Mmm.... Oskari (the sole developer) isn't too friendly to requests to open-source Buzz or to port it to Linux, and neither is the mailing list - the topic is taboo due to a past mailing list meltdown. Buzz does run under WINE, though, quite well, but with a few significant bugs.
There is currently an effort to produce a Buzz-alike for *nix called Octal. It's in its extreme infancy (first code release last weekend), but we desperately need coders. Check the project out at http://www.gnu.org/software/octal/octa l.html and contact the project maintainer or myself if you're interested in helping out.
My point is that, what the hell, it doesn't look too tough to build one of these things (if a waste of a few hours / a weekend), so it couldn't hurt to try and see if you get anything besides a halogen lamp in a magnetic field....
History shows us, however, that it can't last forever. In fact, history shows us that when the breaking point is reached, bloody revolution ensues. When that happens, all the money in the world won't be able to buy a repreive from the people's wrath.
Yes, but it's no fun for anyone involved, including the revolutionaries. Which is why, as futile as it may (or may not) be, it's well worth looking for a better way out.
Of course, this story was posted at 5AM China time.:)
I live in Beijing, and the Firewall blocks:
1. Many western news sites (not just the NYT!) - this includes (from my experience) the New York Times, the Boston Globe, The San Jose Mercury, The Washington Post, and the Australian newspaper that reported on the French suspicions about Windows a while back. Exceptions: The Seattle Times, USA Today, MSNBC, the Globe and Mail, and the BBC.
2. Probably the entire *.gov and *.mil domains - I've never been successful in getting to anything inside those domains. On the other hand, this isn't really surprising.
3. Xoom, Geocities, Fortunecity, Mindspring, AOL user pages - anyplace that has a large number of user pages gets blocked.
4. NOT proxies or anonymizer services (as mentioned in the article). However, even major ones like Anonymizer and Proxymate aren't blocked, so they probably won't start blocking these unless they become a major problem.
On the other hand, I'm not sure that most people here really care enough to go around the Great Firewall and read the NYT (making money is much more important to most of them). But if proxies started becoming popular and getting blocked, I'd appreciate it if someone could point me towards a few backup proxies.
I'm a little surprised by them not blocking porn, since they do try (well, make token efforts) to keep foreign hardcopy pornography from being brought in (I believe).
I've tried a few different audio programs under VMware, and had them either (a) crash on load, or (b) be amazingly slow because VMware is an incredible resource hog.
I've had very good luck running Buzz under WINE, though (use the native comctl32.dll, if you can), with almost-native performance (within 5% CPU usage), so it might be worth giving some other audio apps a try. I haven't done so myself, though. Well, except for Rebirth, which promptly crashed....
<plug> There's an effort to make a very Buzz-like OSS audio app called OCTAL which needs all the help it (we) can get. So if you're interested, check it out and let us know if you can help out. Thanks! </plug>
But all I have here is a Linux box, and not a single copy of DOS to put on it (even if I had space available for a partition) - and that's not even considering Amiga / C64/other? demos. Are there any emulators or anything else that could help me out here?
On the RIAA's part, this sounds like China's policy of "let's make up as many vague, unreasonable, and borderline enforceable laws as possible, so that if we don't like you, we can always bust you for something!"
I'd be inclined to put a bunch of MP3's on a 486 (or whatever cheap box I could get my hands on), all of which were demonstrably composed by me, and see if anything happened.
Hate to say it, but the term "crypto-communist" - followed by pseudo-Marxist ideology, then by rabid capitalism, and the absolutely ridiculous misunderstanding of open source, and the suggestion that it be outlawed (instead of just saying it's a bad idea, and even though nobody's forcing developers to do it, and in spite of the laissez-faire attitude) suggest otherwise. As does the AC status, the entirely unsubstantiable claim of authority at the very beginning, and the #11 posting (though these are innocuous by themselves, they're a good sign of a troll). Oh, also, he ends with "thank you".
If you've spotted plenty a troll and moderated them down but missed this one, you've only been spotting the bad ones. This was quite a good troll, and got quite a good response. It was damn funny, too.
