Actually, if you remember, slashdot didn't have accounts at first. Presumably we both got our accounts in the first week that accounts were available, but that wasn't ten years ago.
A publication ban is the VERY DEFINITION OF CENSORSHIP. People have morphed the word and try to apply it to all kinds of other things (like a bookstore refusing to carry a book), but if the GOVERNMENT is BANNING PUBLICATION of something based on the CONTENT, then that is censorship.
You can make cases for why it's important and a good thing, and you can argue about that if you want, but I don't see how you can possibly claim that this isn't censorship.
That's essentially what Ubuntu does: takes Debian 'unstable', chooses a set of X packages that are deemed "officially supported", polishes them, and releases every six months.
That course isn't really so possible for a random assemblage like Debian, though. Since everyone who works on Debian is a voulenteer, you can't really tell the guy who's packaging svn-workbench that "your little obscure program isn't a part of the official distribution anymore, please work on something more important". Voulenteers work on what they want to work on. If you tell Mr. svn-workbench guy to stop, he'll probably just stop working on Debian altogether.
Also, most people would argue that the 8000ish packages is one of Debian's strongest points. You don't have to download a random RPM off some website that's of unknown quality and hope it works with your version of FC... In most cases the program you want is right there. I like Ubuntu a lot now, but if it didn't give me the option of installing all the misc. debian packages in addition to its "officially supported" packages, I wouldn't use it.
The main thing Ubuntu does is that they seem to focus on providing a stable desktop system. They select packages that they're going to focus on, then package those things REALLY WELL. Like, Hoary (the upcoming Ubuntu release) has GNOME 2.10, (which Debian unstable does not) and it's really nice. They don't try to do everything like Debian does. They pick out which packages they're going to consider "officially supported", and then they make sure those packages are rock solid and make a release every six months.
Of course, since it's basically a fork of debian 'unstable' (with patches flowing both directions), you can also install all those other 'unstable' packages if you change your apt.sources. But the core GNOME desktop system is really slick.
Honestly, I've been using Linux as my primary desktop OS for 8+ years now, so I pretty much know how to make things work, but I'm really impressed by how nice Ubuntu makes things.
Man, I'm sorry, but I think in order to have a competent educational system we have to asssume (gasp)kids don't want to be there, and would rather be doing something else and work from there. If you've ever gotten a kid to eat (and as a result like) something he at first refused to touch, you know it's possible to do.
An interesting thing I found recently is the George Lucas Educational Foundation (yes, that George Lucas). He started it because he wasn't happy with his school experience and so it's mission is to find innovative ways to help kids want to learn and teachers want to teach.
They have a magazine called Edutopia, which you can read online or subscribe to the print version. I think they have RSS feeds, too.
The cover article this month is about the sham that is the textbook publishing industry and offers some suggestions to make it better. It's an interesting read. (This article is actually how I found out about the foundation.)
Yeah, also, it seems like he was referring to a full port to the Win32 interface and stuff. It seems like what Tor Lillqvist does (thought I might be wrong) is just a GTK+, port, which would be far less intrusive and obnoxious to maintain.
In ALL states you can record a call with two party consent. In MOST states (but not PA), you can record the call even if only ONE party knows it's being recorded.
Of course, you probably need to check the laws of both states before you make the call. I'm in a single-party consent state, but I could potentially be found guilty in a PA court if I recorded you without your consent. Federal law requires only one-party consent, though, so I don't really know how the laws would interact.
Here is a handy site with laws for the various states. They have a section on interstate calls too.
It covers (briefly) the history of the earth, the universe, Physics and Chemistry. If you know your science, you probably won't learn a lot from it, but the fun part is the way he covers the personalities behind all the discoveries. I'd say at least 2/3 of the book is brief biographies of hundreds of people you probably haven't heard of.
The writing style is very casual, easy to understand even for non-science nerds, and (most surprisingly) pretty funny. It's not very expensive either. I'd reccomend this book to just about anyone with a casual interest in science (even if that interest is so casual that they haven't sought out science books before).
"I can't debug a language that I know nothing about" is so idiotic that it doesn't deserve a response. But I'll give you one.
Java has a lot of shortcomings, but you've demonstrated only one of them: you can't paste code into a window and expect it to run. So I guess Java programs aren't as easy to use as a short perl script. (Note that a longer perl script would be in several modules and have similar problems.)
But you know what? Not every problem can be solved with a short perl script. You're basically condemning every compiled language because you can't just paste things into a text editor an expect them to run.
