Yes, Mr. Sinus (AKA Mr. Sinus Theater 3000) is obviously a rip-off of MST3K. No mistake there.
But MST3K is over. It's cancelled. The sets and props were sold off and the cast has moved on to other things. (So what does Best Brains do now anyways?)
MST3K was my favorite TV show and probably a favorite of many Slashdot readers. It's become a part of geek culture. Mr. Sinus is continuing the spirit of MST3K. Best Brains should be flatterred to see their creation live on in some form or another... (The article only quotes BB owner, Jim Mallon. What does the rest of the former MST3K crew think?)
Is Mr. Sinus degrading the whole MST3K experience? Are MST3K fans any less likely to buy the DVDs? (So much for "Keep Circulating The Tapes") If Best Brains ever does revive MST3K, will people be less interested in it? If anything, Mr. Sinus might just revive interest in MST3K and expose it to people who never saw it when it was on TV. It could create more demand for the DVDs and MST3K merchandise.
But instead Best Brains rather take their influence on our culture and box it up and keep it in a warehouse under close guard, less it escape into the wild.
This is pathetic. As Crow might say, "Bite Me, Best Brains!"
The Belkin USB 2.0 PCI card I put in my Dual-867 PowerMac G4 now works at USB 2.0 speed. I can actually transfer files to my Maxtor external hard drive in a reasonable amount of time. Too bad I already bought a Firewire drive to use instead.
Apple pioneered the use of USB and Firewire. It's a shame to see they dropped the ball on USB 2 until now.
I have no problem with the idea of abandoning the floppy disk, but good luck getting manufacturers to supply all their drivers on CD. I bought a USB2 card for my PowerMac last week and the driver still came on a floppy! Luckily I was able to copy the file from my PC over the network.
If this article had been posted tomorrow, I could have pointed everyone to my new site, ConcreteShips.org with history and photos of these unique ships. With any luck, I'll have it online sometime tonight.
Hmmm. Actually, the US government embarked on a program to develop a fleet of concrete ships during WWI and WWII. If you've ever been to Cape May, NJ or Seacliff Beach, California you may have seen the remnants of two of these boats. The "Flagship of Texas" is another concrete wreck off Galveston, Texas and one ran aground off Cuba and is now a hotel.
There's actually ten of these ships still afloat as part of a giant floating breakwater on the Powell River in Canada.
My initial reaction to the various servers ported to PDAs was "Why???". But the more I think about it, the more potential I see for it.
The biggest gain would be the elimination of proprietary synchronozation software/protocols. Right now, if I want to access my address book from a PC, I have to hookup the cradle (which requires a free serial or USB port, assuming your machine has functional USB support) install the sync software/drivers (assuming you're running the right OS) and then synchronize (which copies everything to the PC, which might not be a good idea if you're sync'ing to a machine at work).
Instead, say my PDA was running a mini-LDAP server that was acting as a front-end to my address book. Outlook, Outlook Express and Netscape Messenger all support LDAP, so any of them would have immediate access to my address book.
Of course, this all assumes your PDA is capable of Ethernet or 802.11.
An FTP server running on a PDA would be perfect for moving files. A web server would be able to serve up your notes, todo list, etc as HTML, complete with editting forms.
One snag I see is that you might not be able to run multiple servers on a PDA at once. In that case, you would need a universal protocol to piggyback everything on top of, such as SOAP running on a web server, then you would just need some SOAP based APIs, and software that could understand them. Hmmmm.
Yeah, I'm pretty annoyed that they would name their product after the dolphin on SeaQuest DSV too. I couldn't stand that piece of crap passed off as entertainment. Roy Schneider is a whore.
Oh, spare me the white liberal guilt, ese. Of course we can all live the American Dream. It has been found to require work in the past, so that might be a bit off-putting to some. I also hear some personal responsibility is required.
Take a deep breath and repeat after me: Economics is not a zero-sum game. People getting rich does not necessarily make you or me any poorer. You don't have to feel bad about having a good life.
Oh, please. Spare us the Ayn-Rand bullshit.
No, we can't all live the American Dream. There's not enough resources in the world to sustain it. Besides, we'd all be knee deep in garbage.
Sure, in an ideal world, wealth would be spread around equally, but this sure as hell is not an ideal world. Wealth is hoarded. And while we're at it, yeah, let's blame the poor for their own suffering!
