He intends to... (c) extort funds from future AI developers whose actual works might infringe his wonderful patent
You had quite rant going there, but I have to agree with that point. That seems to be the intent of far too many patents these days. Less about protecting a competitive position for your innovations and more about finding a way to get money from the people making the real products of innovation.
On that point and this too: Notice was omitted from thousands of copies of 32V; no contractual agreements require the licensees to affix notice;
I downloaded the 'ancient' unix files and was really surprised at the almost complete lack of (a) comments and (b) copyright notices.
Often I write code that's too sparsely commented, but, compared to the 32V source, my code reads like a damned book. Also, any code that I write gets a copyright notice right up at the top, whether it's code for my boss or just my stuff ("hello world" quality programs excluded).
It's intrigueing (and maybe a little scary) that old masters like Ritchie and Thompson wrote code in a style that might get me an official reprimand where I work.
I suspect he's using several tricks to discover correlate IP addresses to services providers, to businesses to physical locations and superimposing that data on a traditional map. The geographical info is available from many sources; the trick is tieing all that info together to form a coherent 'big picture'.
Some info on discovering the physical location of a IP address (or multiple IP's in order to form a physical route map) is available here
Interesting that there is an extension to DNS as described in RFC 1876 that allows an owner to identify the location of their host.
Bio, a prefix meaning life/living organisms tech, short for technology.
OK, we've got a handheld scanner that can be used to enhance/lengthen/improve a persons life. Seems like an application of techology to life/living organisms.
what's to stop the hijackers from busting the autopilot controls
Because I'm guessing they're talking about a layer which is actually integrated into the fly-by-wire controls. And you don't want to smash those, eh? Then neither a pilot nor an auto-pilot could control the danged thing.
I read your link and must say that I don't agree that it used solar-anything for propulsion. They made great use of gravitation to slingshot it around which was kind of a first at the time.
It *did* use a solar-blanket *to protect* it from on the side which faced the sun, but not for propulsion.
You're the 3rd or 4th person whose posts I've seen indicating a score of 36 or more. You achieve that score, you've got to be fairly "anti-social" according to that quiz. For the record, I answered fairly anti-socially per the quizz too.
So why are we being so social here at/.? Is this just a topic of specific interest or is it more because this is a discussion environment over which we control the information flow (ie not much 2 way, real-time interaction)?
If being able to remember phone numbers and birthdays is a disease, I'm the picture of health.
Interesting that I don't know how to characterize my memory. I forget some of the most obvious things all the time and I generally don't remember phone numbers or birthdates... unless I try to.
I think I have some mild form of porn^H^H^H^Hphotographic memory; if I visualize a phone number for a moment (and sometimes also attach a mnemonic association to a pattern in the numbers) I can recall it months or years later.
1 I prefer to do things with others rather than on my own. Strongly disagree. I can get along royally with damn near anyone, until I have to start working closely with someone on a mentally intensive project.
11 I find social situations easy. What social situations? Some, yes. Others, no. Being kind of shy, I'm uncomfortable with strangers, but I can be the life of the party with a small group of friends.
17 I enjoy social chitchat. Strongly agree.
22 I find it hard to make new friends. Hmm. I hardly ever try to make new friends. Don't really want them. If someone's making an effort to befriend me, I won't run them off. Just don't count on me to keep the friendship active.
38 I am good at social chitchat. Very. With my friends, family and co-workers, even strangers (but only if the stranger starts the chitchat).
44 I enjoy social occasions. Um, sure. I guess there are a lot of social situations I might not like, but I don't bother to attend. I feel very uncomfortable when I'm out of my depth... in a group of total strangers or a topical gathering about which I'm unfamiliar and without some familar anchor (wife, close friend, etc).
46 New situations make me anxious. Way too vague. Like the first time I travelled out to Europe? To Korea? to China? Yes. Maybe I'm being obtuse, but anything (like the above) that I can think of as a 'new situation' causes at least some anxiety in everyone.
47 I enjoy meeting new people. Very similar to Q22, the test is stacking the statistical deck here. Does it bother me to meet new people? Often a little self-conscious anxiety. I just don't often seek the company of others, so maybe I don't enjoy it.
48 I am a good diplomat. Yes! OK, I'm shy and don't really care to hang out with people outside my family. But I often understand people and their viewpoints. I can and often do get along very well with people... even though I may not care to. And no, that doesn't just mean I'm two-faced.