Also, Indymedia has standing to sue, they didn't however, the EFF did
Incorrect. Read the response: "Movants Electronic Frontier Foundation ("EFF"), Urbana-Champaign Independent Media Center Foundation ("UCIMC") and XXXX XXX ("XXX")"
and that was part of the judges ruling (read more than the/. blurb). The EFF has no standing.
Incorrect again. This was not a ruling from a judge. This was an argument by the DOJ. The judge has not ruled yet whether or not they have standing.
Furthermore, if you read the argument, you see the DOJ claiming that there are only three parties to this case at all: The requesting country, the US government, and Rackspace. They do not agree that IMC is allowed to be a movant.
Uhh... if the only copy of their data is a website somewhere, then they're idiots
The issue is not whether or not the data was lost, the issue is that THEIR data was searched without any reason given. And now only Rackspace is allowed to sue to find out the reason? It may have been Rackspace's server, but it wasn't their data.
It's somewhat like claiming people can tap your phones with the phone company's consent... after all, the phone company owns the line, and they didn't take anything from you while they were tapping.
Most of these songs are licensed for commercial sampling, but a handful aren't.
Chuck D and the Beastie Boys, two bands who have built their careers on sampling (like most of the artists on the CD) won't let you sample their work commercially. (The other band that doesn't is "My Morning Jacket", but I don't know who they are.)
As far as the war on drugs message goes -- I agree with you, it was totally out of left field. However, I didn't detect any sarcasm in the posting and don't agree with your analysis.
You must've stopped reading too soon. The very next sentence was:
Soon, copied films will be as rare as students lighting up a joint after their exams.
Which seems like pretty clear sarcasm to me. It's along the same lines as this cartoon.
Google built on top of Yahoo? What? They both use two different ways to search the internet.
You're being too interpretive with it. The poster clearly said it was quite literally on top. This obviously means that the Amazon servers are directly above the Google servers, which are directly above the Yahoo servers, which are directly above the Netscape servers.
Oh, unless it's yet another misuse of the word "literally" to mean "metaphorically". I guess we'll never know.
What a cock-headed argument. Yes, usability means different things to different people. When I grab an instruction manual, I start reading text. Other people start looking at the pictures. Neither is wrong; they're just different definitions of usability.
I don't understand the whole "make Linux easy enough for Grandma" movement, really. I like Linux because it isn't like Windows. Windows' interface is fine for most people, but what's wrong with having an OS for more technical UNIXy people?
In Ulrich Drepper's paper on writing shared libraries, there is a discussion of why it takes so long to start up. Debian lets you use prelink to speed up the dynamic linking time. I dunno how much speedup you get.
From Drepper's paper:
With the knowledge of the hashing function and the details of the string lookup let us look at a real-world example: OpenOffice.org. The package contains 144 separate DSOs. During startup about 20,000 relocations are performed. The number of string comparisons needed during the symbol resolution can be used as a fair value for the startup overhead. We compute and approximation of this value now.
The average chain length for unsuccessful lookup in all DSOs of the OpenOffice.org 1.0 release on IA-32 is 1.1931. This means for each symbol lookup the dynamic linker has to perform on average 72 x 1.1931 = 85.9032 string comparisons. For 20,000 symbols, the total is 1,718,064 string comparisons. The average length of an exported symbol defined in the DSOs of OpenOffice.org is 54.13. Even if we are assuming that only 20% of the string is searched before finding a mismatch (which is an optimistic guess since every symbol name is compared completely at least one to match itself) this would mean a total of more than 18.5 million characters have been loaded from memory and compared. No wonder the startup is so slow, especially since we ignored other costs.
Slashdot Mirror
Actually, if you remember, slashdot didn't have accounts at first. Presumably we both got our accounts in the first week that accounts were available, but that wasn't ten years ago.
A publication ban is the VERY DEFINITION OF CENSORSHIP. People have morphed the word and try to apply it to all kinds of other things (like a bookstore refusing to carry a book), but if the GOVERNMENT is BANNING PUBLICATION of something based on the CONTENT, then that is censorship.
You can make cases for why it's important and a good thing, and you can argue about that if you want, but I don't see how you can possibly claim that this isn't censorship.
That's essentially what Ubuntu does: takes Debian 'unstable', chooses a set of X packages that are deemed "officially supported", polishes them, and releases every six months.
That course isn't really so possible for a random assemblage like Debian, though. Since everyone who works on Debian is a voulenteer, you can't really tell the guy who's packaging svn-workbench that "your little obscure program isn't a part of the official distribution anymore, please work on something more important". Voulenteers work on what they want to work on. If you tell Mr. svn-workbench guy to stop, he'll probably just stop working on Debian altogether.
