Now that the American DoJ(Department of Jokes) has predictably rolled over and stuck their collective high heels in the air, one can only hope that the EU will come down on Microsoft like a ton of bricks.
This settlement will only encourage Microsoft to act illegally, just as the last consent agreement did.
Definitely a nudge nudge wink wink settlement and it only furthers the world wide contempt felt by most folks outside the US for US institutions. If Microsoft wasn't a US company they would be in the stocks long before now and we'd all be pelting Ballmer and Gates with rotten fruit.
I would rather any of my eight children watched fuck movies and were influenced by them, then the usual USian violent TV trash and/or inane sitcoms and were influenced by THEM.
It would seem that Microsoft doesn't have a leg to stand on in regard to folks who are under the age of consent when the purchase takes place. Most jusrisdictions don't allow underage folks to enter into legaly binding contracts. Perhaps minors should be required to have a note from their mothers before they can purchase a shrink wrapped product.
If you enclose ten dollars with your letter, informing them that this is a proportional percentage of your income commensurate with the donations of Microsoft and Dupont et al. If they ignore you, write again and ask for your ten dollars back .
What the Net DOES do is give us the opportunity to access newspapers and news feeds in other parts of the world, so as to understand perspectives other than those of the US media which obviously relect the view of the US administration.
Now that the US media has agreed to begin censoring videos from bin Laden (and who knows what else) the only place to pick up on any alternative view is the ubiquitous Net.
And finally... Visual media (TV), to a large extent, requires that you suspend your critical faculties because it is linear. If you stop watching to consider the content, the story has moved on and you have lost the thread.
In the final analysis, if I'm interested in a Muslim reaction to the present bombing of Afghanistan I would prefer to access several Muslim newspapers around the world rather than watch CNN's spin on what the US administration felt we should know
Try the bombing of Laos and Cambodia to the tune of 2 million deaths by the US during the Vietnam unpleasantness... Attacks against sovereign nations on their own soil. If you feel so strongly about a one hour attack on NY and six thousand dead then I would hope you would feel at least as strongly about your responsibility in millions of deaths around the world in the protection of 'American Interests'.
It's common knowledge that the NSA eavsedrops on all communications world wide and passes what it feels is relevant to the CIA. The CIA is notorious for passing what it feels relevant on to American Corporations. By corollary it seems that back doors will give US Corps. an even greater advantage over the rest of the businesses in the world. We all know that US Corps. are too moral to take advantage of this. But still.....
It makes me pleased to be a Canadian. So far out of this lash-up the government is contemplating issuing picture ID to immigrants and deporting them if they are or become criminals.
Better consider moving north to the true land of the free and the home of the brave. We're NOT sending any of our folks off to Afghanistan to get holes punched in their asses. So far the PM seems to be standing firm in our commitmernt as Peacekeepers.
Pot's cheap and simple possession generally nets you a $25 fine. If they bother. And you can learn to fly if you like. Don't send a letter to your congressman. Send a check to your travel agent.
But leave your guns at home, boy, don't take your guns to town... at least not here..
During WWII the BBC passed messages over the air waves to the Resistance in Europe in the "clear". Messages like "Aunt Harriet says thank you for the turnips." or "The fish will ride the bicycle down Potters Lane thursday next." At various times of the day HUNDREDS of these messages went out. Gimme a break on the Internet.
All ready the US coppers are throwing Reporters in the can. They aren't gonna clamp down because some "Terrorist" is gonna pass the secret plans at midnight... they're gonna clamp down so that y'all wont get restive when the bad news starts to come back from the middle east.
I feel bad about the folks that got wiped out on the 11th and really bad about the kids that are left to figure all this out. But I feel worse about the US public that will be in the strangling grasp of Dubya and his backers/cronies. This is just the beginning. By the time it's finished, one way or the other, Orwell's apocalyptic view will seem like paradise.
You didn't relate ALL the history of what you call the Philippine "pacification", but what was really an invasion. The US bought the Philippines, along with the accompanying Philippinos, from the Spanish government after the hokey Spanish American War. The Philippinos did not appreciate being gought and sold, and so transferred their revolution against the Spanish.to the USians. The US had promised the Philippinos their freedom if they assissted the US against the Spanish. Due to 'American Interests' (Dole Pineapple) they broke their word and shouldered the 'White Man's Burden'. The Bonifacio brothers who led the peasant revolution were captured and murdered by the US shill General Aguinaldo.
