Re: Scour in terms of Napster
on
Scour is Dead
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· Score: 2
Napster + ability to share any file - quality control + heavily Flash-rendered home website - proper software development ethics (get it out of the alpha stage!) = Scour.
Totally. Look, just because Scour sucked, doesn't mean the base concept of peer-to-peer graphics sharing does. The use of Flash is one of my pet peeves - I have no need for it, and I'll stick to Quicktime.
What needs to happen is those complaining about the demise of Scour should take the lessons from its debacle and reengineer an open source replacement. Critical needs would be the use of repeater stations/nodes, some kind of level authentication (based on file offerings - someone with no sharing gets rated as level one, someone who has shared 1 file per 100 received is level two, someone who shares files and is a repeater station/node with 95 percent uptime is level three, a level three with 99.9 percent uptime and good bandwidth upload is level four. And no flash. None.
If you're at level one, you get to see banner ads (no popups or you're dropped) from someone at level three or four. If you're at level two, you can turn off banner ads. If you're at level three or four, you can offer banner ads - picked from the source through the repeaters to requestor (source gets 1/4 ads if also level 3 or four, repeaters share 3/4 ads along the chain, with closest repeater first in queue. This allows for a viable business model - it costs to serve up large graphics, but it's totally free if you just submit some every so often. Repeaters (level 3 or 4) get to vote (polling method) to blacklist someone from level 2 back down to level 1 if faked images (e.g. ads, pr0n, mislabelled/categorized) for 90 days. This keeps the spamsters/adsters out of the system. Blacklist applies to either entire domain or IP or IP gateway - again, repeaters need a 90 percent vote of all voting repeaters to do this.
Well, when the whole market tanked and NASDAQ was down 30+ percent, I was only down 1 percent from last year end, and that with disbursements too.
The main thing is not to panic, to buy for the long term, to not invest in anything you don't understand, and to be patient.
Remember, the AVERAGE growth is 8 to 10 percent. This can mean up years of 20 percent and down years of 10 percent.
While I ignore the age rule (percent of stocks is 100 minus age, rest is bonds minus 10 percent for cash), just like my grandparents did, and am thus always way more into stocks, I try to buy good long-term stocks for the most part. But I will sell if people get too excited (Transmeta, Red Hat) and buy back in when they get depressed (Red Hat, Microsoft).
The main factors in becoming millionaires for most people are:
1. being married to someone who is a saver;
2. saving/investing 10 percent or more of your income; and
3. living below your means.
I could live in a fancy neighborhood, buy a new car every year, but why? I'd rather live in a reasonable neighborhood where I don't have to keep up with the Gateses, buy a new car when my old one needs to be replaced (every 5 or 6 years, almost time), and save 20 percent of my income while giving tons to charity and political causes and having fun at parties.
Conspicuous consumption - the American nightmare. I ride the bus to work like most millionaires.
1. Download IE. You just helped MSFT up their browser counts, killing off all other choices. Plus, they get revenue from you, and can keep killing open source.
2. Download Netscape 6. You now help pay for the work on Mozilla by ad impressions. They're not working for free, those AOL/Netscape engineers, even if you are. And someone has to pay for marketing and distribution. You can disable some of the automatic links, of course.
3. Keep using Netscape 4.72 or 4.74 or whatever. You still count as a Netscape browser, so you don't help MSFT, but you're not helping standards compliance or open source, so you might as well write a check to MSFT, since you've sold out.
Look, a successful book launch has nothing to do with content, it is a marketing ploy. Any author could tell you that it is very rare that a published work ever gets printed with its working title.
House Harkonnen is instantly recognizable, implies some mild dirt, so it increases the demographic. If it said Leit's Story, the sales would have dropped to about half the current volume.
Oh, sorry, you didn't want to know the real reason it's about Leit and others but is titled to make you think it's about the Harkonnens. Instead, you'd like to believe that the book publishing industry is clean and only cares about literary qualities and art.
Wake up and smell the sequel...
