The interesting thing about servers is that if you're not running one, you're probably not a real part of the internet. People without server status are just consuming information, and not really contributing to it.
There are ways to participate in the internet without a server (by email, sourceforge accounts, slashdot accounts, yahoo accounts, wikipedia accounts, etc) but the internet always grew up a peer-to-peer thing. I visit your website and you visit mine. When you read something interesting, chances are it was written by an individual, rather than by a company.
We're starting to see more push for the idea that the internet is just one big television show, where you upload your credit card number, download "content", and go shopping. And the ISP accounts with crappy upload figures, bans on servers, dynamic IP addresses, and bandwith limits, port blocking, and all the rest only encourage this.
What does a vagrant contribute to a city? What does a port-blocked upload-limited dynamic IP address contribute to the internet?
"Like it or not, 90% of those people who have high bandwidth usage are using it for illicit activities."
If any of the people restricted from using their internet connection were engaged in illegal activities, then the ISP would not need to resort to terminating the contract without reason.
The very fact that they are using the "as we like" clause strongly suggests that they have no evidence of illicit usage to use against the people making full use of their service.
"My biggest goal is to break the Ghz barrier sometime before 2006. I have a 266Mhz, a 800Mhz and a 266Mhz laptop. Anything over a Gigahertz is waaaay faster than what I have."
Just start counting both the up and down edges of your clock pulse. Then your 800MHz machine will become 1600MHz.
"For others, a headache. I think KDE team should implement a beginner/advanced profile"
It seems quite distracting that way... trying to find something, only to discover (or not) that you're in the wrong mode. Most programs solve the problem with really good dialog-box design, and that should be the ideal goal of any KDE application.
Example: why implement an "easy options" mode, when you can just put the relevant controls on the first tab, or on the top line of each tab?
Why implement a "braindead options" mode when those people are handled by the setup wizard?
Why implement an "advanced users" mode, when anybody who's decided to go into the third tab of a configuration window is probably someone who needs to control detailed options anyway, regardless of whether they dared click the "scary options for grey-bearded tinkerers" mode?
"I am breaking out my soldering iron to work on this gift coming from my wife...the Enigma-e This is a brand new kit project so you can make an electronic working replica of the German Enigma machine."
Uh, the Enigma was cracked. (continuing shipments to Africa notwithstanding)
Now, if you could make an Enigma case and keyboard, and put a real PKI stream cypher inside it... that would be cool.
"Would it not be logical for his ultimate trial to be held in the form of an international war crimes tribunal, a la Nuremberg?"
A la Milosovic?
Seriously, it depends on whether you want to stand up for justice and the rule of law. It looks like people have a decision to make, whether to use the "we'll do as we like" laws passed for just this situation, and to have a court of US military officers, or whether to actually use the international war crimes courts (also set up for this very purpose).
Perhaps you need a different set of information for your audience handouts / course website, with all the text that you don't want to put on the projected slides?
If the handout is essentially a text document, a transcript, occasionally punctuated by the diagrams at about the same time as you change slides for real, then readers will get the gist of what was said. Nothing worse than finding the slides to a presentation that would have been very useful, only to realise that all of the transcript is missing.
"Great day for Iraq. Let's hope they can rebuild and live in peace now."
Yeah, let's hope they can find a new native Iraqi leader who is popular enough and strong enough to meld the various warring factions into one stable, peaceful country.
I seem to remember someone who'd be an ideal candidate... they had his posters on the walls, and all sorts.
"So what should we use to make presentations then?"
I tend to use HTML, with big centred titles, and use one of my desktop backgrounds to add some style. It fits easily on a disk, it's easy to add graphics, you've got a full-screen mode on every browser, and when you're done, it can go on a website without making you look like an idiot who uses 150KB graphics to display 10 words.
One thing I notice about lecturers (who actually need to convey information in their slides) is that they tend to use the rolls of acetate, and have "slides" that are several metres long, scrolling down all the time to reveal new information while leaving the last few lines visible for anyone taking notes. You can't do this in Impress, but it's easy enough if you're using HTML.
"Why would I want money donated for my help to go to either the FSF or the EFF? Both organizations employ people who say things publicly that make them look like complete idiots."
You haven't given money to the US government have you?
