My K6-300 with 64MB of memory (can't be upgraded) is why performance matters.
I've been using linux again for the past week, and I'm remembering why I had problems. With KDE (I use a lot of the QT and Gnome apps, such as GnomeICQ and KMail, not to mention Konquerer) I have a miserable time trying to switch between windows, much less run anything even remotely intensive.
If I can't have my word processor running with 3 open web windows, mail, and ICQ (like I can in 98SE) I'm a bit impeded.
I can hear the objections already. Why are you using KDE then? Because the applications I like are KDE-dependant (other than GnomeICU) Why don't you just run win98 then if it's better for your feeble equipment? I like Linux better, frankly, even if I have to go back for video and a few other applications every once in a while.
Anyways, that is why Python is still 5 years away. It's going to take these ghz+ machines before we can say that we don't "need" all this performance. That memory and processing power that the word processor is taking up is hurting the performance of the application in the foreground and the memory footprint makes the word processor slower to task switch.
But just for that quick on topic part of the post... Conflict is inevitable. Politics is only the science of conflict management. Even subpar rules are superior to no rules so long as both/all parties abide by the results.
The court system, for all its flaws, is more accurate than duels and cycles of vengence.
Remember, the system that only bruises ego, pride, and reputation is far superior to the one that chops off the wrists or head so the competing programmer can no longer code.
You know, I got out of the Computer Science degree (I'm still in college, mind you) because my wrists started to hurt.
I found that when I didn't type for hours on end (with or without breaks) my wrists didn't burn nearly as much.
I submit to you that it's the continual aggrivation of the inflamation that causes the majority of the problems and the removal of that aggrivation will solve many of them.
Isn't it more reasonable to say that in all but the most extreme cases, the damage isn't permanent and if you take a keyboard vacation, you very well may get your wrists back.
Golf should be considered an equivelant sport. Simultaneous action on 18 holes. How to they set up? Multiple commentators, color commentary, switching to action in one room, following a lead player, various camera views, the possibilities are endless.
Scenarios could be designed for action in key rooms. While there would be action in other places, there would be unobstructed views where action could be watched in between "instant replays" and following around the leaders.
Highlights to download defenitely has its advantage, however. Think of this: Have a large multiple-processor computer doing elaborate frames for it. You could get closer to bugs life-esque pictures.
I'd be more interested in seeing the best duke it out than playing myself.
If they are serious enough to have a proxy server, they probably are running more than simplistic games.
First, in lightly competetive games with no prizes it probably wouldn't matter unless someone complained (and you certainly could see if someone knew a little too much and wasn't careful)
Second, in more heavily competetive matches, you're going to need to worry about things like ping time anyway, so you have to centralize the players. Problem solved.
The guy had 1.44 floppies formatting to 14MB and 2.88s formatting to 36. Apparently (according to the inventor, who is biased) it was also supposed to be more reliable, though I don't know how.
It seemed pretty fast, though, when I saw it copying files.
and this one was based on a hard disk principle. I'm guessing he just managed to sell off the patent.
Mind you, if you got good disks (they exist, you just have to avoid the highmarks) this might be okay for those just-too-big files.
(instead of those CD-Rs? Okay, maybe not. However, it's quicker to write to a floppy.)
The problem is that we see how it's been done in other places. We have to negotiate for us, as opposed to the auto industry... rules like:
No consecutive work weeks with more than 55 hours.
-- One week of 70 hours is fine when there really is a crunch, but when a week drags out to a month to a way of life, code productivity suffers... and often the coder doesn't notice it.
Rest is necessary for creativity. (Yes, you can have that creative spark at 30 hours straight, but you would notice that creativity comes more often with proper sleep.)
OT pay for over 65 hours in a week.
If they don't schedule properly, then it's them who have to pay, not us.
Rights to code written outside of worktime.
(and just think how much open source would flourish if people had time to code out of work!) -- there are still those contracts where an employer can hijack code.
Formalized termination procedures.
Make it possible for them to be fired, but those rules should be posted. It is a nasty restriction that will cause red tape, but it will curb problems such as being fired just before options, etc.
