>> There's a lot of random stuff that's happened since the last time we did this
Um...what about the
Signal 11 vs. CmdrTaco IRC chat that's floating around. Is that true? I think you should confirm or deny that rumor here on/., because not all of us will be on IRC tonight.
My own opinion about/. is...you don't have a moderation problem, you have a spamming problem. kuro5hin deletes spam posts, and I think most of us here wouldn't mind at all if you just got rid of the garbage posts. IMO, that's the main difference. I'm not saying moderation doesn't need to be improved, but the spam posts are definitely the biggest problem.
methinks Microsoft is starting to change its tune. Almost everything I've read about them lately shows that they want to ditch the "evil monopolist" image they created for themselves. They apologized to the Linux/NTFS developers, for example. They are funding open source development companies like Corel. I am open minded enough to ditch my stereotypes about them if they continue to behave as citizens in the corporate world.
As far as other languages being supported, that's what.net is all about. It will work with Perl, Python, VB, C/C++/C#, Cobol, Eiffel, Mercury, etc. The only programming language I know about that doesn't have.net support is Java, but I don't see why support couldn't be built for it. I imagine MS will leave that to Sun and IBM to do themselves, however.
I apologize for miscrediting your comment. My main point was that if DC has no case, then people running sites with useful CueCat programs have nothing to worry about.
BTW, I tried following your link, but couldn't get to the site. Did you take your site down?
OK, so far every article about DC has been served with an insightful CT comment("childishly simple protocol", "DC just doesn't seem to understand that they can't control hardware that's given away for free", etc.)
If its that cut and dried, how about giving these sites that are being threatened by DC some assistance? Tell flyingbuttmonkeys that you are so sure that DC has no case that you are willing to back that claim with legal help if need be. On one hand, you're repeatedly dismissing DC's claims, however that doesn't seem to be preventing them from shutting down the various websites that are making the CueCat useful. Back them up!
>> One-click ordering, by the standards of the patent office, is not an obvious invention.
Thats where most/. readers and I disagree with you. It is an obvious invention. You run a commercial website, you have customers, you use cookies. The whole purpose of cookies is to prevent your customer from entering the same information every time they use your site. All Amazon has done was to put their cute little name on the process.
Amazon did not invent cookies, and thankfully they are something any website can use. Therefore, I argue that any use of cookies to save your customers from repeating tasks when they visit your site is fair and should be legal.
I plead not guilty. I never tried to represent the entire slashdot population, if you'll actually read my original post. In fact I only referenced myself, the orignal poster, and the slashdot staff.
Its a perfectly valid observation that MS-bashing stories consistently get 600+ posts, while other stories, more interesting to the original poster and myself(not necessarily the entire slashdot population) typically get less than 150.
>> Can we stick to the real stuff the matters, like new products, on-line rights and privacy, and science?
Sure, that stuff is what really matters. To us. What matters to slashdot is getting those banner views, and for that, nothing beats a good ol' "my OS can kick your OS's ass" flamefest.
Buy nothing. Here on/., the tradition is to post these things. So here goes.
AN OPEN LETTER TO HOBBYISTS
By William Henry Gates III
February 3, 1976
An Open Letter to Hobbyists
To me, the most critical thing in the hobby market right now is the lack of good software courses, books and software itself. Without good software and an owner who understands programming, a hobby computer is wasted. Will quality software be written for the hobby market?
Almost a year ago, Paul Allen and myself, expecting the hobby market to expand, hired Monte Davidoff and developed Altair BASIC. Though the initial work took only two months, the three of us have spent most of the last year documenting, improving and adding features to BASIC. Now we have 4K, 8K, EXTENDED, ROM and DISK BASIC. The value of the computer time we have used exceeds $40,000.
The feedback we have gotten from the hundreds of people who say they are using BASIC has all been positive. Two surprising things are apparent, however, 1) Most of these "users" never bought BASIC (less than 10% of all Altair owners have bought BASIC), and 2) The amount of royalties we have received from sales to hobbyists makes the time spent on Altair BASIC worth less than $2 an hour.
Why is this? As the majority of hobbyists must be aware, most of you steal your software. Hardware must be paid for, but software is something to share. Who cares if the people who worked on it get paid?
Is this fair? One thing you don't do by stealing software is get back at MITS for some problem you may have had. MITS doesn't make money selling software. The royalty paid to us, the manual, the tape and the overhead make it a break-even operation. One thing you do do is prevent good software from being written. Who can afford to do professional work for nothing? What hobbyist can put 3-man years into programming, finding all bugs, documenting his product and distribute for free? The fact is, no one besides us has invested a lot of money in hobby software. We have written 6800 BASIC, and are writing 8080 APL and 6800 APL, but there is very little incentive to make this software available to hobbyists. Most directly, the thing you do is theft.
