With Caps-Lock redefined as a Control key, which I heartily recommend, ctrl-n is doable with the left hand (I usually move caps-lock to the un-used Pause key).
The UK is in Iraq because of GWB's request that his "good ally" join him in his imaginary crusade against terror.
The invasion of Iraq has created the very terror he claimed to be opposing.
London is now crawling with panicky armed police because the result of this terror was 55+ people being murdered on the tube.
Those people would be alive, and Londoners in general would be safer if George "I'm thick as shit" Bush had not invaded Iraq on fabricated evidence with no idea as to what he was going to do once he won.
Well over a thousand Americans would likewise be alive today if not for this moron's policy. They died for nothing.
Blair is culpable but it will take some time to find out exactly what pressure Bush put him under to join in this sucidal foreign adventure. Raygun threatened Thatcher with the withdrawl of American investment if she did not support his actions in the Middle East, I can't imagine that the gang of parisites and thugs that make up Bush's cabinet is any nicer about how it rallies support.
Opera, while certainly better than IE, hurts the world wide web by dividing the population even further.
Opera is older, and better, than Firefox, so by your "logic" it is Firefox that is dividing the population even further. I assume that you wish we were all using Mosaic?
Reality check: bad judges are almost never kicked out no matter how disastrous their decisions are to other people's lives; the legal system is massivly more devoted to making life easier for its "workers" than it is for the people.
The exploits mentioned above are that the algorithms (MD5 and to some extent SHA-1) have been broken to allow you to construct a piece of data which hashes to the same value as the original.
Well, sort of. It allows you to construct two pieces of data that hash to the same value. It doesn't seem to make it any easier to take an arbitrary original and just magic up another file which has the same hash.
Let's see major wars fought without significant space presence...all of them.
He was being ironic. All previous wars have been fought with a significant space presence, if you define significant as being great enough to prevent the enemy from gaining an advantage from their space presence.
He was pointing out that "significant" in this context is meaningless. Get it?
I remember reading Gary Gygax holding forth about how, in the future, we would be able to get a gang of players together from all over the world and use our computers to play D&D-style games in super-realistic 3D, controled by an invisible GM. I thought it sounded like role-player's heaven!
When it arrived, however, it turned out that 90% of those players and, more importantly, GM's would be wankers. Consequently, I don't play online RPGs and stick to the paper versions, which are funnier, cleverer, cheaper, and above all have better graphics and sound (ie, your imagination), and you get to pick your fellow players.
It's amazing how a 2D sheet of paper can be a more rounded character than a 3D graphic in a hack 'n slash computer game.
You also have to admit that the speed with which a patch is released has nothing to do with how fast it is applied by a couple of million users.
I don't have to admit any such thing. A patch can't be applied until it's out, so it has a direct effect on how fast it's applied by millions of users.
When Microsoft releases patches and people don't update their computers, Microsoft is to blame.
If it releases a patch. This can take literally years and in one case they just paid the website that was reporting the vulnerabilities to shut up. Hardly in the same class as fixing the hole the day before an exploit is seen. Having said that, I don't accept that even Microsoft is to blame for people not patching their browser. I blame them for making fundamentals errors in their design, rather than the execution of that design, but that's a different issue.
Te Firefox team made the mistake of making the auto-update feature too unobtrusive. It should get in your face by default whenever it detects a critical update is available
Why did'nt slashdot choose to go directly to XHTML instead?
Because it's a pointless badly thought-out standard designed by people more interested in justifying their own existance than in making better websites?
Just a guess; it might have been some other reason.
Does the loan payment take a large chunk of their budgets?
It's hard to know since the payments come out of the central government pot rather than being paid by individual libraries so who knows how much of that money would have been allocated to libraries instead of, for example, roads or something?
