the less-than-prophetic beginnings of the net:... The UCLA programmers only got as far as 'lo' before the Stanford machine crashed. Oh, no. The idea of a machine crashing instead of serving up the requested data is totally alien to the modern Slashdot reader!
... an egg at him. (this was during the last general elections I think, so it was more than a couple of years ago.) John Prescott evidently didn't like this and decided to punch the guy in the face. Regarding that guy not voting Labour: presumably, voters don't throw eggs at politicians whose party they support. (BTW, John Prescott is the target of most of the fat guy jokes in British political parody.)
I have come across a (rather old) short story about this, An Alien Agony by Harry Harrison. The basic plot is:
Guy lives on some alien planet where he has introduced metalworking etc materials to some highly litteral-minded aliens (I forget their name) who create beautiful artifacts.
Priest comes to convert them all to Christianity. ("They are all God's children")
Guy disagrees and tries to stop him (by philosiphy).
Aliens are converted and build a church.
Aliens decide that the matter would best be decided by a miracle. With their annoying logic they choose to crucify the priest to see if he comes back to life.
Guess what. He doesn't.
A moral of the story is: People are innocent before they commit murder, but not after.
I want it to be a world in which pertoleum(sic) is seen as too valuable to burn, and as a valuable raw material for manufacturing.
Well, the way some countries are going this isn't going to be hard. I, however would prefer a world with lots of oil about, but no economic use for it... unless that was due to us all living in caves.
>"The Internet is the carrier for open source." It's also the carrier of porn and illegal copies of propritary software. That doesn't transfer evil to (F)OSS merely by being transported the same way (except in the eyes of some people... who run the country:-( ).
>"The Internet is also the platform through which open source is developed." It is also the platform through which propritary software is developed. (Thus associating proprietry software with pr0n and warez as you pointed out above.;-> )I think the point being made is about the exapandability of the of (F)OSS development style.
>"It's simply going to be more secure than proprietary software." Not nescessarily. Most insecurities are due to looming release dates. There is also a tradeoff between usability and security. Which is better? Depends on your mission. Many (F)OSS projects lack big PR departments which have an alarming tendancy to set release dates and feature lists at early stages. And usability IS improving, with the improvements in KDE/Gnome, even though the GUI is not so essential for many computing uses.
>"Open source benefits from anti-American sentiments." Not sure about this. I just got back from Kuait and there are literally hundreds of street vendors there selling propritary software. But how many were selling legal copies? (F)OSS software companies are often not so hurt by illegal copying as propietry software companies would be.
>"Incentives around open source include the respect of one's peers." Like the respect between the Reiser group and Linus? Why did it take so long to get that patch added? Those two crews showed as much respect as a couple of kids yelling "Did not! Did too!" Surely that is an exceptional case. The job of Jobs/Wozniak/Gates is to make money for shareholders. The job of Torvalds/Stallman is to make great software (I think).
>"Open source means standing on the shoulders of giants." Uuh, not sure what he means by this. I'm assuming he means IBM. What about Sun, MS, Adobe, and other closed source "Giants"? That quotation of Newton's metaphor is a little confusing in this case. Newton (originator of quote) meant that he could start with previous scientist's public discoveries instead of wasting time having to rediscover them. (F)OSS developers can often start with bits of public existing code instead of wasting time having to reinvent them.
>"Servers have always been expensive and proprietary, but Linux runs on Intel." So does Windows. And when you are buying a $10k server, $200 for Windows doesn't even figure into it. He seems to be talking about disadvantages of Apple (and similar) here.
>"Embedded devices are making greater use of open source." You have a winner here. But imbeded Windows and QNX are also players. This marker is not usually concerned with backwards compatibility and is very volitale in regards to the underlying kernel they choose. If x86 chips become prevalant, expect Windows to dominate. But (F)OSS Kernels are far more easily and cheaply trimmable and tweakable than proprietry ones. e.g. GNU/Hurd will (eventually) have modules, which can be loaded across a (e.g. mobile phone) network as needed.
>"There are an increasing number of companies developing software that aren't software companies." This has always been the case. Lots of companies need some app that custom-built. They don't really care where the source comes from. Since the app is rarely redistributed, they have no requirements to relea
... since the books are all about the development of the characters, which is what theater shows well, and the setting is hardly needed, not even filming on location (e.g. West coast of Scotland).
