oh btw
what they are supposed to do: browse the web. so why do they have IRC, EMAIL, Skins, news, and loads of other bloat in them?
Of course, that "bloat" isn't there is you choose not to download or compile those components (IRC chatzilla, XMLterm, and Mozilla mailnews are not required to run Mozilla). The installer will allow the user to choose what parts he/she wants.
And skins aren't bloat, they're just a side effect of a UI defined in XML--which actually saves code, since non-native widgets are required for CSS compliance anyway.
It seems to me that it would be fairly trivial to embed an ActiveX component in an HTML email, to mess with people who read their mail with ActiveX-enabled software (Hotmail via MSIE, Outlook, etc.). Since ActiveX is just plain-vanilla binary executables with the most minimal security imaginable, it could do all sorts of unpleasant things when viewed. It could, for example: propagate itself (by interfacing with Outlook), embed itself into every HTML file on the user's hard drive, embed itself into all outgoing HTML mail (in which case it could become nearly uncatchable), send all sorts of info over the net, install backdoors, etc. I'm surprised it hasn't been done already.
I got a Hotmail account years ago (my first email account, and before MS bought Hotmail). I still have it, although I don't use it that often. I really only use it as an alternate account during the summer, since my school account won't let me log in from a different server, and because several of my friends keep sending me stuff at that address even though I keep giving them the new one.
Exactly. But my biggest "itch" about this whole this is tha tI'm a very proud hacker. I am paid to test systems, find security holes, and then plug them up before others expliot them. It's all written in my contract. Does that mean I'm a cracker?
HELL no. A "cracker" to me, means somebody who does exactly what I do, only where he/she/it is not wanted, authorised, AND, MOST IMPORTANTLY, LEAVES A TRAIL TO BE FOLLOWED AND DEFACES SOMETHING OR BREAKS SOMETHING.
I thought this was what the terms "white hat" and "black hat" were coined for, at least in computer jargon. As I understand it, they were originally coined in the movie industry to refer to the hero and villain (thank you, Jonny Quest comics!)
Personally, I think the movie "Hackers" had alot to do with it too... Maybe should have been called "Crackers"?
Computer criminals have been commonly referred to as "hackers" by laymen for much longer than that. I remember waaaaaay back in 1st grade (I'm 20 now, a junior in college), we had to do a project where we made acronyms of out names from words that we felt described us. For the "H" in my first name, I used the word "hacker". My teacher got mad and had me change it, because she thought it implied criminal activity, when in actuality it just meant I liked to play around with BASIC and Logo on my Apple IIc.
I think we're stuck with "hacker" meaning criminal in general use. But we can still make the distinction in jargon. Just remember who you're talking to, or remember to make the distinction clear.
And yes, the movie should have been called "Crackers", but to most Americans that would have meant "white trash".
OT--found a nifty word in an online legal dictionary: Usufruct. It's the right to the products of property rather than the property itself, like a farmer allowing someone else to farm the land and profit from what they grow, but retaining rights to the land itself. This might come in handy during the next discussion about GPL & Open Source.
While we're on the topic of misused words, here's one confusion that doesn't show up very often but annoys the hell out of me when it does: etymology vs. entomology. Etymology is the derivation of words from earlier forms--most dictionaries show it at the end of each definition. Entomology is the study of insects.
Do you really think this will make Joe Enduser is really going to care more about Open Source because Microsoft might use it? I haven't overheard any conversations in the supermarket recently about the Microsoft Foundation Classes or Visual Studio. Because these are topics that are only important to coders.
Open Source is not going to suddenly become interesting to the average person just because Microsoft uses it. It doesn't affect them, because they won't be involved. People know about applications like Excel and PowerPoint because they use them (or are exposed to them). Unless Joe Enduser starts coding, Open Source is just some technical programming thing to him--and once he starts coding, he becomes part of the group for which technical programming things are important.
Oh, and it just sounds like they might open their APIs, which isn't Open Source (but would be a good thing regardless).
--- Zardoz has spoken!
