I don't think they kept the old site archived though hothothot.com is still around and they were offline for a long time during some kind of remodel and no longer carry Clancy's Fancy after the remodel. Strange since I figure they would try to have the largest selection possible. But anyway, the site is still online and might be the oldest web shop by now. As far as I know, it was the second web shop ever but I cannot recall which might have been the first.

China only does assembly. They do not design the chips, and they do not write the software.

Not only that, there is the problem that nearly everyone chooses to ignore, the insecure baseband system and processor. One of the biggest moves China could make would be to both design and certify a processor and a baseboand OS. Then they could just run their own version of Replicant or whatever on the other processor while knowing that the 'hidden' part of the system is also clean. It's the certification that is a big barrier for most teams but China could squash it easily.

"natural langauges" are too imprecise. Even native speakers often get confused talking to each other. It's just that most people don't notice the back and forth with clarifying questions since it comes "naturally". It seems that for any high level of natural language processing a fully sentient AI would be needed for the interpreter.

An interesting experiment might be to use ithkuil for the UI at first to reduce ambiguity and imprecision. That might make it easier to gauge how much AI would ultimately be needed.

Why lynx? Because if it works with lynx it not only works with all browsers, it works with the search engines. That ensures that even the comments are searchable. As it is, the javascript is not only a major security hole it slows things down noticeably, even on fast hardware. I didn't buy this fast machine for Dice to use, I bought it because I want a snappy and responsive UI even when browsing the web. That includes Slashdot. Further, working in lynx ensures that screen readers can use the page, meaning that those with little or no sight can still use the web site. It's less work to avoid the javascript and reaches more people and search engines. Beta sucks and just needs to go away. If the powers that be still feel compelled to make changes, scrap Beta and start over beginning with usability and accessiblity.

Our support is important to you, Slashdice. And if you refuse to listen, you shan't have it.

Dice has had months of feedback to change or improve the situation with Beta but has chosen instead to respond with a giant "fuck you" to its user base. That includes Timothy's non-answer, which is just another "fuck off" in so many fine words. Needless to say, it is that user base which the site is about. It is why people come here and what advertisers pay money to reach. Since Dice has demonstrated an unresponsiveness for months, including this last message from Timothy, it is time to escalate to Dice's bosses, the advertisers.

Who's to say there aren't other, better things saved up for April? If they've managed to fritter away their window to migrate to GNU/Linux, well they'll have fun in April.

Fuck, these days they probably aren't even 50%

Most figure it's even lower than that. M$ market share is only around 20%, old numbers did not include phones. When you count phones, tablets, servers, super computers, and so on, M$ is well on its way to becoming irrelevant. It's only the nasty mess and the legacy of dirty business practices that they leave behind for us.

Your friends, family and coworkers will only hear about them if you yourself bother to bring them up. Unlike Skype, there's no giant budget for marketing. As far as accepting calls over loopback, you'll have to look into that. Another way to hear your own voice would be to call 4444@sip2sip.info There are other echo services and even call back services if you look around.

Developers have already gotten on top of this. There are about a half dozen excellent cross-platform SIP applications out there. Jitsi, IMHO, blows away Skype. There is also Blink, despite the name it's good, too. These are the top two and are cross-platform. Use either to connect to either, they both work well.

It's about Illumos now. Solaris is stagnant. From what I gather, most of the developers moved from Solaris over to Illumos a while back and have been rather active since.

It's even easier to verify. You don't need to write your own program, though that would be fun. You can use curl or wget. Both support using custom User-Agent strings. One or the other will come pre-installed by default on your system, unless it is that Other OS.

There is so much essential functionality missing from key management and encrypted e-mail, that it is in a barely usable state. For the Brazilian government, or any government for that matter, to provide end-to-end email encrytption for their own workers, so much more needs to be done.

Name me even one mail client or plug-in that can search encrypted messages, the body not just the metadata. Or how about re-keying stored messages? Federal employees often have an obligation to archive communications, but how will that fit with the recommended practice of re-keying? The list goes on.

E-mail encryption has been rather thoroughly thought through at the protocol level (thanks, Phil!) but when it comes to how it can be made to fit in with normal workflow, practically nothing has been done yet.

MS Word took off when they started bundling it. For most people it was simple math: Either buy MS Word + MS Excel for the same price as WordPerfect or Quattro alone, or double up the money and pay for WordPerfect and Quattro. d

Microsoft used secret APIs to give its programs an advantage over competitors. That had a big effect in the 1990's. It is apparently still going on in some things but we'll have to wait, as usual, a long time before it turns up in court records. And like before, the damage will have been done. The only way to stop it is to stop using M$ products.

You can find more like that if you wade through the material of the Comes V Microsoft case at the now archived Groklaw site. Basically anything bad that has been said about M$ and the people that work there is true.