"In fact, I find the spectacle of pre-announced, feted, giving (like Ted Turner's immense gift to the UN) to be distasteful for a number of reasons"
while i agree with the spirit of what you're saying, the example was a particualrly poor one. the whole point of ted turner's gift was that at the time (and maybe still) the US government owed the UN a couple of billion dollars in membership dues (yet it still got to veto anything it wanted). by giving the UN the money he was trying to shame the US government into honouring it's commitments and do the same. last i heard they hadn't.
roman mythology actually, if it was greek then the planets would be named hermes, aphrodite, etc. and we'd be talking about the new moon orbiting zeus.
AFAIK the only planet that uses shakespeare for it's moons is uranus (and i wouldn't have known that if it weren't for blue mars).
but anonymous cowards post by default to 0. if you're like me and read with a -1 threshold then you expect these things. if you have less time to waste than you can set your threshold to a higher level thereby ignoring all the first posts.
while i have no doubt that most first posts are trolls, i don't see why they need to be moderated down, just browse at 1 or 2 and you won't be bothered by them, plus your page will probably load a lot faster too.
This is another book by Robert Sawyer, and it just so happened to win the Nebula a while ago. It deals with a researcher who "records" three versions of his brain into a computer, a straight copy (the control), one with no concept of death (an immortal) and one with no life experiences (a ghost). Then one of the recordings of him starts to kill people and the rest of the book is spent finding out who. He's a decent author but after reading a couple of his books they all seem to look the same.
A prof at my school(U of Waterloo) knew him so he invited him in for a talk one evening. It was pretty good, but if you ever meet him here's a tip: don't ask him if he thinks that science fiction writers who are scientists are better than those who aren't.
both gigabit ethernet and ipv6 are available for linux right now, not sure how good the support is but if you try a make xconfig on one of the newer 2.2.x kernels you will see that you can add it in. as for any of us mere mortals getting to use either of these in the near future, well we can always hope:)
actually, they will just give any new number in the current 416 area the 647 area code. also, all local calls in the toronto area (416, 647 & 905) will become 10 digits long.
To me RMS is the Magneto of Free software (I guess that makes Linus the Professor X). His motives are good, but his implementations might be lacking. But as any real X-Men fan could tell you, Magneto is by far the coolest character. You can always count on him to make his point with a splash.
Unfortunately in this article RMS's presence doesn't even seem to be there. It's almost as if it were one of the Acolytes writing instead of the master. While he does explain why he thinks Sun removing Java from the ECMA won't help them, he doesn't bring any conviction but instead uses the too familiar "The beauty of the GPL is that if they make changes we like we can incorporate them into our version". Yes he mentions the GNU efforts that are underway but where is the call to arms that we all silently expected and perhaps feared?
But aren't the big companies what make New York the Centre Of The Universe (TM)?
It probably is more important for the mayor to suck up to these big companies, after all these companies hire a lot of New Yorkers, and are a big draw for people to come to New York.
Besides which, with all the "cleaning up" that Guiliani has done, there can't be as much work for the cops there anyways:)
Pretty good question at the end of the article. Just how did the NYPD get called in for a clerical error?
It would seem that a better solution might have been for MS to send an employee from a nearby office (they must have a New York office), explain the situation and then give him a new unit and perhaps a couple of free months for the hassle.
The again would YOU open your door to some stranger claiming to be from MS? and if you happened to be a gun nut... (er collector)
I for one am looking forward to a good book of this type. IMHO too many people take the open nature of the net as an excuse to say/do whatever they want without though of consequences. If the book is anything like the review says it is, then it should become a teaching aid to anyone who wants to use a computer (although perhaps the sections dealing with a particular faith group can be editied out).
It could be a Hive Queen and Hegemon for the internet, a very cool thing.
This is because stations such as YTV are cable stations. The ones offered by IcraveTV are the local tv stations. If they were to offer cable stations they would probably have to a) get permission and b) pay the stations for the right to rebroadcast
Otherwise i'd be able to watch champions league soccer on TSN from work instead of settling for a java superticker:)
Free as in beer means that the product costs nothing to you (just think of women at bars and you'll get the picture).
The more important freedom is free as in speech. That you should have a right to see the source code of the program you are using, and adapt it to what you want. This is the main point of GNU (as far as I can tell).
The two are often contrasted when discussing the difference between certain companies giving products away 'for free' and things produced under a license such as the GPL (ie free as in beer good, free as in speech better).
The internet makes it easy for people to express exactly what they think. This is a good thing. But how often after you've just told some fscking @$$hole off for something do you realize that it was just an honest mistake. When this happens in the real world, you can make a sincere apology (or not if that's the type of person you are) but online it's so much easier to ignore the effects of what you may have said to someone in the heat of the moment and just disappear.
Perhaps a solution would be to implement a feature in email clients that would by default keep all messages in a queue for a set period of time (say 24 hours) so that you can edit some hastily written words after you've had a good night's sleep. i'm sure this post would benefit from editing of some sort:)
It all started in 1999 when scientests at the University of the West of England created slugbot. After reading about this invention some slashdotters decided to make their own self replicating version powered by the powerful Linux OS. Soon they had robots picking up windoze users and fermenting them into fuel. Slowly, everyone with a Microsoft product was processed in fermenting vats, but the influence of Microsoft was too strong and it started to infect the robots. Realizing that the Linuxites were too powerful to remain unchecked but too useful to do away with, they created a plan, and The Matrix was born.
