A common theme that I've noticed in Slashdot stories about China is that no one seems to know China's actual laws about free speech, criticizing the government, or religion. Nearly everyone is surprised when I drag out the Chinese Constitution and show them the rights that the government supposedly guarantees.

While getting +5's for knowing this is a nice racket, I feel that it's far more important to catalog the information in one place so that others can learn and spread understanding of China's abuses.

Thus this weeks article is China: Getting the Facts.

If you find yourself in a discussion about China again, I hope you'll find it a useful resource to direct people to. If some of you feel that it's worthy of a front page Slashdot story, feel free to submit it. :-)

As the price of gas surged past $3.00 a gallon, many consumers began to wake up to more efficient road vehicles such as hybrid cars. These cars reduce your overall costs by requiring less gas at the pump for the same range. Unfortunately, such savings are bound to be only a temporary fix. Oil prices have dropped back down for the moment, but they're still sitting at some of the highest prices in the history of the modern world. To avoid a transportation collapse (which would result in an economic collapse), we need to reduce our dependency on oil. And fast.

This week's article is part of a new series of articles I'm introducing called, "Come Dream With Me." This series is intended to showcase existing technologies that can be used to make our everyday lives better and our futures brighter. All we need to do is develop them.

The current episode is a two parter focused on Stirling Engines in both planes and cars. Let me know what you think. My hope is that everyone will learn a little something that will help them in the future. :-)

Alrighty, then! Now that I've finally got home internet again (which means that I'll soon be replying to many of the emails that I have piled up in my box!) I've put out a new article! This time, you can actually *have* the future I described, today!

Read More!

Don't you love the title, BTW? Buzzwords are fun, whee! (Or maybe I've done just a little too much cold medication. You decide.)

A new article is finally up, asking the question is AJAX actually new?

so this comment got modded down. I guess I made the mistake of assuming everyone on slashdot had a highschool education.

I made the assumption of thinking everyone here knew basic, highschool chemistry. I was wrong. Oh well.

CmdrTaco had an opportunity to create something great, years ago, and he squandered it completely.

The latest article is up and running!

Free Books on the Internet
-- or --
How to get a Comp-Sci Education in 30 Days!

Check it out, if you dare...

MWAHAHAHAHA!

...the latest and greatest article is up and running! This week I decided to take some time and tackle the recent article by Sal Cangeloso, where he suggests that Linux needs more consolidation.

Sorry if I've been kind of slow in responding to your posts. I've been a little busy working on some cool stuff for the future. Not that I'm going to give anything away... ;-)

...it seems that OSNews has picked up the followup series. It strikes me that the comments this time are much better thought out and even handed than the first story. Of course, some people are still repeating the same stupid mistakes. "I don't want 18 copies of a PNG loader in memory!"

*sigh*

(Cross-posted to WWdN)

The final table of the 2005 World Series of Poker started at 4pm yesterday afternoon, and wasn't finished until just after 7am today. I'm not sure, but I think that's a record. I'd call Pauly to be sure, but something tells me he's crashed out until at least Sunday.

Two qualifiers from PokerStars made the final table, and one guy, who qualified using free play points, made it to the final two tables, finished in 13th place, and won $400,000. Not bad for a freeroll!

Speaking of Pauly and PokerStars, we're doing a charity tournament on Sunday in memory of Pauly's friend Charlie Tuttle:

Charlie is from Clarksville, Tennessee and he's a twenty-six year old music enthusiast who loves hanging out and playing poker with his friends. Charlie was dealt a bad hand in life when he was diagnosed with terminal cancer, which he has been battling this past year. A couple of weekends ago, he was hospitalized because two tumors in his chest pressed up against his lungs, causing him breathing problems. I don't have to tell you how serious his condition was.

Felicia Lee, who is fighting her own battle with cancer, knows several top professional poker players, so she got several of her friends to call Charlie: John Juanda, Marcel Luske, Max Pescatori, and Barry Greenstein to name a few. In fact, when Barry Greenstein won his bracelet in the $1,500 Pot-Limit Omaha event, he dedicated it to Charlie.

