Be careful with "fake" email addresses. The domain name very well could exist. You would not believe the information that people send to me because they are not aware the domain name of the email address they are using is not fake.
That's why "user@example.com" is the one I use; it's a reserved domain name and guaranteed not to be assigned to anyone.
Though for whatever reason "Rob Malda" is not listed in the Oracle of Bacon at Virginia's database, other folks who appear in Revolution OS are listed. Since Bruce Perens has a Bacon Number of 3, for his appearance in Revolution OS, CmdrTaco's Bacon Number is also 3.
Now, the question is, does he have an Erdös number?
The not-so-simple answer: a correct definition of unsollicited e-mail is hard to make.
That's why the important thing to go after is unsolicited bulk email. The "I posted about Yoyodyne tape drives and got a response from a Yoyodyne reseller" example is one thing; the "I posted about Yoyodyne tape drives and me and everyone else on the group got a bunch of messages about hot and horny mortgage lenders" is another.
It should be fairly easy for a reasonable-sized ISP to prove the bulk part all by themselves; even smaller sites can usually do it via news.admin.net-abuse.email.
Single, human-sent-to-a-specific-person commercial email doesn't scale fast enough (and costs the sender too much, even in this economy) to be the same problem as scrape-the-net-and-blast-it-out stuff. Attack the latter first.
Previous article is about shortening copyright limits so that artists work become public domain sooner and everyone is for that.
Am I ripping off Walt Disney (the man, not the company) if I want a copy of Steamboat Willie? Walt is dead. There is no incentive short of resurrection that will ever get him to create another thing. Yet everything he did is still under copyright because of these copyright extensions....
The Internet isn't really that popular; someone at Microsoft just got confused about the subject of the poll, and sent out some email to the entire company claiming that the government was trying to measure the popularity of.NET.
Re:What happens when Tuvalu no longer exists...?
on
VeriSign Buys .tv
·
· Score: 2
I don't know ICANN policy on this, but I would hope that no country code will ever be withdrawn. After all, historical data (and data about history) would continue to make use of these codes.
Well, the.KW TLD did go away completely for a little while at one point (due to the minor disruptions associated with the invasion of the Iraqi army). That was before VeriSign and ICANN, though....
I don't usually reply to posts like this, but I feel I must interject, if only to clear a few things up...
Same here. Note: I am a very happy owner of a DirecTiVo, but don't own stock in or work for either TIVO or MSFT.
The dual-tuner DirecTV feature of UltimateTV is still unique as it records the bitstream off the satellite feed. As far as I'm aware, Tivo does not do this.
The "standalone" TiVo does its own MPEG encoding (which means it can use cable, OTA, or satellite inputs, unlike UltimateTV). The DirecTV/TiVo combination units are the ones that compare directly to UltimateTV, and just like UTV they record the satellite MPEG bitstream. They also support dual satellite tuners.
The recording feature of UTV is more robust than Tivo. UTV allows you to record a given program with a specific name in a particular time-slot.
TiVo lets you record a given program with a specific name, with the timeslot irrelevant. You can also have it auto-record based on a wishlist (anything with Harrison Ford in it, any show mentioning "Linux" in the description).
If there's a skipped week, it won't record it. If it's on every other day, it will record it every other day. All from one recording entry.
TiVo does the same, and then some. Some shows are completely irregularly scheduled (say, Pop-Up Video on VH1). A "Season Pass" on TiVo will record them no matter when they're scheduled. It'll also use the guide data to prevent re-recording an episode you've recorded in the last 28 days; this is helpful for shows that have the same episode show 3-4 times a week at different time slots.
If your program changes time-slots regularly, not to worry! UTV has an option to expand the time-slot search when looking to record your program. It's completely automated.
It's an option...implying you have to select it. TiVo just does it right without having to pick an "automated" option.
In addition, the information about your program is taken from the guide and saved with your recording, ala ID3. Tivo's functionality is a bit more involved, if a bit more specific. It also seems to lack the tagging feature. It's not as flexible as the UTV in this regard.
TiVo does tag the recordings with title, original air date, episode details, etc. It also seems to be more flexible based on your description of UTV.