A major auto company closes some of its plants in Michigan. Thousands loose their jobs. Families break apart and towns go down the tubes. Then the company opens a new plant in Mexico and pays it employees 80 cents an hour to work 60 hour work weeks. Profits soar. Everyone wins, huh?
Walmart opens up in a neighborhood. Local businesses goes under. People get new jobs at Walmart for minimum wage with no benefits. Profits soar! Ah, raw capitalism!
Finally, a small family farm produces enough food to feed everyone as well as some extra that's sold to pay the necessary bills. But now the market demands only the finest new genetically engineered crops, so the family has to borrow a large sum of money for the necessary seeds, fertilizer, pesticides, etc to keep up. The debt becomes overwhelming so, along with pressure from corporate thugs, the family sells the farm to a multinational agribusiness. They get hired to work the farm, but are paid barely enough to feed themselves and they now live in a shack made of scrap wood. Wow, progress!
No, I'm not a Communist, but I'm also realistic enough to know that unregulated capitalism isn't going to solve the worlds problems either. Sure, a tide my raise all ships equally, but the economy doesn't work like the tides. Otherwise, we would see the tide rise 1 foot in one section, and a hundred feet away, we'd see it rise 50 feet. Pick better metaphors next time.
Take a deep breath and repeat after me: We don't exist in a vacuum. Our actions do have consequences that affect the lives of other people. Many of the perceived advantages of progress do actually have dire consequences.
Some of these posts show just how *elite* geeks can really be. Do you actually think the Internet is going to cure societies woes? (Sure, it got you stock options and a shiney new SUV but how is it gonna help the other 99.9% of the world population?)
One of the biggest problems with the third world is just how we think about it. The dominant mentality is "Wouldn't it be great if everyone lived just like us, or else they'll just be ignorant savages." Is the Internet going to be the new missionary cause that will save the third-world?
Look at it this way. Here in America, we have the Amish - a group that's sworn off technology and crass consumerism in exchange for a plain, simple lifestyle. By "modern" standards, these people should are supersticious luddites doomed to poverty. Yet, they enjoy a good standard of life and a very happy. Compare that to the business people I see everyday on the subways who look like they may kill themselves at any moment.
Maybe its time we forgot about modernizing the third world. Take all the land back from the multi-national agribusinesses, shut down the sweathouses, disarm the psycho dictators (who are often supported by Western governments) and give it all back to the people. Let them resume their lives and then carefully offer some aspects of "modern" life such as medicine and yes, even the Internet, without shoving it down their throats. I'm sure the Internet could be useful as a shared communication medium (perhaps a few terminals available in the village center) rather than a tool for economic competition.
The simple fact is we can't all live the almighty "American Dream". We're not better than everyone else, and in some ways, we're alot worse.
1. Do you think its likely that the open source community could develop a truely usable product, from non-tech-person point of view? As Donald Norman and Alan Cooper have said in their books, programmers tend to "design" software for like-minded people (in other words, other tech-people) even though the needs of the end-user are often very different. Also, open source projects tend to suffer from major feature-creep, which results in software too complex for real people to use. Programmers want control and complexity, users want simplicity. Even when the various Linux magazines have articles on Linux GUIs, the authors' own words show a level of disdain for non-tech-oriented people who just want to use computers to get some work done.
2. Assuming the open-source community could develop a truely usable product, do you think its worth the effort to try to improve Linux, or should we start a new OS from scratch (or at least based on a Linux/BSD kernel) built from the ground up targetted specifically at average people, not techies? Most Linux distros try to put on a pretty face during installation or on boot-up, but the tech-orientation of Linux still shows through. Users still have to drop to the command line to execute cryptic commands, edit arcane config files and manually compile apps. (I'm a programmer and even I don't want to be bothered by this stuff!)
3. If some people got together and decided to build a new OS from the ground up, targetted at real people, would you be willing to offer some guidance and suggestions to the project on a continuing basis?
Actually, AIM has those small ads for the AOL service (Do they ever advertise anything else?) and links to AOL's portals. While giving a service away may not be directly profitable, using it to subject people to advertisements is (or at least percieved to be). That's how most big websites work. It's all about "eyeballs".
Slashdot Mirror
Yes, Mr. Sinus (AKA Mr. Sinus Theater 3000) is obviously a rip-off of MST3K. No mistake there.
But MST3K is over. It's cancelled. The sets and props were sold off and the cast has moved on to other things. (So what does Best Brains do now anyways?)
