Yes,/all/ open source sw projects really should make a point of complementing the openness of their source with honest statements as to the policies, philosophy, goals, and state of the software in their project, at least a sentence for each.
That way potential users and contributors can avoid potentially huge time sinks hacking at software not right for them. They can instead make intelligent choices and not have to learn so much the hard way.
G-d knows, i would have forewent all the time i spent on PHP if i'd known that the Zend/PHP4 community's focus was on quantity of functions rather than on quality of documentation and well-tested code (eg, session support, or lack thereof).
To offer a concrete example of what i'm talking about.
After all, what is really the point in hiding a truth that's discovered 99% of the time before any money changes hands? You're better off putting all your cards on the table and attracting people who will stick with you. You can also undercut time and bandwidth-wasting holy war-type argumentation by just admitting your priorities, focus, and, yes, weaknesses.
For OSS to win, we have to use all of its inherent advantages, of which honest, open human->human communication is most definitely one.
To repeat, I urge every OSS project to include information as to their policies, philosophy, goals, and state of the software on their About page.
Buy an Sony Aibo then recoup your money by letting businesses pay you to bring your Aibo over as a customer draw. "``I've been to Hawaii and sat in a hotel lobby and not spent a dime on entertainment, just had a ball when people stopped to talk to me and watch the two dogs playing on the carpet. They're people magnets.''" -- Yahoo News
The W3's Amaya lets you open two windows onto the same document, one a nice gui editor/browser and the other xhtml plain text. Saving in one window updates the other. For collaborative editing, see their Jigsaw with WebDAV.
For searching my docs, i use Apache and ht://Dig. And for quick, organized access to the same docs i created a PHP4 application that allows me to easily create categories, assign docs to them, and to title the documents. That app, with an ht://Dig search field, is my home page, and it works great. Basically i re-created the functionality of a Lotus Notes db i used to use at work (w/o collaboration or replication features) while keeping all the data accessible to any other app that speaks xhtml.
If there's interest i'll post the PHP4 code somewhere. (If i can ever get just get this message posted./. has been on a/long/ lunch break.)
Great! I hope this program becomes nationwide. Then maybe dishonest broken-part resellers like "Good as New Computers" in CT will have to shut down.
The freegeek.org home page also says "a few hours" but actually the price in labor is a few days:
"Membership Program
8 hours Receiving
8 hours Recycling
8 hours Testing
After completing the min. 8 hours of time in each of these three areas (24 hours total), members qualify for a FREEK BOX computer system. An optional orientation class is available (recomended for first time computer owners or first time Linux users)." --
www.freegeek.org/volunteer.html
PostgreSQL has had indexing and transactions for a good long time, and replication is available as a beta download, so your objections there were not carefully made.
In the +1yr I've developed with PostgreSQL i've had no big problems with it. I'm a former Oracle specialist, but it was a smart move for me to switch to Postgres.
Not true. I read an interview where he was asked "Do you think that CYC will ever become conscious?" and his answer was "CYC already is conscious". Don't remember where exactly, but it's probably in the featured article's list of references. Maybe the Austin, TX newspaper article she mentions that now costs a few bucks.
It is clown-like, dishonest, and absurd for Dr Lenat to claim Cyc is conscious.
For the author of the article to have taken this seriously (and then to, eg, think that the Cyc people won't let her "interview" the software because she might ruin it) means that she (whatever her fine qualities) has/alot/ of learning to do.
I'm virginal re: curl but these are my notes. Useful?
Curl tech competes w/javascript, but "In addition, the Surge plug-in offers an integrated XML parser to allow direct interpretation of data streams encoded in most universal data exchange formats" and the built-in ability to do multimedia, animation. -- http://www.curl.com/html/products/surge.jsp.