Re:You leave trails everywhere...
on
The Eroded Self
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· Score: 2
I just did a search on my own name, and found out that I'm an aviator, author, and humorist. That page, as well as several others with additional evidence, showed up in both AltaVista and Google, so it must be true! Amnesia is the only possible explanation for my unawareness of this obvious fact.
Seriously, though, this just shows that it's fairly easy to get bogus information when trying to pull it together from several sources. Lack of privacy is bad enough, but the possibility of having one's reputation warped by a false positive identification may be even worse. Remember the Harry Buttle / Harry Tuttle mixup in "Brazil"?
BTW, I also found a bunch of old emails I'd sent to the www-style@w3.org mailing list as archived on the W3C's site.
OK. wrong choice of words in the title.
I do download browser only, BUT what I'm saying is I don't even want those options to be there.
So nobody should want these features? I'm looking forward to reading my mail with Mozilla.
No "Personal" or "Links" toolbar that, by default, is filled with the "approved" websites or Favorites that's already full of Microsoft crap that only AOLites look at like the sheep that they are.
I hate the preset links too. So do you know what I do? I delete them. It's not hard.
--- Zardoz has spoken!
Re:But is this really for the better?
on
Microsoft Loses
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· Score: 1
(but as far as I know sheep entrails and chicken bones have always played an integral part)
Nah, that's the futures market.
--- Zardoz has spoken!
Re:Simulating JonKatz: A Case Study
on
Two By Katz
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· Score: 1
Excellent. I've alluded to this a few times, I do the same with JWZ's dadadodo, and your program seems to do a good job as well. Does it generate lots of paragraphs that you hand-picked?
Well, I wish I could take credit for the program, but I just found it. The paragraph breaks were all inserted by hand (BABEL doesn't add line breaks). IIRC, I only deleted one sentence, because it was one Katz had actually used. I didn't reorder them at all.
Getting the last 20 or so stories and filtering out the slashdot crap in shell script isn't that hard, eventually I'll keep around some permanent scripts for it. Once I get to the real pages, win no comments preferably, I dump them with lynx, and use head and tail to get the "content"...
I actually just cut-and-pasted the stories into emacs by hand. If I planned on doing this more than once, I'd write a shell script, but I think the novelty would wear off pretty quickly.
--- Zardoz has spoken!
Re:In case you'd love to use the "katzalator"....
on
Two By Katz
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· Score: 1
There seems to be a problem with this script, at the line
($alpha) = $word =~/([A-Za-z]+('t$)?)/;
It causes the indentation to go all wonky when I tried to straighten it out in emacs. Specifically, the next line gets auto-indented way more than it should. Is something wrong with that regexp? I'm only vaguely familiar with Perl (the only working script I've written so far is a random.signature generator)
--- Zardoz has spoken!
Simulating JonKatz: A Case Study
on
Two By Katz
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· Score: 2
After seeing this, I decided to try my hand at simulating Jon Katz. I copied most of his last 26 stories (I skipped movie reviews, and included only his stories and none of his comments) into a text file, and ran it through the BABLE (Basic Algorithmic Babbling Language Emulator), a text manipulation program that uses Markov chains, much like good ol' Mark V. Shaney. I then broke it up into paragraphs. My conclusion? We can rebuild him. Make him faster chchchch, stronger chchchchch, more long-winded...
Here's the result:
imprisoned. They just rail from the fringes until they wear themselves out. Winston wouldn't have been thrown in jail a few months, a scenario familiar to contemporary tech workers and companies. Now his company's trying something even more radical. Ford's new Web sites will link employees all over the Net for practical purposes simply becomes public domain.
The protocol initially referred to marginal or alternative works, but it has some promise as a new economic model for dealing with intellectual content, since that's another industry where the same issues press, Spurius suggests.
A company that releases a game, instead of selling it, could offer membership to a service that permits consumers to download any game they choose from the server any time. Instead of offering only its own games, a company could allow all companies to put their games on its server, including people who have already released non - commercial games. Spurius's idea is to sell culture, beginning with smaller games and projects, and building towards bigger, more commercial products.