Also, most people would argue that the 8000ish packages is one of Debian's strongest points. You don't have to download a random RPM off some website that's of unknown quality and hope it works with your version of FC... In most cases the program you want is right there. I like Ubuntu a lot now, but if it didn't give me the option of installing all the misc. debian packages in addition to its "officially supported" packages, I wouldn't use it.
The main thing Ubuntu does is that they seem to focus on providing a stable desktop system. They select packages that they're going to focus on, then package those things REALLY WELL. Like, Hoary (the upcoming Ubuntu release) has GNOME 2.10, (which Debian unstable does not) and it's really nice. They don't try to do everything like Debian does. They pick out which packages they're going to consider "officially supported", and then they make sure those packages are rock solid and make a release every six months.
Of course, since it's basically a fork of debian 'unstable' (with patches flowing both directions), you can also install all those other 'unstable' packages if you change your apt.sources. But the core GNOME desktop system is really slick.
Honestly, I've been using Linux as my primary desktop OS for 8+ years now, so I pretty much know how to make things work, but I'm really impressed by how nice Ubuntu makes things.
The problem is that right now Debian is preparing for a new 'stable' release (Sarge), so there aren't any huge new upgrades like X allowed to go in.
Once sarge releases, things will hopefully go back to the craziness we all love.
You can get a lot of newer packages out of the new(er) 'experimental' repository, but X.org isn't in there.
Man, I'm sorry, but I think in order to have a competent educational system we have to asssume (gasp) kids don't want to be there, and would rather be doing something else and work from there. If you've ever gotten a kid to eat (and as a result like) something he at first refused to touch, you know it's possible to do.
An interesting thing I found recently is the George Lucas Educational Foundation (yes, that George Lucas). He started it because he wasn't happy with his school experience and so it's mission is to find innovative ways to help kids want to learn and teachers want to teach.
They have a magazine called Edutopia , which you can read online or subscribe to the print version. I think they have RSS feeds, too.
The cover article this month is about the sham that is the textbook publishing industry and offers some suggestions to make it better. It's an interesting read. (This article is actually how I found out about the foundation.)
my point was if it is so open why does it include something which is patented.
The LZW patent has expired.
You can read the specs just fine in any number of other pdf viewers. Just because Adobe isn't advertising that doesn't mean it isn't true.
Furthermore, the specs are published in book format and available amazon and technical bookstores.
Yeah, also, it seems like he was referring to a full port to the Win32 interface and stuff. It seems like what Tor Lillqvist does (thought I might be wrong) is just a GTK+, port, which would be far less intrusive and obnoxious to maintain.
So, nevermind, maybe.
At least one Evolution developer has said he would quit if Evolution was ported to Windows.
He's now in a the tough spot of deciding whether to eat his words or actually quit.
But it's making you think it; just like subliminal messages which are illegal.
You're correct that they're illegal (at least in the US), but the fact is that they don't work.
In ALL states you can record a call with two party consent. In MOST states (but not PA), you can record the call even if only ONE party knows it's being recorded.
Of course, you probably need to check the laws of both states before you make the call. I'm in a single-party consent state, but I could potentially be found guilty in a PA court if I recorded you without your consent. Federal law requires only one-party consent, though, so I don't really know how the laws would interact.
Here is a handy site with laws for the various states. They have a section on interstate calls too.
I'd highly recommend Bill Bryson's A Short History of Nearly Everything. I found it because it was one of Powell's "favorite new titles of the season".
It covers (briefly) the history of the earth, the universe, Physics and Chemistry. If you know your science, you probably won't learn a lot from it, but the fun part is the way he covers the personalities behind all the discoveries. I'd say at least 2/3 of the book is brief biographies of hundreds of people you probably haven't heard of.
The writing style is very casual, easy to understand even for non-science nerds, and (most surprisingly) pretty funny. It's not very expensive either. I'd reccomend this book to just about anyone with a casual interest in science (even if that interest is so casual that they haven't sought out science books before).
"I can't debug a language that I know nothing about" is so idiotic that it doesn't deserve a response. But I'll give you one.
Java has a lot of shortcomings, but you've demonstrated only one of them: you can't paste code into a window and expect it to run. So I guess Java programs aren't as easy to use as a short perl script. (Note that a longer perl script would be in several modules and have similar problems.)
But you know what? Not every problem can be solved with a short perl script. You're basically condemning every compiled language because you can't just paste things into a text editor an expect them to run.
