Dammit, I'm tired of this "Take over the world" mentality. I don't particularly care if linux has 2% or 20% of market share.
Maybe not, but I bet you would care if Linux suffered massive brain drain, developer migration to another OS.
You want drivers for that brand new GeForce 65535? Sorry, there's no interest. And you can forget about the vendor releasing one anytime soon--there's nothing in it for them to make a few scattered hackers happy.
You want DSL? Sorry, your ISP only allows Windows. Linux is only used by hackers and frankly, we don't want to provide tech support.
You want the latest release of Debian on CD? Sorry, Cheapbytes went out of business because everyone uses Windows now. Not to mention that Debain is losing package maintainers left and right, the maintained package count is down to a record low of 522.
Exaggerated maybe, but my point is that though market share is nice if we want corporate interest, but much more important for the free software community is mind share.
I have great empathy for the trolls. They as a whole are a truly worthwhile lot of folk. Don't marginalize them because the percieved extremity of the situation has fueled this. Instead, ask how we can maintain order and still give them space.
I agree. I honestly don't care if trolls post here, as long as they don't soak up so much bandwidth that legitimate users can't access the site. Some trolls crack me up uncontrollably. I think the issue here is that it needs to be much easier to avoid them, especially for newcomers.
We need favorable first impressions, and the trolls are presently robbing us of this. I don't feel like I can encourage non-geeks to read comments on Slashdot to try and understand our community, because I know they'll be confronted by pages of trolls and first posters. Default is Threshold=0 or -1, depending on which link you click, but worse still, it defaults to "Oldest First," which just encourages the first posters.
I would never advocate censorship, I still want the ability to read trolls if I want to. But we need to make it easier to avoid them.
I agree wholeheartedly, and in addition I would add one more:
5) PLEASE change the default comment view to "Highest Scores First!" When important issues come along, I want to tell people "Visit Slashdot, and see that there is a group of intelligent, concerned people who exist in an online community to whom these issues are real. See us firsthand."
However, the default view is "oldest first," leaving the un-logged in reader with the "first posts" and "trollmastahz." This is no way to earn a favorable first impression
We have to make it easy for outsiders to become exposed to our world. We have to be understood if we want the support when we really need it.
I was contemplating the actions the MPAA is taking when I came upon something that seems to make sense:
If free software exists that can encrypt and decrypt DVD's, the Motion Picture industry no longer has a monopoly on MAKING DVD's
Think about it. Right now, anyone with a $150 CD burner and some studio equipment can make a CD (of their own music) that's just as good as what you buy in the store, if they're good. The result? Sites like mp3.com where independent artists can completely bypass record companies. Artists are no longer at the mercy of the head honchos, they don't have to send their demo tapes to everyone in hopes that someone will like it. They can do it on their own.
I think we're seeing the MPAA trying to keep the same thing from ever happening to DVDs.
I have to wonder if you've read any of the comments explaining the situation and debunking the myths the MPAA would like you to believe. Let me summarize:
Piracy is possible without the use of the DeCSS player. You can bit-for-bit copy without knowing what it is or how to decrypt it.
The cost of writable DVD media makes piracy more expensive than actually purchasing DVDs.
EVEN IF DeCSS made piracy possible, or easier, piracy is NOT its primary intent. A screwdriver can kill someone if you choose to use it that way.
If "protecting their industry" requires intentionally misleading the court system by portraying us as pirates and criminals and trampling rights while they're at it, then they ought to find a new industry.
No matter how fast you move your arm, it takes at least an eighth of a second to move your hand to the mouse. In that time, you should be able to get at least ten keystrokes in.
At least 10 keystrokes in 1/8 of a second?
That's 80 keystrokes/second.
That's 4800 keystrokes/minute, or 600 WPM, assuming an average of 8 letters/word.
You've gotta tell me where you learned to touch type.
I usually have no less then four browser windows open at once. More then ten is not uncommon. (And, no, running multiple instances of Lynx in an xterm is not the same thing.)
