I was thinking more along the lines of "generally unknown to the casual user," but the general idea is pretty much the same.
I mean, don't get me wrong, I think supporting the local LUG is a great idea, but I believe the parent post's point was that peer support for DOS, Windows and the Mac OS developed independenty of user groups. Until Joe Average can ask someone at work how to change the image on his desktop rather than having to go to the guy with the long gray beard, suspenders and "I (heart) Penguins" T-shirt who belongs to the local LUG, general support for Linux will lag behind Windows.
While I agree with you that dropping the Morse requirement by itself won't signal the end of using Morse on the bands, it will signal the beginning of the end. Without the license requirement, what incentive is there to learn and use Morse? It will just become another "legacy" mode, a reminder of the good old days of hamming, sort of like AM.
And, as those who have used and loved it move on to other pursuits, pass away or whatever, the number of CW operators is going to drop until there will be no further justification for keeping the large portions of the bands that are currently reserved for CW. Maybe they will be transitioned to "digital media" segments to include PSK-31 and other digital modes, but more likely there will be small (~50 kHz) windows for "digital" modes and the rest of the bands will be given over to voice.
I think it's inevitable, just like the changes when spark gave way to CW or AM to SSB. And in a way it's too bad, because when you get right down to it, voice is great and digital modes are great (use 'em myself when I get the chance), but the big advantage of Morse code is its minimalism. You only need an oscillator and an antenna to get a signal on the air, and your ears and a receiver to decode it on the other end. There's something cool about knowing that when the meteor hits, you could head up into the hills in Oregon with one of Wes Hayward's CW transceivers the size of a roll of quarters, an antenna and a pack of batteries, and be on the air looking for other survivors in a matter of hours.
I say, it was a good show. Not an outstanding show, but watchable, and IMHO it could have become a niche favorite a la Buffy had the PHBs at Fox given it the chance.
The problem with a show like Firely is, you can't tell six episodes into the series whether it's going to find its audience. The other problem is, if it doesn't find its audience within those six shows, it gets cut faster than you can say "Winter replacement."
I was going to post an entry about "Jesus feet," big blocks of Styrofoam you can use to walk on water, but I can't find them on the Web. All the references to "Jesus feet" on Google seem to have some sort of religious slant to them.
Ah, well I would have missed that part then, because I haven't yet seen the movie.
One of the great things about Stargate SG-1 is that the writers aren't afraid to have Sam say "I don't know how it works" when the team comes across an alien artifact, rather than making up some kind of technobabble for her to spout.
In fact, pretty much any Marvel-influenced movie is a special case. I mean, c'mon, even when I was a kid I had some vague idea that people didn't really turn green and get musclebound when they got mad, or that Angel would have had to have had hollow bones and pectoral muscles roughly the size of a Buick to actually fly with those wings of his.
Science fiction is about the STORY, not about the effects. Sure, it's better if the science behind it is more solid, but the thing that makes science fiction good is the plot and characterization, not the science. Really, all the science is is a device to allow us to ask the basic question behind science fiction, "What if . . . "
If the story's enjoyable it's much easier to willingly suspend disbelief and let yourself think, for a few minutes at least, that a guy can shoot webs out of his wrists or death rays out of his eyeballs. We all (well, most of us) overlooked "made the Kessel run in twelve parsecs" and the explosions in space, because we thought the story behind Star Wars was so much fun. (On the other hand, if a movie otherwise stinks, the flashiest special effects aren't going to save it, and any recognizably bad science is just going to make such a movie more laughable.)
"And electrons trapped in the middle layer were excited by light to create a quantum logical gate with four states."
Yeah, and those four states are Mississippi, Utah, New Jersey and North Dakota. Which make this story weird, because I can't even see an electron getting excited about being in one of those four states.
Perhaps, but Shaw disliked them, and somehow through sheer force of personality put "Mr" and "Mrs" without the periods into common usage. Do a Google search for "Mr Blair" for instance and you'll see that the British sites like the Guardian don't use the period, while American sites do.
Proper according to who? Or whom? Proper British English, perhaps, but as H. L. Mencken pointed out over 80 years ago, there is an American language different from British English. "Flavor" is proper American English.
Oh, I forgot to mention that this "flavor" thing was all Noah Webster's fault. He didn't like the "our" endings, so he conveniently dropped them from his dictionary. Since his was the drictionary that was used in America in its formative years (early 19th century), his was the spelling that was learnt. Er, learned. Occasionally a single individual can have that effect. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe it was George Bernard Shaw who got the period removed from "Mr.", "Mrs." and the like in Britain.