I'm pretty sure this quizz could be useful in developing some sort of a phsych profile, but diagnosing AS? Maybe only in extreme cases. I think the questions need to be re-thought.
Umm... what is "etheral" software? Did the article mean to say "ethereal"? If so, I still don't understand. Whether you like it/them or not, Microsoft's software products do, um, tangible things.
Perhaps the author meant to use the word ethereal as applied to software in general not being a physical product such as phones and access points and DVD players?
Regarding the issue of your proposal to allow copyright holders to respond to violators with the destruction of their property.
I suspect by now you've already received a fair amount of negative response to your comments. I wish to add my own.
I consider the act of destroying a copyright violator's personal property by the copyright holder to be analogous with me having the right to go into my neighbor's home and smash his stereo equipment because he refuses to turn down/off his music while I am trying to sleep. Stillwater, Oklahoma has a law/ordinance against excessive noise in residential areas and I can call the police if my neighbor is violating that ordinance. If he continues to refuse to comply, he may be fined or worse. If I destroyed his personal property to prevent his violation, I would be liable for the damages, be fined and possibly jailed. This is as it should be.
I have been a professional software developer for over 14 years. My livelihood is derived directly from licensing copyrighted software to other people. If they copy and use my software without paying, I lose; however, our constitution says that I may not destroy or otherwise deprive another of his property *without due process*!
AND THIS IS AS IT SHOULD BE!
I hope you realize just how thoughtless and anti-constitutional your suggestions were. Please apply your future energies to more practical and legal solutions.
PS: In spite of (or perhaps because of) the RIAA's recent actions and the general S.O.P. of the recording industry with respect to treatment of their artists/content providers, expect a revolution in which musicians specifically and artists in general move to independent labels and means of content distribution. I believe this is happening already and will ultimately make the organizations which the RIAA represents nearly irrelevent in future copyright discussions. Do not treat their heavy-handed lobbying as a serious cause. They are scared because their business model is flawed in today's context, not merely because of flagrant copyright violation. Their business model cannot survive, but they desperately wish it to do so. If they can't change to meet the consumers' needs, they deserve to perish as a more appropriate model takes over.
I'd have to agree on the biology, but I might go further. As others have posted, where you need to go now depends on where you've been (what have you studied so far?).
Bioinformatics is a newish field and still defining itself. But there is a need for 'Bio IT' that covers the spectrum... from the basic grunt work of handling *huge* databases (and good user interfaces to them) in an efficient and useful way to ground-breaking chemical/molecular/organism modelling. I think the latter is where we'll make the most important advances to the science of understanding how organisms function, but none of that is possible without the former.
I also don't believe you need to waste time & money on a masters degree to do the grunt work; If you're aspiring to the high-end stuff, you should be focusing on Math, Biology and Chemistry, all in heavy doses. The necessary algorithms will likely be obvious from the math and chemistry in which immersed yourself.
Actually, I'd go for that one... or any help with the 4004/4040 processor.
I've got a 4040 processor that I'd like to design into a working computer as a novelty. In my research, I've come up with a dearth useful documentation for the chip. The best I've found so far is a list of the opcodes.
Alas, I had no need for BASIC of any kind in this system.
And, lastly, from the RHAS Agreement above: 4. REPORTING AND AUDIT. If Customer wishes to increase the number of Installed Servers, then Customer will purchase from Red Hat additional Services for each additional Installed Server.
To paraphrase, the product "Red Hat Advanced Server" is a service which, incidentally, includes a package of files on installation CDs. If you install the 'package', you must pay for it.
It is clear that they are selling a service, not a software license, but I agree that it gets a little fuzzy when you start talking about requiring the 'service' if you install the set of files.
Heh, regarding the first post, that sounds like something Slashdot would do. Post a story saying "Oh, somebody's challenging Red Hat's license claims but they're wrong so we'll post a story on it anyway."
The only thing that makes this funny is that it's Nugget.
It *is* interesting that it was nugget (of distributed.net fame and more) who asked the questions. Normally I'd have disregarded it completely, but, with his background, it did make me pause a bit. On review, I'd have to agree that he missed the mark.
Yeah. I started finding out about it around 2 or 3 weeks ago when I larted a spam email. Traceroute and whois at APNIC had showed conflicting info, so I asked about the legitimacy of ownership of a particular IP address in nanae. There I discovered an on-going discussion on hijacked netblocks and was referred to NANOG.
At NANOG, the hijackings discussed are 3-fold: netblocks, RIR handles and ASN's.
