I will attempt to avoid the whole of the airline industry if I possibly can, but if not, please be assured that there is absolutely no way whatsoever that I will be on a US aircraft or passing through US airspace. It's just too inconvenient, and frankly, dangerous.
Sorry folks, but the behaviour your government and its servants on the international scene is just the pits and I'd much prefer to put my travel dollars into a country which is actually a responsible member of the family of nations.
Daybot:: You must be Yet Another Opinionated and Ignorant Yankee who does not know that there are many English patois, of which yours is but one . There are more English speakers in the rest of the world than there are in the US. I assure your there is nothing whatsoever wrong with Domini's ability to spell. Didn't you notice the.za domain?
No! Re-map it to CTRL which is what it should be. At 66 I'm junior senior, and that mis-placement of the control key on the PC keyboard almost drove me insane.
And yes, my main current complaint about computers is that the text size is always too small, and fixing it always breaks the aesthetics of the window and desktop. Is it not possible for the box to be sized around the text? KUbuntu is as bad as all the rest in this regard.
Yes/. you are just as bad as all the others. Please oh please fix that.
> My six year old is pissed I won't let him have his own soldering iron yet.
Why on earth not? If he picks it up by the wrong end, he'll yell and squeak, drop it soon enough, and never repeat the exercise.
It's called learning from experience, and it's just so wrong that we seem hell-bent on stopping that form of learning, because it's by far and away the most effective way.
...the shopping before the thought police turn up and haul me off to boot camp in the forest, because I have a 24/7 on Cable connection to the Internet.
There seem to be many well qualified people here who can answer my simple question which is:-
What's the difference between Governments guaranteeing deposits in banks, and Governments simply printing more money and giving it away to said banks?
To my simplistic mind which, I agree, has an abysmal knowledge of matters financial, both actions look horribly similar. There is the exception that the guarantee bit uses a mass of double-talking high-tech voodoo to hide the truth of the matter from "the masses", i.e. ordinary hard-working folks who make up the majority of the world's human population.
Do please answer the question, because to me this whole worldwide financial collapse looks like the biggest international corporate fraud since the Fall of Rome. Convince me it isn't.
It is with great sadness that the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds report that the wild pigeon population is being totally decimated, yet strangely there is no evidence of the cause of the presumed deaths.
The IETF report that the RFC server for rfc1149 and rfc2549 have been pom-dotted into oblivion by millions of Britons determined to preserve their privacy.
The price of quality eggs of pure racing pigeon breeding stock has suddenly punctured the thousand pound barrier for the first time in history, resulting in the share value of the British Consolidated Pigeon Breeding Co. increasing by 500% per day for the last week.
Although this has been one of the most fruitful sources of real hilarity on/. for many years, thanks commentators. I feel compelled to just note that the most laudable side effect of Google's Giggles will be a huge boost to the mental numeracy of the world's technocrats. I can't help but wonder if that was the intention all along?
Perhaps a better test for alcohol intoxication might be to turn off the browser's spell checker, yet not allow the mail to go until the spelling is word perfect.
Aw, so sorry, can't do that! It'll put the primary school teachers to shame, and Little Johnney/. Snooks might actually lean to spell, albeit somewhat belatedly.
To say nothing of most of the rest of the world.
As far as we are concerned it makes not one jot of difference who is in the White House. The US will continue on it's two-faced, warmongering, and exploitative path irrespective of who is elected. We all know that even if you don't.
you have to first sell to them that they are actually interested about the workings of *anything*
Somebody needs to ensure that the total idiot who killed the children's innate curiosity uses their body to stop a small piece of rapidly moving metal.
an instance of Unix - perhaps PC-BSD, or possibly that Finnish fake called Linux. Yes, it's quite possible. I know a 9 year old who installed Kubuntu successfully. He needed to be told the 'phone and IP numbers of the ISP, but that's all. Then connect a green text terminal to it and get them to understand that typing commands does not result in a fate worse than death, you know, something like creating serious laundry problems. Once they get the idea that it's ok to touch a keyboard, they might like to risk having their little minds corrupted by being entertained by one of the GUI oriented packages such as: Alice; Scratch; or perhaps the Squeak Smalltalk E-Toys?
A simple solution to the problem would be to let a consortium of disinterested countries - perhaps in the form of the United Nations - run all elections throughout the world.
Or, to look at it from another point of view: Outsource the administration of all elections everywhere.
The 'technology' should be no more complex than dropping pebbles into securely locked boxes for counting which should be done twice. Once at the polling place and then again in the County Hall.
Be absolutely sure to remove all the useful 'notes to self' in your source code, just in case they confuse the people who have to maintain your code after you have jumped the boundary fence and gone on to the greener pastures elsewhere.
