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Hmmm... seems quite a few people (judging from email I've gotten) have figured out that this week's interview guest, Clinton Ebadi, is the 'unknown_lamer' who frequents irc.openprojects.net, not that this was a great secret or anything. Anyway, Clinton has a pretty good sense of humor about himself and this whole thing, and I think it shows through clearly in his answers (below) to your questions.

1) Girls (Score:5, Interesting)
by Stoke (stoke@excite.com)

At the age when most teens seem to be crazy over the opposite sex and dating, how is your situation with girls? Assuming you don't have a girlfriend, do you feel better off without one taking away your free time, or is it something you wish for?

Clinton:

No girlfriend for the unknown_lamer. I'm not cool enough. I really wish I had one, because here is my daily schedule:

• 6am: wake up
• 7am: time for school
• 3pm: home from school
• 4:40pm: homework done
• 6pm: food
• 6:30-10:30 - music / irc / tv
• 11pm: sleep

Well, You see, I have a bit too much free time on my hands.

2) Just Curious... (Score:5, Interesting)
by Brazilian Geek (akajita@spamyourmama.bigfoot.com)

Are you now or have you ever been a Slashdot troll? If so, please comment on the feeling of being a troll, if not, what is your favorite troll?

Clinton:

I am not, and never have been a troll (but I might be one in the future). Trolling is bad (except when the troll is modded up to 5:funny). I try to only post a comment when I have something worthwhile to say. And, I don't like losing my precious karma(12 whole points). I read at level 2, and I usually don't see any trolls (I used to read at -1...and my browser kept crashing.). IMHO, all trolls are equally funny. Except for the goatse.cx ones.

3) What are your plans for college? (Score:5, Interesting)
by Zachary Kessin (zkessin@script-fu.org)

If you have thought about it what do you want to do after High School? Do you have any ideas about college or further education?

Clinton:

I really want to go to college one day. And, I really want a job. Being poor isn't fun when you have a 4 and a half year old box (and other people are saying their "ancient" p2/500 is slow..try having the newest game consoles be faster than your box).

4) What are you listening to? (Score:5, Interesting)
by geophile (jao@mediaone.net)

When I was 15, my father said, "how can you listen to this? It's noise! There's no melody, it's just boom boom boom!". He was talking about the Beatles. Today, I am horrified to find myself saying the same thing about all rap/hip-hop/whatever, Britney Spears, N Sync, and just about everything else I hear that's been recorded recently. I don't buy much new music, but lately I've been buying CDs to replace my old LPs (The Who, Genesis, and yes, The Beatles).

At least there's Elvis (C, not P), They Might Be Giants, and Komeda.

Is it just me, or my g-g-g-generation, or does new music really suck? What are you listening to?

Clinton:

Pop music isn't bad. It's worse than that. It is horrible. I say, down with pop. I listen to extreme death metal and punk. So, I own the first two limp bizkit albums..but they don't such really bad. I really like independent bands from sites like riffage.com (which is dead now) and BeSonic.com(which is alive and well). I really like bands like cannibal corpse, cryptopsy, NiN, orgy, the offspring, NoFX, rage against the machine, and anything really loud. The words don't matter to me, its all about the instruments. Bands like cannibal corpse == the bringer of evil, but their guitar work is amazing. So, I guess you could argue(and maybe win) that the music I listen to is noise..but at least it isn't filth disguised as good- wholesome- music- for- the- whole- family. It tells you it is bad (but you just have to love the guitar work and the little complexities of the music).

5) How is it? (Score:5, Interesting)
by dbarclay10 (dbarclay10_NOSPAM_@_MAPSON_yahoo.ca)

Hey, what's up? :) I'm not a teenager, but I am a Linux user, and a rather dedicated one. I've come to the realization over the past year or so that, indeed, MS Office is actually a good software packager. Well, relatively speaking, of course ;) I find it fast, relatively lean, feature-complete, and more-or-less stable. I was wondering if you yourself have a particular software favorite that doesn't run under Linux?

Clinton:

My favorite software that doesn't run under linux...starcraft. Or rather, all of the blizzard games. They are amazing, and I love them. Why can't blizzard port them! I'd pay for all of them again if I could play them under linux (WINE can play them..but at a really low frame rate, and Battle.net doesn't work).

