As far as I'm concerned, special effects cover up more plot holes, and plot holes lead to boredom. You can't have a half page outline turned into a full movie without either lots of special effects, or hardcore porn.
Sadly, good special effects should help good movies. Exceedingly rare, though. (The subtle effects in Amelie were a brillant example)
Did anyone at all EVER say that PM was as any of the original three SW movies? If so, I misssed it.
The one I find interesting was Return of the Jedi. It was a great movie when it came out, and now looks like the weakest of the three. The Empire Strikes Back, on the other hand, got mediocre reviews and poor viewing (comparatively), and now stands out as the best written and best executed SW movie, bar none.
I just saw the second Matrix movie last week (yes, for the first time!), and despite everything I'd heard, found that it posed a lot of interesting questions, and left some places for real plot development. It's up to the third movie to tie everything together. After this movie (and some time), we'll know if the Matrix was:
a) A great movie with two lousy sequels b) A messy trilogy that started really well c) A great and lasting trilogy of social commentary
I never really expected the third to be true, but I still have hopes, I guess. Dammit, SOMEONE has to make a worthwhile and socially relevant movie, and science fiction is certainly the most natural genre to do it in. Unfortunately, it hasn't happened since A Boy and his Dog. (And perhaps Gattaca--a moderately well reviewed movie in its day, that's looking more and more profound in retrospect, interestingly.)
The original Matrix was one of the only intelligent SF movies ever made. Early reviews suggest that it's going to get buried as a crappy trilogy. Pity.
There is no invasion of privacy here, because Telia explicitly denied (in the contract that you're too damned lazy to read--that doesn't remove your responsibility to be held by it) and guarantee or expectation of privacy. If you thought otherwise, then it was because you deluded yourself, despite fair and reasonable attempts by Telia (the other party to the contract) to make their authority clear to you.
I don't like contracts like this, but if you agree to one, then you've got NO ONE at all to blame but yourself. In other words, it's your own damned fault.
You were knowingly breaking your contract with them and likely the law, and when they used the part of their contract that says "we can monitor you to our hearts content" to prove it, they told you to stop it. That's all they did? And you're MIFFED at them for this??!! They could have cut your service and passed your name to the police to possibly make a test case of you. Count yourself lucky that they were so forgiving.
Desperation is someting that people LOSING a battle fall prey to. Right now though, the spammers are winning.
They're forcing the anti-spam organisations off the 'net.
They're writing viruses to turn random desktop machines into spam sources, and getting away with it.
They've all but destroyed email as a useful means of communication.
And they're getting away with it.
Doesn't anyone else see? This isn't a sign of desperation, it's a push towards victory--victory by brute force and slaughter.
A guy at Symmantec said (very much off the record) that he believed the last round of virus attacks was backed by organised crime. Really folks, who else has the power to do this stuff?
First of all, RedHat Enterprise Linux comes in a variety of flavours, including a workstation/desktop release. That will still be sold to companies.
Secondly, it's all about vendor buy-in. Oracle says Linux, and partners with RedHat. Landmark and GeoFrame (geological/geophysical apps companies) do the same. So does Sun and IBM.
RedHat will see no difference from this, other than not having to deal with profit-losing individuals. It's smart from a corporate point of view, if a bit nasty. (But then, they also fund Fedora)
Three cheers for the /. editors!
on
Neil Gaiman Responds
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
What? No sarcasm? No abuse?
I just want to say that this was definitely one of the best interviews on/. I've read. Partly this is because Neil was so forthcoming and willing to answer in depth, but also because the/. editors really did pick out ten of the best questions.
Good work guys. You get dumped on a lot, and probably deserve more praise than you receive.
" We do have a formal review process, and sometimes we have to pull the plug on documents containing factual erreors."
Ah, then my apologies--things have certainly changed for the better then!
As far as writing documents, you make a very large (and incorrect) assumption about my time, when you say that I certainly have more free time to give. Sadly, I don't. More to the point though, there are few Linux topics I feel well enough versed in to write quasi-definitive documentation for. (or in fact, any documentation).
