Some readers may be having difficulty understanding some of the discussion of this article because they don't understand the concept of public-key encryption. Such readers can find a simple-to-understand overview on my website. The overview is a presentation (available in PowerPoint and PDF formats) that should be self-teachable. It has an open-source license, so feel free to reuse and modify it.
Karl Fogel is somebody who has worked on several successful open-source projects. He wrote an excellent book called Producing Open Source Software: How to Run a Successful Free Software Project. I recommend that you read the book. You can buy paperback copy from, say, Amazon. Alternatively, if you use a search engine then you can easily find free PDF or online HTML versions.
Regards,
Ciaran.
If the whale-cow crossbreeding trials were successful then you can bet that McDonald's in Japan would introduce a new item to their menu: the blubber burger. And they would have a new advertising slogan: "Come to McDonald's for a whale of a good time."
I liked that comment. It's almost precisely what I did with my novel. Release for free and see if it creates a name that can go places. It being my first, no agents or publishers were willing to talk. Now at 5 months after release it's at around 7K downloads. Debut authors just don't get that kind of exposure. At all. So I concur. Do pro bono work (FOSS in your case, Creative Commons licensed literature in mine) and let that open doors for you. I echo that experience. Last year I made my CORBA Explained Simply book available free-of-charge in PDF and HTML formats. The PDF version has been downloaded about 10,000 times in 10 months and the HTML version accessed about 6,500 times in the same period. The download rate dropped a bit during the summer months, but it shot up again once the academic year started.
For years, drivers have been putting "My other car is a Porche" bumper stickers on their cars. I guess now we will see cyclists putting "My other bike runs Linux" stickers on their mudguards.
[W]hen light hits an object or an interface between two media it does not immediately bounce back but seems to travel very slightly along that object, or in the case of metamaterials, travels very slightly backwards along the object. In other words, when light hits an object it does a moon dance.
we had a friend who kept a police whistle next to the phone (the metal kind) and when a telemarketer was especially annoying they would use it on them... VERY effective... Huh? Your friend threw the whistle long distance and managed to hit the person on the far end of the call? With a throwing arm like that, your friend should have a good career in baseball.
I think the way to market this exercise machine is to use it to power the playback of a porn movie. When you stop exercising, the movie pauses. When you resume exercising, the movie continues. Such a device would offer two great marketing opportunities.
First, the "but its healthy exercise" angle it would help potential customer overcome the social stigma of buying porn.
Second, there can be advertisements in which an attractive woman eyes up a fit-looking man and asks "How do you keep in shape?" to which he replies "I have a healthy sex life."
They still haven't solved the #1 problem with cloning though: why would I want another one of me? Perhaps so if somebody tells you to "Go fuck yourself" then you will be able to comply with the request.
A 40-seconds long musical score is a bit short for a "serious" piece of music. Perhaps it was an advertising jingle instead. I'm guessing the lyrics to go with the music were "Giovanni's pizza are tasty. The extra-large size is so big it's the last supper you will ever need to buy. Tell them Da Vinci sent you to qualify for the 'buy one, get one free' offer."
I personally enjoy the following algorhythm: Break the image up in to inch squares. For any given inch if the dominant color is red, note the word "this", if it's green, note the word "is", and if it's blue, note the word "stupid". Amazingly, Da Vinci left a message encoded that appears to describe his views on musical analysis of his work.
I tried that and I found "Stupid, stupid. This this this this this stupid stupid is is is this this is is is is is stupid stupid stupid."
Wow. I never realized that Da Vinci had a stutter.
To my ears, the p's in "bippedy-bippedy-bippedy" are more pronounced than the b's and this makes the jingle sound a lot like the tongue twister "If Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers, how many pickled peppers did Peter Piper pick?"
If Scott Adams hears about this project then it might make it into Dilbert. I imagine Dilbert would construct one of these, show it to colleagues, and then his pointy-hair boss would say "Good prototype. Now miniaturize the parts to fit into a laptop and we'll sell it at a price point to compete against the Asus eee."
With some extra cooling, maybe this machine could be overclocked to, say, 7 or 8 Mhz. Then you could start to run some more powerful applications on it. Anyone for Eclipse? Or MS Word under Wine? And for that truly Spinal Tap experience, there should be a knob to turn the overclocking all the way up to 11 so its web server can rock out even under a slashdot-imposed load.
A disposable battery with a 30-year power capacity is a good start. But eventually somebody will figure out how to make a rechargeable version. And what that happens, your next laptop will come with instructions to "Ensure that the battery is fully charged before you use the laptop for the first time. To do that, plug in the laptop and let it charge for 12 years."
I have a vague memory that in one episode of MacGyver, the hero did something like this to redirect water from the corrupt landowner's property to nearby drought-stricken peasant's fields. He used a car battery initially to get the voltage required to create the water bridge. But when the car battery started to die, he used the water to drive a small generator (made from an empty Wite-Out bottle, some fuse wire and scuba diver flippers) that produced the electricity to keep the water bridge going. It was a great episode, even if the perpetual-motion machine was a bit far fetched.