What about the guys who re-sell Altair BASIC, aren't they making money on hobby software? Yes, but those who have been reported to us may lose in the end. They are the ones who give hobbyists a bad name, and should be kicked out of any club meeting they show up at.
I would appreciate letters from any one who wants to pay up, or has a suggestion or comment. Just write to me at 1180 Alvarado SE, #114, Albuquerque, New Mexico, 87108. Nothing would please me more than being able to hire ten programmers and deluge the hobby market with good software.
There isn't a lot of what I think of as "Rock" coming out any more
Ever wonder why that is? Its because the recording industry could care less about art. They want a product that sells. So what we have is that 95% of all radio stations are owned by a handful of media companies. We have Britney Spears and boy bands, entirely conceived and executed by middle-aged recording execs.
That's right, all you teenage music fans. Your generations music is really the product of some fat, bald old fart sitting behind a desk. Thats why your generation has no Led Zeppelin, no Who, no Rush. No great songs that you'll still be listening to in 30 years. Now, what're you going to do about it?
I figure you or spiralx would be the ones to ask this, so here goes: I am looking for the original text of the famous Usenet troll: "Oh how I envy American College students". Supposedly this one post got ~3,500 replies in the course of a year. Now that's what I would call an effective troll!
Any ideas on where I can find it? I tried all the major search engines, and found references to it, but couldn't find the troll itself. To find the reference, search on google for "subtle art of trolling", find the article, and scroll down to the section called "The Successful Troll".
As far as I'm concerned, this is the Troll Holy Grail. Help me find it, please! BTW, can I be on the mailing list? I've never trolled, but I certainly enjoy them now and then.
According to this Slashdot article, "the unauthorized alteration, damage or use of a computer system" is now a felony in Michigan.
A robot not respecting robots.txt is certainly in the class of unauthorized use. So if Michigan's law catches on across the U.S., maybe there will be some real protection for web admins to protect sites or directories from being indexed. Slap the bot company with a felony! Maybe the law isn't so odious after all.
I'm not ashamed to say it is one of those Microsoft split-keyboard contraptions. Since I've started using it the carpal tunnel and shoulder pain have gone away. I can't go back. Sorry Rob, but 10 dollar keyboards suck major ass.
The electronics are encased in plastic, so you could probably stick it in a dishwasher to clean it(haven't tried it though). I have spilled entire glasses of water on it and it was fine when it dried(clean too!)
Here's what I think would be really useful - a keyboard that allowed you to store keystroke macros. Like say, a macro that opened up an editor, typed in a program, ran said program, and finished up by deleting said program from the computer. Heh, heh.
understood, but I still would have liked to have seen the original email or other proof that Amazon replied to a question about their cookie-pricing scheme with an answer about "mispricing". Yes, one can make the inferential leap, but I would have preferred a reference, some proof.
"Finally, at any given time, despite our best efforts, a small number of the more than 4.7 million items on our site may be mispriced."
What does this have to do with cookie-based price differentiation? The above is true regardless of whether they are charging different prices to different customers. And the above statement clearly does not explain the cookie-based price game Amazon is trying to play.
In a completely unrelated story, Amazon was caught with prices that were too low, and they tried to explain the mistake to the customers for the purpose of charging full price. This has nothing to do with the cookie-pricing.
Unless I missed something, there are two completely separate issues here. Hmm. I thought slashback was where we checked the facts and presented corrected information.
Half my life ago, when I was 16, I had a couple of very profound(to me, anyway) experiences. Hopefully this discussion is not yet dead, because I would definitely like some feedback.
The first occurred when I was with a group of friends experimenting with a Ouija board. We were all receptive and open-minded about the whole thing, and sure enough, we were summoning spirits that would move the little plastic piece around and form letters. We got well past the point where any of us was skeptical that something otherworldy was taking place.
The weirdest part of that whole time was the night before we were all going to go see Al Di Meola/Paco De Lucia/John McLaughlin/Steve Morse in concert. We summoned this particularly nasty spirit and proceeded to insult it, being the well-mannered geeky teenagers that we were. Well, I kid you not, we all received what felt like an electric shock from this thing. Ever touch a piece of metal that is inserted into an electric socket? That's EXACTLY what it felt like.
I was pretty freaked about it. When I talked it over with my Dad, he insisted that it was a bunch of nonsense - anything we experienced was created entirely out of our own minds. However, I never forgot the experience, and I still don't understand how that kind of shock could be transmitted through a plastic piece.
I believe there are natural explanations for everything supernatural. Anyone here want to explain how the above could have happened?
I will gladly accept any P75 systems your friend's company is throwing out. Email me if you want someone to take those. Ever hear of clustering?
