Maybe the AC has a point. Who might these DVDs be useful for? Are they technical discussions, or stuff like IceWeasel/Firefox discussions? Or just fun events for the Debian guys to get together? TFA just mentions 'DebConf sessions', so I'm not sure what that involves (a little bit of all, I'm guessing).
Hadn't heard of this before. The wiki page calls this "a video hosting service similar to YouTube. It also sells and rents videos in Windows Media DRM restricted formats. It was founded in 1998 as a Usenet service provider."
Asking as someone who wasn't around when Usenet was the biggest thing, is this really as proliferate as torrent sites?
While one of the basic strengths of Wikipedia is its updatability, I would question the point of storing all the articles offline. Admittedly, TFA does say it'll sync up the data the next time you go online, but it'll practically eat up all your disk space eventually.
I think I'll stick to just checking it online quickly on my humble Motorola A780.
... about third world countries needing food and medicine more (god I can't stand those comments!), here's a very nice article I found through reddit about what happened when an Indian computer chap put a comp in a slum in the capital city.
Its 6 years old but sure makes for nice reading. Stuff like that makes the OLPC worth it IMO.
Okay, I may be a little tipsy, and legal loopholes may not be my strong point, but what exactly is wrong with v3? As I understand it, one of its main purposes is to prevent cases like Tivo from happening again, where the source is officially released (therefore GPL-compliant), but modified builds won't work anyway (not covered in GPLv2, therefore legally correct, but still against the actual spirit of the GPL)
Isn't it expected that licenses will evolve as technmology changes, and as loopholes are exploited? If v3 isn't adopted, what's to prevent everyone from locking down their software through keys?
Please clarify if I've misunderstood something, I greatly respect RMS and really can't see what he's doing wrong here. As I see it, without v3, the GPL will just end up just being a license where people can use the community's hard work and avoid giving something back in return.
So, instead of lengthy user manuals or complicated keypads and remotes, the collection focused on gesture, touching, and other intuitive ways for humans to interact with their environment.
From the hitchhiker's guide:
For years radios had been operated by means of pressing buttons and turning dials; then as the technology became more sophisticated the controls were made touch-sensitive -- you merely had to brush the panels with your fingers; now all you had to do was wave your hand in the general direction of the components and hope. It saved a lot of muscular expenditure of course, but meant that you had to sit infuriatingly still if you wanted to keep listening to the same programme.
Yeah, like I need my last open browser window coming back up on my screen.
Yes, its not very convenient if it automatically restores tabs from the last session, but if its anything like the SessionSaver extension, I'm all for it. Its incredibly useful in that it allows you to reopen closed tabs while browsing. Also, if you're researching a particular topic and have a dozen related tabs open that you'll need again in the future, you can save the entire session under a name. Its nice to see the Firefox guys taking a cool thing like that and making it part of the default browser.
electronic teenager repellant: -1, Troll work on the mystery of why fingernails being dragged down a blackboard produces an excruciating sound: -1, Stupid how woodpeckers avoid headaches: +1, Interesting why dry spaghetti breaks into more than one piece when it is bent: -1, Lame
He predicted that "truth predictor" software would, within five years, "hold politicians to account."
I did a quick google and got this Wiki page. Arguably not as fine grained as he foresees, but with a decent minute of googling you can fish out pretty much anything.
On a side note, it is somewhat saddening to see that there are a dozen famous broken promises mentioned in the link, but the list of fulfilled promises is still a stub.
What does Slackware offer the newbie Linux user that something like Ubuntu doesn't?
A newbie's reply here, so please be kind if I'm wrong:) You learn quite a lot if you use Slackware. I was totally new to Linux more than a year back, and after trying Mandriva, Ubuntu, and a few others, it was Slackware that I finally stuck too. It doesn't hide the underlying workings behind poorly made GUI wrappers (IIRC I struggled somewhat with Mandriva because of this).
Its basic package management is easy too, an installpkg filename.tgz almost always works for me. And since my (default?) installation put gcc, perl, python etc, I didn't come across dependency problems either. The 2 CD set of 10.2 also came with a surprisingly comprehensive bunch of apps (lots of small windowmanagers especially!), and there's always linuxpackages.net for the rest.
Give this distro a try, for its sheer simplicity and cleanliness its worth it.
From the article and summary, it says that the person should specifically switch on the pickpocket mode. And then if the blackberry is removed from the holster it triggers the alarm.