Great, more bad legislation. All this will do is give large companies more muscle when they try to "crack down" on people using their name. For the longest time ati.com was legitemately pwned by some other company who even provided a link to the video card manufacturer. At one point I think legal action was even being considered (but not implemented). Seeing how typing it in now gets me to ATIs (the video card manufacturer) site, I guess they bought them out.
I'm just waiting to start my own internet company so that I can finally get tariq.com from the guy who currently owns it:)
What relevance is there that the software is being used at Yale? For the most part university students don't get to know their profs very well, and it is a rare (or upper year) class where the prof knows more than five students names. IMO this is totally different from what high school is like (or at least was for me) where both students and teachers have the opportunity to interact with each other in a variety of areas, be it academic or otherwise. The majority of teachers in my high school were involved in some sort of school related extra curricular activity, and for the most part so were the students. This seems to me more like another way for school administrations to cover their backsides in case something does go wrong.
I can see it now. "If mosaic couldn't realize johnny was a psycho what chance did we have?"
Here is a simple solution that I use with Netscape. When I am doing general surfing I use one profile that accepts profiles and lets websites make money off of me. When I decide to do something that requires giving away personal ID such as making a purchase I use a different profile. This allows me to easily log in to sites I use often and tells the banner ad people that a given site is getting hits, while in my opinion not compromising my privacy very much.
And for those who didn't take a look at it before here's a link to Slashdot's article on David Brin's privacy book "The Transparent Society"
Attention Moderators: You've got to moderate the post up. I don't think I've ever seen a funnier comment on Slashdot, and it would be a shame if others weren't able to read it because it was so far down the page.
Slashdot Mirror
while i agree with the spirit of what you're saying, the example was a particualrly poor one. the whole point of ted turner's gift was that at the time (and maybe still) the US government owed the UN a couple of billion dollars in membership dues (yet it still got to veto anything it wanted). by giving the UN the money he was trying to shame the US government into honouring it's commitments and do the same. last i heard they hadn't.
the moons that i know of are miranda, oberon, ariel, titania and umbriel. there might be more.
AFAIK the only planet that uses shakespeare for it's moons is uranus (and i wouldn't have known that if it weren't for blue mars).
while i have no doubt that most first posts are trolls, i don't see why they need to be moderated down, just browse at 1 or 2 and you won't be bothered by them, plus your page will probably load a lot faster too.
note to moderators: read the guidelines and try to promote stories rather than waste your points marking first posts as trolls.
the 666 seems obvious, but the 30516 stumps me, it's sorta similar to 3:16 but it obviously isn't. oh well.
Slashdot has taken over reality.
A prof at my school(U of Waterloo) knew him so he invited him in for a talk one evening. It was pretty good, but if you ever meet him here's a tip: don't ask him if he thinks that science fiction writers who are scientists are better than those who aren't.
would he be allowed to patent the algorithm he used? if so then he can make a killing. or the university can if that's how it works over there.
both gigabit ethernet and ipv6 are available for linux right now, not sure how good the support is but if you try a make xconfig on one of the newer 2.2.x kernels you will see that you can add it in. as for any of us mere mortals getting to use either of these in the near future, well we can always hope :)
actually, they will just give any new number in the current 416 area the 647 area code. also, all local calls in the toronto area (416, 647 & 905) will become 10 digits long.
The biggest problem will be that none of us North Americans will understand any of the Milton Keynes jokes. And that's just a shame.
Unfortunately in this article RMS's presence doesn't even seem to be there. It's almost as if it were one of the Acolytes writing instead of the master. While he does explain why he thinks Sun removing Java from the ECMA won't help them, he doesn't bring any conviction but instead uses the too familiar "The beauty of the GPL is that if they make changes we like we can incorporate them into our version". Yes he mentions the GNU efforts that are underway but where is the call to arms that we all silently expected and perhaps feared?
It probably is more important for the mayor to suck up to these big companies, after all these companies hire a lot of New Yorkers, and are a big draw for people to come to New York.
Besides which, with all the "cleaning up" that Guiliani has done, there can't be as much work for the cops there anyways :)
It would seem that a better solution might have been for MS to send an employee from a nearby office (they must have a New York office), explain the situation and then give him a new unit and perhaps a couple of free months for the hassle.
The again would YOU open your door to some stranger claiming to be from MS? and if you happened to be a gun nut... (er collector)
It could be a Hive Queen and Hegemon for the internet, a very cool thing.
Otherwise i'd be able to watch champions league soccer on TSN from work instead of settling for a java superticker :)
The more important freedom is free as in speech. That you should have a right to see the source code of the program you are using, and adapt it to what you want. This is the main point of GNU (as far as I can tell).
The two are often contrasted when discussing the difference between certain companies giving products away 'for free' and things produced under a license such as the GPL (ie free as in beer good, free as in speech better).
At least that's my take on it.
Perhaps a solution would be to implement a feature in email clients that would by default keep all messages in a queue for a set period of time (say 24 hours) so that you can edit some hastily written words after you've had a good night's sleep. i'm sure this post would benefit from editing of some sort :)
Uh, don't they already do that? For international news, I'd take the BBC over CNN anyday.
Or something like that.
I'm just waiting to start my own internet company so that I can finally get tariq.com from the guy who currently owns it :)
I can see it now. "If mosaic couldn't realize johnny was a psycho what chance did we have?"
And for those who didn't take a look at it before here's a link to Slashdot's article on David Brin's privacy book "The Transparent Society"
Attention Moderators: You've got to moderate the post up. I don't think I've ever seen a funnier comment on Slashdot, and it would be a shame if others weren't able to read it because it was so far down the page.