Before we get too hearts-and-flowersy about Sen. McCain, y'all might want to take a look at an EFF statement about his library filtering bill. This guy's supposedto be against big government?
The Deluxe ed. cards are pretty damn slick. The money sucks, unfortunately--little cardboard rectangles like everyone else uses. The original eds had stackable black poker chips that were so nice that my friends used it as the money for all their other money-using games (i.e., Cosmic Encounter and miscellaneous debris) as well.
The discussion of the Slashdot card brings to mind the applicability of the game paradigm to innumerable custom spinoffs. Way back when, some folks threw together a Brown U. Illuminati set that was extremely cool (I won't burden this post with any of it, becaus the jokes were mostly very inside and very early-'90s-topical). The Burningman Illuminati idea shows some potential. Basically, any subculture with enough baroque politics is destined to be turned into an Illuminati module. It's just a matter of time...
Farewell, Link Lists/The Mysterious Googleburn
on
Google is launched!
·
· Score: 2
It looks like they got rid of the option to see the sites linking to a given URL. It's a shame--the feature was interesting, useful, and (since Google ranks by link-tos) informative about how a particular site got ranked the way it did. Maybe if we bug them, they'll add it back as an option, like Dejane^H^H.com did with its uncluttered format.
On an unrelated topic, does anyone know why they have that Google/Burningman logo in their old logos page? I e-mailed them about it last year, but got no reply. I't love to know if there's a theme camp they do
I was browsing with multiple windows this morning, and had one window fetching this article while another was fetching the floydcam piece from Tuesday. I came back after they'd finished loading, and my eyes fell on: "And for record, I regret damage done to property and life-but the power of Nature is still amazing."
It's been fascinating watching the tech press conclusion that the Mozilla Project is a "failure" go from tentative suggestion to established "fact" (sorry about the heavy use of ""s) in a couple weeks, in a vast ripple effect. It's been a real lesson in just how bold & hardworking tech journalists are. They certainly seem to be dilligent in reading each other's prose and the occaisonal press release, but between this and the uncritical swallowing of Microworkz' "hybrid OS" BS, I don't see a lot of ability to think for themselves out there.
Okay. Let's accept the premise that Freeing the Lizard did little or no good to the mainline browser development. Two issues remain:
A few other companies are already using Gecko as the heart of their own products, and that number will only increase. If the point of the exercise is to make other firms aware of and dependent on your technology, then the strategic importance of this fact shouldn't be dismissed.
How much harm was done by open sourcing? An AC poster earlier mentioned that Netscape went to the espense of opening up their browser, to no avail. But how much could this possibly have cost them? A million? Ten million? So far, we're at figures that aren't all that big a loss for Netscape/AOL.
The last paragraph of the article mentions that Microsoft is now no longer the only OS maker with a death ray. Further explanation of that remark can be found in the second article here.
I came up with this in a discussion on BeOSCentral, and I was proud enough to want to share it around a little more. Someone posted the following poem by Thomas Disch: Lives there a man with soul so dead He's never to his toaster said: "You are my friend; I see in you An object sturdy, staunch, and true; A fellow mettlesome and trim; A brightness that the years can't dim."? Then let us praise the brave appliance In which we place this just reliance. And offer it with each fresh slice Such words of friendship and advice As "How are things with you tonight?" Or "Not too dark but not too light."
it inspired me to create my own topical followup:
But now my friendly old appliance Will not maintain his trusty silence. Instead, although it makes me sad, He showers me with banner ads. His days of toasting bread are past; He wants me to Make Money Fast. He once was satisfied enough in Browning up my english muffin But now he fills my mail with spamsters! He wants to show me dancing hamsters! That is my tale, though it's depressin'. To others let it be a lesson. The dangers only now I see Of Toaster TCP/IP.
Phooey. Killbill starts out all right, by making the valid observation that the companies were simply asked the "value" of the stolen code, and so were not necessarily being dishonest with the enormous sums they reported.
However, when he goes on to try to equate unauthorized copying of software with theft of material goods, he quickly drops into the absurd. What's the difference between your copying my sourcecode, and your stealing $20 from my liquor store? (no, I don't actually have a liquor store. Allow me my fantasies, please.) In the latter case, I don't have the 20 anymore!
The notion that all the value of their software was gone once an unauthorized person had access to it is transparently ludicrous.
So is anyone actually running Darwin at this point?
I've seen a lot of discussion of where it comes from, whether it's a good idea, how open is the license; but I haven't seen the merest shadow of a review from someone who's tried to use it.
Is it actually a standalone useable product? Is anyone using it as their primary OS at this point?
Slashdot Mirror
Before we get too hearts-and-flowersy about Sen. McCain, y'all might want to take a look at an EFF statement about his library filtering bill. This guy's supposedto be against big government?
The discussion of the Slashdot card brings to mind the applicability of the game paradigm to innumerable custom spinoffs. Way back when, some folks threw together a Brown U. Illuminati set that was extremely cool (I won't burden this post with any of it, becaus the jokes were mostly very inside and very early-'90s-topical). The Burningman Illuminati idea shows some potential. Basically, any subculture with enough baroque politics is destined to be turned into an Illuminati module. It's just a matter of time...
On an unrelated topic, does anyone know why they have that Google/Burningman logo in their old logos page? I e-mailed them about it last year, but got no reply. I't love to know if there's a theme camp they do
I was browsing with multiple windows this morning, and had one window fetching this article while another was fetching the floydcam piece from Tuesday. I came back after they'd finished loading, and my eyes fell on: "And for record, I regret damage done to property and life-but the power of Nature is still amazing."
Okay. Let's accept the premise that Freeing the Lizard did little or no good to the mainline browser development. Two issues remain:
The last paragraph of the article mentions that Microsoft is now no longer the only OS maker with a death ray. Further explanation of that remark can be found in the second article here.
to share it around a little more. Someone posted the following poem by
Thomas Disch:
Lives there a man with soul so dead
He's never to his toaster said:
"You are my friend; I see in you
An object sturdy, staunch, and true;
A fellow mettlesome and trim;
A brightness that the years can't dim."?
Then let us praise the brave appliance
In which we place this just reliance.
And offer it with each fresh slice
Such words of friendship and advice
As "How are things with you tonight?"
Or "Not too dark but not too light."
it inspired me to create my own topical followup:
But now my friendly old appliance
Will not maintain his trusty silence.
Instead, although it makes me sad,
He showers me with banner ads.
His days of toasting bread are past;
He wants me to Make Money Fast.
He once was satisfied enough in
Browning up my english muffin
But now he fills my mail with spamsters!
He wants to show me dancing hamsters!
That is my tale, though it's depressin'.
To others let it be a lesson.
The dangers only now I see
Of Toaster TCP/IP.
However, when he goes on to try to equate unauthorized copying of software with theft of material goods, he quickly drops into the absurd. What's the difference between your copying my sourcecode, and your stealing $20 from my liquor store? (no, I don't actually have a liquor store. Allow me my fantasies, please.) In the latter case, I don't have the 20 anymore!
The notion that all the value of their software was gone once an unauthorized person had access to it is transparently ludicrous.
I've seen a lot of discussion of where it comes from, whether it's a good idea, how open is the license; but I haven't seen the merest shadow of a review from someone who's tried to use it.
Is it actually a standalone useable product? Is anyone using it as their primary OS at this point?