From personal experience HOWTOs are great, but they can also be a lot of work to read just to get something working. However the great thing about HOWTOs is that they are generally structured and might lend themselves to an idea I call "automated HOWTOs".
One reason Windows is popular is that Microsoft keeps finding new ways to make it easy to use the system. Ok, easy to crash too, but hey. If somebody were to take a particular HOWTO, and rework it into a script, it might turn out to be something vastly more useful for new Linux users who are used to Windows doing everything for you with its wizards and such.
i never saw or noticed the data crystals in B5, but of course i only watched the first couple of seasons.
in my opinion, the cool thing about the isolinear circuitry in star trek was not the ODN (optical data network, i.e. fibre optics, how 21st century;) conduits all over the place, but the fact that processing speed could be increased simply by applying more power to the processor. since all data was optical, the additional power was used to generate a stronger warp field, effectively raising the speed of light and making things faster.
I drew one interesting idea that I drew from this article. I'm not sure the author was really trying to say this, but it kinda sparked my imagination on this subject, so here it is.
The search for an explanation of origins heretofore has focused soley at the macro level. The big bang, formation of galaxies and planets, evolution of life, and so forth are all phenomena we can observe.
But what if things at the macro level evolved from smaller things? Some scientists once thought that atoms were individual, until sub-atomic particles like electrons were discovered. Then they were thought to be the smallest particles until quarks were theorized. How small do things go?
Well at the quantum level things start to get strange, but maybe it is only because macro scale phenomena originally evolved from the quantum level, and in doing so took on a form quite different from the quantum level. Even quantum events may have evolved from an even smaller world so strange that it makes quantum physics seem common sense. Where does it all end, if it does?
The great thing about services like Deja (I still want to call it DejaNEWS) is that they provide a centralized location for searching archives.
The great thing about Usenet, in my opinion, is that it is distributed, and thus free.
With all the talk about Usenet dying, it seems that maybe what is needed is just a better front-end. You can post to Usenet from Deja, for example, and don't really need to know that its usenets. Imagine hundreds of sites that exist as frontends to usenet, but each provides a specialize service.
But that still doesn't address the problem of how to keep the content open. "E-Babble" sounds great to me, but such a catchy name somebody will probably trademark it, and then restrict the use of their content, and we'll all get upset because speech wants to be free, right?
Besides, all news users believe that "The World Wide Web" *IS* the internet, right?;)
A law to that effect was passed in my state a few years ago. Everybody was supposed to fill out a special form as part of their state taxes, and send it in along with the taxes for stuff they bought via mail order.
I don't remember all the details of why, but it wasn't long before the law was repealed... So legally in my state there is no requirement to pay taxes on out of state purchases.
Re:I just had a bright moment...
on
YETI@Home
·
· Score: 1
An interesting idea, but would it be profitable?
In other words, how much would someone really pay to use some of your CPU cycles, compared to your cost of running the machine - both the electricity to run the thing and the slight wear and tear.
I realize that most people are paying these costs anyway, especially if they leave their computers running all the time without power conservation techniques, but if we are going to try to raise money for good causes like save the earth it might be more effective to start a compaign to simply utilize power saving features on your computer when you aren't using those CPU cycles.
Can you tell me what polymorphic lambda-calculus is, and where I might find an good introduction to it? It sounds interesting, and I was not aware that there is another calculus besides the one you learn in math class.
Now normally I am a bit suspicious about people who advocate conspiracy theories and the like, but in this case the point of view advocated at the above site - namely that the patent office is under attack by legislation by congress - might be interesting to us geeks, specifically because if "they" are right, congress has actually passed a bill through the house which would get rid of some of our headaches over patents.
These guys don't want that, but we do, at least to some extent perhaps. Maybe this is worth looking into and supporting (instead of resisting, as the page at the URL suggests).
Sorry, it's been a slow day on Slashdot today. I read this story from a couple different sources in the past couple days so I was actually suprised to see the Slashdot headline - I thought it was old news already.;)
With all due respect for the deceased, how did South Park make her life better? How does irreverence and "lowest common denominator" humor make anybody's life?
I'm not saying that we should infringe on anybody's rights, and my reasons for disliking South Park have nothing to do with Christianty which itself is something I have many criticisms of.