"The Surge plug-in is currently for Microsoft® Windows® only - Macintosh® and Linux coming soon! The Surge plug-in installer is 360kB in size, and will download files from Curl.com as needed. Total installation will depend on system configuration. " -- Ibid. The security is tiered, and sandbox-safe by default, but can allow access to the local system, unlike javascript. --Ibid.
i'm interested partly because prog'ing for Javascript is an unhappy experience, partly because the results are so browser-dependent. A plug-in from a single company should make for better consistency. 8/7/01
Curl is the language, Surge is the name of the plug-in (v1.1) and The Surge Lab is the IDE (beta 5). 8/7/01
"The Curl language integrates mark-up functionality, scripting functionality, and a full-featured object-oriented programming language,all within one environment. Curl technology can be used with existing Webtechnologies, such as HTML, CGI and JavaScript, and multimedia animation tools, or it can be used in place of them."... "No more waiting for round trips to the server. Text, graphics, scripting, and object-oriented programming are contained in a consistent and unified environment."..."And it improves the developer experience by making the creation of this superior content both easier and more efficient" -- http://www.curl.com/html/technology/technology.jsp 8/7/01
"The Curl" content language allows you to create the following items: "Curl Applets, which end users can view in an Internet browser. "Applications, which run outside of an Internet browser. Applications have a stand-alone, windows-based user interface. " Curl Packages, which are logical collections of source code written in the Curl language. " Scripts, which contain code that runs from the command line of the operating system.However, with this release of the Curl language, you can create only applets and packages. Support for creating applications and scripts will appear in a future release." --- p04-curl-basic-features.pdf. 6/01
"A pre-processed.curl file has the extension.pcurl. [As opposed to.curl files.]
Pre-processing files improves the load time of packages. Pre-processing files makes the delivered code much smaller. Pre-processing files hides the source code."... "you can distribute only packages in.pcurl format; you cannot distribute applets in.pcurl format." -- Ibid.
The language appears clean but nothing earth shaking. It's most advanced and unusual feature may be anonymous procs. "You can assign ananonymous procedure to a variable and then use that variable name to call the anonymous procedure."... "Unlike other functions, which can be declared only in very specific places, you can declare an anonymous procedure in any code block or expression." Suchas a regular proc, a method, or top-level Curl source code.... "One of the most powerful features of anonymous procedures is their ability to access variables that are defined within the scope of the block of codecontaining the anonymous procedure definition. (This feature is also referred to as supporting closures over lexical variables.)" -- Ibid, p191. I just skimmed, but anonymous procs look like a way to create a procedure data type, plus give it access to more var's.
Curl.com claims that the download sizes are 1/10 of what they are normally, that must be true only for some.pcurl files. 8/7/01
Everything is free and open source, except the use of curl.com, which is metered by the downloaded # of bytes. 8/7/01. "Non-commercial users can deploy Curl content at no charge." -- http://www.curl.com/html/products/pricing.jsp. But http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=01/08/06/211322 7
has someone saying "Then wander over to http://www.curl.com/html/products/pricing.jsp and look at the fact that you have to commit to sending Curl a minimum of $1000/month (max of $50,000/month) to use Curl to deliver content. And the cost is based on how many characters you serve. Not, on how much revenue it generates." No prices are on that page, however, nor in Google's cached copy.
(Above saved to the above mentioned slashdot discussion of 8/6/01.)
I've used php extensively, i'm "brainbench master certified" in it, but choosing it for my website development was a bad mistake.
I'll warn you that the www.php.net documentation (the only place that can stay up-to-date on the language) is seriously lacking in info for many of its functions. It's a young language but if someone has taken the time to get a function working and integrated into php surely that person can be asked to describe what it does!
Zend, php's "mother" company, has closed source php's engine and (worse:) has seriously annoyed me (wasted a month of my time by not admitting bugs they knew they had). I'd put them several rungs below Microsoft in trustworthiness.
It says instead "We charge commercial customers based on the volume of Curl content executed. If you would like to deploy Curl content in a commercial setting, please contact us at sales@curl.com. Our license agreement includes a standard fee and allows for volume-based usage discounts. Non-commercial users can deploy Curl content at no charge."
