I've been a subscriber to New Scientist for about 14 years now and I still look forward to it arriving each week. If anyone hasn't come across it, take a look at the NewScientist website where you can read a lot of the magazine's content.
Oh, and they have even started referencing opinion on/. every now and again!
This news has now made front page at news.bbc.co.uk... LISTEN UP Mozilla/Firefox/Opera people. Get your marketing divisions off their asses
Have a look at the list of related links (on the right) that the BBC now has for this story - there are a few alternative browsers listed at the bottom:
RELATED INTERNET LINKS: US Computer Emergency Response Team Internet Storm Center Microsoft on IIS trojan F-Secure on IIS trojan Symantec on IIS trojan Opera web browser Firefox web browser Netscape web browser Neoplanet web browser
I've never even been to England, and I can tell you that Brits do not spell "center" as "centre." A "centre" is a central building (is in importance) in the UK, while a "center" is still the middle of something. "Centre" is only for buildings. You just got showed up in your own language by an American!
I was born in England and have lived in Britain for most of my life (except for a few years in the US) and I can tell you that you are talking bollocks. We do not use "center" for anything in the Queen's English.
And as a Canadian, I can tell you that "meter" is in fact the common spelling here.
Would I be correct in assuming that this is only true in the predominantly English-speaking parts of Canada? I would expect that the mainly French-speaking parts such as Quebec would use the British (French-derived) spelling when writing English for re/er words like metre and centre.
Lol. British.. That's a good one! It is spelled meter over here, so guess which country (not US, btw).
If over here is Britain, you are wrong. The unit of measurement is spelt "metre" after the French spelling, in just the same way that we (Brits that can spell) use "centre" instead of the American "center".
A "meter" is a measuring device, such as a "water meter" or a "tachometer".
The article doesn't mention the real argument between the EU and the US. The US didn't want Galileo to be on a similar frequency to the military GPS signal because they wanted to be able to jam it with impunity.
One part of the article almost gets it right,
"Late last year, the Europeans agreed to modify the modulation of Galileo signals intended for government use so they would not disrupt encrypted GPS signals to be used by the US military and NATO".
Unfortunately, it looks like the EU caved in, so it will not be safe to assume that Galileo will be operational for the safety critical applications which it is designed for, such as air traffic control.
But he won't win. And it's dumbasses like you who are going to get Bush re-elected, because none of the third party candidates take away from the Republican vote.
Third parties won't be in a position to take the vote from anyone if people don't start consistently voting for them. Anyway, why should anyone have to vote for a party with which they disagree on major issues.
All those Democrats whining about how much damage Nader did really need to consider that he wouldn't have been standing if the Democrat party really represented the people that voted for him.
Two party systems may be stable, but they are just as bad for democracy as one-party communist states.
I personally think the best way for the government to realize the extent to which they have failed us is a massive boycott of the electoral process, so I really don't care whether any individuals vote or do not vote.
Not voting is a really bad way to express dissatisfaction to politians - they just put low turnouts down to voter apathy and assume that things can't be too bad. If you can't find a decent protest candidate and don't wish/can't stand for election yourself, a positive spoiling of the ballot is a much better form of protest than merely staying away from the polls.
How many different times did they recount the paper ballots in Florida, and how many times did they come up with differing numbers? I would bet money if you had different people count the same exact ballots you would have come up with differing numbers (see the bazillion "hanging chad" conversations of several years ago).
However, if you count often enough and average the results, you should get pretty close to the true number.
I was going to suggest that. But then we have a smaller minority that is blind and does not read braille. The principal remains the same but on a smaller scale.
It should be easy enough to also print a barcode on the ballot and provide barcode readers which translate the ballot into audio through headphones. For those who are blind, deaf and can't read braille, I think it is reasonable to expect that they get assistance from an able-bodied helper (although no doubt technical solutions could be devised if it was deemed important enough).
A comment on the PDF: I have excellent vision (no visual impairment whatsoever) but am completely unable to read who has been selected for president and vice president on that ballot (of course, I can guess easily enough).
