...the notion that once something has been sold, the buyer can do as he pleases with the bought item.
What, like senators? Fortunately, we're finding out that although we have those rights for goods, we don't necessarily have them for services (i.e., creating legislation).
Which is why Microsoft is so hell-bent on converting software from a good into a service.
(I doubt they'll succeed, as I've spent time in third-world countries and they can't afford software at first-world prices. So they copy when possible; as companies go to an on-line verification system, the third world will lead the move to free/Free software. It's already happening: where's Miguel from?)
Maybe we should push for new laws that explicitly allow certain things.
We're forgetting the Constitution and Amendments: all things not expressly forbidden are allowed. Those are our rights.
What really pisses me off is Bush saying he will veto any bill which does not ban all human cloning. Who is he to impede the progress of science? Especially for a predominantly religious argument. We're supposed to have separation of church and state.
And just like the CBDTPA would do, Bush's ban on cloning would simply move advanced technology off-shore. I thought our goal was to move as much low technology off-shore, so we could then apply tarrifs as the products come back in (i.e., steel -- I just read Japan is planning to retaliate against the recently-imposed 30% markup which the government will pocket on steel imports. And of course it's hurting Brazil as well, but they're in less of a position to retaliate).
Long story short: I'm very glad to hear this news. We should not arbitrarily restrict the progress of science, whether it's in digital consumer technology or a life-saving technology like medical research.
Re:Not competition for TiVo/Replay
on
PVR For Linux
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· Score: 2
Are you high?
Re:Not competition for TiVo/Replay
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PVR For Linux
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· Score: 3, Interesting
Personally, I would rather pay $500 to TiVo and be done with it than have to screw around with getting all of the different random bits inline to make the Linux VDR solution work!
I own a ReplayTV, recently upgraded from 20 to 80 GB because I was going to be out of town. A couple days ago, the local phone monopoly changed the rules (went to 10-digit dialing, area code is not optional now) and my machine couldn't keep up.
I missed "That 70's Show" tonight, and if I hadn't caught the machine at 8:15, I would have missed "24" as well. The punchline is it had data up to 7:30!
The hateful part is there was no "dial now" option. I had to pretend the input was "Nothing" and accept the changes, then reset it to the proper cable network to get it to call in and get updates.
An Open Source solution would have a distributed "channel" to communicate important "overriding" information like this, with obvious security around it. So my machine, which still had 6 hours of space, would have know how to update its knowledge.
As another poster said, I'd like to see an Open Source "update" to the TiVo/ReplayTV software which gives it our own UI. Complete control over what the buttons do. The ability to teach it new controllers so you can re-use controllers from old machines, for families with more than one kid. That'll teach them how to share!;-)
For developers, the ability to create Perl and Python bindings to the buttons on-screen. Editing would be a little difficult, but could be (slowly) achieved with the 2 = "ABC2", 3 = "DEF3", etc., where hitting it once is the first, twice is the second, etc., and it wraps around. Or the user could program in macros, in "Edit Mode", for each button. One button could be "last function called" and could keep going back each time it was pressed, again wrapping around.
Now, with these things to help out fellow developers, imagine what a marketing-minded contibutor could add to the polish of the finished product? I think there's a serious competitor, and like Microsoft's Windows Update site, if a product can be auto-updated it can hijacked.
Imagine creating a distrubtion of Linux with a "perfect" WINE, which completely mimicked the Windows interface, except the Help screen had different credits.
Then imagine hijacking the Windows Update machines (which must run IIS, though I'm not certain), and distributing this update. An update which can cross-polinate, and get in through various cracks like IIS holes, Exchange exploits, etc. It tries to be silent, but it'll stop at nothing to replace the closed-source mess that's eating your productivity.
The TiVo's not eating your productivity; it's just not giving you the full potential of the device, and the company wants to be friends with the old dinosaur companies. So it restricts features. That's what forces people to write their own versions, because they want new features. They want to improve what they paid for. And that (I must assume) applies to everybody, with any piece of merchandise -- especially if it can be done at no cost.