And that's not even getting into things like the ability to set Season Pass options to record first-run episodes only (great for network shows that interleave repeats throughout a season) and suggestions (thumb up shows you like, thumb down shows you don't, and if it has extra space it'll record things it thinks you might like).
Re:The Collected Stories of Vernor Vinge
on
True Names
·
· Score: 2
"True Names" is one of two of his stories not included in the collection, sadly. I don't know what the other one is.
The second is part of the fix-up novel Tatja Grimm's World, and really makes more sense as part of that novel than as a stand-alone story.
In addition to the two stories (which are both available elsewhere as noted above), there's also a page missing from the collection: see this page containing the missing text.
I live in Massachusetts and here they have three different ID cards: liquor ID, state ID, and drivers license. I don't have a drivers license so I went out and got a state ID card. Even in Mass., I can't get into bars or buy liquor with a state ID. "But this is a STATE ISSUED ID! My birthdate is RIGHT THERE!," I say. They want a liquor ID, however, and I refuse to go spend another $50 on an ID card that I ALREADY have.
Where did you get your state ID? (And why? The only reason to get one instead of a Liquor ID is to save $10 or because you're not 21....) The RMV website page on Mass IDs and Liquor IDs says "There is a $15.00 fee for a Massachusetts ID and a $25.00 fee for a Liquor ID." Where does the $50 come in?
And you can always get a passport, which is good for 10 years, only costs $60 (plus the cost of getting photos), and is accepted by the ABCC (Alcoholic Beverages Control Commission) as an ID for liquor purchases. (See MGL 138-34B if you want a cite.) Or join the military (active duty IDs work too).
Of course, both passports and military IDs are (da-dum!) national IDs....
Because, with the small LCD and smallish base and the mobility of the swiveling stalk, one of these could easily be slipped into a backpack or duffel bag.
I suspect very strongly that there is a cable loop and/or Kensington "laptop style" locking slot built into the design. Remember, even the original Macintosh had a "locking kit" that let you secure the machine (and keyboard!) to a solid piece of furniture, and the current towers combine it with a case lock so people can't steal your RAM.
If we do donate to the EFF and the like, what are they prepared to do? Do they have a lobby in DC to pull back the ears of the congressman and get some real results?
They can't "lobby" and keep their 501(c)3 tax deductible status. OTOH, they can pursue "education" on relevant issues.
(Put bluntly, they can give Congress white papers and testimony, but not money.)
EFF produces analyses to educate government policymakers and the public about the civil liberties implications of their actions and decisions. We have advised the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) on consumer privacy rights, the Sentencing Commission on intellectual property, the Child Online Protection Act (COPA) Commission and the National Research Council (NRC) on online censorship, and the National Science Foundation (NSF) and the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) on encryption, to name a few.
EFF monitors legislation and agency actions affecting the online community, working with EFF members and other organizations on global, national, state and local levels to affect positive change in technology policy.
Note also that their legal work can sometimes undo bad legislation, and is more susceptible to reasoned argument than "count the dollars"--as long as they have the amount they need to pursue the case in the first place....
I thought that was the oldest server, when did they appear?
Despite the perceived similarity in names between EFF and EFnet, it was not the first, main, or only EFnet server in any way. irc.colorado.edu both predated and postdated it.
MIT's spinoff list is all well and good but if you add up Stanford's it'd eat them alive
Of course, the real difference between Stanford and MIT is that MIT got net 18, and Stanford had to settle for net 36 (and appears to have given it back to IANA since then).
Seriously, though, both Stanford and MIT have had a real impact. One study ranked the total economic value of MIT's spinoffs as the 24th largest economy in the world for 1994 (between Thailand and South Africa).
OpenWindows[tm], winner of the [entirely fictitious and just-invented] Most Unintuitive Interface In The Entire Fscking World Award.
A comment I made during the Unix International/OSF wars, when it was Sun and AT&T vs. Everyone Else with Open Look and Motif their dueling GUIs:
"This just shows that it's not only about look and feel, but also smell."
Re:Why is this better?
on
GNU Emacs 21
·
· Score: 3, Informative
Could someone with experience explain the difference between Xemacs and gnu emacs??