In the recalcitrant eastern province of Samar, the US imported one of its old Indian fighting Generals whose name escapes me now. The General ordered all males over the age of ten to be shot, and said he wanted "Samar turned into a howling wilderness." Much, I suppose, like 'ground zero' in New York. The Philippines just recently threw the US out on its ass and turned the bases into duty free resorts...
The vast majority of ordinary Muslims consider bin Laden a hero, and many consider him a holy man. Kill him and you will have to fight over a billion enraged Muslims and I really don't know where you're gonna get the oil to do it. They own most of it. They're already rioting in the streets of Pakistan at the thought of their government letting one US soldier onto their soil.
The US has supported corrupt governments in most of the middle east states, not to mention the rest of the world, and they are all on pretty shaky foundations. The populace is gonna revolt and the Mullahs will take over. They think the US is just peachy.
Good luck.
I'm gonna sell my oil stocks and invest in a little company I know of that makes body bags.
I may be of interest to Slashdotters to know that when I tried to send an email to Mohsen Makhmalbaf who wrote the brilliant, heart rending piece on Afghanistan, Yahoo sent me an email this morning telling me that his email adress was blocked.
I don't know if this is Yahoo's move or the US government's, but I can assure you that as a Canadian I am outraged.
With this in mind I want to assure Yahoo that I will never again access their site under any cicumstances untill I have a written apology and a guarantee that this will never happen again.
If this is an example of US consensus building then the effort is doomed to failure.
Dipshits like you really sustain my faith in human stupidity.
Has it occured to you yet that the Russians have been flogging tactical nukes and weapons grade uranium and plutonium out their back door for years now. Who do you think has been buying it? John Smurd for his coffee table? The same folks who YOU trained to fly YOUR planes into YOUR buildings. Now... suppose reposing beneath say... Dallas and/or Houston is a little gem just waiting for your reaction to Tuesdays abomination. It's gonna be two of YOUR cities that disappear in a flash of fire seconds after you lob a nuke at a pile of rocks in Afghanistan. Hasn't it gotten through to you yet that the days of the US doing whatever it feels like are OVER.
Most of the rest of us don't give a big rat's ass for your hurt pride or your precious US Interests. We care about the 5000 folks who are toast and our OWN asses. Get real and get a brain. Untill you people are prepared to sit down and talk about how this came about and how to fix the circumstances so that it doesn't happen again it will happen again and again and again.
And while you're talking, forget about US interests. They rarely coincide with those you're generally toasting in your attempt to protect them. Think of OURS for a change goddamit.
As I watched the twin toweres collapse I was reminded of the great line from the brilliant Australian movie entitled "Breaker Moran", set in South Africa during the Boer War.
As Moran sits, tied into a chair facing a British firing squad, he turns to his companion in death beside him and says, "This is what comes of Empire, Billy."
It's interesting that two of these flights took off from Boston and terminated in New York... and a significant number of American Irish in both those cities have been sending money and arms to the IRA for fifty years to bomb London. Maybe what goes round comes etc.
Wow! You USians aren't on the slippery slope leading to fascism... you're there. If this had been practiced in the old USSR twenty years ago, USian politicians would have been trumpeting the dangers of Communism ergo 'Big Brother' and building more missiles.Now there seems to be a disconcerting number of you who think this is OK because it's just for criminals... and this in a country that seems to be rapidly criminalizing a HUGE proportion of their citizens.
As a matter of interest, you folks that agree that facial recognition software is Ok should look up the definition of 'psychopath' in a dictionary, and then ponder how many cops, politicians and Corporate CEOs you know that DON'T fit the profile.
Scary eh?
We certainly have our share of dipshit pols and CEOs here in Canada, not to froget the pscopaths in power at the corporate, judicial and governmental level, but I hope that this lust for technology to control the rest of us doesn't bleed across the border or it'll soon be time to build the Great Wall of North America... or failing that, to head for the mountains.and settle in for a long battle.