Lynx has its uses. For me, the internet is about text. I use the internet for information, not graphics. Lynx is faster than anything else, and probably always will be.
>> If you wanna browse in four colors you can, but why should my experience be spoiled by whiny pathetic ten year old technology huggers?
Apparently you didn't read the article. The biggest incompatibility is trying to present colors the same to both High Color(15 and 16 bit) and True Color(24 bit). Even if you leave the old 8-bit browsers out of the picture, you have to contend with the fact that there is no compatibility between High and True Color. There is no overlap: if a color is represented in True Color, by mathematical definition it is not represented in High Color.
Seeing as how ~56 percent of people use High Color and ~38 percent use True Color, you've got a real problem there. You cannot present the same high-quality image to both audiences. Getting rid of High Color settings would largely solve the problem, but unfortunately, these people are in the majority.
Slashdot Mirror
Um...what about the Signal 11 vs. CmdrTaco IRC chat that's floating around. Is that true? I think you should confirm or deny that rumor here on /., because not all of us will be on IRC tonight.
My own opinion about /. is...you don't have a moderation problem, you have a spamming problem. kuro5hin deletes spam posts, and I think most of us here wouldn't mind at all if you just got rid of the garbage posts. IMO, that's the main difference. I'm not saying moderation doesn't need to be improved, but the spam posts are definitely the biggest problem.
I watch the sea.
I saw it on TV.
As far as other languages being supported, that's what .net is all about. It will work with Perl, Python, VB, C/C++/C#, Cobol, Eiffel, Mercury, etc. The only programming language I know about that doesn't have .net support is Java, but I don't see why support couldn't be built for it. I imagine MS will leave that to Sun and IBM to do themselves, however.
I watch the sea.
I saw it on TV.
BTW, I tried following your link, but couldn't get to the site. Did you take your site down?
I watch the sea.
I saw it on TV.
If its that cut and dried, how about giving these sites that are being threatened by DC some assistance? Tell flyingbuttmonkeys that you are so sure that DC has no case that you are willing to back that claim with legal help if need be. On one hand, you're repeatedly dismissing DC's claims, however that doesn't seem to be preventing them from shutting down the various websites that are making the CueCat useful. Back them up!
I watch the sea.
I saw it on TV.
Thats where most /. readers and I disagree with you. It is an obvious invention. You run a commercial website, you have customers, you use cookies. The whole purpose of cookies is to prevent your customer from entering the same information every time they use your site. All Amazon has done was to put their cute little name on the process.
Amazon did not invent cookies, and thankfully they are something any website can use. Therefore, I argue that any use of cookies to save your customers from repeating tasks when they visit your site is fair and should be legal.
I watch the sea.
I saw it on TV.
Don't forget about moderating down perfectly good comments.
I watch the sea.
I saw it on TV.
Its a perfectly valid observation that MS-bashing stories consistently get 600+ posts, while other stories, more interesting to the original poster and myself(not necessarily the entire slashdot population) typically get less than 150.
Sure, that stuff is what really matters. To us. What matters to slashdot is getting those banner views, and for that, nothing beats a good ol' "my OS can kick your OS's ass" flamefest.
AN OPEN LETTER TO HOBBYISTS
By William Henry Gates III
February 3, 1976
An Open Letter to Hobbyists
To me, the most critical thing in the hobby market right now is the lack of good software courses, books and software itself. Without good software and an owner who understands programming, a hobby computer is wasted. Will quality software be written for the hobby market?
Almost a year ago, Paul Allen and myself, expecting the hobby market to expand, hired Monte Davidoff and developed Altair BASIC. Though the initial work took only two months, the three of us have spent most of the last year documenting, improving and adding features to BASIC. Now we have 4K, 8K, EXTENDED, ROM and DISK BASIC. The value of the computer time we have used exceeds $40,000.
The feedback we have gotten from the hundreds of people who say they are using BASIC has all been positive. Two surprising things are apparent, however, 1) Most of these "users" never bought BASIC (less than 10% of all Altair owners have bought BASIC), and 2) The amount of royalties we have received from sales to hobbyists makes the time spent on Altair BASIC worth less than $2 an hour.
Why is this? As the majority of hobbyists must be aware, most of you steal your software. Hardware must be paid for, but software is something to share. Who cares if the people who worked on it get paid?
Is this fair? One thing you don't do by stealing software is get back at MITS for some problem you may have had. MITS doesn't make money selling software. The royalty paid to us, the manual, the tape and the overhead make it a break-even operation. One thing you do do is prevent good software from being written. Who can afford to do professional work for nothing? What hobbyist can put 3-man years into programming, finding all bugs, documenting his product and distribute for free? The fact is, no one besides us has invested a lot of money in hobby software. We have written 6800 BASIC, and are writing 8080 APL and 6800 APL, but there is very little incentive to make this software available to hobbyists. Most directly, the thing you do is theft.