This is definitely the newest front in the fight against spam. The level of organization and the sheer audacity of the subversion of the network at a fundamental level is a little scary.
I think we're going to see some significant changes in (a) how network admins treat backbone routes and (b) how the RIRs treat netblock allocation.
(1) Official, legit way: become a member (fees required) of your RIR (Regional Internet Registry or something similar). Apply for assignment of unallocated space. Example is this fee schedule from APNIC The downside here is that you can't get (and pay for) just a few addresses.
(2) Common, legit way: sign up for some kind of service package with an ISP and ask for however many IP addresses you want. You generally pay monthly or annually based on your service agreement and number of IP addresses. The downside here is that those IP addresses aren't really yours. Your ISP just let's you use them and handles the routing for you. In some cases, you ISP doesn't even 'own' them... their upstream just lets them use the IP addresses.
(3) Hijack them. (a) start announcing bogus routes and hope no one notices very soon. (b) Hijack a RIR (ARIN, RIPE, APNIC, etc) tech/admin handle for an unused or under utilized netblock and then start announcing routes (you're a little more likely to be trusted this way).
I don't think you understand. Spammers hijack the netblocks because network admins block email (and sometimes all) traffic from known spam IP addresses and netblocks. The spammers steal someone else's netblock to spew out their garbage. Then it's up to the rightful owners of the netblock to clear the collateral damage to their own networks and the spammers move on.
Look at this:
Spam supporting ISP ServInt is announcing routes for the netblock containing this IP: 203.25.208.131 traceroute shows that IP being handled by ServInt in Mclean, VA, USA.
That netblock belongs to:
inetnum: 203.25.208.0 - 203.25.223.255 netname: GREENWAY-AU country: AU
Nope. The SLC physically modifies the imager's tracking, thereby modifying what is imaged. It keeps the imager from missing data in its desired, rectilinear image path.
It is not a matter of diddling the image data to un-zig-zag it; without the SLC, the imager simply acquires the wrong data. Software *could* be utilized to interpolate and try to fill in the missing data at a lower resolution, but that would certainly leave a noticable zig-zag artifact of high-res diagonals filled between with lower res blurs.
It's hardware, man. If we every get a shuttle back in the sky, maybe they can do a fly-by and have an astronaut give it a thump on the way by.
Yep. After absorbing Rockwell and McDonnell-Douglas a few years ago, they're the USA's biggest (and damned near only) aero-space company. They've got 4 main categories of expendable launch vehicle: Delta II, III and IV and the relatively new SEA.
They're all over the map, geographically and product-wise. One of they're newest ventures is SeaLaunch, a joint, international deal to launch commercial geo-sync satellites from sea near the equator, saving fuel/increasing payload by taking the shortest route to orbit.
Hey they've even got a job opening for an F18 fighter pilot... in Kuwait.
Can people like me still learn to speak languages fluently?
Yes. Immersion is the most effective way and maybe the most stressfull way too (not necessarily a bad thing). I met an Aussie in the Guangxi provence in China. He spoke Chinese fluently. Turns out he started doing work in China in the mid-80's in the Gobi desert... not too many English speakers there. He basically had to learn Chinese in order to feed himself. He said that was a great motivator.
More practical is a style of language study called the Pimsleur Method. There is no reading involved, no written studies at all. Paul Pimsleur's premise is that you can learn a new language the same way you learned your first, by hearing, speaking and repetition. I bought the Mandarin Chinese 30 lesson set (for about US $350) and its worked pretty well for me. You can pick up sample packs at many local book/music stores that contain the first 6 or 8 lessons for a reasonable price that can be applied to the whole course purchase if it works for you.
Even so, you must use your new language or it will never set and/or you'll lose it.
Slashdot Mirror
He intends to... (c) extort funds from future AI developers whose actual works might infringe his wonderful patent
You had quite rant going there, but I have to agree with that point. That seems to be the intent of far too many patents these days. Less about protecting a competitive position for your innovations and more about finding a way to get money from the people making the real products of innovation.
On that point and this too:
Notice was omitted from thousands of copies of 32V; no contractual
agreements require the licensees to affix notice;
I downloaded the 'ancient' unix files and was really surprised at the almost complete lack of (a) comments and (b) copyright notices.
Often I write code that's too sparsely commented, but, compared to the 32V source, my code reads like a damned book. Also, any code that I write gets a copyright notice right up at the top, whether it's code for my boss or just my stuff ("hello world" quality programs excluded).