It's essential that you express your ego by punctuating, frequently, any remaining comments or programmer documentation with vulgar 4 letter naughty words and the occasional ".". Commas, colons, semi-colons etc? They are only for 18th. and 19th century authors of true literature.
Use the most hi-falutin' prose you can dream up in the user documentation. It will enhance your standing in the company. You know, use "utilize" instead of "use" and similar ad nauseam.
Make sure you split infinitives and put adverbs before verbs, such as "To boldly go".
In spite of the fact that all compilers allow for long strings as variable names, your excellent memory for details allows you to use identifiers such as slb2docm when those mere mortals with poor memories would have wasted time and energy with something like: sales_ledger_balance_to_date_of_current_month.
Never ever even dream about your program handling error cases, because it's a total waste of time and intellectual effort. Equipment never fails, and people are perfect. After a while you will get complaints about this. Your thought is that your users are careless and need a good prod to wake them up. So you send an error message something like: "Er Um?\nYou're a clot!!\n?". Make sure to handle every error condition identically. Never, ever, anything more informative, because it will reduce the force of the aforementioned prod.
You know you made in the precise image and likeness or your $DEITY and never ever make mistakes, so with absolute certainty, you know that you simply never ever need put ASSERTs in your code. That's for weens.:-) but many a true word is in jest.
You recall fairly well. According to the abrowser web site it does indeed offer the FireFox branding, but it's not under the control of the Mozilla Foundation in the way I suggested, and there is no mention about checking the authenticity of the files at branding installation time. imho that is essential from Mozilla's point of view, because it is vital, legally, that they do not allow modified versions, or as commercial law sees it, unauthorised 'knock-offs' to carry the brand. I think my suggestion would satisfy both sides of the argument.
My suggestion is that the Mozilla Foundation offer a completely unbranded version of their browser software for public distribution, and name the binary 'wb' - for Web-Browser - or somesuch. The software licence could be the GPL and allow distributors who wish to brand both altered and unaltered versions of 'wb' with their own mark to do so. If end users wish to apply the FireFox brand to wb they could do so by downloading a EULA-protected set of branding files _only_ from Mozilla Corp. The installer of the branding files could very easily check that the particular instance of 'wb' was in fact the genuine unadulterated item before applying the patches to brand 'wb' as a genuine instance of 'firefox'.
Mozilla Foundation: You listening? 'cos I'd be happy with that approach.
It's surprised me that big users of electricity don't at least attempt to recover some of their costs by selling the waste heat from the industrial process to warm the homes of, and provide hot water for, their surrounding communities.
Well I do believe that my age and UID qualify me to comment about the days of yore, and, with hindsight, I can say, without a shadow of doubt, that it's a real tragedy that the "PC" did not evolve from one of: the PDP-11; the VAX; the 68000; or indeed the AT&T 3b series. All these are vastly superior architectures to that miserable waif called 8086 and her misbegotten offspring which we are condemned to suffer on our laps and desks for at least another decade or three.
After some 27 years it's time for us all to have the choice of a decent processor running quality software which doesn't suck.
This is just one more example of the evil, deceptive, criminality of Corporate America. It's this kind of behaviour which, in the eyes of the rest-of-the-world, has branded the United States as the Ultimate Satan. That's unfortunate in the extreme because I am certain that it is only a relatively small number of "Evil Axis" entities which behave in this way, and the vast majority of the American People lead moral lives. However, it's that evil minority which has created the label.
Many of us who are not inhabitants of the US sincerely hope that November will bring the beginning of a long period of fundamental change which will cause us to actually want to welcome the Prodigal One back into the Family of Nations.
From reading the transcript of the confession conference, and reading pretty fully the other press reports, it seems to me that Hans is guilty of the crime of passion to which the D.A. suggested he should plead guilty at the start of the trial. Voluntary manslaughter, and a three year sentence. Thus by forcing a murder conviction, are not the People of California forcing a miscarriage of justice here? A comment form a real lawyer would be appreciated. Being forced to abandon your appellate rights seems to me to be a real injustice too. I'm just so thankful that the circumstances of my birth means I do not find myself in the jurisdiction of the State of California.
Slashdot Mirror
Call your lappie some exotic female name so the login screen says Welcome to Linux on Samantha, or whoever
Tell the nuisances who want to use your computer that the guest login name is ROOTER
and the passphrase is "is going to catch AIDS"
That fact will get around the dorm. before you can say Jack, and you won't have any more problems.
Let us know if that doesn't work please.