Well, I could point out that image support and colors on TTYs were in XEmacs a long time ago (I still have a machine with XEmacs 20.4 on it, which has both...) but that might start up another "frank exchange of views" so I guess I'd better be pusillanimous instead.
To be more succinct: they're different, based on the fact that the different development teams have different priorities. There are features that come in both directions, but IMHO they tend to show up on XEmacs first.
the 4 character Type is worse than the the 3 character extension, because at least the extension is common across all applications (compare.jpg with the variety of jpeg Types used in MacOS).
That "variety" would be what, JPEG and, er, JPEG? All the JPEG files I have lying around are type JPEG, even if some of them belong to BPPi (Cameraid) or 8BIM (Photoshop) or ogle (PictureViewer).
Massachusetts will allow the purchase of alcohol only with a Massachusetts drivers license. The non-driving state ID is actaully not valid for the purchase of alcohol. The US passport or any other foreign passport is not legal for the purchase of alcohol. A New Hampshire drivers license is not valid for the purchase of alcohol.
Well, you're right about the last one, and right that a Massachusetts license is legal, but wrong about the rest.
Massachusetts General Laws, Chapter 138, Section 34B:
"Any licensee, or agent or employee thereof, under this chapter who reasonably relies on such a liquor purchase identification card or motor vehicle license issued pursuant to section eight of chapter ninety, or on a valid passport issued by the United States government, or by the government, recognized by the United States government, of a foreign country, or a valid United States issued military identification card, for proof of a person's identity and age shall not suffer [...]"
So the accepted forms of ID:
Massachusetts Driver's License
Massachusetts Liquor ID
US passport
Passport issued by a diplomatically recognized government (no Sealand, no Taliban)
US military ID (which they define as the active duty cards only--not dependent IDs
This makes a twisted sort of sense
on
Bert Is Evil
·
· Score: 5, Funny
Here's the "logic":
Jerry Falwell says that gays "helped this happen."
Bert and Ernie have been living together for how many years? Haven't you ever been a little bit suspicious about them?
The last CompactFlash card I bought for my digital camera was well under $1/MB (actually about $0.67/MB).
The first SCSI hard disk I bought for my Mac Plus was over $10/MB, and held less than 1/4 the capacity of that CF card. And it weighed 14 lb.
Flash isn't cheaper than current technology disks, certainly; for the price of a 1/4 GB CF card you can get an 80GB IDE drive. But the growth of the digital camera and PDA markets has driven the cost/MB of flash down, and will continue to do so.
What would be cool is a RAID controller for CompactFlash; plug in 6 CF cards in a space the size of a standard hard drive and have it do RAID-5 in hardware. Slower than stock RAM, but non-volatile. The catch there is the number of read/write cycles...and I'm not sure how much work has been done on improving that side of flashRAM performance.
As for custom icons - you can change the colour. That's it.
"Get Info" on the file. Click on the icon in the Get Info window. Paste, assuming you have a picture or icon in the clipboard. Done.
As for the problem you had opening the file, I usually get the "can't find the application for this file--try picking one" dialog box, and recent versions of the OS (not just OS X) will use the extension to pick an application if the type/creator are missing (see the Internet control panel to set MIME type/application/suffix mappings).
I just saw DoubleTake on DVD last night, and the opening scene showed the WTC. It really made me feel weird seeing it.
You really want weird? I was cleaning out some old Pop-Up Video episodes on the TiVo, and as I fast-forwarded through some commercials I saw a Jeep commercial, which was riffing on the "there's only one {Amazon, jungle, etc,..., Jeep}" theme. For "jungle" they had the NYC skyline as it then was.
And right after that, I got a Tina Turner video looking across at the NYC skyline...as it then was.
Slashdot Mirror
Just look at the serial number. If it starts with QT, it was made by Quanta.
That's why "user@example.com" is the one I use; it's a reserved domain name and guaranteed not to be assigned to anyone.
Though for whatever reason "Rob Malda" is not listed in the Oracle of Bacon at Virginia's database, other folks who appear in Revolution OS are listed. Since Bruce Perens has a Bacon Number of 3, for his appearance in Revolution OS, CmdrTaco's Bacon Number is also 3.