If ballot papers are intended to be read by partially-sighted people, it would be better if there weren't large and rather useless pictures of a flag and plane underneath the text.
If a blind person can't read the receipt, he has to choose either less privacy (by having someone verify it) or less protection (by not doing so). It definitely creates a disparity of privilege for the individual.
So just install braille printers for the blind. Next problem?
However, the purpose of the patent system is not to ensure that money goes to those who "deserve" it. Patents are state-granted, limited term, monopolies on inventions. They serve a very specific purpose - to encourage inventors to disclose how there inventions work so that they can be reproduced by others when the patent expires; they exist to act as a balance to the economic advantages that can be enjoyed by inventors who keep their inventions secret.
They also serve to motivate research in some areas (pharmaceuticals, for instance) because the very high returns that can be gained through having a monopoly more than offset the high development costs.
They do not, however, have anything to do with fairness or rewarding deserving people.
Re:No! I use CapsLock as my "ESC" key
on
Is Caps Lock Dead?
·
· Score: 1
I would love to not only have it blink while I have mail, but also my two other house mates
That shouldn't be a problem. I use ledcontrol to check both my home and work accounts (home on numlock, work on scroll lock). The file '/etc/ledcontrol.conf' calls 'mail.sh' which extracts the number of new messages in each account using mailcheck.
Following our policy to "Patch first, ask questions later", we integrated the new feature as soon as practical, without wasting time arguing about it on a mailing list
The patch in question, a boolean operations patch, is said to be PD in the article. But this attitude is a major landmine for GPL (or any other free license) projects.
You have completely misunderstood what the author of the article was saying. The questions he was referring to are the developer questions - "should we include this feature?", "is this the best way to implement this feature?", etc.
He explicitly emphasised that licence issues can be a problem and that was the first thing he checked when the patch was submitted.
No, unfortunately there isn't a misstatement in my post:-(
The European Parliament is far too weak. A lot of the resentment of the EU in Britain is because of the "unelected eurocrats in Brussels" - the European Commission is far too powerful and entirely unaccountable.
For Europe to function effectively, the Commission needs to be turned into a simple civil service and the Parliament needs to take over the powers that currently reside with the Council of Ministers (the first step is definitely a pre-requisite for the second).
In the meantime, the Parliament has the power of veto, the ability to make suggestions, the ability to spend enormous amounts of money moving between two different parliament buildings and not much else.
Yes. There are three pillars of government to the EU - the Parliament, the Commission and the Council of Ministers. Legislation requires agreement from all three.
The European Commission (appointed by ministers in each state) proposed to introduce software patents along US lines. The European Parliament (the only democratically elected pillar) amended the proposed directive to prevent software patents. The Council of Ministers (made up of ministers of each state (the ones who appoint the Commission)) have just voted for an even more extreme pro-patent position than the original Commission proposal. In order to defeat this, an absolute majority* of all the Parliament's MEPs must vote against the Council's new version.
* this is an absolute majority of all elected MEPs, not just a majority of those who bother to vote.
Slashdot Mirror
Oh, and they have even started referencing opinion on /. every now and again!
Have a look at the list of related links (on the right) that the BBC now has for this story - there are a few alternative browsers listed at the bottom:
I was born in England and have lived in Britain for most of my life (except for a few years in the US) and I can tell you that you are talking bollocks. We do not use "center" for anything in the Queen's English.
Would I be correct in assuming that this is only true in the predominantly English-speaking parts of Canada? I would expect that the mainly French-speaking parts such as Quebec would use the British (French-derived) spelling when writing English for re/er words like metre and centre.
We call it a ruler. Do you call it a yard meter?
If over here is Britain, you are wrong. The unit of measurement is spelt "metre" after the French spelling, in just the same way that we (Brits that can spell) use "centre" instead of the American "center".
A "meter" is a measuring device, such as a "water meter" or a "tachometer".
One part of the article almost gets it right,
Unfortunately, it looks like the EU caved in, so it will not be safe to assume that Galileo will be operational for the safety critical applications which it is designed for, such as air traffic control.
