I remember when 3 1/2 inch floppy disk prices rose in the summer. The reason is that people who store these things in warehouses have to cool the warehouses in order to prevent the plastic from warping.
Could it be that the CDR storage requirements are the same as for the floppies? If this is the case stock up on them before spring has sprung.
It depends on the state you live in. In ohio they basically said that if you do not like the company and its conditions, quit. That was the only way to get out of having to do what they asked as a condition of employment.
Other states probably have different attitudes. The place where I checked was the wage and hour division of the state government.
If we were in a truely capitalistic environment with no subsidizing or legalizing of monopolies the cost of a phone line would be no different for business use or home use.
There would be no tax incentives to claim a phone line as a business expense as there would be no taxes to be counted against.
Given the above libertarian situations you would have incentive to set up a payphone as long as you got more quarters than the monthly charge for the phone line and the rental of the space the phone occupied.
It is goverment assistance of large monopolies that give these monopolies the ability to decide whether or not something is profitable to themselves.
We are heading towards another ice age. The geologic record shows that periodic ice ages happen about every 10,000 years. Our waste heat and excess CO2 may be the only thing that is keeping us from falling into another ice age.
It would serve the tree huggers if they get the CO2 down to a point that they freeze all their beloved trees and other plants.
There is quite a bit of info on the effect of the eliptical path of the earth and its bearing on the seasonal variations we experience each year.
Only nearsited exteamists would attempt to make us believe that their answer is the correct one. We barely have the ablilty to store our own history for the last couple of centuries and our weather data is even less developed.
Research is needed and intelligence with no emotional ties is needed to figure out what our best course is.
I came up with the statement listed below. Let me know what you think.
Sirs and Ladies,
I have read much of your proposal and found that while it takes into account many things that should be done to aid in the arrest of parties engaged in illegal access and destruction of computer data, it does not mention or protect the need for corporations and individuals to attempt to access data on their own computer systems so as to determine their systems vulnerability to attack.
There is concern that normal security checking software and knowledge of common or popular systems used to defeat security would be made illegal by the provisions of your treaty. I and many others feel that only with thorough knowledge of the weaknesses and strengths of any computer or system of computers, can those computers or systems of computers be made more secure. If provisions of your treaty make the use of security checking software legally questionable then only those with illegal intent will use such software.
I ask that you make provisions within your treaty for the use of security checking software by individuals and corporations. I would ask that you make clear that it is the intent to do damage or cause harm that is illegal, not the means by which that harm is caused.
Sincerely,
David P. Zimmerman Bachelor Of Electronics Engineering Technology
Re:Threat to "secret ballot"?
on
Online Voting?
·
· Score: 1
If you can be influenced that easily by your peers then you are a mealy mouthed democrat anyway and who cares how you vote, Big Grin.
Thank you very much for your informative reply to my comment. I will check out fte and jed and inform my friend so he can get on with setting up his firewall.
An article in Discover Magazine made note of the fact that so called genetic defects play a large role in the advancement of many different things.
The point was made that it might take up to 11 different defects to cause a person to be predisponsed towards being a homicidal maniac. It also pointed out that those same defects in smaller numbers are responsible for the kind of person who is needed in developement and research of new ideas.
If we are all healthy, happy, and social then we would never take the time to develope space travel, better foods, cheaper energy, better transportation, or any other desired thing.
You might as well throw art out also as happy people who try to do art are quite frankly boring.
The human race needs its so-called imperfections to continue to survive.
A cell phone is useful only if you want to talk to someone. I get enough of that supporting over 1400 users at my place of work. A pager is fine if the family needs to get a hold of me when I am not with them, which is a rare occurance. In the last 2 years I can see where a cell phone might have been handy for about 2 or 3 MINUTES. I am not going to make the phone company any richer for a convienence whose usefullness is totally manufactured by the producers of the product. A cell phone will not help your career, make you more popular, or improve your love life. They are being promoted in exactly the same way that tobacco and alcohol have been and because of the herd instinct of humanity most humans suck it in and spew it out in the form of corporate profits and loss of quality of life.
who do not want governments help with the proviso that they can take actions on their own to correct a problem. A true libertarian would take toysmart to civil court and sue their knickers off.
Interesting, I at first did not catch the meaning of the ^H because I am TOO OLD a geek.
I know that the backspace is a HEX 08 which can also be accessed by doing a control h key combination on the keyboard.