Now, the question is, does he have an Erdös number?
That's why the important thing to go after is unsolicited bulk email. The "I posted about Yoyodyne tape drives and got a response from a Yoyodyne reseller" example is one thing; the "I posted about Yoyodyne tape drives and me and everyone else on the group got a bunch of messages about hot and horny mortgage lenders" is another.
It should be fairly easy for a reasonable-sized ISP to prove the bulk part all by themselves; even smaller sites can usually do it via news.admin.net-abuse.email.
Single, human-sent-to-a-specific-person commercial email doesn't scale fast enough (and costs the sender too much, even in this economy) to be the same problem as scrape-the-net-and-blast-it-out stuff. Attack the latter first.
Am I ripping off Walt Disney (the man, not the company) if I want a copy of Steamboat Willie? Walt is dead. There is no incentive short of resurrection that will ever get him to create another thing. Yet everything he did is still under copyright because of these copyright extensions....
Compaq already shipped a 64-bit JVM for their Alpha systems (running Tru64, OpenVMS, or something called Linux) a while back.
The Internet isn't really that popular; someone at Microsoft just got confused about the subject of the poll, and sent out some email to the entire company claiming that the government was trying to measure the popularity of .NET.
Well, the .KW TLD did go away completely for a little while at one point (due to the minor disruptions associated with the invasion of the Iraqi army). That was before VeriSign and ICANN, though....
It's back now, of course.
Same here. Note: I am a very happy owner of a DirecTiVo, but don't own stock in or work for either TIVO or MSFT.
The "standalone" TiVo does its own MPEG encoding (which means it can use cable, OTA, or satellite inputs, unlike UltimateTV). The DirecTV/TiVo combination units are the ones that compare directly to UltimateTV, and just like UTV they record the satellite MPEG bitstream. They also support dual satellite tuners.
TiVo lets you record a given program with a specific name, with the timeslot irrelevant. You can also have it auto-record based on a wishlist (anything with Harrison Ford in it, any show mentioning "Linux" in the description).
TiVo does the same, and then some. Some shows are completely irregularly scheduled (say, Pop-Up Video on VH1). A "Season Pass" on TiVo will record them no matter when they're scheduled. It'll also use the guide data to prevent re-recording an episode you've recorded in the last 28 days; this is helpful for shows that have the same episode show 3-4 times a week at different time slots.
It's an option...implying you have to select it. TiVo just does it right without having to pick an "automated" option.
TiVo does tag the recordings with title, original air date, episode details, etc. It also seems to be more flexible based on your description of UTV.
And that's not even getting into things like the ability to set Season Pass options to record first-run episodes only (great for network shows that interleave repeats throughout a season) and suggestions (thumb up shows you like, thumb down shows you don't, and if it has extra space it'll record things it thinks you might like).
The second is part of the fix-up novel Tatja Grimm's World, and really makes more sense as part of that novel than as a stand-alone story.
In addition to the two stories (which are both available elsewhere as noted above), there's also a page missing from the collection: see this page containing the missing text.
Where did you get your state ID? (And why? The only reason to get one instead of a Liquor ID is to save $10 or because you're not 21....) The RMV website page on Mass IDs and Liquor IDs says "There is a $15.00 fee for a Massachusetts ID and a $25.00 fee for a Liquor ID." Where does the $50 come in?
And you can always get a passport, which is good for 10 years, only costs $60 (plus the cost of getting photos), and is accepted by the ABCC (Alcoholic Beverages Control Commission) as an ID for liquor purchases. (See MGL 138-34B if you want a cite.) Or join the military (active duty IDs work too).
Of course, both passports and military IDs are (da-dum!) national IDs....
Today. :) (And this is the release, not the "preview".)
Press release: Roxio Provides Free Macintosh OS X Update For Toast 5 Titanium users
"Direct" link: Toast for OS X
I suspect very strongly that there is a cable loop and/or Kensington "laptop style" locking slot built into the design. Remember, even the original Macintosh had a "locking kit" that let you secure the machine (and keyboard!) to a solid piece of furniture, and the current towers combine it with a case lock so people can't steal your RAM.