But that also means it damn well better be tested good, for it to be accepted by the general public.
You'd think ReplayTV would have been notified by my albatross of a phone company, and then been given ample opportunity to update its devices' software, so they continue to dial correctly. There should be a law -- because the telephone company is a monopoly. Otherwise it should be free competition, but since infrastructure is expensive we gave them a monopoly.
These days a wireless network with the same bandwidth would cost a lot less to set up, and wouldn't have to be regulated. And it could be as simple as an extra "layer" in TCP/IP that took advantage of the fact that wireless cards are approaching the cost of LAN cards. So instead of wiring your house, you can wireless your house.
The benefit is you're getting the ability to talk to your neighbors, too. If they have a card, then it creates a secure network among them, on which commication can be passed -- creating a "separate" Internet, similar to the Gnutella clouds model, each piece connected to a few neighbors, forming a large cloud. Like the original BBS email, as well -- which kept all calls to local calls to keep operational costs down.
And it would of course have "Internet Entry Points" where it would reach other clouds by using the Internet. So if every tenth house had DSL, it would be able to communicate very effectively.
Hated by the providers, of course, since they invested in a technology that's being evolved on top of, and they haven't made back their money yet. But not every investment is (or should be) a profitable one, and legislation isn't going to stop it (but they'll try, I'm sure -- in all the cases above).
Re:Several cool Features
on
PVR For Linux
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· Score: 2
Note to Tivo, please add these functionalites to the next system upgrade
- A "Keep Watching" option, for when you tape multiple shows (i.e., the 8:00, 8:30, 9:00, 9:30, of Fox, Fox, NBC, and NBC (THU)), it shows all four in succession.
- ReplayTV's "Strip the Commercials" feature.
Re:Great product
on
PVR For Linux
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· Score: 1, Offtopic
Dude, that is so cool:
...my (then) youngest daughter, about a year old, take a DVD out of it's case, put the case back on the rack, toddle over to the computer, and slide the disc into the crack between the top of the DVD-ROM and the computer chassis.
Encourage that. Teach her how to put them in the right way. Only one year old! I was twelve when I got into computers. 2-3 years old is perfect for languages, when kids are bilinguals (or more). Imagine what she could create if she learned to speak computer languages in the same timeframe she learned to speak human languages.
Just look at it this way: she's another experiment.;-)
Pretty amazing. It's great to have relevant data like that, and I appreciate that he will not remove the page; however, it screams "script kiddie" to me -- detailed instructions on how to create the "protocol" and forms of attack for the worm writer, along with relevant source code.
The next step: write a worm which can travel back in time and infect computers prior to the worm existing.
(There was a great series of books starting with "Red Limit Freeway" (forgot the author) which had a "map cube" of the universe which only existed in a loop -- the (older) main character gave it to the (younger) main character. Neat plot device.)
(PS Cool/. fortune currently "If you can survive death, you can probably survive anything." Relevant both to time travel and to the "lifetime" of the worm.)
If there's a folder in there called BDE and you aren't running the Borland Databse Engine then you're infected as well.
This Brilliant tempest is giving Borland/Inprise/Borland a lot of press. I haven't heart of the BDE in years, but in the past week I've seen mention of it at least a dozen times.
What's really cool is the extent to which the instructions go to make sure you aren't deleting something useful.
Re:He's either a fruit that's a little nutty...
on
Time Travel
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· Score: 1
To go back 10 years you need to run a time machine for at least 10 years.
He should have waited, like that Italian researcher, until he was far enough along before announcing.
Re:The best he can build is a disintegration chamb
on
Time Travel
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· Score: 2
Sounds to me like a great way to get rid of garbage but a less than ideal way to travel.
So we can stop pissing off those people in Nevada. And instead piss off people we'll never hear or see from.