I then saw that the control charactor is represented by the carrot "^" symbol which is something I remember seeing before.
The following explanation assumes that the least significant bit is on the right.
For those who might care the H is the eigth charactor of the alphabet and the reason control h gives you a HEX 08 is because the control key masks out the binary bit number 7 of the combination.
The masking makes the binary 0101000 a binary 0001000. The shift key also does the same thing to bit number 6, it toggles bit six from 1 to 0 assuming you are starting out with a lower case h. As such a captial H is 0101000. A lower case h is 0110100. A back space is of course 0001000.
This can be discerned by looking at an ascii code chart.
So by a very round-a-bout path I saw that the meaning was to erase by way of destructive backspace the word or phrase directly before the series of ^H's.
It is quite funny how techy things get used and the original reasoning is not remembered or valued.
I saw a description of a cat5 cable in the replies that does not match what I have used in the past. The normal configuration for a cat5 cable is as follows
View from the non-clip side of RJ45.
Left side to Right side
with the clip pointing up and the cable coming down from the clip
The wires are color coded by having either a color with a narrow white stripe or white with a narrow color stripe. Pairs of wire have the same color with one being more color and less white and the other having more white and less of that same color. In my description the first color is the dominant and the second is the narrow stripe. IE: Blue/White is Mostly blue with a white stripe
Ethernet uses the White/Orange Orange/White Pair and the White/Green Green/White Pair.
So to build a cross over cable the Orange and Green pairs are switched on one end of the cable while the other end is standard.
The crossed end would have this configuration White/Green Green/White White/Orange Blue/White White/Blue Orange/White White/Brown Brown/White
The only reason I posted this was that I saw someone else giving information that was not standard cat5 specs. This could lead to more confusion than needed for someone who is trying to learn the basics.
I have played with linux and have had problems when trying to upgrade to Netscape 4.7.2 . If it were not for the built in KDE browser I would have been browserless. The only function that the old browser did not perform was FTP downloads. I had to use the Command Line version of FTP to do any downloads. I will look forward to an upgraded version of an already worthwhile product.
If you had a lot of small wormholes that could be lined up then you could make a matter transporter. Why not just transport each individual atom of a piece of matter at the same time and you would get the same effect as throwing the whole chunk through a big wormhole. The trick would be to synchronize all the microscopic wormholes in one area so that the ends and alignments are identicle. This would in effect create a portal that would tranmit matter without having to bend the heck out of space time the way a larger wormhole would. Maybe this explains some strange things that have been noted. Telepathy could be caused by the brain being able to tranmit thought waves through such portals. Teleportation could also be caused by the brain having the ablity to line up a region of microscopic wormholes. Clarivoince could be achieved this way also. Even precog if someone from the "future" sent a message via wormhole to someone in the present.
Another plus is that individual atoms are very sturdy compared to larger structures. The only downside is if you were to transport something living it would require a awful lot of precision to ensure that everything got to where it was going at exactly the correct moment and place.
You will have several things to consider when informing your high school powers that be about linux and the GPL.
1. Microsoft and Apple have a considerable budget that they set aside for the wooing of public education. Because of this many teachers may have been taught certain things about linux that are no longer true.
2. In your favor most colleges use some form of unix. Most teachers have attended one of these colleges. Therefore somewhere in the back of their experiences they might remember unix. You could try to explain that linux is just a form of unix.
3. Obtain a copy of a standard GPL. Include it with any other information you choose to provide. Getting a factory printed GPL from a boxed distribution would probably be more impressive than just printing one out on a laser printer.
4. Teachers do not like to appear foolish in front of students. Most distributions include a technical support line for a certain number of days or months. Make sure that the teachers know they have somewhere to turn when the installation goes south.
5. Beware of talking about how you can "get it free on the internet". Teachers and schools are very cautious about anything to do with downloads from the internet. If the teacher is knowledgable then this should not be an issue but if that were the case you would not have written your letter.
6. Make them aware that an office suite is availabe for linux. Star Office comes with many distributions and it makes the transition from other office suites much easier. It also makes it posible to teach wordprocessing and spreadsheet operation using a linux system.
7. Telling the teacher that it is better because it is free might not have any effect because Microsoft and Apple may already be providing the school with free software. Choose other points in Linux's favor.
