"giving value to how often an album was mentioned by editors and recording its mean place."
So, it's not the best albums of 2003, but the most popular. Isn't the article title pretty misleading in that case? The linked page doesn't even say it's the "best" albums, it just says "top". So, really, this is just a statistically accurate Top 20 chart.
I'm using 0.6 to write this right now, and I've been following Phoenix-cum-Firebird since the first 0.1 release. I only use Mozilla for the Mail client now. (That reminds me; I need to bzip up my Junk mail folder and send it off to spamarchive.org.)
2003 in Review: One Step Backward, Two Steps Forward
By Timothy R. Butler Editor-in-Chief, Open for Business December 31, 2003, 19:58:35 EST
This year was a year that wasn't exactly how we might have hoped, but overall, the state of GNU/Linux was overall better at this side of 2003 than it was at the other. In our annual tradition, what follows is a look at the ups - and downs - of GNU/Linux and Free/Open Source Software in 2003.
The year started hopeful - in our last year-end article, I said, "all indications seem to suggest that 2003 might just be even better [than 2002]." However, our hopes were temporarily dashed. By the end of January, one of the key players in the GNU/Linux desktop market - MandrakeSoft - had entered bankruptcy protection. Nearly a year later, Mandrake appears to be poised to reemerge in much better financial health, but at the time, many thought it might end up being liquidated.
It was about this time that rumors first started to circulate that the SCO Group had hired Boies, Schiller & Flexner. By March, SCO Group had taken away the air of mystery and announced their intent: to sue IBM and argue that the Linux kernel contained code illegally stolen from SCO's UNIX intellectual property. This suit quickly became a large scale "war" between SCO and the Free Software community as SCO broadened its range of attack and even started selling "licenses to use Linux."
Things did improve, nonetheless, once SCO started letting out "violating code." Thus far, Eric Raymond, Bruce Perens, Linus Torvalds and others have been able to confirm non-SCO origins for all of the code in question. The case was further weakened when it was collectively recalled that SCO had released the base UNIX code under the BSD license as part of its "ancient UNIX" program before Ransom Love left the company (does this mean that this one time "foe" of the community might have actually ended up helping it?). Love also made headlines later this year when he joined the board of directors at Debian-centered Progeny Linux Systems.
But all was not bad - by a long shot. All of the major distributions took huge strides towards better usability this year. Red Hat's Fedora Core, release in October, along with Mandrake Linux 9.2 and SuSE Linux 8.2 were major advances over similar distributions even just a year ago concerning ease-of-use and functionality.
Desktop GNU/Linux also made strides in the OEM front this year. In July, Hewlett-Packard announced that a number of its Compaq d-series computers would come bundled with Mandrake Linux 9.1. Wal-Mart also continued to push its Microtel GNU/Linux systems that were one of our highlights of last year. However, the most interesting OEM deal might not have been HP or Microtel, but Shuttle. As I noted in our review of the Shuttle SB62G2 system last week, this is a system that is really appealing for both its functionality and practicality. As an ideal system for home or office and with a low sticker price, it may be one of the first systems that come bundled with GNU/Linux that actually sticks out as something beyond the bare essentials.
The Free Software desktop also got support from a somewhat confused Sun Microsystems. While it was not that long ago that Sun abandoned its plan to have its own GNU/Linux distribution, Sun switched courses yet again and released the Java Desktop System late this year. The system - which has relatively few Java related features - is based on SuSE Linux and uses a modified version of the GNOME 2.4 desktop. Sun also revealed some really exciting future technologies such as the "Looking Glass" 3D desktop, something that could be GNU/Linux's chance to move beyond following Mac OS and Windows and blaze its own revolutionary desktop trail (not that learning from the other OSes isn't a necessary and important part of the Linux desktop's rapid maturation).
Another venerable industry name that has suffered in recent years took to GNU/Linux in a major way
Linux went 2.6 with a massive scheduling and memory management system, and the SCO case kicked off. Microsoft launched new security 'initiatives' and Mozilla came out with about three or four new major versions. The next 12 months look as if they'll be just as exciting as the previous, and I myself can't wait. I bet there'll be legal, financial and technical issues abound. My personal favourite at the moment is freeciv. I like to hack it.
...of why this guy is a troll and all who modded him up must be smoking the $2 crack.
"(First off, remember that us MATHEMATICANS DO IT SMOOTHLY AND CONTINUOUSLY.) Hehehe, wow, too many New Year's drinks. Anyway, on to the story."
OK, a fairly unfunny introduction. Fair enough.
"Last year I assisted with some research involving Poincare along with four other professors."