After saving his dad, he goes on to form the band Wyld Stallyns. (OT: Did you realize one of the "historical babes" was the French exchange student from "Better Off Dead"? "I can't even get real drugs here!" he said, brandishing a whippet.)
This is the most important part of creating a work of fiction, be it a book, movie, art, or game.
On a slightly-related topic (the upcoming TV serial was discussed a few days ago), I remember being shocked to find that Corwin's artificial hand was in some places left, and other places right. This was when I was 14; it (temporarily) ruined the suspension of disbelief. Still great books, and I hope to PVR the series.
Sure. As you stated in a previous reply, it's all about the Google search. Mine was "free genealogy".
I found the site awt.ancestry.com. The previous link goes directly to Jack Valenti's info page.
Did you know he's married to Mary Margaret Wiley, who was President Lyndon Johnson's secretary? She may have provided some important connections in the RIAA's formative years.
Then I clicked on "Trees". To get his family tree, I had to provide birth date and place, so another Google search ("jack valenti biography born") found the following biography with all I needed (Born: September 5, 1921; Birth Place: Houston, Texas).
Also from that bio page, we learn the following:
After serving as a bomber pilot in World War II, he opened Weekley & Valenti Advertising in 1952 and later became a top aide to fellow Texan Lyndon B. Johnson. In 1966, President Johnson appointed Valenti as the third president and chief executive officer of the Motion Picture Association, a post he has held ever since.
So my assumption was slightly off; he most likely met his wife while working with Johnson.
Plugging the data into the tree search page, I am frustrated to find that this is to create your own family tree, not to provide one for you based on your initial person.
So I clicked on the "Ancestry Family Tree" and got here. This is a program you need to download (closed source, spyware leaps to mind) but I'm running Ad-Aware so I boldly go.
I had to register to download, so I used a throwaway Hotmail account. (It's really tough to create a unique username!)
It's a 4.5 MB download and appears to be an ActiveX control; waiting for it to finish (slow modem in Brazil).
Well that was entirely too frustrating; the program is also for creating a family tree, not for automatically generating one.
I tried a couple other sites and had my hopes dashed for finding a quick solution. I spent a good bit of time on this (thinking it would be a bit easier) so I'm posting this anyway; even though it's not as Informative as I would have liked, it could at least be considered Cautionary.;-)
Of course, if anyone knows how to do this, please post! Would be neat to find potential "influences" (actually, I already found one -- a former president).
If they were to choose for opt-out, they should have gone with a central "trusted" method of removal. They do this with the post office when you want to be removed from junk mailing lists. How can it not have occured to them that the same should apply to junk-email???
Several years ago I blew some investment funds on bulk mail, and learned one trick the mailing list companies use. When a list is sold as "one-time use only," a small percentage (1% or less, depending on the list size) of the addresses are actually "fake" addresses which lead back to the list owners.
If they get two offers from you, you're in trouble.
With this in mind, I really like the idea of an "opt-out" national (international?) database. A percentage of the addresses in this database will loop back to the government, and anyone sending SPAM to those addresses will be in trouble.
Also, the database could be "blind" -- the SPAMmer submits the email address to send to, and a simple "yes" or "no" is returned. The SPAMmer never sees the entire list.
Of course, using a dictionary and "@hotmail.com" (among others) could allow a SPAMmer to script harvesting the database, even though it was "blind" -- but that 1% rule would most likely catch them.
As of right now the URL is giving me a 403 - "Você não está autorizado a exibir esta página" (i.e. you are not authorized to view this page, except that I'm currently in Brazil).
The other one, http://198.63.57.204, gives me a directory listing with two entries - "Parent Directory" and "Stats". The former just loops back to the same page, and the latter requires a username and password.
Sounds like someone really screwed up the configuration, or it (they both?) got/.ed.
What I find hilarious (somewhat) about this is I recently purchased a case from Antec, a very well-done case with multiple fans, drive rails that click and slide out, etc. $179 and worth every penny.
The case came with a stick-on logo like the "Intel Inside" logo, except that it said "Antec Outside".