"That's really irrelevant. Either you need to have all your licensing properly sorted out, in which case installing the software on two machines using the same key is unacceptable to begin with, or you don't. If you don't, then you also do not mind using any of the other less-than-proper approaches to get past WPA."
This assumes that you trust Microsoft's activation servers to continue responding throughout the lifetime that you expect to use your operating system.
I just reinstalled my copy of Windows98 a few months ago. This article mentions that Windows98 is, and I quote "retired". People are comparing its level of support to AppleII's. Microsoft sound surprised that people are even still using it. This is the same retired operating system that I rely upon to run some very expensive software.
If Windows98 had activation, do you think I'd still be able to use it today?
Howabout my copy of MS-DOS 6 on the 386? If that had activation, do you think I'd still be able to run it today?
Activation isn't about license disputes, it's about forcing people into an upgrade cycle. When WindowsXP came out, I had a long think about the activation features, and decided that my upgrade cycle would be Mandrake Linux. So far, it looks like that was the right choice.
"So, SF fee is separate from PayPal's fee and is charged on top of that; and has a minimum of $1. With bunch of small donations $5 to $10 from each contributor, the SF fee alone will be in the whopping 10%-20% range."
Perhaps we should point out that the cheapest way to receive donations is still to publish an address, work address, or P.O. box number. (If you think addresses should be private, have a look at your WHOIS listing sometime)
You can then mail cash as a donation, and it'll cost a few tens of cents for postage, and it works worldwide. You can buy money in the recipient's currency at your post office, or if you're in the same country, write a cheque.
Just don't tell the postman you're mailing cash.
If you need to transfer a large amount, you can publish a bank account number, and people can transfer money directly to that account. The cost of that would be about $10, but for large amounts of money, you really want to trust a bank, instead of someone [PayPal] which looks like a bank, acts like a bank, but has a history of cheating, a ridiculous ToS/privacy policy, and absolutely no regulatory oversight.
"Do you see how what you've said is utterly ridiculous?"
Why? What he says is perfectly reasonable. Law enforcement has, time and time again, failed to go after DoS attackers. Even where there's clear and unambiguous evidence, right down to the very names and addresses of the people running the attack.
Should they give up and go home? Well from all appearances, they already have. As far as everyone else is concerned, the FBI computer crime division is completely fictional. If they don't even lift a finger to investigate when the very electronic infrastructure of the United States is under serious and prolonged and deliberate attack, then of what use are they?
Email is becoming unusable. I got 355 emails advertising wire fraud and illegal drugs yesterday alone. Millions of computers are infected, and attacking critical infrastructure. Spammers are writing viruses and stealing credit cards and hijacking IP ranges and domains every day, and we expect the FBI to suddenly wake up and respond to an easily prevented attack on SCO?
"From what I heard on the radio this morning (in New Zealand), he was quite irresponsible and that's why they're not going out of their way to actively help him"
Is this the same person who was in the news before, for consistantly going on dangerous missions, and having to be rescued every single time, at great risk to the people going out after him?
I remember hearing of someone landing on an iceberg, being rescued by a rather daring pilot landing there (no guarantee of getting off before the ground broke up), then going back the next year to try again. And failing again. And having to be rescued again. And the year after that too.
"How many hundreds of people do you think browse with an alternative browser?"
It only needs one person, then you've lost an iPod sale. Or lost a contract for whatever I'm buying at work. Or even got yourself a lawsuit from someone blind if you're in the US. People selling technical kit especially, should think about the impression it gives to have a website which is broken unless you view it in a particular program.
Slashdot Mirror
"Servers, which are generally prohibited"
The interesting thing about servers is that if you're not running one, you're probably not a real part of the internet. People without server status are just consuming information, and not really contributing to it.
There are ways to participate in the internet without a server (by email, sourceforge accounts, slashdot accounts, yahoo accounts, wikipedia accounts, etc) but the internet always grew up a peer-to-peer thing. I visit your website and you visit mine. When you read something interesting, chances are it was written by an individual, rather than by a company.
We're starting to see more push for the idea that the internet is just one big television show, where you upload your credit card number, download "content", and go shopping. And the ISP accounts with crappy upload figures, bans on servers, dynamic IP addresses, and bandwith limits, port blocking, and all the rest only encourage this.
What does a vagrant contribute to a city? What does a port-blocked upload-limited dynamic IP address contribute to the internet?