What about the guys who re-sell Altair BASIC, aren't they making money on hobby software? Yes, but those who have been reported to us may lose in the end. They are the ones who give hobbyists a bad name, and should be kicked out of any club meeting they show up at.
I would appreciate letters from any one who wants to pay up, or has a suggestion or comment. Just write to me at 1180 Alvarado SE, #114, Albuquerque, New Mexico, 87108. Nothing would please me more than being able to hire ten programmers and deluge the hobby market with good software.
Bill Gates
General Partner, Micro-Soft
Ever wonder why that is? Its because the recording industry could care less about art. They want a product that sells. So what we have is that 95% of all radio stations are owned by a handful of media companies. We have Britney Spears and boy bands, entirely conceived and executed by middle-aged recording execs.
That's right, all you teenage music fans. Your generations music is really the product of some fat, bald old fart sitting behind a desk. Thats why your generation has no Led Zeppelin, no Who, no Rush. No great songs that you'll still be listening to in 30 years. Now, what're you going to do about it?
ESR has no degree. Having a degree doesn't make you a competent programmer, nor does the lack of one prevent you from becoming one.
Any ideas on where I can find it? I tried all the major search engines, and found references to it, but couldn't find the troll itself. To find the reference, search on google for "subtle art of trolling", find the article, and scroll down to the section called "The Successful Troll".
As far as I'm concerned, this is the Troll Holy Grail. Help me find it, please! BTW, can I be on the mailing list? I've never trolled, but I certainly enjoy them now and then.
A robot not respecting robots.txt is certainly in the class of unauthorized use. So if Michigan's law catches on across the U.S., maybe there will be some real protection for web admins to protect sites or directories from being indexed. Slap the bot company with a felony! Maybe the law isn't so odious after all.
yes they do. And Rover is a bad dog.
There *already* is a random search. Uroulette.
I've actually found some interesting sites with this.
We have not reached the accuracy limit. A search engine should be able to read my mind and infer the best sites to go to.
not to mention other organic matter resulting from visiting pr0n sites :)
The electronics are encased in plastic, so you could probably stick it in a dishwasher to clean it(haven't tried it though). I have spilled entire glasses of water on it and it was fine when it dried(clean too!)
Here's what I think would be really useful - a keyboard that allowed you to store keystroke macros. Like say, a macro that opened up an editor, typed in a program, ran said program, and finished up by deleting said program from the computer. Heh, heh.
What does this have to do with cookie-based price differentiation? The above is true regardless of whether they are charging different prices to different customers. And the above statement clearly does not explain the cookie-based price game Amazon is trying to play.
In a completely unrelated story , Amazon was caught with prices that were too low, and they tried to explain the mistake to the customers for the purpose of charging full price. This has nothing to do with the cookie-pricing.
Unless I missed something, there are two completely separate issues here. Hmm. I thought slashback was where we checked the facts and presented corrected information.
The first occurred when I was with a group of friends experimenting with a Ouija board. We were all receptive and open-minded about the whole thing, and sure enough, we were summoning spirits that would move the little plastic piece around and form letters. We got well past the point where any of us was skeptical that something otherworldy was taking place.
The weirdest part of that whole time was the night before we were all going to go see Al Di Meola/Paco De Lucia/John McLaughlin/Steve Morse in concert. We summoned this particularly nasty spirit and proceeded to insult it, being the well-mannered geeky teenagers that we were. Well, I kid you not, we all received what felt like an electric shock from this thing. Ever touch a piece of metal that is inserted into an electric socket? That's EXACTLY what it felt like.
I was pretty freaked about it. When I talked it over with my Dad, he insisted that it was a bunch of nonsense - anything we experienced was created entirely out of our own minds. However, I never forgot the experience, and I still don't understand how that kind of shock could be transmitted through a plastic piece.
I believe there are natural explanations for everything supernatural. Anyone here want to explain how the above could have happened?
Lynx has its uses. For me, the internet is about text. I use the internet for information, not graphics. Lynx is faster than anything else, and probably always will be.
Apparently you didn't read the article. The biggest incompatibility is trying to present colors the same to both High Color(15 and 16 bit) and True Color(24 bit). Even if you leave the old 8-bit browsers out of the picture, you have to contend with the fact that there is no compatibility between High and True Color. There is no overlap: if a color is represented in True Color, by mathematical definition it is not represented in High Color.
Seeing as how ~56 percent of people use High Color and ~38 percent use True Color, you've got a real problem there. You cannot present the same high-quality image to both audiences. Getting rid of High Color settings would largely solve the problem, but unfortunately, these people are in the majority.
If so, very cool. If not, most laptop carrying geeks still need the laptop.