It's as if the government is indirectly establishing tyranny by mandating policies that support the corporpations who support them. Individuals become seen as the means to support the corporations who support the government. Somewhere along the line, we forgot that it is the case that the government should be seen as the means of supporting individuals.
Let's turn this around to witness a disturbing trend in evolution:
It's as if the human brain is indirectly establishing tyranny by mandating policies that support the actions that support it. Cells become seen as the means to support the actions that support the human brain. Somewhere along the line, we (the cells) forgot that it is the case that the human brain should be seen as the means of supporting cells.
Am I way off base, or does this make some sense? And is there any way for our cells to obtain individuality, apart from our body? Are we becoming no more than "cells" to the government body, which is more concerned with its abstract actions than it is with the cells that support it?
As others have said, I am very close to "voting with my plane ticket."
How about leaving sensationalism to the Weekly World News, the Sun or the National Inquirer, and just post stories without the whining "the sky is falling" prose?!
I just want to add that, even though it is the case that the text in question was written by "an unnamed reader", it was timothy who copied and posted it onto the front page.
I think the editors should do a lot more editing of the submissions. Especially now that they're asking for money to do this job.
Do you hold on to an old 286, even though it could easily crash purely because of its old-hardware, just because it works? Do you hold on to a 1982 Toyota Corolla, just because it works? No. For the safety of you data, and for the safty of your family, you go and get new stuff.
To take your analogy even further: a "perfectly good program" written in 1970's FORTRAN might be able to be rewritten in a newer-style language, with well-document and well-tested libraries (Perl, Python, Java, Visual Basic, many others). This could reduce a program from 100,000 lines to, say, 10,000 lines.
By reducing the size by 10 times, you also reduce the complexity (perhaps not by 10 times, but by a lot).
No amount of "additional carburetors" (as another poster put it) will ever give your old car anti-lock brakes, traction control, a heads-up display, etc.
If it's worth selling 10 years later, it's probably worth rewriting in the language-of-the-day, to afford the benefits of scale. Take advantage of the work other programmers have done on the "foundation" (libraries), so you can more easily build a larger "building."
And as another poster mentioned, the skillset for the old language is dying as developers learn and prefer the newer languages, thus making the older language's programs more expensive to maintain.
Right now, KPresenter could have a UI redesign (hiding the least used toolbar buttons etc.).
Might not be a bad idea to add a "logger" so that all features used are logged, their frequency, etc. This could be used by the developers to fine-tune the displayed features, and hide the lesser-used ones.
Of course, this should be disabled by default like the Mozilla auto-loader, but it could be a prominent option in the installation (again, like the Mozilla auto-loader).
If your customers read slashdot, then you really are in trouble.
Why?
I didn't mean only/., either; there are sites with better signal-to-noise ratios discussing software.
My point was the Mozilla team should have their finger on the pulse of the community. This includes taking discussions and spending resources turning them into useful items (such as additions to Bugzilla).
Not every customer who has the ability to discuss bugs, has the ability to submit them to Bugzilla.
This is the same UI issue which Unix/Linux has historically ignored, which gave Microsoft an opportunity: "make the interface easier for the users" vs. "make the users learn the horrible interface."
It's up to you, of course, but I'd choose the model that has been shown to be successful.
If you have a bug to report, or a suggestion to
make, can you take it to
here?
While I agree with your sentiment, I would submit that if Mozilla is a commercial project (AOL's paying for it), then the Mozilla team (not necessarily developers, could be someone with secretarial skills) should monitor Slashdot and other discussion sites when Mozilla is being discussed.
I used to do this at my former employer, and was appreciated both by management and customers.
Configure your middle mouse button to open links in a tab in the background.
Could you explain how to do that? I looked in the Edit, Preferences but none of the entries for Navigator, Tabbed Browsing seem to be for that feature. (And there's no help for Tabbed Browsing, either! -- I'm on 0.9.8, downloading 0.9.9 as I type.)