In the broader picture, however, libraries here are underfunded and many struggle to get working budgets unless they are planning to turn themselves into multimedia extravaganzas which usually means reducing the shelf-space. Community support is vital - and often claimed to be behind the demand for the multimedia; in some places the system works, in others it has failed. But education is not high on the UK government's list of things to do (unless you count the list of things to talk about, in which case it's top), so I don't think we're going to see any great improvements this decade at least.
Does this limit libraries to stocking reference material over popular novels?
Not at all. Again, since the libraries themselves do not see each loan as taking something out of their specific budget, there is no incentive for them to avoid popular items. In fact, the realationship between libraries and authors over here seems a very positive one on the whole, with writers quite often turning up to give talks at their local libraries and even donating to support them. I had not realised the American system was so radically different and I can imagine that there is a certain resentment.
Ironically, many libraries in the UK, including my local one, were built or restructured with money from Carnegie, which is one reason I assumed the US had a similar system to ours.
It seems that I may have only been talking for the UK, where libraries report their annual loans to a central government department which then writes cheques to individual authors (not publishers or agents) to compesate them for lost royalties.
Users of the libraries do not, of course, have to pay and neither, really, do the libraries although the money all comes out of the country's library budget.
Anyone who is content with just those pages as a reference should be checking the book out of a library anyway, not buying it.
In which case, in the UK, you would get a fee whereas Google does not write any cheques to authors.
However, consulting a library book in the UK is not tracked (yet!) so simply reading two pages in a book without taking it home would not get you anything (and neither would someone reading those two pages in a bookshop for that matter).
Obviously the situation in the US is substantially different. Sorry to have mixed up my countries!
Well, perhaps you think everyone born in the 50's was given a million dollar trust-fund by their grandfather (James Willard Maxwell super-rich banker), and went to a prep school with its own mini-computer and fees three times those of Harvard, but I'd class that as "rich".
Bill's never had to work in his life and certainly has never taken any risks he didn't know he could walk away from and still be richer than most other people will ever be.
Libraries do NOT pay per loan, and have NEVER had authors on their side
Sorry, in both cases you are wrong as regards the UK; I foolishly assumed that the US would have a civilised system of paying authors for library loans.
Libraries do not pay per loan on books. They buy the book once and have no obligation to pay after that. Even if they did, the moey would not go to the author but to the publisher who might then pass on a portion to the author, depending on the contract and the honesty of the publisher. If you have evidence refuting this, I'd like to see it.
For the UK almost everything you say is wrong with the slight exception that the actual library does not write a cheque, the government does so on its behalf. The minimum annual payment to an author is 5 pounds and the maximum is 6000. Payment is direct to the author, who must register with the relevent government department.
Details may be found in this year's "Writers' and Artists' Yearbook".
I must say that I had assumed that America would have had a similar system in place; perhaps it doesn't.
And the contents of the libraries Google is scanning are not?
No, they're not. Libraries pay per loan, which is paid by taxes, and that money goes to the author. This was one reason the public library movement was able to get authors on side in its early days. Google does not pay this fee.
I'm not sure how anyone has any right to complain.
You are clearly not trying to make a living from writing, then.
I just love when you have a bunch of crackhead slashdot posters telling billionares that their buisness plan is flawed. Good job, fucker.
I just love it when you have a bunch of capitalism fanboys telling us that being born rich and riding on other people's coat-tails is a flawless business plan that indicates some sort of infallible genius.
Well, it raises the ethical and moral issue that they are making money off the back of work they're not paying for. I don't think it has any legal bearing, at least not much in the US and none at all in the UK.
I mean, come on. I'm supposed to care about Linux because of... the children?
Well, yes. It's not really very unusual for people to work on projects because they want to contribute to the future, which means "the children" if you look at it that way. Why do you think it's odd?
If I buy a CD, and it becomes lost or damaged before I can make a copy, does it constitute a fair use for me to copy the same disc from my friend, or download the same songs to replace the ones that I paid for? Thoughts?
