I own both an Unicomp and an IBM model M. They have a slightly different feel, but they are both excellent. I tend to use the Unicomp more, though, because it has a more modern layout (windows keys). Unicomp also sells localized versions, e.g. I have the italian layout.
I am a big fan of Unicomp. I am also unlikely to buy again from them soon, since their 'boards are built for eternity. So I give them good reviews when I can, just to support them.
I don't think it is a special case. It is well known among people that study this kind of mechanisms that participation devices are not really meant to produce a result, but mainly to disarm conflict, by giving the participants the impression that they are being heard. (US readers think of the online petitions on the White House site).
You are very naïf if you think that the Parliaments will welcome these brilliant novel ideas from the people and convert them into laws at once.
In Italy, the constitution (since 1948) allows 50'000 citizens to propose laws to the Parliament.
It has been used sometimes, but the Parliament has *always* shelved the proposals immediately. None has even been discussed. Not because they were awful proposals, but because this kind of tool tends to be used when the Parliament is *already* avoiding making laws on a topic. So, it will continue avoiding it.
Today I've discovered that The Pirate Bay website is blocked in Italy. Previously the italian providers were forced to configure the DNS to resolve it as 127.0.0.1, but that was easy to circumvent. Now, the IP is totally unreacheable from Italy. To look at TPB one has to use a proxy, a tunnel, etc.
A similar measure is in force for unauthorized gambling sites.
I don't gamble and I don't care too much for torrents, but the very idea that my government decides which sites I can visit and which I cannot sends a cold shiver down my spine.
Gdata antivirus is a pretty good antivirus for Windows which has a bootable disk (linux-made, btw). Even if I've bought the online version, they sent me the disk by mail anyway. I was not allowed to refuse it, it seems. For my safety, I suppose:-)
Civil law or Continental law or Romano-Germanic law is the predominant system of law in the world [including Italy]. Civil law as a legal system is often compared with common law. The main difference that is usually drawn between the two systems is that common law draws abstract rules from specific cases, whereas civil law starts with abstract rules, which judges must then apply to the various cases before them.
I completely agree. I've been playing dnd since ad&d first edition, and now i find D20 overtechnical and devoid of inspiration. I am looking for alternatives (I once played Mage and liked it a lot). Since you say "I can name a dozen RPGs that have rules so simple you can learn them in five minutes. The only thing they have in common is that they are usually superior in imagination and quality to the popular games", could you name that dozen as a suggestion?
Speaking of which -yes I know it's slightly offtopic- what's the future of the suite, aka Mozilla Seamonkey? Some time ago the moz foundation announced there will be no more new release (except bug fixes like this one). Someone announced that Seamonkey will be a new separate open source projects. Any news about this?
Firefox is great but still it looks a bit like "Seamonkey for dummies" to me...
Yes. For example, in italy there is a ridiculously high tax on recordable media ("to compensate for piracy"). Result: everyone buys blank CDs and DVDs by mail from other EU countries.
This bureaucratic nightmare also shows once more why the new Constitutional Treaty must be adopted as soon as possibile. It will streamline the european legislative process and institutions, and give more power to the European Parliament. The consitution, signed on october 2004, must be ratified by all the 25 states in order to be valid. So far, IIRC, only four states did it. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/3954327.stm
This isn't the first discussion I see on Slashdot about "how can we get more energy"? But why no one ever talks about "how can we be more efficient? How can we save more energy?" And please don't start that "needed for our american lifestyle" mantra. The USA spends WAY WAY more energy per capita than any other country in the world. Even countries where the lifestyle is not bad at all! After all, being more efficient may be interesting and geeky engineering problem as well:-)
Most USRobotics products claim to support WPA in big letters, then a nasty footnote says that "WPA will be supported upon ratification". I hope that now that 802.11i has been finally ratified, my USR5410 Wireless PC card will be blessed by WPA...
I don't know about desktop Macs, but powebooks in my experience are not silent at all. My 1GHz Titanium has a rather noisy fan. It emits about as much noise as my Dell inspiron 8200 notebook (that is, quite a lot in my opinion).
Adobe licenses, so far, allowed the user to install the software not just on a machine, but also on a notebook (provided the twos are not used at the same time). This has always been a very good thing (and one of the reasons why I hate Macromedia licenses, not allowing this): most of us have a main workstation, plus a notebook to carry the work around. I am now very worried about this product activation concept being embraced by Adobe. Product activation usually binds the license to a single machine. Does this mean that, basically, for notebook owners the price of Adobe software has effectively doubled? (two activations = two licenses)?
Looks to me this proposal is another way of uniquely tagging digital content.
Could someone explain if and how this proposal is somehow similar to (or different from) the Digital Object Identifier standard (DOI)? DOI, although proprietary (like EAN, UPC, etc) is gaining momentum; for example, here in Italy is going to be adopted as a general standard for the public administration documents.
Slashdot Mirror
It means that in recent macs the RAM cannot be upgraded.
Texinfo produces very nice paper manuals effortlessly. With Docbook one has to dive into XSL-FO unpleasantness.
I own both an Unicomp and an IBM model M. They have a slightly different feel, but they are both excellent. I tend to use the Unicomp more, though, because it has a more modern layout (windows keys). Unicomp also sells localized versions, e.g. I have the italian layout.
