While it isn't on the global scale you seem to seek, I know of two coffee shops with "Take a Book, Leave a Book" libraries. They work out quite nicely. I see quite a few of the books I leave come and go more than once, so people definitely come back for more. Perhaps you could persuade a local technology store into allocating floor space to something like this for technology books.
The provisions for surveys are meant to prevent the government from fighting itself. The government, at various levels, spends billions of dollars per year funding survey research. My employer (the University of Wisconsin) recieves millions each year from the state alone.
If you feel a survey is not of academic nature then the call is illegitimate (per Wisconsin law) and the caller can still be punished. Since Wisconsin's do-not-call list went into effect at the beginning of this year we have recieved phone calls from various areas of the government ensuring our credibility.
You had the right idea in the beginning. Terrorist organizations don't care about soldiers' immunizations or SSNs. They are interested in civilian information. Who cares if you kill a hundred soldiers, everyone knows that is a possibility from the start. If it was a terrorist organization they would steal medical records from small towns (population less then 5000) where most people go to the same doctor, and kill half the population. Much easier to steal the information and much more effective at causing terror.
I believe when MPEG decoders process an MPEG stream they recreate approximations of the sound (rather than leave them out, which is what the author seems to believe). Therefore, listening to MPEG-encoded audio is like listening to a CD with bad speakers. So by this reasoning, Dell and Gateway are slowing killing us all with those horrible speakers they ship with their PCs;]
Learning, and especially using, the x86 assembly language gave me an amazingly new level of understanding of everything computers. This shouldn't stop with the x86 architechure. The simple act of repeatedly thinking in terms of bits and bytes affecting the state of the processor and how that allows everything else to happen has consitently given me more clarity while learning anything new involving computers.
While the most practical uses for this are in systems programming and design I have since thought this is _most_ important in the higher level activities. I believe the old saying is something along the lines of "To know where you are going, you need to know where you have been".
A real-world example of this happened just a few weeks ago, to a fellow in my local LUG. He had problems understanding buffer overflows, as they were taught to him in a network security course. I learned this on my own with much better clarity becauase I understood where everything started. I knew where the problem started and where it ended. He knew only where it ended. Because he did not understand where it started, he had a much cloudier idea of what came between these two points.
I think this was a major part of the section of the A+ certification offered by CompTIA+ which dealt with PC hardware. There are similar certifications, and all seem to have slightly missed their mark. In order to remain unbias and "fair" the only specific questions they ask are in relation to IRQs and similar numbers such as IO ports. This is supposed to show that you understand how they work. Unfortunately they don't.
As weird as it may seem, a certification in SPARC assembly language would be just as useful, if not more, than the A+ certification is; the goal being to show a thorough understanding of how the hardware works.
Hello Moshe. Do you use openMosix at home? Do _you_ believe openMosix is well-suited for small mini-clusters to allow individuals to save cpu cycles from older machines or is it really only for larger clusters?
I agree with everything except that the different appearance of windows throws people off to a point at which they are unable to or don't care to use it.
We'll take one small application as an example, but the idea applies to almost all GUI differences. Winamp supports skins, along with many other applications. The skins move buttons around, reword things, and even hide a few things sometimes. Yet I have not seen anyone sit down at a computer and attempt to use Winamp and not understand how to use it just because it looked drastically different.
Believe it or not, I convinced my mother that Linux running FVWM was Windows (yes, it took a lot of work). I convinced her that XMMS was Winamp, and I even convinced her that Mozilla was Netscape 4. She didn't have a clue until netscape crashed and the window just disappeared (rather than saying "this program has caused an illegal opperation" (or whatever the phrasing is on a windows box).
My point? Simply that similar applications have similar functionality; no matter how different they look. Sure, people are thrown off a bit when I open the Gimp instead of Photoshop but After about a minute or two of looking at the interface they feel quite comfortable.
"How do I use my dial up modem in linux, using redhat 7.2?"
Please tell me where you have heard a newbie ask that question. I would seriously like to see/hear it.
Many variations are heard throughout the lands, but not that question. I hear "How do I connect to the Internet?" and "How do I use my modem under Linux?". The confusion comes when all the gurus ask all the right questions in slightly different words. This is what HOWTOs are for and also why I have stopped interactively helping newbies. I give them about 5 URLs on the subject and tell them to ask me after they read the web pages if they still don't get it.