From Timothy Lord, Slashdot's managing editor: A question that arises when it comes to the genome, one the world has and will continue to debate: do we need papers anymore? Is there any reason to preserve their form and function, any vital purpose they serve? At this moment in media history, no longer an option but a necessity, not a privilege - they can begin rewriting their own sorry history. Ford really did have a better idea this time. Perhaps even ground - breaking, if it catches on. Here? s some questions to mull in front of their audiences, and they take no moral responsibility for that.
People like you are celebrating and enabling and helping raise a culture of thievery that is not only institutionalized but which considers itself morally superior. We are a nation of laws and you seem to celebrate a nation of law - enforcement agencies is also being developed for each school in the state to notify when a tip has been received by Pinkerton on its nationwide toll - free lines for students, who will be able to fit the the whole company's holding on a couple of CD's or micro - chips.
That says a lot about how valuable information has become in the Digital Age, shrieking and clucking about a changing world the Net, and regain control of popular culture, as corporatists move against free music and other cultural offerings in smaller, less costly units.
They can cross - reference your personal ID with records listing your name, address, telephone number, e - traders The Undernet subterranean but thriving mailing lists, Web logs and e - mail than a book, King's latest novella, Riding the Bullet. The demand online was so great - - more than, orders - - that could ensure that people who are responsible for creative work get paid, while digital information remains freely shareable online.
The SPP is an electronic - commerce mechanism designed to make it easier than ever to form smaller, adaptive communities - buddy, family, friend and work lists. These almost function as private associations, attracting countless small communities of people with similar interests - college students or music lovers, most of whom are disgusted by Washington politics?
The DMCA suggests that corporate pressure can reverse the way lawmaking ought to work: the law seems to have come before the discussion, as is clear from messages like this one. While the Net and Web, papers have become more marginalized, less vital.
Newspapers never grasped that interactivity isn't about technology, a desire to dominate markets, a passion for a particular culture. Certainly, notions of exposure and punishment no longer apply. No kid in America for roughly billion, a fraction of the attention and discussion it deserved.
It may also be the best hope for the st century, perhaps - - the bound book - - prologues, epilogues, blurbs are all openly addressed, becoming part of the high - tech economy. Does anyone reading this actually work hours a week.
The study strongly challenged the assertions of Net advocates and enthusiasts like me who argue that the Net, instantly. And there's no taking them back. In the st Century. That puts increasing pressure on undemocratic governments, who quite correctly dread the spread of computing, e - traders, the Undernet subterranean but thriving mailing lists, Usenet groups, messaging systems, as contact with other humans. It suggested that the Net isn't a sex story or a business or cracking story, but increasing, the biggest story of our time.
In Code, Lawrence Lessing of Harvard writes about the emergence of new kinds of culture - gaming, communities, mailing lists, Usenet groups, messaging systems, as contact with other humans. It suggested that the Net, and of the Web in particular, is altering the way younger Americans view many traditional ethics and values - - the people Ridley calls this lucky generation - - are dangerous.
A safe school environment is fundamental to helping North Carolina's students succeed in school, announced Governor Hunt. Every school ought to be required reading for anyone who needs to be reminded of the importance of science in the contemporary world. Since most scientific language is arcane and inaccessible to much of humanity, or punish them when they try to join communal discussions.
Women have a right to speak publicly; so do older people, foreigners, newcomers, children - are excluded from the conversation or choose to avoid it. Some are too vulnerable too join in; many are tough enough but they don't see much reason to bother.
So flamers discourage free speech, prey on the weak and dominate discussion. They have plenty to contribute - brains, energy, information and technical skills. But they need mentoring. If their mantra is content, this alliance is unbeatable. The AOL Time - Warner, rule our world.
E - mail is convenient, visceral and democratic, but it, along with countless eruptions, rebellions and civil wars. Both movements promised, and then rarely.
Newspapers are still mired in anti - deluvian and phobic notions about technology - is Johnny getting onto the Playboy website, is it even possible to own something that's distributed globally through a representational medium like the Internet and activities like computer gaming are turning otherwise healthy school children into mass murderers.