Don't forget the old engineering saying: "every problem has a solution that is simple, easy - and wrong".
Use GhostScript to process the printed ballot?
Third parties won't be in a position to take the vote from anyone if people don't start consistently voting for them. Anyway, why should anyone have to vote for a party with which they disagree on major issues.
All those Democrats whining about how much damage Nader did really need to consider that he wouldn't have been standing if the Democrat party really represented the people that voted for him.
Two party systems may be stable, but they are just as bad for democracy as one-party communist states.
Not voting is a really bad way to express dissatisfaction to politians - they just put low turnouts down to voter apathy and assume that things can't be too bad. If you can't find a decent protest candidate and don't wish/can't stand for election yourself, a positive spoiling of the ballot is a much better form of protest than merely staying away from the polls.
However, if you count often enough and average the results, you should get pretty close to the true number.
It should be easy enough to also print a barcode on the ballot and provide barcode readers which translate the ballot into audio through headphones. For those who are blind, deaf and can't read braille, I think it is reasonable to expect that they get assistance from an able-bodied helper (although no doubt technical solutions could be devised if it was deemed important enough).
A comment on the PDF: I have excellent vision (no visual impairment whatsoever) but am completely unable to read who has been selected for president and vice president on that ballot (of course, I can guess easily enough).
If ballot papers are intended to be read by partially-sighted people, it would be better if there weren't large and rather useless pictures of a flag and plane underneath the text.
Other than that, excellent post.
So just install braille printers for the blind. Next problem?
Whereas Vi vs Emacs is like ed vs Vi?
<asbestos />
How about the fact that they provided a viable alternative to Microsoft Office
The paperclip was patented. Several times.
However, the purpose of the patent system is not to ensure that money goes to those who "deserve" it. Patents are state-granted, limited term, monopolies on inventions. They serve a very specific purpose - to encourage inventors to disclose how there inventions work so that they can be reproduced by others when the patent expires; they exist to act as a balance to the economic advantages that can be enjoyed by inventors who keep their inventions secret.
They also serve to motivate research in some areas (pharmaceuticals, for instance) because the very high returns that can be gained through having a monopoly more than offset the high development costs.
They do not, however, have anything to do with fairness or rewarding deserving people.
That shouldn't be a problem. I use ledcontrol to check both my home and work accounts (home on numlock, work on scroll lock). The file '/etc/ledcontrol.conf' calls 'mail.sh' which extracts the number of new messages in each account using mailcheck.
/etc/ledcontrol:
/usr/share/ledcontrol/mail.sh:Ledcontrol is your friend! I use it to indicate when I have new mail but you could easily use it to turn the LED off altogether.
You have completely misunderstood what the author of the article was saying. The questions he was referring to are the developer questions - "should we include this feature?", "is this the best way to implement this feature?", etc.
He explicitly emphasised that licence issues can be a problem and that was the first thing he checked when the patch was submitted.
The European Parliament is far too weak. A lot of the resentment of the EU in Britain is because of the "unelected eurocrats in Brussels" - the European Commission is far too powerful and entirely unaccountable.
For Europe to function effectively, the Commission needs to be turned into a simple civil service and the Parliament needs to take over the powers that currently reside with the Council of Ministers (the first step is definitely a pre-requisite for the second).
In the meantime, the Parliament has the power of veto, the ability to make suggestions, the ability to spend enormous amounts of money moving between two different parliament buildings and not much else.
The European Commission (appointed by ministers in each state) proposed to introduce software patents along US lines. The European Parliament (the only democratically elected pillar) amended the proposed directive to prevent software patents. The Council of Ministers (made up of ministers of each state (the ones who appoint the Commission)) have just voted for an even more extreme pro-patent position than the original Commission proposal. In order to defeat this, an absolute majority* of all the Parliament's MEPs must vote against the Council's new version.
* this is an absolute majority of all elected MEPs, not just a majority of those who bother to vote.
Hopefully, anyone reading an ACM journal should be able to type "slashdot" into google.