Protection for foreign workers...
--- but that's what a tech union should look like.
Further, there should be separate barganing for call center employees. They do resemble the auto industry in a way. Anyone can work them, but not everyone can work them for long periods of time. -- whereas bad conditions destroyed the physical body, call centers often destroy the mind.
Even when you are paraphrasing, shorthand notation can be useful.
I know that if I am writing paraphrases, I'm missing what the professor is saying because I'm not hearing what he's saying. Formulating that paraphrase isn't hard, but by the time I get it on the paper he can be on the next point.
That's why I use a personal shorthand notation in college.
In India, it's common practice to send "eunuchs" to recover debts. (Their equivelant of the eunuch covers a broad spectrum of people, from castrated men to transgendered folk to gay folk to people who associate themselves with the above groups) The eunuchs will frequent themselves around a business until they are paid the debt (or something is arranged.)
I'm sure we could have arranged for them to hang out around the programmers HQ until they release the source code...
To a child prodigy, this becomes a more vulgar and profane word than damn, fuck, or Microsoft could ever be.
I was a child "prodigy," though probably not to the level of this child. However, I started to rebel because I started to be told how much potential I had.
The subtle meaning kids pick up on is: I would love you more if...
Affection becomes conditional, at least in the eyes of the child.
---
Now, as for what to teach him, I saw a great suggestion below. Teach him communications! Teach him how to observe his classmates, and make it a game to be able to interact with them.
In the "bleeding edge" areas, teach him whatever you can connect to the basics. However, teach him what he is interested in. Pass subjects by him, and see what makes his eyes shine. Have him research the basics. Then start developing small projects that increase in complexity. Most importantly, make him complete the project. This will teach him the power to finish, something many people don't learn until much later in life.
However, above all, MAKE SURE that he understands you care about him, not his brain. This is the most important. Without this, all the training may not matter because that brain will be shattered with a.44 before he can ever reach his potential.
There have been a few other people who have mentioned this already, but I thought I'd pipe in with my story. At AOL (I was young and foolish then...) I had someone call me with the other vendor's tech on the line already. Within 10 minutes we had figured out that it was Microsoft's fault. There's always *someone* to pass the blame onto.
Now seriously, I do believe our obsession with video cards has been a bit extreme lately. Is it great that there are cards that blow the socks off anything out even a year before? Sure. Is it worth 300 dollars a year for an extra few FPS in Quake 3?
I'm just not sure.
Furthermore, we've come to the point that the extra rates only support more on the screen, rather than an incredible clarity. I've seen some nice pictures, but it's still light years away from anything I would call beautiful.
Yet the biggest delimiter isn't the card anymore, but the artistry. There just aren't enough artists, and it's not possible to put enough great artists on most teams to make something spectacular. That might be the next frontier. Even if we can get life-like quality, the game will still only be as good as the artist behind it.
You know, I wish RedHat, VA, and the other LinBizzes would concentrate their open source focus on providing lawyers for the community. What we really need is to get some law hackers finding hacks in the Federal Code (I think the outside world calls them loopholes) and start turning the tables. (you know, perhaps we need to make a call for some of the CS majors to go into law instead of industry...)
Now on the same lines: would it be a stretch to register more open source projects as not-for-profit? It seems a bit of a tax hack. Basically, have the project as a profitless entity, receiving donations from businesses who are looking for extra features (all added to the general source so the public can benefit, of course,) and paying programmers for their work from those donations, keeping only a 'little bit' of the money for administrative purposes.
This could subsidize our patents (better that we get them for the world to use before someone tries to copyright the while loop)
And, for successful projects, the maintainers can still make a healthy salary. (Didn't Elizabeth Dole make 600k/year for heading up the American Red Cross? -- and don't even start on the United Way or the RIAA, for that matter.)
Isn't the hack all about taking what you're given and using it in such a creative way you impress your friends? Let's impress our 'friends' in Congress by taking their tricks and showing what we can do with them.
How about "The Apache Scholarship" for a top student in CS that has performed valuable community service for the Apache community? More directly, churches pay pastors and others for services rendered, certainly our non-profits could do the same thing.