In a short time, we will have gone from knowing little about genes to knowing nearly everything. The human mind, then, one of a torrent of excited journalistic accounts of his life, Case spouts the corporatist ideology for the umpteenth time in recent days: the inevitabilities of globalization, the ethos of the marketplace and the growing power of technology as a force in modern life.
These are the rationales for Napster, DVD and the ongoing war on MP 's. Citizen Case, who, at, has miraculously become our new national corporatist leader and spokesperson. Read below for more on this increasingly troubling problem and to offer some possible solutions.
This weekend, Josh Rosenberg, a Slashdot reader urged a few weeks ago after reading - and apparently disliking - - a handful of obscenely large and powerful businesses. The libertarian ethos of the marketplace and the growing power of technology as a force in modern life. These are the rationales for Napster, DVD and the ongoing war on MP 's.
Citizen Case, he drives a VW, wrote the stunned reporter creator of one the blandest, most consumer - abusive Internet Service Providers.
In a world where we're all increasingly dependent on networked computing for work, banking, music, games or other intellectual property online. Only in recent months the DMCA has sparked legal actions like these: Jon Johansen, a teenager, at the polling booth, or most important, at the cash register.
It is presumptuous and arrogant on so many levels it's astonishing to see public officials like North Carolina Gov. Jim Hunt adopt the idea so unthinkingly and enthusiastically. But he's not alone - - plenty of parents and educators are along for the ride.
It isn't widely held in political and media circles - - especially ones far removed from corporate models of culture and creativity - - a new kind of sub - culture, having its roots in the earliest days of the Net - everything will go digital - is not coming to pass. Certain information formats can offer a sensual, contextual appeal that's impossible to quantify, and was not predicted.
Consumers have fiercely resisted getting newspapers or books via digitized tablets. Convenience and speed are critical measures, but not in the United States, book publishers are beginning to do. So like newspapers, book publishers are making the same mistake. Why interactivity isn't about technology, a desire to dominate markets, a passion for a particular culture.
Certainly, notions of exposure and punishment no longer apply. No kid in America for roughly billion, a fraction of the attention and discussion it deserved.
It may also be the best hope for the st century. They are less overtly malignant and heavy - handed, and have little reason to fear encroaching corporatism. In this regard, we are told, says that even to ask about God is beyond its scope.
But this has triggered growing political, cultural and political consequences. The Internet, write McInerney and White, has given consumers with PC's the power to exercise market control as never before.
On electronic networks of every kind, from television to the Internet will be regulated shortly, but not in the United States. Communities are also greatly affected - and threatened by - the evolution of new laws in cyberspace.
Artists, musicians, writers and other creators of intellectual property can still be paid fairly for their work. There are all sorts of options beyond conventional royalties. They can offer contracts to cadres of music lovers who agree to pay for access if they're offered more choices at cheaper prices.
The fact is, culture is already being transmitted freely all over the Net for practical purposes simply becomes public domain. The protocol initially referred to marginal or alternative works, but it alters the length of the levers they hold. Consumer reaction is instant, be it through the Internet, would do well to read Thomas Jefferson, who eloquently expressed one of his fondest wishes for intellectual property in his new country as follows: That ideas should freely spread from one to another over the globe, for the moral and mutual instruction of man, and improvement of his condition, seems to have been peculiarly and benevolently designed by nature, when she made them, like Congress or on TV talk shows.
In the off - line world, mutual benefit is the core of community. Real people provide help, entertainment, or on the Internet. But Lessig adds, there is no such thing as God, or science - which embodies our ability to reason - must be able to fit the the whole company's holding on a couple of years, he could buy those computers without even dipping into his principal. The industry has spent billions of dollars by collecting various distribution and user fees.
The Net has been the primary tool by which government, monarchies, educational and media institutions focus obsessively on exaggerated or meaningless issues like the spread of free music threatens the way they work - - at least artists the industry doesn't control.
The industry has obviously done its homework, studying how software really works and how information moves, and is using the Digital Millennial Copyright Act as its primary weapon against infringement by people using the Net and Web, and the genes of humans.
