With my book review collection, around 20% of all traffic
is from search engine spiders or other automated
fetches. (For the month to date, analog reports
105 000 page accesses, excluding 28 000 "unwanted
logfile entries" which are mostly excluded because
the Agent string matches a spider.)
This may explain part of the discrepancy between
monitoring measures and logfile analysis - did the Brittanica people exclude automated fetches from their stats?
The fact that developing countries can and do
illegally copy software does not mean the price
is irrelevant. If an Egyptian company wants
to export software or services to countries where
softare licensing is enforced, they will be
in trouble.
And any really successfull Egyptian company
is likely to find the local equivalent of the BSA
knocking on their doors, demanding they buy
legal copies of all the proprietary software they
are using, at full retail value. Remember the WTO and WIPO are working hard to force countries like China to crack down on illegal copying of copyrighted materials...
And then think about the
long-term dependencies created by building
industries on proprietary software...
Stallman (and others who think similarly) do
not base their philosophy on anything so abstract as "information
wants to be free". RMS's starting point is that
sharing is good, that people working together
is good, and that he wants to live in a society based on those things. Dependence on proprietary software (and copyright monopolies) is a hindrance to this, therefore free software needs to be created to provide an alternative.
They missed their chance to rename Python 1.6
as
Python 6.0, which would have decisively
beaten Perl in the race for
"a version 6 scripting language"!
(cf Slackware 7)
I don't know what they would have called Python 2.0 if they'd done that, though:-)
A Deepness in the Sky was ok, but
I wouldn't have picked it as a Hugo winner.
(I preferred A Fire Upon the Deep.) I haven't read most of the other nominees, but I think I'd have voted for Greg Egan's Teranesia... But then I'm
an Egan fan.
But how about Slashdot starts an sf competition of its own (or make it a horror competition, and
call 'em the "Slashies":-), maybe for the best short story published online?
Danny.
Re:End of OTT accusations?
on
Qt Going GPL
·
· Score: 1
Are they real quotes or did you just make them up?
They're not among the ones in the TT announcement.
This reminds me of the great story "A Conversation with Einstein's Brain" by Douglas Hofstadter. It's one of his Achilles and the Tortoise dialogues in
which we are asked to imagine a book encoding all the information in Einstein's brain, down to the
cellular level.... Check it out, it's one of
works
in The Mind's I (edited by Hofstadter and
Daniel Dennett), which has a pile of great stuff in it.
Danny.
It will be interesting to look back in ten years.
on
Qt Going GPL
·
· Score: 2
If this had happened two years ago, we'd probably
be looking at one major desktop environment desk. Now we have two of roughly equal popularity and quality... I can't say if that's a good thing or a bad thing, though.
In ten years we'll be able to look back at this episode in the history of computing with the benefit of hindsight, perhaps in the way we can now look
back at the history of Unix - there are still arguments, but they are a lot more subdued.
Vincent Courtillot's book
Evolutionary Catastrophes pretty much convinced me that mass extinctions on Earth have been due to volcanic events, not meteorite impacts.
I don't know if that makes me feel more secure, though, at least we can see the asteroids coming, but our understanding of mantle dynamics isn't up to predicting Deccan Traps style volcanic events yet...
Heh, does anyone still use Mosaic? I keep copies of that and
Netscape 1.1 and Netscape 2.02 around just for fun (and testing web pages), and I still use Netscape 3.04 for most things myself (it's what I'm in now), because there are a few key aspects of its interface I prefer to Netscape 4. I fire up that and Mozilla or galeon
for testing pages that use stylesheets.
And what about lynx? Sometimes when I'm at home and want to read a bit/. story I'll use lynx,
so only the bits I actually view get transferred over my slow modem.
The answer is
English, Mandarin, Hindi, Spanish, Arabic,
Russian, Japanese, and Portuguese.
Indonesian is spoken by more than a hundred
million people, but not as a first language
(and there are only about 75 million speakers of Javanese).
Portuguese is probably the tricky one for
most peopple - most of the speakers of Portuguese live in Brazil.