It's intrigueing (and maybe a little scary) that old masters like Ritchie and Thompson wrote code in a style that might get me an official reprimand where I work.
I suspect he's using several tricks to discover correlate IP addresses to services providers, to businesses to physical locations and superimposing that data on a traditional map. The geographical info is available from many sources; the trick is tieing all that info together to form a coherent 'big picture'.
Some info on discovering the physical location of a IP address (or multiple IP's in order to form a physical route map) is available here
Interesting that there is an extension to DNS as described in RFC 1876 that allows an owner to identify the location of their host.
Just what is a "killer biotech app" anyway!?
Hmmm. Let's take 'killer' in its original sense, mix in some bio-tech...
I don't think I want to be anywhere nearby when the next 'killer biotech' product is released
Bullpuckey.
Bio, a prefix meaning life/living organisms
tech, short for technology.
OK, we've got a handheld scanner that can be used to enhance/lengthen/improve a persons life. Seems like an application of techology to life/living organisms.
Biotech it is.
what's to stop the hijackers from busting the autopilot controls
Because I'm guessing they're talking about a layer which is actually integrated into the fly-by-wire controls. And you don't want to smash those, eh? Then neither a pilot nor an auto-pilot could control the danged thing.
I read your link and must say that I don't agree that it used solar-anything for propulsion. They made great use of gravitation to slingshot it around which was kind of a first at the time.
It *did* use a solar-blanket *to protect* it from on the side which faced the sun, but not for propulsion.
I could see this working well (size-wise) in embedded applications... if it had a little IO.
But that doesn't seem to be their target and there are already products (most notably PC/104Plus) that fit the bill quite nicely.
You're the 3rd or 4th person whose posts I've seen indicating a score of 36 or more. You achieve that score, you've got to be fairly "anti-social" according to that quiz. For the record, I answered fairly anti-socially per the quizz too.
/.? Is this just a topic of specific interest or is it more because this is a discussion environment over which we control the information flow (ie not much 2 way, real-time interaction)?
So why are we being so social here at
If being able to remember phone numbers and birthdays is a disease, I'm the picture of health.
Interesting that I don't know how to characterize my memory. I forget some of the most obvious things all the time and I generally don't remember phone numbers or birthdates... unless I try to.
I think I have some mild form of porn^H^H^H^Hphotographic memory; if I visualize a phone number for a moment (and sometimes also attach a mnemonic association to a pattern in the numbers) I can recall it months or years later.
I scored 24.
1 I prefer to do things with others rather than on my own.
Strongly disagree. I can get along royally with damn near anyone, until I have to start working closely with someone on a mentally intensive project.
11 I find social situations easy.
What social situations? Some, yes. Others, no. Being kind of shy, I'm uncomfortable with strangers, but I can be the life of the party with a small group of friends.
17 I enjoy social chitchat.
Strongly agree.
22 I find it hard to make new friends.
Hmm. I hardly ever try to make new friends. Don't really want them. If someone's making an effort to befriend me, I won't run them off. Just don't count on me to keep the friendship active.
38 I am good at social chitchat.
Very. With my friends, family and co-workers, even strangers (but only if the stranger starts the chitchat).
44 I enjoy social occasions.
Um, sure. I guess there are a lot of social situations I might not like, but I don't bother to attend. I feel very uncomfortable when I'm out of my depth... in a group of total strangers or a topical gathering about which I'm unfamiliar and without some familar anchor (wife, close friend, etc).
46 New situations make me anxious.
Way too vague. Like the first time I travelled out to Europe? To Korea? to China? Yes. Maybe I'm being obtuse, but anything (like the above) that I can think of as a 'new situation' causes at least some anxiety in everyone.
47 I enjoy meeting new people.
Very similar to Q22, the test is stacking the statistical deck here. Does it bother me to meet new people? Often a little self-conscious anxiety. I just don't often seek the company of others, so maybe I don't enjoy it.
48 I am a good diplomat.
Yes! OK, I'm shy and don't really care to hang out with people outside my family. But I often understand people and their viewpoints. I can and often do get along very well with people... even though I may not care to. And no, that doesn't just mean I'm two-faced.
I'm pretty sure this quizz could be useful in developing some sort of a phsych profile, but diagnosing AS? Maybe only in extreme cases. I think the questions need to be re-thought.
While Microsoft, which makes etheral software...
Umm... what is "etheral" software? Did the article mean to say "ethereal"? If so, I still don't understand. Whether you like it/them or not, Microsoft's software products do, um, tangible things.