This is just one more reason why I will never, under any circumstances, ever visit the US again. Me and Dimitri.
I saw an Englishman flinging a full sized car a couple of hundred yards the other day on TV... and for a follow up he flung flaming pianos several hundred yards. He was determined to build an all metal beauty next, scaled up to two or three times the size of his present pride and joy. Formidable!
Why isn't there an inexpensive debit card reader that plugs into your usb? Pretty simple rig. Then your pin number remains where it belongs... in the bank. Some of us don't use credit cards but the ubiquitos debit card is everywhere... everywhere but the net.
Most folks posting seem to have forgotten that Microsoft has been judged to be a Monopoly by the US courts, and as a monopoly is subject to different rules. It can't use its position as a Monopoly to bundle software to the deteriment of the consumer.
European monopoly rules are different however. There Microsoft cannot bundle if it is to the deteriment of the consumer OR the conpetition.
This isn't about bundling. This is about Microsoft as a Monopoly bundling to further its Monopoly.
C'mon you guys... get real.
The art of making damascus steel was never lost... it's simply a matter of forge welding two or more different kinds od steel in a laminate. Simple stuff. Actually you can use nickle instead of one of the different steels... or iron. You can buy it ready made or you can do it yourself and always have been able to. It might interest computer nerds to know that Danascus steel had really very little to do with Damascus.It was a laminate composed of iron and high carbon steel and it was the high carbon steel that was the ingredient that made it so valuable. The High carbon steel was made in India in clay crucibles. The method was simple. Put raw iron and some charcoal in a clay crucible with a small vent in the top and melt it. The iron absorbed some of the carbon (charcoal) and voila... carbon steel. This was called Wooten steel as I recall, after the Indian family that had discovered the process. For years it was a family secret. Arab traders bought it in India and transported it to Damascus which was at the time the largest market, where it was sold for an equivalent weight in gold. The source was kept secret by the traders. Kinda like microsoft.. Thus the assumption that it was made in Damascus. The carbon steel was brittle because of the high carbon content so it was laminated with iron. Iron gave it toughness and resilance and the carbon steel gave it a hard cutting edge. Because it is composed of two or more different hardnesses the edge of a Damascus blade is microscopically serrated which allows it to outcut a conventional blade 4 to 1. There any number of bladesmiths making Damascus blades today.
Some of the magical blades of the past (Excalibur) are reckoned to have been forge welded from iron and meteorite nickle from whence came their mystical properties. Forge welding has been around since man discoverd fire and metal.
Pick up any Knife magazine and you will find that probably half the blades are so called Damascus. The beauty lies in the pattern. After the first several layers are laminated they can be twisted, cut and rewelded a number of times. Beautiful patterns can be created. When the blade is finished it is usually soaked in a weak acid solution. The acid eats away one of the laminates more easily than the other, enhancing the pattern.
Another example of forge welding is Damascus gun barrels which were still in fashion at the turn of the last century when black powder was still in vogue. These were made by forge welding.strips of steel around a round mandril. They too were commonly etched with acid to enhance the spiral pattern. Usually they were browned instead of blued. I hunted with a shotgun with Damascus barrels 50 years ago when I was a kid. Beautifull gun. Unfortunately the increased pressures developed by modern powders ocassionally caused the barrels to unlay with scary results.
The rediscovery of Damascus steel is comparable to Microsoft rediscovering the internet. In other words it's bullshit. Sounds like another patent scam to me.
Slashdotters posting would do us all a favour by not referring to folks prominent in our community as "leaders". Project managers etc. perhaps but not "leaders". I don't have, nor do I want, a "leader". I'm too bloody old for this bull shit. We're starting to sound like one of our wretched, traditional political parties. Mr. Icaza may be a nice man, but my leader he's not.
It's well past time for our generally worthless politicians to get off their collective asses and pass laws against this kind of electronic stalking. I don't listen to music, it's so much white noise to me, but I am going to begin downloading songs because the RIAA pisses me off.
