Finally we have the chance to lobby elected representatives rather than aetherial bureaucracy! Don't let's waste it, guys...
If anyone in the UK wants to write to their MEPs about this resolution (you should), you can use this page to do so. I'm sure similar services exist in other countries, or you could just post the MEPs a dead tree version of your complaint.
According to a tentative theory mentioned in Ancient Egypt: A Very Short Introduction, it's possible that the early Ancient Egyptians heard about the technology of "written languages", and then got their top scientists onto replicating the concept, in order to try to correct the economic and military disparity that would result from being illiterate in a literate world.
I'm not sure how well accepted this hypothesis is, but I find it an intriguing idea. It certainly fits in with the behaviour of nations today, as they scramble to try to replicate nuclear technology, say, or high quality Internet search engines.
Does it matter? I mean, are you saying you believe everyone has the right to face their accuser and defend themselves - unless the evidence is really convincing?
I'm as pro-technological advance as the next/.er, but I've never really bought this kind of argument.
Civilizations wax and wane, ebb and flow. If Roman technological and economic advance had continued unabated, there may have been a Europe-wide steam train system by 700 AD, perhaps. But it didn't.
Maybe, just before the Sun's increased emissivity becomes a serious problem, our descendants will fall back into some sort of dark age/world war/counter-enlightenment. Who knows?
I just think it's a bit silly to assume that Moore's Law will be obeyed continuously for the next billion-odd years, without considering that maybe there will be sociological forces that come into play.
Supposing there are a series of photographs of portraits that are in the public domain, but the images all have the frames in shot.
I don't think the frame should be in shot, so I write a bash script to remove the frames in bulk. Not only has a great deal of technical sophistry gone into this (I'd be surprised if 2% of the general population were capable of doing that), but the resulting.jpegs are set up in a way that I have dictated, based on my personal artistic preferences.
Are these new images in the public domain?
My gut feeling says they should be, but I don't see the difference between your actions and mine.
Whilst I don't know enough copyright law to know if the NPG is in the right or not, as a UK taxpayer I'm firmly against this legal action. Our culture is enriched by these images; let them be free!
If it decays, the bacteria feeding on it release the carbon stored in the trees/plants/whatever in the form of CO2.
If it is burnt, the carbon in the biomass is oxidized, and released in the form of CO2.
As much as I'd like the answer to Global Warming to be as simple as planting a few trees, it really isn't. Tree planting has its place, but isn't nearly as effective as reduction in man-made CO2 levels.
The upgrade did not, however, work perfectly for me. There were X crashes each time I logged on, and everything was incredibly slow to load. I was only able to resolve the problems by getting an even techier friend to change my X configuration, and remove several problematic programs.
This was nothing to do with server timeouts. This was to do with a lack of testing at the beta release stage. If Linux is ever going to make it to the mainstream, we need to stop such glaring omissions making it into release software.
This can only be seen as great news for the ion drive. SMART-1 spiralled around the Moon exactly as planned, and was targetted at the Sea of Excellence with utmost precision. Perhaps we'll be seeing more probes with tiny amounts of fuel in the near future...?
I agree, for a single user, "sudo" is kind of useless. However, if you have a large number of users, sudo is a godsend.
In the standard Linux/Unix setup, you have a lot of users with minimal control of the system, and one "superuser" (root) who can do anything. This all-or-nothing setup is inherently risky, and a bit outdated.
With sudo, a good sysadmin can use the "sudoers" file and select which users can do what. They can change this quickly and easily, and make groups and so on sans hassle. Users cannot, for security reasons, be given the root password. They can, however, just be asked to re-enter their own password to verify that it is in fact them.
In short, sudo is a masterful idea. Also, it allows for some rather funny cartoons.
OO 1 cannot open documents that were saved in OO 2 format
This is far better than with Office, where not only is it impossible to open later Office documents in earlier versions, but some documents saved in earlier versions cannot be opened in later versions. Also, since the old.doc format is proprietary and closed, it is nigh-on impossible to open old documents without that same old version of Office.
The Netherlands were right to make this move. OOo is an open format. They will be able to read their documents forevermore, no matter what changes there are in technology and software. And that can only be a good thing.
They basically say it runs Firefox and Solitaire
I reckon the vast majority of Windows users use a web browser and a solitaire game more than any other applications.
We can give away all the free stuff we want, but if we don't advertise the fact then the message won't get through.
Go to any random person on the street and ask them if they've heard of Ubuntu. Dollars to donuts, they won't have.
Yes, Ubuntu is a great OS (I'm using it now). Now, that doesn't mean that it will replace Windows 98 by osmosis.
Slashdot Mirror
Finally we have the chance to lobby elected representatives rather than aetherial bureaucracy! Don't let's waste it, guys...
If anyone in the UK wants to write to their MEPs about this resolution (you should), you can use this page to do so. I'm sure similar services exist in other countries, or you could just post the MEPs a dead tree version of your complaint.
According to a tentative theory mentioned in Ancient Egypt: A Very Short Introduction, it's possible that the early Ancient Egyptians heard about the technology of "written languages", and then got their top scientists onto replicating the concept, in order to try to correct the economic and military disparity that would result from being illiterate in a literate world.
