I'm guessing you've already read everything in Salmoln of Doubt. Some wonderful geek essays in that too - his observations on the early mac are priceless.
Well really that depends on how disciplined you are in terms of installations/uninstallations and keeping the install tidy. Win2K on my Toshiba Tecra has been installed since early 2001.
Although the idea made it into reality in the Turnpike email client, which is probably the best email client for Windows that you haven't used, but which is so terribly marketed by Demon Internet that you might as well forget I said this right now.
Sorry - troll. I live here (Cape Town), most of my friends live here strangely enough - some in Jo'berg. Its a great country with some serious issues to contend with. Maybe you should talk about something you have some knowledge or experience of in future.
Try some CDs you've got now after 30 years of use and then tell me that vinyl sucks. Goddamn I've got CDs less than a year old that don't play properly (and yes, I do look after them... well mainly).
Yes, South Africa has some heavy duty problems to deal with post-apartheid: rape as you say is a huge problem (I have a close friend who has suffered), as is AIDS and having a neighbour like Zimbabwe. However there's a huge amount to be inspired about here too, the amount of grassroots enthusiasm for addressing the country's problems and building the future is outstanding.
As regards music - sure, Blues and Jazz came from African-Americans. Two things - firstly there's also a some incredibly beautiful music around in Africa itself, just you won't have been exposed to it as much. Just here in Cape Town there's some stunning music being produced by the likes of African Dope.
Secondly I wanted to make the point that if you are looking at the last 500 years of African history, and the contributions of Africa to the world you have to look beyond the geographical continent because vast numbers of Africans were kidnapped and taken elsewhere.
I think this shows a very limited understanding of Africa. Sure housing and water supply are important issues, here in South Africa as well as elsewhere on the continent. But many African countries also have a sophisticated infrastructure that is supported by IT. In many ways I regard dependence on Microsoft software as a form of cultural imperialism, and to some extent economic. We need to be free of fundamental dependence on foreign corporations.
That being said, anthropologists theorize that the reasons why the west has come to rule is bad weather and winter. In Africa, it was for a long time relatively feasible to live hand-to-mouth. They didn't have cold, cold winters where food got scarce. They didn't have overpopulation that required ever increasing levels of food output. Being too organized in terms of housing might have proven a disadvantage when there was confrontation. Lots of theories.
There's an excellent book on this subject called Guns, Germs and Steel by Jared Diamond. He goes through a whole series of hypotheses to debunk the popular myth that non-Europeans are biologically inferior (I know that wasn't what you were arguing).
It's more complex than just climate, for instance Diamond argues that the east-west orientation of the Eurasian landmass allowed agriculture to spread easily once it had developed in the "fertile crescent" of the middle east, whereas the north-south orientations of Africa and the Americas hindered any such migration due to significantly different climates as one moves away from or towards the equator.
I almost modded you down as a troll, but that wouldn't be fair - its a valid question.
Try blues, jazz, soul, rhythm'n'blues, reggae - all are deeply influenced by African styles and rhythms, and came largely from the Africans taken to the West as slaves.
And really that's just a start - a huge number of beneficial things have come out of my home country of South Africa - the inspiration and hope of the successful struggle over apartheid springs to mind - and many smaller normal contributions just like any decent country. And I'm sure people from other African states would argue the same.
Pah - maybe you were just trolling in which case - well done, I bit:)
Some philosophizing is that crass its true, but if you actually read Penrose or Zohar they're not playing off on the "indeterminacy" "mystical" cheap shot, they're actually examining how the underlying reality model of quantum physics does encourage a more holistic interconnected view of things where multiple effects are complexly related to multiple causes, at some times unbounded by traditional constraints on space and time.
To me it works against mysticism by drawing into rational frameworks of thought phenonema like consciousness which are impossible to analyse comprehensively within the framework of Newtonian mechanistic physics.
Like many "alternative" things being forced to exist on the fringes of mainstream thought attracts the kooks who habituate those fringes. So yeah some of its crass - read the good stuff.
Great. As practical applications of quantum physics become widespread (outside of silicon engineering plants) maybe the mindset shift accompanies it will really take root.
Maybe writers like Frijof Capra, Danah Zohar and even to some extent Roger Penrose will become less hokey in the mainstream view.
You only have to look around the world that is a product of mechanistic thinking - the simplistic cause and effect rationality of Bush's tyrades, the lack of dialectic thinking in politics in general to see that this shift is ripe in the making.