(Note: there are some noticable problems with this, the least of which would be international concerns. However, government involvment certainly wouldn't be any better.)
read my previous remark on memory. (Yes, someone mentioned it was one occurance. Except it's happened to others that I've talked to. Generic memory isn't a guaranteed bust, but just make sure you have a good return policy and make sure they guarantee it's Athlon compatible) In fact, I found something on the amd site about it.... http://www.amd.com/products/cpg/athlon/pdf/quick_r ef_faq.pdf -- much of it's the standard warnings, but good to peruse nonetheless. Of course, none of this applies if you're just talking about buying a prebuilt. And, of course, you always get what you pay for, so you should go for the good stuff anyway.
I'm guessing all of the Athlon advocates in here either A. Got a pre-built Athlon, or B. Installed brand name memory.
There's a nasty little secret that I've encountered with the Athlons. You see, the Athlons are really picky with their memory. My friend and I have tried identical memory (PC100, for the record) on an AMD K6-2 350 and an Athlon. It works fine on the K6-2, but it choked on the Athlon. (It booted up, but it crashed all too often) I put back in the memory it came with and the Athlon worked fine again.
He got run around until he found someone who told him what I'm telling you now. I've heard from another person since who has had the same experience. If you're building your own Athlon, or upgrading the memory on an existing one, go with the good stuff. (We ended up ordering the memory from Gateway. - Thus, I can't give any hints as to what to use.)
It might be worth checking out citv -- http://www.citv.com/services/realaudio/ to be exact. They might be able to work something out with you. (It's real audio and NT, but it would solve the bandwidth problem.) Seriously, the one time charge is the easy part. it's the bandwidth that's expensive. It might be cheaper to send out your tapes to anyone who requests it for free!
Yeah, I know it's been over a hundred years now, but weren't they the ones hired to break the union dissidents in the late 1800s/early 1900s? I seem to remember this from history class. The more things change, the more they stay the same...
Note: I was a BBSer from 1991-1995, and one of the top two BRE players in my city, as judged by tournaments and inter-league play. At one time I frequented no less than 15 boards a week, often 8 a day to play BRE, Global War (a risk clone) and Land of Devestation (I even made half a mod for that one) I was known on no less than 10 FidoNet echoes, and even was a SysOp for 6 months (and a CoSysOp on a few boards too... wasn't everyone?:)
In this context, I say we oversentimentalize the BBS.
Sure, we met plenty of people. Sure, we had lots of fun. But I'd suggest that more than a few of you have telnetted into a board, checked the message boards, and played a door game or two, and said, "This is what I spent hours a day doing?"
If we really think back, I'm sure we can remember more than the silver lining on the cloud. If it was a multi-line board, chances are we were paying money to access it, perhaps more than the internet charges we pay now. And what were we paying for? The privledge to talk to maybe 4 or 5 more people at a time, or download the newest file.
Or, you were on about 80 of the single line boards, where you would toggle 8 or 9, and redial for a half hour until you got on, hoping to make the midnight deadline for some game.
Let's face it: times have gotten better technologically, not worse.
I think what we're really remembering is the people we've met. I mean, we can always find people somewhere on this vast Internet, but chances are they're half way across the world, or at least the country. I miss finding people who were in the same city that I am. In a world of unbounded contact, is it the physical colocation with others that we miss?
Of my current best friends, three of them I met online. I see two of them often enough now that I no longar talk to them online. As for the third, I'm more likely to talk with him over the phone long distance than to chat with him online.
And perhaps this is the moral of the story. As much as we talk about these new forms of communication taking over the world, all they are, ultimately, are ways to contact people, and hopefully to stimulate face-to-face interaction.
So go play TW2002 again. Chances are you'll play for a week and then drop it, citing that you just don't have as much time as you used to. Or find a BRE league or play Earth 2025, its successor. But it was the people, not the process.
When do they get their cease and desist orders and subsequent lawsuits suing them for needed GNU and FSF development funding? hmmn... how about after the IPO? Then you take them out, get the money (if someone was dumb enough to buy into this...) and then watch linux (-)one fade into obscurity and prison sentences.
