If you, as a band, ARE good enough, you WILL get the followers if people download your music. If you DO get the followers, then you can make money touring. If you don't, then very likely your music isn't touring quality. Just because you are a band does not mean you are good. Secondly, the cover art may have been a problem 10 years ago, but now days, hey, GIMP, need I say more? I should think it would be really easy to find someone who likes your music and knows how to use a graphics program that will help you design your covers. As for promo gimicks, well, if you are truly good, interest in your band will reach critical mass and explode without the gimmicks. Yes, trying without a big label backing you is more risky. Hey, you could be the only people who like your music, in which case, no tours for you, go get a real job.
BTW, kudos to Babtist Death Ray for getting posted on/. They probably increased their listening audience by 1000 fold. Nice job. And all they had to do was write an essay.
This would mean: 0.Gnome and KDE apps that work together well. 1.Gnome and KDE ppl sharing resources. 2.Goodbye QPL and Qt! 3.Debian ppl will stop whining;) 4.Debian will finally include KDE.
All very Good Things(tm). Off hand I can't see a downside, other than fixing a lot of code. Never, ever thought I'd see the day when they were even talking about doing this. This is the happiest day since Baseball went on strike...
Two steps: 1. Your.sig should say something to the effect of: "All files ending in.doc are from my account before opening due to a. it being a proprietary file format which my machine does not understand, and b. the likelyhood of viruses embedded in them. Take your Pick. Please use.rtf when sending your data." 2. filter out any emails with an attachment named *.doc. Hey no more.docs! The "I'm ignoring you!" tactic. children have used it for years. Because it works;) 3. (I can't count) With access to a prompt, simply write a script to email your favorite.doc junky once a week asking them to post in another format.(for instance, all those parts manuals that are in.doc: email the company) Be sure and be very polite, and be sure and check to make sure when they post in RTF or your favorite non-proprietary format. The idea is to rattle the can, not to ring a gong. These are very simple pro-active steps that you can take that will help change the digital world. Also, make sure you change email addresses once in a while on that script, so they don't just filter you. Spam is a tool for good, too;) Just dont be obnoxious, then you won't get what you want.
My question is: will Crusoe, etc. be able to optimize in a SMP environ? AND even if it can do that, will it be able to do so for a COW or Beowulf cluster? It seems to me that such optimization at runtime might CRIPPLE a cluster if the processors weren't aware that they were clustered. OTOH, if they WERE aware, and could optimize parallel code, oooohhhh...... That gives me a warm fuzzy feelin just thinking about it. Whichever company achieves that,and it shouldn't be terribly difficult when you consider what they have done already on some of those projects, they could really leverage that. Especially if it optimized non-parallellized binaries to perform parallellized. Now something like that could revolutionize the industry. And give massive computing power. Amazing the level of technology we have achieved in so short a time... Our computers are not only self-aware(in a limited way, temp & voltage, etc.) but aware of thier surroundings(the code that they optimize.) So the next step is to make them aware of thier neighbors(other computers to help them crunch more efficiently and optimize for that). Soon they will be aware of us! Who is ready for that? Just some rambling thoughts...
Linux BIOS, *and* it's sister project, OPENBIOS
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For a while now, I have been following discussions on OpenBIOS to see what they could come up with. Very impressive, really. OpenBIOS and LinuxBIOS have been sharing for some time. The big reason for it is even simpler than booting faster or putting cool things in your BIOS like graphics (which, I must admit, is cool): The project is about having a system truly free of proprietary software. Feel free to join in and contribute to either project; in the true spirit of Opensource, they share, so helping one will help the other. Ultimately, I would like to see a package that will help sysadmins customize and install thier own bios. Also, lets see Intel try and pull the serial# off a machine that has the serial#'s memory location specifially blocked off in the bios... See? The reasons for doing this go on and on. It's a new frontier in Open Source. How can anyone call themselves a hacker when they depend on Phoenix or Award to turn thier computer on for them?
How to handle this little obstacle...