[yes, my name used to be longer, back when I was published in White Dwarf and various Australian and New Zealand mags, but the publishing industry is still the same beast]
Face it, it's only because MSFT charges too much for their OS for handhelds. When any tech device marketing person can tell you that you must get the price below $500 for a tech device within 18 months, and below $300 within 30 months, it just stands to reason that an OS that costs as much as MSFT charges will eventually lose in the Darwinian struggle of the marketplace, without monopolistic and linking actions.
It's not that Linux is better, it's that it does the same thing for a cheaper price.
According to this UpsideToday story, one of the most popular things at this year's Comdex is not Embedded Linux Handhelds, it's a headband with little red blinking demon horns from BSDi. And we all know how popular the booth babes from BSDi were at various Linux conventions...
As the story says:
Attendees ranging from twentysomething men to white-haired couples were lined up to collect the headbands from the software and services company, which uses a dough-eyed red demon character as its mascot.
Jordan Hubbard, vice president of BSDi, said the company went through 4,000 headbands and tails in just one day.
"They love the horns," he said, and the company loves the brand awareness they create.
One criteria though is anonymity. How would your system address this?
The actual "ballot" would be anonymous, with only a tracer record number. The 180 day files with the voter reg ID to tracer record ID match would be stored on a precinct by precinct level, and would only have the match of the two numbers.
The best security would be physical security - use removable hard drives, which are wiped once the 180 day period is over for challenges.
Your question, however, is based on the concept that you actually have an anonymous vote now. You don't. Every Precinct Committee Officer gets records indicating your name, phone, address, when you voted over the last four years, and which party affiliations (ballot type requests) you declared during that time.
How do you think we know you have an absentee ballot when we knock on your door?
Look, forget the distro wars for a few seconds - what is the end goal?
It's secure Open Source distros. Bastille is a method/process to help the large number of Linux users at least have a chance at this.
This is not to say that BSD is not a better choice for some, but each user has different needs, and we need to encourage the diversity which is Open Source, not get into blamefests.
That given, the old rule still applies:
90 percent of all security breaches are inside jobs.
A. Voter shows up at polling place (secure encyrpted terminal in secure place like library, post office, govt building kiosk, embassy).
B. Voter swipes voter reg card, machine takes pic and stores it in 180 day storage file for verification. Reg card ID stored in voting PC and marked in voting queue database. Key generated, attached to voting record. Key now used for all further transactions.
C. Voter says name, machine records voice snippet for 180 day storage for verification.
D. Voter uses touch screen or mouse to vote preferential ballot. Choices are 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 up to 9 max. No vote is no vote.
E. Voter has ballot choices displayed, with choices checked. Voter clicks/enters OK, voice snippet records voter saying OK "Please repeat your name".
F. Files uploaded once complete to servers via encrypted data stream. If incomplete, ballot is voided after 30 minutes. If voided, you can vote again. Max wait time is 30 minutes. If less than 30 minutes prior to polling booth close - voter is issued receipt to vote again, but noone can start voting after poll close without receipt number.
G. Midnight all voting ceases. If recount, voter pics and voices are available, voters can challenge vote. Humans decide if same person - people have better wetware to recognize faces and voices to confirm.
H. Preferential ballot drops lowest vote total first, reallocating to No. 2 choice, until candidate wins race.
I. Script-kiddies have Voltron elected anyway. Corporate paymasters pay them off for job well done.
While it's amusing to read about the tank, considering I've seen real live people run over by tanks and APCs (score: tanks 5, humans 0.9 (one lived but badly injured)), another interesting field test of PCs (386 ones) was recently conducted in Seattle.
We took an old 386 PC, with keyboard and monitor and threw it from the top of the Fremont Troll during Trolloween. Result was:
case of monitor cracked slightly - tube still intact (landed face down due to weight);
case of PC broke loose from mounting, some boards chipped and some connectors split, but motherboard over 90 percent intact;
keyboard split in four parts, keys sprung, springs still connected - total writeoff.
So, a PC can survive a 30 foot drop onto hard packed dirt if tossed downwards at an 80 degree angle from vertical. Will reuse the PC for the next art event where we need non-working PCs, maybe lawn bowling (one of my faves, just love to hear the tinkle of monitor glass).