They can't "lobby" and keep their 501(c)3 tax deductible status. OTOH, they can pursue "education" on relevant issues.
(Put bluntly, they can give Congress white papers and testimony, but not money.)
From the About EFF page:
Note also that their legal work can sometimes undo bad legislation, and is more susceptible to reasoned argument than "count the dollars"--as long as they have the amount they need to pursue the case in the first place....
Despite the perceived similarity in names between EFF and EFnet, it was not the first, main, or only EFnet server in any way. irc.colorado.edu both predated and postdated it.
And it was never "EFFnet".
Of course, the real difference between Stanford and MIT is that MIT got net 18, and Stanford had to settle for net 36 (and appears to have given it back to IANA since then).
Of course, what would you expect from the university whose spinoff BBN built the ARPANET, built routers before Cisco, and brought us the use of @ for email addresses?
Seriously, though, both Stanford and MIT have had a real impact. One study ranked the total economic value of MIT's spinoffs as the 24th largest economy in the world for 1994 (between Thailand and South Africa).
But I gotta thank Stanford for Google.
A comment I made during the Unix International/OSF wars, when it was Sun and AT&T vs. Everyone Else with Open Look and Motif their dueling GUIs:
"This just shows that it's not only about look and feel, but also smell."
Well, I could point out that image support and colors on TTYs were in XEmacs a long time ago (I still have a machine with XEmacs 20.4 on it, which has both...) but that might start up another "frank exchange of views" so I guess I'd better be pusillanimous instead.
To be more succinct: they're different, based on the fact that the different development teams have different priorities. There are features that come in both directions, but IMHO they tend to show up on XEmacs first.
That "variety" would be what, JPEG and, er, JPEG? All the JPEG files I have lying around are type JPEG, even if some of them belong to BPPi (Cameraid) or 8BIM (Photoshop) or ogle (PictureViewer).
Well, you're right about the last one, and right that a Massachusetts license is legal, but wrong about the rest.
Massachusetts General Laws, Chapter 138, Section 34B:
"Any licensee, or agent or employee thereof, under this chapter who reasonably relies on such a liquor purchase identification card or motor vehicle license issued pursuant to section eight of chapter ninety, or on a valid passport issued by the United States government, or by the government, recognized by the United States government, of a foreign country, or a valid United States issued military identification card, for proof of a person's identity and age shall not suffer [...]"
So the accepted forms of ID:
Here's the "logic":
Obviously this explains the whole thing.
The last CompactFlash card I bought for my digital camera was well under $1/MB (actually about $0.67/MB).
The first SCSI hard disk I bought for my Mac Plus was over $10/MB, and held less than 1/4 the capacity of that CF card. And it weighed 14 lb.
Flash isn't cheaper than current technology disks, certainly; for the price of a 1/4 GB CF card you can get an 80GB IDE drive. But the growth of the digital camera and PDA markets has driven the cost/MB of flash down, and will continue to do so.
What would be cool is a RAID controller for CompactFlash; plug in 6 CF cards in a space the size of a standard hard drive and have it do RAID-5 in hardware. Slower than stock RAM, but non-volatile. The catch there is the number of read/write cycles...and I'm not sure how much work has been done on improving that side of flashRAM performance.
"Get Info" on the file. Click on the icon in the Get Info window. Paste, assuming you have a picture or icon in the clipboard. Done.
As for the problem you had opening the file, I usually get the "can't find the application for this file--try picking one" dialog box, and recent versions of the OS (not just OS X) will use the extension to pick an application if the type/creator are missing (see the Internet control panel to set MIME type/application/suffix mappings).
No contact email address is given. Hmm. Maybe because they don't want to get signed up for all those single opt-in lists?
You really want weird? I was cleaning out some old Pop-Up Video episodes on the TiVo, and as I fast-forwarded through some commercials I saw a Jeep commercial, which was riffing on the "there's only one {Amazon, jungle, etc, ..., Jeep}" theme. For "jungle" they had the NYC skyline as it then was.
And right after that, I got a Tina Turner video looking across at the NYC skyline...as it then was.