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...the Activist's Way: Petition petition petition. Press Press Press. You don't just sit around and bitch about it, you do what the Veterans did in the 30's: go and preach it in the streets of Washington D.C. You organize rallys, get spokespeople involved (actors and actresses, they love PR and they get attention) and shake things up. ...the Hacker's Way: Keep doing what you are doing. That is, making OSS platforms THE platforms for gaming. (if you are not involved in OpenGL or OpenAL or some project that makes linux games a. easy to make and b. ROCK harder than on the closed source OS'es, you are wrong.) If you build it, they will come. If they come, Game publishers will come, too. A few projects are coming along quite nicely in the Office Products category. Kudos to Gnome,KDE,Abiword, heck the list is just too long, but few products out there do not show great promise *almost* realized. Then all we have to do is take over the server market. Oh... wait... I will pay for good software. I just bought UT, even tho i had a copy of it. Why? because it rocks. I didn't need to, I had a copy. Most of us are like that. Nobody minds paying for quality. I have bought Mandrake's distro a few times, even though I had it burned on cd already. You support what is worth your time.
IMHO, Lars appears to be an idiot.(Sorry to state the obvious). About the only legible idea he got across was that its ok for him to bootleg but not for you, because of the quality and quantity. Love to see the defense bring that up in court. For you, Lars: What would be the end result of Napster collapsing the music industry? Which of course will never happen, there are just too many folks out there as clueless as you, but what if? Think of it! Musicians making music for the sheer artistic value! What a concept! Musicians getting published widespread based on the merit of the music, instead of the dictations of an industry(for instance, no more crap bands like New Kids on the Block.) Nothing, NOTHING, could do more good for music quality than for such things as Napster and DeCSS to succeed. It is truly a shame that Metallica is too caught up in Greed ('It's ours, our masters, nobody elses') to see Napster for what it is: Musical freedom. Lets face it: if you are in music for the money you are in it for the wrong reasons. All I can say is that if they continue the suit, they are proving themselves to be hippocrites. Because they started as a garage band, and I doubt it was about money then, was it boys? Now you become exactly what your music rails against. Shame on you.
In the Constitution, in order to sue, the dispute must be for more than $20. It's really plain and simple. He cannot sue for a CD that is worth $14.99(in HIS opinion), there is simply no legitimate provision for it, since every law in this country is based and judged from the Constituion, and the Constitution says dispute>=$20. Also keep in mind that that was $20.00 at the end of the 1700s. Inflation would say no disputes less than, what, $300 or $400? IMHO, small claims court should be abolished.
two things: 0. A laptop to learn things on, keep notes, etc. 1. A reading pad with high resolution that just displays information. Make it so instead of buying textbooks every year, the kids just download thier books into thier reading pads. MacMillin will adjust, trust me. Easier to carry around, less costly in the long run, the kids can keep thier 'textbooks' for the rest of thier lives. The technology exists now to make it a reality.
Ideally,however, watch ST:DS9 episodes and emulate, emulate, emulate. Those little pads they carry around are just what the doctor ordered.
...I learned by the end of sixth grade. After that, it was simply repetition of what I already knew. Reading, writing, mathmatics, science, all the basics, I can honestly say that I forgot more useful things while in High School than I learned. SO. I feel that giving a kid a laptop to play with is a GOOD THING(tm). Teaching them to use it is even better. But the real point is to teach kids how to LEARN. Everything else is moot. In most cases what I was taught in school was incorrect information anyway(e.g., Edison invented the **insert invention**. Everyone here should know that old Tommy was a businessman not an inventor or scientist. He was the Bill Gates of the first half century). For instance, I have used what I learned in History for one thing only: I can answer Jeopardy questions like a mad rat. Off hand I would say I did not need it. At all. Second instance: Mathematics. Once I learned how to do the basics,( +,-,/, and *) nothing else was useful to me in school or out up until I started dealing with computers and learning to program. One could argue that calculators cripple the mind, yes I have heard it before. But the simple fact is that when I needed to learn trig I went to the public library and checked out a friggin BOOK (you know, those paper thingies) and learned on my own in about 15 days. Am I an expert? No. But I can tell you that I learned it when it was useful to me so I retained it much better. I learned to LEARN. I learned to TEACH MYSELF. Most of you can relate, you taught yourself how to program, how to use Linux, etc. THAT is how you fix what is wrong with public schools. Stop wasting the best learning years of our lives by filling our heads with crap we don't want or need and start TEACHING HOW TO GET WHAT WE NEED ON OUR OWN. Then work on evolving society to think that lots of knowledge is Uber-kewl. As we, the geeks can testify, that kind of environment is the breeding ground for creative minds and unique (sometimes useful) talents. Most of us work in jobs where we took aptitude tests of some sort to get the job. Did we really need to know how to disect a frog to do what we do? Not unless you're a doctor. Or Vet. Those sorts things are better taught in college, to people who stand a chance of, hey, EVER NEEDING that information. I can tell you that in this day and age,though, if you were to give ME a laptop at, say, 11 years old, by the time I finished high school I would probably be telling you you Linux is for wussies and real men program thier OWN OS in machine language;) To end this slightly O/T post I have only one quote of importance: Give a man a fish, he eats for a day. Teach a man to fish, he eats for a lifetime.
