It doesn't need multiple beams, it just needs focussing. Like a magnifying glass.

Technocrat was a great site, especially early on, but I recall Bruce saying it never made money. It was fun for a while, but it acquired a somewhat fringe group of supporters (quasi survivalists) that gradually became lunatic. I'm not sure what exactly was the tipping point that caused Bruce to shut Technocrat down, but there were problems with offensive commenters, and the way it was going, sooner or later there was going to be something of interest to the FBI ;-). Or maybe it just didn't end up what Bruce wanted it to be ... ? Anyway, I doubt anyone would have been in a position to take over Technocrat - certainly some of the regular contributors would have been sad to see it go, but I doubt any of that crowd would have had either the cash or the inclination to take over running it.

The problem in your scenario is that there's no such thing as a "write only" file...

Not correct. There are lots of ways of setting up a system that can write but not read. For example, a line printer that records a transaction log. To see the password, you have to physically read the printout. You could get the same effect with a dedicated server with a single-use connection to the main server (and no internet connection! Doesn't even need to have a TCP/IP stack) and a well controlled software environment.

I get what you're saying, but, if you look dispassionately at the original trilogy, are they that much better? A lot of the acting and plot in episode IV is quite implausible too. Ep V is pretty good, but when I watch ep VI these days I skip over large sections of the Ewok battles. At least Jar-Jar came in small doses.

I think you're confused. Socialism is about the cooperative management of resources and the means of production, leading to equal power sharing among citizens. I don't see how mandating a particular proprietary format (which it is, despite the ECMA and ISO standards) fits anywhere in the socialist spectrum.

On the other hand, it seems to be capitalism at its finest (or worst, depending on point of view); a company on the free market gets big enough that it has an effective monopoly and can use that power to leverage government regulation. Of course the end result is counter to free market principles, but a completely laissez-faire market almost inevitably results in the biggest fish taking over the pond, so it is a natural consequence.

Thanks, I'll check out Clementine! I've since switched to Sonata, which I don't like as much as old Amarok, but I do like the idea of the Music Player Daemon back end.

Kaffeine 1.1 on KDE 4.5.4:

The TV guide doesn't work the same way, and is much less useful, than in Kaffeine 0.8 (or whatever the KDE3 version of kaffeine was). One standout regression in functionality is that it is no longer possible to actually change channels from the TV guide window. It used to be possible to double-click on a program in the TV guide and start watching it immediately. Now, you need to remember the channel name, close the TV guide dialog and then manually switch to that channel.

I've had numerous occasions when the DVB has simply stopped working, and even a restart doesn't fix it. Following reports I found on a forum, removing all of the channels and rescanning solves the problem, but that is quite a hassle.

The playlist is harder to use. I'd prefer to not have a playlist at all as such - what i want to do is record TV shows, and watch them later. It used to be that double clicking on a file in the file browser window would add it to the play list (and maybe start playing it? I can't remember). Now, it is necessary to physically drag n drop the filename from the browser window onto the playlist window, and then hit play. Actually, in experimenting just nhow I discovered by accident that it is possible to start playing a file immediately by dragging it onto the play window instead, which is better but not obvious. Heh, and I just went to kaffeine.kde.org and that was the tip of the day ;-) But I'd prefer a right-click action to start playing a particular file, and maybe previous file and next file, so I can set up DBUS actions via the remote.

There is no documentation that I can find. A total of 4 'tips', and an out of date FAQ (that still discusses DCOP!) is all I can find. No handbook or installed documentation (that I can find, anyway).

I find the scheduled recording harder to use than the KDE3 version. If I'm browsing the TV guide and I see a show I want to record (say, every week), I 'schedule' it, and then go into the edit schedule dialog to set it to record every week. There used to be a simple options 'repeat daily', and 'repeat weekly'. Now, there are 7 check boxes for the day of the week to repeat the recording. Arguably a bit more flexible (but if there is an unusual pattern of recording, then that could be handled in KDE3 kaffeine by having multiple separate entries, so I don't think there is any win). But now, and really annoyingly, I need to know what day it is on, whereas in the past I didn't need to care about this. I just see some random show in the future, say on 2011-01-24, and I want to repeat it weekly. Quick, what day is that? ummm, let me just open up the calendar here .... okay, it's a Monday, I'll click the Monday check box.

The configuration settings have been stripped out. It used to be possible to set all of the xine enging parameters via a dialog on the Settings menu. I see, from looking at the config files in .kde4/share/apps/kaffeine/xine-config that those options are still relevant but there is no way to adjust them anymore without editing that file.

A big one: the diagog box that one ued to get by pressing the 'v' key during DVB playback doesn't appear to exist anymore (at least, i can see no sign of it). This is a big one, because for whatever reason, when I watch live DVB the audio sync is off by about 0.15 seconds, and this dialog had a slider to adjust the A/V sync. This seems to be missing in kaffeine 1.1, and it makes watching live DVB rather irritating.

I used to love the old kaffeine, and I used it all the time as my TV. But having finally made the switch only a couple of weeks ago to KDE4 and the new kaffeine, I'm disappointed by all of the regressions in ease of use and functionality compared with the KDE3 version. Same goes for many other good KDE3 apps that have lost functionality or are just not the same application anymore.

The WM is unstable, and many of the apps still don't have as much functionality as their KDE3 counterparts. Many of the really nice KDE3 apps, such as Kaffeine and Amarok, now seem to be unmaintained and/or stripped of their functionality and gutted.

This again exposes a problem of case sensitivity. Try Republic vs tyranny (capital R).

Interesting that it is case sensitive. Searching for "britannica,wikipedia" in lowercase, produces, for today, close to zero for brittanica, and 0.00005% for wikipedia, which is not far off the result for Wikipedia (with capital).

Putting these together, the case-insensitive comparison of brittanica and wikipedia has wikipedia already well ahead of brittanica, at around 0.00010% for britannica, vs 0.00013% for wikipedia.

All the providers have to do is block a specific set of URL's. Easy to implement, but also easy to work around, so basically pointless. But I don't expect it will add much to the ISP's workload.

I'd imagine he realizes that. But that isn't an argument in favor of existing copyright laws. Stallman argues that copyleft should be the default, and copyright shouldn't exist (or only apply in much more limited circumstances).

I think you've missed the point, to some extent. The last comment on that LWN article captures it better than I can:

Posted Feb 28, 2009 0:19 UTC (Sat) by tialaramex (subscriber, #21167)

I think the story you've offered (with Unix growing by one byte) is apocryphal, but feel free to go find a source.

Ken Thompson's point is philosophical, more than practical. It tells us something about the nature of what we're doing, rather than having some immediate practical lesson like "fire anyone devious who works for your software company" or "always use two compilers".

The system is too complicated for us to understand from the ground up how it all works, so we trust some aspects of the system implicitly. Thompson's example is the compiler, but it could as easily be the CPU or any other sufficiently complicated component. Probably we have long since passed the point of no return. All we can do is be aware of the trap we have set ourselves.

You really should look up the Keith Thompson backdoor incident properly first - you are looking rather naive yourself at this moment!

They have military service. Conscription is something different, that is brought in on an as-needs basis. The last time the USA brought it in was Vietnam. Early on there were questions about whether conscription would be needed in Iraq.

I don't see the relevance though. Your point is?