Newbies ask too broad of questions while learning GNU Linux. The most correct answer for most of the questions I am asked is either "sort of" or "yes, and no".
For instance the other night my rommmate sat down at my box and started poking around, as he does sometimes. He said "so to browse the web, I just open Konqueror, right?". I said "well... uhm.. kinda.". I opened Netscape 4, whatever Mozilla nightly build is installed, lynx and Konqueror and said "These are the *ways* to browse the web on *this* box".
My point? My point is that most aspects of GNU Linux is not complicated, but answering most newbie questions in complete correctness is that complicated.
Agreed. Who cares if users use free software in conjunction with non-free software? But when the developers of free software put interoperability with non-free software above providing a free alternative/equivilent we are defeating our goals.
I hope I don't see any README files bitching about "give credit where credit is due" and not calling GNU&Linux (my variant which is a bit more descriptive imo) by a name which gives credit to the GNU developers (not the FSF developers but anyone who releases their code under the GPL).
On the other hand, does the name of XMMS give credit to the mpg123 developers? There are plenty of projects which repackage other GNU software without giving credit in the name. Does the GNU licensing give enough credit? I really don't think so, but demanding that the name of every project incorporated is not the answer either. Mozilla/XPCom/Bugzilla/Talkback/etc.
This definitely raises the question of whether or not Microsoft recieves any federal funding. Everyone ready to donate money to the FSF? I wonder if the FSF could get federal funding to help fight this.
This is not at all uncommon. It is commonly referred to as "diversified interests". Many people invest money in Nike, who uses sweatshops in 3rdy world countries and still donate money to organizations who fight this practice.
In IBM's case, retaining as much control as possible over their products has proven itself to generate revenue consistently due to such issues of vendor lock-in.
This conflicts with the interests of consumers, though, and most companies like to keep their customers happy. For this reason some companies do decide to go the route of Freedom and most generate enough revenue to survive and usually profit. These industries are usually more diverse and survive quite a bit longer. Everyone is happy and everyone has what they need. Except the nature of any business is to generate as much revenue as possible.
My point? Neither approach comes close to meating the ideals of all parties involved.
It doesn't take a freakin' genious to figure this out. Look at the games today. To sum them up in a few words: steep learning curve, acrobatic fingers, overly system heavy, buggy. It's sad when somebody pays 40 dollars for a game that is buggier than an emulator that can play 500+ games faster.
I'm glad to see people are accually starting to understand this. I have been saying this for 3+ years now and people tell me I'm crazy. I guess I need to get a clueless title like "CEO" before they'll believe me.
I think I'm going to go shoot up a school somewhere.
The GPL will always apply to the code he released under it. A license he applies to later releases cannot apply to the code he released under the GPL, because he has given up exclusive rights to it. For example, ID Software can't "recall" the Quake source just because people are using it to make cheating clients.
Begging is not a bad idea. Look at public broadcasting. It has survived for *decades* on 90% donations.
Politely remind people that your web site is a service. It does not even have to be in words. The hard part is making it painless for your visitors to make a donation.
For example, Slashdot could make a "Donations" Slashbox with a few quick selections like $0.50, $1, and $5, or a text box to allow you to enter in your own amount. Your account preferences *could* (not would) store your PayPal account number. With this you could just set just click three times and you've donated a small amount of money to Slashdot.
If your web site has 50 loyal (like how you read Slashdot) visitors. Assuming they all donate $1 every other month. That's $25 per month. Now scale that up to 200 loyal visitors. That's $100 per month; about twice the cost of web hosting, with $50 extra for management and so forth.
The VFS under Unix-like OSs provides a good way to use multiple devices transparently. Are there any plans to implement such a mechanism into any of Microsoft's products? More generally, are there plans to migrate the Windows methodologies closer to the Unix methodologies? Would you personally like to see this happen?
I very well may be making an ass out of myself but I could not read more than two paragraphs into this crap.
"Microsoft's dominance" was NOT "instrumental in spawning... Free Software... decentralized media". Free Software was around before Microsoft was ever dominant and Zines have been around since the turn of the 20th century.
Just the way it is written is sickening. I think Slashdot may have a new Drama Queen.
Slashdot Mirror
While it isn't on the global scale you seem to seek, I know of two coffee shops with "Take a Book, Leave a Book" libraries. They work out quite nicely. I see quite a few of the books I leave come and go more than once, so people definitely come back for more. Perhaps you could persuade a local technology store into allocating floor space to something like this for technology books.