I'd like to add a couple observations as well. The first is really amazing -- my right wrist feels better since I installed Mozilla (I started with 0.9.7, downloaded 1/14/02). I had been seeing a physical therapist every week for several months; we deduced that it's my desk and chair position, which bends my wrist unnaturally when I use the mouse. Using Mozilla, I've been able to avoid the mouse a lot more than when I was using IE; since my wrist is feeling better, there's a potential correlation. (The only other change is he went out of business and I haven't seen him in a month or so; perhaps he was aggravating the condition?)
The other observation has to do with the text box, which various people have been discussing in this thread. One odd behavior I've noticed is this: hit Ctrl+End, then the right arrow. You'll end up at the beginning of the last line. Hit End, then the right arrow again, and it moves the cursor to the top (as if you had hit Ctrl+Home)!
Also, Ctrl+Backspace doesn't delete the previous word (it does nothing). And Ctrl+Left Arrow/Right Arrow doesn't stop at punctuation, as IE does. (Even if that's not preferred, it should at least be an option.)
Hopefully, some of these will be fixed in 0.9.9, which I'll have in... about 20 more minutes (56k).
Slashdot Mirror
What, like senators? Fortunately, we're finding out that although we have those rights for goods, we don't necessarily have them for services (i.e., creating legislation).
Which is why Microsoft is so hell-bent on converting software from a good into a service.
(I doubt they'll succeed, as I've spent time in third-world countries and they can't afford software at first-world prices. So they copy when possible; as companies go to an on-line verification system, the third world will lead the move to free/Free software. It's already happening: where's Miguel from?)
We're forgetting the Constitution and Amendments: all things not expressly forbidden are allowed. Those are our rights.
What really pisses me off is Bush saying he will veto any bill which does not ban all human cloning. Who is he to impede the progress of science? Especially for a predominantly religious argument. We're supposed to have separation of church and state.
And just like the CBDTPA would do, Bush's ban on cloning would simply move advanced technology off-shore. I thought our goal was to move as much low technology off-shore, so we could then apply tarrifs as the products come back in (i.e., steel -- I just read Japan is planning to retaliate against the recently-imposed 30% markup which the government will pocket on steel imports. And of course it's hurting Brazil as well, but they're in less of a position to retaliate).
Long story short: I'm very glad to hear this news. We should not arbitrarily restrict the progress of science, whether it's in digital consumer technology or a life-saving technology like medical research.
Are you high?
I own a ReplayTV, recently upgraded from 20 to 80 GB because I was going to be out of town. A couple days ago, the local phone monopoly changed the rules (went to 10-digit dialing, area code is not optional now) and my machine couldn't keep up.
I missed "That 70's Show" tonight, and if I hadn't caught the machine at 8:15, I would have missed "24" as well. The punchline is it had data up to 7:30!
The hateful part is there was no "dial now" option. I had to pretend the input was "Nothing" and accept the changes, then reset it to the proper cable network to get it to call in and get updates.
An Open Source solution would have a distributed "channel" to communicate important "overriding" information like this, with obvious security around it. So my machine, which still had 6 hours of space, would have know how to update its knowledge.
As another poster said, I'd like to see an Open Source "update" to the TiVo/ReplayTV software which gives it our own UI. Complete control over what the buttons do. The ability to teach it new controllers so you can re-use controllers from old machines, for families with more than one kid. That'll teach them how to share! ;-)
For developers, the ability to create Perl and Python bindings to the buttons on-screen. Editing would be a little difficult, but could be (slowly) achieved with the 2 = "ABC2", 3 = "DEF3", etc., where hitting it once is the first, twice is the second, etc., and it wraps around. Or the user could program in macros, in "Edit Mode", for each button. One button could be "last function called" and could keep going back each time it was pressed, again wrapping around.
Now, with these things to help out fellow developers, imagine what a marketing-minded contibutor could add to the polish of the finished product? I think there's a serious competitor, and like Microsoft's Windows Update site, if a product can be auto-updated it can hijacked.