Ok, but in our original example:), the article on Tikipedia & Nupedia vs Britannica, the confirming "research" is thought no more arduous or painful than normal reading.
For example, he says that people like comaraderie, to be recognized for their expertise, and contribute, as long as contributing is easy. Statements like that are as fast to agree with as they are to read.
In the general case, you're right, of course: it's much better to read an authoritative source than not.
"Any English student will tell you that an exposé of a speaker's own work is very low on the authoritative scale. This is not to say that the open source encyclopaedias therefore suck, it is saying that the posted article should be taken with a grain of salt."
The article isn't a witness's deposition, however; it is a mostly theoretical treatment in which the points made can be confirmed or denied by reader consideration. Therefore the sympathies of the author are moot.
If the U.S. military claims to have developed a devastating new bomb and to have dropped it on Hiroshima, the Japanese can simply check this for themselves, w/o resorting to "hmmm, they'd like us to believe that wouldn't they?"-reasoning.
Is there an Alicebot FAQ? Didn't see one at www.alicebot.org or www.faqs.org.
I was wondering for example what practical apps are being worked on with Alice.
I like the http://alicebot.org/committees/education.html idea of creating a network of conversing Alicebots. Instead of having a bunch
of search engines each trying to out-index each other by swallowing the entire web, it would sure save alot of work, time, and disk space if they could cooperate by specializing in certain areas and asking each other questions.
Has anyone attempted to use an Alicebot as a natural language front end to, eg, a corporate helpdesk knowledgebase? This is a very practical
area as evidenced by all the companies doing automated-email replies to questions and websites using Ask-Jeeves-type sw.
Anyone working on a program to convert English text into AIML that Alice could use to answers q's about the original text?
BTW, when i logged into the alice listbot it said that it was shutting down 8/6. Where will the new home for the mailing list be? Wherever it is I suggest entering its address per
http://www.mail-archive.com/faq.html#newlist so there is a searchable,redundant archive.
At least for Linux there is an advertiser-supported free version of Opera (the last time i downloaded it was ~2mo. ago). I liked it; the ads don't eat much real estate.
I've used Opera for Linux intensively for months. About 5% of the time it doesn't show something that Netscape 4.77 can, but it's easy to copy and paste the url to Netscape browser (i had both apps running).
Opera is good for opening alot of browser windows while only taking up one task's worth of my taskbar. It also has a nice builtin google search field. It's pretty much better than Netscape in all ways except the aforementioned. (As of yesterday i just use Mozilla 0.9.2, though, because it includes an email client and is nicer than Netscape 4.77.)
Re:Missing questions and answers
on
Review: A.I.
·
· Score: 1
I disagree completely. Religious questions was one of the few areas where this movie did/not/ have a comment to make. It is not even clear to all that David had genuine emotion, much less a "soul", much less that being "the entire point of AI". Not that i think he's right, but Mr Ebert states that "the robot does not genuinely love. It genuinely only seems to love." -- Sun Times.
I also disagree that the movie is a fairy tale with a sci fi veneer. The technological/societal questions it raises about where we are headed are absolutely central to this film.
In any case, the question of soul isn't what i'm primarily interested in here. I was interested in seeing more attention paid to the question of crossing the line from simulating emotion to actual emotion. But i was expecting too much, because this would be asking the movie to highlight one of its own holes. A hole that it can't possibly close because we are fundamentally ignorant on the subject.
This was a great movie by the way and Salon's review is +5 insightful.
Missing questions and answers
on
Review: A.I.
·
· Score: 1
I wish the movie had directly raised the question of: How do we know when simulation crosses the line into reality, with respect to love, consciousness, feeling, emotion? That these things can exist at all it our most profound mystery, so I don't have high hopes (or worries) of these things being artificially recreated any time soon. We don't have clue #1 about this, other than pointing at neurons, as the movie does.