6) If you were stranded on a desert island (Score:5, Funny)
by dattaway (dattaway@attaway.org)

...and could only have one cd to load a blank computer, what would it be?

Clinton:

Well, Debian GNU/Linux! Well, that is almost 5 cds now..but I can count it as one, right? It comes with everything I'll ever need too.. with about 6000 packages to choose from.

7) Childhood toys? (Score:5, Insightful)
by Ralph Wiggam (ralph@springfield.com)

Pretty much every geek I've asked remembers loving construction type toys as children. I know my fave was Capsella because of the motors and gears, but there was always a big box of Legos in my house, too.

Did you play with toys like that in your 5-12 years?

What were your favorites?

Clinton:

I liked to play with legos. And k'nex. But I discovered the computer at age 7... and learned some BASIC when I was 8 (using a precomputer 1000 from vtech. Thank-you vtech). My mom brought home a laptop from NASA when I was 7 (end of 1993), and it was hooked up to the internet. I got a book on how to use lynx and SLIP and stuff a few weeks later, and I was on the net using a dialup SLIP @ 14.4k baud, on a win 3.1 running 486 from IBM (it was nice..except win 3.1 confused me). So, I guess my favorite toy was that little government owned laptop..then my mac (The mac actually is what got me really in computing..the learning curve was so small that I was able to explore deeper with things like ResEdit, MPW, and macsbugs easier), and finally my humble 166Mhz linux box (which I got a new 20GB drive for tuesday..finally, free space).

8) Times Change (Score:5, Interesting)
by HRbnjR (chris@hubick.com)

When I was a geek in high school (10 years ago)... it was not cool at all. The computer club was definitely frowned upon by the "cool" people. My question is, with the rise of the internet, and computers becoming pervasive in "normal" peoples lives...has this changed? Or have geeks gained some respect?

I read an article somewhere (Wired?) that said geeks were the new sex symbols...doctors and lawyers used to represent power and success and where what men stereotypically wanted to be, and what women stereotypially chased after. But now, as it is suggested, do you think geeks have invaded some of this position? Do you see any attitudes like this in school?

Clinton:

I don't really think geeks have taken the position of doctors, but I think we have moved up a bit. I'm not taunted anymore, I'm just understood. People understand I'm not like them, and they don't care. They are still a few people who won't stop making fun or picking up me, but I can deal with them (because I'm bigger than them now). I really have noticed that "normal" people have invaded my High School CS class.. most of them are trying to learn C, and can barely use AOL. It is very sad (and the teacher are worse... quote from teacher: "Linux!? That's just a graphical shell on top DOS like windows is. Everything has to use MS-DOS to run" and "Since when has their been a version of UNIX for the intel processor? What? Since the early 90s? What is this BSD UNIX you speak of?").

But still, I get made fun of sometimes for using linux ("Linux sucks. You suck"). But I can ignore it, since a few of my friends use linux as well (hmm...at my school I know of..4 linux users. 2 debian ones (mike and I) and a BSD user..but only Mike and I in the CS class). My rant has gone on long enough now. Yep, everyone has gone up the ladder. Nope, IMHO geeks aren't like doctors.. if the "average" geek is anything like me.. (the one who uses IRC 11 hours a day, has lots of fun and gets excited after being on slashdot (and makes his non-geek friends read it too), and doesn't ever go outside).

9.)Now answer honestly! (Score:4, Interesting)
by OlympicSponsor

In 8th/9th/10th grade I was unpopular (hung out with the losers, didn't go to dances, etc). 11th and 12th grades I was merely neutral (went to some dances, knew a lot of people, but I wasn't a jock or anything). I bring this up not out of relevance, but to show that "I've been there."

My question is: Which came first, the chicken or the egg? What I mean by that is: Many geek teenagers exhibit anti-social characteristics, including: poor hygiene, little or no conversation skills and attitudes (for instance know-it-all-ism) that are off-putting. Do adolescents get into computers because they don't get along and don't understand why, so turn to computers (books, D&D, whatever) as something they can understand/master? Or do adolescents who get into computers/whatever use up so much brain capacity with intellectually challenging tasks they can't learn how to interact with others? Or some third thing?