Yes, I know, you'd expect me to say something about his style of writing, but not this article.
Basically, he's right in that we drastically need to improve our method of voting, but he's wrong in his exact solution.
A PC-based method inherently discriminates against low-tech areas or non-wired rural areas. If we were to ensure that polling places held Electronic Voting Boxes, this might not be such a bad idea, however.
I dreamed last Friday night that I had voted electronically. I went into my polling place (or library) even though I was allowed to vote from home, because I like to meet my neighbors and had heard rumors of GOP script-kiddies hacking the absentee ballots of Democrats with viral Bush-voting scripts that made you think you voted for Pat Buchanan if you checked Gore.
In the dream, I used a stylus to vote for all the issues, wrote in my name for Precinct Committee Officer (since they forgot to take my filing fee of $1), and then reviewed on screen my choices. After a quick comparison with my sample ballot, I clicked on Submit, clicked on OK, clicked on Yes, I Am Really Sure, clicked on Yes, Give $2 Matching Funds To Allow Third Parties To Run For President, and it confirmed my vote and spit out an election receipt which showed my name, precinct, and a voting ident to prove my ballot had been cast. In the event of a system crash of my ballot place, I could use the voting ident to get a replacement vote within 72 hours (hey, it's happened, major power outage when Westside.com went live with it's server farms and took down Fremont, Center of the Universe).
Mozilla, Netscape, and IE: Why does it matter?
on
Netscape 6.0 Released
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· Score: 2
OK, let's do the numbers.
Which run on Linux (without WINE): Mozilla and Netscape.
Which run on Mac: all three
Which sell out your privacy and let you be tracked the most easily, in violation of European Privacy Standards: IE
Which must we download if we don't want the entire corporate world to go with IE: Netscape.
So, download Netscape 6.0, download Mozilla 16, cheat and copy IE for testing purposes (use a slightly older version) (if you download, they count your stat).
Even though the story was rejected, one piece of news today on Yahoo Business was that the US Army has announced they will be using Transmeta chips for their battlefield backpack computers.
Personally, ymmv, but I just use my notebook to fill up my rio, and then use the rio most of the time for short trips - I live in front of a computer, so putting new stuff on the rio is easy, and I have automated scripts to fill it with talk radio & news in the morning before I wake up. If I'm booking for a long trip, I can just connect a notebook directly. The rio has the advantage of not risking damage under, uh, "spirited" driving conditions:). Nor do I have to worry about leaving it in the dash and attracting attention from the criminal element.
I've nuked out a few CDs on long road trips, especially on Highway 101 from Oregon to California, where the twists going 20 mph faster than the limit can really smear the disk surface.
What I want is a non-movable storage system. Flash or something, so I can take a stick of 72 hours driving music and NPR for those long rides to catch the surf.
The time has come, the call to arms.
To pitchforks rather.
Light the fires, light the torches,
get out your guns.
We shall make wicker men,
men with no guts,
wimps,
wusses.
We shall drag them by noose to the public squares,
string them up,
put masks on their empty heads.
Paint the giant L of the Loser,
douse them in kerosene,
light them on fire.
I served in the army, I have been in harm's way,
I shall not respect this loser called Shrub.
I shall hurl rotten fruit should he set foot,
in my town,
in my city.
We of the brave,
we of the true,
we of the morally strong -
shall not suffer this fool's existence,
this man who has bought his throne.
Let loose the hounds of the media,
follow the trail of white powder,
follow the oil deals,
follow the abortions caused by this frat boy.
Let him be visited by that which his folk
visited upon this country.
Let him know the hell suffered by Clinton,
but four fold.
He shall be the flawed prince.
He shall be the sacrificial lamb.
His time on this earth shall be short.
He too shall crumble in flames,
his scarecrow shall turn into dirt.
Hi, my dad's rich and has lots of friends and he says that even though I'm less popular than this other smart guy that he can get me into the Electoral College. Can you send me an application?
Seriously, under a Bush presidency, you can forget about IP rights. Open Source is toast, everything will be patented by the Oil Companies and Pharmaceuticals and we're all going to lose all our privacy rights, since it's not written in the literalist Constitution.
