Here in South Africa the cars had Mercedes badges attached. They've been here for years - I'm suprised that they haven't been available in the US until now.
I'm not a big downloader myself - work policies prohibit BitTorrent etc and phone calls in South Africa are too expensive (even locally) to download great whopping amounts of data from home.
I do know many people though who have episodes or full sets of various TV shows, and offer them to me all the time. They've been doing that for years - I can't really see that this is anything new, especially if we're already doing it in my sleepy corner of the globe.
Of course, just because a (relatively) few people do it now, when they become shared with the same regularity as music, that's when they become the next craze. Perhaps the TV exec's are perfectly aware that it already happens - what they're scared of is when it becomes huge.
To analogise, for those of us who don't know anything about what I presume is gridiron football:
The bowler charges in, phone cunningly concealed with his left hand. He delivers a vicious bouncer, but the batsman is on to it in a flash. He swivels into a hook, catching the phone with the meat of his bat and sending it over the west stand. Six more!
On the other hand, our own satellite service is filled with European content:-)
I wouldn't be too concerned about not getting much SA TV - the public broadcast stuff does carry a bit of excellent programming, but it's mostly common denominator stuff, which obviously cannot appeal to everyone. Furthermore they are government funded, and a fair amount of public service programming is required (not that I think this is a bad thing.) They also broadcast in all 11 official languages, so the English channel is the only one which would be of use to most Europeans (although maybe the Afrikaans programming could be understood by the Dutch).
Most of our entertainment and documentary stuff is imported, either from the US/Canada or Europe.
It is being screened on SABC 3 here in South Africa, one of the South African Broadcasting Corporation's three free to view channels. It is entirely free to view, as long as you have a tv license, which you need if you have a TV anyway.
The first episode will apparently be available for download from the website at the end of this week.
I'm with you on Stallman though - he reminds me of nothing more than a dwarf from some form of fantasy novel. Give him an axe and a scottish accent and there's a career in the diminutive warrior trade just waiting for him:-)
To be honest, I actually know very little Afrikaans, relatively speaking, being raised in an English family and only learning Afrikaans in school because I was forced to (like everyone else at school in the 80's and 90's in South Africa).
I can make myself understood, but real Afrikaans people tend to laugh if I attempt to hold a real conversation with them in the language. Still, I can ask where the toilets are and buy a beer - what more do you need?:-)
Kind of arb replying to my own comment, I know, but it's been pointed out to me that "African" is the English translation of "Afrikaans". I apologise for my misunderstanding if this is what was intended - however, the proper name for the language in English is still "Afrikaans" (I think:-) ).
Actually, South Africa runs at 220 (officially at least). Eskom (the government power company) puts out a varying range (as do all power companies) due to a variety of factors but it averages out to close to 220V. We never come near 250V.
Re:You can get to their website?
on
Cray XT-3 Ships
·
· Score: 1
I happened to see the story quite early - I got in, read it and got out before the sound of a million slashdotters could be heard approaching on the horizon.
I'm a South African myself, and Mark Shuttleworth is truly an inspiration to us all. I can't speak too much for what kind of impact he has had on open-source adoption in terms of raw numbers and so forth, but the government has started making serious noises about taking it up, some of which can probably be attributed to our Afronaut's efforts.
He also supports Go Open Source a South African website devoted to promoting OSS. Lots of info is available here about the spread of OSS in SA, if you're interested.
His Shuttleworth foundation also supports other OSS and related projects, such as Digital Coast and various others. Plenty of information can be found at The Shuttleworth Foundation.
Furthermore, he also supports Hip2b2 which aims to encourage schoolkids to take an interest in and study science, and provides tools to allow more of our youth to study science (and indeed to study in general). So many of our schoolkids face crippling poverty and bleak prospects that Hip2b2 might well be some of the most important stuff he is doing. He actually did a roadshow around the country some time ago to try and personally promote the study of science and was very well received. Next to Nelson Mandela, he may well be the most popular and recognisable person in SA today (well, maybe not quite, but I'd like to think he's up there.)
I seem to have written way more than I planned to, but there is so much good stuff you can write about this man. We in SA are very fortunate to have him.
P.S. - did you you know he is also a Slashdot user? He is user markshuttle, with a personal website here.
It may be obvious from this post that I have the utmost respect for this man.
I read the article (okay, so I kinda read it:-) ) and it has the speed and specs to be a geek's improvement on sliced bread. But how big is it, physically?
The article doesn't appear to mention its dimensions, and I'm curious to know what kind of space you need to install this baby. Anyone got any idea?
Sorry, it wasn't clear to any of us (or to me at least) that you were quoting someone, since your comment was over the +1 threshold and the parent clearly wasn't.