After hanging out in this dimension for 62 years, I've been led inexorably to the conclusion that any society based on greed and arrogance is doomed to fail. Open Source is one of the few bright spots. I find it very reassuring that folks I have never met, nor likely ever will, generously share the fruits of their intellect and labour with me. I suspect that this is the essence of the Christian 'New Jerusalem'. Sharing.
As for Open Source being revolutionary... may I suggest that it is part of an ongoing revolutionary struggle that has been happening since man has been able to communicate with the other members of his species. There has always been a core of folks struggling for freedom. Open source is part of that struggle. Unfortunately, revolutions are generally co-opted by the very people they were designed to displace. You only have to look at the French Revolution, the Russian, American, Chinese, Filipino, the list is long, to see that this is true... and you only have to look at our small segment of the larger picture to see the dangers. It is vitally important that we defend the GPL against all attempts to co-opt it. And you may be sure that the mega-corporations are trying. One can only hope they will die in the attempt.
Finally, it would seem that folks think of revolutions in terms of blood and the struggle of armies. Ours is not. It is a rediscovery of a beneficial mind set... the belief that sharing is the only way to ensure the survival of our species.
The Net and Open Source have done more to transcend national borders than any other technology in our history. Unfortunately, but inevitably, it has been under attack by transnational corporations who have attempted and are attempting still to co-opt and corrupt it. The good news is that they have pissed their pants so far in the attempt.
I must say that I'm a little disappointed in the attacks on Mr. Katz by./ participants. His piece may be a little euphoric but hardly deserving of the vituperous rhetoric it seems to have attracted. Perhaps we, the participants in Open Source, are a little embarrassed by praise. I hope so. Then again, perhaps Mr. Katz's detractors are simply corporate shills. Bear up, Mr. Katz. The light at the end of the tunnel, although distant yet, is not an approaching train.
pretty easy to see how the US mananges to lock up one quarter of all the prisoners in the world. Spam fer crissake. The Canadian Post Office delivers 10x more to my po box daily than the net delivers to my isp mail box in a week. Get a grip down there. Lighten up.
Slashdot Mirror
Now that the American DoJ(Department of Jokes) has predictably rolled over and stuck their collective high heels in the air, one can only hope that the EU will come down on Microsoft like a ton of bricks.
This settlement will only encourage Microsoft to act illegally, just as the last consent agreement did.
Definitely a nudge nudge wink wink settlement and it only furthers the world wide contempt felt by most folks outside the US for US institutions. If Microsoft wasn't a US company they would be in the stocks long before now and we'd all be pelting Ballmer and Gates with rotten fruit.
Humbug.
I would rather any of my eight children watched fuck movies and were influenced by them, then the usual USian violent TV trash and/or inane sitcoms and were influenced by THEM.
It would seem that Microsoft doesn't have a leg to stand on in regard to folks who are under the age of consent when the purchase takes place. Most jusrisdictions don't allow underage folks to enter into legaly binding contracts. Perhaps minors should be required to have a note from their mothers before they can purchase a shrink wrapped product.
IANAL. thank god
If you enclose ten dollars with your letter, informing them that this is a proportional percentage of your income commensurate with the donations of Microsoft and Dupont et al. If they ignore you, write again and ask for your ten dollars back .
What the Net DOES do is give us the opportunity to access newspapers and news feeds in other parts of the world, so as to understand perspectives other than those of the US media which obviously relect the view of the US administration.
Now that the US media has agreed to begin censoring videos from bin Laden (and who knows what else) the only place to pick up on any alternative view is the ubiquitous Net.
And finally... Visual media (TV), to a large extent, requires that you suspend your critical faculties because it is linear. If you stop watching to consider the content, the story has moved on and you have lost the thread.
In the final analysis, if I'm interested in a Muslim reaction to the present bombing of Afghanistan I would prefer to access several Muslim newspapers around the world rather than watch CNN's spin on what the US administration felt we should know
Try the bombing of Laos and Cambodia to the tune of 2 million deaths by the US during the Vietnam unpleasantness... Attacks against sovereign nations on their own soil. If you feel so strongly about a one hour attack on NY and six thousand dead then I would hope you would feel at least as strongly about your responsibility in millions of deaths around the world in the protection of 'American Interests'.