As for France . . . yep, and it seems like revolution was one of our first exports. <grin>
in English, and not dictated by some zealous national linguistic academy (* koff koff France *). So in the Commonwealth countries we have "flavour," and in the US we have "flavor". In Enghald it's "labour," over here it's "labor."
So, let's accept that both spellings are correct, and not get our panties in an uproaur over this.
This is so far from K&R it's sacrelige to even make the comparison. Shame on you.
Um, the reviewer was comparing K&R to "Programming Perl" -- a/k/a "The Camel Book" -- not to the book being reviewed. Which is a fair comparison in that both books pretty much define the language in question.
Normally I don't respond to ACs, but this post was so short-sighted and off the mark, misses the point so completely, that I had to respond:
It doesn't matter what the minimum is. This is a monkeywrench job, not a license compliance issue. You don't even have to be actually streaming songs for it to work. (In fact I would be prone to say "This is my royalty payment for playing "Yummy, Yummy, Yummy, I've Got Love In My Tummy" by the Ohio Fruitgum Company at 9:58 AM on July 11, 2003 on streaming server " and then give them the IP address for one of AOL's proxy servers. When, of course, I had done no such thing.) You're trying to make their job more difficult, not facilitate or play along with them. That's what "monkeywrenching" means.
By hopefully thousands of people sending them checks for seven cents at a time:
- You force a human being to open every single one of them to find out what it is, which wastes the RIAA's time and money. Especially if your payments are of no use to them.
- You're making a point about their royalty system.
- If you're smart you get the press to cover this to get the RIAA issue in front of normal everyday sheep^H^H^H^H^Hpeople.
Even if you're a small webcaster who wants to comply with their licensing, you can still send them your royalty payments seven cents, or a dollar, at a time. Sure it will cost you money, but I'm sure opening over 28,000 envelopes from you will cost them even more. I'm reminded of a fellow who once showed up at an IRS office demanding to pay his taxes -- tens of thousands of dollars, if I remember right -- in nickels. At first the IRS wouln't take the payment, so he re-appeared with his lawyer who said yes indeed, they did have to take the payment. The story may be apocryphal, but the thought of the IRS having to count all those nickels -- just like the thought of the RIAA processing a blizzard of almost, but not quite worthless, checks -- amuses me.
Set up your streaming web server, and pick a song. Any song, preferably a long one. "Tubular Bells, Part 1" is a good choice, and runs about 24 minutes so you could play it 60 times a day. Every day.
100,000 people would probably tune in at least once, more for the novelty value than that they like Mike Oldfield's work if I'm guessing right. Then you dutifully send your check to the RIAA . . . for seven cents.
Actually, if you were into that sort of thing, you could probably run an accounting DOS on them by paying your royalties, seven cents at a time. Make sure it's a check, because those take a certain amount of work to process. Or better yet, pay by credit card, seven cents at a time. MasterVisa charges a certain amount to process a credit card transaction, and it's got to be more than seven cents. (Even if it doesn't if you do it by mail you have to have someone physically open the envelope and at least look at the letter, which takes time and money. And you would, of course want to send it by letter.)
If people really want to peeve the RIAA a certain amount of old-fashioned monkeywrenching might do the job better than an elaborate high-tech solution.
Disclaimer: This post for educational and entertainment purposes only. Do not try this at home unless you are a trained professional, and probably not even then. I will under no circumstances be liable for any monetary damage this causes you, including the seven cents you're out. Close cover before striking. Your mileage may vary. The management is not responsible.
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Of course, the story is quick to state that the whole study was funded and commissioned by our favorite Redmond, WA based software giant.
You take that back. I had nothing whatever to do with this.
SCO Director Blake Stowell said the company is willing to negotiate pricing
Here in America we don't negotiate with terrorists.
And the local LUG is what? Chopped liver?
I was thinking more along the lines of "generally unknown to the casual user," but the general idea is pretty much the same.
I mean, don't get me wrong, I think supporting the local LUG is a great idea, but I believe the parent post's point was that peer support for DOS, Windows and the Mac OS developed independenty of user groups. Until Joe Average can ask someone at work how to change the image on his desktop rather than having to go to the guy with the long gray beard, suspenders and "I (heart) Penguins" T-shirt who belongs to the local LUG, general support for Linux will lag behind Windows.
While I agree with you that dropping the Morse requirement by itself won't signal the end of using Morse on the bands, it will signal the beginning of the end. Without the license requirement, what incentive is there to learn and use Morse? It will just become another "legacy" mode, a reminder of the good old days of hamming, sort of like AM.