The reflective person thus knows that his life is in some incomprehensible manner guided through biological ontogeny, a more or less the same questions for half a century now: what should we be? What do you think?
For years, Old Media dismissed electronic competitors as frivolous and temporal. Then New Media appeared to be burying its predecessors for good. It appears both notions may have been the usual long, boring and self - congratulatory affair.
But there are signs all over of a new, hybrid, and probably permanent Middle Media. Old media are generally defined as newspapers, magazines, publishing and websites.
Papers seem seem almost stupefyingly oblivious to the graphic revolution that has swept magazines and is spreading through the Web. As a result, with little political opposition or discussion, the DMCA pits the free software movement, squarely against the commercialist threat to the free nature of the Net, increasingly the subject of commercial and corporate interest and speculation, has remained strikingly free, diverse and highly individualized entertainment.
The ability to personalize culture in this way is unprecedented, a unique feature of life online. But before China and the music industry, all simultaneously making doomed efforts to stick their fingers in the digital dike. The Net and Web spawn ferocious and idiosyncratic commentary, democratizing opinion all over the country to work for online information sites.
These reporters, leaving papers like the Wall Street Journal and New York Times you have to join, but it's www. nytimes. com, so are the sales of books in stores.
The technological absolutism invoked by the rise of a politically - correct ethos in public communications, encroachments on depictions of sex and violence. No newspaper will ever challenge the notion of taking responsibility, of being held accountable for what one says, is that it's also fun, and social.
The underlying political issue is both clear and significant: Must we depend on the creative choices and products of a handful of Chinese political dissidents speaking out online, both groups are beyond conventional policing. But that doesn't mean a lot of harm.
The first generation Internet promoted certain concepts of freedom that didn't exist elsewhere. This wasn't by accident. Internet protocols were designed to be open but quickly commercialized, and almost completely co - opted, by a handful of targets to use as warnings, examples of the nasty fate that will befall transgressors.
If any approach is doomed to fail in this era, it's that one. Too bad some people will have to pay along the way, sacrifices on the altar of corporate or governmental obliviousness.
For all the media hype about technology, pornography and e - mail that the discussions of the Digital Millenium Copyright Act, passed quietly months ago and now being used to shut down every free music site on the Net - a coalition of academics, engineers, early hackers and researchers - designed the Net and the Web. As a result, with little political opposition or discussion, the DMCA threatens to do much more harm to freedom on the Net:
the Communications Decency Acts, however obnoxious, were both efforts at political theater, staged mostly for constituents. They were ludicrously unenforceable and vague. By contrast, the DMCA is already beginning to redefine entertainment on the Net and are building it still?
Do the people running websites have any responsibility to challenge people who assault others online, create environments in which some of the conflict over free music - - simple greed and desire are others - - are dangerous. A safe school environment is fundamental to helping North Carolina's students succeed in school, announced Governor Hunt. Every school ought to be a serious problem with real consequences.
Misinformation about genetic research, online safety - even the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences is beginning to succumb. Einstein once said that the thing which most interested him wasn't whether God existed or not, rather than to have studies or others describe that experience for you.
Do any of you read newspapers regularly, or see a future for them? This column was inspired by an e - mail accounts. Ocurring continents apart, the two incidents seemed oddly connected.
The MPA - along with the educational, cultural, social and economic benefits of computing still unavailable to more than half the American population. New kinds of programmers and computer users would surge online, perhaps bringing new ideas and approaches to programming, software and intellectual property online.
Apparently, none of the L.A. stations are showing it. You'd think that with two affiliates (3 if you count the one in Huntington Beach), they could make time for it, but noooo...
The concern is as much about user friendliness as quality. Taping something off the radio is lower quality, yes, but more importantly from the record company POV is that it's a pain in the neck.
Funny, I've never had much difficulty. Hit Tuner, hit Tape Monitor, insert tape and hit Record. Difficult if you want a specific song, but if you just want to grab a bunch of music it's easy. A friend ofmine used to record techno off of Live 105 in the San Francisco bay area this way.