And, no, a true troll doesn't try to attract attention to himself. A true troll tries to spark of a massive number of posts from Slashdotters trying to prove their 31337ness by pointing out exactly where he was wrong (much like I'm doing now...:P). Massive flamewars are a bonus, as is a moderation roller-coaster. (Yes, good trolls often get moderated up as Insightful or Informative before being consigned to the karmic abyss!)
Next thing I knew, I was in the surf in Malibu trying to figure out if I was in heaven or hell.
I've died in my dreams before, and even been dead at the start of the dream a few times (somehow I just knew). Most times I end up with an afterlife I have no idea if it's heaven or hell and keep trying to figure it out.
It's possible that my post wasn't clear, but I was asking the same two questions, just in as unweighted a manner as I could. I realize that it's tough (if not impossible) to answer those questions in an objective, quantitative manner.
But to respond to your response, and hopefully clarify my original post:
1. I think my original question #2 is the same.
2. The point of my original two questions was to ask if this has, overall, benefited the RIAA or cost it money.
They've certainly made more money from me than they would have otherwise because of "piracy". I'm just curious if this holds up over the entire music-buying population.
On the other hand, I haven't bought any CD's or listened to much pirated music at all over the past few months.....
(And I happen to not like the RIAA's current actions myself, so, yes, I do agree with the spirit behind your post.)
I posted that primarily as a request for whacked out theories, but it now appears that I should clarify a little.
There's probably nothing in particular about this story that got it blocked. It was on the website of a Western news source, most of which happen to be blocked.
Off the top of my head, blocked sites that I've tried to go to include:
CNN, NYT, LA Times, San Jose Mercury whatever, the Washington Post, the Boston Times (I think), _not_ BBC News (curiously enough), The Age (the Australian newspaper that published this), Xoom, Geocities, Angelfire, Tripod, and the US House of Representatives.
We weren't asking the right questions - we were asking about how to run a campaign, not a website..
(a) Nobody asked him how to run a campaign. Plenty of people asked him about running a campaign website.
(b) He's Al Gore's webmaster. If you want to know about handling large volumes of visitors, talk to Yahoo's tech staff.
He totally failed to answer anything that we couldn't have had out of any other webmaster, and, as far as I'm concerned, we would have been better off with the webmaster of a higher-traffic, better-known site -- they would have given better answers, and admitted that they couldn't answer the ones that they couldn't answer!
Read question #7. Read the answer. Am I the only one underwhelmed here? Two-way communication and a lot of information. Great. Wonderful answer. Could I get some details, please?
Or question #9: "how does Gore use his site to his advantage? How do you see sites like this affecting political campaigns?" Answer #9: "Al Gore looks at the website every day and is very familiar with it."
Grrrrrreat. I can see how the second part of the question might not be answerable by Ben. But the first? He answered a "how" question with a "what". Lots o' help.
And #10, of course. The most political of the questions. But, even if it was the wrong question, as you seem to indicate it was, Ben didn't just say "Content isn't my field, I can't talk about it." He had to completely transparently try and fail to seem like he was answering the question, while actually dodging it entirely, and ending with an entirely irrelevant bit of pandering to the audience.
What upsets me and, I'd guess, most everyone else complaining about this interview, is that Ben consistently gave non-answers and dodged questions instead of saying "I really can't say much about that -- isn't my department," or (for example), "I can't say much about how we plan to improve our site in the future, but we are planning to implement features to get more feedback from visitors, and to include sections comparing Al Gore's stand on the issues to those of other candidates." Basically, Ben just wasn't giving us straight answers, and a lot of people aren't very happy with that.
Q: Where are the details? Why do you give us all image and no issues? Just because the average American doesn't necessarily understand technology well or care too much about politics doesn't mean you shouldn't tell us!
A: I disagree. Average Americans drive technology demand, and our website got us a lot of volunteers. Our website is the best. It runs on Linux and PHP.
Am I the only one who was completely unimpressed with these answers? This is most certainly not the 'straight talk' that Ben seems to have been trying to pass it off as. He consistently dodged tough questions, and really only answered technically-oriented questions in a satisfactory manner.