And, as those who have used and loved it move on to other pursuits, pass away or whatever, the number of CW operators is going to drop until there will be no further justification for keeping the large portions of the bands that are currently reserved for CW. Maybe they will be transitioned to "digital media" segments to include PSK-31 and other digital modes, but more likely there will be small (~50 kHz) windows for "digital" modes and the rest of the bands will be given over to voice.
I think it's inevitable, just like the changes when spark gave way to CW or AM to SSB. And in a way it's too bad, because when you get right down to it, voice is great and digital modes are great (use 'em myself when I get the chance), but the big advantage of Morse code is its minimalism. You only need an oscillator and an antenna to get a signal on the air, and your ears and a receiver to decode it on the other end. There's something cool about knowing that when the meteor hits, you could head up into the hills in Oregon with one of Wes Hayward's CW transceivers the size of a roll of quarters, an antenna and a pack of batteries, and be on the air looking for other survivors in a matter of hours.
Firefly was not a good show.
Sez you.
I say, it was a good show. Not an outstanding show, but watchable, and IMHO it could have become a niche favorite a la Buffy had the PHBs at Fox given it the chance.
The problem with a show like Firely is, you can't tell six episodes into the series whether it's going to find its audience. The other problem is, if it doesn't find its audience within those six shows, it gets cut faster than you can say "Winter replacement."
The world has no idea what Zaurus and DeCSS are. In fact the "world" is so far just barely aware of Linux.
That aside, your point is well taken.
Imagine a 20-stone, oval-cut Beowulf cluster of these.
(I should be ashamed of myself for that, but I'm not.)
I was going to post an entry about "Jesus feet," big blocks of Styrofoam you can use to walk on water, but I can't find them on the Web. All the references to "Jesus feet" on Google seem to have some sort of religious slant to them.
Ah, well I would have missed that part then, because I haven't yet seen the movie.
One of the great things about Stargate SG-1 is that the writers aren't afraid to have Sam say "I don't know how it works" when the team comes across an alien artifact, rather than making up some kind of technobabble for her to spout.
In fact, pretty much any Marvel-influenced movie is a special case. I mean, c'mon, even when I was a kid I had some vague idea that people didn't really turn green and get musclebound when they got mad, or that Angel would have had to have had hollow bones and pectoral muscles roughly the size of a Buick to actually fly with those wings of his.
Science fiction is about the STORY, not about the effects. Sure, it's better if the science behind it is more solid, but the thing that makes science fiction good is the plot and characterization, not the science. Really, all the science is is a device to allow us to ask the basic question behind science fiction, "What if . . . "
If the story's enjoyable it's much easier to willingly suspend disbelief and let yourself think, for a few minutes at least, that a guy can shoot webs out of his wrists or death rays out of his eyeballs. We all (well, most of us) overlooked "made the Kessel run in twelve parsecs" and the explosions in space, because we thought the story behind Star Wars was so much fun. (On the other hand, if a movie otherwise stinks, the flashiest special effects aren't going to save it, and any recognizably bad science is just going to make such a movie more laughable.)
"I would like you to know that I am sitting here in the smallest room in the house.
I have your latest press release in front of me.
Soon it will be behind me."
(Shamelessly ripped off from either Max Reger or George Bernard Shaw, depending on who you ask.)
I don't think SCO is champing at the bit to sue every customer. I don't think the recording industry is champing at the bit to sue every customer.
I can't decide whether I don't think you're paying attention or whether I don't think you're using the same reality we are. Maybe both.
I say we just design and create some integrated circuits composed of dozens of very tiny lava lamps.
"And electrons trapped in the middle layer were excited by light to create a quantum logical gate with four states."
Yeah, and those four states are Mississippi, Utah, New Jersey and North Dakota. Which make this story weird, because I can't even see an electron getting excited about being in one of those four states.
(Yeah, I know, someone had to say it)
Perhaps, but Shaw disliked them, and somehow through sheer force of personality put "Mr" and "Mrs" without the periods into common usage. Do a Google search for "Mr Blair" for instance and you'll see that the British sites like the Guardian don't use the period, while American sites do.
Proper according to who? Or whom? Proper British English, perhaps, but as H. L. Mencken pointed out over 80 years ago, there is an American language different from British English. "Flavor" is proper American English.
