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User: bigstripes

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  1. Dad on Who Were Your Best Teachers? · · Score: 1

    My best teacher was probably my dad. As long as I can remember, we went to the library once a week, regular like groceries. He'd pick up any books that looked like they might be interesting, no subject being unworthy of investigation. He kept his mind open without being unquestioning. Always cheerful, always reasonable. Never preached, but always interested to talk, always there to encourage an interest.

    Once a coworker with young kids asked him how he got his children to read. "Well, when they picked up a book I didn't bat it out of their hands."

    On paper he had only high school education (rare enough in the time and place he grew up) yet retired as Supervisor of Stores and Maintenance for a steel mill. Which he also converted from Burroughs mainframe to early PCs. Again, by quiet example. When the high priests of Central Processing dragged their heels, he bought one PC, learned it, and patiently answered questions of the rest of the mill management until each department had their own and no one used the Burroughs any more.

  2. Re:Its for the better on WIPO Settles 'Cybersquatting' Disputes · · Score: 1

    The US maintains a great deal of control over the UN by not paying its dues.

    I get a bad feeling most Americans don't know this.

    All other failings of the UN aside, it just can't become anything like the ideal with a constantly crippled budget.

  3. Re:Ramblings on N6 -- Fast? Not here. on Netscape 6 Preview Release · · Score: 1

    I answer questions for my friends, and I like to know what the 'average user' is seeing, so I downloaded it into the slowest thing I have, a PI 166 running 24megs and Win95B. A little unfair in 2000, but I wanted a hard test.

    And...

    It's dog slow. Really. Like i was running 4.72 on a 386. That bad. The blue is horrible -- I want to see the web page people! Not your interface. Go back to grey.... Then i clicked bookmarks. It rolled right off the screen. Good god. They didn't even test that. I tried it one more time after restarting. Same results. Enough. It gets uninstalled. I suggest Netscape will be just a memory in 12 months. Damn. That's too bad. C'mon opera 4! C'mon open source! We need a browser other than Bill's.

  4. Re:Dear Pinkertons: on Slashdot Meets The Pinkerton Corp. · · Score: 1

    One of the things that I found interestng about the show was how much the crew at Bletchley Park reminded me of the people you would find at a web startup. It seems to me that the British missed a chance to be the dominate power in the world of computing. Once the war ended there was no longer a place for people that strange. I suspect most of them drifted off to rather normal lives, and a few , like Turing, never where able to make it in a society that valued normality above creativity. I find it hard to believe that the person who made the first computer was sent back to work at the post office.

    This is a lesson to us in the US tech industry. Don't assume that just because we are on top of the world now, that we will stay there. If we don't value the contributions of the people who create the technology then our pace of inovation will slow and we will become overtaken.

    The above was posted by an AC in an Enigma thread. Seems relevant here. Perhaps the mention of economics will get those idiots at Pinkertons [who are indeed former high school jocks] to pay a little attention? Maybe get some of the very rich successful high tech industry types to talk to P about what it was like in high school for them? This has got to be turned around somehow.

  5. Re:Finally... on Slashdot Meets The Pinkerton Corp. · · Score: 1
    Did Pinkerton also read all of Hellmouth?

    Maybe this should be a requirement before meeting with them.

  6. banner ads on Andover Marketing Revelado · · Score: 1

    but where are the fool's day banner ads? has anyone seen one?

  7. Re:Oh that poor Atari 800 :( on Quickielanche · · Score: 1

    Not only did the guy get an Atari 800 to be a server, now he can say it, personally, got /.'d. Wow. Now that's hometown class!

  8. Another Good Link on Engineers Use Legos, Too! · · Score: 1

    Douglas Coupland did a TV interview in Denmark a while back, all about Lego. It's under TV in his flash website.

  9. Who Owns Ideas? -- Historical input please on Part One: In A Virtual World, Who Owns Ideas? · · Score: 1
    Well it's about time authorship was brought into question.

    Journalists, like Mr. Katz, write about other people's work and thoughts. Musicians do listen to music. Things tend to follow a time-line of development which we call things like genres, themes, memes. It may be that the "physical copy" point that becomes commonly acknowledged as "original work" and thereby constitue ownership is actually changing. Culturally, we're very big on seeing things in terms of ownership, not stewardship, or open-source. Does anyone know the historical work on this item of psychology/cognitive science? This could be helpful.

    Remember how long Homer was thought to be the author of the Ilaid. It was ground-breaking [and heavily disputed] when the case was made that he was a repeating bard.