An excellent point, but all this means really is that instead of flooding the video card companies, we really need to flood the computer vendors, and let them know that you will not be buying one of thier systems if they use a video card that does not have open source drivers. (also send a CC to the video card vendors). Hit em right where it hurts. Once the computer vendors start getting spooked about using a closed source video card, just watch those video card companies *leap* to the forefront of the open source movement. "Why, we were with you all along don't you remember?" Oh, yeah, and don't sound so bleeding heart for the video card companies. They don't get any pity from me. They want to make money. We want open source. The Law of Supply and Demand says if they want our money bad enough, they will give us what we want. No "poor video card company just trying to make a decent living" crap for me, thank you. That's just not the way it works. Also, believe me when I tell you that when we hold out on buying that new card until one of them opens their source, and then they can't keep that opensourced card on the shelves, which card do you think will get put in the computer vendor's systems? Yep you guessed it, the one that SELLS. The one that OPENS THEIR SOURCE. Have no fear my fellow slashdotters, you WILL get your open source drivers. They can't afford not to give it to us.
Telsa is probably the most important man to live in the last century. I would like to point out that I have posted that link at least 5 times on/. but I am still glad to see that it hit the front page here. I have seen some comments here about how the teacher is using the third graders, and how wrong it is. That's a pretty lame reaction, because I am sure that the point was to TEACH the children that they CAN make a difference, and that they CAN right wrongs. Anyone who has children and doesn't want their children to learn that, doesn't deserve their children. Its definitely a GOOD THING(tm) that the teacher is trying to do. Do not let the flames posted here cloud your mind. Maybe these kids will grow up to make a difference if we teach them that they CAN make one. Someone should send 'em all Linux boxes:)
The U.S. has been doing this for ever. Beneath the Pentagon there's supposed to be this huge mile long room filled with guys who couldn't tell ya what the sun looked like, who sit around all the time doing nothing but cracking codes with supercomputers. Think THEY don't have the latest toys? What's the name of that project to snoop out all the interesting stuff that goes across the internet that the NSA is in to? Slashdot was all over it in November and December. You're worried about Russia? Let the Bear cup his hands behind his ears, we got bigger problems at home.
I won't quote the Constitution for you, since that's about the easiest thing to look up on the internet. But 1. one of the things guaranteed to every American is the RIGHT to a trial by jury over any criminal proceedings, and more importantly to us, any dispute involving a sum of 20$ or more. (IANAL, so don't quote me, just read it yourself, thats what it says.) 2. That's not just any jury. Its a jury of peers. In other words, In a case like this DeCSS fiasco, a jury of folks who know how to at least code. Otherwise they could not be considered peers in context, now, could they?(And lets face it, if the least of the defendants' knowledge of information technology were equated to one of the Great Lakes, the judge's knowledge would have to equate to a thimbleful. So WHO SHOULD"VE DEMANDED A TRIAL BY JURY? Prejudiced/Paid For judges are the very reason juries exist. Just my humble opinion. (sorry, Flame Off.) 3. Any juror has the RIGHT and DUTY to vote "Not Guilty" if for any reason they feel that the defendant is not guilty, reguardless of any law on the books. What this means is that if there is a law in Turkeypoot, Arkansas that says you will be fined 20$ for spitting on the sidewalk and George spits on the sidewalk, if you are on the jury and you don't think george is guilty of a crime even if he did spit on the sidewalk, you are obligated to vote "Not Guilty". Doing so, George gets out of the fine, but more importantly, a major blow has been struck against the stupid blue law that prevents people from spitting on the sidewalk. Our Founding Fathers believed (rightly,) that it is better for a criminal to walk free than for an inocent man to be punished. Next time, it probably wouldn't even make it to court, because it will result in no fine again. Eventually the law gets striken dead. This is the forgotten beauty of the Justice System. It is the check that keeps judges and lawyers and bureaucrats in place. Now that you know, don't blame anyone but yourself if you don't stand up for your American Rights. This is a govornment of the people, for the people, BY THE PEOPLE! Do your part. Only the people (us) can shut these big corps down. To learn more about your duty as an American Citizen, read The Citizen's Rulebook and Jury Handbook. I am sure that you will enjoy the read, and it is right on topic. Don't worry about it being a geocity page, there's no popups. Fight the Good fight.
