Reminds me of my mom who used to hang the clothes out to dry in the sun's UV. Now we'll do that for our chips. Clothes line technology will have new life!
(complete with authentic terrible grammar and misspellings!)
From DR CHARLES PIEDO
Auditing and acounting unit
International bank of Africa
Attn: JOHN SMITH
I am DR CHARLES PIEDO, the director in charge of auditing and accounting section of international bank of Africa Lome-Togo in west Africa with due respect and regards.
During our investigation and audting in this bank, my department came across a very huge number of black DS's belonging to a deceased person who died on November 1997 in a plane crash and have been sitting dormant in his account with this bank without any claim of the fund in our custody either from his family or relation before our discovery to this development.
Meanwhile all the whole arrangement to put claim over this equipment as the bonafide next of kin to the deceased, get the required approval and transfer this money to a foriegn account has been put in place and directives and needed information will be relayed to you as soon as you indicate your intrest and willingness to assist us and also benefit your self to this great business opportunity.
I will not fail to inform you that this transaction is 100% risk free. On smoth conclusion of this transaction, you will be entitiled to 30% of the total sum as gratification, while 10% will be set aside to take care of expenses that may arise during the time of transfer.
No, by far the worst engineering mistake was the f-er who designed my date Mary Swansons impossible-to-remove-in-a-car bra clasps in 1989. I was totally going to score that night but the stupid thing wouldn't come off and killed the moment.
Today, found in old shelving in an empty cave-like room were found thousands of little paper books from the late 20th century. Many are in very fragile, but still readable forms. Scholars are exstatic at the find. "It will provide us with unbelievable amounts of knowledge about our development during the peoples of the late 20th century". Scholars are expecting to spend the next 5-10 years cataloging and converting the information from these tomes to learn about our early ancestors.
Curiously, there were some small electronic devices with primitive displays found with the books. The storage mediums degraded centuries ago and all the non-volatile storage was lost. On top of that, there seems to have been some sort of primitive cryptography which has made analysis very difficult. "It's unclear what purpose these devices played, and it is strange they would garble the data in such a simplistic and easily broken method by today's standards. Also, they seem to rely on some sort of authentication system which has long been lost. We may never know what they were for or contained."
If I had mod points, you get all of them. Since when is the distribution and support model NOT a key part of purchasing something??
If Toyota sold most people cars the way OSS supports it's customers, you'd get a mostly assembled car (assembled only because they finally decided to do so after Nissan, Honda, and everyone else did and you'd still need to tweak it a lot first thing). You'd not really be able to come back to the dealer after that, but here are some nice news groups from other buyers to go ask questions on to figure out how to change the oil/etc - and maybe you'll get an answer if someone feels like it. You might even get one of the original developers, but they have to hide behind tons of filters to keep away the random hordes. There's no warranty, no phone support to really speak of, and the you'll have to get all your help from the interesting personailties of the other users can be as equally helpful as elitist/idiots/zealots. If you have a deadline to get somewhere and the car breaks down, I hope you have a toolbox in the trunk. Any design flaws might get fix when it's convenient in our time or in the 'next rev'. No guarantees on anything in the car and no path of accountable redress if something goes horribly wrong or it kills someone. Ready to drive?
Reality check: 95% of your parents, friends, etc want a toaster distribution model. You take it home, plug it in, and it works. You have a little button to start it and a knob to control darkness. They don't care about anything else because they have lives and want to do the things they love - teaching, raising children, selling couches, etc (NOT about configuring their DHCP). Witness Apple designs and how wildy succeful it is. Yes, it isn't often the 'best' solution (iPod certainly isn't), but most people don't care. It does what they want.
Thank you BlueZ3 for giving us the user's and the view from real teachers. THEY are who our tools are written for - or is it just for ourselves?
Dang, why the heck do people not understand this simple concept? The whole world *is* open source - already - right now. You can go out and create whatever the heck you want and distribute it any way you want already. I, for one, enjoying doing that in an environment in which my contributions are rewarded on a regular basis with a guaranteed supply of 'green paper', retirement fund matching, and medical/dental coverage. Also, I happen to enjoy creating my freely distributed programs written for windows environments too. Nothing stops me. Not even GPL.
