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User: Crysgem

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  1. Symbolism? on Open-Source Soft{ware,drink}: "OpenCOLA" · · Score: 1

    Steelbridge, is it? Located on Bloor St. E as they claim to be (mmm, south of Rosedale), this name inevitably invokes the Bloor Viaduct, but a few hundred meters away.

    The only bridge in North America from which more lives were ended last year was the Golden Gate. This I would not deem a propitious symbol.

  2. The nature of international astronomy on Earth's Second Moon · · Score: 2

    The object was discovered by a British team, but it's "satellite" nature was not known until a Canadian team performed the analysis (contrary to an earlier posting which credited one at a... Turkish university?).

    Alors, we have a co-discovery... unreported, as is usual for matters of Canadian pride. But astronomy and other such international sciences is to be about the high purpose of fact and truth and the extension of knowledge's frontiers, not nationality or whatsoever nation a research happens to be working in. Consider all the discoveries by foreign (non-Chilean) researchers in Chile's Atacama Desert...

    By the by, there is some interest among a select band of Canadians to launch a probe to the asteroid...

  3. Bugzilla! on IF bugs, THEN marketing director eats insects · · Score: 0

    Tenders of the Lizard, do you mark this?

  4. Flame me, please - I'm feeling chill. on Mozilla: News from the front · · Score: 3

    One of the perhaps smaller, but of a certainty significant, aspects of the Mozilla project is apparent to those of us who browse the Bugzilla database. Ergo, it has lain unnoticed by the silent majority, the flamedot minority, and the ha-ha-Netscape-fools gawkers.

    Users and programmers have traditionally been the poles of a divide (if I may carelessly mix my metaphors), kinda like boys and girls. (Which of the pairs is analogous to which I leave as an exercise to the reader >:+} ). While other companies or groups have been renowned for their attention to user interface or responsiveness to users, Mozilla, through Bugzilla, more so even than through the newsgroups, stewards a new user/coder frontier: The blessed enhancement request. Pssst - Rob - your code won't permit me to include the necessarily long CGI URL.

    Here, in this well-mannered and efficient forum, users make unreasonable requests - and watch with astonishment as they are sometimes granted! The Netscape engineers are for the most part tolerant and polite - even enduring unwarranted abuse - and are open to luser suggestion. If indeed lusers they be. And most proposals are at the very least discussed, for the greater number.

    The seeding of this hitherto untapped and rather mangy range of the noosphere (to use your beloved but limited vernacular), the (*scoffing*) user base, is an advanced, or rather advancing, inclusion that makes our trumpeted Open Source method more of a societal, a popular?, phenomenon than before. (*Leaving further such analysis to the grandiose*)

    Needless to say, these words apply only to those members of society who are sufficiently interested to linger circa such domains. So should it be. We (or, perhaps, I) mad bastards who think to shape the next Netscape browser toward our ends and in reflection of our method-minds rather like the lack of company >:+)

    And there is another aspect of appeal in the Bugzilla milieu. (Milieu being a browsable web database, an ongoing discussion with engineers, a devoted newsgroup set, a sense of comradeship against hostile outside, media, forces, &c) The satisfaction of submitting a bug and awaiting it's speedy repair soon becomes a quite forthright expectation, something akin almost to a human instinct, undiscovered alas until this late march of the Industrial age. It is the desire and expectation that, finding a bug, one reports it, and will soon be using a fresh copy of the software that is bereft of the very flaw. If such a cycle were established in all public domains, many corporations would be afflicted, and many consumers would rejoice. And lo!, the yobbers would owe we "computer hackers". It nearly calls to mind the fabled customer service and quality of vendors such as the Eaton's of the 1960s (to those non-Canadians who do not recognize the reference, *nyyahh* to ye).

    Or perhaps I'm foaming verbose again - there was the Great Overboard some time ago, as I recall - but we'll see when it ships, won't we, kiddies?