I can't believe this made it on/. esp. in the Science dept? Put this kind of crap in the WTF dept so I can screeeeeeen it OOOOOUUUUUTTTT. Thank you. V/R, lifebouy#2000123
I see a lot of posts as to how lame this is. Please excuse IBM for proving something we have all suspected for most of our geek lives. Give credit where its due. It seems to me that at this point its all a matter of arranging these little mirage pools such that the output of two produce enough of a mirage in a third to produce an output in the third. -^------^- -^--------^-- -^------^- something like that. if you can make it so that both inputs are required to produce an output, you have a logic gate. The spacing would determine whether or not it was an AND or OR gate. NAND and NOR should be a simple matter of reversing the output's connection to the next pool(s) in line.
I really don't see this as far off in the future. My LCARS may not be too far off after all...
Dont be a dolt. Go read the Constitution. Patents have a purpose. Unfortunately, it is not being served by today's politicians.(Or yesterdays, apparently.) A patent should last only a short while, just long enough to allow the patent holder to get an edge in the market it's affecting. IMHO a patent should last no more than a year, and in the case of ANYTHING related to the computer industry, three months would be more than plenty. If it werent for current patent laws allowing people to sit on thier innovations instead of acting on them immediately, and strangling the U.S. Constitution's purpose for patents in the first place, right now we would ALL have LCARS sitting in front of us. This is a country govorned by Ferengi.
If you think there is a problem, then be part of the solution: OpenBIOS!
I have often wondered why it is so hard ...
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to find information on the WWW. Now, its easy to find the basics on any particular topic. But try to find specifics, and be prepared to be frustrated. For instance, nanotech. We all know what it is, but how many of us know how to do it?Who has the technical knowledge to construct the tools you need? Who knows what to do with those tools if you had them? Information like that should be as common as grass. We should all know it. But try to find out such specific information, and you will eventually hit a brick wall. The science community as a whole should model after GNU's example. Think how far we could go if everyone had access to the hows of cutting edge technology? Just because I dont have a Doctorate in science does not mean I could not contribute valuable data/ideas/theories. All I am saying is that since the Open Source Movement is proving itself time and again to be the best way to achieve progress, perhaps we should be thinking about which other "nerd" projects could benefit from its practices. Don't think, "Oh that will never happen." If the GNU people had said that, we would all be forced to use M$. (I like using M$ for some things, and I love having the CHOICE) Think about it. Apply it everywhere you can. Information should be free. Lets all make it happen. One man can dig a hole, but 100,000 men can move a mountain. Open Source your whole world, not just your software. Then you can really make the world a better place.
Edison could spend his time inventing new things because his life was paid for by the things he'd invented previously. If he didn't know that he would achieve a financial pay off from his efforts, I doubt he would have done what he did. Edison did not invent. Edison stole. How did he steal? Patent laws. Do a little research. Here is a primer. I do not mean this as a flame, I am only trying to keep you from spreading ignorance and to dispel your own. Edison was the Bill Gates of the first half of this century. Don't make him out to be a hero.
Slashdot Mirror
heh. 404 Error.