So forget about any IP effects, just kiss your intellectual assets goodbye...
In non-independent tests avoided by the majority of people with taste buds, 3 out of 5 cola non-skilled cola hackers report that they can't tell the difference between SDMI and MP3 music.
The industry funded RIAA reported that this conclusively proves the existence of life on Mars, and will proceed with plans to produce Colas that will sound the same to Martians and can't be cracked for their recipes. No Martians could be found who could crack the recipe, according to RIAA.
Rumors that there are no Martians, that colas don't work in low-pressure atmospheres, and that you will never make a profit when people drink the free Open Source cola rivers on Mars were all reported to be just rumors, according to the news media who depend on insider cola event tips and free cola concert tickets from RIAA.
However, no schoolchildren noticed, since their censorware doesn't allow them to view the site, nor did anyone see the defaced site at public libraries.
As candidates discover that the filters won't let them get their messages out, they will quickly find reasons other than that to deep six the use of such filters in schools and libraries except in cases where they meet the review of an "independent" panel. This panel will just happen to ensure that filters that censor politicians' sites are deemed unworthy of approval.
Transmeta will live or die by dockable WebPads. Low power consumption chips are most useful on devices with non-heavy graphics screens - this form allows one to use an HDTV screen for web browsing, but browse news articles while sitting at the couch or working in the kitchen. Here the difference between a 2-3 hour battery life (Intel/AMD products) and a 4-6 hour battery life (Tranmeta) will become critical.
This may also prove useful in PDAs, where battery life with reasonable non-hard-disk usage can have a major impact. I would love to have a PDA that plugs into my fridge webpad and synchs, plugs into my car display and activates voice tech modules, and can be stuck in a slim pack or a purse.
The rest is GIGO.
[note - I'm biased, since I have IPO shares in TMTA]
There's a story on Yahoo about the IPO, which is now at $48 and climbing, less than one hour from the IPO.
I picked up 75 shares at IPO price myself.
Amusingly,/. has rejected three stories submitted by me over the past week about the IPO, with probably about four story links per submission.
Conflict of interest? Inquiring minds want to know...
Anyone catch the little stab in the back by Compaq today? Et tu, Brute? Mr. Grove should be ashamed of twisting their arms over such a silly thing as a little bit of competition.
you cannot simply drive from the US to get an operation.
And you'd better bring a birth certificate with you, cause they require more than just your driver's license nowadays. And if you come from Texas (like me and George "Wuss" Bush (who ain't no true texan, ain't ne'er had no rattlesnake in his crib)) or New Mexico, you'd better make sure it's a Long Form Birth Certificate, cause they don't accept short form ones anymore, due to forgeries.
We are being told that we can't vote for who we really want in the
presidential election without "wasting" our vote. There is a simple way
to fix this problem, albeit not in time for this election: (IRV)
Instant Runoff Voting.
Wouldn't Instant Runoff Voting work better? I think so.
Funny you should mention this as a voting alternative, because a friend of mine sent me an invite to an online petition about that. So far, in my state, it seems to have signatures from a mix of Greens, Democrats, and Independents.
Here's the letter:>>>
Find out about this simple solution to the two-party problem and sign the petition in support of it at http://www.petitiononline.com/WaIRV/
You can also find out more about electoral reform in general at http://www.fairvote.org
the man must man two ways. You can vote for Nader in safe states - if you're in a Bush state, you will infuriate both GOP and Dems by increasing the Green vote. And you can vote for Gore in swing states - which will infuriate the Independents and GOPs by letting them win the popular vote but losing the Electoral College vote - this will make them stew for months.
It's the equivalent of tossing a lighted match on the man. Or, even better, breathing fire to light a torch, and tossing the torch onto the Man of the Two Party System. Burn, baby, burn!
Slashdot Mirror
Napster + ability to share any file - quality control + heavily Flash-rendered home website - proper software development ethics (get it out of the alpha stage!) = Scour.
Totally. Look, just because Scour sucked, doesn't mean the base concept of peer-to-peer graphics sharing does. The use of Flash is one of my pet peeves - I have no need for it, and I'll stick to Quicktime.