I'm not saying something has happened here which is unique, either. Lots of people commit suicide every year, so why should this instance be special somehow, other than the person being famous?
But if we really care and want to prevent suicides (and maybe we don't) perhaps there should be more dialog about the conditions which contribute to a person's decision to end their own life. Obviously a person who is happy and at peace with themselves and their life will not kill themselves.
What influences cause a person to say "Life sucks" and therefore logically conclude that the right choice is "I want to end it"? Aren't they the same influences that show a lack of respect for life in a myriad of ways?
The poll on the same page asks if "Win95/98 are stable". Ironically, when I click to see the result, I keep getting a javascript error and can't see the poll results.
At this URL the article mentions that Pioneer 10 will reach the stars of the constellation Taurus in about three million years.
At this URL is presented a star chart showing what is supposed to be the course of an unknown tenth planet in the solar system, which according to this page will pass by the earth in 2003.
What is interesting is that the current location of this "Planet X" is given to be just above Orion, in the leftmost portion of Taurus. Does anybody have more detailed information on exactly where in Taurus Pioneer 10 is, so this correlation could be checked closer?
Ok, so it's got at 12" LCD touch screen. That means absolutely nothing to me. What's the resolution on it? VGA? SVGA? XGA? Those are well defined standards each of which has an exact resolution.
Laptop makers routinely do the same thing and it really bugs me. Personally, I'm waiting for a portable device with (at least) an 24-bit color XGA touchscreen.
Good point. I haven't posted any comments here for a while, and as far as I can remember all the comments I made were either moderated up or not at all, except for the last one, which was moderated down. (for being redundant if I remember correct, heck its hard to not be when there are tons of posts and you dont have time to read every since thread and subthread before posting:-)
But, somehow, my karma is at -1! It almost makes me want to start over and get a new account, because once your moderation drops low enough, how are you ever going to get back up if everyone has filtered out your comments, even if they are good. Especially if you are posting a nested comment such as this one, how many people are actually read it? Marv
It's good that this articles is promoting thought and discussion on the subject. However since people have said that they wouldn't mind paying say, $1 or $2 for an electronic version of a CD for which they would pay $15-$20, why not just have the artists sell direct to the public for a buck or too?
It seems to me that the primary concern should be eliminating overhead (the middleman, etc.) to reduce costs and increase production. Keep in mind that copying a CD over the internet is NOT free, all that bandwidth has to be paid for. Also, promoting your work is a lot harder without a "big name" to decide whether they think you are good enough to "make it big" (and this is really how they keep prices so high, by limiting the supply!), but the internet provides the potential for significant cost savings.
The bottom line may be that a $15 CD will really only be $5 instead of $1 as mentioned. The real costs incurred for promotion and duplication do have to be paid, and an artist that is wildly popular deserves a bigger payback, but definitely the Internet provides the potential for cost cutting.
Of course, those that resist are the ones who have the most to lose... just like the old candlemakers when the light bulb came along. But where are they now?
...does bill gates birthday co-inciede with roswell does it?
Bill Gates was born on October 28, 1955.
The Roswell crash occured in early July, 1947. (The actual crash was reported in a newspaper on July 8 but a rancher claimed finding debris on July 4.) So let's see who was born around that time period:
July 3, 1947 Dave Berry July 9, 1947 O J Simpson July 18, 1947 Steve Forbes July 24, 1947 Robert Hayes (Ok, the last one is a bit late, but hey, he played an alien in the TV Series Starman)
Slashdot Mirror
From personal experience HOWTOs are great, but they can also be a lot of work to read just to get something working. However the great thing about HOWTOs is that they are generally structured and might lend themselves to an idea I call "automated HOWTOs".
One reason Windows is popular is that Microsoft keeps finding new ways to make it easy to use the system. Ok, easy to crash too, but hey. If somebody were to take a particular HOWTO, and rework it into a script, it might turn out to be something vastly more useful for new Linux users who are used to Windows doing everything for you with its wizards and such.
i never saw or noticed the data crystals in B5, but of course i only watched the first couple of seasons.