Now Solaris, I could write a novel about.:-) Now if I only had some spare time...
Hmmm. Maybe you need to get past third year CS to realise that the man pages for Unix are great documentation. Man pages for Linux are...sick to the point of being broken.
At any rate, they were only four of the 13 binders in the last printed documentation set we had, if I remember. There were programmers' guides, users' guides, intro manuals, boot-block building guides, detailed hardware manuals, and everything else.
First of all, I'd like to debunk the idea that, "there was a general consensus that Unix in general, and Linux in particular, lacked good documentation." That's BS--Unix has had good and even definitive documentation for decades. Four feet of manuals (man pages, install guides, networking config, X programming, etc., etc., etc.) were considered absolutely essential material back in the day, and they were generally really good! Today we have docs.(vendor).com, as a pretty damned fine replacement. At no point in recent history has the Unix community suffered from a general shortage of good documentation.
Now the LDP has come a long way in the last ten years, and let me join with everyone here in saying, "Congratulations! Linux wouldn't have gotten anywhere near where it is without you."
That said, there are two fundamental weaknesses that stem from the nature of the LDP, and I'd like to see some way of modifying the project to address them as much as possible.
First of all is the lack of a formal review process. As I understand it, anyone can submit a doc, and it will by accepted if it meets basic criteria. (mostly proper SGML/Docbook formatting.) There really needs to be a review process, similar to code review for proper software projects. (of course, a project should also have a documentation writer/maintainer, which would invalidate much of the LDP, but I digress...) I have seen HOWTOs which were unintelligible, incomplete, unmaintained, and wildly inaccurate. Without grammar and technical review, stuff like this just keeps popping up at random.
The second problem is something that the LDP cannot (and shouldn't have to) correct on its own. It's incomplete--it is not a complete repository of Linux documentation, by any stretch of the imagination. To be fair, it shouldn't have to be--software should come with documentation! Howtos and guides should be supplements to that documentation, not the only source for it. Unfortunately, freelance developers don't always see things that way.
Anyways, enough sour grapes. Happy Birthday LDP! Keep on going, and keep on gettting better.
First of all, while I know it's a pipe-dream, I really wish the/. "editors" would do some damned editing. The submitter's commentary on the post was stupid, pointless, and out of line. Save it for the threads, people!
OK, now that I've got that off my chest...
There is a common misperception among almost everyone who talks about this and many other contentious issues. It goes like this:
1) The RIAA is evil, therefore I'm in the right. 2) The RIAA is behaving legitimately (maybe scummy, maybe not, but legitimately) and therefore file sharing is wrong.
It's always us vs. them, and one side HAS to be right, while the other HAS to be wrong. This just isn't the way it works. In reality, the RIAA has the legal and moral mandate to protect the works of their labels' signed artists. In reality, downloading music without compensation is bad. HOWEVER, in reality one must also realise that the RIAA is treating artists like dirt, and downloading doesn't practically take anything away from the artists. (or more to the point, for 99+% of the artists out there, buying their music doesn't provide any effective compensation)
Boycotting? Unless it's done en masse, it won't affect anyone--and if it did, then the RIAA would absorb the pain, by passing it on to the artists.
There are no real winning situations here--no moral high ground, no "he's wrong, so I must be right!"
Now that I've laid that (unquestionable!!!:-) groundwork, let's take a step back and look at the whole picture. In other words, who wants what?
Ideal case: 1) Consumers want artists' music. 2) Artists want compensation for their work. 3) The RIAA wants to facilitate that.
Real case: 1) Consumers want music for free. 2) Artists want compensation for their work. 3) The RIAA wants control of the industry (from both artist and consumer sides).
So what do we see? The artists' role doesn't change. The consumers' role has become more self centred, but ultimately isn't conceptually different (but more on that in the next exciting paragraph!). The RIAA is the role that's changed the most: they are no longer acting in the interests of the musicians or the consumers. They are acting on their own behalf, and aiming at complete control over who listens to what, and when. THIS is the fundamental flaw in the system. THIS is what we need to break away from!