"Like it or not, 90% of those people who have high bandwidth usage are using it for illicit activities."
If any of the people restricted from using their internet connection were engaged in illegal activities, then the ISP would not need to resort to terminating the contract without reason.
The very fact that they are using the "as we like" clause strongly suggests that they have no evidence of illicit usage to use against the people making full use of their service.
"He wasn't responsible for winamp3 from what I hear"
That's an pretty good thing to have on your CV: "not responsible for winamp3"
"Is this one really good?"
They fired the best people at Nullsoft, and tried to scare the rest into AOL compliance. Take a guess if it's any good.
"My biggest goal is to break the Ghz barrier sometime before 2006. I have a 266Mhz, a 800Mhz and a 266Mhz laptop. Anything over a Gigahertz is waaaay faster than what I have."
Just start counting both the up and down edges of your clock pulse. Then your 800MHz machine will become 1600MHz.
"Hey, I used Konspire few months ago. How's the development going?"
Not a developer, just a user. It seems like one of the best concepts for P2P to appear for a long time.
The technical qualities of bittorrent, with the social qualities of blogging.
"For others, a headache. I think KDE team should implement a beginner/advanced profile"
It seems quite distracting that way... trying to find something, only to discover (or not) that you're in the wrong mode. Most programs solve the problem with really good dialog-box design, and that should be the ideal goal of any KDE application.
Example: why implement an "easy options" mode, when you can just put the relevant controls on the first tab, or on the top line of each tab?
Why implement a "braindead options" mode when those people are handled by the setup wizard?
Why implement an "advanced users" mode, when anybody who's decided to go into the third tab of a configuration window is probably someone who needs to control detailed options anyway, regardless of whether they dared click the "scary options for grey-bearded tinkerers" mode?
"for that kinky library sex, i assume?"
Librarians love leather bindings...
"I am breaking out my soldering iron to work on this gift coming from my wife...the Enigma-e This is a brand new kit project so you can make an electronic working replica of the German Enigma machine."
Uh, the Enigma was cracked. (continuing shipments to Africa notwithstanding)
Now, if you could make an Enigma case and keyboard, and put a real PKI stream cypher inside it... that would be cool.
"What makes the iPod superior to the cheaper Rio Karma which also plays Ogg Vorbis and FLAC files among other things?"
The Jobs' reality distortion field
"She: You're going to give a presentation on why we're going to take away everyone's Macs and make them use Windows."
Happy Christmas!
"Would it not be logical for his ultimate trial to be held in the form of an international war crimes tribunal, a la Nuremberg?"
A la Milosovic?
Seriously, it depends on whether you want to stand up for justice and the rule of law. It looks like people have a decision to make, whether to use the "we'll do as we like" laws passed for just this situation, and to have a court of US military officers, or whether to actually use the international war crimes courts (also set up for this very purpose).
Perhaps you need a different set of information for your audience handouts / course website, with all the text that you don't want to put on the projected slides?
If the handout is essentially a text document, a transcript, occasionally punctuated by the diagrams at about the same time as you change slides for real, then readers will get the gist of what was said. Nothing worse than finding the slides to a presentation that would have been very useful, only to realise that all of the transcript is missing.
"Great day for Iraq. Let's hope they can rebuild and live in peace now."
Yeah, let's hope they can find a new native Iraqi leader who is popular enough and strong enough to meld the various warring factions into one stable, peaceful country.
I seem to remember someone who'd be an ideal candidate... they had his posters on the walls, and all sorts.
"You'd almost think that you care about us in the Southern Hemisphere"
It won't be the southern hemisphere for long...
"So what should we use to make presentations then?"
I tend to use HTML, with big centred titles, and use one of my desktop backgrounds to add some style. It fits easily on a disk, it's easy to add graphics, you've got a full-screen mode on every browser, and when you're done, it can go on a website without making you look like an idiot who uses 150KB graphics to display 10 words.
One thing I notice about lecturers (who actually need to convey information in their slides) is that they tend to use the rolls of acetate, and have "slides" that are several metres long, scrolling down all the time to reveal new information while leaving the last few lines visible for anyone taking notes. You can't do this in Impress, but it's easy enough if you're using HTML.
"Why would I want money donated for my help to go to either the FSF or the EFF? Both organizations employ people who say things publicly that make them look like complete idiots."
You haven't given money to the US government have you?
