...you seem to have a slant against Microsoft for whatever reason...
Well, yes... that's the general theme of the site, and I think calling it "Just Say No to Microsoft" is pretty up-front about that. Pretending that I don't have an agenda would be dishonest. But it isn't "whatever" reason; the site explains the reason, which boils down to the opening statements: "Microsoft isn't evil. But it is too powerful, and consumers are being harmed by it."
...While there are some great open source apps out there...
And again, the purpose of the site isn't to promote open-source apps. As much as they appeal to my own ideological preferences, and I tend to pimp them a bit, I don't expect people to "join a crusade" (as you put it) to use them. I'm simply encouraging people to look at the alternatives, and even to support competing commercial products. After all, in our Mercantilist society the viability of the Apples, the Adobes, the Corels, the Oracles, the Operas, the Palms, the Reals, the Nintendos, the Borlands, the Suns, etc. are just as important to keeping the Microsoft juggernaut in check - and keeping us free (as in speech) to choose what suits us best - as the Firefoxes, the MySQLs, the Linuxes, the Apaches, the OpenOffices, and so on.
I've been maintaining* a web site entitled "Just Say No to Microsoft" since the late 1990s. It is a bit biased to my own preferences in places, but tries to be non-dogmatic about what "other road" to take (including proprietary alternatives as well as open-source)... just pointing out as many of them as practical. Perhaps not as in-depth and hand-holding as a book like this could be, but a bit less expensive to consult. And IMNSHO a lot more comprehensive than the links on the author's web site.
*OK, not maintained enough lately; some of the info's getting dated.
This way there is not a problem with Trademarks in TLD. The UN will hand out International Trademarks.
Somehow I can't see the U.S. (and other countries) tossing out their national trademark registries to accommodate a international trademark registry based on domain names.
Once there is bases in other solar systems... you get the picture.
To say nothing of the small furry creatures from Alpha Centauri agreeing to interstellar trademarks... especially after all the good ones have been taken!
Another thought about why this probably won't catch on: The public won't get it.
The AOL-using masses out there have already been trained too well to put.COM on the end of everything. I have a hard time explaining to people that they don't need to put a WWW. on the front of (for example) MICROSOFT.TODDVERBEEK.COM or a.COM on the end of GRAPHICNOVELS.INFO. If you give them a plain "domain name" such as HOLYCOMICS, they won't know what to do except enclose it in WWW.*.COM
Calling these "Top Level Domains" is a bit of a misnomer, because - although technically accurate - they probably wouldn't be used very much in that way. They're domains with a nul top level. If you want to invent and control your own hierarchical TLD (e.g. "dot slash"); just do like New.net, rather than forking over money to these people.
I'm sure this idea sounds nice to people who are too lazy (or confused) to type a TLD, but it would be a nightmare to implement effectively on any large scale. And since the idea A) scales poorly, and B) would completely undermine ICANN's authority (in a way that makes New.net seem harmless), I don't see it lasting very long, either because of non-use on the ISP/client end or getting stomped on (hard) by The Powers That Be.
A fool and his money are quickly parted. One of the safest business models is the exploitation the poor judgment skills of children, adolescents, and the poorly-educated.
There is also a good chance that they came up with the idea themselves,
Several decades too late for that. The phrase "creator owned" has been bouncing around the comics industry for decades, and has been going on rather visibly since the 1980s; there isn't anyone involved in comics publishing who isn't familiar with the idea and seen it in practice. For much of the 1990s the top-selling comic in North American (Spawn) was creator owned, a fact that its owner and his partners at Image made a lot of noise about.
In terms of volume, publisher-owned comics are still the vast majority, but even at the #1 and #2 publiushers, DC does a fair number (mostly under their Vertigo imprint) and Marvel did them a decade and a half ago (the Epic imprint) and are testing the waters again now (their new Icon imprint). Everything Image (#3 or #4) does is still creator-owned; Dark Horse (#4 or #3) has always (i.e. since the 80s) published creator-owned books (as well as licenced stuff like Star Wars). A lot of the mid-level publishers and pretty much all of the small publishers work under creator-owned terms (since the publisher usually is the creator). In fact, when word got out that TokyoPop was generally not letting creators keep their copyrights, that raised the minor firestorm that got Seven Seas' attention.