However, the biggest stumbling block to getting rid of the RIAA is the difference between the consumers' ideal and real behaviours. If people can get stuff for free, then they don't want to pay for it, and as long as we keep fighting the RIAA on that front, then they will remain the only main conduit for money getting to artists--in other words, downloading music for free makes the artists more dependent on the RIAA. (Of course, there are many exceptions--artists who release stuff willingly for free download are the biggest one.)
As consumers, in a consumer-driven society, we have to accept that the artists deserve and need compensation--from us! Micropayments, voluntary downloads direct to artists, pay-per-song downloads, it doesn't matter what system gets put in place. The thing is that we can't get rid of the RIAA until we can come up with a better system for artist compensation. Otherwise, it all really is just lip service in order to avoid paying for music.
Heh. ESR is getting credit for "The Road to Hell..." quote now? I wonder what Samuel Johnson would say about that? The origin of this quote dates back to somewhere around 1100AD, quite a bit older than ESR I suspect.
As for Nobel and TNT, it's always been a double-edged sword, in the truest sense of the metaphore. Most research has potential for good and bad. Great research has great potential--often equally for good and bad. TNT has done fantastic things to help develop the world. Likewise, bioengineering is giving us promise for a truly amazing future. The problem isn't how can you separate the good from the bad--you can't. The real key is to guess at the outset whether the outcome is going to be more for good or bad, and whether the positive will outweigh the negative. Unfortunately, you can't predict the future.
I look at the question with a cautionary-yet-fatalist approach. You can't put the genie back in the bottle. You can't stop research from happening. At the very best, you might be able to direct research, if you approach it with your eyes wide open. Of course, that also makes the potential for dangerous-but-good research more tempting.
Pretty simple. People will read mediocre books (contrary to popular opinion), but won't go to the effort of reviewing anything unless they're madly in love with, or want to warn the world away from.
Since Amazon reviews have become a dime-a-dozen, I find that the 2-9 reviews are usually the most honest and relevant. Rarely do I find something useful in a 10++++ review, nor a 0--- one. Likewise, I very rarely give top marks to anything if I'm reviewing. (exceptions: The Unix System Administrator's Handbook, and Slaughterhouse V.)
It's basically human nature, and I imagine the/. editors would just as soon not bother adding reviews of horrible books anyways.
First thing I thought is, "who the FUCK would come up with such a lame, pathetic, anti-hacker mentality idea as this?" I missed the ESR reference.
Can't say it surprises me though.
A logo? A LOGO? Hey Eric, how about everyone who meets qualifications (do you need to qualify to be an official hacker? ) get team jackets? Oh, oh yeah, and we could all listen to the same hacker music, and play the same hacker games, and and...
Last I remember, any non-derogatory definition of hacker included (or at least implied) a strong sense of independence. Let's all show our independence by wearing a logo!!!
Do I want digital tuners? Hell, yeah! Do I want the FCC (or any government authority) to mandate who, when, how, what, and why I get it? NOT BLOODY LIKELY!!! This is something that the FCC should NOT be forcing legislation on.
That's all I've got to say.
Good content will remain on every format
on
Who Needs Radio?
·
· Score: 1
I listen--almost religiously--to The CKUA Radio Network, here in sunny Alberta. This is listener-supported radio, and is so good that you wonder why the other stations bother staying on the air. (I know the answer, of course: Money.)
Rock, classical, country, folk, world, new-age, ambient, techno, they play it all. There's a late-night show that's a tribute to the Grateful Dead. They had a 24 part series chronicling the history of Folkways Records. AND, they're available on the internet. That doesn't take away from their province-wide AM and FM transmitters, so that you can hear them for roughly 16 hours of straight driving.
Stations like this will be broadcasting for a long time, and will exist in the same 'radio-like' format on the internet if broadcast radio ever dies. The internet isn't going to kill off the format, even if the medium were to eventually die.