But i agree with computer scientist Hugo de Garis that once we do have a clue, "humans should not stand in the way of a higher form of evolution.... It is human destiny to create them [("godlike" machines)]." (NYTimes Magazine 8/1/1999)
Unless you believe that humans possess some sacred eternal soul, and that these would not exist in a sentient bot, I see little reason to discriminate in favor of carbon based life. Can anyone give me a logical reason to, other than loyalty? On the contrary, it would be a bigger tragedy for the universe to lose all sentience than for it to lose one bested beast, and a superlative crystalline creation has a better chance of outlasting our planet's ruination than us. These artificial creatures are our best chance of achieving a sort of immortality, if we can last long enough to create them.
One thing that tends to increase even PHB acceptance of software is support, which in turn tends to come with more widespread use, which tends to result from positive publicity. So how about a little publicity: which GNU tools did you use, and how? "GNU tools (SunOS 5.6 and a nice E10K machine if you want to know!)" dubiously implies that SunOS, a proprietary OS, was your GNU tool.
I haven't used it, but i saw a rcommendation on one website for this commercial antivirus software:
AVP for Linux Workstation is $49.95 The server edition is $560.00
AVP Web-Site: http://www.avp.ch/
Virus Info: http://www.virusdatabase.com/ Bern, Switzerland Email: info@avp.ch Phone: +41 (0)31 348-1333
Fax: +41 (0)31 348-1335
Even cheaper, i went to library, xeroxed an attractive NDA, typed it in, and printed it out. As a bonus, my signers and i found it to be understandable.
I agree with you. Unless you have a situation that is unique in some way, and not simply "don't steal my idea", why is everyone suggesting spending $100s-$1000s on a lawyer's? You'll have plenty of other opportunities to bleed cash in the coming months if you pursue your idea. Remember that unless you're made of money and have done this before perfection is not a practical goal. If you do use a lawyer, keep him on a short leash. For each job let him give you a price estimate -- it's very dangerous to assume that he has your interests at heart. He's much more likely to be interesting in generating billing fees. If possible, get the price estimates in writing or at least email.
I bought a Seagate STT320000A 10GB (native) ATAPI Minicartridge Drive from Dell, used, for ~$150. It takes Travan TR5 tapes that Dell sells for $44. The install was a problem, as it came 100% documentation-free but for my lite needs it's worked fine, hardware-wise.
Redhat 6.2 kernal has support builtin for the drive, so tar/dev/ht0 worked as soon as the tape drive was installed.
I back up multiple machines at once by nfs mounting them from the pc w/the tape drive.
Avoid the free Amanda backup program, as its medusa-like config is much too slippery. (I'm not a beginner but 2 weeks of work couldn't tame that beast.)
I found that upgrading mt to 0.6 seems to make it work better re: its bsf/fsf commands (though still the file number stays at zero).
Using tar, you probably want --ignore-failed-read and --verify. There is a --exclude option for names but i haven't found a way to simply leave out specific directory trees.
I wrote alot of details on all of this, email me if you want them.
If you don't need archival storage (eg, you don't have fear of crackers infecting your filesystem long before its discovered), you're probably better off just putting an old, monitor-less, fat-drived pc on your lan/router and backing up to that.
For speed and ease of use.
Unfortunately, Iomega's Peerless 20GB drive is only for Windows and Mac (OS8 & OS9).
Why not design a laptop that lets you fold back (all the way back, like a newspaper) the keyboard when not in use? A keyboard can just get in the way when all you're doing is reading and using a touch-screen.
Color me curious, but if you're short on time why rewrite the app in perl? For readability?:)
Good going for getting all that working. The only thing i'm not sure about is the inability to edit entries? if i have that correct.
I'm pretty happy using Amaya for my personal database--I just maintain an html page of subjects, and click to read/edit a subject page: Amaya is a combo editor/browser, with easy, simultaneous access to the html source. Available from www.w3.org/amaya.