Giving up the copyright also means giving up control of the work, forever. Someone with an exclusive license to reproduce your work doesn't have the right to hire someone else to produce a sequel without your involvement.
Most of what I download is not consdered "popular music."
I understand why people are upset about the prospect of higher pricing on higher-demand music, but I have a hard time getting personally upset. I've never cared much for whatever was popular and I'm well into the that-garbage-kids-these-days-are-listening-to phase of life by now, so I look forward to better deals on the less "marketable" music.
It'll be interesting to see if this kind of pricing will start to level demand, by encouraging buyers to sample less expensive genres...?
This reminds me (an artist) of one of my favorite Dilbert strips: Dogbert is talking about his Corporate Art Supply business (motto: "If it's in a frame it will look like art to you"). He's asked about how much they charge, and he replies, "Six dollars a pound."
I am also sure that Apple chose to receive a smaller margin (profit) on the Mini in order to get more of them into the hands of consumers.
This is supported by the tiny educational discounts on the Mini. Students and such get a full $100 off the price of a 14" iBook or 17" iMac and even $50 off a 12" iBook, but a mere $20 off the price of a Mini (even the top-of-the-line $700 model). Granted, the base price is lower, but the percentage for the Mini discounts is smaller (2.8-4.0% instead of 5.0-8.3%). This suggests that Apple has less profit margin that it can give up on those without them becoming actual loss leaders.
Makes me wonder: is this jump in the schedule because developers were quick to transition, or because customers were holding off their purchases until they saw the new Intel models?
I'd think the iBook market would be one of the least affected by this phenomenon, since the lion's share of potential iBook buyers - people who get their product announcements from TV commercials - aren't even aware that there's a switch in the pipeline. And if Apple's suffering from "purchase delay" now, imagine how bad it'll get for the rest of the product line once the general public know about and see Intel-based Macs. They won't be able to give away PowerBook G4s after intelBooks like these ship.
This is something of a landmark, kind of like when Mac OS stopped supporting 68000 processors. These are the CPUs that these OSes were built for, and whose consistent feature set made it possible to engineer software to run on "any" computer of that kind. The idea of 386BSD not running on a 386 is a bit... eye-opening.
Actually, the Resturant at the End of the Universe could exist anywhere, even on planet Earth, as the "End" is representive of the universe ending (in another big bang) and not representing the "edge" of the universe as was given in the end of the HHGG movie.
Response A: It's clearly established that the Restaurant will be located in the ruins of Magrathea, not "anywhere".
Response B: The prepositional phrase "at the end" is a play on words, and the joke is that it can be interpretted in spatial or temporal terms, which is what makes it funny. Confining it to only one sense of the phrase robs it of its humor.
The "football field" is a bit like the "pint" (bigger on the east side of the pond), "ton" (metric and otherwise), "cubit", "bread basket", or damn near any other popular unit of measure with a vague subjective connotation, but no objective standard.
And as a Non-Sporting-American, I object to the use of *ball references in/. articles, you insenstive clod!
Basically, what the commentator is saying (whether he means to or not) is that Star Wars is a classically Bad movie. Plot developments are based on un-credible coincidence. The plotmaster's hand is an actual plot device. Et cetera. Post-modern deconstruction of an art form or genre is all about defying the conventions that make up a Good movie. The only question is whether Lucas is doing it on purpose (in which case it's avant-garde) or not (in which case these are just shortcomings).
Why does no one ever attempt to explain that God created man using evolution as a tool?
They do; that's the compromise that most rational Christians tend toward when faced with the preponderance of evidence for evolution. Toss in a filter of symbolism and metaphor and either of the Creation myths (Genesis 1 or Genesis 2) meshes well enough with the evolution model.