I do the exact same thing at present, and I find it to be an unacceptable solution to the parallel browsing problem, because it's so resource hungry and such a pain to manage all those windows (not to mention that probably 1 out of 5 times I close one of my open windows in netscape, it closes ALL my open windows. THIS DRIVES ME NUTS!).
I was thinking about this problem one day, and I drafted an idea of software I think could help alleviate this problem. Check it out (my "whitepaper," if you will) at http://joshua.haberman.com/compute rs/ibiwnn.html I'd really appreciate input about it, would it help/be useful?
(this is a repost, the first had a stupid HTML formatting error)
I will repeat what I've said many times before, in hopes that someone will hear:
Easy mass distribution of music via the internet is a permanent reality. This leaves you with one of two choices:
Fight against digital music with stupid, unenforcable laws that only make music-lovers more angry
adapt to the situation with a new business model. I promise you that if a music company let me download any MP3 I wanted for <3 bucks a piece, I would download quite a few and spend more money that I ever did on CDs.
Listen to me or ignore me, but if you don't accomadate your customer instead of trying to force them to buy CDs, you will die, plain and simple.
However, I was later offended by the author's apparent lack of patience. His comment about "a man...condemned forever to articulate his thoughts at the speed of an imbecile" made me wince. Here he is, one of a privileged few journalists with the opportunity to spend an afternoon with the greatest mind of the last 50 years, and he is focussing on the man's physical disabilities. I nearly stopped reading at that point.
The line to which you refer is, I think, one of the most powerful in the article, and I see no hint of disrespect toward Mr. Hawking in it.
This is a fate that most intellectuals constantly dread. To be boxed into a body that is incapable of accomadating a brilliant mind could be compared to a mental claustrophobia--many thinkers suffer this fate without any sort of disability, and stutter over their words because their physical body can't keep up with the speed of their thoughts.
We can watch Steven Hawking and see that in spite of speaking at 20 words per minute, despite of having a moderator between his brain and his synthesized voice he still manages to get his thoughts out and people still listen to him. That's the consolation we need. That's why this line is not patronizing, but admiring.
I've always held this exact same gripe about Marilyn Vos Savant and her column in Parade.
It first bothers me that people assume that her IQ makes her the expert on everything from science to relationships and ethics. People seem to forget that there's a difference between INTELLIGENCE and KNOWLEDGE--intelligent people aren't born wise, and wise people aren't always geniuses.
My second gripe is that she propagates this myth by actually fielding these questions! I'm sure she knows better, and whether there's pressure from the publishers I don't know, but I wish she wouldn't.
Not only did he bring us that nifty coordinate system, he was also the first to convincingly *prove* his existence, which is the next best thing to justifying it
On the contrary, I think Descartes was desperate to justify his Catholic faith, and knowingly or unknowingly devised a system of "proof" that conveniently led him straight to a proof for a perfect God.
I also don't find his "proofs" very convincing, because his system of proof is not deterministic, but instead relies on the process of elimination.
His first proof, the famous Cogito, ergo sum was based on the observation that I am aware I perform a process called "thinking" and that means that I must exist as a thinking thing. However obvious this might seem, it assumes that there can be no other way to explain the observation that we think, and Descartes had most deliberately resolved not to assume anything.
Descartes mistake is that he assumes that we, with our finite cognitive capacities, can know of any possible explanation for any observed phenomenon.
Imagine what math would be like if we treated it this way. Imagine if, being faced with the problem of 7/3, you wrote down all the numbers from 1 to 10 and eliminated them one by one. If for some reason you could eliminate all the numbers but 2, does that make 2 the correct answer? No because there's a whole system of non-integral numbers that the hypothetical person solving this problem doesn't know about.
No such thing as a "proof" can exist until we devise a deterministic way to arrive at it, as opposed to eliminating all but one possibility.
When will Debian's Woody tree get the new Linux-2.4.0-prerelease kernel?
Officially, I don't know, I don't monitor the devel lists.