I will attempt to avoid the whole of the airline industry if I possibly can, but if not, please be assured that there is absolutely no way whatsoever that I will be on a US aircraft or passing through US airspace. It's just too inconvenient, and frankly, dangerous.
Sorry folks, but the behaviour your government and its servants on the international scene is just the pits and I'd much prefer to put my travel dollars into a country which is actually a responsible member of the family of nations.
Daybot:: You must be Yet Another Opinionated and Ignorant Yankee who does not know that there are many English patois, of which yours is but one . There are more English speakers in the rest of the world than there are in the US. I assure your there is nothing whatsoever wrong with Domini's ability to spell. Didn't you notice the .za domain?
No! Re-map it to CTRL which is what it should be. At 66 I'm junior senior, and that mis-placement of the control key on the PC keyboard almost drove me insane.
And yes, my main current complaint about computers is that the text size is always too small, and fixing it always breaks the aesthetics of the window and desktop. Is it not possible for the box to be sized around the text? KUbuntu is as bad as all the rest in this regard.
Yes /. you are just as bad as all the others. Please oh please fix that.
I was saddened when the "Printer Failure, is it on on fire?" error message was removed form the standard Linux printer driver.
> My six year old is pissed I won't let him have his own soldering iron yet.
Why on earth not? If he picks it up by the wrong end, he'll yell and squeak, drop it soon enough, and never repeat the exercise.
It's called learning from experience, and it's just so wrong that we seem hell-bent on stopping that form of learning, because it's by far and away the most effective way.
...the shopping before the thought police turn up and haul me off to boot camp in the forest, because I have a 24/7 on Cable connection to the Internet.
There seem to be many well qualified people here who can answer my simple question which is:-
What's the difference between Governments guaranteeing deposits in banks, and Governments simply printing more money and giving it away to said banks?
To my simplistic mind which, I agree, has an abysmal knowledge of matters financial, both actions look horribly similar. There is the exception that the guarantee bit uses a mass of double-talking high-tech voodoo to hide the truth of the matter from "the masses", i.e. ordinary hard-working folks who make up the majority of the world's human population.
Do please answer the question, because to me this whole worldwide financial collapse looks like the biggest international corporate fraud since the Fall of Rome. Convince me it isn't.
In other news:
It is with great sadness that the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds report that the wild pigeon population is being totally decimated, yet strangely there is no evidence of the cause of the presumed deaths.
Wikipedia reports that the hit rate on a page about an interesting implementation of IP has increased by several orders of magnitude.
The IETF report that the RFC server for rfc1149 and rfc2549 have been pom-dotted into oblivion by millions of Britons determined to preserve their privacy.
The price of quality eggs of pure racing pigeon breeding stock has suddenly punctured the thousand pound barrier for the first time in history, resulting in the share value of the British Consolidated Pigeon Breeding Co. increasing by 500% per day for the last week.
Market analysts are dumbfounded.
No, no. From what I hear, Linus is a dedicated family man.
Have a relaxing week-end with your wife and children.
Although this has been one of the most fruitful sources of real hilarity on /. for many years, thanks commentators. I feel compelled to just note that the most laudable side effect of Google's Giggles will be a huge boost to the mental numeracy of the world's technocrats. I can't help but wonder if that was the intention all along?
Perhaps a better test for alcohol intoxication might be to turn off the browser's spell checker, yet not allow the mail to go until the spelling is word perfect.
Aw, so sorry, can't do that! It'll put the primary school teachers to shame, and Little Johnney /. Snooks might actually lean to spell, albeit somewhat belatedly.
1. /. ogles
WordNet (r) 2.0 [wn]
ogle
v : look at with amorous intentions
'Cos we've always known /. is over endowed with testosterone.
Isn't that supposed to read as: Google Giggles?
Canada, Switzerland, Austrailia...
To say nothing of most of the rest of the world. As far as we are concerned it makes not one jot of difference who is in the White House. The US will continue on it's two-faced, warmongering, and exploitative path irrespective of who is elected. We all know that even if you don't.
Somebody needs to ensure that the total idiot who killed the children's innate curiosity uses their body to stop a small piece of rapidly moving metal.
an instance of Unix - perhaps PC-BSD, or possibly that Finnish fake called Linux. Yes, it's quite possible. I know a 9 year old who installed Kubuntu successfully. He needed to be told the 'phone and IP numbers of the ISP, but that's all. Then connect a green text terminal to it and get them to understand that typing commands does not result in a fate worse than death, you know, something like creating serious laundry problems. Once they get the idea that it's ok to touch a keyboard, they might like to risk having their little minds corrupted by being entertained by one of the GUI oriented packages such as: Alice; Scratch; or perhaps the Squeak Smalltalk E-Toys?