Ben's answer to BOredAtWork's question (#10) was the one that really got me. Bored asked why algore2000.com seems to think that we're fools, and Ben responded with an answer that pretty clearly shows that he thinks we're fools too!
Not to be hypocritical, here are some details:
Bored gave an excellent example of fluff content at Gore's site, and all Ben said was "I disagree." No counterexample, counterargument, nothing. Ben then proceeded simultaneously attack the weakest assertion in Bored's argument and sidestep it entirely:
BAW: "The average American has little interest in politics, and little technical knowledge."
Ben: "Americans are driving the demand for technology. We have recruited a lot of volunteers through the website. Our website is for everyone, and it is the best."
(No, this summarization is not as inaccurate as you're thinking. Read the Q/A again.)
How is that a response? Ben never follows through on his logic, never gives an example of a large number of Americans showing technical knowledge, and never gives any sort of evidence that Americans aren't growing less interested in politics. (But what about declining voter turnout? Hm?)
And, just for kicks, Ben decides to end his non-answers by pandering to the audience -- "AND it runs on Linux and PHP!"
DO I CARE? NO!
I want to know Gore's stand on the issues! I want details! I want interactivity! I want data! And it annoys the hell out of me when somebody thinks they can distract me by saying that their website runs Linux!
Rant over now. This guy just annoyed the hell out of me, though. Time to see if webmaster@algore2000.com answers his emails (and if so, if he answers them any more satisfactorily than he does Slashdot interviews).
How would anyone claim that burning someone at the stake invalidates belief in Jesus?
Some do. "This is why Xtianity sucks, it does stuff like this, etc...." On the other hand, nobody's said it yet in this thread.
For starters, a non-believer can hardly pontificate about what believers should and should not do.
This doesn't stop some of them.
> The actions of misguided people abusing Jesus' name 400 years ago have nothing to do with my faith now
But the actions of people 2000 years ago have everything to do with your faith.
It's called the Protestant Reformation (or just a personal faith). And even the Catholic church has changed. He can pick and choose which group of Christians he wants to follow.
And why did you mention 400 years as seemingly the remote past, if you centre your beliefs on events five times as old?
Um, could we please try and attack imaginary points in the argument now? This is really nitpicking. And anyway, both are in the remote past, and his belief, which he's talking about, is now.
This looks like a case of selectively interpreting events, according to what fits your preconceived belief.
This is both exactly right and entirely wrong. First, of course this whole thing is about belief!
But second, the crucial part that you seem to be missing is that everybody, both the original poster and the misguided bunch of people 400 years ago (the Catholic church of the time), is basing everything (one way or another), around the actions of the same people 2000 years ago. He's just dissociating himself from the ones who didn't get it quite right. (Or were only using it as a pretext to do other things.)
1. I slept at the office four nights last week. 2. I showered at the gym, when I could. 3. I ate at my computer. 4. This was over the biggest holiday of the year. (Chinese New Year....)
And I'm still thinking that the project isn't good enough and I have to make it better. There's an art to balancing commitments, but it's hard when you've got a tough project and a tough deadline and there's nobody else to pick up the slack. It's an art I have yet to learn.
(Mmmm..... Vacation. I'd say they owe me a week now. Xi'an or Shanghai? But I must improve my project! Aieeee!)
Slashdot Mirror
Mmm.... Oskari (the sole developer) isn't too friendly to requests to open-source Buzz or to port it to Linux, and neither is the mailing list - the topic is taboo due to a past mailing list meltdown. Buzz does run under WINE, though, quite well, but with a few significant bugs.
There is currently an effort to produce a Buzz-alike for *nix called Octal. It's in its extreme infancy (first code release last weekend), but we desperately need coders. Check the project out at http://www.gnu.org/software/octal/octa l.html and contact the project maintainer or myself if you're interested in helping out.
Aaargh. Preview is what I wanted, of course.
Anyway.
My point is that, what the hell, it doesn't look too tough to build one of these things (if a waste of a few hours / a weekend), so it couldn't hurt to try and see if you get anything besides a halogen lamp in a magnetic field....
Hey, we're all scientifically minded here. Does anyone want to build one and let us know if it works?