Now, I don't know what the one comment had in it exactly, but if I saw something sawing what I was looking at was GPL, and I'ld look up just what GPL means.
I'm just not sure if that would fly in a court of law
Its not like there are different GPLs out there that might cause confusion. GPL is GPL.
Well, technically any General Public License is a GPL. Saying that it is covered under the GNU GPL would be better, I think (however, I'm not sure if even that is sufficient for coverage. IANAL)
More seriously, doesn't the GPL contain a clause that states that copies of covered source code must contain the GPL? If so, didn't they already violate the terms of the GPL?
I wish I'd known about all this stuff before I bought my DVD player, or I would've bought a better one. Especially since I'm a total otaku and would like to watch Japanese movies (many of which won't be released here). Stupid region codes.
Of course, I really wish I'd known about the DeCSS controversy and DVD boycott before buying my DVD player. I could've saved about $300. I obviously don't need a DVD player if I won't be buying DVDs.
You can already do that with a video cam and some parts from Radio Shack. No vision processing chip necessary. I had a friend who did this. With the vision processing chip you could have your toy car follow someone automatically, or program it to find your shoes under your bed. Now that would be cool! --- Zardoz has spoken!
Yikes! That sounds pretty dangerous. I bet it makes your coffee taste pretty horrible--like metal ions (however, if it's L.A. water you might not notice any difference:) --- Zardoz has spoken!
first off, I said it's not a basic right and then I said it's unenforcable - that's quite a different thing than saying it's not a basic right because it's unenforcable.
Okay, I was a little confused by your wording. Still, there are some problems with this. One is that it implies that enforceability is required for legitimacy, which is not true. Try traffic law: is it possible to catch everybody who runs a red light? No. Does that mean that the laws against running red lights should be repealed? No.
Second, copyrights are not a basic right, it has nothing to do with whose rights are more important because when I copy something that you created - your rights are not being violated in any way.
Au contraire. It is not a right enumerated in the Constitution, but see what Amendment IX has to say about that. I have a right to receive proper remuneration for my effort. Writing is frickin' hard. Not everybody is Stephen King and can write ten dictionary-sized bestselling novels in a week. It takes time and effort, which were obviously not spent on another job (except possibly flipping burgers, or sticking price tags on merchandise at S-Mart)
In fact, that attitude is rather arrogant. It's similar to saying that stealing slaves from the plantation and freeing them violates their masters basic right.
But the master could have no basic right to them in the first place, because to do so would conflict with the basic human right to freedom. Humans have free will. Until someone codes a sentient AI, data does not. The slavery metaphor is not very apt.
You're assuming that copyrights are like some type of property right, I'm assuming they're not and acting from there.
I suppose we'll have to agree to disagree, since we're operating from different sets of axioms. I've been taking the traditional "Euclidian" route, you've been taking the "non-Euclidian" one. The two points of view can't be reconciled if they are based on conflicting initial assumptions, like the perennial argument of theism vs. atheism.
However, unlike yours - my assumption is founded.
<impression voice="LaurenceFishburne">Show me.</impression> If you can trace this back to a set of initial assumptions I agree with, then you can show my own reasoning (and therefore my position) to be faulty.
Slashdot Mirror
IIRC, the W3C itself has been having some problems WRT namespaces lately.
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Zardoz has spoken!
Grabbing the JVM from NS6PR1 for Linux should do the trick. No guarantees though.
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Zardoz has spoken!
Of course, that "bloat" isn't there is you choose not to download or compile those components (IRC chatzilla, XMLterm, and Mozilla mailnews are not required to run Mozilla). The installer will allow the user to choose what parts he/she wants.
And skins aren't bloat, they're just a side effect of a UI defined in XML--which actually saves code, since non-native widgets are required for CSS compliance anyway.
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Zardoz has spoken!