To jot quick notes, i have a "mergeme" subject to save me the time of opening the correct subject page. i periodically batch insert its contents into the correct subject pages after sorting it with a simple perl script.
To index the pages for searching, i use ht://Dig, which gives me the relevant filenames. But i need to do more work with her. The ht://Dig people may have improved her lately, i have to check, but, eg, their docs are flaky in places, a main developer is a testy, and support can be hard to get. But hey, it's a free product.
"So what are those claims? Alot of it makes good sense. For instance, Dave Bowman relates to Ulysses... He goes on a long voyage and loses all his crew. Pretty neat so far, but Wheat tends to go to far in some of his claims." That's just about it for the claims discussion that doesn't have to do with proving to us how wacked Mr Wheat is. Pretty disappointing for a review intro'd by Timothy that ends with a statement that A Triple Allegory is one of the "most unusual books about a science-fiction movie that you are likely to encounter. Ever."
More reality, less promotion, pls. Readers don't have infinite time.
Slashdot Mirror
Yes, /all/ open source sw projects really should make a point of complementing the openness of their source with honest statements as to the policies, philosophy, goals, and state of the software in their project, at least a sentence for each.
That way potential users and contributors can avoid potentially huge time sinks hacking at software not right for them. They can instead make intelligent choices and not have to learn so much the hard way.
G-d knows, i would have forewent all the time i spent on PHP if i'd known that the Zend/PHP4 community's focus was on quantity of functions rather than on quality of documentation and well-tested code (eg, session support, or lack thereof). To offer a concrete example of what i'm talking about.
After all, what is really the point in hiding a truth that's discovered 99% of the time before any money changes hands? You're better off putting all your cards on the table and attracting people who will stick with you. You can also undercut time and bandwidth-wasting holy war-type argumentation by just admitting your priorities, focus, and, yes, weaknesses.
For OSS to win, we have to use all of its inherent advantages, of which honest, open human->human communication is most definitely one.
To repeat, I urge every OSS project to include information as to their policies, philosophy, goals, and state of the software on their About page.
Buy an Sony Aibo then recoup your money by letting businesses pay you to bring your Aibo over as a customer draw. "``I've been to Hawaii and sat in a hotel lobby and not spent a dime on entertainment, just had a ball when people stopped to talk to me and watch the two dogs playing on the carpet. They're people magnets.''" -- Yahoo News
The W3's Amaya lets you open two windows onto the same document, one a nice gui editor/browser and the other xhtml plain text. Saving in one window updates the other. For collaborative editing, see their Jigsaw with WebDAV.
/. has been on a /long/ lunch break.)
For searching my docs, i use Apache and ht://Dig. And for quick, organized access to the same docs i created a PHP4 application that allows me to easily create categories, assign docs to them, and to title the documents. That app, with an ht://Dig search field, is my home page, and it works great. Basically i re-created the functionality of a Lotus Notes db i used to use at work (w/o collaboration or replication features) while keeping all the data accessible to any other app that speaks xhtml.
If there's interest i'll post the PHP4 code somewhere. (If i can ever get just get this message posted.
Great! I hope this program becomes nationwide. Then maybe dishonest broken-part resellers like "Good as New Computers" in CT will have to shut down.
The freegeek.org home page also says "a few hours" but actually the price in labor is a few days:
"Membership Program
8 hours Receiving
8 hours Recycling
8 hours Testing
After completing the min. 8 hours of time in each of these three areas (24 hours total), members qualify for a FREEK BOX computer system. An optional orientation class is available (recomended for first time computer owners or first time Linux users)." --
www.freegeek.org/volunteer.html
In the +1yr I've developed with PostgreSQL i've had no big problems with it. I'm a former Oracle specialist, but it was a smart move for me to switch to Postgres.
Not true. I read an interview where he was asked "Do you think that CYC will ever become conscious?" and his answer was "CYC already is conscious". Don't remember where exactly, but it's probably in the featured article's list of references. Maybe the Austin, TX newspaper article she mentions that now costs a few bucks.