Clinton:

Well, I think I became anti-social first. They said I had ADD, and they put me on ritalin. I promptly stopped interacting with other people (after I got off of it, I started returning to normalcy). People made fun of me because I never went anywhere, and stayed inside all of the time. So, I got that NASA laptop, and I started to use the internet (wait..that came first..). So, the computer didn't make me anti-social. Yes, I was a know-it-all for a long time. And I have a habit of interrupter people (although it isn't nearly as bad as it used to be). But, I'm not that anti-social. I have friends. The people with yellow and green hair are my friends (you have to love punk rockers), the l33t hax0rs at school, the somewhat-suicidal ones, and my fellow geeks. I am happy. Isn't that all that matters? The pop culture people look happy, but they aren't. They need music and icons to tell them who to be.

10.)Why a new Linux distribution? (Score:4, Insightful)
by Alan Shutko (ats@acm.org)

There are tons of Linux distributions, and each one has a different reason for being. Most distributions seem geared to one major point: learning how to make a distro, supporting a specific niche like small routers, being easier for Linux novices.

What's your vision for MentalUNIX? Why do you feel that you need to make your own distribution, and what specifically will your distribution do to make it fulfill that need better than existing offerings.

(The website seems to lack a clear description of the overall goal, though it has some mentions of new setup tools.)

Clinton:

BTW, a new, actually up to date site will be uploaded once SCP over at sourceforge starts to work again. Lots of the stuff like mdevelop weren't really my idea, but they aren't new programs. Mdevelop is more of a system built around existing apps. Imagine Glimmer + DDD + glade + a lisp interpreter all integrated. IMHO, linux lacks a really good IDE that can do everything you need..edit the code, debug it, and create an interface. Lots of programs come close(like emacs and code crusader), but most can't design an interface / debug your program internally.

My general vision for it is as the Universal distribution -- one that follow the FHS and LSB to the letter, and one that can use all package formats. The package format issue really bugs me. It scares away lots of people(almost scared me away). You have source packages, debs, rpms, slis, slackware tar.gz, and lots more. If one tool could install all of them, then life would be a lot easier for a new user.

Also, installation is getting easier every day now, so it will eventually have a nice installer, but I hope to make it better than the rest. Instead of dumping all of the packages in the entire distro on the user, they only get what they should need(and the all powerful kernel hacker can select exactly what they want). So, a new user who selected the "home" install wouldn't get things like gcc or apache. Now, not giving them gcc is a bit hard to justify, but mpkg will be able to handle source packages(the autoconfigure type), so it would grab the compiler when it encountered the source package / when you wanted to recompile a source deb / srpm / whatever).

Another really big part of mentalUNIX is making maintaining the distro easier. Mpkg will allow the maintainer (or user) to recompile an entire package tree with one command, for any platform their compiler can compiler for. So, it would be feasible for mentalunix to be available in specific versions for every x86 architecture, and make porting to things like PPC easier (you would still have lots of stuff to worry about, but you would know what packages failed to recompile, and you could focus on getting them to compile for the new platform). And, a maintainer could recompile one package, or multiple packages for more than one target platform with one command as well. The maintainer utilities are a big thing, and are going to be the first to be focused on. Making it simple for the maintainer to maintain helps to overcome the fear of trying to help join a project and it makes it easier for developers to make precompiled(or not) packages easier to produce.

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ASCII ART
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"Ain't it l33t?"
All views expressed are IMHO.
Because MHO is better than yours.
unknown_lamer

Linuxathome writes: "I spent over $100 recently at a local Radio Shack (Columbia, Md.) and they gave me a free RCA cable modem with no strings attached (at least, to the best of my knowledge). Actually, it wasn't quite free, I still had to pay the 5% tax on it. Comcast has some deal with the Shack to push as much hardware as possible in hopes that the consumer will order the cable broadband service. At least I won't have to rent the equipment. I wonder how Comcast can actually make money this way? Especially since the Shack consumer has absolutely no obligation to buy the service. They can't even guarantee the buyer lives in an area where Comcast is providing service. Time to figure if this bad boy acts nice with a linux router." Soon we will be buried in "free" hardware and AOL CDs. Has anyone else encountered this giveaway? Is there any use more clever than signing up for cable Internet service? (And can you examine data which passes through it without violating an implied agreement? ;) )