Grow up and stop this incessant slashdot bitching about your 'oppressed' state and create. If you can do so much better - go do it and shut the opposition up. But don't dedicate your life to complaining about how others distribution models and (gasp) sales are stopping people from using your invention; or even more lame, copying MS/Apple/etc ideas with "Oh yeah, well I can do that better and for free." It's coming up with the idea first - that's were growth, change, and newness happens. I for one create with the tools that work best.
Oh, I seriously have to disagree. Each raindrop doesn't think it's responsibile for the flood either.
I used to write web plugins a number of years back. One of those companies (name removed - but odds are 2 out of 3 that you have it installed on your machine right now) had to do discovery of some of the hardware to see if it could even run (video capabilities, 2d and 3d capabilities, sound, etc). Though they were reputable and never sold that information, the developers that we were working with at that company said they could make far more money just selling the information about the average internet-connected computers configuration to marketers and consulting companies than they did from their core business. In fact, they were constantly being offered money for it. These guys were smart and knew that if they sold that info, it could destroy their rep (can you say RealAudio) They used it solely internally so they could target capabilities and new features; but that information would have been worth millions. Witness the eleventy-million 'free' browsing toolbars. Guess how they keep the lights on?
In the real world of commercial products, in order to secure funding to build something you need to know if it will return someone's investment (aka: 'sell a real thing'). So you need to know who might buy it, how much they'd pay, how many people would buy it, etc. In order to know your target audience - you must do research and research costs real money. Don't underestimate the lengths companies will go to get this sort of info.
This guy is more likely to make a killing that not - if he can do it right.
Amen brother.
What the heck!? 99% of them look like they were designed in MS Paint for God's sake - one of them even has a picture of his kid sleeping on a church pew! Doesn't anyone know that showing others pictures of your kid is the #1 most annoying thing ever? The only thing most of the designs are missing are lots of magenta, cyan, and flashing text. Look at the designs of Adobe and Macromedia boxes, then come back. The gimp is living up to it's name on this front...
1. Observation: There's a lot of different species out there.
2. Hypothesis: Some "intelligent designer" must of altered the species to allow them to survive in their environment.
3. Ummmm....
What comes next? well duuuhhhhh!
4. PROFIT!
What could be more scientific than that? We did it all thru the 90's...
What'll be even funner is when the aliens that pick up our probes decode our communications - then come down to earth speaking DES.
At least any hacker will be able to crack it in a few hours by then...
Yeah, we all thought it was bad when the teenage kids would go into Radio Shack and 'hack' the backgrounds/settings/sounds/etc while resetting passwords on the windows computers they sold - imagine them wandering up and down the aisles with a jtag cable hanging out of their backpacks...
It'll be a whole new understanding for 'packet' security after that...
I'm really glad that none of that un-ethical medical behavior that 'religious nuts' were worried about has happen. This will most likely set the case of trusting in the ethics of scientific work on back a bit...
"You cannot use people as a means to an end" - Kant
Yes, this element O2 or 'Oxygen' is a hazard to the environment! I can't believe they just let that stuff leak out - just another example of our tax dollars wasted at Nasa. Free O2 (or Oxygen in laymens terms) is corrosive and does millions of dollars of damage each year all over this country! This is especially true when it comes into contact with any bare metal of your car in the front yard on blocks. We need to have this stuff regulated or banned or both - not to mention that dihydrogen monoxide mentioned above.
I'm founding the PLF - Pole Liberation Front. We're gathering funds right now to have people fly up and we'll tie ourselves to this marvelous magnetic pole to make sure that it isn't continnual exploited by economically and class oppressive multi-national corporations bend solely on profit. They abuse the natural energies of the pole for their crude navigation. Military regimes use this natural resource that belongs to all of us to aim murderous weapons, and weekend hikers that steal it's power with tiny metal rods that direct them where to tramp and destroy our natural world. We're willing to die for our cause, we just need your support.
Quotes from recent visitors:
"You can feel it's natural energies pouring out and bathing our world."
"Its a shame this resource is abused by so many"
"Everyone should take a trip up here to see this invisible magnetic phenomenon!"
"Shit, Polar bear - run!"
Slashdot Mirror
http://www.gimp.org/contest/
Reminds me of my mom who used to hang the clothes out to dry in the sun's UV. Now we'll do that for our chips. Clothes line technology will have new life!