I'm sorry to burst your bubble but there are far more factors to weigh than participation.
Just go with the twist tie. They have plenty of uses; closing food containers, picking your teeth, manually opening CD-ROM drives, etc.
The provisions for surveys are meant to prevent the government from fighting itself. The government, at various levels, spends billions of dollars per year funding survey research. My employer (the University of Wisconsin) recieves millions each year from the state alone.
If you feel a survey is not of academic nature then the call is illegitimate (per Wisconsin law) and the caller can still be punished. Since Wisconsin's do-not-call list went into effect at the beginning of this year we have recieved phone calls from various areas of the government ensuring our credibility.
I'm pretty sure you don't need to pay royalties if it will only be used for school credit.
You had the right idea in the beginning. Terrorist organizations don't care about soldiers' immunizations or SSNs. They are interested in civilian information. Who cares if you kill a hundred soldiers, everyone knows that is a possibility from the start. If it was a terrorist organization they would steal medical records from small towns (population less then 5000) where most people go to the same doctor, and kill half the population. Much easier to steal the information and much more effective at causing terror.
I believe when MPEG decoders process an MPEG stream they recreate approximations of the sound (rather than leave them out, which is what the author seems to believe). Therefore, listening to MPEG-encoded audio is like listening to a CD with bad speakers. So by this reasoning, Dell and Gateway are slowing killing us all with those horrible speakers they ship with their PCs ;]
Learning, and especially using, the x86 assembly language gave me an amazingly new level of understanding of everything computers. This shouldn't stop with the x86 architechure. The simple act of repeatedly thinking in terms of bits and bytes affecting the state of the processor and how that allows everything else to happen has consitently given me more clarity while learning anything new involving computers.
While the most practical uses for this are in systems programming and design I have since thought this is _most_ important in the higher level activities. I believe the old saying is something along the lines of "To know where you are going, you need to know where you have been".
A real-world example of this happened just a few weeks ago, to a fellow in my local LUG. He had problems understanding buffer overflows, as they were taught to him in a network security course. I learned this on my own with much better clarity becauase I understood where everything started. I knew where the problem started and where it ended. He knew only where it ended. Because he did not understand where it started, he had a much cloudier idea of what came between these two points.
I think this was a major part of the section of the A+ certification offered by CompTIA+ which dealt with PC hardware. There are similar certifications, and all seem to have slightly missed their mark. In order to remain unbias and "fair" the only specific questions they ask are in relation to IRQs and similar numbers such as IO ports. This is supposed to show that you understand how they work. Unfortunately they don't.
As weird as it may seem, a certification in SPARC assembly language would be just as useful, if not more, than the A+ certification is; the goal being to show a thorough understanding of how the hardware works.
Hello Moshe. Do you use openMosix at home? Do _you_ believe openMosix is well-suited for small mini-clusters to allow individuals to save cpu cycles from older machines or is it really only for larger clusters?
All the more reason for one global government(*note* I am very against one global government... but they aren't).
I agree with everything except that the different appearance of windows throws people off to a point at which they are unable to or don't care to use it.
We'll take one small application as an example, but the idea applies to almost all GUI differences. Winamp supports skins, along with many other applications. The skins move buttons around, reword things, and even hide a few things sometimes. Yet I have not seen anyone sit down at a computer and attempt to use Winamp and not understand how to use it just because it looked drastically different.
Believe it or not, I convinced my mother that Linux running FVWM was Windows (yes, it took a lot of work). I convinced her that XMMS was Winamp, and I even convinced her that Mozilla was Netscape 4. She didn't have a clue until netscape crashed and the window just disappeared (rather than saying "this program has caused an illegal opperation" (or whatever the phrasing is on a windows box).
My point? Simply that similar applications have similar functionality; no matter how different they look. Sure, people are thrown off a bit when I open the Gimp instead of Photoshop but After about a minute or two of looking at the interface they feel quite comfortable.
"How do I use my dial up modem in linux, using redhat 7.2?"
Please tell me where you have heard a newbie ask that question. I would seriously like to see/hear it.
Many variations are heard throughout the lands, but not that question. I hear "How do I connect to the Internet?" and "How do I use my modem under Linux?". The confusion comes when all the gurus ask all the right questions in slightly different words. This is what HOWTOs are for and also why I have stopped interactively helping newbies. I give them about 5 URLs on the subject and tell them to ask me after they read the web pages if they still don't get it.