"That's really irrelevant. Either you need to have all your licensing properly sorted out, in which case installing the software on two machines using the same key is unacceptable to begin with, or you don't. If you don't, then you also do not mind using any of the other less-than-proper approaches to get past WPA."
This assumes that you trust Microsoft's activation servers to continue responding throughout the lifetime that you expect to use your operating system.
I just reinstalled my copy of Windows98 a few months ago. This article mentions that Windows98 is, and I quote "retired". People are comparing its level of support to AppleII's. Microsoft sound surprised that people are even still using it. This is the same retired operating system that I rely upon to run some very expensive software.
If Windows98 had activation, do you think I'd still be able to use it today?
Howabout my copy of MS-DOS 6 on the 386? If that had activation, do you think I'd still be able to run it today?
Activation isn't about license disputes, it's about forcing people into an upgrade cycle. When WindowsXP came out, I had a long think about the activation features, and decided that my upgrade cycle would be Mandrake Linux. So far, it looks like that was the right choice.
"If any of this is true, I would hate to see SourceForge caught in the middle of something that could hurt them or its users."
SourceForge mention that their system is a good way to donate money to organisations such as the EFF.
It's worth noting however, that both the Free Software Foundation, and the Electronic Frontiers Foundation accept credit cards directly, without any sort of intermediary.
As for Debian, there's the Software in the Public Interest site, which is setup to handle donations to Debian, or to other Free Software projects.
If you have more time than money, consider the Help Wanted pages at SourceForge and Savannah (currently unavailable)
"So, SF fee is separate from PayPal's fee and is charged on top of that; and has a minimum of $1. With bunch of small donations $5 to $10 from each contributor, the SF fee alone will be in the whopping 10%-20% range."
Perhaps we should point out that the cheapest way to receive donations is still to publish an address, work address, or P.O. box number. (If you think addresses should be private, have a look at your WHOIS listing sometime)
You can then mail cash as a donation, and it'll cost a few tens of cents for postage, and it works worldwide. You can buy money in the recipient's currency at your post office, or if you're in the same country, write a cheque.
Just don't tell the postman you're mailing cash.
If you need to transfer a large amount, you can publish a bank account number, and people can transfer money directly to that account. The cost of that would be about $10, but for large amounts of money, you really want to trust a bank, instead of someone [PayPal] which looks like a bank, acts like a bank, but has a history of cheating, a ridiculous ToS/privacy policy, and absolutely no regulatory oversight.
"There's a 5% transaction fee, but that doesn't sound totally unreasonable... not bad at all"
Minimum transaction fee: $1. So the percentage varies from 5% to 20% depending on how much you spend.
"Do you see how what you've said is utterly ridiculous?"
Why? What he says is perfectly reasonable. Law enforcement has, time and time again, failed to go after DoS attackers. Even where there's clear and unambiguous evidence, right down to the very names and addresses of the people running the attack.
Should they give up and go home? Well from all appearances, they already have. As far as everyone else is concerned, the FBI computer crime division is completely fictional. If they don't even lift a finger to investigate when the very electronic infrastructure of the United States is under serious and prolonged and deliberate attack, then of what use are they?
Email is becoming unusable. I got 355 emails advertising wire fraud and illegal drugs yesterday alone. Millions of computers are infected, and attacking critical infrastructure. Spammers are writing viruses and stealing credit cards and hijacking IP ranges and domains every day, and we expect the FBI to suddenly wake up and respond to an easily prevented attack on SCO?
"There's a poll here...It's missing the CowboyNeal option!"
It's got Richard Stallman though.
"From what I heard on the radio this morning (in New Zealand), he was quite irresponsible and that's why they're not going out of their way to actively help him"
Is this the same person who was in the news before, for consistantly going on dangerous missions, and having to be rescued every single time, at great risk to the people going out after him?
I remember hearing of someone landing on an iceberg, being rescued by a rather daring pilot landing there (no guarantee of getting off before the ground broke up), then going back the next year to try again. And failing again. And having to be rescued again. And the year after that too.
"How many hundreds of people do you think browse with an alternative browser?"
It only needs one person, then you've lost an iPod sale. Or lost a contract for whatever I'm buying at work. Or even got yourself a lawsuit from someone blind if you're in the US. People selling technical kit especially, should think about the impression it gives to have a website which is broken unless you view it in a particular program.