Slashdot Mirror
Slashback: Civilians, Rubyx, Restrictions
Do they have the original Coneheads novels? seattlenerd writes "Largely lost in the TV coverage and media hype surrounding Friday's opening of Paul Allen's Science Fiction Museum and Hall of Fame in Seattle is the fact that SFM celebrates books as much as TV/film SF, according to at least one review. Lots of first editions and several manuscripts are on display as the font of SF ideas. Also not covered much: There's no fantasy or horror. It's all science fiction, with no apologies. And ain't it cool that someone has acknowledged that there are actual writers behind some of the best science-fiction depictions? And that some of these writers are on SFM's advisory board?"
(Reader Comte offered a sneak peek at the museum last week.)
That's why it's called software. An anonymous reader writes "News.com.au is reporting an Australian company has released "The Worlds First" anti-virus software for mobile phones to fix the recent 'Caribe' virus and attempts to prevent future exploits."Simon Crean of Mobile security company Jamanda wrote to say that his company is also has "just delivered a comprehensive fix to the widely publicised mobile virus Cabir and made this fix available to the public via its website at www.jamanda.com. As a gesture of goodwill and to maintain market confidence, concerned mobile users can currently download and install this fix at no charge."
Speaking of quick fixes, baudilus writes "The good folks at Cerulean Studios have already released a patch for Trillian, addressing the block attempt by Yahoo!. In half a day they've outdone Yahoo!'s latest scheme. How's that for support?"
Click two ISOs together, go /home. awalrond writes "Rubyx is a source-based Linux distro which achieved far too much interest a couple of months back after a mention on Slashdot. The author had to pull the plug due to the massive bandwidth costs of users downloading all the sources. Well now it's back, fully converted to use the new White Water bandwidth-sharing download utility. A line has been drawn in the sand, and this e-gauntlet thrown back at Slashdot.
Rubyx can be downloaded, built and installed with a single command to the small rubyx script (written in the ruby language) The same script handles all subsequent package management, and can even create a bootable ISO image of the distro."
I want to see the floating candy instead. Mike Taht writes "Bruce Damer, curator of the Digibarn, got some stunning pictures and movies of the historic SpaceShipOne launch event on Monday. Check it out!"Also in civilian space news, Walkiry writes "The Russian Space Comittee has rejected Gregory Olsen, who was set to become the third space tourist, due to health reasons. This comes as a bit of a surprise, given that Olsen himself seemed quite condfident about his performance during the physical training and claimed that the hardest part was actually learning Russian. A real shame."
(The linked story is less clear about whether Olsen will eventually be able to make the trip; in it, a spokesman for Space Adventures denies that this rejection precludes Olsen's flight.)
His meaning is clear. Matheus Villela writes "Sergio Amadeu, Brazilian president of ITI, the third authority in Brazilian government being below only of Brazilian president and the minister of civil house and recently sued by Microsoft have released an official note to Brazilian and international press; here's a translation of what he said:' In atention to the demands of national and international press, which seens solidary with Brazilian Govern at this moment with no precedences in the history, when a controller of an important public institucion of this country personally suffers the action from those interested in mantain a hegeomonic model, i come, after hear my federal lawyers and solicitors, say that the judicial provocation moved against my person is, by itself, so insultant and improper, that does not deserve reply.By reading this far, you irrevocably agree to all the text that follows. emtboy9 writes "If you happen to live in the Raleigh-Durham area, Nextel is now officially offering wireless Broadband via its cell towers. With all the discussion about BPL as of late, its refreshing to finally see someone in my local area doing wireless which is a much better mechanism for broadband access.
For other hand, i would like to register that the act of contract software preserving the values freedom and opening is, for the Brazilian Government, a question of indissolvable form to the democratic principle.
And because a long and painful way was covered to arrive at the current period of stage of development of the democracy in this Country, we will not stop in our fight. If democracy is a value replect of ideology, is not never an insignificant value. If democracy is a dream, is a dream of which this Country never will wake up again.
The future is free.'"
Nextel's coverage area looks to be about the same as the trial area they had been running, but if this takes off, it shouldn't be too much longer until they are offering this coast to coast, especially with coming pressure from Cingular Wireless."