Music is a part of my life that I can definately live with out. If I need music that bad I will hum to myself. I always turn off the music in PC games as it is distracting and totally out of place in Unreal, Quake, or Doom. How many battle hardened warriors do you see with a walkman on? I have not bought a record, tape, or music CD in many many years and that is not likely to change. In short, let those who care pick up this battle. I will rest in my favorite sound environment, silence.
from the OSS (open source sound) commercial product if you had the newer vortex chips. the 8820 and 8830 are partially supported already. I bought a Magicsound PCI sound card and it has a vortex 8810 sound chip and this chip is NOT supported by OSS. I asked and received a polite reply from the gentleman that wrote most of the sound card software presently in linux. I can only hope that aureal will support the 8810 chip so I can finally get further away from that darn Win 4.01, (otherwise knows as Win98). I am a game meister and though I am a cheapo when it comes to buying hardware I still enjoy the effects of 3d sound. Up to this point linux has not had drivers for my old mako sound card or my new aureal sound card. I will await with baited breath the arrival of drivers from aureal.
the bible then you have basically defined GOD. A creative impulsive jerk. Who curbs GOD ? Maybe we should hire ODEN to knock some sense into the Christian Diety.
On a more serious nature. Flames can be basically ignored. I do not post very often because I have other things to do in my life than spending 8 hours a day reading/. . The young who have internet access are the only ones who could spend the time needed to review a message and its subsequent postings in full. This gives them a decided edge when it comes to discussions because they may have read everything up to the point that they post. I would not limit the youngsters because no one actually gets a bloody nose in chats so they can work out their differences verbally and get a few rough edges ground down. Replying to flames is pointless but not replying to valid questions is also just as bad. Columnists and authors of books are not used to the level of instant critisism that the internet can bring to bear on them. This can cause them to turtle and not respond to valid points that are raised about their writing. Perhaps some of the more talented programmers can develope a filter for Authors and Columnists that can be installed. This filter would change certain sayings but retain the basic meaning. A short list of such changes could be.
WTF => Huh
You Fsking idiot => I totally diagree with you.
*ssh*le => I beg to differ
You get the idea. I know some people who use certain words in their day to day speach that I would never use. They are not malicious about it. We may be dealing with more of a cultural language problem than with an open hostility problem.
when card punches where the way to program. You could become a guru if you knew how to touch-type. My first personal computer was a Cosmac Elf, 1803 RCA controller/CPU with a hex keypad and hex display. It had an upgrade that would allow you to display an image on a TV. It was built for a Composite Video monitor so you had to build your own oscillator circuitry to beat the Comp.Vid. signal against to send it to the TV tuner. No worrying about the FCC I sent a signal at MANY frequencies, but hey, I could see it and that was what counted. I was working on an ascii keyboard interface when the Timex-Sinclair came out. 2k of ram and you could get a 16k upgrade. Z80 programming and graphics that were almost as good as those store bought thingies. Those were the days laddie, grin.
A browser for most people has gotten to be a commodity. When browsers just had to support html they were pretty easy to write. Now that you have browsers handling all kinds of content in addition to html you end up with a mess. The other problem is that the standards are always being upgraded. Do you write for java 1.0 or java 2.0 standards? Do you find a way to handle all of the sound and video formats that currently exist? Do you try to handle active (cough) X ? This makes it less likely that the kids who code for fun are going to do to much for it. I also noted that the Java browser was not mentioned and if you have a JVM for your OS why should you not be able to run a Java coded browser?
Your lucidity is good considering you probably think in your native language. Thus you are performing major translations while trying to maintain an understandable dialog in english. I am curious. What is radiosity? Are you referring to the distance from a point at a given vector or does the term have something to do with the radiation given off by a luminescent body ? I have no language skills other than english so I stand in awe of anyone who can work with more than one.:^)
Corrine, This sort of subsociety does indeed work. I met my wife via CB channel on compuserve back in September of 1986. It just happened that we both lived in the same town and I drove over to her apartment the next day and we have been together ever since. We would never have met on the street as she was a Regestered Nurse with Atari Computers and I was a Electrical Engineer with Timex-Sinclair computers. I had just gotten a free hour on compuserve through OMNI magazine and decided to check it out. We met because I had chosen the same CB handle that one of her friends used. She quickly found out that I was not the friend she thought I was. (That last sentence can be taken badly, a pox on english!) After chatting for about an hour we exchanged telephone numbers and I called her and talked with her for the rest of the night. I then went to work (with no sleep at all) and managed to not break anything. After work was done I stopped at her place. We met, made love, and talked a lot more. We lived together for 4 years and then got married. We met as disembodied intelligences in chat and then got to know each other via talking for 8 hours and then got to know each other physically. This is almost the exact opposite of normal dating and flirting that takes place today. I will add that I have always noticed Indian females, prim or otherwise. It would stand to reason that India has some of the most provocative ladies in the world or they would not have a population as large as it is now.