Dear friend,
I am the wife of Mr. Tibbitts. As SCO was being viciously sued into non-existence due to false accusations made against SCO, my husband liberated money from the sco bank account and transferred it to a Nigerian bank account (last digits 419). I seek your help to repatriate these funds of $50,000,000 (fifty million dollars) and will give you 30% as a thank you....
Lots of people on slashdot are complaining that OOo is slow. For goodness sake, guys. Just run it on a Beowulf cluster and it will be plenty fast enough. At least according to the overlords.
Slashdot Mirror
Some readers may be having difficulty understanding some of the discussion of this article because they don't understand the concept of public-key encryption. Such readers can find a simple-to-understand overview on my website. The overview is a presentation (available in PowerPoint and PDF formats) that should be self-teachable. It has an open-source license, so feel free to reuse and modify it.
The researchers just have to call these micro robots "angels". That then will finally answer the age-old question.
Karl Fogel is somebody who has worked on several successful open-source projects. He wrote an excellent book called Producing Open Source Software: How to Run a Successful Free Software Project. I recommend that you read the book. You can buy paperback copy from, say, Amazon. Alternatively, if you use a search engine then you can easily find free PDF or online HTML versions. Regards, Ciaran.
If the whale-cow crossbreeding trials were successful then you can bet that McDonald's in Japan would introduce a new item to their menu: the blubber burger. And they would have a new advertising slogan: "Come to McDonald's for a whale of a good time."
I'm tickled pink!
For years, drivers have been putting "My other car is a Porche" bumper stickers on their cars. I guess now we will see cyclists putting "My other bike runs Linux" stickers on their mudguards.
I used the EyeClops Bionic Eye to get a close-up of the Linux kernel. It was amazing. I could clearly see the 235 Microsoft patents embedded in it.
First, the "but its healthy exercise" angle it would help potential customer overcome the social stigma of buying porn.
Second, there can be advertisements in which an attractive woman eyes up a fit-looking man and asks "How do you keep in shape?" to which he replies "I have a healthy sex life."
A 40-seconds long musical score is a bit short for a "serious" piece of music. Perhaps it was an advertising jingle instead. I'm guessing the lyrics to go with the music were "Giovanni's pizza are tasty. The extra-large size is so big it's the last supper you will ever need to buy. Tell them Da Vinci sent you to qualify for the 'buy one, get one free' offer."
To my ears, the p's in "bippedy-bippedy-bippedy" are more pronounced than the b's and this makes the jingle sound a lot like the tongue twister "If Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers, how many pickled peppers did Peter Piper pick?"
If Scott Adams hears about this project then it might make it into Dilbert. I imagine Dilbert would construct one of these, show it to colleagues, and then his pointy-hair boss would say "Good prototype. Now miniaturize the parts to fit into a laptop and we'll sell it at a price point to compete against the Asus eee."
With some extra cooling, maybe this machine could be overclocked to, say, 7 or 8 Mhz. Then you could start to run some more powerful applications on it. Anyone for Eclipse? Or MS Word under Wine? And for that truly Spinal Tap experience, there should be a knob to turn the overclocking all the way up to 11 so its web server can rock out even under a slashdot-imposed load.
I'm going to wait till CPUs reach 640 GHz. That should be fast enough for anyone.
A disposable battery with a 30-year power capacity is a good start. But eventually somebody will figure out how to make a rechargeable version. And what that happens, your next laptop will come with instructions to "Ensure that the battery is fully charged before you use the laptop for the first time. To do that, plug in the laptop and let it charge for 12 years."
I have a vague memory that in one episode of MacGyver, the hero did something like this to redirect water from the corrupt landowner's property to nearby drought-stricken peasant's fields. He used a car battery initially to get the voltage required to create the water bridge. But when the car battery started to die, he used the water to drive a small generator (made from an empty Wite-Out bottle, some fuse wire and scuba diver flippers) that produced the electricity to keep the water bridge going. It was a great episode, even if the perpetual-motion machine was a bit far fetched.
I expect Bush will say something like "The judge's ruling shows that the constitution is unpatriotic and therefore needs to be changed."
1. Buy shares in a stock
2. Pump up the share price to $65.535
3. Immediately sell shares at $100.000
4. Profit!
Dear friend, I am the wife of Mr. Tibbitts. As SCO was being viciously sued into non-existence due to false accusations made against SCO, my husband liberated money from the sco bank account and transferred it to a Nigerian bank account (last digits 419). I seek your help to repatriate these funds of $50,000,000 (fifty million dollars) and will give you 30% as a thank you....
Lots of people on slashdot are complaining that OOo is slow. For goodness sake, guys. Just run it on a Beowulf cluster and it will be plenty fast enough. At least according to the overlords.