Re:GNU Free Documentation License
on
GPL for Books?
·
· Score: 1
My thought is: A simple solution to the dilemma is to patent it, and let your patent documents be the explicit how-to. Then, as you have the rights to do whatever you want with the patent, release the knowledge. Then let your website (or etc.) lay the grounds of what is allowed.
Don't give too much flack for this one... the ctrl-alt-del allusion refers to *one* decision, a big red shiny button (or series of access codes, what have you) in a briefcase if I remember correctly.
At least he's trying to care, even if his feeble mind can't grasp the complexity of the microchip.
This comes from former experience as an aol user and tech support slave (no NDA information is in here, for the lawyers:) AOL has this very pretty little screen that comes up after every big update. It often times will take anywhere from 3 minutes to 45 minutes to finish an update. (The upgrade from AOL's old browser to IE 3.02 was performed this way.) So, if they are unbound from their contractual obligations, then they can just update as often as they like. It's very likely that when Mozilla goes to middle beta stages that it will be open to AOL beta testers. (I know there are at least 50,000 and believe there are more, and they do post bug reports) After that and contractual obligations aside, AOL may force Mozilla on the world. (read: 15,000,000 consumers.)
The problem isn't that we'll run out of oil any more. I don't know that that would be such a bad thing even, considering the pollution... (Okay, so we'd also have to trash coal, but that's besides the point.) Our real problem is: if we burn all the oil off with our cars and all, we won't be able to breathe by the time we have a crisis. Realistically, now is the time to start making the transition to non-petrolium based fuels. If it costs us more to make products and the standard of living temporarily goes down, so be it. It will only be 20 years or so before we're on the rebound, and our earth would be the better for it. Not that any red-blooded american would ever consider such a thing:) (or arab, or venusuelan, etc...)
Slashdot Mirror
My K6-300 with 64MB of memory (can't be upgraded) is why performance matters.
I've been using linux again for the past week, and I'm remembering why I had problems. With KDE (I use a lot of the QT and Gnome apps, such as GnomeICQ and KMail, not to mention Konquerer) I have a miserable time trying to switch between windows, much less run anything even remotely intensive.
If I can't have my word processor running with 3 open web windows, mail, and ICQ (like I can in 98SE) I'm a bit impeded.
I can hear the objections already. Why are you using KDE then? Because the applications I like are KDE-dependant (other than GnomeICU) Why don't you just run win98 then if it's better for your feeble equipment? I like Linux better, frankly, even if I have to go back for video and a few other applications every once in a while.
Anyways, that is why Python is still 5 years away. It's going to take these ghz+ machines before we can say that we don't "need" all this performance. That memory and processing power that the word processor is taking up is hurting the performance of the application in the foreground and the memory footprint makes the word processor slower to task switch.
But just for that quick on topic part of the post... Conflict is inevitable. Politics is only the science of conflict management. Even subpar rules are superior to no rules so long as both/all parties abide by the results.
The court system, for all its flaws, is more accurate than duels and cycles of vengence.
Remember, the system that only bruises ego, pride, and reputation is far superior to the one that chops off the wrists or head so the competing programmer can no longer code.
You know, I got out of the Computer Science degree (I'm still in college, mind you) because my wrists started to hurt.
I found that when I didn't type for hours on end (with or without breaks) my wrists didn't burn nearly as much.
I submit to you that it's the continual aggrivation of the inflamation that causes the majority of the problems and the removal of that aggrivation will solve many of them.
Isn't it more reasonable to say that in all but the most extreme cases, the damage isn't permanent and if you take a keyboard vacation, you very well may get your wrists back.
What's so contraversial abou that? --NF
I disagree.
Golf should be considered an equivelant sport. Simultaneous action on 18 holes. How to they set up? Multiple commentators, color commentary, switching to action in one room, following a lead player, various camera views, the possibilities are endless.
Scenarios could be designed for action in key rooms. While there would be action in other places, there would be unobstructed views where action could be watched in between "instant replays" and following around the leaders.