If you, as a band, ARE good enough, you WILL get the followers if people download your music. If you DO get the followers, then you can make money touring. If you don't, then very likely your music isn't touring quality. Just because you are a band does not mean you are good. Secondly, the cover art may have been a problem 10 years ago, but now days, hey, GIMP, need I say more? I should think it would be really easy to find someone who likes your music and knows how to use a graphics program that will help you design your covers. As for promo gimicks, well, if you are truly good, interest in your band will reach critical mass and explode without the gimmicks. Yes, trying without a big label backing you is more risky. Hey, you could be the only people who like your music, in which case, no tours for you, go get a real job.
/. They probably increased their listening audience by 1000 fold. Nice job. And all they had to do was write an essay.
BTW, kudos to Babtist Death Ray for getting posted on
How about the little guy tossing an apple core in a recycle bin (^^)
"C#" is a poor name. Shouldn't it be "M$"?
This would mean:
0.Gnome and KDE apps that work together well.
1.Gnome and KDE ppl sharing resources.
2.Goodbye QPL and Qt!
3.Debian ppl will stop whining;)
4.Debian will finally include KDE.
All very Good Things(tm).
Off hand I can't see a downside, other than fixing a lot of code.
Never, ever thought I'd see the day when they were even talking about doing this. This is the happiest day since Baseball went on strike...
Two steps: .sig should say something to the effect of: "All files ending in .doc are from my account before opening due to a. it being a proprietary file format which my machine does not understand, and b. the likelyhood of viruses embedded in them. Take your Pick. Please use .rtf when sending your data." .docs! The "I'm ignoring you!" tactic. children have used it for years. Because it works;) .doc junky once a week asking them to post in another format.(for instance, all those parts manuals that are in .doc: email the company) Be sure and be very polite, and be sure and check to make sure when they post in RTF or your favorite non-proprietary format. The idea is to rattle the can, not to ring a gong.
1. Your
2. filter out any emails with an attachment named *.doc.
Hey no more
3. (I can't count) With access to a prompt, simply write a script to email your favorite
These are very simple pro-active steps that you can take that will help change the digital world.
Also, make sure you change email addresses once in a while on that script, so they don't just filter you. Spam is a tool for good, too;) Just dont be obnoxious, then you won't get what you want.
My question is: will Crusoe, etc. be able to optimize in a SMP environ? AND even if it can do that, will it be able to do so for a COW or Beowulf cluster? It seems to me that such optimization at runtime might CRIPPLE a cluster if the processors weren't aware that they were clustered. OTOH, if they WERE aware, and could optimize parallel code, oooohhhh...... That gives me a warm fuzzy feelin just thinking about it. Whichever company achieves that,and it shouldn't be terribly difficult when you consider what they have done already on some of those projects, they could really leverage that. Especially if it optimized non-parallellized binaries to perform parallellized. Now something like that could revolutionize the industry. And give massive computing power. Amazing the level of technology we have achieved in so short a time... Our computers are not only self-aware(in a limited way, temp & voltage, etc.) but aware of thier surroundings(the code that they optimize.) So the next step is to make them aware of thier neighbors(other computers to help them crunch more efficiently and optimize for that). Soon they will be aware of us! Who is ready for that? Just some rambling thoughts...
For a while now, I have been following discussions on OpenBIOS to see what they could come up with. Very impressive, really. OpenBIOS and LinuxBIOS have been sharing for some time. The big reason for it is even simpler than booting faster or putting cool things in your BIOS like graphics (which, I must admit, is cool): The project is about having a system truly free of proprietary software. Feel free to join in and contribute to either project; in the true spirit of Opensource, they share, so helping one will help the other. Ultimately, I would like to see a package that will help sysadmins customize and install thier own bios. Also, lets see Intel try and pull the serial# off a machine that has the serial#'s memory location specifially blocked off in the bios... See? The reasons for doing this go on and on. It's a new frontier in Open Source. How can anyone call themselves a hacker when they depend on Phoenix or Award to turn thier computer on for them?
...the Activist's Way:
Petition petition petition. Press Press Press. You don't just sit around and bitch about it, you do what the Veterans did in the 30's: go and preach it in the streets of Washington D.C. You organize rallys, get spokespeople involved (actors and actresses, they love PR and they get attention) and shake things up.