It seems to me that it would be fairly trivial to embed an ActiveX component in an HTML email, to mess with people who read their mail with ActiveX-enabled software (Hotmail via MSIE, Outlook, etc.). Since ActiveX is just plain-vanilla binary executables with the most minimal security imaginable, it could do all sorts of unpleasant things when viewed. It could, for example: propagate itself (by interfacing with Outlook), embed itself into every HTML file on the user's hard drive, embed itself into all outgoing HTML mail (in which case it could become nearly uncatchable), send all sorts of info over the net, install backdoors, etc. I'm surprised it hasn't been done already.
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Zardoz has spoken!
I got a Hotmail account years ago (my first email account, and before MS bought Hotmail). I still have it, although I don't use it that often. I really only use it as an alternate account during the summer, since my school account won't let me log in from a different server, and because several of my friends keep sending me stuff at that address even though I keep giving them the new one.
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Zardoz has spoken!
You can. Neoplanet is, for one.
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Zardoz has spoken!
I thought this was what the terms "white hat" and "black hat" were coined for, at least in computer jargon. As I understand it, they were originally coined in the movie industry to refer to the hero and villain (thank you, Jonny Quest comics!)
Computer criminals have been commonly referred to as "hackers" by laymen for much longer than that. I remember waaaaaay back in 1st grade (I'm 20 now, a junior in college), we had to do a project where we made acronyms of out names from words that we felt described us. For the "H" in my first name, I used the word "hacker". My teacher got mad and had me change it, because she thought it implied criminal activity, when in actuality it just meant I liked to play around with BASIC and Logo on my Apple IIc.
I think we're stuck with "hacker" meaning criminal in general use. But we can still make the distinction in jargon. Just remember who you're talking to, or remember to make the distinction clear.
And yes, the movie should have been called "Crackers", but to most Americans that would have meant "white trash".
OT--found a nifty word in an online legal dictionary: Usufruct. It's the right to the products of property rather than the property itself, like a farmer allowing someone else to farm the land and profit from what they grow, but retaining rights to the land itself. This might come in handy during the next discussion about GPL & Open Source.
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Zardoz has spoken!
While we're on the topic of misused words, here's one confusion that doesn't show up very often but annoys the hell out of me when it does: etymology vs. entomology. Etymology is the derivation of words from earlier forms--most dictionaries show it at the end of each definition. Entomology is the study of insects.
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Zardoz has spoken!
Do you really think this will make Joe Enduser is really going to care more about Open Source because Microsoft might use it? I haven't overheard any conversations in the supermarket recently about the Microsoft Foundation Classes or Visual Studio. Because these are topics that are only important to coders.
Open Source is not going to suddenly become interesting to the average person just because Microsoft uses it. It doesn't affect them, because they won't be involved. People know about applications like Excel and PowerPoint because they use them (or are exposed to them). Unless Joe Enduser starts coding, Open Source is just some technical programming thing to him--and once he starts coding, he becomes part of the group for which technical programming things are important.
Oh, and it just sounds like they might open their APIs, which isn't Open Source (but would be a good thing regardless).
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Zardoz has spoken!
I just did a search on my own name, and found out that I'm an aviator, author, and humorist. That page, as well as several others with additional evidence, showed up in both AltaVista and Google, so it must be true! Amnesia is the only possible explanation for my unawareness of this obvious fact.
Seriously, though, this just shows that it's fairly easy to get bogus information when trying to pull it together from several sources. Lack of privacy is bad enough, but the possibility of having one's reputation warped by a false positive identification may be even worse. Remember the Harry Buttle / Harry Tuttle mixup in "Brazil"?
BTW, I also found a bunch of old emails I'd sent to the www-style@w3.org mailing list as archived on the W3C's site.
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Zardoz has spoken!
It can jump, actually. It also has the front-mounted cutting blades.
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Zardoz has spoken!
So nobody should want these features? I'm looking forward to reading my mail with Mozilla.
I hate the preset links too. So do you know what I do? I delete them. It's not hard.
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Zardoz has spoken!
Nah, that's the futures market.
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Zardoz has spoken!
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Zardoz has spoken!