From DR CHARLES PIEDO
Auditing and acounting unit
International bank of Africa
Attn: JOHN SMITH
I am DR CHARLES PIEDO, the director in charge of auditing and accounting section of international bank of Africa Lome-Togo in west Africa with due respect and regards.
During our investigation and audting in this bank, my department came across a very huge number of black DS's belonging to a deceased person who died on November 1997 in a plane crash and have been sitting dormant in his account with this bank without any claim of the fund in our custody either from his family or relation before our discovery to this development.
Meanwhile all the whole arrangement to put claim over this equipment as the bonafide next of kin to the deceased, get the required approval and transfer this money to a foriegn account has been put in place and directives and needed information will be relayed to you as soon as you indicate your intrest and willingness to assist us and also benefit your self to this great business opportunity.
I will not fail to inform you that this transaction is 100% risk free. On smoth conclusion of this transaction, you will be entitiled to 30% of the total sum as gratification, while 10% will be set aside to take care of expenses that may arise during the time of transfer.
Yours faithfully, Dr CHARLES PIEDO
No, by far the worst engineering mistake was the f-er who designed my date Mary Swansons impossible-to-remove-in-a-car bra clasps in 1989. I was totally going to score that night but the stupid thing wouldn't come off and killed the moment.
Today, found in old shelving in an empty cave-like room were found thousands of little paper books from the late 20th century. Many are in very fragile, but still readable forms. Scholars are exstatic at the find. "It will provide us with unbelievable amounts of knowledge about our development during the peoples of the late 20th century". Scholars are expecting to spend the next 5-10 years cataloging and converting the information from these tomes to learn about our early ancestors.
Curiously, there were some small electronic devices with primitive displays found with the books. The storage mediums degraded centuries ago and all the non-volatile storage was lost. On top of that, there seems to have been some sort of primitive cryptography which has made analysis very difficult. "It's unclear what purpose these devices played, and it is strange they would garble the data in such a simplistic and easily broken method by today's standards. Also, they seem to rely on some sort of authentication system which has long been lost. We may never know what they were for or contained."
Poor Cicso, I heard that you could take penicillin to clear that up...
If Toyota sold most people cars the way OSS supports it's customers, you'd get a mostly assembled car (assembled only because they finally decided to do so after Nissan, Honda, and everyone else did and you'd still need to tweak it a lot first thing). You'd not really be able to come back to the dealer after that, but here are some nice news groups from other buyers to go ask questions on to figure out how to change the oil/etc - and maybe you'll get an answer if someone feels like it. You might even get one of the original developers, but they have to hide behind tons of filters to keep away the random hordes. There's no warranty, no phone support to really speak of, and the you'll have to get all your help from the interesting personailties of the other users can be as equally helpful as elitist/idiots/zealots. If you have a deadline to get somewhere and the car breaks down, I hope you have a toolbox in the trunk. Any design flaws might get fix when it's convenient in our time or in the 'next rev'. No guarantees on anything in the car and no path of accountable redress if something goes horribly wrong or it kills someone. Ready to drive?
Reality check: 95% of your parents, friends, etc want a toaster distribution model. You take it home, plug it in, and it works. You have a little button to start it and a knob to control darkness. They don't care about anything else because they have lives and want to do the things they love - teaching, raising children, selling couches, etc (NOT about configuring their DHCP). Witness Apple designs and how wildy succeful it is. Yes, it isn't often the 'best' solution (iPod certainly isn't), but most people don't care. It does what they want.
Thank you BlueZ3 for giving us the user's and the view from real teachers. THEY are who our tools are written for - or is it just for ourselves?
Dang, why the heck do people not understand this simple concept? The whole world *is* open source - already - right now. You can go out and create whatever the heck you want and distribute it any way you want already. I, for one, enjoying doing that in an environment in which my contributions are rewarded on a regular basis with a guaranteed supply of 'green paper', retirement fund matching, and medical/dental coverage. Also, I happen to enjoy creating my freely distributed programs written for windows environments too. Nothing stops me. Not even GPL.
Grow up and stop this incessant slashdot bitching about your 'oppressed' state and create. If you can do so much better - go do it and shut the opposition up. But don't dedicate your life to complaining about how others distribution models and (gasp) sales are stopping people from using your invention; or even more lame, copying MS/Apple/etc ideas with "Oh yeah, well I can do that better and for free." It's coming up with the idea first - that's were growth, change, and newness happens. I for one create with the tools that work best.