MST3K was my favorite TV show and probably a favorite of many Slashdot readers. It's become a part of geek culture. Mr. Sinus is continuing the spirit of MST3K. Best Brains should be flatterred to see their creation live on in some form or another... (The article only quotes BB owner, Jim Mallon. What does the rest of the former MST3K crew think?)
Is Mr. Sinus degrading the whole MST3K experience? Are MST3K fans any less likely to buy the DVDs? (So much for "Keep Circulating The Tapes") If Best Brains ever does revive MST3K, will people be less interested in it? If anything, Mr. Sinus might just revive interest in MST3K and expose it to people who never saw it when it was on TV. It could create more demand for the DVDs and MST3K merchandise.
But instead Best Brains rather take their influence on our culture and box it up and keep it in a warehouse under close guard, less it escape into the wild.
This is pathetic. As Crow might say, "Bite Me, Best Brains!"
I found one in the dumpster outside my apartment. Works great!
The Belkin USB 2.0 PCI card I put in my Dual-867 PowerMac G4 now works at USB 2.0 speed. I can actually transfer files to my Maxtor external hard drive in a reasonable amount of time. Too bad I already bought a Firewire drive to use instead.
Apple pioneered the use of USB and Firewire. It's a shame to see they dropped the ball on USB 2 until now.
In Soviet Russia, I for one welcome a beowulf cluster of all your base!
Mmm.... Burger....
I have no problem with the idea of abandoning the floppy disk, but good luck getting manufacturers to supply all their drivers on CD. I bought a USB2 card for my PowerMac last week and the driver still came on a floppy! Luckily I was able to copy the file from my PC over the network.
If this article had been posted tomorrow, I could have pointed everyone to my new site, ConcreteShips.org with history and photos of these unique ships. With any luck, I'll have it online sometime tonight.
Hmmm. Actually, the US government embarked on a program to develop a fleet of concrete ships during WWI and WWII. If you've ever been to Cape May, NJ or Seacliff Beach, California you may have seen the remnants of two of these boats. The "Flagship of Texas" is another concrete wreck off Galveston, Texas and one ran aground off Cuba and is now a hotel.
There's actually ten of these ships still afloat as part of a giant floating breakwater on the Powell River in Canada.
I predicted this back in January of 99!
http://www.worldofcheese.org/news/article.asp?id=2 1
My initial reaction to the various servers ported to PDAs was "Why???". But the more I think about it, the more potential I see for it.
The biggest gain would be the elimination of proprietary synchronozation software/protocols. Right now, if I want to access my address book from a PC, I have to hookup the cradle (which requires a free serial or USB port, assuming your machine has functional USB support) install the sync software/drivers (assuming you're running the right OS) and then synchronize (which copies everything to the PC, which might not be a good idea if you're sync'ing to a machine at work).
Instead, say my PDA was running a mini-LDAP server that was acting as a front-end to my address book. Outlook, Outlook Express and Netscape Messenger all support LDAP, so any of them would have immediate access to my address book.
Of course, this all assumes your PDA is capable of Ethernet or 802.11.
An FTP server running on a PDA would be perfect for moving files. A web server would be able to serve up your notes, todo list, etc as HTML, complete with editting forms.
One snag I see is that you might not be able to run multiple servers on a PDA at once. In that case, you would need a universal protocol to piggyback everything on top of, such as SOAP running on a web server, then you would just need some SOAP based APIs, and software that could understand them. Hmmmm.
Instead of starting another country, why don't we take this one back?
We can start by voting for Ralph Nader: http://www.votenader.org/
Yeah, I'm pretty annoyed that they would name their product after the dolphin on SeaQuest DSV too. I couldn't stand that piece of crap passed off as entertainment. Roy Schneider is a whore.
Oh, spare me the white liberal guilt, ese. Of course we can all live the American Dream. It has been found to require work in the past, so that might be a bit off-putting to some. I also hear some personal responsibility is required.
Take a deep breath and repeat after me: Economics is not a zero-sum game. People getting rich does not necessarily make you or me any poorer. You don't have to feel bad about having a good life.
Oh, please. Spare us the Ayn-Rand bullshit.
No, we can't all live the American Dream. There's not enough resources in the world to sustain it. Besides, we'd all be knee deep in garbage.
Sure, in an ideal world, wealth would be spread around equally, but this sure as hell is not an ideal world. Wealth is hoarded. And while we're at it, yeah, let's blame the poor for their own suffering!