However, it's reasonably easy to manually drop in any kernel you want. I'm currently running 2.4.0-test11 on my woody box, and it's running great!
Here's how:
install package kernel-package. This is a set of scripts that will automate the build process of the kernel.
Download whatever kernel you want to use.
configure the kernel to you liking.
Run make-kpkg (I think that's the name of the script, I'm away from my debian box at the moment). This will compile the kernel and spit out a deb.
Install the deb.
configure lilo to your liking. All the images are in/boot.
This is explained much more verbosely in the documentation that comes with kernel-package, but I had few problems with the process, and I'm no expert. The process is very smooth. I like it.
Of course, there is no linuxconf in Debian, so you'll need to be familiar with the unified configuration tools vi and emacs.:)
I'm really tempted to switch to debian, but there are times when I rely on linuxconf. Is there a web site you can point me to that gives instructions on which config files to edit (and their file formats) for all the different things linuxconf can configure?
I get lost in the mess of the/etc directory, and I don't know where to go for a complete guide to all the config files within.
Once again we can observe the harms of allowing the government to regulate the computer industry.
The majority of the powerful people in the government are 50+, people who grew up in a time where there was no such thing as electronic data or electronic property. I realize that there are plenty of computer savvy people older than 50, but the average layperson in that age group doesn't understand what is a completely different world when it comes to law and regulation.
We saw this in the etoy vs. etoys debate: I'm betting that the judge who issued the court order against etoy doesn't understand the nature of the internet and of the situation: how else could such a crazy ruling be issued?
Do we need to explain these situations in terms that non-techie people can more easily understand? Something to the effect of: "This is the equivalent of making someone change their phone number because someone intending to dial Big Business Corporation X could accidentally slip and dial the wrong number!"
In the Microsoft vs. DOJ trial, it's lucky that the majority of the case pertained to business practices, and not more complicated technological issues.
I suppose in many cases, the complicated technological issues can be reduced to higher level ideas by experts. Instead of "Installing certain Microsoft software can replace DLLs that mysteriously conflict with competing software," (I just made that scenario up), an expert could tell the judge "It seems that Microsoft is intentionally and underhandedly stifling the competition." However, there's still a lot more to the situation, and over-simplifying the situation can often lead to uninformed decisions. Also, this gives the interpretations of experts the brunt of the weight in the case, and as we all know, experts can be made to say almost anything.
As we've seen on/. recently, this problem is a massive epidemic in the US Patent Office. Are all these crazy patents perhaps a result of Patent Inspectors not really understanding what's being patented? If someone tried to patent the idea of swiping a credit card, they'd just get a funny look. "One-click shopping" seems just as obvious to people familiar with the internet, but it's granted a patent by people who don't understand what they're doing.
The companies must use this to their advantage. I'm sure the developers at amazon realize how obvious the idea of "one-click shopping" is, I doubt they approached their legal department and exclaimed "This new idea is amazing--we need a patent!" The business lobbyists must also take advantage of the fact that the legislation they're trying to get pushed through Congress will get described to the Congresspeople in general terms ("This bill will protect the rights of musicians in a constantly changing time"), but whose specific implications aren't really understood.
I don't know about you, but I don't appreciate having the beautiful freedom of the internet and technology regulated by a bunch of people who obviously don't know what they're talking about.
I think the biggest accomplishment for Linux when it comes to the desktop can be seen by comparing screenshots of the default X install of Redhat 5.1 (a bare-bones fvwm, very daunting to the beginner) vs 6.0 (KDE).
Their stance on the issue earlier on was so frustrating:
Creative has no plans of releasing its intellectual property to the general public. We have spent many years and many millions of dollars developing the EMU10K1 audio processor, and we do not intent to release it. ... Frankly, their is SO much false information in the newsgroups that they have actually SLOWED the release of information to the public. Their was one joker who said he had our internal spec, and that he was going to develop a driver independantly of us. That caused a COMPLETE shutdown of my Linux development for about the last 6 months while we did an internal investigation to find the leak.