Did anyone happen to read this post before the story fell off the front page? It's excellent. Nice defense of RMS.
History shows us, however, that it can't last forever. In fact, history shows us that when the breaking point is reached, bloody revolution ensues. When that happens, all the money in the world won't be able to buy a repreive from the people's wrath.
Yes, but it's no fun for anyone involved, including the revolutionaries. Which is why, as futile as it may (or may not) be, it's well worth looking for a better way out.
I had ping times of over 1 second. It may have improved since.
Yeah, it's 300-600ms now.... But sometimes BTA screws up and drops all of its customers (Tier 2 ISP's) off the Internet for a little while.
Of course, this story was posted at 5AM China time. :)
I live in Beijing, and the Firewall blocks:
1. Many western news sites (not just the NYT!) - this includes (from my experience) the New York Times, the Boston Globe, The San Jose Mercury, The Washington Post, and the Australian newspaper that reported on the French suspicions about Windows a while back. Exceptions: The Seattle Times, USA Today, MSNBC, the Globe and Mail, and the BBC.
2. Probably the entire *.gov and *.mil domains - I've never been successful in getting to anything inside those domains. On the other hand, this isn't really surprising.
3. Xoom, Geocities, Fortunecity, Mindspring, AOL user pages - anyplace that has a large number of user pages gets blocked.
4. NOT proxies or anonymizer services (as mentioned in the article). However, even major ones like Anonymizer and Proxymate aren't blocked, so they probably won't start blocking these unless they become a major problem.
On the other hand, I'm not sure that most people here really care enough to go around the Great Firewall and read the NYT (making money is much more important to most of them). But if proxies started becoming popular and getting blocked, I'd appreciate it if someone could point me towards a few backup proxies.
I'm a little surprised by them not blocking porn, since they do try (well, make token efforts) to keep foreign hardcopy pornography from being brought in (I believe).
I've tried a few different audio programs under VMware, and had them either (a) crash on load, or (b) be amazingly slow because VMware is an incredible resource hog.
I've had very good luck running Buzz under WINE, though (use the native comctl32.dll, if you can), with almost-native performance (within 5% CPU usage), so it might be worth giving some other audio apps a try. I haven't done so myself, though. Well, except for Rebirth, which promptly crashed....
<plug>
There's an effort to make a very Buzz-like OSS audio app called OCTAL which needs all the help it (we) can get. So if you're interested, check it out and let us know if you can help out. Thanks!
</plug>
The original author says:
the solution is adding:
#define DefaultCCOptions -O2 GccWarningOptions
to site.def.
I'm testing it now, and it seems to be working....
Wannabe's can live up to 10% of your life. but any more and you can sue.
Wow. This would really put Being John Malkovitch in a whole new light....
But all I have here is a Linux box, and not a single copy of DOS to put on it (even if I had space available for a partition) - and that's not even considering Amiga / C64 /other? demos. Are there any emulators or anything else that could help me out here?
On the RIAA's part, this sounds like China's policy of "let's make up as many vague, unreasonable, and borderline enforceable laws as possible, so that if we don't like you, we can always bust you for something!"
I'd be inclined to put a bunch of MP3's on a 486 (or whatever cheap box I could get my hands on), all of which were demonstrably composed by me, and see if anything happened.
Hate to say it, but the term "crypto-communist" - followed by pseudo-Marxist ideology, then by rabid capitalism, and the absolutely ridiculous misunderstanding of open source, and the suggestion that it be outlawed (instead of just saying it's a bad idea, and even though nobody's forcing developers to do it, and in spite of the laissez-faire attitude) suggest otherwise. As does the AC status, the entirely unsubstantiable claim of authority at the very beginning, and the #11 posting (though these are innocuous by themselves, they're a good sign of a troll). Oh, also, he ends with "thank you".
:P). Massive flamewars are a bonus, as is a moderation roller-coaster. (Yes, good trolls often get moderated up as Insightful or Informative before being consigned to the karmic abyss!)
If you've spotted plenty a troll and moderated them down but missed this one, you've only been spotting the bad ones. This was quite a good troll, and got quite a good response. It was damn funny, too.
