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 future is free.
...and so bright, I have to wear sunglases...
seems like I've been outsorced to Brazil
This seems absolutely socialist behavior compared to what is being promoted by these licensing agreements. At least the immigrants knew they were being fucked and had the ability to discern exactly how fucked they were before they signed the papers. Now agreements are not even generally made available prior to the contract signing, i.e. purchase, and are often made available in hard copy only after the additional agreement is reached. I admire companies like verizon suppling their agreements before a contract, i.e. sale, is reached. However, one has to wonder when the courts are going to decide that the general populous is just too stupid to comprehend these agreements. which are written for corporate lawyers, and therefore have to be ruled null and void.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
Well, I don't know what this proves, but:
/usr/lib/{ruby,python2.3} /usr/lib/ruby /usr/lib/python2.3
% du -sh
5.7M
38M
Generally, Ruby code can be very compact because there's not a lot of extra "stuff" you have to do. For instance to define the stringification of a class:
def to_s
"#{field1} #{field2}"
end
In Python (how I do it usually):
def __str__(self):
return "%(field1)s %(field2)s" % self.__dict__
Ruby doesn't need "self", or "return", or underscores or whitespace or other distractions. It also encourages highly dynamic programming so your programs can be very small, but not small the way Perl can be small (instead of making everything terse and unreadable, it allows you to factor out more).
It doesn't rule out using the connection for general web browsing and email, which is probably all that 95% of their target market want anyway
you don't need broadband to surf the net or to read email.
http://cincyboys.blogspot.com/ Everything Cincinnati. Including the word 'Finnih'
In other words, they are technologically incompetent and don't know how to throttle bandwidth to a specific customer or exactly what the internet really is about. They are lazy in regards to trying to monitor individual connections, and have oversold their bandwidth to the point that if you and everybody else really used the bandwidth they claim to be offering to you, they would be unable to actually deliver that amount of data.
Prohibiting a server connection of any sort is prohibiting you from every sending data from your computer. Period. The rest is just semantics from a lawyer who thinks he understands computers but really doesn't.
Of course, they probably think that the only internet protocol is HTTP.
I will not be dragged into yet another scam where I constantly pay to patch up problems that should not exist in the first place. If my service is interrupted by a virus my phone company had better release a firmware update to fix it or I won't be paying the bill. If they cut off my service for not paying for a phone that can't be used then all that will have happened is that they lost another customer. I can easily live without a cell phone.
Liberals call everyone Nazis yet they are the closest thing to it.
If their bandwidth is so precious that it only supports web browsing and email, then it's not quite "broadband", is it? It reminds me of Monty Python's "Insurance Sketch":
Vicar (Eric Idle): But my car was hit by a lorry while standing in the garage and you refuse to pay my claim.
Insurance Agent (Michael Palin): Oh well, Reverend Morrison ... in your policy... in your policy... here we are. It states quite clearly that no claim you make will be paid.
Vicara: Oh dear.
Agent: You see, you unfortunately plumped for our 'Neverpay' policy, which, you know, if you never claim is very worthwhile ... but you had to claim, and, well, there it is.
Translation:Doesn't preclude the flight, just makes it cost Olsen a couple more roubles.
What's another word for Thesaurus?
-Steve Wright
It doesn't rule out using the connection for general web browsing and email, which is probably all that 95% of their target market want anyway.
This is broadband we are talking about. If the target market is just browsing the web or reading email why would they need broadband? Before I had broadband that's all I did, and it was plenty fast enough.
I think what bothers me the most is that they don't specifically limit the illegal grey area and instead broadly ban everything. What if I were watching movies available free on the internet (red vs blue, the broken episodes) or various free mp3's or for that matter internet radio.
I'm trying to think of a single thing I do with my cable modem that doesn't include games, music or video. To mind the only thing is the occasional download of a linux ISO. Broadband would be a pretty boring place under these restrictions.
If Yahoo asked very politely for third-party clients to display advertising and provided info on how to do so, there'd probably be a better than zero chance of at least seeing a plug-in.
I don't begrudge AOL, Yahoo, or even MSN for trying to make some money on ads. If they explained intelligently and elegantly why Gaim users _should_ view with ads, I bet some people would do it.
-Erwos
Plausible conjecture should not be misrepresented as proof positive.
It's lazy grammatical translation on the part of the slashdot submitter and editors.
Didn't read the license did you? It clearly stated...
By reading this far, you irrevocably agree to all the text that follows.
If you don't like the translation or the editing you should complain before you read it.
Well, I'm all for yahoo blocking 3rd party IMs because hopefully people will stop using their service and I won't have to build gaim from cvs once a week (okay, not every week) so I can IM people who won't give it up.
The sooner people start moving towards open protocols like jabber, the easier it is for all of us!
My $.02
The path of least resistance is what makes the river crooked.
That seems to me to rule out absolutely any form of IP traffic, since it is not possible for humans to transmit IP without a machine to encode/decode it. You can't operate a morse key fast enough to send broadband. The prohibition of more specific activities like downloading music is superfluous.