I read this and just shook my head. They're sitting here making absolutely sure no one has their holy internal spec, making sure no one will come and steal their amazing ideas... Don't you get it Creative? NO ONE IS GOING TO BUY YOUR PRODUCTS IF THEY CAN'T USE THEM!!
IE, a disproof only requires a contradiction where a proof requires the lack of a contradiction,
That's a very interesting standard of proof. You're saying that if I could come up with a theory that doesn't contradict anything (ie. completely coherent) then it's automatically true?
I postulate that rational thought and human logic are not sufficient to yield absolute truth in any matter but in realizing their failings.
According to your standard of proof, this must be true, because it contradicts nothing (it supercedes anything that could contradict it!)
Anyway, what I was talking about is the basis for belief, which you've given me a great opportunity to demonstrate:
Sorta like credit cards online(unless someone can disprove me=), it's pretty safe if people trust the system.
We now have a reason to believe that using credit cards online is safe: it's undergone peer review, it's a common practice, and companies are held legally accountable and have other incentives for it to work right. There is basis for belief.
But imagine the net 5 years ago. If an obscure online retailer asked you to fill in your credit card number and click the happy "Submit" button, would you have done it? I hope not. Where there's not the basis for belief, I think skepticism is the more appropriate response.
How long did you believe in Santa before you realized you were being lied to?
What amazes me is how people continually will believe anything they find in their inbox or on a web page. Our parents, our friends, even the news media (does anyone remember the Arizona news station that reported on a "Good Times"-like virus warning they got in their mailbox?)
It seems so obvious, but so many people are led to believe that if it's in print and sounds semi-official, it must be true. People believe unless they have a reason to doubt, and on the net you don't survive unless you do it the other way around.
"w3m is a pager/text-based WWW browser. It is similar to Lynx, but has several features Lynx doesn't have. It can render tables, frames (by converting frames into tables), display a document given from standard input, and is small."
Slashdot Mirror
Dammit, I'm tired of this "Take over the world" mentality. I don't particularly care if linux has 2% or 20% of market share.
Maybe not, but I bet you would care if Linux suffered massive brain drain, developer migration to another OS.
You want drivers for that brand new GeForce 65535? Sorry, there's no interest. And you can forget about the vendor releasing one anytime soon--there's nothing in it for them to make a few scattered hackers happy.
You want DSL? Sorry, your ISP only allows Windows. Linux is only used by hackers and frankly, we don't want to provide tech support.
You want the latest release of Debian on CD? Sorry, Cheapbytes went out of business because everyone uses Windows now. Not to mention that Debain is losing package maintainers left and right, the maintained package count is down to a record low of 522.
Exaggerated maybe, but my point is that though market share is nice if we want corporate interest, but much more important for the free software community is mind share.
Ask anyone what program they use most every day, and they will probably answer NS/IE.
:-)
Actually, I most often get this answer when asking people who their ISP is.
Or they could just post it in HTML and let people view it how they want to. If they want to release a PDF version for the suits, fine, but please...
I have great empathy for the trolls. They as a whole are a truly worthwhile lot of folk. Don't marginalize them because the percieved extremity of the situation has fueled this. Instead, ask how we can maintain order and still give them space.
I agree. I honestly don't care if trolls post here, as long as they don't soak up so much bandwidth that legitimate users can't access the site. Some trolls crack me up uncontrollably. I think the issue here is that it needs to be much easier to avoid them, especially for newcomers.
We need favorable first impressions, and the trolls are presently robbing us of this. I don't feel like I can encourage non-geeks to read comments on Slashdot to try and understand our community, because I know they'll be confronted by pages of trolls and first posters. Default is Threshold=0 or -1, depending on which link you click, but worse still, it defaults to "Oldest First," which just encourages the first posters.
I would never advocate censorship, I still want the ability to read trolls if I want to. But we need to make it easier to avoid them.