;) conduits all over the place, but the fact that processing speed could be increased simply by applying more power to the processor. since all data was optical, the additional power was used to generate a stronger warp field, effectively raising the speed of light and making things faster.
in my opinion, the cool thing about the isolinear circuitry in star trek was not the ODN (optical data network, i.e. fibre optics, how 21st century
maybe such a principle will apply here...
not to mention telnet or derivitives like IRC, MUD, etc....
I drew one interesting idea that I drew from this article. I'm not sure the author was really trying to say this, but it kinda sparked my imagination on this subject, so here it is.
The search for an explanation of origins heretofore has focused soley at the macro level. The big bang, formation of galaxies and planets, evolution of life, and so forth are all phenomena we can observe.
But what if things at the macro level evolved from smaller things? Some scientists once thought that atoms were individual, until sub-atomic particles like electrons were discovered. Then they were thought to be the smallest particles until quarks were theorized. How small do things go?
Well at the quantum level things start to get strange, but maybe it is only because macro scale phenomena originally evolved from the quantum level, and in doing so took on a form quite different from the quantum level. Even quantum events may have evolved from an even smaller world so strange that it makes quantum physics seem common sense. Where does it all end, if it does?
The great thing about services like Deja (I still want to call it DejaNEWS) is that they provide a centralized location for searching archives.
The great thing about Usenet, in my opinion, is that it is distributed, and thus free.
With all the talk about Usenet dying, it seems that maybe what is needed is just a better front-end. You can post to Usenet from Deja, for example, and don't really need to know that its usenets. Imagine hundreds of sites that exist as frontends to usenet, but each provides a specialize service.
But that still doesn't address the problem of how to keep the content open. "E-Babble" sounds great to me, but such a catchy name somebody will probably trademark it, and then restrict the use of their content, and we'll all get upset because speech wants to be free, right?
;)
Besides, all news users believe that "The World Wide Web" *IS* the internet, right?
Not necessarily.
A law to that effect was passed in my state a few years ago. Everybody was supposed to fill out a special form as part of their state taxes, and send it in along with the taxes for stuff they bought via mail order.
I don't remember all the details of why, but it wasn't long before the law was repealed... So legally in my state there is no requirement to pay taxes on out of state purchases.
An interesting idea, but would it be profitable?
In other words, how much would someone really pay to use some of your CPU cycles, compared to your cost of running the machine - both the electricity to run the thing and the slight wear and tear.
I realize that most people are paying these costs anyway, especially if they leave their computers running all the time without power conservation techniques, but if we are going to try to raise money for good causes like save the earth it might be more effective to start a compaign to simply utilize power saving features on your computer when you aren't using those CPU cycles.
Imagine how much good THAT might do...
The woman gets 60 cents, and the man who gets the other 40 cents is the TAX MAN... so the real man is left with zero!
Hey, I went to www.fire-fighters.org, and suddenly I smelled smoke. Yikes! My computer is on fire! ;-)
Smells could also be used instead of censorware. "Hrm, something smells like... Alright, who's been visiting pron sites again!!!"
Marv
Can you tell me what polymorphic lambda-calculus is, and where I might find an good introduction to it? It sounds interesting, and I was not aware that there is another calculus besides the one you learn in math class.
Thanks!
I did some digging and found this url:
http://www.trudelgroup.com/pwars.htm
Now normally I am a bit suspicious about people who advocate conspiracy theories and the like, but in this case the point of view advocated at the above site - namely that the patent office is under attack by legislation by congress - might be interesting to us geeks, specifically because if "they" are right, congress has actually passed a bill through the house which would get rid of some of our headaches over patents.
These guys don't want that, but we do, at least to some extent perhaps. Maybe this is worth looking into and supporting (instead of resisting, as the page at the URL suggests).
Great, I'm moving up there tommorrow! ;-)
;)
Sorry, it's been a slow day on Slashdot today. I read this story from a couple different sources in the past couple days so I was actually suprised to see the Slashdot headline - I thought it was old news already.
Wouldn't it be great if front page stories could be moderated?
Now if they made the site worth viewing in the first place, everything would be groovy with fox.com.
Score: -1 (Flamebait)
Heh.
With all due respect for the deceased, how did South Park make her life better? How does irreverence and "lowest common denominator" humor make anybody's life?