Over on C|Net, there's an article about Longhorn. Bill Gates has called this their biggest effort since Win95. Now if we assume that he's telling the truth (hey, why not?), it brings up some interesting parallels.
Windows95 originally was just going to be Windows 4.0--an updated version of Win3.1 Turning it into more than a GUI for DOS, adding multitasking, recreating the GUI, and so forth, was a HUGE undertaking which lead to endless delays. (Win4.0 was supposed to be out in '93; Win95 barely made it into it's named year.) But what threat caused the massive effort? OS/2. OS/2 2.1, the PPC chip, and the Pentium FP math bug got MS good and scared, and they came up with a (relative) miracle.
Now they're saying that they're putting that effort in again. What, pray tell, is the threat to MS this time, hmmmm?
Calling someone a dirtball is clearly not libellous. Saying that someone stole $50 from you very clearly is, assuming they didn't steal the money.
Calling someone a thief definitely implies that they stole something--and if it's not true, then it's libel. I think that SCO could at least get a judge to consider it seriously.
Ah, Eric. Always the pinnacle of restrained wit and tact.
Seriously, he could be charged with libel for his "SCO has become a nest of liars and thieves" comment, and probably should. At any rate, he keeps missing a major point of open source: If you release it to the general public under a given license, then everyone who abides by that license can use it. Military (domestic and foreign both), IBm, and SCO. SCO, for instance, can use the jargon dictionary just fine, and he doesn't HAVE to like it! He made his own bed, now he can lie in it.
Slashdot Mirror
Heh. I'll concede that I spent a chunk of my previous post attacking PM, but I _did_ consider the future perspective of the Matrix movies.
Heh. Interesting idea.
As far as I'm concerned, special effects cover up more plot holes, and plot holes lead to boredom. You can't have a half page outline turned into a full movie without either lots of special effects, or hardcore porn.
Sadly, good special effects should help good movies. Exceedingly rare, though. (The subtle effects in Amelie were a brillant example)
You don't bang a dominatrix. If you're lucky, you get banged by her. :-)
Did anyone at all EVER say that PM was as any of the original three SW movies? If so, I misssed it.
The one I find interesting was Return of the Jedi. It was a great movie when it came out, and now looks like the weakest of the three. The Empire Strikes Back, on the other hand, got mediocre reviews and poor viewing (comparatively), and now stands out as the best written and best executed SW movie, bar none.
I just saw the second Matrix movie last week (yes, for the first time!), and despite everything I'd heard, found that it posed a lot of interesting questions, and left some places for real plot development. It's up to the third movie to tie everything together. After this movie (and some time), we'll know if the Matrix was:
a) A great movie with two lousy sequels
b) A messy trilogy that started really well
c) A great and lasting trilogy of social commentary
I never really expected the third to be true, but I still have hopes, I guess. Dammit, SOMEONE has to make a worthwhile and socially relevant movie, and science fiction is certainly the most natural genre to do it in. Unfortunately, it hasn't happened since A Boy and his Dog. (And perhaps Gattaca--a moderately well reviewed movie in its day, that's looking more and more profound in retrospect, interestingly.)
The original Matrix was one of the only intelligent SF movies ever made. Early reviews suggest that it's going to get buried as a crappy trilogy. Pity.
Um...no. Sorry, you're wrong.
There is no invasion of privacy here, because Telia explicitly denied (in the contract that you're too damned lazy to read--that doesn't remove your responsibility to be held by it) and guarantee or expectation of privacy. If you thought otherwise, then it was because you deluded yourself, despite fair and reasonable attempts by Telia (the other party to the contract) to make their authority clear to you.
I don't like contracts like this, but if you agree to one, then you've got NO ONE at all to blame but yourself. In other words, it's your own damned fault.
So let me get this straight.
You were knowingly breaking your contract with them and likely the law, and when they used the part of their contract that says "we can monitor you to our hearts content" to prove it, they told you to stop it. That's all they did? And you're MIFFED at them for this??!!