  5. Names, Geography and History on Linus at Fermi National Accelerator Lab · · Score: 2

    'T'is interesting to consider the arraying of names and geography and history, the small-detail underpinnings of any such meeting. But those three factors are functions of one another to extent varying, non? Enrico Fermi, Chicago, Illinois, Manhattan Project, the great scientific - burst *irony intended* - that was the 20th century. Will our memetic descendants one day study/innovate at, or revere a "Torvalds Institute"? And what repututation would it bear? Would it spawn rebels such as Berkeley, ideologues as did MIT? *Chuckles* Interesting that the BSD kids "sold out", and the North-Easters remained committed. So much for West-Coast culture.
    And more interestingly, where would such a facility be based? Within Helsinki environs, or in California? That's fascinating to consider, yes, citizens? Here again with Torvalds the international infusion to American science, ergo American wealth and power. Will we now witness a shift, the onset of a balance, where Europe and other non-American spheres create equal or even competing streams to the American information structure, which in honest recollection was largely the cradle of much of our now-used network technology? And would these alternate spheres (I am considering Western Europe, possibly India) create network/information regimes that reflect their own societies, their own unique differences... or would they apishly reflect the American capital technocracy that seemingly is unconsciously imparted to any users (and managers) of these our tools?
    I am uncertain if Fermilab was so titled after the great Italian's death, or before. Perhaps it would inform these thoughts...
    I know comparitively little of Jon "maddog" Hall... if I retrieve and parse correctly, he is of the American '70s Unix generation, nearly following the Progenitors, Thompson, Ritchie and Kernighan. What will this generation, these individuals, pass on to our future? What influence or guidance, if any (in the social/power sense)? Will institutions bear their name? Will they remain relatively unrecognized and uncredited in "the Real World", as I seem to believe Postel is? It seems to me that, like the Americans and, aye, Europeans, who made their wealth and changed the world from the base of America in the first half of this century (A. Einstein, consider his pacifism), they've a responsibility to speak and think on the implications of their wizardcraft. A strict engineering mentality ("I'm not political") should be discouraged by these people... else that American example will be passed to the world, which (as I, a Canadian, know well) questions not American ways enough. Heh, well... I suppose 't'is difficult to be an icon... and I *would* prefer Linus to devote himself in this still-early time in largest part to kernel oversight... until our World Domination.

  6. Be not surprised. on The Free S/WAN Project:secure TCP/IP · · Score: 3

    Oh, come now, anonymous Canadian coward, and any who may unnecessarily note the origin of this project... be nice. We all of us know that Canada benefits from our MANY contrasts with that, er, big freakin' Southern Elephant. (Here noting that even the Michigan boy, Malda, couldn't bring himself to refer to Ryerson in a previous post as being in Toronto, but rather "in Canada". Along with a typically parochial, clueless American gibe about "lots of snow"... but this movement is about RMS' arrogant patriotism and ESR's gun-nut "American free speech", I suppose >:+} )
    That surprises *them* but it shouldnae surprise us... I mean to say, look only at our poor disenfranchised people in Ontario *snicker* alone - lessee now, what recent projects of ours might I name? Unreal? The various Corel incursions? Do none of you realize the benefits the people of New Brunswick invite by heavily investing their future in telecom? Did I not recently read that Nortel runs Linux en masse? Sift the Linux credits for ".ca" addresses - and remember that most Canadians don't advertise their national origin in Net tags, as that has the colonial sound and seeming of "AOL Canada", *feh*, and the like.
    Hang fast, kids, for I'll wager that matters of Canadian, um - influence (read: authorship) - shall wax, not wane. But be vewy quiet of this. Else, the Americans shall notice us and become annoyed at the piping-up of those damned marginals.
    *Cough* Unless they've already noticed the heavy European participation *cough* and SuSE's superiority over Red Hat *cough* we'll get them to use ".us" addresses yet *cough*
    But, verily, the contrasts do exist, the laws not least among them. The *cryptography* laws not least among them, if one observes how Ottawa fawns over Corel...
    Despite the much-bemoaned taxes, the lack of respect for research, and the infamous inferiority complex, I behold a population of GPL-believing, culturally neutral, purist enthusiasts for Linux and open coding here (well, in TO) that none of my American comrades can report... and I expect that when a foundation free-software tradition is established here, them Americans will employ our modest lands as their great haven, home away from home... the proximity, cultural similarities, monetary advantage to migrating Americans, and the precedent of "unAmerican" software possibilities may permit an interesting variant enclave to become entrenched... unbeknownst to the homelanders, just as we took in draft-dodgers, heh... might you say, "Miguel MacKenzie" or "Linus Toquevals"? : )
    (In passing - speaking of Torontonian Net.celebrities - meeting Henry Spencer - as my Californian comrades say, "what a trip")
    Or perhaps a software-equivalent Mulroney will follow our free-software glory Trudeau days... *sigh*
    And, perhaps, one day, I'll observe those pretty girl coders (here's lookin' at'choo, Amiga chick!) choose to attend Waterloo as 'posed to MIT. Well, it matters not - MS waylays both student populations...