People of geekdom used to have a plan for all this. Join the brotherhood. Have a ritual. Sacrifice the virginity. We were the Shamans and the Druids and the holy ones. The normals came to us for help and advice and spicing up their gene pool. Now we have the power but no mystique to go with it. Techno Pagans probably have the right idea and that is what I lean towards. I can see why there are a lot of anti-religion groups out there but I still think the attraction for non-geeks is the possible danger and mystery that used to shroud the normal geek life. ie. " Heated discussion of the mixing ratio's of various metals for best ductile properites " was a discussion that was kept in a secret society. Our society is out in the open for all to see. Maybe we need a little more mystery to attract the partner of choice. Just my.02 worth
Just remember, any big company moves very S L O W L Y. As a point my wife has a Compusere account that she uses to get mail through Compuserve. When AOL bought compuserve nothing changed. She still uses that mail account with a commercial reader, NAVCIS. We even have NAVCIS set to go straight through the RoadRunner/Compuserve gateway so she does not even have to use her modem. She can still use a modem when she is out of town to check her mail. Something that RoadRunner by itself does not offer. A posible good thing that might come of this is that RoadRunner by itself had no dialup access. It was cablemodem or nothing. This has caused us to have to pay for RR and compuserve service to get the flexability of dialup for when we are out of town. Now we may be able to have one ISP charge which will save me a little money.:^) If RoadRunner and AOL are both making money the way they are now they will not make any major changes and what changes they offer will most likely be optional. They want YOUR money so they are not going to piss you off.
Slashdot Mirror
I remember when 3 1/2 inch floppy disk prices rose in the summer. The reason is that people who store these things in warehouses have to cool the warehouses in order to prevent the plastic from warping.
Could it be that the CDR storage requirements are the same as for the floppies? If this is the case stock up on them before spring has sprung.
dzimmerm
It depends on the state you live in. In ohio they basically said that if you do not like the company and its conditions, quit. That was the only way to get out of having to do what they asked as a condition of employment.
Other states probably have different attitudes. The place where I checked was the wage and hour division of the state government.
Good Luck,
dzimmerm
If we were in a truely capitalistic environment with no subsidizing or legalizing of monopolies the cost of a phone line would be no different for business use or home use.
There would be no tax incentives to claim a phone line as a business expense as there would be no taxes to be counted against.
Given the above libertarian situations you would have incentive to set up a payphone as long as you got more quarters than the monthly charge for the phone line and the rental of the space the phone occupied.
It is goverment assistance of large monopolies that give these monopolies the ability to decide whether or not something is profitable to themselves.
dzimmerm
We are heading towards another ice age. The geologic record shows that periodic ice ages happen about every 10,000 years. Our waste heat and excess CO2 may be the only thing that is keeping us from falling into another ice age.
It would serve the tree huggers if they get the CO2 down to a point that they freeze all their beloved trees and other plants.
There is quite a bit of info on the effect of the eliptical path of the earth and its bearing on the seasonal variations we experience each year.
Only nearsited exteamists would attempt to make us believe that their answer is the correct one. We barely have the ablilty to store our own history for the last couple of centuries and our weather data is even less developed.
Research is needed and intelligence with no emotional ties is needed to figure out what our best course is.
dzimmerm
I came up with the statement listed below. Let me know what you think.
Sirs and Ladies,
I have read much of your proposal and found that while it takes into account many things that should be done to aid in the arrest of parties engaged in illegal access and destruction of computer data, it does not mention or protect the need for corporations and individuals to attempt to access data on their own computer systems so as to determine their systems vulnerability to attack.
There is concern that normal security checking software and knowledge of common or popular systems used to defeat security would be made illegal by the provisions of your treaty. I and many others feel that only with thorough knowledge of the weaknesses and strengths of any computer or system of computers, can those computers or systems of computers be made more secure. If provisions of your treaty make the use of security checking software legally questionable then only those with illegal intent will use such software.
I ask that you make provisions within your treaty for the use of security checking software by individuals and corporations. I would ask that you make clear that it is the intent to do damage or cause harm that is illegal, not the means by which that harm is caused.