A simple solution to the problem would be to let a consortium of disinterested countries - perhaps in the form of the United Nations - run all elections throughout the world.
Or, to look at it from another point of view: Outsource the administration of all elections everywhere.
The 'technology' should be no more complex than dropping pebbles into securely locked boxes for counting which should be done twice. Once at the polling place and then again in the County Hall.
Be absolutely sure to remove all the useful 'notes to self' in your source code, just in case they confuse the people who have to maintain your code after you have jumped the boundary fence and gone on to the greener pastures elsewhere.
It's essential that you express your ego by punctuating, frequently, any remaining comments or programmer documentation with vulgar 4 letter naughty words and the occasional ".". Commas, colons, semi-colons etc? They are only for 18th. and 19th century authors of true literature.
Use the most hi-falutin' prose you can dream up in the user documentation. It will enhance your standing in the company. You know, use "utilize" instead of "use" and similar ad nauseam.
Make sure you split infinitives and put adverbs before verbs, such as "To boldly go".
In spite of the fact that all compilers allow for long strings as variable names, your excellent memory for details allows you to use identifiers such as slb2docm when those mere mortals with poor memories would have wasted time and energy with something like: sales_ledger_balance_to_date_of_current_month.
Never ever even dream about your program handling error cases, because it's a total waste of time and intellectual effort. Equipment never fails, and people are perfect. After a while you will get complaints about this. Your thought is that your users are careless and need a good prod to wake them up. So you send an error message something like: "Er Um?\nYou're a clot!!\n?". Make sure to handle every error condition identically. Never, ever, anything more informative, because it will reduce the force of the aforementioned prod.
You know you made in the precise image and likeness or your $DEITY and never ever make mistakes, so with absolute certainty, you know that you simply never ever need put ASSERTs in your code. That's for weens. :-) but many a true word is in jest.
You recall fairly well. According to the abrowser web site it does indeed offer the FireFox branding, but it's not under the control of the Mozilla Foundation in the way I suggested, and there is no mention about checking the authenticity of the files at branding installation time. imho that is essential from Mozilla's point of view, because it is vital, legally, that they do not allow modified versions, or as commercial law sees it, unauthorised 'knock-offs' to carry the brand. I think my suggestion would satisfy both sides of the argument.
My suggestion is that the Mozilla Foundation offer a completely unbranded version of their browser software for public distribution, and name the binary 'wb' - for Web-Browser - or somesuch. The software licence could be the GPL and allow distributors who wish to brand both altered and unaltered versions of 'wb' with their own mark to do so. If end users wish to apply the FireFox brand to wb they could do so by downloading a EULA-protected set of branding files _only_ from Mozilla Corp. The installer of the branding files could very easily check that the particular instance of 'wb' was in fact the genuine unadulterated item before applying the patches to brand 'wb' as a genuine instance of 'firefox'.
Mozilla Foundation: You listening? 'cos I'd be happy with that approach.
Problem solved?
It's surprised me that big users of electricity don't at least attempt to recover some of their costs by selling the waste heat from the industrial process to warm the homes of, and provide hot water for, their surrounding communities.
Well I do believe that my age and UID qualify me to comment about the days of yore, and, with hindsight, I can say, without a shadow of doubt, that it's a real tragedy that the "PC" did not evolve from one of: the PDP-11; the VAX; the 68000; or indeed the AT&T 3b series. All these are vastly superior architectures to that miserable waif called 8086 and her misbegotten offspring which we are condemned to suffer on our laps and desks for at least another decade or three.
After some 27 years it's time for us all to have the choice of a decent processor running quality software which doesn't suck.
This is just one more example of the evil, deceptive, criminality of Corporate America. It's this kind of behaviour which, in the eyes of the rest-of-the-world, has branded the United States as the Ultimate Satan. That's unfortunate in the extreme because I am certain that it is only a relatively small number of "Evil Axis" entities which behave in this way, and the vast majority of the American People lead moral lives. However, it's that evil minority which has created the label.
Many of us who are not inhabitants of the US sincerely hope that November will bring the beginning of a long period of fundamental change which will cause us to actually want to welcome the Prodigal One back into the Family of Nations.
From reading the transcript of the confession conference, and reading pretty fully the other press reports, it seems to me that Hans is guilty of the crime of passion to which the D.A. suggested he should plead guilty at the start of the trial. Voluntary manslaughter, and a three year sentence. Thus by forcing a murder conviction, are not the People of California forcing a miscarriage of justice here? A comment form a real lawyer would be appreciated. Being forced to abandon your appellate rights seems to me to be a real injustice too. I'm just so thankful that the circumstances of my birth means I do not find myself in the jurisdiction of the State of California.