I agree wholeheartedly, and in addition I would add one more:
5) PLEASE change the default comment view to "Highest Scores First!" When important issues come along, I want to tell people "Visit Slashdot, and see that there is a group of intelligent, concerned people who exist in an online community to whom these issues are real. See us firsthand."
However, the default view is "oldest first," leaving the un-logged in reader with the "first posts" and "trollmastahz." This is no way to earn a favorable first impression
We have to make it easy for outsiders to become exposed to our world. We have to be understood if we want the support when we really need it.
I was contemplating the actions the MPAA is taking when I came upon something that seems to make sense:
If free software exists that can encrypt and decrypt DVD's, the Motion Picture industry no longer has a monopoly on MAKING DVD's
Think about it. Right now, anyone with a $150 CD burner and some studio equipment can make a CD (of their own music) that's just as good as what you buy in the store, if they're good. The result? Sites like mp3.com where independent artists can completely bypass record companies. Artists are no longer at the mercy of the head honchos, they don't have to send their demo tapes to everyone in hopes that someone will like it. They can do it on their own.
I think we're seeing the MPAA trying to keep the same thing from ever happening to DVDs.
Your heart is in the right place but:
1. I'd be willing to bet that the original poster is just a troll, not a sexist, you're probably wasting your breath
2. The parable of the talents has nothing to do with talents as we know them: the talents referred to in the parable are a form of currency.
No matter how fast you move your arm, it takes at least an eighth of a second to move your hand to the mouse. In that time, you should be able to get at least ten keystrokes in.
At least 10 keystrokes in 1/8 of a second?
That's 80 keystrokes/second.
That's 4800 keystrokes/minute, or 600 WPM, assuming an average of 8 letters/word.
You've gotta tell me where you learned to touch type.
I usually have no less then four browser windows open at once. More then ten is not uncommon. (And, no, running multiple instances of Lynx in an xterm is not the same thing.)
I do the exact same thing at present, and I find it to be an unacceptable solution to the parallel browsing problem, because it's so resource hungry and such a pain to manage all those windows (not to mention that probably 1 out of 5 times I close one of my open windows in netscape, it closes ALL my open windows. THIS DRIVES ME NUTS!).
I was thinking about this problem one day, and I drafted an idea of software I think could help alleviate this problem. Check it out (my "whitepaper," if you will) at http://joshua.haberman.com/compute rs/ibiwnn.html I'd really appreciate input about it, would it help/be useful?
I will repeat what I've said many times before, in hopes that someone will hear:
Easy mass distribution of music via the internet is a permanent reality. This leaves you with one of two choices:
Listen to me or ignore me, but if you don't accomadate your customer instead of trying to force them to buy CDs, you will die, plain and simple.
Easy mass distribution of music via the internet is a permanent reality. This leaves you with one of two choices:
Listen to me or ignore me, but if you don't accomadate your customer instead of trying to force them to buy CDs, you will die, plain and simple.
However, I was later offended by the author's apparent lack of patience. His comment about "a man...condemned forever to articulate his thoughts at the speed of an imbecile" made me wince. Here he is, one of a privileged few journalists with the opportunity to spend an afternoon with the greatest mind of the last 50 years, and he is focussing on the man's physical disabilities. I nearly stopped reading at that point.
The line to which you refer is, I think, one of the most powerful in the article, and I see no hint of disrespect toward Mr. Hawking in it.
This is a fate that most intellectuals constantly dread. To be boxed into a body that is incapable of accomadating a brilliant mind could be compared to a mental claustrophobia--many thinkers suffer this fate without any sort of disability, and stutter over their words because their physical body can't keep up with the speed of their thoughts.
We can watch Steven Hawking and see that in spite of speaking at 20 words per minute, despite of having a moderator between his brain and his synthesized voice he still manages to get his thoughts out and people still listen to him. That's the consolation we need. That's why this line is not patronizing, but admiring.
I've always held this exact same gripe about Marilyn Vos Savant and her column in Parade.