KEWL (Knowledge Environment for Web-based Learning) is a highly functional distance learning platform, incorporating course content management, assignment and marks tracking, and various communication tools. It was developed at the University of the Western Cape, South Africa - you can see it running at http://www.kewl.uwc.ac.za . The code is due to be released under GPL in the near future - the Sourceforge page is reserved but no code is there yet.
Re:www.informationwar.org - anti-war news filter s
on
The Hypermedia Hazard
·
· Score: 1
Thanks for the mod point, but not that informative given that we just got slashdotted... must remember don't post link to site on end of cable modem.
www.informationwar.org - anti-war news filter site
on
The Hypermedia Hazard
·
· Score: 2, Informative
There's a great source of anti-war articles, plus background information on American military involvement in the middle east and elsewhere at www.informationwar.org.
Well i guess I'm walking into your trap, but... have you tried MySQLfront? I'm guessing you have as it's not obscure, but what didn't you like about it?
For me it does almost everything I need out of a frontend (and certainly stomps mightily on the piece of shit that is MySQLGUI). And yes I went through all that evaluating too, and MySQLfront came up way on top - edit data, table design, server management etc etc
I noticed reading this article that free software is referred to as software libre (gratuit). That's an interesting twist on the problem of the word "free".
I can only conclude that Mr. Behlendorf is a Wired wannabe.
I actually remember in '93 or so as I was first getting into the web (the web note, not the Internet;-), wondering about mcdonalds.com and trying www.mcdonalds.com. At that time it pointed at hyperreal.org which was and is Brian's site.
Actually there's a lot more to GNU than tar and grep.
The GNU/Linux thing is more predicated on the likes of gcc and glibc than it is on tar and grep (great though they are).
Not that I really care about the GNU/Linux thing, 'Linux' is just a label in a lot of ways, and given most people's are running a 'Something Linux (Redhat, Debian, SuSE or whatever) this is even more the case.
Sorry, I don't see it. It seems to me that paying for support for free software is exactly the wrong economic incentive to create software.
The company in question profits almost completely by releasing a buggy, badly documented product.
Nonsense - because:
A) No-one will use it
B) Depends on the support contract. If it's per incident then maybe, but most I know of are of the yearly contract form. Then the less bugs in your product, the less support staff you need, the more money you make... Ipso facto.
Slashdot Mirror
Wonderful links, thanks.
I'm guessing you've already read everything in Salmoln of Doubt. Some wonderful geek essays in that too - his observations on the early mac are priceless.
Nope, miles last time I looked.
Well really that depends on how disciplined you are in terms of installations/uninstallations and keeping the install tidy. Win2K on my Toshiba Tecra has been installed since early 2001.
Although the idea made it into reality in the Turnpike email client, which is probably the best email client for Windows that you haven't used, but which is so terribly marketed by Demon Internet that you might as well forget I said this right now.
Finally something worth doing with my mod points and I'm not allowed.
Troll! (the article not the parent)
and in the unlikely event of a cart tipping over
I love this - do you work in PR?
Sorry - troll. I live here (Cape Town), most of my friends live here strangely enough - some in Jo'berg. Its a great country with some serious issues to contend with. Maybe you should talk about something you have some knowledge or experience of in future.
Try some CDs you've got now after 30 years of use and then tell me that vinyl sucks. Goddamn I've got CDs less than a year old that don't play properly (and yes, I do look after them... well mainly).
Yes, South Africa has some heavy duty problems to deal with post-apartheid: rape as you say is a huge problem (I have a close friend who has suffered), as is AIDS and having a neighbour like Zimbabwe. However there's a huge amount to be inspired about here too, the amount of grassroots enthusiasm for addressing the country's problems and building the future is outstanding.
As regards music - sure, Blues and Jazz came from African-Americans. Two things - firstly there's also a some incredibly beautiful music around in Africa itself, just you won't have been exposed to it as much. Just here in Cape Town there's some stunning music being produced by the likes of African Dope.
Secondly I wanted to make the point that if you are looking at the last 500 years of African history, and the contributions of Africa to the world you have to look beyond the geographical continent because vast numbers of Africans were kidnapped and taken elsewhere.
I think this shows a very limited understanding of Africa. Sure housing and water supply are important issues, here in South Africa as well as elsewhere on the continent. But many African countries also have a sophisticated infrastructure that is supported by IT. In many ways I regard dependence on Microsoft software as a form of cultural imperialism, and to some extent economic. We need to be free of fundamental dependence on foreign corporations.