There's no evidence of this; we don't even know who this person is. There's very little research done merely 'involving' Poincare, and this claim is just so nonspecific it could mean anything. 'Poincare' could mean anything of his, not necessarily his infamous Conjecture.
"We studied weak wide-angle temperature correlations in the cosmic MICROWAVE background."
This has nothing to do with the Poincare Conjecture at all. Nor mathematics in general. This makes little sense, and is totally offtopic.
"There exists a simple geometric model of a NON-INFINITE and NON-NEGATIVE curved space, which we call the POINCARE space."
This is the only ontopic sentence here, and it's just been copy-and-pasted from the article and capitalised strangely.
"This may sound foreign to you, and I'd probably be worried if it didn't, but this POINCARE space can account for these observations with no fine-tuning."
The reason it sounds foreign is because it makes no sense. "I'd probably be worried if you didn't" is just message padding, and the final clause of the sentence refers to 'observations' which no one, not even the poster himself, mentioned. "no fine-tuning" is just more message padding.
"From our "Nature" (425 2003 593) article: "If confirmed, the model will answer the ancient question of whether space is finite or infinite, while retaining the standard Friedmann-Lemaitre foundation for local physics.""
I can't find any such quote on Google. The "425 2003 593" is simply a US court case reference number. Friedmann-Lemaitre is just two random names stuck together. "foundation for local physics" means nothing.
"So, yes, Poincare is VERY important"
Sweeping into the conclusion in response to a nonexistent question ("Is Poincare important?")
"and this postulate"
Why does he refer to it as a postulate and not 'Conjecture' all of a sudden?
"as well as the query as to whether it's been appropriately solved has a HUGE impact on all kinds of other research (math, physics, computer science, etc.) such as this very research that I participated in."
This very research which you just made up out of thin air, yes. And while Poincare's Conjecture is quite important in number theory, topology and consequently numerical cryptography, it has little relevance to physics or other sciences. He's just listed these to sound credible.
And there you have it. One of the most effective trolls today, and you all fell for it. *Sigh.*
Though for me, the ability to hack the game code is probably the next-best thing after its rough-edged cuteness. I'm currently dicking around with the code to add a server option that allows you to choose the radius of a nuclear bomb's fallout and aftereffects. I also made up my own ruleset which has an ICBM, IRBM and Tactical Nuke. Oh, and I threw together a patch which causes dropping a nuke to affect your reputation and to remove infrastructure from around the epicentre of the blast.
take it up in the arse, manham manham manham manham manham manham manham manham manham manham manham manham manham manham manham
shut up ekrout
don't make me whip out the PECKER!!!11
...but who the hell cares? Does this actually benefit humanity in any way, shape or form? I totally doubt that two space tourists are going to make space holidays or astrofaring more accessible for the rest of us. I'd just wait for private enterprise in general to catch up; as it is, this is just money which could be spent more productively.
Slashdot Mirror
"giving value to how often an album was mentioned by editors and recording its mean place."
So, it's not the best albums of 2003, but the most popular. Isn't the article title pretty misleading in that case? The linked page doesn't even say it's the "best" albums, it just says "top". So, really, this is just a statistically accurate Top 20 chart.
I'm using 0.6 to write this right now, and I've been following Phoenix-cum-Firebird since the first 0.1 release. I only use Mozilla for the Mail client now. (That reminds me; I need to bzip up my Junk mail folder and send it off to spamarchive.org.)
2003 in Review: One Step Backward, Two Steps Forward
By Timothy R. Butler
Editor-in-Chief, Open for Business
December 31, 2003, 19:58:35 EST
This year was a year that wasn't exactly how we might have hoped, but overall, the state of GNU/Linux was overall better at this side of 2003 than it was at the other. In our annual tradition, what follows is a look at the ups - and downs - of GNU/Linux and Free/Open Source Software in 2003.
The year started hopeful - in our last year-end article, I said, "all indications seem to suggest that 2003 might just be even better [than 2002]." However, our hopes were temporarily dashed. By the end of January, one of the key players in the GNU/Linux desktop market - MandrakeSoft - had entered bankruptcy protection. Nearly a year later, Mandrake appears to be poised to reemerge in much better financial health, but at the time, many thought it might end up being liquidated.
It was about this time that rumors first started to circulate that the SCO Group had hired Boies, Schiller & Flexner. By March, SCO Group had taken away the air of mystery and announced their intent: to sue IBM and argue that the Linux kernel contained code illegally stolen from SCO's UNIX intellectual property. This suit quickly became a large scale "war" between SCO and the Free Software community as SCO broadened its range of attack and even started selling "licenses to use Linux."
