JANET (the Joint Academic Network) used to use X.25, which used reverse domain names, if I recall correctly.
You do. My email address used to be [user]@uk.ac.swan.pyr
It also used HORRIBLE addressing notation. Essex University's DEC 10 (which ran the first ever massively multi-user adventure game, or rather three of them) had an address of A2206411411.
That was a boon to to us mudders, though. You could connect directly from the PAD in each terminal room to a MUD on JANet, without having to log on to an intermediate computer with a TCP/IP connection. Handy for when my account was suspended during the vacations.
(Yes, I really do remember that.)
I used to remember 5 or 6 of those. MUDS, Monochrome, talkers.
Interestingly, there's also parliament.uk. At first it seems strange that it's not parliament.gov.uk, but in the UK system, it's Government that is subservient to Parliament, and therefore parliament.gov.uk would give out quite the wrong idea.
There are also a few holdouts from before the.uk domain was rationalised - bl.uk, for example, is the British Library.
The basic difference between drug patents and software patents is the barrier to entry. You can buy a $200 computer, a $50 book on programming, and be infringing on software patents later that evening. It also costs nothing to release that infringing code to the world. The only people likely to be infringing on drug patents, on the other hand, are well-capitalised pharmaceuticals companies, who can afford to research patents.
This is why software patents "feel" different to the Slashdot audience. None of us think we will infringe on a patent for an anti-depressant, but we don't like the idea of infringing on some obvious patented algorithm just by writing a few lines of code.
In an ideal world, a transaction between buyer and seller would be done with full information and with satisfaction on both sides. That is, it's not a zero-sum game - the buyer gets a product they're happy with at a price they like, and the seller makes his profit.
Unfortunately, we don't live in an ideal world. The motives of companies do not always co-incide with those of the consumers. As we can see here, not only does the customer suffer from imperfect information (a market inefficiency) but the companies actively fear an increase in this information, and also actively seek to restrict the flow of information that is required to become closer to market perfection (remember the copyright arguments about the posting of special offers on third-party websites). They don't want the kind of transaction I mention above; if they think they could get away with it, they screw the customer.
What's my point? Information is *good*, and if companies attempt to mess with the market by restricting this flow of infomation, they need to be regulated until their pips squeak. We need to realise that when businesses whine about regulation restricting the market, they're usually whining because *they* want to to mess with the markets to distort them in their favour.
I recommend you actually read the Geneva Conventions sometime. Like it or not, it is very clearly intended only for protecting _uniformed soldiers_.
I suggest you take your own advice. There have been several Geneva Conventions, including the 1949 Geneva Convention relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War
No one got a reduced welfare check because of the tax cuts.
There was no tax cut. The Bush administration borrowed a bunch of money and gave it to people and called it a tax cut, but because they refused to do the hard thing and concurrently decrease government spending, that "tax cut" will have to be paid back. The only question is exactly *who* will bear the burden of the increased debt.
You can debate the pros and cons of government spending all day long, but the fact of the matter is that Bush has dramatically increased discretional spending and decreased government tax revenue. He's a big government Republican - he wants someone else to pay, preferably when he's no longer the guy responsible for balancing the books.
Do you really believe that the operators of these on-line "casinos" are above playing poker against you while they can watch your hands, or when they can tell the computer what to deal next?
You can milk a cow every day. You can only kill it once.
The online poker rooms are already making millions from rake. If they try to squeeze more out, so that even the good players' winnings go down, then people will just play somewhere else. There are plenty to choose from.
Then you won't mind paying for it. Not the cost-plus cost of digging up the oil, but the actual cost of burning it. If you equate travel with freedom, then pay for your damned externalities.
In Peter Sellers's "Balham, Gateway to the South", he goes to a cafe where everything is off. Maybe the OP is thinking of that.
It's worth noting that the point of the Spam sketch is that it's merely a pastiche of British cafes, where everything comes with chips. "Sausage, egg, chips", "Sausage, bacon, egg, chips", etc.