Imagine creating a distrubtion of Linux with a "perfect" WINE, which completely mimicked the Windows interface, except the Help screen had different credits.
Then imagine hijacking the Windows Update machines (which must run IIS, though I'm not certain), and distributing this update. An update which can cross-polinate, and get in through various cracks like IIS holes, Exchange exploits, etc. It tries to be silent, but it'll stop at nothing to replace the closed-source mess that's eating your productivity.
The TiVo's not eating your productivity; it's just not giving you the full potential of the device, and the company wants to be friends with the old dinosaur companies. So it restricts features. That's what forces people to write their own versions, because they want new features. They want to improve what they paid for. And that (I must assume) applies to everybody, with any piece of merchandise -- especially if it can be done at no cost.
But that also means it damn well better be tested good, for it to be accepted by the general public.
You'd think ReplayTV would have been notified by my albatross of a phone company, and then been given ample opportunity to update its devices' software, so they continue to dial correctly. There should be a law -- because the telephone company is a monopoly. Otherwise it should be free competition, but since infrastructure is expensive we gave them a monopoly.
These days a wireless network with the same bandwidth would cost a lot less to set up, and wouldn't have to be regulated. And it could be as simple as an extra "layer" in TCP/IP that took advantage of the fact that wireless cards are approaching the cost of LAN cards. So instead of wiring your house, you can wireless your house.
The benefit is you're getting the ability to talk to your neighbors, too. If they have a card, then it creates a secure network among them, on which commication can be passed -- creating a "separate" Internet, similar to the Gnutella clouds model, each piece connected to a few neighbors, forming a large cloud. Like the original BBS email, as well -- which kept all calls to local calls to keep operational costs down.
And it would of course have "Internet Entry Points" where it would reach other clouds by using the Internet. So if every tenth house had DSL, it would be able to communicate very effectively.
Hated by the providers, of course, since they invested in a technology that's being evolved on top of, and they haven't made back their money yet. But not every investment is (or should be) a profitable one, and legislation isn't going to stop it (but they'll try, I'm sure -- in all the cases above).
- A "Keep Watching" option, for when you tape multiple shows (i.e., the 8:00, 8:30, 9:00, 9:30, of Fox, Fox, NBC, and NBC (THU)), it shows all four in succession.
- ReplayTV's "Strip the Commercials" feature.
Encourage that. Teach her how to put them in the right way. Only one year old! I was twelve when I got into computers. 2-3 years old is perfect for languages, when kids are bilinguals (or more). Imagine what she could create if she learned to speak computer languages in the same timeframe she learned to speak human languages.
Just look at it this way: she's another experiment. ;-)
I did. (For the lazy .)
Pretty amazing. It's great to have relevant data like that, and I appreciate that he will not remove the page; however, it screams "script kiddie" to me -- detailed instructions on how to create the "protocol" and forms of attack for the worm writer, along with relevant source code.
The next step: write a worm which can travel back in time and infect computers prior to the worm existing.
(There was a great series of books starting with "Red Limit Freeway" (forgot the author) which had a "map cube" of the universe which only existed in a loop -- the (older) main character gave it to the (younger) main character. Neat plot device.)
(PS Cool /. fortune currently "If you can survive death, you can probably survive anything." Relevant both to time travel and to the "lifetime" of the worm.)
This Brilliant tempest is giving Borland/Inprise/Borland a lot of press. I haven't heart of the BDE in years, but in the past week I've seen mention of it at least a dozen times.
What's really cool is the extent to which the instructions go to make sure you aren't deleting something useful.
He should have waited, like that Italian researcher , until he was far enough along before announcing.
So we can stop pissing off those people in Nevada. And instead piss off people we'll never hear or see from.
Doing a quick search for the Second Law, I found the following hilarious article: Christian Right Lobbies To Overturn Second Law Of Thermodynamics .