I suggest you get your priorities straight..
It's common knowledge that the NSA eavsedrops on all communications world wide and passes what it feels is relevant to the CIA. The CIA is notorious for passing what it feels relevant on to American Corporations. By corollary it seems that back doors will give US Corps. an even greater advantage over the rest of the businesses in the world. We all know that US Corps. are too moral to take advantage of this. But still.....
It makes me pleased to be a Canadian. So far out of this lash-up the government is contemplating issuing picture ID to immigrants and deporting them if they are or become criminals.
Better consider moving north to the true land of the free and the home of the brave. We're NOT sending any of our folks off to Afghanistan to get holes punched in their asses. So far the PM seems to be standing firm in our commitmernt as Peacekeepers.
Pot's cheap and simple possession generally nets you a $25 fine. If they bother. And you can learn to fly if you like. Don't send a letter to your congressman. Send a check to your travel agent.
But leave your guns at home, boy, don't take your guns to town... at least not here..
During WWII the BBC passed messages over the air waves to the Resistance in Europe in the "clear". Messages like "Aunt Harriet says thank you for the turnips." or "The fish will ride the bicycle down Potters Lane thursday next." At various times of the day HUNDREDS of these messages went out. Gimme a break on the Internet.
All ready the US coppers are throwing Reporters in the can. They aren't gonna clamp down because some "Terrorist" is gonna pass the secret plans at midnight... they're gonna clamp down so that y'all wont get restive when the bad news starts to come back from the middle east.
I feel bad about the folks that got wiped out on the 11th and really bad about the kids that are left to figure all this out. But I feel worse about the US public that will be in the strangling grasp of Dubya and his backers/cronies. This is just the beginning. By the time it's finished, one way or the other, Orwell's apocalyptic view will seem like paradise.
You didn't relate ALL the history of what you call the Philippine "pacification", but what was really an invasion. The US bought the Philippines, along with the accompanying Philippinos, from the Spanish government after the hokey Spanish American War. The Philippinos did not appreciate being gought and sold, and so transferred their revolution against the Spanish.to the USians. The US had promised the Philippinos their freedom if they assissted the US against the Spanish. Due to 'American Interests' (Dole Pineapple) they broke their word and shouldered the 'White Man's Burden'. The Bonifacio brothers who led the peasant revolution were captured and murdered by the US shill General Aguinaldo.
In the recalcitrant eastern province of Samar, the US imported one of its old Indian fighting Generals whose name escapes me now. The General ordered all males over the age of ten to be shot, and said he wanted "Samar turned into a howling wilderness." Much, I suppose, like 'ground zero' in New York. The Philippines just recently threw the US out on its ass and turned the bases into duty free resorts...
The vast majority of ordinary Muslims consider bin Laden a hero, and many consider him a holy man. Kill him and you will have to fight over a billion enraged Muslims and I really don't know where you're gonna get the oil to do it. They own most of it. They're already rioting in the streets of Pakistan at the thought of their government letting one US soldier onto their soil.
The US has supported corrupt governments in most of the middle east states, not to mention the rest of the world, and they are all on pretty shaky foundations. The populace is gonna revolt and the Mullahs will take over. They think the US is just peachy.
Good luck.
I'm gonna sell my oil stocks and invest in a little company I know of that makes body bags.
I may be of interest to Slashdotters to know that when I tried to send an email to Mohsen Makhmalbaf who wrote the brilliant, heart rending piece on Afghanistan, Yahoo sent me an email this morning telling me that his email adress was blocked.
I don't know if this is Yahoo's move or the US government's, but I can assure you that as a Canadian I am outraged.
With this in mind I want to assure Yahoo that I will never again access their site under any cicumstances untill I have a written apology and a guarantee that this will never happen again.
If this is an example of US consensus building then the effort is doomed to failure.
Dipshits like you really sustain my faith in human stupidity.
Has it occured to you yet that the Russians have been flogging tactical nukes and weapons grade uranium and plutonium out their back door for years now. Who do you think has been buying it? John Smurd for his coffee table? The same folks who YOU trained to fly YOUR planes into YOUR buildings. Now... suppose reposing beneath say... Dallas and/or Houston is a little gem just waiting for your reaction to Tuesdays abomination. It's gonna be two of YOUR cities that disappear in a flash of fire seconds after you lob a nuke at a pile of rocks in Afghanistan. Hasn't it gotten through to you yet that the days of the US doing whatever it feels like are OVER.