Think about it. If they could easily arrange it (and get away with it), cigarette companies would give everyone 20 free cigs as soon as they reached $LEGAL_SMOKING_AGE, hoping enough would get hooked for life that there would be a payback.
(Analogy unashamedly inspired by (though not really copied from) earlier post.)
I have been reading up on the history of the Apple II and it seemes that each peripheral card had a ROM which held its "driver" code. Most of this was mapped to an area of fake memory that looked different to each card, so most of a card's code did not need to be relocatable.
# Is it possible to read minds as Prof. X of the X-Men does?
Apparent telepathy would be quite easy: telepaths could simply communicate in some way that most people cannot detect; radio would be fine, if you can figure out how to biologically generate radio waves.
Mind-reading is more difficult. You must:
Detect which neurons are firing.
The signals are rather weak to detect using known physics. Any information stored by quantum tricks can probably be ignored. Memory-reading can be done by remotely stimulating some neurons and seeing which others fire (Neuron stimulation would allow some mind-control, or even the ability to cause heart-attacks or paralysis.)
Process the information.
Probably rough calculations will do mostly. Tricks such as concentrating on simple stuff such as motor output, eye direction, dominant sense, etc will also help. Emotions will appear as large-scale patterns. Despite this, a large processing lobe will be needed.
I wasn't sure how dubious the characters were until he started talking about GravityMan, The Planetaryelectricfield, StrongNuclearForceGirl and Mr.Inertia
Readers of the web-comic G.P.F. will remember a "Mr. Intertia" who was featured in one chapter.
(Warning! Homepage not completely office-safe in a large browser window as of 2004/02/16, due to surreal dream of one of the characters.)
Slashdot Mirror
Children turn pidgins into creoles. (as summarised here)
the less-than-prophetic beginnings of the net: ... The UCLA programmers only got as far as 'lo' before the Stanford machine crashed.
Oh, no. The idea of a machine crashing instead of serving up the requested data is totally alien to the modern Slashdot reader!
If you want to know the day of September 1993, go to : http://www.stopspam.org/faqs/endlesssept.html
... an egg at him. (this was during the last general elections I think, so it was more than a couple of years ago.) John Prescott evidently didn't like this and decided to punch the guy in the face. Regarding that guy not voting Labour: presumably, voters don't throw eggs at politicians whose party they support. (BTW, John Prescott is the target of most of the fat guy jokes in British political parody.)
- Guy lives on some alien planet where he has introduced metalworking etc materials to some highly litteral-minded aliens (I forget their name) who create beautiful artifacts.
- Priest comes to convert them all to Christianity. ("They are all God's children")
- Guy disagrees and tries to stop him (by philosiphy).
- Aliens are converted and build a church.
- Aliens decide that the matter would best be decided by a miracle. With their annoying logic they choose to crucify the priest to see if he comes back to life.
- Guess what. He doesn't.
A moral of the story is: People are innocent before they commit murder, but not after.Wouldn't be cruel enough. Wyrms* would be better:
"aaAAAAGHGH!"
<flame sound> <CRUNCH> <CRUNCH> <GULP>
* (read up on your fantasy fiction)
"Steve jobs will manage to create a pointing device with no buttons at all. Mac users will claim this to be a revolutionary feature."
t ml
.
This was posted ages ago on rec.humor.funny:
http://www.netfunny.com/rhf/jokes/93q1/macnokbd.h
It also predicts the abscence (sp?) of a keyboard . .
Real Soon Now
his ass/arse so clever it can talk. Or is that just him talking out of it?
> "The Internet is powered by open source."
Like Cisco or Nortel?
No, like Sendmail, or Cisco's Open Source Initiative
>"The Internet is the carrier for open source." ... who run the country :-( ).
It's also the carrier of porn and illegal copies of propritary software.
That doesn't transfer evil to (F)OSS merely by being transported the same way (except in the eyes of some people
>"The Internet is also the platform through which open source is developed." ;-> )I think the point being made is about the exapandability of the of (F)OSS development style.
It is also the platform through which propritary software is developed.
(Thus associating proprietry software with pr0n and warez as you pointed out above.