It first bothers me that people assume that her IQ makes her the expert on everything from science to relationships and ethics. People seem to forget that there's a difference between INTELLIGENCE and KNOWLEDGE--intelligent people aren't born wise, and wise people aren't always geniuses.
My second gripe is that she propagates this myth by actually fielding these questions! I'm sure she knows better, and whether there's pressure from the publishers I don't know, but I wish she wouldn't.
I wish moderators would moderate stuff like this up as "funny." I think that's the only way posts like this can be sufficiently mocked.
Not only did he bring us that nifty coordinate system, he was also the first to convincingly *prove* his existence, which is the next best thing to justifying it
On the contrary, I think Descartes was desperate to justify his Catholic faith, and knowingly or unknowingly devised a system of "proof" that conveniently led him straight to a proof for a perfect God.
I also don't find his "proofs" very convincing, because his system of proof is not deterministic, but instead relies on the process of elimination.
His first proof, the famous Cogito, ergo sum was based on the observation that I am aware I perform a process called "thinking" and that means that I must exist as a thinking thing. However obvious this might seem, it assumes that there can be no other way to explain the observation that we think, and Descartes had most deliberately resolved not to assume anything.
Descartes mistake is that he assumes that we, with our finite cognitive capacities, can know of any possible explanation for any observed phenomenon.
Imagine what math would be like if we treated it this way. Imagine if, being faced with the problem of 7/3, you wrote down all the numbers from 1 to 10 and eliminated them one by one. If for some reason you could eliminate all the numbers but 2, does that make 2 the correct answer? No because there's a whole system of non-integral numbers that the hypothetical person solving this problem doesn't know about.
No such thing as a "proof" can exist until we devise a deterministic way to arrive at it, as opposed to eliminating all but one possibility.
Officially, I don't know, I don't monitor the devel lists.
However, it's reasonably easy to manually drop in any kernel you want. I'm currently running 2.4.0-test11 on my woody box, and it's running great!
Here's how:
This is explained much more verbosely in the documentation that comes with kernel-package, but I had few problems with the process, and I'm no expert. The process is very smooth. I like it.
What version is currently in Woody?
2.2.17 and 2.2.18pre21, it seems.
--
Of course, there is no linuxconf in Debian, so you'll need to be familiar with the unified configuration tools vi and emacs. :)
/etc directory, and I don't know where to go for a complete guide to all the config files within.
I'm really tempted to switch to debian, but there are times when I rely on linuxconf. Is there a web site you can point me to that gives instructions on which config files to edit (and their file formats) for all the different things linuxconf can configure?
I get lost in the mess of the
Once again we can observe the harms of allowing the government to regulate the computer industry.
/. recently, this problem is a massive epidemic in the US Patent Office. Are all these crazy patents perhaps a result of Patent Inspectors not really understanding what's being patented? If someone tried to patent the idea of swiping a credit card, they'd just get a funny look. "One-click shopping" seems just as obvious to people familiar with the internet, but it's granted a patent by people who don't understand what they're doing.
The majority of the powerful people in the government are 50+, people who grew up in a time where there was no such thing as electronic data or electronic property. I realize that there are plenty of computer savvy people older than 50, but the average layperson in that age group doesn't understand what is a completely different world when it comes to law and regulation.
We saw this in the etoy vs. etoys debate: I'm betting that the judge who issued the court order against etoy doesn't understand the nature of the internet and of the situation: how else could such a crazy ruling be issued?
Do we need to explain these situations in terms that non-techie people can more easily understand? Something to the effect of: "This is the equivalent of making someone change their phone number because someone intending to dial Big Business Corporation X could accidentally slip and dial the wrong number!"
In the Microsoft vs. DOJ trial, it's lucky that the majority of the case pertained to business practices, and not more complicated technological issues.