Of the
Chinese languages other than Mandarin, Yue or Cantonese has about 70 million speakers,
while Wu has about 80 million. (I recommend
Ramsey's The Languages of China for anyone interested in Chinese languages and linguistics.)
A great source for linguistic facts is
Ethnologue.
If you're interested in English's spread as
a global language, and its regionalisation into
multiple "Englishes", I recommend David Crystal's
English as a Global Language and Tom McArthur's
The English Languages.
It's not just ALT tags - there are other things wrong with the Olympics
site as well. For example, the bogus implementation of frames, making it impossible to
link to many pages directly.
This is all really basic stuff,
Usability 101, and there's no excuse for getting it wrong on a really high-profile site. Heck, they ought to have a full-time usability expert for a site like that!
It's often difficult to explain to non-profit
organisations why free software is important.
An article I wrote last year,
Development, Ethical Trading, and Free Software makes the ethical and political argument for use of free software by Oxfam, but is applicable to other non-profit organisations as well.
Yes, it would be good if the rest of Information Liberation were "liberated" as well. Martin explains why its not at the end of the chapter that is online, but I think his argument can be reversed - I think the publicity Freedom Press would get from putting the whole book online would be invaluable, especially for a small press no one much has ever heard of.
THe Australian Broadcasting Authority has managed to shut down an entire news service, by requiring the people running it not only to remove particular content, but to not host anything "similar or substantially similar". Details here; more info about the ongoing censorship here.
Slashdot Mirror
For background reading on "punk eek", I recommend The Dynamics of Evolution .
Danny.
Danny.
Danny.
This may explain part of the discrepancy between monitoring measures and logfile analysis - did the Brittanica people exclude automated fetches from their stats?
Danny.
And any really successfull Egyptian company is likely to find the local equivalent of the BSA knocking on their doors, demanding they buy legal copies of all the proprietary software they are using, at full retail value. Remember the WTO and WIPO are working hard to force countries like China to crack down on illegal copying of copyrighted materials...
And then think about the long-term dependencies created by building industries on proprietary software...
Danny.
Danny.
Danny ("thinking of Maud, your mind turns in upon itself")
At least, that's the way I understand him.
Danny.
I don't know what they would have called Python 2.0 if they'd done that, though :-)
Danny- reviews of Programming Python and Python Essential Reference )
But how about Slashdot starts an sf competition of its own (or make it a horror competition, and call 'em the "Slashies" :-), maybe for the best short story published online?
Danny.
Danny.
Danny.
In ten years we'll be able to look back at this episode in the history of computing with the benefit of hindsight, perhaps in the way we can now look back at the history of Unix - there are still arguments, but they are a lot more subdued.
Danny.
Of course this is my computer in the sense that it's running the process that is me, not in the sense that I own it. I'm talking about the universe!
Danny.
I don't know if that makes me feel more secure, though, at least we can see the asteroids coming, but our understanding of mantle dynamics isn't up to predicting Deccan Traps style volcanic events yet...
And what about lynx? Sometimes when I'm at home and want to read a bit /. story I'll use lynx,
so only the bits I actually view get transferred over my slow modem.
Danny
And the Australian National Library wouldn't issue me an ISSN, because I didn't have formal issue numbers :-( (lots of numbers)
Danny
Indonesian is spoken by more than a hundred million people, but not as a first language (and there are only about 75 million speakers of Javanese).
Portuguese is probably the tricky one for most peopple - most of the speakers of Portuguese live in Brazil.
Of the Chinese languages other than Mandarin, Yue or Cantonese has about 70 million speakers, while Wu has about 80 million. (I recommend Ramsey's The Languages of China for anyone interested in Chinese languages and linguistics.)
A great source for linguistic facts is Ethnologue.
Danny
(I got this from David Crystal's Language Death).
Danny
Danny
This is all really basic stuff, Usability 101, and there's no excuse for getting it wrong on a really high-profile site. Heck, they ought to have a full-time usability expert for a site like that!
Danny
Danny.
Danny.
Danny.