I'm not saying that we should infringe on anybody's rights, and my reasons for disliking South Park have nothing to do with Christianty which itself is something I have many criticisms of.
I'm not saying something has happened here which is unique, either. Lots of people commit suicide every year, so why should this instance be special somehow, other than the person being famous?
But if we really care and want to prevent suicides (and maybe we don't) perhaps there should be more dialog about the conditions which contribute to a person's decision to end their own life. Obviously a person who is happy and at peace with themselves and their life will not kill themselves.
What influences cause a person to say "Life sucks" and therefore logically conclude that the right choice is "I want to end it"? Aren't they the same influences that show a lack of respect for life in a myriad of ways?
Marv
The poll on the same page asks if "Win95/98 are stable". Ironically, when I click to see the result, I keep getting a javascript error and can't see the poll results.
Marv
At this URL the article mentions that Pioneer 10 will reach the stars of the constellation Taurus in about three million years.
At this URL is presented a star chart showing what is supposed to be the course of an unknown tenth planet in the solar system, which according to this page will pass by the earth in 2003.
What is interesting is that the current location of this "Planet X" is given to be just above Orion, in the leftmost portion of Taurus. Does anybody have more detailed information on exactly where in Taurus Pioneer 10 is, so this correlation could be checked closer?
Marv
Try this URL instead...
Probably slightly off topic, but... talk about strict...
Tonga law prohibits any person from appearing in a public without a shirt.
(reference: Kingdom of Tonga - Facts)
Just wear a disguise next time you go to the DMV to get your picture taken ;-)
Ok, so it's got at 12" LCD touch screen. That means absolutely nothing to me. What's the resolution on it? VGA? SVGA? XGA? Those are well defined standards each of which has an exact resolution.
:-)
Laptop makers routinely do the same thing and it really bugs me. Personally, I'm waiting for a portable device with (at least) an 24-bit color XGA touchscreen.
Please?
Marv
Good point. I haven't posted any comments here for a while, and as far as I can remember all the comments I made were either moderated up or not at all, except for the last one, which was moderated down. (for being redundant if I remember correct, heck its hard to not be when there are tons of posts and you dont have time to read every since thread and subthread before posting :-)
But, somehow, my karma is at -1! It almost makes me want to start over and get a new account, because once your moderation drops low enough, how are you ever going to get back up if everyone has filtered out your comments, even if they are good. Especially if you are posting a nested comment such as this one, how many people are actually read it? Marv
the rest of us will just have to hold our ears as well-meaning Wall Street types pronounce Linux as "linex"
I hope that's how they pronounce it. I refuse to pronounce it the way everyone else seems to. (Lin-ux? reminds me of lint!) I prefer "Line-ix" anyday.
Cheers,
Marv
It's good that this articles is promoting thought and discussion on the subject. However since people have said that they wouldn't mind paying say, $1 or $2 for an electronic version of a CD for which they would pay $15-$20, why not just have the artists sell direct to the public for a buck or too?
It seems to me that the primary concern should be eliminating overhead (the middleman, etc.) to reduce costs and increase production. Keep in mind that copying a CD over the internet is NOT free, all that bandwidth has to be paid for. Also, promoting your work is a lot harder without a "big name" to decide whether they think you are good enough to "make it big" (and this is really how they keep prices so high, by limiting the supply!), but the internet provides the potential for significant cost savings.
The bottom line may be that a $15 CD will really only be $5 instead of $1 as mentioned. The real costs incurred for promotion and duplication do have to be paid, and an artist that is wildly popular deserves a bigger payback, but definitely the Internet provides the potential for cost cutting.
Of course, those that resist are the ones who have the most to lose... just like the old candlemakers when the light bulb came along. But where are they now?
Marv
...does bill gates birthday co-inciede with roswell does it?
Bill Gates was born on October 28, 1955.
The Roswell crash occured in early July, 1947. (The actual crash was reported in a newspaper on July 8 but a rancher claimed finding debris on July 4.) So let's see who was born around that time period:
July 3, 1947 Dave Berry
July 9, 1947 O J Simpson
July 18, 1947 Steve Forbes
July 24, 1947 Robert Hayes
(Ok, the last one is a bit late, but hey, he played an alien in the TV Series Starman)
Marv