Things did improve, nonetheless, once SCO started letting out "violating code." Thus far, Eric Raymond, Bruce Perens, Linus Torvalds and others have been able to confirm non-SCO origins for all of the code in question. The case was further weakened when it was collectively recalled that SCO had released the base UNIX code under the BSD license as part of its "ancient UNIX" program before Ransom Love left the company (does this mean that this one time "foe" of the community might have actually ended up helping it?). Love also made headlines later this year when he joined the board of directors at Debian-centered Progeny Linux Systems.
But all was not bad - by a long shot. All of the major distributions took huge strides towards better usability this year. Red Hat's Fedora Core, release in October, along with Mandrake Linux 9.2 and SuSE Linux 8.2 were major advances over similar distributions even just a year ago concerning ease-of-use and functionality.
Desktop GNU/Linux also made strides in the OEM front this year. In July, Hewlett-Packard announced that a number of its Compaq d-series computers would come bundled with Mandrake Linux 9.1. Wal-Mart also continued to push its Microtel GNU/Linux systems that were one of our highlights of last year. However, the most interesting OEM deal might not have been HP or Microtel, but Shuttle. As I noted in our review of the Shuttle SB62G2 system last week, this is a system that is really appealing for both its functionality and practicality. As an ideal system for home or office and with a low sticker price, it may be one of the first systems that come bundled with GNU/Linux that actually sticks out as something beyond the bare essentials.
The Free Software desktop also got support from a somewhat confused Sun Microsystems. While it was not that long ago that Sun abandoned its plan to have its own GNU/Linux distribution, Sun switched courses yet again and released the Java Desktop System late this year. The system - which has relatively few Java related features - is based on SuSE Linux and uses a modified version of the GNOME 2.4 desktop. Sun also revealed some really exciting future technologies such as the "Looking Glass" 3D desktop, something that could be GNU/Linux's chance to move beyond following Mac OS and Windows and blaze its own revolutionary desktop trail (not that learning from the other OSes isn't a necessary and important part of the Linux desktop's rapid maturation).
Another venerable industry name that has suffered in recent years took to GNU/Linux in a major way
Linux went 2.6 with a massive scheduling and memory management system, and the SCO case kicked off. Microsoft launched new security 'initiatives' and Mozilla came out with about three or four new major versions. The next 12 months look as if they'll be just as exciting as the previous, and I myself can't wait. I bet there'll be legal, financial and technical issues abound. My personal favourite at the moment is freeciv. I like to hack it.
OK, a fairly unfunny introduction. Fair enough.
There's no evidence of this; we don't even know who this person is. There's very little research done merely 'involving' Poincare, and this claim is just so nonspecific it could mean anything. 'Poincare' could mean anything of his, not necessarily his infamous Conjecture.
This has nothing to do with the Poincare Conjecture at all. Nor mathematics in general. This makes little sense, and is totally offtopic.
This is the only ontopic sentence here, and it's just been copy-and-pasted from the article and capitalised strangely.
The reason it sounds foreign is because it makes no sense. "I'd probably be worried if you didn't" is just message padding, and the final clause of the sentence refers to 'observations' which no one, not even the poster himself, mentioned. "no fine-tuning" is just more message padding.
I can't find any such quote on Google. The "425 2003 593" is simply a US court case reference number. Friedmann-Lemaitre is just two random names stuck together. "foundation for local physics" means nothing.
Sweeping into the conclusion in response to a nonexistent question ("Is Poincare important?")
Why does he refer to it as a postulate and not 'Conjecture' all of a sudden?
This very research which you just made up out of thin air, yes. And while Poincare's Conjecture is quite important in number theory, topology and consequently numerical cryptography, it has little relevance to physics or other sciences. He's just listed these to sound credible.
And there you have it. One of the most effective trolls today, and you all fell for it. *Sigh.*
No.
(It even says in the freaking article stub that the proof is merely alluded to, for crying out loud.)
Though for me, the ability to hack the game code is probably the next-best thing after its rough-edged cuteness. I'm currently dicking around with the code to add a server option that allows you to choose the radius of a nuclear bomb's fallout and aftereffects. I also made up my own ruleset which has an ICBM, IRBM and Tactical Nuke. Oh, and I threw together a patch which causes dropping a nuke to affect your reputation and to remove infrastructure from around the epicentre of the blast.
(Whew, that's quite a lot to say.)
And the CVS now has AI diplomacy. All, right!
take it up in the arse, manham manham manham manham manham manham manham manham manham manham manham manham manham manham manham shut up ekrout don't make me whip out the PECKER!!!11
...but who the hell cares? Does this actually benefit humanity in any way, shape or form? I totally doubt that two space tourists are going to make space holidays or astrofaring more accessible for the rest of us. I'd just wait for private enterprise in general to catch up; as it is, this is just money which could be spent more productively.