The potential for a good set of humorous corrections has just evaporated. Ah well...
I asked this question myself in this post some time ago. I received this informative reply (and I quote):
I don't want to argue your points, but give you some explanations:
- Slashdot is not a news site as in journalism news. Its staff does not necessarily have Press credentials or any training in publishing news, and its original contents should be regarded with low credibility. It's really just a collection of links to happenings that may or may not be interesting to a nerd.
- As per above, Slashdot "editors" are not news editors. They don't take articles by journalists and check them for facts, grammar, and spelling, then publish them. The editors' job is to maintain the website and decide which stories are posted and which are discarded.
- It's worth repeating: the stories here are not news items. Never have been, never will be. Get that through your head, pound it into your brain, and stop evaluating the stories as journalistic news reports. They're not.
- The editors will not change any part of the user's story submission before posting it. This includes the title and the links. Even if they know there are spelling or grammar errors in the title and story, they will not change it. They will only make changes if they receive a substantial amount of email complaining about an error.
- Complaining about mistakes in the comments section might earn you some karma, but the most effective way of fixing them is to email the editor who posted the story.
Not being in the US myself, I'm curious to know if this regulation now allows research and work on BPL to start, or if lots of trials and so forth are already under way. I know that a great deal of work is being done in Europe on it already, and even here in South Africa (with some of the Eurpoean deployment in Spain being done by an SA firm, which is basically what I know of the global BPL situation:) ). To the best of my knowledge, these implementations are still experimental work though.
Does this regulation now allow for commercial implementation of BPL by US power companies, or is this not the end of the story as far as regulation in the US goes?
Of course, I may be completely wrong and full scale commercial development is under way in other parts of the world already. Is it?
I'm not in the US, so maybe this is fine there, but to me this sounds very much like libel (at least what I understand libel to mean:)).
If it was simply the case that the Republican registered the sites, on which disparaging comments are made about a political opponent that would just be the sleazy but unfortunately acceptable face of politics. But since he registered domains which might reasonably (by my definition of reasonable anyhow) be taken to be connected with the Democrat and such disparaging statements are then made it sounds like a case could be made for unfairness, and whatever law that then entails.
Is this any different to registering www.microsoft.com (for example) and then writing Bill Gates hate-speech all over it?
Please note that I have no political stance to take on the issue of US politics, so please don't interpret anything I have said as a political attack on either candidate:)
I agree with your point, but this argument only really applies to countries with a large enough segment of the population intererested in x genre of music to make living off performing that music viable.
Here in South Africa, for example, we have 40 million people, of which about 1 million are actively interested in Rock (my genre of choice). The live music scene in any given city isn't huge (most cities have a club or two, the Johannesburg metropole has many), since the people in that city don't have enough active numbers to support many live music outlets of any one kind of genre at once. CD sales for that same music aren't huge, but they do add significantly to a band's income here.
There are some places in the world (like here) where the sole aim of any good band in a professional sense is to be noticed and signed by a British or US label, and move to that country where one really can make it big and live off music alone. That just can't be done here no matter how good you are (our best band is now in the US, performing as Seether. When they were here as Saron Gas they were huge locally, but they were hardly getting rich:) ). Depriving bands in situations such as ours from the supplementation of CD sales, small as they may be, doesn't seem right for the environment we are in.
This of course applies situations like ours and has (I imagine) less relevance in the US or other 1st-world countries.
Anheuser-Bush has developed a sweet, caffeinated beer.
I'll admit I'm hardly a beer fanatic nor am I an expert, but is beer really supposed to be sweet? Is that not going to taste truly vile?
I enjoy a good draught of Amstel, Windhoek or even Castle from time to time (I'm South African, so these are the beers we get here, mostly brewed locally). These beers aren't sweet, and I can't imagine what a sweet beer would taste like. Fruit juice with added hops comes to mind...
Note that I have no objection to the addition of caffeine, the more stimulants there are in my glass at once the better:)
Try living in Africa for a while (I'm in South Africa) and then talk about always being the last to get the really cool stuff.
We only got ISDN a few years ago, and that isn't widely distibuted yet. Broadband, via ASDL and satellite linkage, is a distant dream for most people (heck, for most of our rural population, a telephone and electricity is a distant dream:( ).
I agree, the US is probably less technologically favoured than Europe, but from our perspective, everyone else, North America, Europe, Australia, half of Asia etc, looks like high-tech demigods:)
I'm not trying to start anything, nor am I saying you should just sit back and smile about what you have because you have more than us. I'm just pointing out how different parts of the world can have incredibly different perspectives of the same issue:)
Instead of quietly dragging yourself into a corner and drinking away the pictures, you had to share that charming piece of mental imagery with all of us. Now we can't get rid of it either.