Perhaps the author meant to use the word ethereal as applied to software in general not being a physical product such as phones and access points and DVD players?
Regarding the issue of your proposal to allow copyright holders to respond to violators with the destruction of their property.
I suspect by now you've already received a fair amount of negative response to your comments. I wish to add my own.
I consider the act of destroying a copyright violator's personal property by the copyright holder to be analogous with me having the right to go into my neighbor's home and smash his stereo equipment because he refuses to turn down/off his music while I am trying to sleep. Stillwater, Oklahoma has a law/ordinance against excessive noise in residential areas and I can call the police if my neighbor is violating that ordinance. If he continues to refuse to comply, he may be fined or worse. If I destroyed his personal property to prevent his violation, I would be liable for the damages, be fined and possibly jailed. This is as it should be.
I have been a professional software developer for over 14 years. My livelihood is derived directly from licensing copyrighted software to other people. If they copy and use my software without paying, I lose; however, our constitution says that I may not destroy or otherwise deprive another of his property *without due process*!
AND THIS IS AS IT SHOULD BE!
I hope you realize just how thoughtless and anti-constitutional your suggestions were. Please apply your future energies to more practical and legal solutions.
PS: In spite of (or perhaps because of) the RIAA's recent actions and the general S.O.P. of the recording industry with respect to treatment of their artists/content providers, expect a revolution in which musicians specifically and artists in general move to independent labels and means of content distribution. I believe this is happening already and will ultimately make the organizations which the RIAA represents nearly irrelevent in future copyright discussions. Do not treat their heavy-handed lobbying as a serious cause. They are scared because their business model is flawed in today's context, not merely because of flagrant copyright violation. Their business model cannot survive, but they desperately wish it to do so. If they can't change to meet the consumers' needs, they deserve to perish as a more appropriate model takes over.
I'd have to agree on the biology, but I might go further. As others have posted, where you need to go now depends on where you've been (what have you studied so far?).
Bioinformatics is a newish field and still defining itself. But there is a need for 'Bio IT' that covers the spectrum... from the basic grunt work of handling *huge* databases (and good user interfaces to them) in an efficient and useful way to ground-breaking chemical/molecular/organism modelling. I think the latter is where we'll make the most important advances to the science of understanding how organisms function, but none of that is possible without the former.
I also don't believe you need to waste time & money on a masters degree to do the grunt work; If you're aspiring to the high-end stuff, you should be focusing on Math, Biology and Chemistry, all in heavy doses. The necessary algorithms will likely be obvious from the math and chemistry in which immersed yourself.
"4004 Assembly Made Easy"
Actually, I'd go for that one... or any help with the 4004/4040 processor.
I've got a 4040 processor that I'd like to design into a working computer as a novelty. In my research, I've come up with a dearth useful documentation for the chip. The best I've found so far is a list of the opcodes.
Alas, I had no need for BASIC of any kind in this system.
Now, who owns CP/M?
Let's see...
CP/M was developed and marketed by DRI (Digital Research Inc.) DRI sold out to Novell. Novell sold all of DRI's stuff to Caldara.
From this link:
Caldera Inc. owns all trademark and copyright to CP/M
Now, what was the question?
As seen at dell,
Red Hat Linux AS 2.1 is supplied only as part of a SUBSCRIPTION service.
And from the Red Hat Advanced Server and Services Agreement: The term âoeInstalled Serversâ means the number of servers on which Customer installs Red Hat Linux Advanced Server.
And, lastly, from the RHAS Agreement above: 4. REPORTING AND AUDIT. If Customer wishes to increase the number of Installed Servers, then Customer will purchase from Red Hat additional Services for each additional Installed Server.
To paraphrase, the product "Red Hat Advanced Server" is a service which, incidentally, includes a package of files on installation CDs. If you install the 'package', you must pay for it.
It is clear that they are selling a service, not a software license, but I agree that it gets a little fuzzy when you start talking about requiring the 'service' if you install the set of files.
Ahhhh, whatever.
yeah, from the link at livejournal:
Heh, regarding the first post, that sounds like something Slashdot would do. Post a story saying "Oh, somebody's challenging Red Hat's license claims but they're wrong so we'll post a story on it anyway."
The only thing that makes this funny is that it's Nugget.
It *is* interesting that it was nugget (of distributed.net fame and more) who asked the questions. Normally I'd have disregarded it completely, but, with his background, it did make me pause a bit. On review, I'd have to agree that he missed the mark.