Newbies ask too broad of questions while learning GNU Linux. The most correct answer for most of the questions I am asked is either "sort of" or "yes, and no".
For instance the other night my rommmate sat down at my box and started poking around, as he does sometimes. He said "so to browse the web, I just open Konqueror, right?". I said "well... uhm.. kinda.". I opened Netscape 4, whatever Mozilla nightly build is installed, lynx and Konqueror and said "These are the *ways* to browse the web on *this* box".
My point? My point is that most aspects of GNU Linux is not complicated, but answering most newbie questions in complete correctness is that complicated.
Agreed. Who cares if users use free software in conjunction with non-free software? But when the developers of free software put interoperability with non-free software above providing a free alternative/equivilent we are defeating our goals.
I could have sworn the GPL was intended for freedom.
Too bad the DMCA would beat freedom of religeon any day of the week. 200 year old dead guys can't beat 30 year old millionaire lawyers.
I hope I don't see any README files bitching about "give credit where credit is due" and not calling GNU&Linux (my variant which is a bit more descriptive imo) by a name which gives credit to the GNU developers (not the FSF developers but anyone who releases their code under the GPL).
On the other hand, does the name of XMMS give credit to the mpg123 developers? There are plenty of projects which repackage other GNU software without giving credit in the name. Does the GNU licensing give enough credit? I really don't think so, but demanding that the name of every project incorporated is not the answer either. Mozilla/XPCom/Bugzilla/Talkback/etc.
--Drew Vogel
This definitely raises the question of whether or not Microsoft recieves any federal funding. Everyone ready to donate money to the FSF? I wonder if the FSF could get federal funding to help fight this.
This is not at all uncommon. It is commonly referred to as "diversified interests". Many people invest money in Nike, who uses sweatshops in 3rdy world countries and still donate money to organizations who fight this practice.
In IBM's case, retaining as much control as possible over their products has proven itself to generate revenue consistently due to such issues of vendor lock-in.
This conflicts with the interests of consumers, though, and most companies like to keep their customers happy. For this reason some companies do decide to go the route of Freedom and most generate enough revenue to survive and usually profit. These industries are usually more diverse and survive quite a bit longer. Everyone is happy and everyone has what they need. Except the nature of any business is to generate as much revenue as possible.
My point? Neither approach comes close to meating the ideals of all parties involved.
It doesn't take a freakin' genious to figure this out. Look at the games today. To sum them up in a few words: steep learning curve, acrobatic fingers, overly system heavy, buggy. It's sad when somebody pays 40 dollars for a game that is buggier than an emulator that can play 500+ games faster.
I'm glad to see people are accually starting to understand this. I have been saying this for 3+ years now and people tell me I'm crazy. I guess I need to get a clueless title like "CEO" before they'll believe me.
I think I'm going to go shoot up a school somewhere.
Yes.
The GPL will always apply to the code he released under it. A license he applies to later releases cannot apply to the code he released under the GPL, because he has given up exclusive rights to it. For example, ID Software can't "recall" the Quake source just because people are using it to make cheating clients.
Begging is not a bad idea. Look at public broadcasting. It has survived for *decades* on 90% donations.
Politely remind people that your web site is a service. It does not even have to be in words. The hard part is making it painless for your visitors to make a donation.
For example, Slashdot could make a "Donations" Slashbox with a few quick selections like $0.50, $1, and $5, or a text box to allow you to enter in your own amount. Your account preferences *could* (not would) store your PayPal account number. With this you could just set just click three times and you've donated a small amount of money to Slashdot.
If your web site has 50 loyal (like how you read Slashdot) visitors. Assuming they all donate $1 every other month. That's $25 per month. Now scale that up to 200 loyal visitors. That's $100 per month; about twice the cost of web hosting, with $50 extra for management and so forth.
The VFS under Unix-like OSs provides a good way to use multiple devices transparently. Are there any plans to implement such a mechanism into any of Microsoft's products? More generally, are there plans to migrate the Windows methodologies closer to the Unix methodologies? Would you personally like to see this happen?
I very well may be making an ass out of myself but I could not read more than two paragraphs into this crap.
... Free Software ... decentralized media". Free Software was around before Microsoft was ever dominant and Zines have been around since the turn of the 20th century.
"Microsoft's dominance" was NOT "instrumental in spawning
Just the way it is written is sickening. I think Slashdot may have a new Drama Queen.