That being said, anthropologists theorize that the reasons why the west has come to rule is bad weather and winter. In Africa, it was for a long time relatively feasible to live hand-to-mouth. They didn't have cold, cold winters where food got scarce. They didn't have overpopulation that required ever increasing levels of food output. Being too organized in terms of housing might have proven a disadvantage when there was confrontation. Lots of theories.
There's an excellent book on this subject called Guns, Germs and Steel by Jared Diamond. He goes through a whole series of hypotheses to debunk the popular myth that non-Europeans are biologically inferior (I know that wasn't what you were arguing).
It's more complex than just climate, for instance Diamond argues that the east-west orientation of the Eurasian landmass allowed agriculture to spread easily once it had developed in the "fertile crescent" of the middle east, whereas the north-south orientations of Africa and the Americas hindered any such migration due to significantly different climates as one moves away from or towards the equator.
I almost modded you down as a troll, but that wouldn't be fair - its a valid question.
:)
Try blues, jazz, soul, rhythm'n'blues, reggae - all are deeply influenced by African styles and rhythms, and came largely from the Africans taken to the West as slaves.
And really that's just a start - a huge number of beneficial things have come out of my home country of South Africa - the inspiration and hope of the successful struggle over apartheid springs to mind - and many smaller normal contributions just like any decent country. And I'm sure people from other African states would argue the same.
Pah - maybe you were just trolling in which case - well done, I bit
Some philosophizing is that crass its true, but if you actually read Penrose or Zohar they're not playing off on the "indeterminacy" "mystical" cheap shot, they're actually examining how the underlying reality model of quantum physics does encourage a more holistic interconnected view of things where multiple effects are complexly related to multiple causes, at some times unbounded by traditional constraints on space and time.
To me it works against mysticism by drawing into rational frameworks of thought phenonema like consciousness which are impossible to analyse comprehensively within the framework of Newtonian mechanistic physics.
Like many "alternative" things being forced to exist on the fringes of mainstream thought attracts the kooks who habituate those fringes. So yeah some of its crass - read the good stuff.
Great. As practical applications of quantum physics become widespread (outside of silicon engineering plants) maybe the mindset shift accompanies it will really take root.
Maybe writers like Frijof Capra, Danah Zohar and even to some extent Roger Penrose will become less hokey in the mainstream view.
You only have to look around the world that is a product of mechanistic thinking - the simplistic cause and effect rationality of Bush's tyrades, the lack of dialectic thinking in politics in general to see that this shift is ripe in the making.
KEWL (Knowledge Environment for Web-based Learning) is a highly functional distance learning platform, incorporating course content management, assignment and marks tracking, and various communication tools. It was developed at the University of the Western Cape, South Africa - you can see it running at http://www.kewl.uwc.ac.za . The code is due to be released under GPL in the near future - the Sourceforge page is reserved but no code is there yet.
Thanks for the mod point, but not that informative given that we just got slashdotted... must remember don't post link to site on end of cable modem.
There's a great source of anti-war articles, plus background information on American military involvement in the middle east and elsewhere at www.informationwar.org.
Indeed, I managed to change my mysql root password without realising it.
Shit though, nothing's perfect. But overall its damn useful.
(And it'd be nice if the guy opened the source, then we could fix bugs instead of complaining).
Well i guess I'm walking into your trap, but... have you tried MySQLfront? I'm guessing you have as it's not obscure, but what didn't you like about it?
For me it does almost everything I need out of a frontend (and certainly stomps mightily on the piece of shit that is MySQLGUI). And yes I went through all that evaluating too, and MySQLfront came up way on top - edit data, table design, server management etc etc
My spanish isn't good period.
My point was the article felt the need to point out that the software was free as in beer (gratuit) as well as free as in speech (libre).
I noticed reading this article that free software is referred to as software libre (gratuit). That's an interesting twist on the problem of the word "free".
Well that's what you'd expect from the dot in dot.com :-/
I actually remember in '93 or so as I was first getting into the web (the web note, not the Internet ;-), wondering about mcdonalds.com and trying www.mcdonalds.com. At that time it pointed at hyperreal.org which was and is Brian's site.
Actually there's a lot more to GNU than tar and grep.
The GNU/Linux thing is more predicated on the likes of gcc and glibc than it is on tar and grep (great though they are).
Not that I really care about the GNU/Linux thing, 'Linux' is just a label in a lot of ways, and given most people's are running a 'Something Linux (Redhat, Debian, SuSE or whatever) this is even more the case.
A) No-one will use it
B) Depends on the support contract. If it's per incident then maybe, but most I know of are of the yearly contract form. Then the less bugs in your product, the less support staff you need, the more money you make... Ipso facto.