Sincerely,
David P. Zimmerman Bachelor Of Electronics Engineering Technology
If you can be influenced that easily by your peers then you are a mealy mouthed democrat anyway and who cares how you vote, Big Grin.
Libertarians rule....themselves.
Thank you very much for your informative reply to my comment. I will check out fte and jed and inform my friend so he can get on with setting up his firewall.
An article in Discover Magazine made note of the fact that so called genetic defects play a large role in the advancement of many different things.
The point was made that it might take up to 11 different defects to cause a person to be predisponsed towards being a homicidal maniac. It also pointed out that those same defects in smaller numbers are responsible for the kind of person who is needed in developement and research of new ideas.
If we are all healthy, happy, and social then we would never take the time to develope space travel, better foods, cheaper energy, better transportation, or any other desired thing.
You might as well throw art out also as happy people who try to do art are quite frankly boring.
The human race needs its so-called imperfections to continue to survive.
This is all pure rant, you have been warned!
============================================
A cell phone is useful only if you want to talk to someone. I get enough of that supporting over 1400 users at my place of work. A pager is fine if the family needs to get a hold of me when I am not with them, which is a rare occurance. In the last 2 years I can see where a cell phone might have been handy for about 2 or 3 MINUTES. I am not going to make the phone company any richer for a convienence whose usefullness is totally manufactured by the producers of the product. A cell phone will not help your career, make you more popular, or improve your love life. They are being promoted in exactly the same way that tobacco and alcohol have been and because of the herd instinct of humanity most humans suck it in and spew it out in the form of corporate profits and loss of quality of life.
===========================================
Hope you enjoyed my rant. :^)
who do not want governments help with the proviso that they can take actions on their own to correct a problem. A true libertarian would take toysmart to civil court and sue their knickers off.
Interesting, I at first did not catch the meaning of the ^H because I am TOO OLD a geek.
I know that the backspace is a HEX 08 which can also be accessed by doing a control h key combination on the keyboard.
I then saw that the control charactor is represented by the carrot "^" symbol which is something I remember seeing before.
The following explanation assumes that the least significant bit is on the right.
For those who might care the H is the eigth charactor of the alphabet and the reason control h gives you a HEX 08 is because the control key masks out the binary bit number 7 of the combination.
The masking makes the binary 0101000 a binary 0001000. The shift key also does the same thing to bit number 6, it toggles bit six from 1 to 0 assuming you are starting out with a lower case h. As such a captial H is 0101000. A lower case h is 0110100. A back space is of course 0001000.
This can be discerned by looking at an ascii code chart.
So by a very round-a-bout path I saw that the meaning was to erase by way of destructive backspace the word or phrase directly before the series of ^H's.
It is quite funny how techy things get used and the original reasoning is not remembered or valued.
I saw a description of a cat5 cable in the replies that does not match what I have used in the past. The normal configuration for a cat5 cable is as follows
View from the non-clip side of RJ45.
Left side to Right side
with the clip pointing up and the cable coming down from the clip
The wires are color coded by having either a color with a narrow white stripe or white with a narrow color stripe. Pairs of wire have the same color with one being more color and less white and the other having more white and less of that same color. In my description the first color is the dominant and the second is the narrow stripe. IE: Blue/White is Mostly blue with a white stripe
White/Orange Orange/White White/Green Blue/White White/Blue Green/White White/Brown Brown/White.
The Pairs are usually labled as follows.
Pair One---->Orange wires
Pair Two---->Green wires
Pair Three-->Blue wires
Pair Four--->Brown wires
Ethernet uses the White/Orange Orange/White Pair and the White/Green Green/White Pair.
So to build a cross over cable the Orange and Green pairs are switched on one end of the cable while the other end is standard.
The crossed end would have this configuration White/Green Green/White White/Orange Blue/White White/Blue Orange/White White/Brown Brown/White
The only reason I posted this was that I saw someone else giving information that was not standard cat5 specs. This could lead to more confusion than needed for someone who is trying to learn the basics.
I have played with linux and have had problems when trying to upgrade to Netscape 4.7.2 . If it were not for the built in KDE browser I would have been browserless. The only function that the old browser did not perform was FTP downloads. I had to use the Command Line version of FTP to do any downloads. I will look forward to an upgraded version of an already worthwhile product.