I suppose in many cases, the complicated technological issues can be reduced to higher level ideas by experts. Instead of "Installing certain Microsoft software can replace DLLs that mysteriously conflict with competing software," (I just made that scenario up), an expert could tell the judge "It seems that Microsoft is intentionally and underhandedly stifling the competition." However, there's still a lot more to the situation, and over-simplifying the situation can often lead to uninformed decisions. Also, this gives the interpretations of experts the brunt of the weight in the case, and as we all know, experts can be made to say almost anything.
As we've seen on
The companies must use this to their advantage. I'm sure the developers at amazon realize how obvious the idea of "one-click shopping" is, I doubt they approached their legal department and exclaimed "This new idea is amazing--we need a patent!" The business lobbyists must also take advantage of the fact that the legislation they're trying to get pushed through Congress will get described to the Congresspeople in general terms ("This bill will protect the rights of musicians in a constantly changing time"), but whose specific implications aren't really understood.
I don't know about you, but I don't appreciate having the beautiful freedom of the internet and technology regulated by a bunch of people who obviously don't know what they're talking about.
I think the biggest accomplishment for Linux when it comes to the desktop can be seen by comparing screenshots of the default X install of Redhat 5.1 (a bare-bones fvwm, very daunting to the beginner) vs 6.0 (KDE).
That alone is a huge accomplishment.
Their stance on the issue earlier on was so frustrating:
Creative has no plans of releasing its
intellectual property to the general
public. We have spent many years and many
millions of dollars developing the EMU10K1 audio processor, and we do not intent
to release it.
...
Frankly, their is SO much false information in the newsgroups that they have
actually SLOWED the release of information to the public. Their was one joker
who said he had our internal spec, and that he was going to develop a driver
independantly of us. That caused a COMPLETE shutdown of my Linux development
for about the last 6 months while we did an internal investigation to find the
leak.
I read this and just shook my head. They're sitting here making absolutely sure no one has their holy internal spec, making sure no one will come and steal their amazing ideas... Don't you get it Creative? NO ONE IS GOING TO BUY YOUR PRODUCTS IF THEY CAN'T USE THEM!!
IE, a disproof only requires a contradiction where a proof requires the lack of a contradiction,
That's a very interesting standard of proof. You're saying that if I could come up with a theory that doesn't contradict anything (ie. completely coherent) then it's automatically true?
I postulate that rational thought and human logic are not sufficient to yield absolute truth in any matter but in realizing their failings.
According to your standard of proof, this must be true, because it contradicts nothing (it supercedes anything that could contradict it!)
Anyway, what I was talking about is the basis for belief, which you've given me a great opportunity to demonstrate:
Sorta like credit cards online(unless someone can disprove me=), it's pretty safe if people trust the system.
We now have a reason to believe that using credit cards online is safe: it's undergone peer review, it's a common practice, and companies are held legally accountable and have other incentives for it to work right. There is basis for belief.
But imagine the net 5 years ago. If an obscure online retailer asked you to fill in your credit card number and click the happy "Submit" button, would you have done it? I hope not. Where there's not the basis for belief, I think skepticism is the more appropriate response.
How long did you believe in Santa before you realized you were being lied to?
What amazes me is how people continually will believe anything they find in their inbox or on a web page. Our parents, our friends, even the news media (does anyone remember the Arizona news station that reported on a "Good Times"-like virus warning they got in their mailbox?)
It seems so obvious, but so many people are led to believe that if it's in print and sounds semi-official, it must be true. People believe unless they have a reason to doubt, and on the net you don't survive unless you do it the other way around.
"w3m is a pager/text-based WWW browser. It is similar to Lynx, but has several features Lynx doesn't have. It can render tables, frames (by converting frames into tables), display a document given from standard input, and is small."
.jp/~aito/w3m/eng/
http://ei5nazha.yz.yamagata-u.ac
I've downloaded it before: it works well. The page isn't responding at the moment, but you can download it at ftp://ftp.umlauf.de/pub/w3m/
Etoys ping requests are timing out: I suppose these are the advanced "proprietary" defenses they're boasting?
How does one even disable that? I didn't realize it was a controllable behavior.