The problem comes when they try to reconcile the scientific record with Genesis 3, which states that suffering and death are the result of humanity's rebellion against God. The Origin of Species and Original Sin are irreconcilable, because the former requires eons of carnage and death, long before the first hominid existed to grab a piece of fruit from a tree. That - not the "days" vs. "eons" discrepancy or the "chance" vs. "design" question - is what's at stake, and is the reason why fundamentalist Christians ultimately can't accept evolution.
Did you read the part of the question where he explained that he was looking for tools to analyze and fix the problem? And did you notice that he didn't mention or imply any kind of migration?
Here's an idea: Before you blunder in with an answer, the first step is to work out what the question is.:)
Slashdot Mirror
That's usually a pretty good sign that there's something really obvious that you don't understand. Like the concept of inertia.
Well, yes... that's the general theme of the site, and I think calling it "Just Say No to Microsoft" is pretty up-front about that. Pretending that I don't have an agenda would be dishonest. But it isn't "whatever" reason; the site explains the reason, which boils down to the opening statements: "Microsoft isn't evil. But it is too powerful, and consumers are being harmed by it."
And again, the purpose of the site isn't to promote open-source apps. As much as they appeal to my own ideological preferences, and I tend to pimp them a bit, I don't expect people to "join a crusade" (as you put it) to use them. I'm simply encouraging people to look at the alternatives, and even to support competing commercial products. After all, in our Mercantilist society the viability of the Apples, the Adobes, the Corels, the Oracles, the Operas, the Palms, the Reals, the Nintendos, the Borlands, the Suns, etc. are just as important to keeping the Microsoft juggernaut in check - and keeping us free (as in speech) to choose what suits us best - as the Firefoxes, the MySQLs, the Linuxes, the Apaches, the OpenOffices, and so on.
*OK, not maintained enough lately; some of the info's getting dated.
This guy is clearly considered harmful.
This is surprising news. I'll have to stop using it, then.
Somehow I can't see the U.S. (and other countries) tossing out their national trademark registries to accommodate a international trademark registry based on domain names.
Once there is bases in other solar systems... you get the picture.
To say nothing of the small furry creatures from Alpha Centauri agreeing to interstellar trademarks... especially after all the good ones have been taken!
The AOL-using masses out there have already been trained too well to put .COM on the end of everything. I have a hard time explaining to people that they don't need to put a WWW. on the front of (for example) MICROSOFT.TODDVERBEEK.COM or a .COM on the end of GRAPHICNOVELS.INFO. If you give them a plain "domain name" such as HOLYCOMICS, they won't know what to do except enclose it in WWW.*.COM
I'm sure this idea sounds nice to people who are too lazy (or confused) to type a TLD, but it would be a nightmare to implement effectively on any large scale. And since the idea A) scales poorly, and B) would completely undermine ICANN's authority (in a way that makes New.net seem harmless), I don't see it lasting very long, either because of non-use on the ISP/client end or getting stomped on (hard) by The Powers That Be.
A fool and his money are quickly parted. One of the safest business models is the exploitation the poor judgment skills of children, adolescents, and the poorly-educated.
In this context, "manga" refers to a style and publishing format. So it does make sense to distinguish these from just plain "comics".
Several decades too late for that. The phrase "creator owned" has been bouncing around the comics industry for decades, and has been going on rather visibly since the 1980s; there isn't anyone involved in comics publishing who isn't familiar with the idea and seen it in practice. For much of the 1990s the top-selling comic in North American (Spawn) was creator owned, a fact that its owner and his partners at Image made a lot of noise about.
In terms of volume, publisher-owned comics are still the vast majority, but even at the #1 and #2 publiushers, DC does a fair number (mostly under their Vertigo imprint) and Marvel did them a decade and a half ago (the Epic imprint) and are testing the waters again now (their new Icon imprint). Everything Image (#3 or #4) does is still creator-owned; Dark Horse (#4 or #3) has always (i.e. since the 80s) published creator-owned books (as well as licenced stuff like Star Wars). A lot of the mid-level publishers and pretty much all of the small publishers work under creator-owned terms (since the publisher usually is the creator). In fact, when word got out that TokyoPop was generally not letting creators keep their copyrights, that raised the minor firestorm that got Seven Seas' attention.