Just a thought
If you had a lot of small wormholes that could be lined up then you could make a matter transporter. Why not just transport each individual atom of a piece of matter at the same time and you would get the same effect as throwing the whole chunk through a big wormhole. The trick would be to synchronize all the microscopic wormholes in one area so that the ends and alignments are identicle. This would in effect create a portal that would tranmit matter without having to bend the heck out of space time the way a larger wormhole would. Maybe this explains some strange things that have been noted. Telepathy could be caused by the brain being able to tranmit thought waves through such portals. Teleportation could also be caused by the brain having the ablity to line up a region of microscopic wormholes. Clarivoince could be achieved this way also. Even precog if someone from the "future" sent a message via wormhole to someone in the present.
Another plus is that individual atoms are very sturdy compared to larger structures. The only downside is if you were to transport something living it would require a awful lot of precision to ensure that everything got to where it was going at exactly the correct moment and place.
You will have several things to consider when informing your high school powers that be about linux and the GPL.
1. Microsoft and Apple have a considerable budget that they set aside for the wooing of public education. Because of this many teachers may have been taught certain things about linux that are no longer true.
2. In your favor most colleges use some form of unix. Most teachers have attended one of these colleges. Therefore somewhere in the back of their experiences they might remember unix. You could try to explain that linux is just a form of unix.
3. Obtain a copy of a standard GPL. Include it with any other information you choose to provide. Getting a factory printed GPL from a boxed distribution would probably be more impressive than just printing one out on a laser printer.
4. Teachers do not like to appear foolish in front of students. Most distributions include a technical support line for a certain number of days or months. Make sure that the teachers know they have somewhere to turn when the installation goes south.
5. Beware of talking about how you can "get it free on the internet". Teachers and schools are very cautious about anything to do with downloads from the internet. If the teacher is knowledgable then this should not be an issue but if that were the case you would not have written your letter.
6. Make them aware that an office suite is availabe for linux. Star Office comes with many distributions and it makes the transition from other office suites much easier. It also makes it posible to teach wordprocessing and spreadsheet operation using a linux system.
7. Telling the teacher that it is better because it is free might not have any effect because Microsoft and Apple may already be providing the school with free software. Choose other points in Linux's favor.
That is all I have time for now.
Good luck!
Dave Zimmerman dzimmerm@columbus.rr.com
Music is a part of my life that I can definately live with out. If I need music that bad I will hum to myself. I always turn off the music in PC games as it is distracting and totally out of place in Unreal, Quake, or Doom. How many battle hardened warriors do you see with a walkman on? I have not bought a record, tape, or music CD in many many years and that is not likely to change. In short, let those who care pick up this battle. I will rest in my favorite sound environment, silence.
from the OSS (open source sound) commercial product if you had the newer vortex chips. the 8820 and 8830 are partially supported already. I bought a Magicsound PCI sound card and it has a vortex 8810 sound chip and this chip is NOT supported by OSS. I asked and received a polite reply from the gentleman that wrote most of the sound card software presently in linux. I can only hope that aureal will support the 8810 chip so I can finally get further away from that darn Win 4.01, (otherwise knows as Win98). I am a game meister and though I am a cheapo when it comes to buying hardware I still enjoy the effects of 3d sound. Up to this point linux has not had drivers for my old mako sound card or my new aureal sound card. I will await with baited breath the arrival of drivers from aureal.
the bible then you have basically defined GOD. A creative impulsive jerk. Who curbs GOD ? Maybe we should hire ODEN to knock some sense into the Christian Diety.
On a more serious nature. Flames can be basically ignored. I do not post very often because I have other things to do in my life than spending 8 hours a day reading /. . The young who have internet access are the only ones who could spend the time needed to review a message and its subsequent postings in full. This gives them a decided edge when it comes to discussions because they may have read everything up to the point that they post. I would not limit the youngsters because no one actually gets a bloody nose in chats so they can work out their differences verbally and get a few rough edges ground down. Replying to flames is pointless but not replying to valid questions is also just as bad. Columnists and authors of books are not used to the level of instant critisism that the internet can bring to bear on them. This can cause them to turtle and not respond to valid points that are raised about their writing. Perhaps some of the more talented programmers can develope a filter for Authors and Columnists that can be installed. This filter would change certain sayings but retain the basic meaning. A short list of such changes could be.
WTF => Huh
You Fsking idiot => I totally diagree with you.