Highlights to download defenitely has its advantage, however. Think of this: Have a large multiple-processor computer doing elaborate frames for it. You could get closer to bugs life-esque pictures.
I'd be more interested in seeing the best duke it out than playing myself.
This can be dealt with at two levels.
If they are serious enough to have a proxy server, they probably are running more than simplistic games.
First, in lightly competetive games with no prizes it probably wouldn't matter unless someone complained (and you certainly could see if someone knew a little too much and wasn't careful)
Second, in more heavily competetive matches, you're going to need to worry about things like ping time anyway, so you have to centralize the players. Problem solved.
The guy had 1.44 floppies formatting to 14MB and 2.88s formatting to 36. Apparently (according to the inventor, who is biased) it was also supposed to be more reliable, though I don't know how.
It seemed pretty fast, though, when I saw it copying files.
and this one was based on a hard disk principle. I'm guessing he just managed to sell off the patent.
Mind you, if you got good disks (they exist, you just have to avoid the highmarks) this might be okay for those just-too-big files.
(instead of those CD-Rs? Okay, maybe not. However, it's quicker to write to a floppy.)
The problem is that we see how it's been done in other places. We have to negotiate for us, as opposed to the auto industry... rules like:
No consecutive work weeks with more than 55 hours.
-- One week of 70 hours is fine when there really is a crunch, but when a week drags out to a month to a way of life, code productivity suffers... and often the coder doesn't notice it.
Rest is necessary for creativity. (Yes, you can have that creative spark at 30 hours straight, but you would notice that creativity comes more often with proper sleep.)
OT pay for over 65 hours in a week.
If they don't schedule properly, then it's them who have to pay, not us.
Rights to code written outside of worktime.
(and just think how much open source would flourish if people had time to code out of work!) -- there are still those contracts where an employer can hijack code.
Formalized termination procedures.
Make it possible for them to be fired, but those rules should be posted. It is a nasty restriction that will cause red tape, but it will curb problems such as being fired just before options, etc.
Protection for foreign workers...
--- but that's what a tech union should look like.
Further, there should be separate barganing for call center employees. They do resemble the auto industry in a way. Anyone can work them, but not everyone can work them for long periods of time. -- whereas bad conditions destroyed the physical body, call centers often destroy the mind.
Even when you are paraphrasing, shorthand notation can be useful.
I know that if I am writing paraphrases, I'm missing what the professor is saying because I'm not hearing what he's saying. Formulating that paraphrase isn't hard, but by the time I get it on the paper he can be on the next point.
That's why I use a personal shorthand notation in college.
In India, it's common practice to send "eunuchs" to recover debts. (Their equivelant of the eunuch covers a broad spectrum of people, from castrated men to transgendered folk to gay folk to people who associate themselves with the above groups) The eunuchs will frequent themselves around a business until they are paid the debt (or something is arranged.)
I'm sure we could have arranged for them to hang out around the programmers HQ until they release the source code...
The "P" word, of course, is potential.
.44 before he can ever reach his potential.
To a child prodigy, this becomes a more vulgar and profane word than damn, fuck, or Microsoft could ever be.
I was a child "prodigy," though probably not to the level of this child. However, I started to rebel because I started to be told how much potential I had.
The subtle meaning kids pick up on is: I would love you more if...
Affection becomes conditional, at least in the eyes of the child.
---
Now, as for what to teach him, I saw a great suggestion below. Teach him communications! Teach him how to observe his classmates, and make it a game to be able to interact with them.
In the "bleeding edge" areas, teach him whatever you can connect to the basics. However, teach him what he is interested in. Pass subjects by him, and see what makes his eyes shine. Have him research the basics. Then start developing small projects that increase in complexity. Most importantly, make him complete the project. This will teach him the power to finish, something many people don't learn until much later in life.
However, above all, MAKE SURE that he understands you care about him, not his brain. This is the most important. Without this, all the training may not matter because that brain will be shattered with a
There have been a few other people who have mentioned this already, but I thought I'd pipe in with my story. At AOL (I was young and foolish then...) I had someone call me with the other vendor's tech on the line already. Within 10 minutes we had figured out that it was Microsoft's fault. There's always *someone* to pass the blame onto.