Dad/Western world: "Where did you get this ? Where'd you learn to do this stuff?" Kid/China: "You, alright. I learned it from watching YOU!"
I guess we have the answer to the question "Name one thing I can't do with my Linux that you can do with your PC/Mac"
I used to write web plugins a number of years back. One of those companies (name removed - but odds are 2 out of 3 that you have it installed on your machine right now) had to do discovery of some of the hardware to see if it could even run (video capabilities, 2d and 3d capabilities, sound, etc). Though they were reputable and never sold that information, the developers that we were working with at that company said they could make far more money just selling the information about the average internet-connected computers configuration to marketers and consulting companies than they did from their core business. In fact, they were constantly being offered money for it. These guys were smart and knew that if they sold that info, it could destroy their rep (can you say RealAudio) They used it solely internally so they could target capabilities and new features; but that information would have been worth millions. Witness the eleventy-million 'free' browsing toolbars. Guess how they keep the lights on?
In the real world of commercial products, in order to secure funding to build something you need to know if it will return someone's investment (aka: 'sell a real thing'). So you need to know who might buy it, how much they'd pay, how many people would buy it, etc. In order to know your target audience - you must do research and research costs real money. Don't underestimate the lengths companies will go to get this sort of info.
This guy is more likely to make a killing that not - if he can do it right.
Yes! Now a tinfoil hat for my id cards too. Time to stick it to the alien-man too!
Ha! And what the heck would it do/think if you were having great sex?
"...many mice died to bring us this information."
Amen brother.
What the heck!? 99% of them look like they were designed in MS Paint for God's sake - one of them even has a picture of his kid sleeping on a church pew! Doesn't anyone know that showing others pictures of your kid is the #1 most annoying thing ever? The only thing most of the designs are missing are lots of magenta, cyan, and flashing text.
Look at the designs of Adobe and Macromedia boxes, then come back. The gimp is living up to it's name on this front...
1. Observation: There's a lot of different species out there.
2. Hypothesis: Some "intelligent designer" must of altered the species to allow them to survive in their environment.
3. Ummmm....
What comes next? well duuuhhhhh!
4. PROFIT!
What could be more scientific than that? We did it all thru the 90's...
What'll be even funner is when the aliens that pick up our probes decode our communications - then come down to earth speaking DES. At least any hacker will be able to crack it in a few hours by then...
It'll be a whole new understanding for 'packet' security after that...
Or about 1.8 million graduate students to do the work for you.
The biggest problem with nerds is that not every problem needs a nerd solution.
I'm really glad that none of that un-ethical medical behavior that 'religious nuts' were worried about has happen. This will most likely set the case of trusting in the ethics of scientific work on back a bit... "You cannot use people as a means to an end" - Kant
Yes, this element O2 or 'Oxygen' is a hazard to the environment! I can't believe they just let that stuff leak out - just another example of our tax dollars wasted at Nasa. Free O2 (or Oxygen in laymens terms) is corrosive and does millions of dollars of damage each year all over this country! This is especially true when it comes into contact with any bare metal of your car in the front yard on blocks. We need to have this stuff regulated or banned or both - not to mention that dihydrogen monoxide mentioned above.
No, no, Mr. Sparkle-O http://www.geocities.com/chuckhoyt/mrsparkle.html is even better! "I'm disrespectful to bad web design! Can you see I am serious?"
Or called a Catholic (their school systems are the basis for many modern ones)
I'm founding the PLF - Pole Liberation Front. We're gathering funds right now to have people fly up and we'll tie ourselves to this marvelous magnetic pole to make sure that it isn't continnual exploited by economically and class oppressive multi-national corporations bend solely on profit. They abuse the natural energies of the pole for their crude navigation. Military regimes use this natural resource that belongs to all of us to aim murderous weapons, and weekend hikers that steal it's power with tiny metal rods that direct them where to tramp and destroy our natural world. We're willing to die for our cause, we just need your support.
Quotes from recent visitors: "You can feel it's natural energies pouring out and bathing our world." "Its a shame this resource is abused by so many" "Everyone should take a trip up here to see this invisible magnetic phenomenon!" "Shit, Polar bear - run!"Won't you please donate today?