>"It's simply going to be more secure than proprietary software."
Not nescessarily. Most insecurities are due to looming release dates. There is also a tradeoff between usability and security. Which is better? Depends on your mission.
Many (F)OSS projects lack big PR departments which have an alarming tendancy to set release dates and feature lists at early stages. And usability IS improving, with the improvements in KDE/Gnome, even though the GUI is not so essential for many computing uses.
>"Open source benefits from anti-American sentiments."
Not sure about this. I just got back from Kuait and there are literally hundreds of street vendors there selling propritary software.
But how many were selling legal copies? (F)OSS software companies are often not so hurt by illegal copying as propietry software companies would be.
>"Incentives around open source include the respect of one's peers."
Like the respect between the Reiser group and Linus? Why did it take so long to get that patch added? Those two crews showed as much respect as a couple of kids yelling "Did not! Did too!"
Surely that is an exceptional case. The job of Jobs/Wozniak/Gates is to make money for shareholders. The job of Torvalds/Stallman is to make great software (I think).
>"Open source means standing on the shoulders of giants."
Uuh, not sure what he means by this. I'm assuming he means IBM. What about Sun, MS, Adobe, and other closed source "Giants"?
That quotation of Newton's metaphor is a little confusing in this case. Newton (originator of quote) meant that he could start with previous scientist's public discoveries instead of wasting time having to rediscover them. (F)OSS developers can often start with bits of public existing code instead of wasting time having to reinvent them.
>"Servers have always been expensive and proprietary, but Linux runs on Intel."
So does Windows. And when you are buying a $10k server, $200 for Windows doesn't even figure into it.
He seems to be talking about disadvantages of Apple (and similar) here.
>"Embedded devices are making greater use of open source."
You have a winner here. But imbeded Windows and QNX are also players. This marker is not usually concerned with backwards compatibility and is very volitale in regards to the underlying kernel they choose. If x86 chips become prevalant, expect Windows to dominate.
But (F)OSS Kernels are far more easily and cheaply trimmable and tweakable than proprietry ones. e.g. GNU/Hurd will (eventually) have modules, which can be loaded across a (e.g. mobile phone) network as needed.
>"There are an increasing number of companies developing software that aren't software companies."
This has always been the case. Lots of companies need some app that custom-built. They don't really care where the source comes from. Since the app is rarely redistributed, they have no requirements to relea
... since the books are all about the development of the characters, which is what theater shows well, and the setting is hardly needed, not even filming on location (e.g. West coast of Scotland).
If you look in the Jargon Dictionary under DWIM, you will find a much older example of this mis-smartness.
...people start pronouncing "ftsh" as "fetish". Actually, I've started already, just ask the girl sitting next to me. ;-)
(Analogy unashamedly inspired by (though not really copied from) earlier post.)
I have been reading up on the history of the Apple II and it seemes that each peripheral card had a ROM which held its "driver" code. Most of this was mapped to an area of fake memory that looked different to each card, so most of a card's code did not need to be relocatable.
You ought to stay off that spice, it's addictive.
Apparent telepathy would be quite easy: telepaths could simply communicate in some way that most people cannot detect; radio would be fine, if you can figure out how to biologically generate radio waves.
Mind-reading is more difficult. You must:
Detect which neurons are firing. The signals are rather weak to detect using known physics. Any information stored by quantum tricks can probably be ignored. Memory-reading can be done by remotely stimulating some neurons and seeing which others fire (Neuron stimulation would allow some mind-control, or even the ability to cause heart-attacks or paralysis.) Process the information. Probably rough calculations will do mostly. Tricks such as concentrating on simple stuff such as motor output, eye direction, dominant sense, etc will also help. Emotions will appear as large-scale patterns. Despite this, a large processing lobe will be needed.Readers of the web-comic G.P.F. will remember a "Mr. Intertia" who was featured in one chapter.
(Warning! Homepage not completely office-safe in a large browser window as of 2004/02/16, due to surreal dream of one of the characters.)
\/\/
BTW, the Greeks mucked the Phonecian sibilants up and shin's shape and position became sigma.
You have attempted to invoke Goldwin's law delibrately. The thread will not end. <Evil Laugh>
Title says it all.