Comment Re:the purpose of Wikipedia (Score 1) 564
The official version: Wikimedia Founding Principles
The shouting-in-your-face version: WIKIPEDIA IS AN ENCYCLOPEDIA
Comment Re:Or we can use clean coal (Score 1) 148
We can use clean coal, appreciate what it really is
... dirty?
Comment Re:Really.... (Score 1) 152
Yep. There's also EarthBound which breaks the fourth wall as part of the plot. The dialogue in the game makes it entirely clear that you are not Ness, which this article would claim never happens.
I'm surprised that a game designer for GAMBIT would make such an easily-refutable statement. I'd say that the weaker thesis of the article -- that breaking the fourth wall doesn't actually harm gameplay -- is reasonable, on the other hand.
Comment Re:Questions? Answers. (Score 1) 821
The only exception is EMI? What about the MP3s you can buy from Amazon?
Researcher Warns of "Digital Dark Age" 367
alphadogg writes "A assistant professor from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign is sounding a warning that companies, the government and researchers need to come up with a plan for preserving our increasingly digitized data in light of shifting document management and other software platforms (think WordPerfect and floppy disks). Jerome P. McDonough, who teaches at the Graduate School of Library and Information Science at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, says there exists about 369 exabytes worth of data, and that includes some pretty hard to replace stuff, including tax files, email and photos. Open standards could play a key role in any preservation effort, he says. 'If we can't keep today's information alive for future generations, we will lose a lot of our culture,' McDonough said. Even over the course of 10 years, you can have a rapid enough evolution in the ways people store digital information and the programs they use to access it that file formats can fall out of date.'"
EFF Sues To Overturn Telecom Immunity 369
Mike writes "The title says it all — The EFF is suing to have the unconstitutional telecom immunity overturned. 'In a brief filed in the US District Court [PDF] in San Francisco, the EFF argues that the flawed FISA Amendments Act (FAA) violates the federal government's separation of powers as established in the Constitution and robs innocent telecom customers of their rights without due process of law. [...] "We have overwhelming record evidence that the domestic spying program is operating far outside the bounds of the law," said EFF Senior Staff Attorney Kurt Opsahl. "Intelligence agencies, telecoms, and the Administration want to sweep this case under the rug, but the Constitution won't permit it."'"
Mobile Firefox Alpha 1 Released 148
An anonymous reader writes "Today Mozilla released development builds of its next mobile browser, Fennec 1.0 Alpha 1. 'The last eight milestones were building up to getting a stable browser with an easy to use interface. We really want to get Fennec in front of as many people as possible and get feedback.' To that end, Fennec has been made available for the desktop on Windows, Mac and Linux."
Subpoena Sought For Browsed News Articles 172
The Xoxo Reader writes "A new filing in the Autoadmit Internet defamation lawsuit (previously discussed here on two occasions) reveals how the plaintiffs' lawyers have attempted to discover the identities of the defendants, who posted under pseudonyms on a message board without IP logging. The defendants had posted links and excerpts of several Web pages that mention the plaintiffs, including a Washington Post article, a college scholarship announcement, and a federal court opinion. Now the plaintiffs are asking those Web sites for logs of everybody who accessed those articles in the hours before the allegedly defamatory content was posted. (All the more reason to read the web through Google cache!) The plantiff's motion for expedited discovery includes copies of the lawyers' letters to hosting providers, ISPs, and others. It also includes replies from the recipients, many of whom point out that the lawyers' requests are technically impossible to fulfill. No matter; the plaintiffs are asking the court to issue subpoenas anyway. This thread contains a summary of the letters in the filing."
Comment Re:America has officially lost its monopoly on stu (Score 3, Insightful) 644
Brilliant! It's a hoax within a hoax. Misleading the public to believe that we're misleading our contestants, eh? Wouldn't that be ingenious?
Comment Re:Combinatorics says you'll end up in court (Score 1) 515
Thank you for the complement about the article.
I really can't imagine why you'd want to come across as having not written it
I didn't immediately want to take credit for the article because as yerricde, so many people had put me on their foe lists for allegedly repeatedly ramming the issue down their throats on every single music-industry-related article. I guess they just couldn't handle the facts about the copyright incumbents' monopoly on songwriting.
Comment Re:Me, too! (Score 1) 208
I'd guess the opposition would jump on your TOS agreement, and say you were out of order for providing these services (depends on your ISP, of course). I hope anti-spam legislation doesn't ricochet into tougher TOS agreements, and tougher enforcements thereof.
Journal Journal: Account Closed 1
Welcome to my brief cathartic rant.
I woke up one day, not so very long ago, looked in the mirror, and realized I had turned a little rotten. It's not a good feeling. I realized that I need to take a step back, reflect, and readjust.
Journal Journal: Yerricde Signing Off? 8
by Damian Yerrick
I got the nick "yerricde" in late 1999 when my former school created my user accounts under a nick based on my legal name (Yerrick, Damian E.) It seems that too many people have seen an extra 'i' (*yerricide) in my nick. To prevent further confusion, I decided to phase out that nick starting in early 2002. I wrote a program in the Scheme language to generate a nick th
Journal Journal: Bad Behaviour
Good writers revise, revise, revise. Slashdot posters rarely do, and I'm no exception. The result is more conversational, and sometimes a little raw. I'm not saying this is a bad thing, it's just the way it is.
Comment The question I'll ask if I'm around... (Score 5, Insightful) 433
..what ever happened to JonKatz?