Oh, I forgot to mention that this "flavor" thing was all Noah Webster's fault. He didn't like the "our" endings, so he conveniently dropped them from his dictionary. Since his was the drictionary that was used in America in its formative years (early 19th century), his was the spelling that was learnt. Er, learned. Occasionally a single individual can have that effect. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe it was George Bernard Shaw who got the period removed from "Mr.", "Mrs." and the like in Britain.
As for France . . . yep, and it seems like revolution was one of our first exports. <grin>
in English, and not dictated by some zealous national linguistic academy (* koff koff France *). So in the Commonwealth countries we have "flavour," and in the US we have "flavor". In Enghald it's "labour," over here it's "labor."
So, let's accept that both spellings are correct, and not get our panties in an uproaur over this.
I don't know if it's the first, but it's gonna be the biggest.
Hey wait a minute, there's something odd about this story . . .
Oh yeah, I know what it is. No mention of SCO.
Or, do what I did.
1. Set your Athlon XP 2000+ box up with Gentoo
2. Optimize everything for the Athlon
3. Set out a plate of milk and cookies.
4. Start the openoffice emerge running
5. Go to bed
In the morning the milk and cookies will be gone and the OpenOffice elves will have left you a copy of OpenOffice, tailored to your machine.
This is so far from K&R it's sacrelige to even make the comparison. Shame on you.
Um, the reviewer was comparing K&R to "Programming Perl" -- a/k/a "The Camel Book" -- not to the book being reviewed. Which is a fair comparison in that both books pretty much define the language in question.
The German legal system is refreshingly weird
As opposed to the weirdness of the American legal system, which we've all grown used to.
Hi, my name is Blotty! What would you like to do?
Choose a password?
Let me help you choose one?
Normally I don't respond to ACs, but this post was so short-sighted and off the mark, misses the point so completely, that I had to respond:
It doesn't matter what the minimum is. This is a monkeywrench job, not a license compliance issue. You don't even have to be actually streaming songs for it to work. (In fact I would be prone to say "This is my royalty payment for playing "Yummy, Yummy, Yummy, I've Got Love In My Tummy" by the Ohio Fruitgum Company at 9:58 AM on July 11, 2003 on streaming server " and then give them the IP address for one of AOL's proxy servers. When, of course, I had done no such thing.) You're trying to make their job more difficult, not facilitate or play along with them. That's what "monkeywrenching" means.
By hopefully thousands of people sending them checks for seven cents at a time:
- You force a human being to open every single one of them to find out what it is, which wastes the RIAA's time and money. Especially if your payments are of no use to them.
- You're making a point about their royalty system.
- If you're smart you get the press to cover this to get the RIAA issue in front of normal everyday sheep^H^H^H^H^Hpeople.
Even if you're a small webcaster who wants to comply with their licensing, you can still send them your royalty payments seven cents, or a dollar, at a time. Sure it will cost you money, but I'm sure opening over 28,000 envelopes from you will cost them even more. I'm reminded of a fellow who once showed up at an IRS office demanding to pay his taxes -- tens of thousands of dollars, if I remember right -- in nickels. At first the IRS wouln't take the payment, so he re-appeared with his lawyer who said yes indeed, they did have to take the payment. The story may be apocryphal, but the thought of the IRS having to count all those nickels -- just like the thought of the RIAA processing a blizzard of almost, but not quite worthless, checks -- amuses me.
Set up your streaming web server, and pick a song. Any song, preferably a long one. "Tubular Bells, Part 1" is a good choice, and runs about 24 minutes so you could play it 60 times a day. Every day.
100,000 people would probably tune in at least once, more for the novelty value than that they like Mike Oldfield's work if I'm guessing right. Then you dutifully send your check to the RIAA . . . for seven cents.
Actually, if you were into that sort of thing, you could probably run an accounting DOS on them by paying your royalties, seven cents at a time. Make sure it's a check, because those take a certain amount of work to process. Or better yet, pay by credit card, seven cents at a time. MasterVisa charges a certain amount to process a credit card transaction, and it's got to be more than seven cents. (Even if it doesn't if you do it by mail you have to have someone physically open the envelope and at least look at the letter, which takes time and money. And you would, of course want to send it by letter.)
If people really want to peeve the RIAA a certain amount of old-fashioned monkeywrenching might do the job better than an elaborate high-tech solution.
Disclaimer: This post for educational and entertainment purposes only. Do not try this at home unless you are a trained professional, and probably not even then. I will under no circumstances be liable for any monetary damage this causes you, including the seven cents you're out. Close cover before striking. Your mileage may vary. The management is not responsible.