Obviously we do a fusion prequel/sequel two parter and turn it into a
Trilogy.

In the first half, the Parliament is not happy with Mal, but now they have bigger problems. And so does Mal. In his experiences he realizes that he will not find peace as long as Parliament is still in power. And with the help of his crew he discovers that there is no one better to help him understand and navigate the maze of power and how to attack Parliament than the person he most despises in the universe, the Operative. Through a series of new scenes and flashbacks (Which give us back Wash & Book, for a while) Mal realizes that Book was an operative, and that his nemesis, now in reclusion (like Book was) is the only one who can help him.

So the first of the sequels brings Mal to the realization, and Mal finds him. Their eyes meet, but not a word is said fade to black end of part one.

In the second, it picks up with the exact shot we left before, almost as though we just 'blinked.' The Operative joins Mal's crew (with all the expected edginess) and together they bring down Parliament. (Accomplishing almost single-handedly what the Browncoats could not do openly!)

To paraphrase Independence Day: "Any Questions?" "Let's Do It!"

It used to be that Microsoft was the operating system that strove to be most easily usable by the lowest common denominator, and Linux was perceived as a tool only for the most serious geeks. So, by using Microsoft products for over a decade, end users had been, in some degree, 'dumbed down.' But the main intent, make no mistake, was to please the end user.

Now comes Vista, with some fairly significant changes in how things work. For some, it is a big hurdle. But end users were not Microsoft's only beneficiaries this time. Microsoft has chosen to become its own police force and provide seamless, impenetrable DRM. After all, it's not your content, it really belongs to the person who bought it from the creator. And as we've all seen, that DRM hasn't got a chance.

Microsoft will shortly find itself in a very difficult situation. Do they allow these 'end user DRM modifications,' or do they enforce copyright through reinforcing the DRM? How will this happen? Will Microsoft choose to disable certain features for those users who don't agree with their policies?

I think that we're in for a very interesting period here as Microsoft begins to understand what they are really doing, with both end users and copyright holders.

- This Just In -

"Microsoft has received a patent for Communications. We are now no longer
allowed to communicate without a license."

There is a commotion outside.

"What's that sound?"

The door explodes inward and the room is immediately filled with smoke and
overrun with stormtroopers.

A large and ominous voice booms out.

"You are forbidden to communicate."

I am stunned! I don't know what to think!

Then just as suddenly the first wave of stormtroopers are felled, one by one in
an unimaginably short flash of time.

"Don't know what to think?" a voice says.

I look up and see Jeff Brazos towering above the carnage.

"That's fine by me. I just patented Thought!"

Slashdot has it's way of finding things. That's good for me, 'cause I get to find out all kinds of neat things, that I probably wouldn't find out about otherwise. With each member empowered to be a cub reporter of sorts, Slashdot finds its way into everything sooner or later. And when it does, we race for the cliff, herded there with all the furry frenzy of a Walt Disney documentary. The Slashdot Effect is well documented (just Google 'slashdot effect'). And with that power (aka known as the Slashdot DDOS attack) comes responsibility. Perhaps someone could develop the market niche which would address this problem. Slashdot Insurance would provide coverage, for a reasonable fee, to insure both that your bandwidth would be paid for and that your site would remain accessible, by providing monitoring and mirroring as your insured threshold was crossed. It seems that Slashdot would be in the best position to offer said insurance, but I wonder what the RICO statutes would have to say about a company that can offer you protection from the adverse effects of their own business practices?

Hmmmmm..... Maybe this one needs a little more thought. I'll file it with the RFID Shielded Wallet and the RFID currency impersonator and we'll see what happens.

Yesterday I got an e-mail from a student to which had been appended the puzzle: WWWDOT-GOOGLE=DOTCOM. I like puzzles, so after solving it I decided to track down it's origins. I guess I missed the /. article. Anyway, here's my take WFIW.

1. 555378-177104=378274
2. the hot to be cool
   the cool to become warmer
   can i have more ram?
3. 12212111
4. E
5. Unix isn't broken, it is only misunderstood by the inexperienced. At some level, each of us individually reaches a point at which we are individually inexperienced. Only shared understandings have any meaning. Do you understand? Live free or die. (However if I were to design an operating system around a product I might view things differently ... )
6. E
7. E
8. 17280: Blue@450nm, Yellow-Green@550nm and Red@650nm (nice round numbers)
9. 365731913 * 11
10. 1 ohm
11. I'd do that stuff on Saturday afternoon, and organize for the week to wind (are we flying a kite or energizing a toy?) down on on Sunday.
12. pi = c/r
13. D
14. It's not in the quality or quantity of items/concepts, it's in the interpretations of the understandings of the relationships between the items/concepts. Users tend to refine their searches in an interative manner. Those iterations represent (hopefully, from the searcher's point of vew) a refinement in the result set. If we organize the data in an N directed graph, we can allow for navigation of the result data set by the intention of the searcher with respect to the relationships of the items/concepts. In effect we can data mine the searches indexed by IP and, by comparison of enough sets begin to explore the overall solution set for locii of interest.
15. D
16. Determine the Centriod (P) by bisecting the three sides of the triangle ABC with the compass and extending the three medians to their intersection with the ruler. Then use the ruler to connect the three verticis of ABC with the Centriod P.
17. 0 (zero)
18. Use of indirection in MUMPS to allow code to morph itself to adapt to circumstances rather than individually coding for each possible circumstance. Probably applicable in python too.
19. (N!)/(N/2)! However, there is a special case, if mapped to the empty set means we have an exact identical outcome: We each have Nothing!
20. D
21. Stimulating the mind with interesting problems and formulating solutions that are downright sexy. Finding the page curl of reality and pulling it back to see the machineries within.

YMMV

-/.-

I'd like to add at least one option to the choices in the moderation select list: Misleading (-1). This would be used for some messages which are simply marked Offtopic or Troll. However the problem is tha message is not really either, and sometimes inattentive moderators even select Informative for these messages. The point, however, is that the message author has made a deliberate attempt to subvert the discussion.

We live in a world where perception is reality. Everyone from advertisers to businesses, education to government practices this form of deception in one way or another, when the stakes are sufficently high; and the usual motive behind it leads in some manner to select individuals profiting at the expense of the general population. Shouldn't we simply identify disinformation for what it is worth? Shouldn't we encourage /. readers to make this kind of distinction?

-/.-

With all the messages that manage to pass through the discussons on this site, it's often a big pain in the a** to actually separate the entertainement, from the information. Wouldn't it be nice to have a means to digest and summarize the discussions so that we could get to the facts or the funnies relatively quickly? At the very least, the posts could be grouped by their moderation tags and point values. I know that as end users we can 'adjust' the ratings of messages, but I'd like something a little more organized.

-/.-

Once before I had an usual color scheme when I was visiting my homepage. For some reason it just didn't look like the thousands (sic millions) of others. Right after I clicked off of it; it came to me: It had a different CSS! Today I duplicated the effect. Visit any section, then click the homepage link. Try a few different ones! The section CSS remains and is displayed as the homepage CSS. For some reason I just thought this was interesting.

Feature or Bug?

And yes I do remember the definition in the big red Apple ][ manual:
"A feature is a bug as described by the marketing department."

-/.-