A major auto company closes some of its plants in Michigan. Thousands loose their jobs. Families break apart and towns go down the tubes. Then the company opens a new plant in Mexico and pays it employees 80 cents an hour to work 60 hour work weeks. Profits soar. Everyone wins, huh?
Walmart opens up in a neighborhood. Local businesses goes under. People get new jobs at Walmart for minimum wage with no benefits. Profits soar! Ah, raw capitalism!
Finally, a small family farm produces enough food to feed everyone as well as some extra that's sold to pay the necessary bills. But now the market demands only the finest new genetically engineered crops, so the family has to borrow a large sum of money for the necessary seeds, fertilizer, pesticides, etc to keep up. The debt becomes overwhelming so, along with pressure from corporate thugs, the family sells the farm to a multinational agribusiness. They get hired to work the farm, but are paid barely enough to feed themselves and they now live in a shack made of scrap wood. Wow, progress!
No, I'm not a Communist, but I'm also realistic enough to know that unregulated capitalism isn't going to solve the worlds problems either. Sure, a tide my raise all ships equally, but the economy doesn't work like the tides. Otherwise, we would see the tide rise 1 foot in one section, and a hundred feet away, we'd see it rise 50 feet. Pick better metaphors next time.
Take a deep breath and repeat after me: We don't exist in a vacuum. Our actions do have consequences that affect the lives of other people. Many of the perceived advantages of progress do actually have dire consequences.
Some of these posts show just how *elite* geeks can really be. Do you actually think the Internet is going to cure societies woes? (Sure, it got you stock options and a shiney new SUV but how is it gonna help the other 99.9% of the world population?)
One of the biggest problems with the third world is just how we think about it. The dominant mentality is "Wouldn't it be great if everyone lived just like us, or else they'll just be ignorant savages." Is the Internet going to be the new missionary cause that will save the third-world?
Look at it this way. Here in America, we have the Amish - a group that's sworn off technology and crass consumerism in exchange for a plain, simple lifestyle. By "modern" standards, these people should are supersticious luddites doomed to poverty. Yet, they enjoy a good standard of life and a very happy. Compare that to the business people I see everyday on the subways who look like they may kill themselves at any moment.
Maybe its time we forgot about modernizing the third world. Take all the land back from the multi-national agribusinesses, shut down the sweathouses, disarm the psycho dictators (who are often supported by Western governments) and give it all back to the people. Let them resume their lives and then carefully offer some aspects of "modern" life such as medicine and yes, even the Internet, without shoving it down their throats. I'm sure the Internet could be useful as a shared communication medium (perhaps a few terminals available in the village center) rather than a tool for economic competition.
The simple fact is we can't all live the almighty "American Dream". We're not better than everyone else, and in some ways, we're alot worse.
Some questions for the mighty guru Jakob:
1. Do you think its likely that the open source community could develop a truely usable product, from non-tech-person point of view? As Donald Norman and Alan Cooper have said in their books, programmers tend to "design" software for like-minded people (in other words, other tech-people) even though the needs of the end-user are often very different. Also, open source projects tend to suffer from major feature-creep, which results in software too complex for real people to use. Programmers want control and complexity, users want simplicity. Even when the various Linux magazines have articles on Linux GUIs, the authors' own words show a level of disdain for non-tech-oriented people who just want to use computers to get some work done.
2. Assuming the open-source community could develop a truely usable product, do you think its worth the effort to try to improve Linux, or should we start a new OS from scratch (or at least based on a Linux/BSD kernel) built from the ground up targetted specifically at average people, not techies? Most Linux distros try to put on a pretty face during installation or on boot-up, but the tech-orientation of Linux still shows through. Users still have to drop to the command line to execute cryptic commands, edit arcane config files and manually compile apps. (I'm a programmer and even I don't want to be bothered by this stuff!)
3. If some people got together and decided to build a new OS from the ground up, targetted at real people, would you be willing to offer some guidance and suggestions to the project on a continuing basis?
Sure you can download a binary that plays encrypted DVD's for Linux but who wants to run anything you can't compile yourself?
Um, maybe non-geeks?
Actually, AIM has those small ads for the AOL service (Do they ever advertise anything else?) and links to AOL's portals. While giving a service away may not be directly profitable, using it to subject people to advertisements is (or at least percieved to be). That's how most big websites work. It's all about "eyeballs".