As Pauly wrote:

Situations like this one make you reassess what's really important in life. Las Vegas is a city built on greed. Poker is a game that often attracts some of the lowest forms of life. However, in the past two weeks, there has been a small group of professional poker players who have earned my respect and admiration. Amidst all the darkness and debauchery, I have caught a few glimpses of the bright side of humanity. The hearts of some of the biggest sharks in Las Vegas are filled with compassion.

Thank you, Charlie, for inspiring us all. We'll never forget you.

Charlie passed away on June 22 and his friends have organized a charity poker tournament this Sunday at PokerStars. It's going to be a lot of fun, and I hope to see lots of WWdN readers there.

Details:

SUNDAY, JULY 17th
18:00 EDT (15:00 CDT)
PokerStars
Buy-in is $20 — all of it goes to charity.
"WPBT Charlie Tournament" under Tourneys -> Private tab in the lobby

Well, I did try to get this article out early, but it just didn't happen. So here we are on Thursday Night (as usual), and I've just published the second part of the Followup series. I highly recommend you read this one, because it covers a lot more detail about how the DBFS can be implemented and used. Feel free to submit the followup to any news source that will take it. I certainly don't mind the traffic. ;-)

Another new and interesting thing you'll find on my blog is a small white box located underneath the skyscraper ad on the left. If you type your email address in there, you can sign up to receive an automatic email every time I publish a new article. I'm running it through the Notify List service, so we'll see how it works out.

Enjoy!

A follow up to last week's four part series is now online. Call all your friends, neighbors, relatives, blogging buddies, and Linus Torvalds to let them know! ;-)

Follow Up article.

Unless you've been living under a rock, you've probably seen that my article is now on the front page of Slashdot. Unsurprisingly, the comments are of a much better quality than those on OSNews.

I have to say that it's a bit weird, though. It's like looking into the eye of a hurricane and hoping you won't get blown away. If I thought I had trouble keeping up with the comments before, there is absolutely no hope now.

Now if you'll excuse me, I myself am going to go hide under a rock until the storm blows over. Maybe after it's over, the aftermath will have hooked a few interested Linux developers. ;-)

I can't believe my recent blog article is getting so amazingly hammered. I've been trying to respond to criticisms and questions, but I'm quickly getting overwhelmed. So... I have no idea what I'm going to do about it other than keep plugging away. It's kind of fun to fan the flames. :-)

Even though Slashdot doesn't seem to want to pick up the story, I found out that OSNews picked it up. The people over there have been generally unkind, and have decided to ignore the intelligent points of my article and instead use their forums for an all out flamefest. The few actual criticisms seem mostly based on things I either didn't say, or a desire to plug their ears, ignore any points that are made, and hope it goes away. I have no idea why they do this. Are OSNews discussions always this... I don't know... useless?

Outside of OSNews, one of the things that I've noticed is that a lot of people seem to be skimming over the articles and losing the details. They then go on to criticize without double checking. A few examples:

- Is it a good idea to tie MySQL (or other major DB Engine) to the file system? How does that effect maintenance? (For the record, I used SQL tables as a metaphor. The DBFS should be a complete file system. Using something like Berkeley DB to store the data in a file on the DBFS is probably the easiest solution, but is hardly the same thing as bringing a large database online.)

- AppFolders aren't abstract enough. The user can still see inside the folder. (These people seem to miss the HUGE sections on wrapping the AppFolders into disk images.)

- Have you seen technology XYZ? It already does some of this. (Yes, I have seen it. That's why there's a link to it at the bottom of the article.) ;-)

Now I realize that the language could use some cleaning up in a few places (especially the last article which was a bit rushed), but is it possible that something else is impacting people's ability to read clearly? For example, does the blog color scheme cause anyone here problems? I've been considering changing it, but I'm none too happy with most of blogger.com's offerings. I may have to create a custom template. :-/

Welp, back to the grindstone. (With a little sleep in between.)

Part 4 is here!

Feel free to to submit the complete series to any sites you like (including the Slashdot front page ;-)). Hopefully we can get these ideas to catch on and make Open Source Operating Systems market leaders instead of market followers!