*ssh*le => I beg to differ
You get the idea. I know some people who use certain words in their day to day speach that I would never use. They are not malicious about it. We may be dealing with more of a cultural language problem than with an open hostility problem.
What do you think?
when card punches where the way to program. You could become a guru if you knew how to touch-type. My first personal computer was a Cosmac Elf, 1803 RCA controller/CPU with a hex keypad and hex display. It had an upgrade that would allow you to display an image on a TV. It was built for a Composite Video monitor so you had to build your own oscillator circuitry to beat the Comp.Vid. signal against to send it to the TV tuner. No worrying about the FCC I sent a signal at MANY frequencies, but hey, I could see it and that was what counted. I was working on an ascii keyboard interface when the Timex-Sinclair came out. 2k of ram and you could get a 16k upgrade. Z80 programming and graphics that were almost as good as those store bought thingies. Those were the days laddie, grin.
A browser for most people has gotten to be a commodity. When browsers just had to support html they were pretty easy to write. Now that you have browsers handling all kinds of content in addition to html you end up with a mess. The other problem is that the standards are always being upgraded. Do you write for java 1.0 or java 2.0 standards? Do you find a way to handle all of the sound and video formats that currently exist? Do you try to handle active (cough) X ? This makes it less likely that the kids who code for fun are going to do to much for it. I also noted that the Java browser was not mentioned and if you have a JVM for your OS why should you not be able to run a Java coded browser?
Your lucidity is good considering you probably think in your native language. Thus you are performing major translations while trying to maintain an understandable dialog in english. I am curious. What is radiosity? Are you referring to the distance from a point at a given vector or does the term have something to do with the radiation given off by a luminescent body ? I have no language skills other than english so I stand in awe of anyone who can work with more than one. :^)
Corrine, This sort of subsociety does indeed work. I met my wife via CB channel on compuserve back in September of 1986. It just happened that we both lived in the same town and I drove over to her apartment the next day and we have been together ever since. We would never have met on the street as she was a Regestered Nurse with Atari Computers and I was a Electrical Engineer with Timex-Sinclair computers. I had just gotten a free hour on compuserve through OMNI magazine and decided to check it out. We met because I had chosen the same CB handle that one of her friends used. She quickly found out that I was not the friend she thought I was. (That last sentence can be taken badly, a pox on english!) After chatting for about an hour we exchanged telephone numbers and I called her and talked with her for the rest of the night. I then went to work (with no sleep at all) and managed to not break anything. After work was done I stopped at her place. We met, made love, and talked a lot more. We lived together for 4 years and then got married. We met as disembodied intelligences in chat and then got to know each other via talking for 8 hours and then got to know each other physically. This is almost the exact opposite of normal dating and flirting that takes place today. I will add that I have always noticed Indian females, prim or otherwise. It would stand to reason that India has some of the most provocative ladies in the world or they would not have a population as large as it is now.
People of geekdom used to have a plan for all this. Join the brotherhood. Have a ritual. Sacrifice the virginity. We were the Shamans and the Druids and the holy ones. The normals came to us for help and advice and spicing up their gene pool. Now we have the power but no mystique to go with it. Techno Pagans probably have the right idea and that is what I lean towards. I can see why there are a lot of anti-religion groups out there but I still think the attraction for non-geeks is the possible danger and mystery that used to shroud the normal geek life. ie. " Heated discussion of the mixing ratio's of various metals for best ductile properites " was a discussion that was kept in a secret society. Our society is out in the open for all to see. Maybe we need a little more mystery to attract the partner of choice. Just my .02 worth
Dr, Has anyone come up with a reason that gravity appears to be weakened above a superconducting disk?
Just remember, any big company moves very S L O W L Y. As a point my wife has a Compusere account that she uses to get mail through Compuserve. When AOL bought compuserve nothing changed. She still uses that mail account with a commercial reader, NAVCIS. We even have NAVCIS set to go straight through the RoadRunner/Compuserve gateway so she does not even have to use her modem. She can still use a modem when she is out of town to check her mail. Something that RoadRunner by itself does not offer. A posible good thing that might come of this is that RoadRunner by itself had no dialup access. It was cablemodem or nothing. This has caused us to have to pay for RR and compuserve service to get the flexability of dialup for when we are out of town. Now we may be able to have one ISP charge which will save me a little money. :^) If RoadRunner and AOL are both making money the way they are now they will not make any major changes and what changes they offer will most likely be optional. They want YOUR money so they are not going to piss you off.