Slashdot Mirror
Tuesday Quickies
r3drun sent us pictures of
the first production empeg
(the Linux based car MP3 player).
Tom Porter
hooked us up with
interesting essay by Neal Stephenson
that is pretty interesting. Worth a read.
emad sent us a link to a
Vote for your favorite RFC page.
Cracked me up: You vote by number.
wall sent us what
appears to be the new SGI Logo.
Next, I've been waiting for an excuse to link Space Ghost for awhile, and
Visoblast sent one that I think
us amusing as hell:
Naked Pictures of Keith Richards
do not affect wildlife.
I'm probably only posting it because I listened to Some Girls and Beggers Banquet today.
In other music news,
RedOregon sent us amusing parody lyrics,
Welcome to Berkeley California (you
can guess the tune)
And finally,
GiMP wrote in to say that someone
created the Slashdot dance.
Hemos has never looked lovelier.
Rowan's "essay" on the GNU Community gets
full billing while Neal Stephenson's fascinating monologue is relegated to one of many
quickies? Wake up, slashdot editors.
You must read the Stephenson essay.
-tank builder
I hope this doesn't get the Well swamped by the slashdot effect, but ...
Stephenson has also posted an article about 'Cryptonomicon' on the Well. It's aimed at readers of the Cypherpunks mailing list, and covers the technical and historical basis for the book.
http://www.well.com/user/neal/cypherFAQ.html
More of a novella, really, but...
1 point to CmdrTaco for mentioning it.
-1 point to CmdrTaco for burying it in a bunch
of Quickies.
Both ``The Cathedral and the Bazaar'' and
``In the Beginning was the Command Line'' were
written by programmers who were, in part,
describing their introduction to Linux. The
difference is one was written by an egotistical
prick, and the other by a writer(you decide which
is which).
There are many jewels for a fortune(6) file in
Stephenson's piece.
It could almost be entitled ``The
Re-Education of a Mac Bigot''.
;^)
The author expends a great deal of prose(well
written!) wrestling with the fact that until a
computer Operating System or software application
does what you (the user) mean, you will have to
learn to do what it means.
The Windows and Mac Operating Systems are just
sick, sad, sorry interludes in the evolution of
interaction between humans and computers.
---------------------------------
"The Internet interprets censorship as damage,
All I have to say is "Wow."
And also: Please re-submit this as its own feature. It deserves to be widely read.
I was truly blown away by this essay -- a huge, rollicking trip through culture, cosmology, computers and the history of the OS. All written in simply amazing prose.
I have never read one of his novels, but I can say that this essay has inspired me to go out and buy _The_Diamond_Age_ and _Snow_Crash_ (and probably _Cryptonomicon_ as soon as its out).
I have recommended it to they small minority of Linux hold-outs I know among my more intelligent friends. This essay shows them with style what they are missing.
The Wired article was called Mother Earth Mother Board . Highly recommended for those who haven't read it yet.
The correct URL for Neal Stephenson's essay is http://www.cryptonomicon.com/begi nning_print.html -- just take off the slash. I would have thought Slashdot readers to be a bit more enterprising.
I have to agree with Silmaril above.. it doesn't make sense that this long, literate and excellent essay by an insightful and respected writer gets relegated to a quickie, while Rowan van der Molen's whiny, unfocused rant gets a full article.
If Slashdot is going to have such a lax and sloppy editorial policy (further, and more egregious, examples of which abound) then it might be more interesting to pick articles using the same moderation system that's currently used for comments. If it didn't improve things, at least it would be radical.