And, no, a true troll doesn't try to attract attention to himself. A true troll tries to spark of a massive number of posts from Slashdotters trying to prove their 31337ness by pointing out exactly where he was wrong (much like I'm doing now...
Next thing I knew, I was in the surf in Malibu trying to figure out if I was in heaven or hell.
I've died in my dreams before, and even been dead at the start of the dream a few times (somehow I just knew). Most times I end up with an afterlife I have no idea if it's heaven or hell and keep trying to figure it out.
And you said you were done with trolling!
I knew it wouldn't last.
Thanks for returning to make my days just a little more amusing.
It's possible that my post wasn't clear, but I was asking the same two questions, just in as unweighted a manner as I could. I realize that it's tough (if not impossible) to answer those questions in an objective, quantitative manner.
But to respond to your response, and hopefully clarify my original post:
1. I think my original question #2 is the same.
2. The point of my original two questions was to ask if this has, overall, benefited the RIAA or cost it money.
They've certainly made more money from me than they would have otherwise because of "piracy". I'm just curious if this holds up over the entire music-buying population.
On the other hand, I haven't bought any CD's or listened to much pirated music at all over the past few months.....
(And I happen to not like the RIAA's current actions myself, so, yes, I do agree with the spirit behind your post.)
1. How much more could this have been if there were no piracy?
2. How much less could this have been if people hadn't bought CD's based on hearing pirated music that they liked?
I posted that primarily as a request for whacked out theories, but it now appears that I should clarify a little.
There's probably nothing in particular about this story that got it blocked. It was on the website of a Western news source, most of which happen to be blocked.
Off the top of my head, blocked sites that I've tried to go to include:
CNN, NYT, LA Times, San Jose Mercury whatever, the Washington Post, the Boston Times (I think), _not_ BBC News (curiously enough), The Age (the Australian newspaper that published this), Xoom, Geocities, Angelfire, Tripod, and the US House of Representatives.
Anonymizer.com and Proxymate.com are my friends.
We're not even at the peak of the solar flare season yet
:P
When is this supposed to be?
Yes, there -are- undersea cables, but much of the NSF equiptment used satellite feeds.
Possibly a stupid question: what does NSF stand for?
Also, expect trans-continental Internet service to stagger
Argh.... I get Slashdot slowly enough as it is.
We weren't asking the right questions - we were asking about how to run a campaign, not a website..
(a) Nobody asked him how to run a campaign. Plenty of people asked him about running a campaign website.
(b) He's Al Gore's webmaster. If you want to know about handling large volumes of visitors, talk to Yahoo's tech staff.
He totally failed to answer anything that we couldn't have had out of any other webmaster, and, as far as I'm concerned, we would have been better off with the webmaster of a higher-traffic, better-known site -- they would have given better answers, and admitted that they couldn't answer the ones that they couldn't answer!
Read question #7. Read the answer. Am I the only one underwhelmed here? Two-way communication and a lot of information. Great. Wonderful answer. Could I get some details, please?
Or question #9: "how does Gore use his site to his advantage? How do you see sites like this affecting political campaigns?"
Answer #9: "Al Gore looks at the website every day and is very familiar with it."
Grrrrrreat. I can see how the second part of the question might not be answerable by Ben. But the first? He answered a "how" question with a "what". Lots o' help.
And #10, of course. The most political of the questions. But, even if it was the wrong question, as you seem to indicate it was, Ben didn't just say "Content isn't my field, I can't talk about it." He had to completely transparently try and fail to seem like he was answering the question, while actually dodging it entirely, and ending with an entirely irrelevant bit of pandering to the audience.
What upsets me and, I'd guess, most everyone else complaining about this interview, is that Ben consistently gave non-answers and dodged questions instead of saying "I really can't say much about that -- isn't my department," or (for example), "I can't say much about how we plan to improve our site in the future, but we are planning to implement features to get more feedback from visitors, and to include sections comparing Al Gore's stand on the issues to those of other candidates." Basically, Ben just wasn't giving us straight answers, and a lot of people aren't very happy with that.