I don't get it either. This might have been useful for absent minded people who misplace their stuff, but now they're expected to trigger the device before misplacing it?
That statement you quote doesn't actually appear in the article, FWIW. Some lines that do appear are:
Perennial sea ice -- thick ice that is normally present year-round and is not affected by the Arctic summer -- had disappeared over an area bigger than the British Isles, ESA said.
Regular satellite monitoring over the last 25 years shows that the northern polar ice cover has shrunk and thinned as global temperatures have risen. "This situation is unlike anything observed in previous record low-ice seasons"
Sounds pretty depressing to me, especially for the bears and other animals there.
I clicked on the short story cos it caught my attention first. It started off well, addressing privacy issues, but then tailed off into the usual rant about everything being digitized and the soulless internet replacing good ol' natural hobbies.
I never could get that line of thought. The internet is a tool, the power is in how you use it. I look around and see the wealth of information I have learnt in the past few years over the net, and it just wouldn't have been possible any way else. I couldn't give that up for anything. And don't blame games for poor parenting either. Technology rocks, quit whining. Poetic angst just makes me sick.
i suppose this implies that evolution is not tailored to the individual.
You are correct here. Evolution is tailored for the survival of genes, not individuals (hence the title 'The Selfish Gene' for Dawkins' book, in which he fully explains this reductionist point of view).
evolution made a mistake in creating humanity, however. we are the only species on this planet capable of directing our own evolution; it seems to have planted the seeds of its own obsolescence.
If you meant that literally, it is not entirely correct. Evolution/Natural selection doesn't have foresight or planning. It just is. But you conclude correctly, our brains have advanced far enough that we are not shackled by our instincts. I'd just love to see if we use our brains well (for stuff like this anti-ageing thing) and don't end up blowing ourselves in the long run.
I recollect reading in atleast 1 book of Richard Dawkins (not sure which), that ageing was evolutionarily inevitable. The reason being that parasitic genes in a host that usually end up killing or harming it will quickly be removed from the gene pool. So such genes are not evolutionarily successful.
On the other hand, if their effect was triggered only after a certain number of years (when an animal has already performed its main purpose of reproduction), there is no drive for it to be removed from the gene pool. An animal with the parasite would be as successful in spreading its genes as one without it. So over the years, the early-acting bad stuff has been wiped out bit by bit by natural selection, while the latent ones have been accumulating all along. I'm sure someone with more knowledge in this will chip in.
agile approaches, agile software development in project management movement, open and honest communications
So what's this about, apart from the management-speak? I feel like I read half dozen pages with barely any content.
You're right, I wouldn't normally recommend anyone to do that. In this case he specifically asked for help in performing his IDE-related tasks (latex etc).
If he sticks to config file editing, he'll learn nothing new in vi except insert mode, make changes and:wq. For the actual stuff that really makes Vim powerful, you need to focus it on your specific requirement. Just my 0.02$.
Slashdot Mirror
Maybe the AC has a point. Who might these DVDs be useful for? Are they technical discussions, or stuff like IceWeasel/Firefox discussions? Or just fun events for the Debian guys to get together?
TFA just mentions 'DebConf sessions', so I'm not sure what that involves (a little bit of all, I'm guessing).
Hadn't heard of this before. The wiki page calls this "a video hosting service similar to YouTube. It also sells and rents videos in Windows Media DRM restricted formats. It was founded in 1998 as a Usenet service provider."
Asking as someone who wasn't around when Usenet was the biggest thing, is this really as proliferate as torrent sites?
While one of the basic strengths of Wikipedia is its updatability, I would question the point of storing all the articles offline. Admittedly, TFA does say it'll sync up the data the next time you go online, but it'll practically eat up all your disk space eventually.
I think I'll stick to just checking it online quickly on my humble Motorola A780.
they're now at /.
Poor guys.
... about third world countries needing food and medicine more (god I can't stand those comments!), here's a very nice article I found through reddit about what happened when an Indian computer chap put a comp in a slum in the capital city.
Its 6 years old but sure makes for nice reading. Stuff like that makes the OLPC worth it IMO.
Okay, I may be a little tipsy, and legal loopholes may not be my strong point, but what exactly is wrong with v3? As I understand it, one of its main purposes is to prevent cases like Tivo from happening again, where the source is officially released (therefore GPL-compliant), but modified builds won't work anyway (not covered in GPLv2, therefore legally correct, but still against the actual spirit of the GPL)
Isn't it expected that licenses will evolve as technmology changes, and as loopholes are exploited? If v3 isn't adopted, what's to prevent everyone from locking down their software through keys?