It is clown-like, dishonest, and absurd for Dr Lenat to claim Cyc is conscious.
For the author of the article to have taken this seriously (and then to, eg, think that the Cyc people won't let her "interview" the software because she might ruin it) means that she (whatever her fine qualities) has /alot/ of learning to do.
Curl tech competes w/javascript, but "In addition, the Surge plug-in offers an integrated XML parser to allow direct interpretation of data streams encoded in most universal data exchange formats" and the built-in ability to do multimedia, animation. -- http://www.curl.com/html/products/surge.jsp.
"The Surge plug-in is currently for Microsoft® Windows® only - Macintosh® and Linux coming soon! The Surge plug-in installer is 360kB in size, and will download files from Curl.com as needed. Total installation will depend on system configuration. " -- Ibid. The security is tiered, and sandbox-safe by default, but can allow access to the local system, unlike javascript. --Ibid.
i'm interested partly because prog'ing for Javascript is an unhappy experience, partly because the results are so browser-dependent. A plug-in from a single company should make for better consistency. 8/7/01
Curl is the language, Surge is the name of the plug-in (v1.1) and The Surge Lab is the IDE (beta 5). 8/7/01
"The Curl language integrates mark-up functionality, scripting functionality, and a full-featured object-oriented programming language,all within one environment. Curl technology can be used with existing Webtechnologies, such as HTML, CGI and JavaScript, and multimedia animation tools, or it can be used in place of them." ... "No more waiting for round trips to the server. Text, graphics, scripting, and object-oriented programming are contained in a consistent and unified environment." ..."And it improves the developer experience by making the creation of this superior content both easier and more efficient" -- http://www.curl.com/html/technology/technology.jsp 8/7/01
"The Curl" content language allows you to create the following items: "Curl Applets, which end users can view in an Internet browser. "Applications, which run outside of an Internet browser. Applications have a stand-alone, windows-based user interface. " Curl Packages, which are logical collections of source code written in the Curl language. " Scripts, which contain code that runs from the command line of the operating system.However, with this release of the Curl language, you can create only applets and packages. Support for creating applications and scripts will appear in a future release." --- p04-curl-basic-features.pdf. 6/01
"A pre-processed .curl file has the extension .pcurl. [As opposed to .curl files.]
... .pcurl format; you cannot distribute applets in .pcurl format." -- Ibid.
Pre-processing files improves the load time of packages.
Pre-processing files makes the delivered code much smaller.
Pre-processing files hides the source code."
"you can distribute only packages in
The language appears clean but nothing earth shaking. It's most advanced and unusual feature may be anonymous procs. "You can assign ananonymous procedure to a variable and then use that variable name to call the anonymous procedure." ... ...
"Unlike other functions, which can be declared only in very specific places, you can declare an anonymous procedure in any code block or expression." Suchas a regular proc, a method, or top-level Curl source code.
"One of the most powerful features of anonymous procedures is their ability to access variables that are defined within the scope of the block of codecontaining the anonymous procedure definition. (This feature is also referred to as supporting closures over lexical variables.)" -- Ibid, p191. I just skimmed, but anonymous procs look like a way to create a procedure data type, plus give it access to more var's.
Curl.com claims that the download sizes are 1/10 of what they are normally, that must be true only for some .pcurl files. 8/7/01
Everything is free and open source, except the use of curl.com, which is metered by the downloaded # of bytes. 8/7/01. "Non-commercial users can deploy Curl content at no charge." -- http://www.curl.com/html/products/pricing.jsp. But http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=01/08/06/211322 7
has someone saying "Then wander over to http://www.curl.com/html/products/pricing.jsp and look at the fact that you have to commit to sending Curl a minimum of $1000/month (max of $50,000/month) to use Curl to deliver content. And the cost is based on how many characters you serve. Not, on how much revenue it generates." No prices are on that page, however, nor in Google's cached copy.