...the Hacker's Way:
Keep doing what you are doing. That is, making OSS platforms THE platforms for gaming. (if you are not involved in OpenGL or OpenAL or some project that makes linux games a. easy to make and b. ROCK harder than on the closed source OS'es, you are wrong.) If you build it, they will come. If they come, Game publishers will come, too.
A few projects are coming along quite nicely in the Office Products category. Kudos to Gnome,KDE,Abiword, heck the list is just too long, but few products out there do not show great promise *almost* realized.
Then all we have to do is take over the server market. Oh... wait...
I will pay for good software. I just bought UT, even tho i had a copy of it. Why? because it rocks. I didn't need to, I had a copy. Most of us are like that. Nobody minds paying for quality. I have bought Mandrake's distro a few times, even though I had it burned on cd already. You support what is worth your time.
IMHO, Lars appears to be an idiot.(Sorry to state the obvious). About the only legible idea he got across was that its ok for him to bootleg but not for you, because of the quality and quantity. Love to see the defense bring that up in court. For you, Lars: What would be the end result of Napster collapsing the music industry? Which of course will never happen, there are just too many folks out there as clueless as you, but what if? Think of it! Musicians making music for the sheer artistic value! What a concept! Musicians getting published widespread based on the merit of the music, instead of the dictations of an industry(for instance, no more crap bands like New Kids on the Block.) Nothing, NOTHING, could do more good for music quality than for such things as Napster and DeCSS to succeed. It is truly a shame that Metallica is too caught up in Greed ('It's ours, our masters, nobody elses') to see Napster for what it is: Musical freedom. Lets face it: if you are in music for the money you are in it for the wrong reasons. All I can say is that if they continue the suit, they are proving themselves to be hippocrites. Because they started as a garage band, and I doubt it was about money then, was it boys? Now you become exactly what your music rails against. Shame on you.
In the Constitution, in order to sue, the dispute must be for more than $20. It's really plain and simple. He cannot sue for a CD that is worth $14.99(in HIS opinion), there is simply no legitimate provision for it, since every law in this country is based and judged from the Constituion, and the Constitution says dispute>=$20. Also keep in mind that that was $20.00 at the end of the 1700s. Inflation would say no disputes less than, what, $300 or $400? IMHO, small claims court should be abolished.
two things:
0. A laptop to learn things on, keep notes, etc.
1. A reading pad with high resolution that just displays information. Make it so instead of buying textbooks every year, the kids just download thier books into thier reading pads. MacMillin will adjust, trust me. Easier to carry around, less costly in the long run, the kids can keep thier 'textbooks' for the rest of thier lives. The technology exists now to make it a reality.
Ideally,however, watch ST:DS9 episodes and emulate, emulate, emulate. Those little pads they carry around are just what the doctor ordered.
...I learned by the end of sixth grade. After that, it was simply repetition of what I already knew. Reading, writing, mathmatics, science, all the basics, I can honestly say that I forgot more useful things while in High School than I learned.
SO. I feel that giving a kid a laptop to play with is a GOOD THING(tm). Teaching them to use it is even better. But the real point is to teach kids how to LEARN. Everything else is moot. In most cases what I was taught in school was incorrect information anyway(e.g., Edison invented the **insert invention**. Everyone here should know that old Tommy was a businessman not an inventor or scientist. He was the Bill Gates of the first half century).
For instance, I have used what I learned in History for one thing only: I can answer Jeopardy questions like a mad rat. Off hand I would say I did not need it. At all.
Second instance: Mathematics. Once I learned how to do the basics,( +,-,/, and *) nothing else was useful to me in school or out up until I started dealing with computers and learning to program. One could argue that calculators cripple the mind, yes I have heard it before. But the simple fact is that when I needed to learn trig I went to the public library and checked out a friggin BOOK (you know, those paper thingies) and learned on my own in about 15 days. Am I an expert? No. But I can tell you that I learned it when it was useful to me so I retained it much better.