However, be choosy about wireless internet service, which can come with some hidden snags: HEXAN writes "With all the recent hubub over wireless access at broadband speeds, I decided to check out Verizon's plan. Although the price is a bit steep, it seemed ok until I got to the "Terms and Conditions."
Here's a sampling of what you cannot do with Verizon's "unlimited" Internet Access: "...cannot be used for" "uploading, downloading or streaming of movies, music or games" [Ugg], "Web camera posts or broadcasts" [No camgirls], "telemetry applications" [No GPS], "substitute or backup for private lines" [No VOIP]. If I cannot use the service to play games, video conference, make calls, download movies or MP3's, what exactly am I paying for? More importantly, how badly will they impinge on my privacy to enforce this agreement? P.s. You cannot reach that special agreement until you go beyond the "front door". The gotcha clauses are not mentioned in the standard, consumer friendly, litigation-approved agreement."
The Sci-Fi "Hall of Fame" part of the museum is comprised completely of authors. Later, it will be expanded to include those involved with film and television. This is because Paul Allen took over the existing Sci-Fi Hall of Fame, which has been around for a while. It had no actual building, it just awarded plaques to inductees each year. It started out as a SciFi/Fantasy Hall of Fame, but fortunatley for the SciFi museum, all the inductees had at least some sci-fi in their bodies of work. They were able to make it into sci-fi only without kicking anyone out.
Don't forget that Friday is Hawaiian shirt day.
GAIM's mailing list on sourceforge has postings saying that they have received info on a Yahoo fix from the Trillian people. They expect to do a release of GAIM tonight. I'd expect that other projects will also get this info and will be doing releases shortly.
I, for one, welcome our new Antichrist overlord.
In case people are curious, the Gaim developers seem to be collaborating with the Trillian folks like they did last time Yahoo broke. (Here's the bug about the breakage.)
Apparently there will be a release out tonight with the fix included.
Try to make the ebuild yourself. It's surprisingly easy, and pretty safe as well, since portage will let you try until you get it right.
Unless something complicated is required to install it, you probably can get a basic ebuild, tweak the filename and paths and have it work.
Here's a sampling of what you cannot do with Verizon's "unlimited" Internet Access: "...cannot be used for" "uploading, downloading or streaming of movies, music or games"...
Unfortunately, uploading means "sending data from your system", and downloading means "receiving data to your system".
If this TOC is going to be enforced, you can plug in the adapter, but you couldn't technically use the service at all (everything else relies on these two capabilities).
Why exactly would you pay them any money?
eskwayrd = m^2c^4
Okay, how small is Ruby in comparision with Perl and Python...
Ruby is quite a bit smaller (in MBs) than Perl. The whole sourcecode to Ruby is less than 1MB - (well, now that they've added several packages and extensions in 1.8.1 it's closer to 2MB, but that includes GUI toolkit bindings, web server modules, etc. - lots of useful stuff.)
Last I checked Perl's sourcecode was in the >5MB range, but that was a while ago.
I included the ruby executable and a few libraries on a CD recently (it was used for installing packages from the CD) and it took up less than 3MB total including the ruby scripts written for installation and C extention that I wrote (a shared library).
So, Ruby's footprint is relatively small compared to Perl's. I don't know about Python's footprint, though.
I'll try my hand at this:
Wanted
Sergio Amadeu da Silveria
Criminal Record
1. Democratization of Technological Knowledge
2. Technological Liberation of Brazil
3. Assisting 2000 Civil Servants (presumably to switch to Linux, or at least helping them with technology)
4. Publication of Diverse Books (in a context indicating that he is the author)
5. Pushing for the end of monopolies through litigation. (Anti-trust lawsuits)
WARNING:
This man is dangerous!
Any information about the location of this person should be sent to the Legal Department at Microsoft. This information will be kept confidential.
MICROSOFT
Always wanting the best for Brazil.
(P.S. I spent a couple of years in Sao Paulo, and although I have a hard time being able to translate INTO Portuguges, I can understand it fairly well and turn it into English. Your translation was pretty good though.)
