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User: dotmaudot

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  1. Re:edit articles for pay is not a sin on Major Wikipedia Donors Caught Editing Their Own Articles · · Score: 1

    I started my comment with As long as documentation is given that somebody is paying for editing an article. Besides, Sarah Stierch was an employee of WMF, not a plain contributor of Wikipedia.

  2. edit articles for pay is not a sin on Major Wikipedia Donors Caught Editing Their Own Articles · · Score: 1

    As long as documentation is given that somebody is paying for editing an article, and of course if the contributed text respects NPOV (and the subject is considered worth to be present in Wikipedia), there is no problem at all. After all, you may use Wikipedia articles in a commercial work: it is sufficient that it is released under CC-BY-SA. So what's bad in being paid for writing?

  3. what's wrong with wikibooks? on Should Wikipedia Allow Mathematical Proofs? · · Score: 1

    Wikibooks is a project under the umbrella of wikipedia which aims to create "a free library of educational textbooks that anyone can edit". Were it for me, the mathematical demonstrations will go there... (disclaimer: I have a degree in maths)

  4. Re:The two sides of Wikipedia on Visualizing the Wikipedia Power Struggle · · Score: 1

    You do not really have big battles over articles like "Pythagorean theorem"
    Funny you say this, since in Italian Wikipedia it gets modified (for the worse) twice a month :-)

  5. in Italy it already happened on US Pennies To Be Worth Five Cents? · · Score: 1

    Since the end of the 70s, smaller Italian coins (5, 10, 20 lire: more or less .3, .6 and 1.2 cents) disappeared, since they were worth more than their nominal value. The funniest thing was that to avoid the same fate for 50 and 100 lire the Government decided to coin new coins which were identical to the old ones except that they were smaller in size!

  6. Who really made the scoop on Copy-and-Paste Reveals Classified U.S. Documents · · Score: 5, Informative

    Needless to say, no Italian newspaper ever cares to cite that the news was pointed out by an Italian blogger, Gianluca Neri of Macchianera.

  7. trademarks in france on French Designer Ordered to Give up milka.fr · · Score: 1

    If I am not wrong, there is a subdomain .tm.fr for trade marks estabilished in France, so there is even more tenuous ground for Kraft. But we saw what happened in Italy with armani.it, formerly owned by a Luca Armani who has an (office) stamp shop and who was forced to resign it and to get timbrificio.com instead.

  8. Re:WAP 1 vs. 2 on WAP is Dead, Long Live WAP · · Score: 1

    Whoever tried to use the phone keys understood the logic beneath WAP: you needed a TLA which could be digited with just three keypress.

  9. Re:More to the story on Too slow! FBI Shuts Down Hosting Service · · Score: 5, Informative

    I haven't seen this story picked up on any other news outlet yet
    Maybe you looked at the wrong sources :-) Anyway, if you are interested in knowing more, have a look at the records at SPEWS . ciao, .mau.

  10. Re:Psion on Sharp Zaurus SL-C750 (P)reviewed · · Score: 1

    I had a 5mx, and I switched to SL-5500 last year. Psion has a more usable keyboard (dunno about C-7x0, it would be too much of a hassle to import one in Italy), but Z is workable. I like Zaurus because I have a real PC in my pocket!

  11. My definition of "adventure games" on Adventure Gaming: Rest In Peace? · · Score: 1

    When I think of an adventure, my mind goes to Infocom... or even the PDP-11 version of Zork, whose name I am forgetting in this moment.
    It is obvious that those kind of games do not exist anymore - what the heck, even Linux starts with a GUI!
    ciao, .mau.

  12. Re:Not true - or an exaggeration anyway on uk.co Domains Knocked Offline By Registrar Dispute · · Score: 1

    What kind of twisted in-bred retard would type in uk.co by accident?
    I am old enough to remember the times of JANET which, in a very British way, wrote the address backwards. Thus, an address like user@example.co.uk should be entered as user@uk.co.example. True, in those days the treat was to mistype .uk.ac, but the basic idea is the same...
    ciao, .mau.

  13. I think it depends... on Are Low Refresh Rates Bad for the Eyes? · · Score: 1

    I never had problems even at 60Hz. I can notice that 72Hz is better, but 80Hz gives me nothing more.
    What I found very useful is photocromatic lenses (I have a heavy myopia). It seems that polarizing light helps my sight!

    ciao, .mau.

  14. Re:Uzi Nissan... getting it from both ends. on Using Your Own Name May Be Infringement, Part 2 · · Score: 1

    But when the Uzi people finally get wind of this fellow, you can bet he'll change his tune.

    Ever wondered why Uzis are called that way?

    ciao, .mau.

  15. Re:What I would like to know is... on The End Of Minix? · · Score: 1
    Why do many TERMCAP databases contain vt100 definitions even though most people use a windowing system of some type?

    For one, I routinely use vt100 emulation.

    ciao, .mau.

  16. Re:This is why on The Day The Music Died: Windows Media and DRM · · Score: 1
    I can't thing of any better way to stifle online music sales

    What? somebody actually wants to boost online music sales?

    ciao, .mau.

  17. Re:You misrepresent the issue & Apple reversed on Death to the 3.5" Floppy? · · Score: 1
    The controversy was all about Apple's assertion that all you need is ethernet.