Good work. Very convincing.
Also, Indymedia has standing to sue, they didn't however, the EFF did
/. blurb). The EFF has no standing.
Incorrect. Read the response:
"Movants Electronic Frontier Foundation ("EFF"), Urbana-Champaign Independent Media Center Foundation ("UCIMC") and XXXX XXX ("XXX")"
and that was part of the judges ruling (read more than the
Incorrect again. This was not a ruling from a judge. This was an argument by the DOJ. The judge has not ruled yet whether or not they have standing.
Furthermore, if you read the argument, you see the DOJ claiming that there are only three parties to this case at all: The requesting country, the US government, and Rackspace. They do not agree that IMC is allowed to be a movant.
Uhh... if the only copy of their data is a website somewhere, then they're idiots
The issue is not whether or not the data was lost, the issue is that THEIR data was searched without any reason given. And now only Rackspace is allowed to sue to find out the reason? It may have been Rackspace's server, but it wasn't their data.
It's somewhat like claiming people can tap your phones with the phone company's consent... after all, the phone company owns the line, and they didn't take anything from you while they were tapping.
Most of these songs are licensed for commercial sampling, but a handful aren't.
Chuck D and the Beastie Boys, two bands who have built their careers on sampling (like most of the artists on the CD) won't let you sample their work commercially. (The other band that doesn't is "My Morning Jacket", but I don't know who they are.)
Bizarre.
They've been planning the 3.0 release for over a year, so they're not going to hold it up to get Java 1.5 support in.
That said, 1.5 support is coming along and development versions can be installed as a plug-in (that link will also show you the current status).
Once it's complete, I'm sure it will be included in an Eclipse point release. 3.0.2 or 3.1 or whatever.
You have to go to "What's New History" and then scroll down to the Eclipse 3.0 plan.
They keep updating it, but they never re-list it in the history for some reason, leaving it down in the news from last May.
Here's a direct link.
As far as the war on drugs message goes -- I agree with you, it was totally out of left field. However, I didn't detect any sarcasm in the posting and don't agree with your analysis.
You must've stopped reading too soon. The very next sentence was:
Soon, copied films will be as rare as students lighting up a joint after their exams.
Which seems like pretty clear sarcasm to me. It's along the same lines as this cartoon.
Google built on top of Yahoo? What? They both use two different ways to search the internet.
You're being too interpretive with it. The poster clearly said it was quite literally on top. This obviously means that the Amazon servers are directly above the Google servers, which are directly above the Yahoo servers, which are directly above the Netscape servers.
Oh, unless it's yet another misuse of the word "literally" to mean "metaphorically". I guess we'll never know.
most non-lethal weapons for crowd (read: riot) control can cause serious injury.
They're actually referred to as "less-lethal" weapons, since pepper spray, tear gas, etc. CAN and DO kill. Just not as much as, say, a bullet.
What a cock-headed argument. Yes, usability means different things to different people. When I grab an instruction manual, I start reading text. Other people start looking at the pictures. Neither is wrong; they're just different definitions of usability.
I don't understand the whole "make Linux easy enough for Grandma" movement, really. I like Linux because it isn't like Windows. Windows' interface is fine for most people, but what's wrong with having an OS for more technical UNIXy people?
Fuck that, if you're in Portland, OR, even if it IS a cop, it might still be a good idea to taze the fuck out of him. Better than ending up dead, right?
In Ulrich Drepper's paper on writing shared libraries, there is a discussion of why it takes so long to start up. Debian lets you use prelink to speed up the dynamic linking time. I dunno how much speedup you get.
From Drepper's paper:
With the knowledge of the hashing function and the details of the string lookup
let us look at a real-world example: OpenOffice.org. The package contains 144 separate DSOs. During startup about 20,000 relocations are performed. The number of string comparisons needed during the symbol resolution can be used as a fair value for the startup overhead. We compute and approximation of this value now.
The average chain length for unsuccessful lookup in all DSOs of the OpenOffice.org 1.0 release on IA-32 is 1.1931. This means for each symbol lookup the dynamic linker has to perform on average 72 x 1.1931 = 85.9032 string comparisons. For
20,000 symbols, the total is 1,718,064 string comparisons. The average length of an exported symbol defined in the DSOs of OpenOffice.org is 54.13. Even if we are assuming that only 20% of the string is searched before finding a mismatch (which is an optimistic guess since every symbol name is compared completely at least one to match itself) this would mean a total of more than 18.5 million characters have been loaded from memory and compared. No wonder the startup is so slow, especially since we ignored other costs.