In America is is illegal to in any way deprive a large company of any money that it might be able to squeeze out of you. All actions by the government are paid for and performed on behalf of these large companies and the action you are suggesting is basically treason under this system.
If you don't like it then the companies will allow you to vote for a different company representative every four years. Any company may put up a reprentative for election provided they pay a nominal 680,000,000 dollar registration fee to the media companies who oversee the election and ensure a fair fight for the company representative who is in favour of strong copyright laws and lax corporate accountability laws.
Slashdot Mirror
With Caps-Lock redefined as a Control key, which I heartily recommend, ctrl-n is doable with the left hand (I usually move caps-lock to the un-used Pause key).
TWW
You obviously know nothing about politics.
The UK is in Iraq because of GWB's request that his "good ally" join him in his imaginary crusade against terror.
The invasion of Iraq has created the very terror he claimed to be opposing.
London is now crawling with panicky armed police because the result of this terror was 55+ people being murdered on the tube.
Those people would be alive, and Londoners in general would be safer if George "I'm thick as shit" Bush had not invaded Iraq on fabricated evidence with no idea as to what he was going to do once he won.
Well over a thousand Americans would likewise be alive today if not for this moron's policy. They died for nothing.
Blair is culpable but it will take some time to find out exactly what pressure Bush put him under to join in this sucidal foreign adventure. Raygun threatened Thatcher with the withdrawl of American investment if she did not support his actions in the Middle East, I can't imagine that the gang of parisites and thugs that make up Bush's cabinet is any nicer about how it rallies support.
So, did you just fail thinking class?
TWW
Opera is older, and better, than Firefox, so by your "logic" it is Firefox that is dividing the population even further. I assume that you wish we were all using Mosaic?
TWW
What on earth is wrong with Ctrl-N for "New"?!
Besides that, can't you just change the setting in Opera anyway?
TWW
Thank you, Mr George W Bush. Now fuck off and die, you retarded little chimp.
TWW
TWW
Reality check: bad judges are almost never kicked out no matter how disastrous their decisions are to other people's lives; the legal system is massivly more devoted to making life easier for its "workers" than it is for the people.
TWW
Well, sort of. It allows you to construct two pieces of data that hash to the same value. It doesn't seem to make it any easier to take an arbitrary original and just magic up another file which has the same hash.
TWW
He was being ironic. All previous wars have been fought with a significant space presence, if you define significant as being great enough to prevent the enemy from gaining an advantage from their space presence.
He was pointing out that "significant" in this context is meaningless. Get it?
TWW
When it arrived, however, it turned out that 90% of those players and, more importantly, GM's would be wankers. Consequently, I don't play online RPGs and stick to the paper versions, which are funnier, cleverer, cheaper, and above all have better graphics and sound (ie, your imagination), and you get to pick your fellow players.
It's amazing how a 2D sheet of paper can be a more rounded character than a 3D graphic in a hack 'n slash computer game.
TWW
I don't have to admit any such thing. A patch can't be applied until it's out, so it has a direct effect on how fast it's applied by millions of users.
When Microsoft releases patches and people don't update their computers, Microsoft is to blame.
If it releases a patch. This can take literally years and in one case they just paid the website that was reporting the vulnerabilities to shut up. Hardly in the same class as fixing the hole the day before an exploit is seen. Having said that, I don't accept that even Microsoft is to blame for people not patching their browser. I blame them for making fundamentals errors in their design, rather than the execution of that design, but that's a different issue.
Te Firefox team made the mistake of making the auto-update feature too unobtrusive. It should get in your face by default whenever it detects a critical update is available
This is true.
Because it's a pointless badly thought-out standard designed by people more interested in justifying their own existance than in making better websites?
Just a guess; it might have been some other reason.
TWW
It's hard to know since the payments come out of the central government pot rather than being paid by individual libraries so who knows how much of that money would have been allocated to libraries instead of, for example, roads or something?