Giving up the copyright also means giving up control of the work, forever. Someone with an exclusive license to reproduce your work doesn't have the right to hire someone else to produce a sequel without your involvement.
I understand why people are upset about the prospect of higher pricing on higher-demand music, but I have a hard time getting personally upset. I've never cared much for whatever was popular and I'm well into the that-garbage-kids-these-days-are-listening-to phase of life by now, so I look forward to better deals on the less "marketable" music.
It'll be interesting to see if this kind of pricing will start to level demand, by encouraging buyers to sample less expensive genres...?
This reminds me (an artist) of one of my favorite Dilbert strips: Dogbert is talking about his Corporate Art Supply business (motto: "If it's in a frame it will look like art to you"). He's asked about how much they charge, and he replies, "Six dollars a pound."
This is supported by the tiny educational discounts on the Mini. Students and such get a full $100 off the price of a 14" iBook or 17" iMac and even $50 off a 12" iBook, but a mere $20 off the price of a Mini (even the top-of-the-line $700 model). Granted, the base price is lower, but the percentage for the Mini discounts is smaller (2.8-4.0% instead of 5.0-8.3%). This suggests that Apple has less profit margin that it can give up on those without them becoming actual loss leaders.
I'd think the iBook market would be one of the least affected by this phenomenon, since the lion's share of potential iBook buyers - people who get their product announcements from TV commercials - aren't even aware that there's a switch in the pipeline. And if Apple's suffering from "purchase delay" now, imagine how bad it'll get for the rest of the product line once the general public know about and see Intel-based Macs. They won't be able to give away PowerBook G4s after intelBooks like these ship.
Followed by .COM
Though .INFO is growing on me.
This is something of a landmark, kind of like when Mac OS stopped supporting 68000 processors. These are the CPUs that these OSes were built for, and whose consistent feature set made it possible to engineer software to run on "any" computer of that kind. The idea of 386BSD not running on a 386 is a bit... eye-opening.
Response A: It's clearly established that the Restaurant will be located in the ruins of Magrathea, not "anywhere".
Response B: The prepositional phrase "at the end" is a play on words, and the joke is that it can be interpretted in spatial or temporal terms, which is what makes it funny. Confining it to only one sense of the phrase robs it of its humor.
And as a Non-Sporting-American, I object to the use of *ball references in /. articles, you insenstive clod!
Basically, what the commentator is saying (whether he means to or not) is that Star Wars is a classically Bad movie. Plot developments are based on un-credible coincidence. The plotmaster's hand is an actual plot device. Et cetera. Post-modern deconstruction of an art form or genre is all about defying the conventions that make up a Good movie. The only question is whether Lucas is doing it on purpose (in which case it's avant-garde) or not (in which case these are just shortcomings).
They do; that's the compromise that most rational Christians tend toward when faced with the preponderance of evidence for evolution. Toss in a filter of symbolism and metaphor and either of the Creation myths (Genesis 1 or Genesis 2) meshes well enough with the evolution model.
The problem comes when they try to reconcile the scientific record with Genesis 3, which states that suffering and death are the result of humanity's rebellion against God. The Origin of Species and Original Sin are irreconcilable, because the former requires eons of carnage and death, long before the first hominid existed to grab a piece of fruit from a tree. That - not the "days" vs. "eons" discrepancy or the "chance" vs. "design" question - is what's at stake, and is the reason why fundamentalist Christians ultimately can't accept evolution.
Someone who tries to justify the first person's cluelessness by trying to posit some alternate universe where it would make sense.
Here's an idea: Before you blunder in with an answer, the first step is to work out what the question is. :)
I have a truly marvelous proof for this, which, unfortunately, this post is too small to contain. Please share, Mssr. Fermat.