They could have cut your service and passed your name to the police to possibly make a test case of you. Count yourself lucky that they were so forgiving.
Desperation is someting that people LOSING a battle fall prey to. Right now though, the spammers are winning.
They're forcing the anti-spam organisations off the 'net.
They're writing viruses to turn random desktop machines into spam sources, and getting away with it.
They've all but destroyed email as a useful means of communication.
And they're getting away with it.
Doesn't anyone else see? This isn't a sign of desperation, it's a push towards victory--victory by brute force and slaughter.
A guy at Symmantec said (very much off the record) that he believed the last round of virus attacks was backed by organised crime. Really folks, who else has the power to do this stuff?
I say bah!
First of all, RedHat Enterprise Linux comes in a variety of flavours, including a workstation/desktop release. That will still be sold to companies.
Secondly, it's all about vendor buy-in. Oracle says Linux, and partners with RedHat. Landmark and GeoFrame (geological/geophysical apps companies) do the same. So does Sun and IBM.
RedHat will see no difference from this, other than not having to deal with profit-losing individuals. It's smart from a corporate point of view, if a bit nasty. (But then, they also fund Fedora)
What? No sarcasm? No abuse?
/. I've read. Partly this is because Neil was so forthcoming and willing to answer in depth, but also because the /. editors really did pick out ten of the best questions.
I just want to say that this was definitely one of the best interviews on
Good work guys. You get dumped on a lot, and probably deserve more praise than you receive.
Bah.
Sun is scrambling a bit, it's true. Their stock is also badly undervalued. However, they still have a lot of money, and a lot of physical value.
Also, don't forget: Good publicity drives good business.
" We do have a formal review process, and sometimes we have to pull the plug on documents containing factual erreors."
:-) Now if I only had some spare time...
Ah, then my apologies--things have certainly changed for the better then!
As far as writing documents, you make a very large (and incorrect) assumption about my time, when you say that I certainly have more free time to give. Sadly, I don't. More to the point though, there are few Linux topics I feel well enough versed in to write quasi-definitive documentation for. (or in fact, any documentation).
Now Solaris, I could write a novel about.
Hmmm. Maybe you need to get past third year CS to realise that the man pages for Unix are great documentation. Man pages for Linux are...sick to the point of being broken.
At any rate, they were only four of the 13 binders in the last printed documentation set we had, if I remember. There were programmers' guides, users' guides, intro manuals, boot-block building guides, detailed hardware manuals, and everything else.
First of all, I'd like to debunk the idea that, "there was a general consensus that Unix in general, and Linux in particular, lacked good documentation." That's BS--Unix has had good and even definitive documentation for decades. Four feet of manuals (man pages, install guides, networking config, X programming, etc., etc., etc.) were considered absolutely essential material back in the day, and they were generally really good! Today we have docs.(vendor).com, as a pretty damned fine replacement. At no point in recent history has the Unix community suffered from a general shortage of good documentation.
Now the LDP has come a long way in the last ten years, and let me join with everyone here in saying, "Congratulations! Linux wouldn't have gotten anywhere near where it is without you."
That said, there are two fundamental weaknesses that stem from the nature of the LDP, and I'd like to see some way of modifying the project to address them as much as possible.
First of all is the lack of a formal review process. As I understand it, anyone can submit a doc, and it will by accepted if it meets basic criteria. (mostly proper SGML/Docbook formatting.)
There really needs to be a review process, similar to code review for proper software projects. (of course, a project should also have a documentation writer/maintainer, which would invalidate much of the LDP, but I digress...) I have seen HOWTOs which were unintelligible, incomplete, unmaintained, and wildly inaccurate. Without grammar and technical review, stuff like this just keeps popping up at random.
The second problem is something that the LDP cannot (and shouldn't have to) correct on its own. It's incomplete--it is not a complete repository of Linux documentation, by any stretch of the imagination. To be fair, it shouldn't have to be--software should come with documentation! Howtos and guides should be supplements to that documentation, not the only source for it. Unfortunately, freelance developers don't always see things that way.