I learned to LEARN. I learned to TEACH MYSELF. Most of you can relate, you taught yourself how to program, how to use Linux, etc. THAT is how you fix what is wrong with public schools. Stop wasting the best learning years of our lives by filling our heads with crap we don't want or need and start TEACHING HOW TO GET WHAT WE NEED ON OUR OWN. Then work on evolving society to think that lots of knowledge is Uber-kewl. As we, the geeks can testify, that kind of environment is the breeding ground for creative minds and unique (sometimes useful) talents. Most of us work in jobs where we took aptitude tests of some sort to get the job. Did we really need to know how to disect a frog to do what we do? Not unless you're a doctor. Or Vet. Those sorts things are better taught in college, to people who stand a chance of, hey, EVER NEEDING that information.
I can tell you that in this day and age,though, if you were to give ME a laptop at, say, 11 years old, by the time I finished high school I would probably be telling you you Linux is for wussies and real men program thier OWN OS in machine language;)
To end this slightly O/T post I have only one quote of importance:
Give a man a fish, he eats for a day. Teach a man to fish, he eats for a lifetime.
An excellent point, but all this means really is that instead of flooding the video card companies, we really need to flood the computer vendors, and let them know that you will not be buying one of thier systems if they use a video card that does not have open source drivers. (also send a CC to the video card vendors). Hit em right where it hurts. Once the computer vendors start getting spooked about using a closed source video card, just watch those video card companies *leap* to the forefront of the open source movement. "Why, we were with you all along don't you remember?"
Oh, yeah, and don't sound so bleeding heart for the video card companies. They don't get any pity from me. They want to make money. We want open source. The Law of Supply and Demand says if they want our money bad enough, they will give us what we want. No "poor video card company just trying to make a decent living" crap for me, thank you. That's just not the way it works.
Also, believe me when I tell you that when we hold out on buying that new card until one of them opens their source, and then they can't keep that opensourced card on the shelves, which card do you think will get put in the computer vendor's systems? Yep you guessed it, the one that SELLS. The one that OPENS THEIR SOURCE.
Have no fear my fellow slashdotters, you WILL get your open source drivers. They can't afford not to give it to us.
Telsa is probably the most important man to live in the last century. I would like to point out that I have posted that link at least 5 times on /. but I am still glad to see that it hit the front page here. I have seen some comments here about how the teacher is using the third graders, and how wrong it is. That's a pretty lame reaction, because I am sure that the point was to TEACH the children that they CAN make a difference, and that they CAN right wrongs. Anyone who has children and doesn't want their children to learn that, doesn't deserve their children. Its definitely a GOOD THING(tm) that the teacher is trying to do. Do not let the flames posted here cloud your mind. Maybe these kids will grow up to make a difference if we teach them that they CAN make one. Someone should send 'em all Linux boxes:)
TESLIX!
The U.S. has been doing this for ever. Beneath the Pentagon there's supposed to be this huge mile long room filled with guys who couldn't tell ya what the sun looked like, who sit around all the time doing nothing but cracking codes with supercomputers. Think THEY don't have the latest toys?
What's the name of that project to snoop out all the interesting stuff that goes across the internet that the NSA is in to? Slashdot was all over it in November and December.
You're worried about Russia? Let the Bear cup his hands behind his ears, we got bigger problems at home.