What needs to happen is those complaining about the demise of Scour should take the lessons from its debacle and reengineer an open source replacement. Critical needs would be the use of repeater stations/nodes, some kind of level authentication (based on file offerings - someone with no sharing gets rated as level one, someone who has shared 1 file per 100 received is level two, someone who shares files and is a repeater station/node with 95 percent uptime is level three, a level three with 99.9 percent uptime and good bandwidth upload is level four. And no flash. None.
If you're at level one, you get to see banner ads (no popups or you're dropped) from someone at level three or four. If you're at level two, you can turn off banner ads. If you're at level three or four, you can offer banner ads - picked from the source through the repeaters to requestor (source gets 1/4 ads if also level 3 or four, repeaters share 3/4 ads along the chain, with closest repeater first in queue. This allows for a viable business model - it costs to serve up large graphics, but it's totally free if you just submit some every so often. Repeaters (level 3 or 4) get to vote (polling method) to blacklist someone from level 2 back down to level 1 if faked images (e.g. ads, pr0n, mislabelled/categorized) for 90 days. This keeps the spamsters/adsters out of the system. Blacklist applies to either entire domain or IP or IP gateway - again, repeaters need a 90 percent vote of all voting repeaters to do this.
Well, when the whole market tanked and NASDAQ was down 30+ percent, I was only down 1 percent from last year end, and that with disbursements too.
The main thing is not to panic, to buy for the long term, to not invest in anything you don't understand, and to be patient.
Remember, the AVERAGE growth is 8 to 10 percent. This can mean up years of 20 percent and down years of 10 percent.
While I ignore the age rule (percent of stocks is 100 minus age, rest is bonds minus 10 percent for cash), just like my grandparents did, and am thus always way more into stocks, I try to buy good long-term stocks for the most part. But I will sell if people get too excited (Transmeta, Red Hat) and buy back in when they get depressed (Red Hat, Microsoft).
The main factors in becoming millionaires for most people are:
1. being married to someone who is a saver;
2. saving/investing 10 percent or more of your income; and
3. living below your means.
I could live in a fancy neighborhood, buy a new car every year, but why? I'd rather live in a reasonable neighborhood where I don't have to keep up with the Gateses, buy a new car when my old one needs to be replaced (every 5 or 6 years, almost time), and save 20 percent of my income while giving tons to charity and political causes and having fun at parties.
Conspicuous consumption - the American nightmare. I ride the bus to work like most millionaires.
You basically have the following choices:
1. Download IE. You just helped MSFT up their browser counts, killing off all other choices. Plus, they get revenue from you, and can keep killing open source.
2. Download Netscape 6. You now help pay for the work on Mozilla by ad impressions. They're not working for free, those AOL/Netscape engineers, even if you are. And someone has to pay for marketing and distribution. You can disable some of the automatic links, of course.
3. Keep using Netscape 4.72 or 4.74 or whatever. You still count as a Netscape browser, so you don't help MSFT, but you're not helping standards compliance or open source, so you might as well write a check to MSFT, since you've sold out.
4. Use Opera. Man, you are so cool!
5. Use Mozilla. Man, you are so cool!
6. Use Lynx. Man, you are so retro!
7. Write your own browser. Man, you are so cool!
Look, a successful book launch has nothing to do with content, it is a marketing ploy. Any author could tell you that it is very rare that a published work ever gets printed with its working title.
...
House Harkonnen is instantly recognizable, implies some mild dirt, so it increases the demographic. If it said Leit's Story, the sales would have dropped to about half the current volume.
Oh, sorry, you didn't want to know the real reason it's about Leit and others but is titled to make you think it's about the Harkonnens. Instead, you'd like to believe that the book publishing industry is clean and only cares about literary qualities and art.
Wake up and smell the sequel
[yes, my name used to be longer, back when I was published in White Dwarf and various Australian and New Zealand mags, but the publishing industry is still the same beast]
Face it, it's only because MSFT charges too much for their OS for handhelds. When any tech device marketing person can tell you that you must get the price below $500 for a tech device within 18 months, and below $300 within 30 months, it just stands to reason that an OS that costs as much as MSFT charges will eventually lose in the Darwinian struggle of the marketplace, without monopolistic and linking actions.