Anyways, enough sour grapes. Happy Birthday LDP! Keep on going, and keep on gettting better.
OK, I hadn't heard about this before now, although I'd seen the book.
This is hilarious! Poor Fox, dumber than a sack of hammers. My favorite quote was from the Fox attorney:
"This is much too subtle to be considered a parody," she said.
Hmm. "Lies and the Lying Liars who tell them" is much too subtle to be parody, is it? I don't see how they could make it any more obvious than that.
Oh well. That's my laugh for the day.
Interesting. In Canada at least, once a cheque clears, it's the bank's problem.
First of all, while I know it's a pipe-dream, I really wish the /. "editors" would do some damned editing. The submitter's commentary on the post was stupid, pointless, and out of line. Save it for the threads, people!
:-) groundwork, let's take a step back and look at the whole picture. In other words, who wants what?
OK, now that I've got that off my chest...
There is a common misperception among almost everyone who talks about this and many other contentious issues. It goes like this:
1) The RIAA is evil, therefore I'm in the right.
2) The RIAA is behaving legitimately (maybe scummy, maybe not, but legitimately) and therefore file sharing is wrong.
It's always us vs. them, and one side HAS to be right, while the other HAS to be wrong. This just isn't the way it works. In reality, the RIAA has the legal and moral mandate to protect the works of their labels' signed artists. In reality, downloading music without compensation is bad. HOWEVER, in reality one must also realise that the RIAA is treating artists like dirt, and downloading doesn't practically take anything away from the artists. (or more to the point, for 99+% of the artists out there, buying their music doesn't provide any effective compensation)
Boycotting? Unless it's done en masse, it won't affect anyone--and if it did, then the RIAA would absorb the pain, by passing it on to the artists.
There are no real winning situations here--no moral high ground, no "he's wrong, so I must be right!"
Now that I've laid that (unquestionable!!!
Ideal case:
1) Consumers want artists' music.
2) Artists want compensation for their work.
3) The RIAA wants to facilitate that.
Real case:
1) Consumers want music for free.
2) Artists want compensation for their work.
3) The RIAA wants control of the industry (from both artist and consumer sides).
So what do we see? The artists' role doesn't change. The consumers' role has become more self centred, but ultimately isn't conceptually different (but more on that in the next exciting paragraph!). The RIAA is the role that's changed the most: they are no longer acting in the interests of the musicians or the consumers. They are acting on their own behalf, and aiming at complete control over who listens to what, and when. THIS is the fundamental flaw in the system. THIS is what we need to break away from!
However, the biggest stumbling block to getting rid of the RIAA is the difference between the consumers' ideal and real behaviours. If people can get stuff for free, then they don't want to pay for it, and as long as we keep fighting the RIAA on that front, then they will remain the only main conduit for money getting to artists--in other words, downloading music for free makes the artists more dependent on the RIAA. (Of course, there are many exceptions--artists who release stuff willingly for free download are the biggest one.)
As consumers, in a consumer-driven society, we have to accept that the artists deserve and need compensation--from us! Micropayments, voluntary downloads direct to artists, pay-per-song downloads, it doesn't matter what system gets put in place. The thing is that we can't get rid of the RIAA until we can come up with a better system for artist compensation. Otherwise, it all really is just lip service in order to avoid paying for music.
Heh. ESR is getting credit for "The Road to Hell..." quote now? I wonder what Samuel Johnson would say about that? The origin of this quote dates back to somewhere around 1100AD, quite a bit older than ESR I suspect.
As for Nobel and TNT, it's always been a double-edged sword, in the truest sense of the metaphore. Most research has potential for good and bad. Great research has great potential--often equally for good and bad. TNT has done fantastic things to help develop the world. Likewise, bioengineering is giving us promise for a truly amazing future. The problem isn't how can you separate the good from the bad--you can't. The real key is to guess at the outset whether the outcome is going to be more for good or bad, and whether the positive will outweigh the negative. Unfortunately, you can't predict the future.