Most of the rest of us don't give a big rat's ass for your hurt pride or your precious US Interests. We care about the 5000 folks who are toast and our OWN asses. Get real and get a brain. Untill you people are prepared to sit down and talk about how this came about and how to fix the circumstances so that it doesn't happen again it will happen again and again and again.
And while you're talking, forget about US interests. They rarely coincide with those you're generally toasting in your attempt to protect them. Think of OURS for a change goddamit.
As I watched the twin toweres collapse I was reminded of the great line from the brilliant Australian movie entitled "Breaker Moran", set in South Africa during the Boer War.
As Moran sits, tied into a chair facing a British firing squad, he turns to his companion in death beside him and says, "This is what comes of Empire, Billy."
It's interesting that two of these flights took off from Boston and terminated in New York... and a significant number of American Irish in both those cities have been sending money and arms to the IRA for fifty years to bomb London. Maybe what goes round comes etc.
Wow! You USians aren't on the slippery slope leading to fascism... you're there. If this had been practiced in the old USSR twenty years ago, USian politicians would have been trumpeting the dangers of Communism ergo 'Big Brother' and building more missiles.Now there seems to be a disconcerting number of you who think this is OK because it's just for criminals... and this in a country that seems to be rapidly criminalizing a HUGE proportion of their citizens.
As a matter of interest, you folks that agree that facial recognition software is Ok should look up the definition of 'psychopath' in a dictionary, and then ponder how many cops, politicians and Corporate CEOs you know that DON'T fit the profile.
Scary eh?
We certainly have our share of dipshit pols and CEOs here in Canada, not to froget the pscopaths in power at the corporate, judicial and governmental level, but I hope that this lust for technology to control the rest of us doesn't bleed across the border or it'll soon be time to build the Great Wall of North America... or failing that, to head for the mountains.and settle in for a long battle.
This is just one more reason why I will never, under any circumstances, ever visit the US again. Me and Dimitri.
I saw an Englishman flinging a full sized car a couple of hundred yards the other day on TV... and for a follow up he flung flaming pianos several hundred yards. He was determined to build an all metal beauty next, scaled up to two or three times the size of his present pride and joy. Formidable!
judges ARE lawyers for crissake!
Why isn't there an inexpensive debit card reader that plugs into your usb? Pretty simple rig. Then your pin number remains where it belongs... in the bank. Some of us don't use credit cards but the ubiquitos debit card is everywhere... everywhere but the net.
Most folks posting seem to have forgotten that Microsoft has been judged to be a Monopoly by the US courts, and as a monopoly is subject to different rules. It can't use its position as a Monopoly to bundle software to the deteriment of the consumer.
European monopoly rules are different however. There Microsoft cannot bundle if it is to the deteriment of the consumer OR the conpetition.
This isn't about bundling. This is about Microsoft as a Monopoly bundling to further its Monopoly.