Basically, he is saying that Microsoft's claims are silly and irrelevant. (first paragraph)
.
Second paragraph,
Open Source is similar to democracy (in the sense that it's not one person/company (microsoft) making all of the choices. Democracy is good, and it (open source) is the future
(dont you just hate formal language?)
In regards to the demands of the national and international press, that empathizes with the Brazilian Government in this moment without precendent in our history, in which the director of an important public institution of this country is personally attacked by those interested in maintaining a homeogenic model, I will, after discussing the matter with my lawyers and federal prosecutors, attest that the judicial action taken against me is, by itself, so insulting and without merit that it does not deserve a response.
On the other hand, I would like to maintain that the move to software that protects the values of openess and freedom is, to the Brazilian Government, something intimately connected to the democratic principle. And because we have come through a long and difficult road to reach our current level of democracy in this country, we will not surrender in our battle.
If democracy is an ideal, it is never insignificant. If democracy is a dream, it is a dream this country will never wake up from.
The future is free.
I have an even greater respect for the original translator now. Although I'm fluent in both languages, it's quite difficult to make direct translations (I guess I just never have to).
Warning: Opinions known to be heavily biased.
"In response to the requests of the national and international press, which seems in agreement with the Brazilian Government at a moment in time which has no precedent in history, when a director of an important public institution of this country suffers from an action taken against him by those interested in maintaining a hegemonical model, I come before you, after being advised by my federal lawyers and my solicitors, to say that the judicial provocation of the motion against me is, by itself, so insulting and improper that it does not even deserve a reply.
On the other hand, I would like to say that contracting to use software that preserves the values of openess and freedom is, for the Brazilian Government, an issue indivisble from the principles of democracy.
And because it has been a long and painful road that we have traveled to arrive at the current stage of democratic development in the country, we will not stop in our fight. If democracy is a value reflective of an ideology its value is never insignificant. If democracy is just a dream, it is a dream from which this country will never awaken again.
The future is free."
-Sergio Amadeu
KFG
> We have had successful lawsuits where people didn't know that coffee is hot, among other such failings of commonsense.
Ahem. The woman didn't know the coffee was hot enough to inflict third-degree burns. A reasonable expectation when you purchase coffee (or any food, whether served hot, cold, or in-between) is that it is at an appropriate temperature for human consumpation at the time of purchase.
The coffee McDonald's served this woman was not at such a serving temperature. Furthermore, by McDonald's record of buying off (by paying their hospital costs) dozens of people who had been burned by their coffee, it can be shown that they were aware of the problem and chose to ignore it.
Finally, the woman only sued for the recovery of her hospital costs, which McD's only offered 10% of; the exorbitant amount awarded by the court was awarded with the intent of punishing McDonald's.
He was speaking about the push to make religion politicaly incorect. In some if not most public forums (not just internet) religious speak and attitue is mostly ousted as undesireable by someone. For some reason we have to apease the minority of the comunity and stop saying the pledge or talking about money or somethign because it has a reference to god. In some areas, some people are almost embarassed to admit they goto church. This is the "official atheism" he is refering to.
Even in this enviroment (./) if you admit to being of a religious nature you will have someone trying to call you stupid or a mindless sheep that has to follow some book that was made up by stoner thinking of a way to control the masses. God forbid you actually state your religion, then you will have a bunch more people telling you your wrong for beliveing in a certain god, worship cows, or somethign of the sort. Religion has basically become taboo in america unless your in an enviroment were it is expected to talk about religion. It is verry hard to find people willing to have a conversation about religion outside one of these enviroments and it is even harder to just meet new people and talk about how being faithfull to your worship has helped you thru tough times.
Taking time to understand is the key, right?
The http protocol allows requests for partial transfers, but single URL defines a single source from which to pull (or else source forge wouldn't have the mirror picker page) and neither the http nor ftp (protocols) define a mechanism for automatically simultaneously pulling a single file from multiple auto-located server sources with crypto file chuck integrity validation.
http caching is great, but this _is_ different from it and from ftp and from bt. Not like Stone age to Bronze age leap, but what I would characterize as a significant evolution of personal file publishing power.