It's not that Linux is better, it's that it does the same thing for a cheaper price.
According to this UpsideToday story, one of the most popular things at this year's Comdex is not Embedded Linux Handhelds, it's a headband with little red blinking demon horns from BSDi. And we all know how popular the booth babes from BSDi were at various Linux conventions ...
As the story says:
Attendees ranging from twentysomething men to white-haired couples were lined up to collect the headbands from the software and services company, which uses a dough-eyed red demon character as its mascot.
Jordan Hubbard, vice president of BSDi, said the company went through 4,000 headbands and tails in just one day.
"They love the horns," he said, and the company loves the brand awareness they create.
One criteria though is anonymity. How would your system address this?
The actual "ballot" would be anonymous, with only a tracer record number. The 180 day files with the voter reg ID to tracer record ID match would be stored on a precinct by precinct level, and would only have the match of the two numbers.
The best security would be physical security - use removable hard drives, which are wiped once the 180 day period is over for challenges.
Your question, however, is based on the concept that you actually have an anonymous vote now. You don't. Every Precinct Committee Officer gets records indicating your name, phone, address, when you voted over the last four years, and which party affiliations (ballot type requests) you declared during that time.
How do you think we know you have an absentee ballot when we knock on your door?
is the example of the wrong question.
Look, forget the distro wars for a few seconds - what is the end goal?
It's secure Open Source distros. Bastille is a method/process to help the large number of Linux users at least have a chance at this.
This is not to say that BSD is not a better choice for some, but each user has different needs, and we need to encourage the diversity which is Open Source, not get into blamefests.
That given, the old rule still applies:
90 percent of all security breaches are inside jobs.
A real Net voting system would work like this:
A. Voter shows up at polling place (secure encyrpted terminal in secure place like library, post office, govt building kiosk, embassy).
B. Voter swipes voter reg card, machine takes pic and stores it in 180 day storage file for verification. Reg card ID stored in voting PC and marked in voting queue database. Key generated, attached to voting record. Key now used for all further transactions.
C. Voter says name, machine records voice snippet for 180 day storage for verification.
D. Voter uses touch screen or mouse to vote preferential ballot. Choices are 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 up to 9 max. No vote is no vote.
E. Voter has ballot choices displayed, with choices checked. Voter clicks/enters OK, voice snippet records voter saying OK "Please repeat your name".
F. Files uploaded once complete to servers via encrypted data stream. If incomplete, ballot is voided after 30 minutes. If voided, you can vote again. Max wait time is 30 minutes. If less than 30 minutes prior to polling booth close - voter is issued receipt to vote again, but noone can start voting after poll close without receipt number.
G. Midnight all voting ceases. If recount, voter pics and voices are available, voters can challenge vote. Humans decide if same person - people have better wetware to recognize faces and voices to confirm.
H. Preferential ballot drops lowest vote total first, reallocating to No. 2 choice, until candidate wins race.
I. Script-kiddies have Voltron elected anyway. Corporate paymasters pay them off for job well done.
While it's amusing to read about the tank, considering I've seen real live people run over by tanks and APCs (score: tanks 5, humans 0.9 (one lived but badly injured)), another interesting field test of PCs (386 ones) was recently conducted in Seattle.
We took an old 386 PC, with keyboard and monitor and threw it from the top of the Fremont Troll during Trolloween. Result was:
case of monitor cracked slightly - tube still intact (landed face down due to weight);
case of PC broke loose from mounting, some boards chipped and some connectors split, but motherboard over 90 percent intact;
keyboard split in four parts, keys sprung, springs still connected - total writeoff.
So, a PC can survive a 30 foot drop onto hard packed dirt if tossed downwards at an 80 degree angle from vertical. Will reuse the PC for the next art event where we need non-working PCs, maybe lawn bowling (one of my faves, just love to hear the tinkle of monitor glass).
Yes, I know, you'd expect me to say something about his style of writing, but not this article.