I won't quote the Constitution for you, since that's about the easiest thing to look up on the internet. But 1. one of the things guaranteed to every American is the RIGHT to a trial by jury over any criminal proceedings, and more importantly to us, any dispute involving a sum of 20$ or more. (IANAL, so don't quote me, just read it yourself, thats what it says.) 2. That's not just any jury. Its a jury of peers. In other words, In a case like this DeCSS fiasco, a jury of folks who know how to at least code. Otherwise they could not be considered peers in context, now, could they?(And lets face it, if the least of the defendants' knowledge of information technology were equated to one of the Great Lakes, the judge's knowledge would have to equate to a thimbleful. So WHO SHOULD"VE DEMANDED A TRIAL BY JURY? Prejudiced/Paid For judges are the very reason juries exist. Just my humble opinion. (sorry, Flame Off.) 3. Any juror has the RIGHT and DUTY to vote "Not Guilty" if for any reason they feel that the defendant is not guilty, reguardless of any law on the books. What this means is that if there is a law in Turkeypoot, Arkansas that says you will be fined 20$ for spitting on the sidewalk and George spits on the sidewalk, if you are on the jury and you don't think george is guilty of a crime even if he did spit on the sidewalk, you are obligated to vote "Not Guilty". Doing so, George gets out of the fine, but more importantly, a major blow has been struck against the stupid blue law that prevents people from spitting on the sidewalk. Our Founding Fathers believed (rightly,) that it is better for a criminal to walk free than for an inocent man to be punished. Next time, it probably wouldn't even make it to court, because it will result in no fine again. Eventually the law gets striken dead. This is the forgotten beauty of the Justice System. It is the check that keeps judges and lawyers and bureaucrats in place. Now that you know, don't blame anyone but yourself if you don't stand up for your American Rights. This is a govornment of the people, for the people, BY THE PEOPLE! Do your part. Only the people (us) can shut these big corps down. To learn more about your duty as an American Citizen, read The Citizen's Rulebook and Jury Handbook. I am sure that you will enjoy the read, and it is right on topic. Don't worry about it being a geocity page, there's no popups. Fight the Good fight.
I can't believe this made it on /. esp. in the Science dept?
Put this kind of crap in the WTF dept so I can screeeeeeen it OOOOOUUUUUTTTT.
Thank you.
V/R,
lifebouy#2000123
Duhhh. Everybody knows Al Gore invented ping.
I see a lot of posts as to how lame this is.
Please excuse IBM for proving something we have all suspected for most of our geek lives. Give credit where its due.
It seems to me that at this point its all a matter of arranging these little mirage pools such that the output of two produce enough of a mirage in a third to produce an output in the third.
-^------^-
-^--------^--
-^------^-
something like that. if you can make it so that both inputs are required to produce an output, you have a logic gate. The spacing would determine whether or not it was an AND or OR gate.
NAND and NOR should be a simple matter of reversing the output's connection to the next pool(s) in line.
I really don't see this as far off in the future.
My LCARS may not be too far off after all...
Dont be a dolt. Go read the Constitution. Patents have a purpose. Unfortunately, it is not being served by today's politicians.(Or yesterdays, apparently.) A patent should last only a short while, just long enough to allow the patent holder to get an edge in the market it's affecting. IMHO a patent should last no more than a year, and in the case of ANYTHING related to the computer industry, three months would be more than plenty. If it werent for current patent laws allowing people to sit on thier innovations instead of acting on them immediately, and strangling the U.S. Constitution's purpose for patents in the first place, right now we would ALL have LCARS sitting in front of us. This is a country govorned by Ferengi.
If you think there is a problem, then be part of the solution:
OpenBIOS!
to find information on the WWW. Now, its easy to find the basics on any particular topic. But try to find specifics, and be prepared to be frustrated. For instance, nanotech. We all know what it is, but how many of us know how to do it?Who has the technical knowledge to construct the tools you need? Who knows what to do with those tools if you had them? Information like that should be as common as grass. We should all know it. But try to find out such specific information, and you will eventually hit a brick wall. The science community as a whole should model after GNU's example. Think how far we could go if everyone had access to the hows of cutting edge technology? Just because I dont have a Doctorate in science does not mean I could not contribute valuable data/ideas/theories. All I am saying is that since the Open Source Movement is proving itself time and again to be the best way to achieve progress, perhaps we should be thinking about which other "nerd" projects could benefit from its practices. Don't think, "Oh that will never happen." If the GNU people had said that, we would all be forced to use M$. (I like using M$ for some things, and I love having the CHOICE) Think about it. Apply it everywhere you can. Information should be free. Lets all make it happen. One man can dig a hole, but 100,000 men can move a mountain. Open Source your whole world, not just your software. Then you can really make the world a better place.
Edison could spend his time inventing new things because his life was paid for by the things he'd invented previously. If he didn't know that he would achieve a financial pay off from his efforts, I doubt he would have done what he did.
Edison did not invent. Edison stole. How did he steal? Patent laws. Do a little research. Here is a primer. I do not mean this as a flame, I am only trying to keep you from spreading ignorance and to dispel your own. Edison was the Bill Gates of the first half of this century. Don't make him out to be a hero.