Thanks for everything. I'll be sending my therapist's bill shortly.
Slashdot Mirror
Who are ZAP?
Here in South Africa the cars had Mercedes badges attached. They've been here for years - I'm suprised that they haven't been available in the US until now.
I'm not a big downloader myself - work policies prohibit BitTorrent etc and phone calls in South Africa are too expensive (even locally) to download great whopping amounts of data from home.
I do know many people though who have episodes or full sets of various TV shows, and offer them to me all the time. They've been doing that for years - I can't really see that this is anything new, especially if we're already doing it in my sleepy corner of the globe.
Of course, just because a (relatively) few people do it now, when they become shared with the same regularity as music, that's when they become the next craze. Perhaps the TV exec's are perfectly aware that it already happens - what they're scared of is when it becomes huge.
To analogise, for those of us who don't know anything about what I presume is gridiron football:
The bowler charges in, phone cunningly concealed with his left hand. He delivers a vicious bouncer, but the batsman is on to it in a flash. He swivels into a hook, catching the phone with the meat of his bat and sending it over the west stand. Six more!
WHAM!! No more nagging phone.
On the other hand, our own satellite service is filled with European content :-)
I wouldn't be too concerned about not getting much SA TV - the public broadcast stuff does carry a bit of excellent programming, but it's mostly common denominator stuff, which obviously cannot appeal to everyone. Furthermore they are government funded, and a fair amount of public service programming is required (not that I think this is a bad thing.) They also broadcast in all 11 official languages, so the English channel is the only one which would be of use to most Europeans (although maybe the Afrikaans programming could be understood by the Dutch).
Most of our entertainment and documentary stuff is imported, either from the US/Canada or Europe.
It is being screened on SABC 3 here in South Africa, one of the South African Broadcasting Corporation's three free to view channels. It is entirely free to view, as long as you have a tv license, which you need if you have a TV anyway.
:-)
The first episode will apparently be available for download from the website at the end of this week.
I'm with you on Stallman though - he reminds me of nothing more than a dwarf from some form of fantasy novel. Give him an axe and a scottish accent and there's a career in the diminutive warrior trade just waiting for him
To be honest, I actually know very little Afrikaans, relatively speaking, being raised in an English family and only learning Afrikaans in school because I was forced to (like everyone else at school in the 80's and 90's in South Africa).
:-)
I can make myself understood, but real Afrikaans people tend to laugh if I attempt to hold a real conversation with them in the language. Still, I can ask where the toilets are and buy a beer - what more do you need?
Kind of arb replying to my own comment, I know, but it's been pointed out to me that "African" is the English translation of "Afrikaans". I apologise for my misunderstanding if this is what was intended - however, the proper name for the language in English is still "Afrikaans" (I think :-) ).
To be nitpicky, it's Afrikaans for "there is no spoon". Afrikaans is a language derived from Dutch, spoken only in South Africa.
There is no such language as African, although there are many African languages, such as Zulu, Xhosa, Swahili etc.
I use the Afrikaans sig as my secret South African Slashdot Handshake...
Actually, South Africa runs at 220 (officially at least). Eskom (the government power company) puts out a varying range (as do all power companies) due to a variety of factors but it averages out to close to 220V. We never come near 250V.
I happened to see the story quite early - I got in, read it and got out before the sound of a million slashdotters could be heard approaching on the horizon.
pleasure Recovery1 - anything I can do to push my own little southern corner of the globe, or one of its citizens :-)
I'm a South African myself, and Mark Shuttleworth is truly an inspiration to us all. I can't speak too much for what kind of impact he has had on open-source adoption in terms of raw numbers and so forth, but the government has started making serious noises about taking it up, some of which can probably be attributed to our Afronaut's efforts.
He also supports Go Open Source a South African website devoted to promoting OSS. Lots of info is available here about the spread of OSS in SA, if you're interested.
His Shuttleworth foundation also supports other OSS and related projects, such as Digital Coast and various others. Plenty of information can be found at The Shuttleworth Foundation.
Furthermore, he also supports Hip2b2 which aims to encourage schoolkids to take an interest in and study science, and provides tools to allow more of our youth to study science (and indeed to study in general). So many of our schoolkids face crippling poverty and bleak prospects that Hip2b2 might well be some of the most important stuff he is doing. He actually did a roadshow around the country some time ago to try and personally promote the study of science and was very well received. Next to Nelson Mandela, he may well be the most popular and recognisable person in SA today (well, maybe not quite, but I'd like to think he's up there.)
I seem to have written way more than I planned to, but there is so much good stuff you can write about this man. We in SA are very fortunate to have him.