Yeah. I started finding out about it around 2 or 3 weeks ago when I larted a spam email. Traceroute and whois at APNIC had showed conflicting info, so I asked about the legitimacy of ownership of a particular IP address in nanae. There I discovered an on-going discussion on hijacked netblocks and was referred to NANOG.
At NANOG, the hijackings discussed are 3-fold: netblocks, RIR handles and ASN's.
This is definitely the newest front in the fight against spam. The level of organization and the sheer audacity of the subversion of the network at a fundamental level is a little scary.
I think we're going to see some significant changes in (a) how network admins treat backbone routes and (b) how the RIRs treat netblock allocation.
Serveral ways.
(1) Official, legit way: become a member (fees required) of your RIR (Regional Internet Registry or something similar). Apply for assignment of unallocated space. Example is this fee schedule from APNIC
The downside here is that you can't get (and pay for) just a few addresses.
(2) Common, legit way: sign up for some kind of service package with an ISP and ask for however many IP addresses you want. You generally pay monthly or annually based on your service agreement and number of IP addresses.
The downside here is that those IP addresses aren't really yours. Your ISP just let's you use them and handles the routing for you. In some cases, you ISP doesn't even 'own' them... their upstream just lets them use the IP addresses.
(3) Hijack them. (a) start announcing bogus routes and hope no one notices very soon. (b) Hijack a RIR (ARIN, RIPE, APNIC, etc) tech/admin handle for an unused or under utilized netblock and then start announcing routes (you're a little more likely to be trusted this way).
I don't think you understand. Spammers hijack the netblocks because network admins block email (and sometimes all) traffic from known spam IP addresses and netblocks. The spammers steal someone else's netblock to spew out their garbage. Then it's up to the rightful owners of the netblock to clear the collateral damage to their own networks and the spammers move on.
Look at this:
Spam supporting ISP ServInt is announcing routes for the netblock containing this IP: 203.25.208.131
traceroute shows that IP being handled by ServInt in Mclean, VA, USA.
That netblock belongs to:
inetnum: 203.25.208.0 - 203.25.223.255
netname: GREENWAY-AU
country: AU
descr: BRISBANE QLD
descr: AUSTRALIA 4000
a couple of weeks ago. Not this particular article, but a little write-up with some nice links (rejected, of course).
Links:
In your face hijacking
Current list of possible bogus bgp routes
Oh, well.
Nope. The SLC physically modifies the imager's tracking, thereby modifying what is imaged. It keeps the imager from missing data in its desired, rectilinear image path.
It is not a matter of diddling the image data to un-zig-zag it; without the SLC, the imager simply acquires the wrong data. Software *could* be utilized to interpolate and try to fill in the missing data at a lower resolution, but that would certainly leave a noticable zig-zag artifact of high-res diagonals filled between with lower res blurs.
It's hardware, man. If we every get a shuttle back in the sky, maybe they can do a fly-by and have an astronaut give it a thump on the way by.
Yep. After absorbing Rockwell and McDonnell-Douglas a few years ago, they're the USA's biggest (and damned near only) aero-space company. They've got 4 main categories of expendable launch vehicle: Delta II, III and IV and the relatively new SEA.
They're all over the map, geographically and product-wise. One of they're newest ventures is SeaLaunch, a joint, international deal to launch commercial geo-sync satellites from sea near the equator, saving fuel/increasing payload by taking the shortest route to orbit.
Hey they've even got a job opening for an F18 fighter pilot... in Kuwait.
Can people like me still learn to speak languages fluently?
Yes. Immersion is the most effective way and maybe the most stressfull way too (not necessarily a bad thing). I met an Aussie in the Guangxi provence in China. He spoke Chinese fluently. Turns out he started doing work in China in the mid-80's in the Gobi desert... not too many English speakers there. He basically had to learn Chinese in order to feed himself. He said that was a great motivator.
More practical is a style of language study called the Pimsleur Method. There is no reading involved, no written studies at all. Paul Pimsleur's premise is that you can learn a new language the same way you learned your first, by hearing, speaking and repetition. I bought the Mandarin Chinese 30 lesson set (for about US $350) and its worked pretty well for me. You can pick up sample packs at many local book/music stores that contain the first 6 or 8 lessons for a reasonable price that can be applied to the whole course purchase if it works for you.
Even so, you must use your new language or it will never set and/or you'll lose it.