I am a big fan of Unicomp. I am also unlikely to buy again from them soon, since their 'boards are built for eternity. So I give them good reviews when I can, just to support them.
the government has considered taxing SMSs by 0.02€ each. (This is not a joke)
I don't think it is a special case. It is well known among people that study this kind of mechanisms that participation devices are not really meant to produce a result, but mainly to disarm conflict, by giving the participants the impression that they are being heard. (US readers think of the online petitions on the White House site).
You are very naïf if you think that the Parliaments will welcome these brilliant novel ideas from the people and convert them into laws at once.
In Italy, the constitution (since 1948) allows 50'000 citizens to propose laws to the Parliament.
It has been used sometimes, but the Parliament has *always* shelved the proposals immediately. None has even been discussed. Not because they were awful proposals, but because this kind of tool tends to be used when the Parliament is *already* avoiding making laws on a topic. So, it will continue avoiding it.
Consumers in the EU still have a two-years warranty anyway, no matter what the manufacturers say.
Today I've discovered that The Pirate Bay website is blocked in Italy. Previously the italian providers were forced to configure the DNS to resolve it as 127.0.0.1, but that was easy to circumvent. Now, the IP is totally unreacheable from Italy. To look at TPB one has to use a proxy, a tunnel, etc.
A similar measure is in force for unauthorized gambling sites.
I don't gamble and I don't care too much for torrents, but the very idea that my government decides which sites I can visit and which I cannot sends a cold shiver down my spine.
In case of a right-wing government like this one, a partial U-turn is probably a left turn.
Gdata antivirus is a pretty good antivirus for Windows which has a bootable disk (linux-made, btw). :-)
Even if I've bought the online version, they sent me the disk by mail anyway. I was not allowed to refuse it, it seems. For my safety, I suppose
The San Marino Scale is being developed "to quantify the potential impact of transmission from Earth of messages into space".
http://www.setileague.org/iaaseti/smiscale.htm
hint:
Civil law or Continental law or Romano-Germanic law is the predominant system of law in the world [including Italy]. Civil law as a legal system is often compared with common law. The main difference that is usually drawn between the two systems is that common law draws abstract rules from specific cases, whereas civil law starts with abstract rules, which judges must then apply to the various cases before them.
source http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_law_(legal_system)
I completely agree. I've been playing dnd since ad&d first edition, and now i find D20 overtechnical and devoid of inspiration. I am looking for alternatives (I once played Mage and liked it a lot).
Since you say "I can name a dozen RPGs that have rules so simple you can learn them in five minutes. The only thing they have in common is that they are usually superior in imagination and quality to the popular games", could you name that dozen as a suggestion?
Speaking of which -yes I know it's slightly offtopic- what's the future of the suite, aka Mozilla Seamonkey? Some time ago the moz foundation announced there will be no more new release (except bug fixes like this one). Someone announced that Seamonkey will be a new separate open source projects. Any news about this?
Firefox is great but still it looks a bit like "Seamonkey for dummies" to me...
Yes. For example, in italy there is a ridiculously high tax on recordable media ("to compensate for piracy"). Result: everyone buys blank CDs and DVDs by mail from other EU countries.
This bureaucratic nightmare also shows once more why the new Constitutional Treaty must be adopted as soon as possibile. It will streamline the european legislative process and institutions, and give more power to the European Parliament.m
The consitution, signed on october 2004, must be ratified by all the 25 states in order to be valid. So far, IIRC, only four states did it.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/3954327.st
This isn't the first discussion I see on Slashdot about "how can we get more energy"? :-)
But why no one ever talks about "how can we be more efficient? How can we save more energy?"
And please don't start that "needed for our american lifestyle" mantra. The USA spends WAY WAY more energy per capita than any other country in the world. Even countries where the lifestyle is not bad at all!
After all, being more efficient may be interesting and geeky engineering problem as well
Proprietary? VRML is an ISO/IEC standard.
What about the "official web site"?
http://www.korea-dpr.com/
Most USRobotics products claim to support WPA in big letters, then a nasty footnote says that "WPA will be supported upon ratification".
I hope that now that 802.11i has been finally ratified, my USR5410 Wireless PC card will be blessed by WPA...
I don't know about desktop Macs, but powebooks in my experience are not silent at all. My 1GHz Titanium has a rather noisy fan. It emits about as much noise as my Dell inspiron 8200 notebook (that is, quite a lot in my opinion).
Adobe licenses, so far, allowed the user to install the software not just on a machine, but also on a notebook (provided the twos are not used at the same time). This has always been a very good thing (and one of the reasons why I hate Macromedia licenses, not allowing this): most of us have a main workstation, plus a notebook to carry the work around.
I am now very worried about this product activation concept being embraced by Adobe. Product activation usually binds the license to a single machine. Does this mean that, basically, for notebook owners the price of Adobe software has effectively doubled? (two activations = two licenses)?
Looks to me this proposal is another way of uniquely tagging digital content.
Could someone explain if and how this proposal is somehow similar to (or different from) the Digital Object Identifier standard (DOI)? DOI, although proprietary (like EAN, UPC, etc) is gaining momentum; for example, here in Italy is going to be adopted as a general standard for the public administration documents.
And in case your preference is not exactly stated, they will choose a default vote for you?!
> overseen by a master control unit
We all remember how a system overseen by a MCP can be ethical, don't we?