Tihstae writes "Since this hasn't been mentioned yet, I figured I would bring it to everyone's attention. Of course I did ordered mine before the slashdot effect. You can get yours visorphone here " This looks a lot nicer then the clunky Qualcomm/Palm III version that was available for awhile, but I still think its a bit large. I'm still waiting for the handhelp PDA/Phone with a nice built in game system, and enough memory for a few days of MP3s tho. Oh, and 802.11 networking, and the ability to remotely display X11 apps. And it should cook rice perfectly every time.

Gaming cheats like "Up, Up, Down, Down..." are techno-folklore, a universal introduction to people of the gaming era. Other generations told war stories or bragged about their sexual exploits. Gamers trade techniques and other lore -- early experiences, confrontations, conflicts, great exploits, cheats, tricks, myths, and legends. Gaming is moving so quickly that it's time to start building some gaming archives. What, for example, is the most addictive game, now or ever: Asheron's Call? Quake? Final Fantasy 8? Red Alert2? You can testify, brag, reminisce, and otherwise post your own gaming stories and experiences here. (And more below about some surprising new stats on Xmas game sales figures, and gender and gaming)

A new report by PC Data says that 35% of Net users are going to buy console or PC console games this Christmas, and that PC and console gaming is no longer a male-dominated activity. The study found that while men make up 55% of gamers overall, for the first time women comprise a a majority of online gamers -- 50.4%. Women, according to the study, favor online gambling, card gones and quiz and trivia contests.

PC Data says men prefer war - and sports-themed games, and that men are three times as likely as women to participate in first-person shooter games (38% vs. 10%). "Solitaire," "Free Cell" and similiar bundled games are the most frequently played of all online and offline games. The top PC game categories are strategy real-time/turn-based, world building, and flight simulation.

Christmas is perhaps the best indicator of what mainstream America is buying and thinking about. The PC Data survey greatly underscores the idea that gaming has become a mainstream form of culture, if not the single most pervasive form of culture, in America.

halcyon7 writes: "My MIT research group has spent the last two months studying Infocom ^[?] , Inc. (the creators of Zork ^[?] ) in great detail. We have talked to many of the original founders and employees, studied board meeting minutes, looked through source code, and done everything we could to tell the story of Infocom's history in a fair and accurate way. As of Friday, our project has concluded. Our report and presentation, entitled "Down From the Top of Its Game: The Story of Infocom, Inc.", is available online in both PDF of the paper and a PDF of the presentation. The presentation was given on December 13th in a quasi-public forum to members of EECS, STS, the MIT community, and some former employees of Infocom." Ah, Infocom. Many a day was whiled away trying to figure the syntax for the next command *grin*.

kberkit asks: "I've just started as a Web designer/Swiss-army-knife, In the crash course of my travails, I've come across some nifty online tools: traceroute to find out what route and how long my Web pages are taking to load to outside servers; DNS lookup, to figure out what IP address a page is coming from; and online HTML validators to make sure my code is clean. I'm sure this is old hat to a lot of Slashdotters, but I'd be interested in knowing what other online tools others would suggest for us poor schleps who find ourselves expected to work miracles with little budget for proper software." For those of you who like traceroute and ping, may I recommend mtr as a supplement for your toolbox? What other small utilities have you all found useful in your day-to-day work lives?

Alex Bischoff writes: "As noted in this Politech posting, a federal district judge says it's OK to do port scans on networks. 'The court concluded that an imperceptible slowdown in performance was not damaged under the Georgia law.'" Note that this is a very specific situation; only one data point out of many that will be required to figure out how various laws apply to the Internet.

dcigary asks: "So, I'm visiting my local outlet mall, and strolling through the Sony Outlet store. At the entrance, they have a BIG stack of refurbished WebTV Plus boxes, with a price tag of $19.99 each. It also included a wireless keyboard! Being a sucker for a cheap price, I snatched up two of them, figuring I could at least set one up for my net-impared parents so they can surf the internet easily. What else can I do with one of these boxes? Are they hackable? I would really like to add an ethernet adapter to it and put it on my house LAN, and run out through the cable modem, but that would probably be asking too much. I've read through the specs and apparently they have a 1.2G drive in them as well? Any other ideas? Any sites out there dedicated to this?" $19.95 for a Web-TV box? That's not a bad price if these things can be enhanced in any way, shape or form.

