I've been reading a lot of Serbo-Croatian literature... Some great books - there seem to be enough really top-notch novels to keep most people in reading material for a year - but probably not Slashdot-fare.
After you finish all the exercises, don't forget to collect your Turing Prize (and maybe a Fields Medal as well), plus whatever collection of doctorates you want!
The ekumen mailing list has been discussing possible adaptations of other Le Guin books:
In the Halmi "Dispossessed", Shevek is so happy to be off of that horrible
socialist prison planet that he applies for asylum on the mercy of the
Urrasti government (they only have one) and happily goes off shopping. Of
course he never returns to Anarres.
If anyone in the EU wants to take action on this, I'd suggest writing to your MEP about it and suggesting this case is evidence that Turkey should not be allowed to join the EU...
I've set my mother and her partner up with an old PII running Fedora Core 1. One day I'll get them a new machine and put a newer distribution on it, but it's doing the job just fine so far.
My father is an academic in electrical engineering and can look after himself (or so I assume, anyway).
The early adopters have been techies and ordinary users and small busineses supported by them (e.g. my mother).
The slowest users to switch the Linux will be the non-technie power users - there are too may games and specialist applications not yet available. Some of these power users may drift to MacOS, but I don't think a huge Windows->Mac shift is going to happen.
In the business world, the early large-scale desktop Linux deployments will come from POS and other specialised systems, and from large tech companies with obvious motivation (Novell, IBM, etc.) Next will be large companies with locked-down systems running a limited range of apps - maybe some banks.
Government deployments will be scattered but large-scale, and will help drive corporate uptake.
The vast bulk of home users won't switch just because of the "cool" factor -- they won't be switching till the apps are there, and the basis for that is going to be government and corporate rollouts.
But we shall see - it's going to be interesting watching it!
Some students have a very poor understanding of plagiarism. I've had people mail me along the lines of "Thank you, you have saved my life - I had to hand in a book report on X and your book review was the only one I could find." -- They clearly didn't understand that that wasn't what they were supposed to do.
But the turnitin bot spiders my site regularly, so anyone copying one of my book reviews now is likely to get into trouble.
Until I read Campbell-Kelly's history of the software industry, From Airline Reservations to Sonic the Hedgehog, I'd never heard of Sonic the Hedgehog. But then I was never much of a gamer.
We had a locked down laptop stolen in under 5 minutes, from an occupied room. Someone went to the toilet and their roommate was facing the other way; when they came back, no laptop.
I'd wondered how the thief managed to cut the cable without making any noise, but I was picturing bolt-cutters, not a pair of scissors and a pen!
The top result on a Google search for "beowulf" is about clustering, but 8 of the top 10 are about the epic. And I doubt there'll ever be nearly as many books and articles written about the clustering system as about the poem.
That's true. Another problem with supporting Linux is the diversity of distributions - I'm a sysadmin and reckon I can puzzle things out if I have a shell on most Linux distributions, but if a general user rang me up and wanted help configuring a SuSE machine, I wouldn't have a clue how the graphical administration tools work on that.
My experience is that non-technical users can run Linux, but they need someone technical to provide support. This is not so different to Windows, however - most ordinary Windows users need support from someone with a bit of technical nous as well. So the major constraint on the spread of "household" Linux is the number of geeks using Linux and willing to support it.
I'm planning to celebrate when Linux moves from 1% to 2% on the Google Zeitgeist OS pie chart.
They could be in for a shock -- I don't know about Star Office, but OpenOffice doesn't have import filters for Word Perfect documents! There is a request for enhancement, of course...
Red Hat's commercial Enterprise Linux is supported for five years.
And even with the non-commercial offerings... Well, Fedora Legacy is still providing updates for Red Hat Linux 7.3, and I'm confident there'll be no problems finding updates for Fedora Core 1 for at least another three years.
I agree that Red Hat did a shocking job of explaning what was happening when they changed their product line and started Fedora, though.
I can still remember the huge spike in traffic to my web site in December 1994, after Lycos indexed my web site (then hosted at my university). Altavista came along nearly a year later, but Lycos was the first full-text web search engine (that I noticed, anyway).
I kept telling people who flamed me over my Belgariad review that they should breathe deeply, go back to their lives, and see what they thought about Eddings in a decade. And I haven't received any hate mail over that for some time now...
I would be surprised if Le Guin sold the film rights without retaining tight creative control... Or did she sell them a long time ago, before she became famous enough to be able to set her own terms?
Slashdot Mirror
Danny.
I can remember people getting unhappy about bot-clients in Netrek, way back in 1994...
Danny.
Danny.
Danny.
Actually, my review of the Bible (well, one edition of it, anyway) is here.
Danny.
I'm off to ask Addison-Wesley for a review copy of volume 4!
Danny.
The ekumen mailing list has been discussing possible adaptations of other Le Guin books:
Danny.
Danny.
My father is an academic in electrical engineering and can look after himself (or so I assume, anyway).
Danny.
The early adopters have been techies and ordinary users and small busineses supported by them (e.g. my mother).
The slowest users to switch the Linux will be the non-technie power users - there are too may games and specialist applications not yet available. Some of these power users may drift to MacOS, but I don't think a huge Windows->Mac shift is going to happen.
In the business world, the early large-scale desktop Linux deployments will come from POS and other specialised systems, and from large tech companies with obvious motivation (Novell, IBM, etc.) Next will be large companies with locked-down systems running a limited range of apps - maybe some banks.
Government deployments will be scattered but large-scale, and will help drive corporate uptake.
The vast bulk of home users won't switch just because of the "cool" factor -- they won't be switching till the apps are there, and the basis for that is going to be government and corporate rollouts.
But we shall see - it's going to be interesting watching it!
Danny.
But the turnitin bot spiders my site regularly, so anyone copying one of my book reviews now is likely to get into trouble.
Danny.
Danny.
I'd wondered how the thief managed to cut the cable without making any noise, but I was picturing bolt-cutters, not a pair of scissors and a pen!
Danny.
Danny.
Danny.
I'm planning to celebrate when Linux moves from 1% to 2% on the Google Zeitgeist OS pie chart.
Danny.
Danny.
And even with the non-commercial offerings... Well, Fedora Legacy is still providing updates for Red Hat Linux 7.3, and I'm confident there'll be no problems finding updates for Fedora Core 1 for at least another three years.
I agree that Red Hat did a shocking job of explaning what was happening when they changed their product line and started Fedora, though.
Danny.
Danny.
Danny.
One of my servers is still running RH 7.3, using the Fedora Legacy support. And the main faculty servers here are moving to RH Enterprise Linux.
The arguments that RH has shafted people are way off target. There are lots of options for people running RH 9, including keeping on doing so.
Danny.
Danny.
Danny.
I would be surprised if Le Guin sold the film rights without retaining tight creative control... Or did she sell them a long time ago, before she became famous enough to be able to set her own terms?
Danny.