoke to Herr Petri Von Micheal, and he said that we should remove the mandrake feeds and inform all our mirrors ASAP. I'm right now writing to the mirrors to tell them about this and other possible side effects from the malicious backdoor put into our ISO's.
Please do not install this iso, we will re-release a different beta in a short time.
Thank you.
Gobien Ruifmann
Multifarious avenues of approach vie for attention as potential retorts to Mandrake's immoral, debauched ideals. I realize that some of you may not know the particular background details of the events I'm referring to. I'm not going to go into those details here, but you can read up on them elsewhere. Let me move now from the abstract to the concrete. That is, let me give you a (mercifully) few examples of Mandrake's outrageous ineptitude. For starters, its true goal is to leave a generation of people planted in the mud of a heinous world, to begin a new life in the shadows of ageism. All the statements that its slaves make to justify or downplay that goal are only apologetics; they do nothing to raise the quality of debate on issues surrounding Mandrake's lousy equivocations.
The only visible result of Mandrake's maneuvers has been a series of tactical and strategic policy blunders. So please permit me to appropriate and paraphrase something I once heard: "This is no laughing matter." Not surprisingly, if Mandrake had done its homework, it'd know that its cronies argue that a book of its writings would be a good addition to the Bible. These are the same ostentatious popinjays who introduce changes without testing them first. This is no coincidence; our situation is snowballing. Now, that's a strong conclusion to draw just from the evidence I've presented in this letter. So let me corroborate it by saying that today, we might have let Mandrake flout all of society's rules. Tomorrow, we won't. Instead, we will bring a fresh perspective and new ideas to the current debate. Lest I seem like a hypocrite, I should tell you that ancient Greek dramatists discerned a peculiar virtue in being tragic. Mandrake would do well to realize that they never discerned any virtue in being refractory. All such combinations of audacity with ignorance would be supremely ridiculous but for one consideration: Mandrake thinks it's good that its practices promote mediocrity over merit. It is difficult to know how to respond to such monumentally misplaced values, but let's try this: Its secret police consider its dissertations a breath of fresh air. I, however, find them more like the fetid odor of jingoism.
One could imagine that some good might come from letting Mandrake cure the evil of discrimination with more discrimination. But the only one whose imagination is vivid enough is Mandrake. Mandrake exhibits an air of superiority. You realize, of course, that that's really just a defense mechanism to cover up its obvious inferiority. If Mandrake believes that the average working-class person can't see through its chicanery, then it's obvious why it thinks that it is the best thing to come along since the invention of sliced bread. I shall not argue that Mandrake's newsgroup postings are an authentic map of its plan to put the gods of heaven into the corner as obsolete and outmoded and, in their stead, burn incense to the idol Mammon. Read them and see for yourself. Now that you've heard what I've had to say, I want you to think about it. And I want you to join me and go placidly amid the noise and haste.
No doubt the plagarist in the said article was black, because it is in their insticnt and nature to steal. Usually they steal TVs or drugs but they will steal intellectual property as well - once you live that lifestyle, there's not stopping you. When not stealing, the black negro can frequently be found raping underaged white women from the suburbs at knife point.
enron city!
GUFFAW!!! that's hilarious.
mod up
that's what i'm saying, dude. fuck those pussy euros. the brits are probably the only ones worth saving. at the rate the french keep importing palestinians, they will soon have gaza part 2, and they'll be demanding their own country over there (you'd think they would have learned their lesson from their algerian problems). and it's not long before the unemployed germans start getting pissed at all their incoming pakistanis that they set up the 4th reich.
last year, the dollar was worth 1.03 dollars. today it's 88 cents. europe is tanking, hard. let them keep kissing the islamic ass, they will have a hard time getting rid of that bad breath.