I look at the question with a cautionary-yet-fatalist approach. You can't put the genie back in the bottle. You can't stop research from happening. At the very best, you might be able to direct research, if you approach it with your eyes wide open. Of course, that also makes the potential for dangerous-but-good research more tempting.
Made more babies than we killed. So far.
(Not a pro/anti-abortion statement--just a comment on our undying thirst for killing)
Pretty simple. People will read mediocre books (contrary to popular opinion), but won't go to the effort of reviewing anything unless they're madly in love with, or want to warn the world away from.
/. editors would just as soon not bother adding reviews of horrible books anyways.
Since Amazon reviews have become a dime-a-dozen, I find that the 2-9 reviews are usually the most honest and relevant. Rarely do I find something useful in a 10++++ review, nor a 0--- one. Likewise, I very rarely give top marks to anything if I'm reviewing. (exceptions: The Unix System Administrator's Handbook, and Slaughterhouse V.)
It's basically human nature, and I imagine the
First thing I thought is, "who the FUCK would come up with such a lame, pathetic, anti-hacker mentality idea as this?" I missed the ESR reference.
Can't say it surprises me though.
A logo? A LOGO? Hey Eric, how about everyone who meets qualifications (do you need to qualify to be an official hacker? ) get team jackets? Oh, oh yeah, and we could all listen to the same hacker music, and play the same hacker games, and and...
Last I remember, any non-derogatory definition of hacker included (or at least implied) a strong sense of independence. Let's all show our independence by wearing a logo!!!
Bah.
Do I want digital tuners? Hell, yeah! Do I want the FCC (or any government authority) to mandate who, when, how, what, and why I get it? NOT BLOODY LIKELY!!! This is something that the FCC should NOT be forcing legislation on.
That's all I've got to say.
I listen--almost religiously--to The CKUA Radio Network, here in sunny Alberta. This is listener-supported radio, and is so good that you wonder why the other stations bother staying on the air. (I know the answer, of course: Money.)
Rock, classical, country, folk, world, new-age, ambient, techno, they play it all. There's a late-night show that's a tribute to the Grateful Dead. They had a 24 part series chronicling the history of Folkways Records. AND, they're available on the internet. That doesn't take away from their province-wide AM and FM transmitters, so that you can hear them for roughly 16 hours of straight driving.
Stations like this will be broadcasting for a long time, and will exist in the same 'radio-like' format on the internet if broadcast radio ever dies. The internet isn't going to kill off the format, even if the medium were to eventually die.
Over on C|Net, there's an article about Longhorn. Bill Gates has called this their biggest effort since Win95. Now if we assume that he's telling the truth (hey, why not?), it brings up some interesting parallels.
Windows95 originally was just going to be Windows 4.0--an updated version of Win3.1 Turning it into more than a GUI for DOS, adding multitasking, recreating the GUI, and so forth, was a HUGE undertaking which lead to endless delays. (Win4.0 was supposed to be out in '93; Win95 barely made it into it's named year.) But what threat caused the massive effort? OS/2. OS/2 2.1, the PPC chip, and the Pentium FP math bug got MS good and scared, and they came up with a (relative) miracle.
Now they're saying that they're putting that effort in again. What, pray tell, is the threat to MS this time, hmmmm?
It's a very thin line he's walking, at the least.
Calling someone a dirtball is clearly not libellous. Saying that someone stole $50 from you very clearly is, assuming they didn't steal the money.
Calling someone a thief definitely implies that they stole something--and if it's not true, then it's libel. I think that SCO could at least get a judge to consider it seriously.
Ah, Eric. Always the pinnacle of restrained wit and tact.
Seriously, he could be charged with libel for his "SCO has become a nest of liars and thieves" comment, and probably should. At any rate, he keeps missing a major point of open source: If you release it to the general public under a given license, then everyone who abides by that license can use it. Military (domestic and foreign both), IBm, and SCO. SCO, for instance, can use the jargon dictionary just fine, and he doesn't HAVE to like it! He made his own bed, now he can lie in it.