Basically, he's right in that we drastically need to improve our method of voting, but he's wrong in his exact solution.
A PC-based method inherently discriminates against low-tech areas or non-wired rural areas. If we were to ensure that polling places held Electronic Voting Boxes, this might not be such a bad idea, however.
I dreamed last Friday night that I had voted electronically. I went into my polling place (or library) even though I was allowed to vote from home, because I like to meet my neighbors and had heard rumors of GOP script-kiddies hacking the absentee ballots of Democrats with viral Bush-voting scripts that made you think you voted for Pat Buchanan if you checked Gore.
In the dream, I used a stylus to vote for all the issues, wrote in my name for Precinct Committee Officer (since they forgot to take my filing fee of $1), and then reviewed on screen my choices. After a quick comparison with my sample ballot, I clicked on Submit, clicked on OK, clicked on Yes, I Am Really Sure, clicked on Yes, Give $2 Matching Funds To Allow Third Parties To Run For President, and it confirmed my vote and spit out an election receipt which showed my name, precinct, and a voting ident to prove my ballot had been cast. In the event of a system crash of my ballot place, I could use the voting ident to get a replacement vote within 72 hours (hey, it's happened, major power outage when Westside.com went live with it's server farms and took down Fremont, Center of the Universe).
OK, let's do the numbers.
Which run on Linux (without WINE): Mozilla and Netscape.
Which run on Mac: all three
Which sell out your privacy and let you be tracked the most easily, in violation of European Privacy Standards: IE
Which must we download if we don't want the entire corporate world to go with IE: Netscape.
So, download Netscape 6.0, download Mozilla 16, cheat and copy IE for testing purposes (use a slightly older version) (if you download, they count your stat).
Even though the story was rejected, one piece of news today on Yahoo Business was that the US Army has announced they will be using Transmeta chips for their battlefield backpack computers.
...
Who needs Compaq anyway
Personally, ymmv, but I just use my notebook to fill up my rio, and then use the rio most of the time for short trips - I live in front of a computer, so putting new stuff on the rio is easy, and I have automated scripts to fill it with talk radio & news in the morning before I wake up. If I'm booking for a long trip, I can just connect a notebook directly. The rio has the advantage of not risking damage under, uh, "spirited" driving conditions :). Nor do I have to worry about leaving it in the dash and attracting attention from the criminal element.
I've nuked out a few CDs on long road trips, especially on Highway 101 from Oregon to California, where the twists going 20 mph faster than the limit can really smear the disk surface.
What I want is a non-movable storage system. Flash or something, so I can take a stick of 72 hours driving music and NPR for those long rides to catch the surf.
The time has come, the call to arms.
To pitchforks rather.
Light the fires, light the torches,
get out your guns.
We shall make wicker men,
men with no guts,
wimps,
wusses.
We shall drag them by noose to the public squares,
string them up,
put masks on their empty heads.
Paint the giant L of the Loser,
douse them in kerosene,
light them on fire.
I served in the army, I have been in harm's way,
I shall not respect this loser called Shrub.
I shall hurl rotten fruit should he set foot,
in my town,
in my city.
We of the brave,
we of the true,
we of the morally strong -
shall not suffer this fool's existence,
this man who has bought his throne.
Let loose the hounds of the media,
follow the trail of white powder,
follow the oil deals,
follow the abortions caused by this frat boy.
Let him be visited by that which his folk
visited upon this country.
Let him know the hell suffered by Clinton,
but four fold.
He shall be the flawed prince.
He shall be the sacrificial lamb.
His time on this earth shall be short.
He too shall crumble in flames,
his scarecrow shall turn into dirt.
Hi, my dad's rich and has lots of friends and he says that even though I'm less popular than this other smart guy that he can get me into the Electoral College. Can you send me an application?
...
Seriously, under a Bush presidency, you can forget about IP rights. Open Source is toast, everything will be patented by the Oil Companies and Pharmaceuticals and we're all going to lose all our privacy rights, since it's not written in the literalist Constitution.