After saving his dad, he goes on to form the band Wyld Stallyns. (OT: Did you realize one of the "historical babes" was the French exchange student from "Better Off Dead"? "I can't even get real drugs here!" he said, brandishing a whippet.)
I went to the extreme and created an account just to see Britney.
cypherpunks/cypherpunks no longer works.
Someone posted nologin/nologin in this thread, but that didn't work either.
I tried creating fuckyou/fuckyou but apparently their software's smarter than that. ;-)
To be helpful, the picture is here , and doesn't require a login to view.
It appears that the old way of getting around the login (replacing "www" with "college" in the URL) no longer works.
This is the most important part of creating a work of fiction, be it a book, movie, art, or game.
On a slightly-related topic (the upcoming TV serial was discussed a few days ago), I remember being shocked to find that Corwin's artificial hand was in some places left, and other places right. This was when I was 14; it (temporarily) ruined the suspension of disbelief. Still great books, and I hope to PVR the series.
Sure. As you stated in a previous reply, it's all about the Google search. Mine was "free genealogy".
I found the site awt.ancestry.com . The previous link goes directly to Jack Valenti's info page.
Did you know he's married to Mary Margaret Wiley , who was President Lyndon Johnson's secretary? She may have provided some important connections in the RIAA's formative years.
Then I clicked on "Trees". To get his family tree, I had to provide birth date and place, so another Google search ("jack valenti biography born") found the following biography with all I needed (Born: September 5, 1921; Birth Place: Houston, Texas).
Also from that bio page, we learn the following:
So my assumption was slightly off; he most likely met his wife while working with Johnson.
Plugging the data into the tree search page , I am frustrated to find that this is to create your own family tree, not to provide one for you based on your initial person.
So I clicked on the "Ancestry Family Tree" and got here . This is a program you need to download (closed source, spyware leaps to mind) but I'm running Ad-Aware so I boldly go.
I had to register to download, so I used a throwaway Hotmail account. (It's really tough to create a unique username!)
It's a 4.5 MB download and appears to be an ActiveX control; waiting for it to finish (slow modem in Brazil).
Well that was entirely too frustrating; the program is also for creating a family tree, not for automatically generating one.
I tried a couple other sites and had my hopes dashed for finding a quick solution. I spent a good bit of time on this (thinking it would be a bit easier) so I'm posting this anyway; even though it's not as Informative as I would have liked, it could at least be considered Cautionary. ;-)
Of course, if anyone knows how to do this, please post! Would be neat to find potential "influences" (actually, I already found one -- a former president).
Several years ago I blew some investment funds on bulk mail, and learned one trick the mailing list companies use. When a list is sold as "one-time use only," a small percentage (1% or less, depending on the list size) of the addresses are actually "fake" addresses which lead back to the list owners.
If they get two offers from you, you're in trouble.
With this in mind, I really like the idea of an "opt-out" national (international?) database. A percentage of the addresses in this database will loop back to the government, and anyone sending SPAM to those addresses will be in trouble.
Also, the database could be "blind" -- the SPAMmer submits the email address to send to, and a simple "yes" or "no" is returned. The SPAMmer never sees the entire list.
Of course, using a dictionary and "@hotmail.com" (among others) could allow a SPAMmer to script harvesting the database, even though it was "blind" -- but that 1% rule would most likely catch them.
Heh, not since I ditched my 3dfx card...
As of right now the URL is giving me a 403 - "Você não está autorizado a exibir esta página" (i.e. you are not authorized to view this page, except that I'm currently in Brazil).
The first numeric address you listed http://130.94.214.143 gives me the same error.
The other one, http://198.63.57.204 , gives me a directory listing with two entries - "Parent Directory" and "Stats". The former just loops back to the same page, and the latter requires a username and password.
Sounds like someone really screwed up the configuration, or it (they both?) got /.ed.
The case came with a stick-on logo like the "Intel Inside" logo, except that it said "Antec Outside" .
Here's a review.