I guess I would describe it more like a distributed bt server system that has built in mirroring of your favorite sites.
Again, with the source forge example - if all the source forge mirrors used ww, you could eliminate the mirror picker page and using a single ww URL your system would automatically download chucks of the file from all the currently running mirrors that held any portion of the file.
I think any sites that do large file serving should consider using it and that way anyone who wants to could help serve out those files, too by using the ww --mirror command to mirror your files. I mirror the rubyx stuff now and would certainly mirror other software, art and info that I want to support and see widely disseminated.
White Water
Well, given that the media and the universities are composed almost entirely of anti-religious bigots, our nation is rapidly becoming one of official atheism.
You may be right but that argument can be used to talk yourself out of voting too. I hope you see the danger in that.
I vote in every election, and I also vote every day in the marketplace with my pocketbook.
Liberals call everyone Nazis yet they are the closest thing to it.
I agree that it was pretty disrespectful for the NY Times to call Lula an alcoholic. From what I've seen of him, I like Lula. And if I were leader of a country, I wouldn' be surprised if I drank heavily. But are you really going to try to defend former leaders of Brazil? Like Collor de Mello? Or Sarney? That's not even mentioning the series of general-presidents during the military regime in the '60s.
Lula has earned my respect through his years as a labor leader, and the initiatives he's taken since he's been president. He's made strides in using open source in government, and has a decent record in environmental and economic issues. If I were Brazilian, I'd be pissed about a specious attack on the first good president my country had in a long time. He's more of an exception than the rule, regarding getting respect.
But I don't think much of the US's leadership either, so maybe it's just me.
Si la vida me da palo, yo la voy a soportar Si la vida me da palo, yo la voy a espabilar
My initial reply to this was a little on the flaming side so here I go again.....
I respect the fact that (I'm assuming here) you adhere to your religious beliefs. However, you have to remember that you live in a world populated by people who are not all Christians. We believe many different things.
When you refer to the 'media' as being officially ahtiestic, I have to wonder what you're talking about. I never see athiests in the news in a positive light. I can't even name one well-known living person who claims to be an athiest, except for the nutcase that took the state to court over the pledge.
Maybe the fact that the media attempts to be unbiased towards religion comes across to you as being athiestic. I really don't see this official athiesm in the media. If you're really interested in the religious bias in the media, you might be interested to know that the Washington Times (considered a more conservative media outlet) is owned by a cult leader. While most likely not your own religion, I don't think that makes the Times athiestic.
I'm not sure how you think religion is taboo in America. Religion (or the pretense of it) is absolutely required for a presidential candidate - why do you think that is? Because the established religion in the U.S. is..... Christianity! Name one politician who doesn't claim to believe in a higher power.
Meanwhile, Bush pushes faith-based charities for receiving government funding, "Under God" was added to the pledge in the 50's, "In God We Trust" was added to the dollar, we still say "So Help Me God" in the courtroom, Congress still prays before every meeting, televangelists are still on the airwaves, the Promisemakers still tour.
It seems you might be interpreting things wrong here, perhaps it looks that way from the pews. When you claim that you can't speak about religion outside of "an enviroment were it is expected" perhaps what's actually going on is that people expect you to respect their beliefs? Some people think that trying to push beliefs on someone else, especially in work or casual social settings is extremely rude and obnoxious. Maybe you see that and think that everyone is an athiest. Somehow, I find it hard to believe that you've had an actual conversation on this topic with the masses of people you're claiming are now suddenly athiests.
There is no way religion is taboo in America. Religion gave us all of our taboos. The Whipping of the Christ raked in millions of dollars. We have multitudes of churches, synagogues, mosques, cults and so many varieties of belief systems that it's dizzying. All existing in one country while peacefully coexisting. Ah.. that peacefully coexisting thing - yes there are some religious people who can't stand that and attempt to influence the media, government and public opinion. I guess the latest tactic is to appear as the underdog. You'll find that most people don't buy that.
You are very safe from Athiesm becoming the official "religion" of the United States.