In the broader picture, however, libraries here are underfunded and many struggle to get working budgets unless they are planning to turn themselves into multimedia extravaganzas which usually means reducing the shelf-space. Community support is vital - and often claimed to be behind the demand for the multimedia; in some places the system works, in others it has failed. But education is not high on the UK government's list of things to do (unless you count the list of things to talk about, in which case it's top), so I don't think we're going to see any great improvements this decade at least.
Does this limit libraries to stocking reference material over popular novels?
Not at all. Again, since the libraries themselves do not see each loan as taking something out of their specific budget, there is no incentive for them to avoid popular items. In fact, the realationship between libraries and authors over here seems a very positive one on the whole, with writers quite often turning up to give talks at their local libraries and even donating to support them. I had not realised the American system was so radically different and I can imagine that there is a certain resentment.
Ironically, many libraries in the UK, including my local one, were built or restructured with money from Carnegie, which is one reason I assumed the US had a similar system to ours.
TWW
Yes, allowing artists to eat is SO last century, darlink.
It seems that I may have only been talking for the UK, where libraries report their annual loans to a central government department which then writes cheques to individual authors (not publishers or agents) to compesate them for lost royalties.
Users of the libraries do not, of course, have to pay and neither, really, do the libraries although the money all comes out of the country's library budget.
Anyone who is content with just those pages as a reference should be checking the book out of a library anyway, not buying it.
In which case, in the UK, you would get a fee whereas Google does not write any cheques to authors.
However, consulting a library book in the UK is not tracked (yet!) so simply reading two pages in a book without taking it home would not get you anything (and neither would someone reading those two pages in a bookshop for that matter).
Obviously the situation in the US is substantially different. Sorry to have mixed up my countries!
TWW
Well, perhaps you think everyone born in the 50's was given a million dollar trust-fund by their grandfather (James Willard Maxwell super-rich banker), and went to a prep school with its own mini-computer and fees three times those of Harvard, but I'd class that as "rich".
Bill's never had to work in his life and certainly has never taken any risks he didn't know he could walk away from and still be richer than most other people will ever be.
TWW
Sorry, in both cases you are wrong as regards the UK; I foolishly assumed that the US would have a civilised system of paying authors for library loans.
TWW
For the UK almost everything you say is wrong with the slight exception that the actual library does not write a cheque, the government does so on its behalf. The minimum annual payment to an author is 5 pounds and the maximum is 6000. Payment is direct to the author, who must register with the relevent government department.
Details may be found in this year's "Writers' and Artists' Yearbook".
I must say that I had assumed that America would have had a similar system in place; perhaps it doesn't.
TWW
No, they're not. Libraries pay per loan, which is paid by taxes, and that money goes to the author. This was one reason the public library movement was able to get authors on side in its early days. Google does not pay this fee.
I'm not sure how anyone has any right to complain.
You are clearly not trying to make a living from writing, then.
TWW
I just love it when you have a bunch of capitalism fanboys telling us that being born rich and riding on other people's coat-tails is a flawless business plan that indicates some sort of infallible genius.
TWW
Well, it raises the ethical and moral issue that they are making money off the back of work they're not paying for. I don't think it has any legal bearing, at least not much in the US and none at all in the UK.
TWW
What OS?
what the hell the /. icon for GNU topics is supposed to be? It looks like a little penis with a silly hat and a security blanket. WTF is it?
Well, yes. It's not really very unusual for people to work on projects because they want to contribute to the future, which means "the children" if you look at it that way. Why do you think it's odd?
TWW
In America is is illegal to in any way deprive a large company of any money that it might be able to squeeze out of you. All actions by the government are paid for and performed on behalf of these large companies and the action you are suggesting is basically treason under this system.
If you don't like it then the companies will allow you to vote for a different company representative every four years. Any company may put up a reprentative for election provided they pay a nominal 680,000,000 dollar registration fee to the media companies who oversee the election and ensure a fair fight for the company representative who is in favour of strong copyright laws and lax corporate accountability laws.
TWW