Let's turn this around to witness a disturbing trend in evolution:
Am I way off base, or does this make some sense? And is there any way for our cells to obtain individuality, apart from our body? Are we becoming no more than "cells" to the government body, which is more concerned with its abstract actions than it is with the cells that support it?
As others have said, I am very close to "voting with my plane ticket."
I just want to add that, even though it is the case that the text in question was written by "an unnamed reader", it was timothy who copied and posted it onto the front page.
I think the editors should do a lot more editing of the submissions. Especially now that they're asking for money to do this job.
To take your analogy even further: a "perfectly good program" written in 1970's FORTRAN might be able to be rewritten in a newer-style language, with well-document and well-tested libraries (Perl, Python, Java, Visual Basic, many others). This could reduce a program from 100,000 lines to, say, 10,000 lines.
By reducing the size by 10 times, you also reduce the complexity (perhaps not by 10 times, but by a lot).
No amount of "additional carburetors" (as another poster put it) will ever give your old car anti-lock brakes, traction control, a heads-up display, etc.
If it's worth selling 10 years later, it's probably worth rewriting in the language-of-the-day, to afford the benefits of scale. Take advantage of the work other programmers have done on the "foundation" (libraries), so you can more easily build a larger "building."
And as another poster mentioned, the skillset for the old language is dying as developers learn and prefer the newer languages, thus making the older language's programs more expensive to maintain.
Wish I knew about that in high school, my SATs were abysmal.
Might not be a bad idea to add a "logger" so that all features used are logged, their frequency, etc. This could be used by the developers to fine-tune the displayed features, and hide the lesser-used ones.
Of course, this should be disabled by default like the Mozilla auto-loader, but it could be a prominent option in the installation (again, like the Mozilla auto-loader).
Why?
I didn't mean only /., either; there are sites with better signal-to-noise ratios discussing software.
My point was the Mozilla team should have their finger on the pulse of the community. This includes taking discussions and spending resources turning them into useful items (such as additions to Bugzilla).
Not every customer who has the ability to discuss bugs, has the ability to submit them to Bugzilla.
This is the same UI issue which Unix/Linux has historically ignored, which gave Microsoft an opportunity: "make the interface easier for the users" vs. "make the users learn the horrible interface."
It's up to you, of course, but I'd choose the model that has been shown to be successful.
While I agree with your sentiment, I would submit that if Mozilla is a commercial project (AOL's paying for it), then the Mozilla team (not necessarily developers, could be someone with secretarial skills) should monitor Slashdot and other discussion sites when Mozilla is being discussed.
I used to do this at my former employer, and was appreciated both by management and customers.
Could you explain how to do that? I looked in the Edit, Preferences but none of the entries for Navigator, Tabbed Browsing seem to be for that feature. (And there's no help for Tabbed Browsing, either! -- I'm on 0.9.8, downloading 0.9.9 as I type.)
I'd like to add a couple observations as well. The first is really amazing -- my right wrist feels better since I installed Mozilla (I started with 0.9.7, downloaded 1/14/02). I had been seeing a physical therapist every week for several months; we deduced that it's my desk and chair position, which bends my wrist unnaturally when I use the mouse. Using Mozilla, I've been able to avoid the mouse a lot more than when I was using IE; since my wrist is feeling better, there's a potential correlation. (The only other change is he went out of business and I haven't seen him in a month or so; perhaps he was aggravating the condition?)
The other observation has to do with the text box, which various people have been discussing in this thread. One odd behavior I've noticed is this: hit Ctrl+End, then the right arrow. You'll end up at the beginning of the last line. Hit End, then the right arrow again, and it moves the cursor to the top (as if you had hit Ctrl+Home)!
Also, Ctrl+Backspace doesn't delete the previous word (it does nothing). And Ctrl+Left Arrow/Right Arrow doesn't stop at punctuation, as IE does. (Even if that's not preferred, it should at least be an option.)
Hopefully, some of these will be fixed in 0.9.9, which I'll have in ... about 20 more minutes (56k).