(Above saved to the above mentioned slashdot discussion of 8/6/01.)
I'll warn you that the www.php.net documentation (the only place that can stay up-to-date on the language) is seriously lacking in info for many of its functions. It's a young language but if someone has taken the time to get a function working and integrated into php surely that person can be asked to describe what it does!
Zend, php's "mother" company, has closed source php's engine and (worse :) has seriously annoyed me (wasted a month of my time by not admitting bugs they knew they had). I'd put them several rungs below Microsoft in trustworthiness.
It says instead "We charge commercial customers based on the volume of Curl content executed. If you would like to deploy Curl content in a commercial setting, please contact us at sales@curl.com. Our license agreement includes a standard fee and allows for volume-based usage discounts. Non-commercial users can deploy Curl content at no charge."
For example, he says that people like comaraderie, to be recognized for their expertise, and contribute, as long as contributing is easy. Statements like that are as fast to agree with as they are to read.
In the general case, you're right, of course: it's much better to read an authoritative source than not.
The article isn't a witness's deposition, however; it is a mostly theoretical treatment in which the points made can be confirmed or denied by reader consideration. Therefore the sympathies of the author are moot.
If the U.S. military claims to have developed a devastating new bomb and to have dropped it on Hiroshima, the Japanese can simply check this for themselves, w/o resorting to "hmmm, they'd like us to believe that wouldn't they?"-reasoning.
I was wondering for example what practical apps are being worked on with Alice.
I like the http://alicebot.org/committees/education.html idea of creating a network of conversing Alicebots. Instead of having a bunch of search engines each trying to out-index each other by swallowing the entire web, it would sure save alot of work, time, and disk space if they could cooperate by specializing in certain areas and asking each other questions.
Has anyone attempted to use an Alicebot as a natural language front end to, eg, a corporate helpdesk knowledgebase? This is a very practical area as evidenced by all the companies doing automated-email replies to questions and websites using Ask-Jeeves-type sw.
Anyone working on a program to convert English text into AIML that Alice could use to answers q's about the original text?
BTW, when i logged into the alice listbot it said that it was shutting down 8/6. Where will the new home for the mailing list be? Wherever it is I suggest entering its address per http://www.mail-archive.com/faq.html#newlist so there is a searchable,redundant archive.
At least for Linux there is an advertiser-supported free version of Opera (the last time i downloaded it was ~2mo. ago). I liked it; the ads don't eat much real estate.
Opera is good for opening alot of browser windows while only taking up one task's worth of my taskbar. It also has a nice builtin google search field. It's pretty much better than Netscape in all ways except the aforementioned. (As of yesterday i just use Mozilla 0.9.2, though, because it includes an email client and is nicer than Netscape 4.77.)
I also disagree that the movie is a fairy tale with a sci fi veneer. The technological/societal questions it raises about where we are headed are absolutely central to this film.
In any case, the question of soul isn't what i'm primarily interested in here. I was interested in seeing more attention paid to the question of crossing the line from simulating emotion to actual emotion. But i was expecting too much, because this would be asking the movie to highlight one of its own holes. A hole that it can't possibly close because we are fundamentally ignorant on the subject.
This was a great movie by the way and Salon's review is +5 insightful.
But i agree with computer scientist Hugo de Garis that once we do have a clue, "humans should not stand in the way of a higher form of evolution.... It is human destiny to create them [("godlike" machines)]." (NYTimes Magazine 8/1/1999)
Unless you believe that humans possess some sacred eternal soul, and that these would not exist in a sentient bot, I see little reason to discriminate in favor of carbon based life. Can anyone give me a logical reason to, other than loyalty? On the contrary, it would be a bigger tragedy for the universe to lose all sentience than for it to lose one bested beast, and a superlative crystalline creation has a better chance of outlasting our planet's ruination than us. These artificial creatures are our best chance of achieving a sort of immortality, if we can last long enough to create them.