Please clarify if I've misunderstood something, I greatly respect RMS and really can't see what he's doing wrong here. As I see it, without v3, the GPL will just end up just being a license where people can use the community's hard work and avoid giving something back in return.
I have a truly remarkable proof that will convince you, but the dang lameness filter is getting in the way.
Its nice to see the Firefox guys taking a cool thing like that and making it part of the default browser.
electronic teenager repellant: -1, Troll
work on the mystery of why fingernails being dragged down a blackboard produces an excruciating sound: -1, Stupid
how woodpeckers avoid headaches: +1, Interesting
why dry spaghetti breaks into more than one piece when it is bent: -1, Lame
On a side note, it is somewhat saddening to see that there are a dozen famous broken promises mentioned in the link, but the list of fulfilled promises is still a stub.
If you've got any illegal MP3's, your player kills you.
Judge, jury and executioner all in one!
You learn quite a lot if you use Slackware. I was totally new to Linux more than a year back, and after trying Mandriva, Ubuntu, and a few others, it was Slackware that I finally stuck too.
It doesn't hide the underlying workings behind poorly made GUI wrappers (IIRC I struggled somewhat with Mandriva because of this).
Its basic package management is easy too, an installpkg filename.tgz almost always works for me. And since my (default?) installation put gcc, perl, python etc, I didn't come across dependency problems either. The 2 CD set of 10.2 also came with a surprisingly comprehensive bunch of apps (lots of small windowmanagers especially!), and there's always linuxpackages.net for the rest.
Give this distro a try, for its sheer simplicity and cleanliness its worth it.
I've been checking the changelog twice a day for a helluva long time, and its finally come.
Here's the full list of mirrors from where you can download it!
(Or you can get the torrents)
From the article and summary, it says that the person should specifically switch on the pickpocket mode. And then if the blackberry is removed from the holster it triggers the alarm.
I don't get it either. This might have been useful for absent minded people who misplace their stuff, but now they're expected to trigger the device before misplacing it?
I clicked on the short story cos it caught my attention first. It started off well, addressing privacy issues, but then tailed off into the usual rant about everything being digitized and the soulless internet replacing good ol' natural hobbies.
I never could get that line of thought. The internet is a tool, the power is in how you use it. I look around and see the wealth of information I have learnt in the past few years over the net, and it just wouldn't have been possible any way else. I couldn't give that up for anything. And don't blame games for poor parenting either.
Technology rocks, quit whining. Poetic angst just makes me sick.
If you meant that literally, it is not entirely correct. Evolution/Natural selection doesn't have foresight or planning. It just is.
But you conclude correctly, our brains have advanced far enough that we are not shackled by our instincts. I'd just love to see if we use our brains well (for stuff like this anti-ageing thing) and don't end up blowing ourselves in the long run.
I recollect reading in atleast 1 book of Richard Dawkins (not sure which), that ageing was evolutionarily inevitable.
The reason being that parasitic genes in a host that usually end up killing or harming it will quickly be removed from the gene pool. So such genes are not evolutionarily successful.
On the other hand, if their effect was triggered only after a certain number of years (when an animal has already performed its main purpose of reproduction), there is no drive for it to be removed from the gene pool. An animal with the parasite would be as successful in spreading its genes as one without it. So over the years, the early-acting bad stuff has been wiped out bit by bit by natural selection, while the latent ones have been accumulating all along.
I'm sure someone with more knowledge in this will chip in.
The actual announcement is here. Its got all the details on licensing (LGPL), prizes, criteria (originality, usability, artisitc merit etc)
*skims article*
XP blah blah trust blah improvement blah Embrace blah
*kicks in knee-jerk anti-M$ flame*
agile approaches, agile software development in project management movement, open and honest communications
So what's this about, apart from the management-speak?
I feel like I read half dozen pages with barely any content.
You're right, I wouldn't normally recommend anyone to do that. In this case he specifically asked for help in performing his IDE-related tasks (latex etc). :wq.
If he sticks to config file editing, he'll learn nothing new in vi except insert mode, make changes and
For the actual stuff that really makes Vim powerful, you need to focus it on your specific requirement.
Just my 0.02$.
(Haven't tried it though)