Now seriously, I do believe our obsession with video cards has been a bit extreme lately. Is it great that there are cards that blow the socks off anything out even a year before? Sure. Is it worth 300 dollars a year for an extra few FPS in Quake 3?
:)
I'm just not sure.
Furthermore, we've come to the point that the extra rates only support more on the screen, rather than an incredible clarity. I've seen some nice pictures, but it's still light years away from anything I would call beautiful.
Yet the biggest delimiter isn't the card anymore, but the artistry. There just aren't enough artists, and it's not possible to put enough great artists on most teams to make something spectacular. That might be the next frontier. Even if we can get life-like quality, the game will still only be as good as the artist behind it.
(I wonder if I gave up the first post by now.
You know, I wish RedHat, VA, and the other LinBizzes would concentrate their open source focus on providing lawyers for the community. What we really need is to get some law hackers finding hacks in the Federal Code (I think the outside world calls them loopholes) and start turning the tables. (you know, perhaps we need to make a call for some of the CS majors to go into law instead of industry...)
Now on the same lines: would it be a stretch to register more open source projects as not-for-profit? It seems a bit of a tax hack. Basically, have the project as a profitless entity, receiving donations from businesses who are looking for extra features (all added to the general source so the public can benefit, of course,) and paying programmers for their work from those donations, keeping only a 'little bit' of the money for administrative purposes.
This could subsidize our patents (better that we get them for the world to use before someone tries to copyright the while loop)
And, for successful projects, the maintainers can still make a healthy salary. (Didn't Elizabeth Dole make 600k/year for heading up the American Red Cross? -- and don't even start on the United Way or the RIAA, for that matter.)
Isn't the hack all about taking what you're given and using it in such a creative way you impress your friends? Let's impress our 'friends' in Congress by taking their tricks and showing what we can do with them.
How about "The Apache Scholarship" for a top student in CS that has performed valuable community service for the Apache community? More directly, churches pay pastors and others for services rendered, certainly our non-profits could do the same thing.
(Note: there are some noticable problems with this, the least of which would be international concerns. However, government involvment certainly wouldn't be any better.)
--Eric
read my previous remark on memory. (Yes, someone mentioned it was one occurance. Except it's happened to others that I've talked to. Generic memory isn't a guaranteed bust, but just make sure you have a good return policy and make sure they guarantee it's Athlon compatible) In fact, I found something on the amd site about it.... http://www.amd.com/products/cpg/athlon/pdf/quick_r ef_faq.pdf -- much of it's the standard warnings, but good to peruse nonetheless. Of course, none of this applies if you're just talking about buying a prebuilt. And, of course, you always get what you pay for, so you should go for the good stuff anyway.
I'm guessing all of the Athlon advocates in here either
A. Got a pre-built Athlon, or
B. Installed brand name memory.
There's a nasty little secret that I've encountered with the Athlons. You see, the Athlons are really picky with their memory. My friend and I have tried identical memory (PC100, for the record) on an AMD K6-2 350 and an Athlon. It works fine on the K6-2, but it choked on the Athlon. (It booted up, but it crashed all too often) I put back in the memory it came with and the Athlon worked fine again.
He got run around until he found someone who told him what I'm telling you now. I've heard from another person since who has had the same experience. If you're building your own Athlon, or upgrading the memory on an existing one, go with the good stuff. (We ended up ordering the memory from Gateway. - Thus, I can't give any hints as to what to use.)
--Eric
It might be worth checking out citv -- http://www.citv.com/services/realaudio/ to be exact. They might be able to work something out with you. (It's real audio and NT, but it would solve the bandwidth problem.) Seriously, the one time charge is the easy part. it's the bandwidth that's expensive. It might be cheaper to send out your tapes to anyone who requests it for free!
Yeah, I know it's been over a hundred years now, but weren't they the ones hired to break the union dissidents in the late 1800s/early 1900s? I seem to remember this from history class. The more things change, the more they stay the same...