One thing that tends to increase even PHB acceptance of software is support, which in turn tends to come with more widespread use, which tends to result from positive publicity. So how about a little publicity: which GNU tools did you use, and how? "GNU tools (SunOS 5.6 and a nice E10K machine if you want to know!)" dubiously implies that SunOS, a proprietary OS, was your GNU tool.
AVP for Linux Workstation is $49.95 The server edition is $560.00
AVP Web-Site: http://www.avp.ch/
Virus Info: http://www.virusdatabase.com/
Bern, Switzerland Email: info@avp.ch
Phone: +41 (0)31 348-1333
Fax: +41 (0)31 348-1335
I agree with you. Unless you have a situation that is unique in some way, and not simply "don't steal my idea", why is everyone suggesting spending $100s-$1000s on a lawyer's? You'll have plenty of other opportunities to bleed cash in the coming months if you pursue your idea. Remember that unless you're made of money and have done this before perfection is not a practical goal. If you do use a lawyer, keep him on a short leash. For each job let him give you a price estimate -- it's very dangerous to assume that he has your interests at heart. He's much more likely to be interesting in generating billing fees. If possible, get the price estimates in writing or at least email.
Redhat 6.2 kernal has support builtin for the drive, so tar /dev/ht0 worked as soon as the tape drive was installed.
I back up multiple machines at once by nfs mounting them from the pc w/the tape drive.
Avoid the free Amanda backup program, as its medusa-like config is much too slippery. (I'm not a beginner but 2 weeks of work couldn't tame that beast.)
I found that upgrading mt to 0.6 seems to make it work better re: its bsf/fsf commands (though still the file number stays at zero).
Using tar, you probably want --ignore-failed-read and --verify. There is a --exclude option for names but i haven't found a way to simply leave out specific directory trees.
I wrote alot of details on all of this, email me if you want them.
If you don't need archival storage (eg, you don't have fear of crackers infecting your filesystem long before its discovered), you're probably better off just putting an old, monitor-less, fat-drived pc on your lan/router and backing up to that. For speed and ease of use.
Unfortunately, Iomega's Peerless 20GB drive is only for Windows and Mac (OS8 & OS9).
You're right. Iomega's Peerless supports only "Windows 98, Windows ME, Windows 2000, or MAC OS 8.6-9.X." with no linux mentioned on their Future page.
To complain, fill out this form.
Why not design a laptop that lets you fold back (all the way back, like a newspaper) the keyboard when not in use? A keyboard can just get in the way when all you're doing is reading and using a touch-screen.
Color me curious, but if you're short on time why rewrite the app in perl? For readability? :)
Good going for getting all that working. The only thing i'm not sure about is the inability to edit entries? if i have that correct.
I'm pretty happy using Amaya for my personal database--I just maintain an html page of subjects, and click to read/edit a subject page: Amaya is a combo editor/browser, with easy, simultaneous access to the html source. Available from www.w3.org/amaya.
To jot quick notes, i have a "mergeme" subject to save me the time of opening the correct subject page. i periodically batch insert its contents into the correct subject pages after sorting it with a simple perl script.
To index the pages for searching, i use ht://Dig, which gives me the relevant filenames. But i need to do more work with her. The ht://Dig people may have improved her lately, i have to check, but, eg, their docs are flaky in places, a main developer is a testy, and support can be hard to get. But hey, it's a free product.
"So what are those claims? Alot of it makes good sense. For instance, Dave Bowman relates to Ulysses ... He goes on a long voyage and loses all his crew. Pretty neat so far, but Wheat tends to go to far in some of his claims." That's just about it for the claims discussion that doesn't have to do with proving to us how wacked Mr Wheat is. Pretty disappointing for a review intro'd by Timothy that ends with a statement that A Triple Allegory is one of the "most unusual books about a science-fiction movie that you are likely to encounter. Ever."
More reality, less promotion, pls. Readers don't have infinite time.