Tavern alerts us to this CNET story which indicates that AT&T will soon offer GSM service to U.S. customers, noting "Maybe US companies are figuring out it's time not to compete in infrastructure, but to compete in services." The article also mentions the investment of Japanese wireless giant DoCoMo into AT&T's wireless service; you may recall that they're the creators of the finger-in-ear phone mentioned a few months back. I got to demo this phone in October, and I hope they speed up the development -- it was fun to say "Hi, Mom. I'm talking with my finger in my ear!"

Crazy Corrigan asks: "I just got a new pager, bought and paid for by my office. I'm looking and the thing and lo and behold, it has an IR port on the bottom. I got all excited and figured there must be someone out there who has a program for the Palm Pilot to interact with this thing. However, upon further research, Motorola says it's only for factory programming. Anyone want a challenge? This would probably be a great project for any Palm programmer! These things are really cheap and could be a great way to extend the usability of your Palm! Check out the LS350 User Guides on Motorola's site"

December writes "This story says Australian company Nascomms claims to be the first in the world to go online with numeric addressing [CT:TCP/IP uses numbers too, just not ones with area code ;)], in which telephone numbers are used in replace of the ubiquitous dot-com address. Interesting idea, but in the business case, I could much more easily guess www.toyota.com then figuring out their phone number."

heyetv asks: "AMD has finally proven itself strong in competition to Intel. For over a year now. Old story; read TomsHardware or Sharky's. For overclockers, hackers, and the rest of us, this is great, but what about high volume, mission critical environments with hundreds, or even thousands of machines? What about high-performance clusters? I'm in a growing University/College Intel house of several hundred and trying to figure out why we are still as such. Are AMD's fast, cheap Athlon processors ready for production situations where a lack of support or seemingly minor failure could cost hundreds of thousands of dollars and reputations/careers? I'm sure some of you have rolled out Texas-style processors in large-scale corporate situations. Have you had positive or negative experiences in doing so? I'm not interested in a flamewar over which is the faster or more technically superior, but opinions on which one is a processor to base a professional reputation on and given that AMD has only been performing on par with Intel for a year now... is this long enough?"

Dodger_ asks: "Has anyone figured out the RCA eBook file format yet? The REB1100 looks perfect for carrying around to read technical papers and isn't too expensive($300) to boot. You can find even more info about it right here." These seem to be nice looking devices, and since they can be expanded up to 72MB (they come with 8MB) these would be able to hold quite a bit of documentation. Imagine converting the manpage library (or any other set of documents) to one of these puppies for some quality reading on your next long flight.

halfelven writes: "Sugarplum, the anti-spambot fighting machine, is out! Quoting from their website: Sugarplum is an automated spam-poisoner. Its purpose is to feed realistic and enticing, but totally useless data to wandering spam-bots such as EmailSiphon, Cherry Picker, etc. The idea is to so contaminate spammers' databases as to require that they be discarded, or at least that all data retrieved from your site (including actual email addresses) be removed." I've seen this sort of thing before, but I just figured it's a fun thing to chat about on a holiday. It would be cool to put this on Slashdot some time: I bet I'm not the only Slashdot reader whose email address has been slurped.

farnsaw asks: "As Christmas approaches, I find that I have several relatives who are Internet challenged... Ok, technologically challenged. I have decided to make it my business to help them overcome their limitation this Christmas by providing them with a connection to the Internet. The problem is, I don't want to spend the next 5 years holding their hands so I thought I would Ask Slashdot for suggestions. I am looking for experiences, both good and bad, about the uninitiated using any and all means to connect to the Internet, from the full blown 2Ghz Overclocked Celeron PC down to WebTV. My plan is to purchase one or several "Internet Appliances" to get these people online. I need the help of /. to determine which is the best method of solving this problem. Please take into consideration that I am not looking for a device to hack (ok, I am ;-) but really need to provide an all inclusive solution to the posed problem. I am aware that getting the unitiated to actually use the Internet is a big problem in an of itself, so I made that greatest of sacrifices (just kidding Suzannah) and just got married, thus providing much dialog and pictures on the Internet that family and friends would be interested in." I figure quite a few of you out there might be looking to do the same thing this year, so this one seemed appropriate, and it's best to discuss these things now, rather than spend hours in the After-Christmas return lines, later.