P.S. - did you you know he is also a Slashdot user? He is user markshuttle, with a personal website here.
It may be obvious from this post that I have the utmost respect for this man.
I read the article (okay, so I kinda read it :-) ) and it has the speed and specs to be a geek's improvement on sliced bread. But how big is it, physically?
The article doesn't appear to mention its dimensions, and I'm curious to know what kind of space you need to install this baby. Anyone got any idea?
Sorry, it wasn't clear to any of us (or to me at least) that you were quoting someone, since your comment was over the +1 threshold and the parent clearly wasn't.
The potential for a good set of humorous corrections has just evaporated. Ah well...
So there you go
those who understand binary arithmetics and those who dont
Would it be rude of me to point at that, in binary arithmetic at least, 1 + 1 = 10?
Not being in the US myself, I'm curious to know if this regulation now allows research and work on BPL to start, or if lots of trials and so forth are already under way. I know that a great deal of work is being done in Europe on it already, and even here in South Africa (with some of the Eurpoean deployment in Spain being done by an SA firm, which is basically what I know of the global BPL situation :) ). To the best of my knowledge, these implementations are still experimental work though.
Does this regulation now allow for commercial implementation of BPL by US power companies, or is this not the end of the story as far as regulation in the US goes?
Of course, I may be completely wrong and full scale commercial development is under way in other parts of the world already. Is it?
amen, brother, amen.
The first few lines were enough to make me stop reading and to consider appointing a therapist...
I'm not in the US, so maybe this is fine there, but to me this sounds very much like libel (at least what I understand libel to mean :)).
:)
If it was simply the case that the Republican registered the sites, on which disparaging comments are made about a political opponent that would just be the sleazy but unfortunately acceptable face of politics. But since he registered domains which might reasonably (by my definition of reasonable anyhow) be taken to be connected with the Democrat and such disparaging statements are then made it sounds like a case could be made for unfairness, and whatever law that then entails.
Is this any different to registering www.microsoft.com (for example) and then writing Bill Gates hate-speech all over it?
Please note that I have no political stance to take on the issue of US politics, so please don't interpret anything I have said as a political attack on either candidate
I agree with your point, but this argument only really applies to countries with a large enough segment of the population intererested in x genre of music to make living off performing that music viable.
:) ). Depriving bands in situations such as ours from the supplementation of CD sales, small as they may be, doesn't seem right for the environment we are in.
Here in South Africa, for example, we have 40 million people, of which about 1 million are actively interested in Rock (my genre of choice). The live music scene in any given city isn't huge (most cities have a club or two, the Johannesburg metropole has many), since the people in that city don't have enough active numbers to support many live music outlets of any one kind of genre at once. CD sales for that same music aren't huge, but they do add significantly to a band's income here.
There are some places in the world (like here) where the sole aim of any good band in a professional sense is to be noticed and signed by a British or US label, and move to that country where one really can make it big and live off music alone. That just can't be done here no matter how good you are (our best band is now in the US, performing as Seether. When they were here as Saron Gas they were huge locally, but they were hardly getting rich
This of course applies situations like ours and has (I imagine) less relevance in the US or other 1st-world countries.
Nice to hear that our beer is better, but I actually just threw Castle in to be patriotic - I much prefer Windhoek myself...
Anheuser-Bush has developed a sweet, caffeinated beer.
:)
I'll admit I'm hardly a beer fanatic nor am I an expert, but is beer really supposed to be sweet? Is that not going to taste truly vile?
I enjoy a good draught of Amstel, Windhoek or even Castle from time to time (I'm South African, so these are the beers we get here, mostly brewed locally). These beers aren't sweet, and I can't imagine what a sweet beer would taste like. Fruit juice with added hops comes to mind...
Note that I have no objection to the addition of caffeine, the more stimulants there are in my glass at once the better
Try living in Africa for a while (I'm in South Africa) and then talk about always being the last to get the really cool stuff.
:( ).
:)
:)
We only got ISDN a few years ago, and that isn't widely distibuted yet. Broadband, via ASDL and satellite linkage, is a distant dream for most people (heck, for most of our rural population, a telephone and electricity is a distant dream
I agree, the US is probably less technologically favoured than Europe, but from our perspective, everyone else, North America, Europe, Australia, half of Asia etc, looks like high-tech demigods
I'm not trying to start anything, nor am I saying you should just sit back and smile about what you have because you have more than us. I'm just pointing out how different parts of the world can have incredibly different perspectives of the same issue
Instead of quietly dragging yourself into a corner and drinking away the pictures, you had to share that charming piece of mental imagery with all of us. Now we can't get rid of it either.
Thanks for everything. I'll be sending my therapist's bill shortly.