I'm not sure how well accepted this hypothesis is, but I find it an intriguing idea. It certainly fits in with the behaviour of nations today, as they scramble to try to replicate nuclear technology, say, or high quality Internet search engines.
Does it matter? I mean, are you saying you believe everyone has the right to face their accuser and defend themselves - unless the evidence is really convincing?
This isn't the first time a dog has managed to wangle its way to a degree.
Go to this page for one of the funniest articles on Wikipedia. Basically, there are a lot of disreputable correspondence courses out there.
embiggen?
That's a perfectly cromulent ending, but I think AC was going for "extinguish".
I'm as pro-technological advance as the next /.er, but I've never really bought this kind of argument.
Civilizations wax and wane, ebb and flow. If Roman technological and economic advance had continued unabated, there may have been a Europe-wide steam train system by 700 AD, perhaps. But it didn't.
Maybe, just before the Sun's increased emissivity becomes a serious problem, our descendants will fall back into some sort of dark age/world war/counter-enlightenment. Who knows?
I just think it's a bit silly to assume that Moore's Law will be obeyed continuously for the next billion-odd years, without considering that maybe there will be sociological forces that come into play.
Hypothetical question:
Supposing there are a series of photographs of portraits that are in the public domain, but the images all have the frames in shot.
I don't think the frame should be in shot, so I write a bash script to remove the frames in bulk. Not only has a great deal of technical sophistry gone into this (I'd be surprised if 2% of the general population were capable of doing that), but the resulting .jpegs are set up in a way that I have dictated, based on my personal artistic preferences.
Are these new images in the public domain?
My gut feeling says they should be, but I don't see the difference between your actions and mine.
Whilst I don't know enough copyright law to know if the NPG is in the right or not, as a UK taxpayer I'm firmly against this legal action. Our culture is enriched by these images; let them be free!
Since NASA's already been there, explored, sent back GigaBytes of data... I'll take that bet.
Would you rather send me the money via PayPal? I also accept credit and debit cards.
And now there's no problem with pot usage amongst the student population!
Yeah!
Who could have imagined that you'd need a techy background to understand articles posted on Slashdot?
What's next? A puerile sense of humor on Fark.com? And interest in current affairs for the BBC?
Exactly. To hear this from the horse's mouth, listen to the latest LUGRadio episode.
When biomass dies, it either rots or is burnt.
If it decays, the bacteria feeding on it release the carbon stored in the trees/plants/whatever in the form of CO2.
If it is burnt, the carbon in the biomass is oxidized, and released in the form of CO2.
As much as I'd like the answer to Global Warming to be as simple as planting a few trees, it really isn't. Tree planting has its place, but isn't nearly as effective as reduction in man-made CO2 levels.
The upgrade did not, however, work perfectly for me. There were X crashes each time I logged on, and everything was incredibly slow to load. I was only able to resolve the problems by getting an even techier friend to change my X configuration, and remove several problematic programs. This was nothing to do with server timeouts. This was to do with a lack of testing at the beta release stage. If Linux is ever going to make it to the mainstream, we need to stop such glaring omissions making it into release software.
"Works on contingency? No, money down!"
What about the ~0.3589793238462643383279502884197 of a person you left off?
Humanity has been crashing probes into the Moon for decades. Luna 2 was the first to impact, way back in the 50s.
This can only be seen as great news for the ion drive. SMART-1 spiralled around the Moon exactly as planned, and was targetted at the Sea of Excellence with utmost precision. Perhaps we'll be seeing more probes with tiny amounts of fuel in the near future...?
I agree, for a single user, "sudo" is kind of useless. However, if you have a large number of users, sudo is a godsend.
In the standard Linux/Unix setup, you have a lot of users with minimal control of the system, and one "superuser" (root) who can do anything. This all-or-nothing setup is inherently risky, and a bit outdated.
With sudo, a good sysadmin can use the "sudoers" file and select which users can do what. They can change this quickly and easily, and make groups and so on sans hassle. Users cannot, for security reasons, be given the root password. They can, however, just be asked to re-enter their own password to verify that it is in fact them.
In short, sudo is a masterful idea. Also, it allows for some rather funny cartoons.
Making jokes about a devastating mass illness that ruined the lives of many, many people from all over the world. That's ... tasteful.
This is far better than with Office, where not only is it impossible to open later Office documents in earlier versions, but some documents saved in earlier versions cannot be opened in later versions. Also, since the old .doc format is proprietary and closed, it is nigh-on impossible to open old documents without that same old version of Office.
The Netherlands were right to make this move. OOo is an open format. They will be able to read their documents forevermore, no matter what changes there are in technology and software. And that can only be a good thing.
They basically say it runs Firefox and Solitaire I reckon the vast majority of Windows users use a web browser and a solitaire game more than any other applications.
What are you talking about? Robots are our friends.
We can give away all the free stuff we want, but if we don't advertise the fact then the message won't get through. Go to any random person on the street and ask them if they've heard of Ubuntu. Dollars to donuts, they won't have. Yes, Ubuntu is a great OS (I'm using it now). Now, that doesn't mean that it will replace Windows 98 by osmosis.
MSNBC is criticising the Electronic Frontier Foundation? Now that's a turn up for the books!
TELCOS: We're going to fucking kill everything the Internet stands for!