I also liked the question.
The answer royally sucked.
Q: Where are the details? Why do you give us all image and no issues? Just because the average American doesn't necessarily understand technology well or care too much about politics doesn't mean you shouldn't tell us!
A: I disagree. Average Americans drive technology demand, and our website got us a lot of volunteers. Our website is the best. It runs on Linux and PHP.
I'm not sure that even qualifies as an answer.
I won't repeat my rant, since it's right here.
Am I the only one who was completely unimpressed with these answers? This is most certainly not the 'straight talk' that Ben seems to have been trying to pass it off as. He consistently dodged tough questions, and really only answered technically-oriented questions in a satisfactory manner.
Ben's answer to BOredAtWork's question (#10) was the one that really got me. Bored asked why algore2000.com seems to think that we're fools, and Ben responded with an answer that pretty clearly shows that he thinks we're fools too!
Not to be hypocritical, here are some details:
Bored gave an excellent example of fluff content at Gore's site, and all Ben said was "I disagree." No counterexample, counterargument, nothing. Ben then proceeded simultaneously attack the weakest assertion in Bored's argument and sidestep it entirely:
BAW: "The average American has little interest in politics, and little technical knowledge."
Ben: "Americans are driving the demand for technology. We have recruited a lot of volunteers through the website. Our website is for everyone, and it is the best."
(No, this summarization is not as inaccurate as you're thinking. Read the Q/A again.)
How is that a response? Ben never follows through on his logic, never gives an example of a large number of Americans showing technical knowledge, and never gives any sort of evidence that Americans aren't growing less interested in politics. (But what about declining voter turnout? Hm?)
And, just for kicks, Ben decides to end his non-answers by pandering to the audience -- "AND it runs on Linux and PHP!"
DO I CARE? NO!
I want to know Gore's stand on the issues! I want details! I want interactivity! I want data! And it annoys the hell out of me when somebody thinks they can distract me by saying that their website runs Linux!
Rant over now. This guy just annoyed the hell out of me, though. Time to see if webmaster@algore2000.com answers his emails (and if so, if he answers them any more satisfactorily than he does Slashdot interviews).
The page is blocked by the Chinese government.
(Yes, it actually is. I had to use a proxy in the States.)
Whacked-out theories, anyone?
How would anyone claim that burning someone at the stake invalidates belief in Jesus?
Some do. "This is why Xtianity sucks, it does stuff like this, etc...." On the other hand, nobody's said it yet in this thread.
For starters, a non-believer can hardly pontificate about what believers should and should not do.
This doesn't stop some of them.
> The actions of misguided people abusing Jesus' name 400 years ago have nothing to do with my faith now
But the actions of people 2000 years ago have everything to do with your faith.
It's called the Protestant Reformation (or just a personal faith). And even the Catholic church has changed. He can pick and choose which group of Christians he wants to follow.
And why did you mention 400 years as seemingly the remote past, if you centre your beliefs on events five times as old?
Um, could we please try and attack imaginary points in the argument now? This is really nitpicking. And anyway, both are in the remote past, and his belief, which he's talking about, is now.
This looks like a case of selectively interpreting events, according to what fits your preconceived belief.
This is both exactly right and entirely wrong. First, of course this whole thing is about belief!
But second, the crucial part that you seem to be missing is that everybody, both the original poster and the misguided bunch of people 400 years ago (the Catholic church of the time), is basing everything (one way or another), around the actions of the same people 2000 years ago. He's just dissociating himself from the ones who didn't get it quite right. (Or were only using it as a pretext to do other things.)
There is no difference between home and work.
What, I have a home?
1. I slept at the office four nights last week.
2. I showered at the gym, when I could.
3. I ate at my computer.
4. This was over the biggest holiday of the year.
(Chinese New Year....)
And I'm still thinking that the project isn't good enough and I have to make it better. There's an art to balancing commitments, but it's hard when you've got a tough project and a tough deadline and there's nobody else to pick up the slack. It's an art I have yet to learn.
(Mmmm..... Vacation. I'd say they owe me a week now. Xi'an or Shanghai? But I must improve my project! Aieeee!)