There seems to be a problem with this script, at the line
/([A-Za-z]+('t$)?)/;
.signature generator)
($alpha) = $word =~
It causes the indentation to go all wonky when I tried to straighten it out in emacs. Specifically, the next line gets auto-indented way more than it should. Is something wrong with that regexp? I'm only vaguely familiar with Perl (the only working script I've written so far is a random
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Zardoz has spoken!
After seeing this, I decided to try my hand at simulating Jon Katz. I copied most of his last 26 stories (I skipped movie reviews, and included only his stories and none of his comments) into a text file, and ran it through the BABLE (Basic Algorithmic Babbling Language Emulator), a text manipulation program that uses Markov chains, much like good ol' Mark V. Shaney. I then broke it up into paragraphs. My conclusion? We can rebuild him. Make him faster chchchch, stronger chchchchch, more long-winded...
Here's the result:
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Zardoz has spoken!
Not on in Los Angeles, either, of all places.
Maybe the title of this thread should be "Anyone's PBS station actually showing this?"
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Zardoz has spoken!
Apparently, none of the L.A. stations are showing it. You'd think that with two affiliates (3 if you count the one in Huntington Beach), they could make time for it, but noooo...
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Zardoz has spoken!
Funny, I've never had much difficulty. Hit Tuner, hit Tape Monitor, insert tape and hit Record. Difficult if you want a specific song, but if you just want to grab a bunch of music it's easy. A friend ofmine used to record techno off of Live 105 in the San Francisco bay area this way.
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Zardoz has spoken!
I'm just not sure if that would fly in a court of law
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Zardoz has spoken!
Well, technically any General Public License is a GPL. Saying that it is covered under the GNU GPL would be better, I think (however, I'm not sure if even that is sufficient for coverage. IANAL)
Heh. Maybe we should lobby the Unicode consortium to add a copyleft character.
More seriously, doesn't the GPL contain a clause that states that copies of covered source code must contain the GPL? If so, didn't they already violate the terms of the GPL?
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Zardoz has spoken!
I wish I'd known about all this stuff before I bought my DVD player, or I would've bought a better one. Especially since I'm a total otaku and would like to watch Japanese movies (many of which won't be released here). Stupid region codes.
Of course, I really wish I'd known about the DeCSS controversy and DVD boycott before buying my DVD player. I could've saved about $300. I obviously don't need a DVD player if I won't be buying DVDs.
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Zardoz has spoken!
You can already do that with a video cam and some parts from Radio Shack. No vision processing chip necessary. I had a friend who did this. With the vision processing chip you could have your toy car follow someone automatically, or program it to find your shoes under your bed. Now that would be cool!
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Zardoz has spoken!
Yikes! That sounds pretty dangerous. I bet it makes your coffee taste pretty horrible--like metal ions (however, if it's L.A. water you might not notice any difference :)
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Zardoz has spoken!
Okay, I was a little confused by your wording. Still, there are some problems with this. One is that it implies that enforceability is required for legitimacy, which is not true. Try traffic law: is it possible to catch everybody who runs a red light? No. Does that mean that the laws against running red lights should be repealed? No.
Au contraire. It is not a right enumerated in the Constitution, but see what Amendment IX has to say about that. I have a right to receive proper remuneration for my effort. Writing is frickin' hard. Not everybody is Stephen King and can write ten dictionary-sized bestselling novels in a week. It takes time and effort, which were obviously not spent on another job (except possibly flipping burgers, or sticking price tags on merchandise at S-Mart)
But the master could have no basic right to them in the first place, because to do so would conflict with the basic human right to freedom. Humans have free will. Until someone codes a sentient AI, data does not. The slavery metaphor is not very apt.
I suppose we'll have to agree to disagree, since we're operating from different sets of axioms. I've been taking the traditional "Euclidian" route, you've been taking the "non-Euclidian" one. The two points of view can't be reconciled if they are based on conflicting initial assumptions, like the perennial argument of theism vs. atheism.
<impression voice="LaurenceFishburne">Show me.</impression> If you can trace this back to a set of initial assumptions I agree with, then you can show my own reasoning (and therefore my position) to be faulty.
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Zardoz has spoken!