So forget about any IP effects, just kiss your intellectual assets goodbye
In non-independent tests avoided by the majority of people with taste buds, 3 out of 5 cola non-skilled cola hackers report that they can't tell the difference between SDMI and MP3 music.
The industry funded RIAA reported that this conclusively proves the existence of life on Mars, and will proceed with plans to produce Colas that will sound the same to Martians and can't be cracked for their recipes. No Martians could be found who could crack the recipe, according to RIAA.
Rumors that there are no Martians, that colas don't work in low-pressure atmospheres, and that you will never make a profit when people drink the free Open Source cola rivers on Mars were all reported to be just rumors, according to the news media who depend on insider cola event tips and free cola concert tickets from RIAA.
In a transparent ploy to boost the Green vote, hackers defaced the GOP's RNC website today, according to cNet.
However, no schoolchildren noticed, since their censorware doesn't allow them to view the site, nor did anyone see the defaced site at public libraries.
As candidates discover that the filters won't let them get their messages out, they will quickly find reasons other than that to deep six the use of such filters in schools and libraries except in cases where they meet the review of an "independent" panel. This panel will just happen to ensure that filters that censor politicians' sites are deemed unworthy of approval.
It's all about the money, honey.
Transmeta will live or die by dockable WebPads. Low power consumption chips are most useful on devices with non-heavy graphics screens - this form allows one to use an HDTV screen for web browsing, but browse news articles while sitting at the couch or working in the kitchen. Here the difference between a 2-3 hour battery life (Intel/AMD products) and a 4-6 hour battery life (Tranmeta) will become critical.
This may also prove useful in PDAs, where battery life with reasonable non-hard-disk usage can have a major impact. I would love to have a PDA that plugs into my fridge webpad and synchs, plugs into my car display and activates voice tech modules, and can be stuck in a slim pack or a purse.
The rest is GIGO.
[note - I'm biased, since I have IPO shares in TMTA]
There's a story on Yahoo about the IPO, which is now at $48 and climbing, less than one hour from the IPO.
/. has rejected three stories submitted by me over the past week about the IPO, with probably about four story links per submission.
...
I picked up 75 shares at IPO price myself.
Amusingly,
Conflict of interest? Inquiring minds want to know
Anyone catch the little stab in the back by Compaq today? Et tu, Brute? Mr. Grove should be ashamed of twisting their arms over such a silly thing as a little bit of competition.
you cannot simply drive from the US to get an operation.
And you'd better bring a birth certificate with you, cause they require more than just your driver's license nowadays. And if you come from Texas (like me and George "Wuss" Bush (who ain't no true texan, ain't ne'er had no rattlesnake in his crib)) or New Mexico, you'd better make sure it's a Long Form Birth Certificate, cause they don't accept short form ones anymore, due to forgeries.
Subject: IRV-Instant Runoff Voting:Sign petition
x xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
(This petition was created for the state of WA. Please work to apply
similar actions in your state.)
Forward this message freely:
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Friends in the state of WA,
We are being told that we can't vote for who we really want in the
presidential election without "wasting" our vote. There is a simple way
to fix this problem, albeit not in time for this election: (IRV)
Instant Runoff Voting.
Wouldn't Instant Runoff Voting work better? I think so.
Funny you should mention this as a voting alternative, because a friend of mine sent me an invite to an online petition about that. So far, in my state, it seems to have signatures from a mix of Greens, Democrats, and Independents.
Here's the letter:>>>
Find out about this simple solution to the two-party problem and sign the petition in support of it at http://www.petitiononline.com/WaIRV/
You can also find out more about electoral reform in general at http://www.fairvote.org
that's what I get for not previewing. The second man link should have read burn.
In other words:
The man must burn.
Does that make more sense?
the man must man two ways. You can vote for Nader in safe states - if you're in a Bush state, you will infuriate both GOP and Dems by increasing the Green vote. And you can vote for Gore in swing states - which will infuriate the Independents and GOPs by letting them win the popular vote but losing the Electoral College vote - this will make them stew for months.
It's the equivalent of tossing a lighted match on the man. Or, even better, breathing fire to light a torch, and tossing the torch onto the Man of the Two Party System. Burn, baby, burn!