That still won't do anything until laws enforce the use of seatbelts and even then you will have idiots claiming using seatbelts is unsafe.
Using seatbelts *is* unsafe - to the people outside the car. When you make drivers feel safer, they drive faster, to the detriment of those not ensconsed in a ton of metal and held back by a seatbelt. The result of mandatory seatbelt laws in the UK was a decrease in driver deaths and an increase in pedestrian and cyclist deaths. Law of Unintended Consequence strikes again.
A similar effect was discovered in a study of German taxi drivers when given a car with anti-lock brakes. They felt safer, drover faster, and had more accidents. Human nature is a bitch.
Slashdot Mirror
At-will employment maybe the norm in the USA, but that isn't the case everywhere.
Interestingly, there's also parliament.uk. At first it seems strange that it's not parliament.gov.uk, but in the UK system, it's Government that is subservient to Parliament, and therefore parliament.gov.uk would give out quite the wrong idea.
.uk domain was rationalised - bl.uk, for example, is the British Library.
There are also a few holdouts from before the
The basic difference between drug patents and software patents is the barrier to entry. You can buy a $200 computer, a $50 book on programming, and be infringing on software patents later that evening. It also costs nothing to release that infringing code to the world. The only people likely to be infringing on drug patents, on the other hand, are well-capitalised pharmaceuticals companies, who can afford to research patents.
This is why software patents "feel" different to the Slashdot audience. None of us think we will infringe on a patent for an anti-depressant, but we don't like the idea of infringing on some obvious patented algorithm just by writing a few lines of code.
Verizon are freeloading on Google's (and Yahoo's, etc) content to sell Internet connections to their subscribers.
Now wasn't that easy?
The French Revolution
In an ideal world, a transaction between buyer and seller would be done with full information and with satisfaction on both sides. That is, it's not a zero-sum game - the buyer gets a product they're happy with at a price they like, and the seller makes his profit.
Unfortunately, we don't live in an ideal world. The motives of companies do not always co-incide with those of the consumers. As we can see here, not only does the customer suffer from imperfect information (a market inefficiency) but the companies actively fear an increase in this information, and also actively seek to restrict the flow of information that is required to become closer to market perfection (remember the copyright arguments about the posting of special offers on third-party websites). They don't want the kind of transaction I mention above; if they think they could get away with it, they screw the customer.
What's my point? Information is *good*, and if companies attempt to mess with the market by restricting this flow of infomation, they need to be regulated until their pips squeak. We need to realise that when businesses whine about regulation restricting the market, they're usually whining because *they* want to to mess with the markets to distort them in their favour.
An even better way of remebering - the capital letter that begins each word looks like that camel. A Bactrian has two humps, and a Dromedary has one.
I use both vi and emacs, too. I use each one for the thing it's best at - emacs as the operating system in which Gnus runs, and vi for editing text.
A canonical example is
"I'd like to thank my parents, Mother Theresa and God". The comma really would add clarity there . . .
(Incidentally, although it's more often used in the US, one of its names is the Oxford Comma. The other is the Harvard Comma)
I have the same problem. I think the answer might be that I'm comparing it with Opera, which is lightning-quick.
The dead have risen, and they're voting Republican!
There is no "market" in DVD player standards, only manufacturers licensed by a cartel^Wconsortium.
The three main reasons I use Opera rather than Firefox are
o Firefox is a dog on my machine, whereas Opera is *really* fast
o Firefox is a dog on my machine, whereas Opera is *really* fast
o Firefox is a dog on my machine, whereas Opera is *really* fast
In Peter Sellers's "Balham, Gateway to the South", he goes to a cafe where everything is off. Maybe the OP is thinking of that.
It's worth noting that the point of the Spam sketch is that it's merely a pastiche of British cafes, where everything comes with chips. "Sausage, egg, chips", "Sausage, bacon, egg, chips", etc.
Cycling Plus magazine occasionally print florid press-releases with the rider "This is why we don't just regurgitate press releases".