CritterNYC asks: "Anyone know of a good NT Web host? I've had 3 different hosting providers over the last 3 years and had horrible experiences with all three: downtime, unpatched servers, e-mail problems, security issues, configuration issues. Even tried one of the 'top-rated' hosts and it was even worse. Most of my problems can be traced to poor support. (I've administered NT and know what it's capable of.) I have a client store written in ASP and SQL7 to take live soon and am having trouble figuring out where to put it. Any suggestions?"

KhaosSpawn asks: "Microsoft is back at the top of the TPC-C performance results and has all ten spots in the top ten by price category. But how many of you work for companies that own a ProLiant 8500-700-192P machine? Are there any results for 2 and 4 way machines? Are there any statistics which include Linux installations? Does this TPC figure mean anything in terms of real world deployment or is this just another number for the Microsoft Marketing Machine?"

Blue Leader writes "Boston.com is reporting that the answer to one of math's most vexing problems lies in Minesweeper. Figure it out, and render modern encryption useless." Its a discussion of NP/P, as well as an excuse to play minesweeper. Personally, I kinda prefer mahjongg or tetris tho ;)

The fine folks at Netcraft have released this month's survey results. Notable figures - our uptime has seen "pronounced improvement", according to the results (true), Microsoft saw their biggest single month increase - but the reasons behind that and other host de/increases are more detailed.

Apparently, the Panasonic Showstopper is doing a fine job of living up to an unfortunate name, by -- yup -- stopping shows, thanks to the wonders of Macrovision. Ars Digita's long-heralded free online university has released its first lecture, and now you can use double coupons for presidential candidates! Well, you can trade like action figures. No, that's not right ... but is it wrong? Oh, and something else for you to do with your Palm, after work of course. All below.

Small-town boy makes good colnago writes "First discussed many months ago, here's ArsDigita's first streaming lecture on the design of computer languages."

This requires RealPlayer, by the way. Cool to see this effort bearing fruit -- I hope that Philip et al will serve as role models for a whole bunch of online learning centers, and they don't have to be computer-centric. Home schooling, anyone?

What we meant by "stop" was ... Reader Chris Reagan passed on this note regarding what initially sounds like an attractive toy: "There is a huge issue brewing with Panasonic Showstoppers preventing their owners from even watching TV. It appears they were over aggressive with their Macrovision copy protection and are blocking certain channels in certain markets.

Even though ReplayTV allowed Panasonic to modify their boxes they're passing the buck back to Panasonic, who in turn just say 'that's how we designed it.' They refuse to change or recall the defective product."

He also sent links to these AVS Forum on this topic -- it seems people don't like getting blue screens on that box, either:

• Damn Panasonic Copyright Protection Mistake
• Petition to Get Showstopper Recalled Re: Macrovision
• Petition to get REPLAY to remove copy protection
• How Replay TV can fix the Macrovision Bug ASAP...
• Can Macrovision be forced onto the ReplayTV branded units?

I'll trade you a handful of boring statists for a Harry Browne. We noted the other day the Nader-centric politics-in-2000-A.D. site nadertrader.org, but now, like all things Internet, the same model gets "borrowed" quickly and rebranded. HP LoveJet writes: "Expanding the concept popularized by NaderTrader, votexchange2000 enables you to swap your presidential vote with an appropriate person in another state, whether your preferred candidate is Nader, Browne, or even one of those Other People. Fascinating. And possibly not illegal. (?)"

Besides administer servers, track inventory, save the world and list groceries, of course. Dum2007 writes: "An open sourced Gameboy emulator for the Palm is available here. It might not be as feature-filled as Liberty, but it's free."