Note: I was a BBSer from 1991-1995, and one of the top two BRE players in my city, as judged by tournaments and inter-league play. At one time I frequented no less than 15 boards a week, often 8 a day to play BRE, Global War (a risk clone) and Land of Devestation (I even made half a mod for that one) I was known on no less than 10 FidoNet echoes, and even was a SysOp for 6 months (and a CoSysOp on a few boards too... wasn't everyone? :)
In this context, I say we oversentimentalize the BBS.
Sure, we met plenty of people. Sure, we had lots of fun. But I'd suggest that more than a few of you have telnetted into a board, checked the message boards, and played a door game or two, and said, "This is what I spent hours a day doing?"
If we really think back, I'm sure we can remember more than the silver lining on the cloud. If it was a multi-line board, chances are we were paying money to access it, perhaps more than the internet charges we pay now. And what were we paying for? The privledge to talk to maybe 4 or 5 more people at a time, or download the newest file.
Or, you were on about 80 of the single line boards, where you would toggle 8 or 9, and redial for a half hour until you got on, hoping to make the midnight deadline for some game.
Let's face it: times have gotten better technologically, not worse.
I think what we're really remembering is the people we've met. I mean, we can always find people somewhere on this vast Internet, but chances are they're half way across the world, or at least the country. I miss finding people who were in the same city that I am. In a world of unbounded contact, is it the physical colocation with others that we miss?
Of my current best friends, three of them I met online. I see two of them often enough now that I no longar talk to them online. As for the third, I'm more likely to talk with him over the phone long distance than to chat with him online.
And perhaps this is the moral of the story. As much as we talk about these new forms of communication taking over the world, all they are, ultimately, are ways to contact people, and hopefully to stimulate face-to-face interaction.
So go play TW2002 again. Chances are you'll play for a week and then drop it, citing that you just don't have as much time as you used to. Or find a BRE league or play Earth 2025, its successor. But it was the people, not the process.
When do they get their cease and desist orders and subsequent lawsuits suing them for needed GNU and FSF development funding? hmmn... how about after the IPO? Then you take them out, get the money (if someone was dumb enough to buy into this...) and then watch linux (-)one fade into obscurity and prison sentences.
My thought is: A simple solution to the dilemma is to patent it, and let your patent documents be the explicit how-to. Then, as you have the rights to do whatever you want with the patent, release the knowledge. Then let your website (or etc.) lay the grounds of what is allowed.
It's kind of a bother, but what I had to do is delete it and add it again. No, it's not what you're asking. But yes, it does work. Long live Fdisk! :)
Don't give too much flack for this one... the ctrl-alt-del allusion refers to *one* decision, a big red shiny button (or series of access codes, what have you) in a briefcase if I remember correctly.
At least he's trying to care, even if his feeble mind can't grasp the complexity of the microchip.
This comes from former experience as an aol user and tech support slave (no NDA information is in here, for the lawyers :) AOL has this very pretty little screen that comes up after every big update. It often times will take anywhere from 3 minutes to 45 minutes to finish an update. (The upgrade from AOL's old browser to IE 3.02 was performed this way.) So, if they are unbound from their contractual obligations, then they can just update as often as they like. It's very likely that when Mozilla goes to middle beta stages that it will be open to AOL beta testers. (I know there are at least 50,000 and believe there are more, and they do post bug reports) After that and contractual obligations aside, AOL may force Mozilla on the world. (read: 15,000,000 consumers.)
The problem isn't that we'll run out of oil any more. I don't know that that would be such a bad thing even, considering the pollution... (Okay, so we'd also have to trash coal, but that's besides the point.) Our real problem is: if we burn all the oil off with our cars and all, we won't be able to breathe by the time we have a crisis. Realistically, now is the time to start making the transition to non-petrolium based fuels. If it costs us more to make products and the standard of living temporarily goes down, so be it. It will only be 20 years or so before we're on the rebound, and our earth would be the better for it. Not that any red-blooded american would ever consider such a thing :) (or arab, or venusuelan, etc...)