    Apple is used to such things. I remember that back in 1986 I had to write my thesis on a Mac (one of the first models, just two floppy discs) with no arrow keys. Everytime I wanted to correct my text, I had to move my hand to the mouse, and positioning the cursor in the needed place.

    ciao, .mau.

  18. I still do not see the issue on How Italian Police Shut Down U.S. Web Servers · · Score: 1

    It's quite funny that people still look at the elimination of the sites as an act against free speech.

    First of all, if any US citizen wants to mirror the old contents, he is quite free to do it, and the Italian police could not do anything to him, since he is not subject to Italian law.

    Pity that things are a bit different. I had a look at the Google cache of one of the sites. The revealing lines are those at the bottom, which I try to translate below. (Well, I am a bit at a loss, I do not know the English form for a lot of those terms)

    Connections are really speedy... so you'll quickly download a tonful of good stuff...
    11 PORN sites + videochat with online bad chicks+ access to the BIG BROTHEL (!!) + 2000 headlines with cellular phone number ... what fucking else do you want?

    Well, the links are to a URL, "sesso.exe", which seems suspiciously like a dialer (don't know if you call it so - it's a program which closes the connection to your ISP, and opens another one to a premium number). So the site was actually hosting a scam, and this matches the closing from "Guardia di Finanza" (the Italian police corps more or less like the SEC).

    It could even be that the allegations of "the Church had the sites closed!" are a cover up from the owners of the sites, so that the real reason is not shown.

    ciao, .mau.

  19. Re:Nobody has asked this yet? on Italian Police Censor "Blasphemous" Websites · · Score: 1

    I find it odd that nobody has asked the question: "How the _HELL_ did Italian authorities get the jurisdiction to put up a block on a site located in the U.S.?"

    IANAL, but (unfortunately :-)) I know a few lawyers. When talking about a similar case in a now-dead "Italian Internet Governance Project", they explained me that an Italian citizen is liable for Italian law even if he did not commit his (Italian) crime in Italy!

    Therefore I believe that the people who registered the domains are Italian citizens, and this gave Italian police the necessary loophole.

    A stranger thing: I am rather sure that a pronunciation from the Corte Costituzionale (More or less an equivalent of the Supreme Court) stated that blasphemy is only against the name of God, and not against the Virgin Mary.

    ciao, .mau.

  20. rubber keyboards on A Selective History Of The Keyboard · · Score: 1

    You Americans never saw Sinclair ZX80, obviously.

    This was a fine example of something quite completely unlike a keyboard...

    ciao, .mau.

  21. Re:Already Happening on EU Plans to Tax Internet Sales · · Score: 1

    I ordered some CDs from amazon.com a few weeks back. Two days ago I received a notice that I needed to go to my local postal depot to pay a customs charge before I could collect my package

    My experience (more than 10 years in buying abroad) is more mixed.

    It is true that every purchase of goods went through custom offices, but I noticed that there was not a consistent behaviour. Especially if I had a small order (say, a Linux distro when they were made of 2 disks for 20$) the package was cleared and I got it at home: but larger orders were stopped, and I had to pay both custom duties (4.5% from US to Italy) and VAT (20%).

    Nowadays I prefer to use offshore services like http://www.play247.com/ for music. As for books, amazon.co.uk charges me with Italian VAT (it's just 4% in that case), so I think that the scenario depicted in the "news" at Yahoo! is already being enforced at least in part.

    ciao, .mau.

  22. Re:why linux on Sun Unveils More Linux Strategies · · Score: 1

    I keep wondering why big companies like HP and Sun choose linux, instead of freeBSD. Although I'm not an expert on any of them, as far as I understand the BSD structure resembles SunOS and HP/UX more than Linux.

    AFAIK, SunOs 4.x (for those of us who are old enough) was more BSD-oriented, but Solaris 2 had phased towards System V. This could be one of the reasons behind the choice.

    ciao, .mau.

  23. Re:make users suffer! on Bastard Operator from Hell II (Son of the Bastard) · · Score: 1

    You're missing the point. Sysadmins should behave in such a way that when they crucify users that get out of line and then set the crosses on fire, the users think that they *are* being nice to them.

    Not quite.
    Users must think that sysadmins are being nice to them in spite of their incredible tight scheduling, so that they will think twice before bothering them again.
    A sysadmin wants to deal with systems, not with users.

    ciao, .mau.
  24. Like antiviral software... on TrustE Launches Trusted Spammer Program · · Score: 1

    If estimation on the number of received spam messages are correct, people will eventually be forced to subscribe to "pay-for-despamming" mailboxes, where the ISPs will screen incoming email. True, some hardcore unix fan will still manage to have a real shell on a remote machine, and work harder and harder to update their procmail scripts, but the future won't be their.

    What a sad thought.

    ciao, .mau.

  25. Re:Paradigm Shift on Is Assembler Still Relevant? · · Score: 1

    Look, don't try to talk this over the OS advocacy gulf.

    I think it's you that started the OS war again :-)

    I can't speak for NT, but on Unix the "low level" necessary to do real work is C, not assembler... you may even write device drivers in C, at least in part, since the model is sufficiently formal.

    When I was young, I tried to make sense of Sparc assembler, and I could not make heads out of tails. True, my only exposure was to 6502 assembler and a bit of 8086, but this showed me that assembler was no more so relevant. And it was 10 years ago!

    YMMV, of course, especially if you are programming space probes, or real real time games.

    ciao, .mau.