C'mon you guys... get real. The art of making damascus steel was never lost... it's simply a matter of forge welding two or more different kinds od steel in a laminate. Simple stuff. Actually you can use nickle instead of one of the different steels... or iron. You can buy it ready made or you can do it yourself and always have been able to. It might interest computer nerds to know that Danascus steel had really very little to do with Damascus.It was a laminate composed of iron and high carbon steel and it was the high carbon steel that was the ingredient that made it so valuable. The High carbon steel was made in India in clay crucibles. The method was simple. Put raw iron and some charcoal in a clay crucible with a small vent in the top and melt it. The iron absorbed some of the carbon (charcoal) and voila... carbon steel. This was called Wooten steel as I recall, after the Indian family that had discovered the process. For years it was a family secret. Arab traders bought it in India and transported it to Damascus which was at the time the largest market, where it was sold for an equivalent weight in gold. The source was kept secret by the traders. Kinda like microsoft.. Thus the assumption that it was made in Damascus. The carbon steel was brittle because of the high carbon content so it was laminated with iron. Iron gave it toughness and resilance and the carbon steel gave it a hard cutting edge. Because it is composed of two or more different hardnesses the edge of a Damascus blade is microscopically serrated which allows it to outcut a conventional blade 4 to 1. There any number of bladesmiths making Damascus blades today. Some of the magical blades of the past (Excalibur) are reckoned to have been forge welded from iron and meteorite nickle from whence came their mystical properties. Forge welding has been around since man discoverd fire and metal. Pick up any Knife magazine and you will find that probably half the blades are so called Damascus. The beauty lies in the pattern. After the first several layers are laminated they can be twisted, cut and rewelded a number of times. Beautiful patterns can be created. When the blade is finished it is usually soaked in a weak acid solution. The acid eats away one of the laminates more easily than the other, enhancing the pattern. Another example of forge welding is Damascus gun barrels which were still in fashion at the turn of the last century when black powder was still in vogue. These were made by forge welding.strips of steel around a round mandril. They too were commonly etched with acid to enhance the spiral pattern. Usually they were browned instead of blued. I hunted with a shotgun with Damascus barrels 50 years ago when I was a kid. Beautifull gun. Unfortunately the increased pressures developed by modern powders ocassionally caused the barrels to unlay with scary results. The rediscovery of Damascus steel is comparable to Microsoft rediscovering the internet. In other words it's bullshit. Sounds like another patent scam to me.
Slashdotters posting would do us all a favour by not referring to folks prominent in our community as "leaders". Project managers etc. perhaps but not "leaders". I don't have, nor do I want, a "leader". I'm too bloody old for this bull shit. We're starting to sound like one of our wretched, traditional political parties. Mr. Icaza may be a nice man, but my leader he's not.
It's well past time for our generally worthless politicians to get off their collective asses and pass laws against this kind of electronic stalking. I don't listen to music, it's so much white noise to me, but I am going to begin downloading songs because the RIAA pisses me off.
As a Canadian, I don't need the American NSA involved in MY operating system on MY computer. Period. Let them keep their code to themselves.
After hanging out in this dimension for 62 years, I've been led inexorably to the conclusion that any society based on greed and arrogance is doomed to fail. Open Source is one of the few bright spots. I find it very reassuring that folks I have never met, nor likely ever will, generously share the fruits of their intellect and labour with me. I suspect that this is the essence of the Christian 'New Jerusalem'. Sharing. As for Open Source being revolutionary... may I suggest that it is part of an ongoing revolutionary struggle that has been happening since man has been able to communicate with the other members of his species. There has always been a core of folks struggling for freedom. Open source is part of that struggle. Unfortunately, revolutions are generally co-opted by the very people they were designed to displace. You only have to look at the French Revolution, the Russian, American, Chinese, Filipino, the list is long, to see that this is true... and you only have to look at our small segment of the larger picture to see the dangers. It is vitally important that we defend the GPL against all attempts to co-opt it. And you may be sure that the mega-corporations are trying. One can only hope they will die in the attempt. Finally, it would seem that folks think of revolutions in terms of blood and the struggle of armies. Ours is not. It is a rediscovery of a beneficial mind set... the belief that sharing is the only way to ensure the survival of our species. The Net and Open Source have done more to transcend national borders than any other technology in our history. Unfortunately, but inevitably, it has been under attack by transnational corporations who have attempted and are attempting still to co-opt and corrupt it. The good news is that they have pissed their pants so far in the attempt. I must say that I'm a little disappointed in the attacks on Mr. Katz by ./ participants. His piece may be a little euphoric but hardly deserving of the vituperous rhetoric it seems to have attracted. Perhaps we, the participants in Open Source, are a little embarrassed by praise. I hope so. Then again, perhaps Mr. Katz's detractors are simply corporate shills. Bear up, Mr. Katz. The light at the end of the tunnel, although distant yet, is not an approaching train.
pretty easy to see how the US mananges to lock up one quarter of all the prisoners in the world. Spam fer crissake. The Canadian Post Office delivers 10x more to my po box daily than the net delivers to my isp mail box in a week. Get a grip down there. Lighten up.