Whatever you get, make sure it's quiet. I attempted taking notes with an old-old IBM laptop at one point (one of the ones with LCD screen and 2 3.5" drives in it, ya know?). Was politely asked by professor not to bring it back the next day. Too noisy.
I also got some odd looks when I toted a full-size keyboard around to use with my IIIe Palm and Happy Hacker Cradle during later college.
Finally I used a Visor Deluxe with Targus Stowaway and it worked a bit better. Except in statistics class. Pesky PDAs, no keys for Greek letters...
Speaking of beer and geekery, I think that the book Beer, for Pete's Sake by Pete Slosberg epitomizes the hacker spirit. Slosberg, the Pete behind Pete's Wicked Ale, talks about his life, the history of beer, and the story behind the formation of Pete's Brewing Company, and how they intertwine and overlap. It's largely thanks to Pete, you know, that you can find microbrewed beers in every liquor and grocery store across the country. His Wicked Ale was the first to become more than a regional curiosity, paving the way for all the others that followed.
I think there's just something about a rags to riches, in your spare time, having fun with it kind of success story that epitomizes the hacker ethic. The fact that it's kind of an esoteric field doesn't hurt, but I don't know that it's strictly necessary.
Yeah, they've been saying stuff like that there the last day or so, ever since this Slashdot story came out. Something about how they were having trouble keeping up with user bandwidth as it was, and then Slashdot came along. (My favorite was when they had the page title read "CmdrTaco's wife is fat".:) I imagine they'll be back in another day or so. Maybe by then they'll have switched to the new faster server they were able to afford with recent donations.
Re:short term - new clients are too configurable
on
BitTorrent Guide
·
· Score: 1
...bittorrent will be most useful as an alternative to web downloading huge legitimate files, like the Baen CD-ROMs or Linux distros. It's blazing fast, or can be, but it's just too easy to shut down a tracker/website, just like what was done to Napster. There's no anonymity here, and the only reason sites like torrentse.cx are around at all is that the RIAA/MPAA haven't noticed them yet. Once they do, kiss 'em goodbye.
I sure hope that torrentse.cx comes back. They've been having problems enough lately as it is, without having to be slashdotted, too.
It's too bad, because BitTorrent is a cool way to harness the "slashdot effect" in a useful way: the more people are downloading a file at a time, the more chances a new downloader has to start receiving file components faster.
I can't even remember where I heard this story--from some friend of mine, or fellow attendee of a Trek convention--so it may be apocryphal, but I heard about one Trek fan who found himself in a small Japanese town, needing some directions. He didn't speak Japanese, the kid he was speaking to didn't English...but then he tried Klingon, and to his surprise, they were able to hold a conversation.
I don't really see Klingon as being any different from a language like, say, Esperanto when you get right down to it. Sure, it's associated with a TV show, but it's still a complete language.
Between the time I submitted the story and the time it was run, the website hosting the ISO went offline, undoubtedly due to bandwidth issues. However, Scarywater did pick it up, and has quite a few people torrenting it now. I hardly think I need to remind people to leave their BitTorrent clients open for a while after their own download finishes, do I?:)
...because the IMAX theater near me, in Branson, often picks a mainstream movie (usually the one with the best special effects) to show on its big screen along with all its specialized IMAX films. Even if this hadn't been announced, I would have expected it to show up there sooner or later anyway.
Seems like a lot of mainstream cinematographers are going more IMAX these days. James Cameron and Bill Paxton's recent IMAX documentary on the Titanic, for instance. (I can't help but think I'd find that documentary a little nervewracking, though. I mean, Bill Paxton in a submarine at crush depth in a James Cameron movie? I'd keep expecting him to die a horrible death about 3/4 of the way through the film.:)
Another good type of subscriber to Netflix-type services would be people like my parents, who live miles out in the country, too far away from a town with a video rental place to want to make a regular trip in to rent, then have to go back in to return the movie.
Indeed. I've been learning some of the most interesting things from my job as a phone conglomerate customer service rep.
To wit, if you want to try saving some money from your current long distance phone company, call them up and say you'd like to cancel. They'll offer you some kind of saves promotion (like a discount off your next bill, or free Saturdays for the next six months), and/or put you on a less expensive long distance plan.
(You really should be updating your plan once a year or so anyway...phone companies are constantly moving to cheaper/more featured plans but they never tell any of the customers this...since as long as the customer is content to pay 12 cents a minute, it'd be stupid to proactively offer to cut their rates down to 5.)
True enough...but if I'm gonna pay money to rent a disc from Netflix, I'm gonna want to rent the version of the disc that has everything on it. If I want just the movie, I know where Kazaa is.
I'm not a member of Netflix, though now that I have a job I might consider it. But it seems to me that if you're returning something like that, which has a great deal of value, you shouldn't take chances. Drop it in a USPS mailbox or hand it to the maildude directly.
Well, apparently there's stuff that even Morpheus doesn't know, since the first Animatrix short seems to disagree with Morpheus's tale on at least a couple of key points.
And, since the Wachowski brothers wrote it, it is canonical.
Welcome to the Desert of the Real: The Philosophy of the Matrix. It's a collection of essays on various philosophical and religious points of view as espoused in The Matrix, by the same guy who edited the Simpsons and Seinfeld philosophy books. I would link to it, but my work computer system is retarded enough not to allow cut and paste. A websearch should turn it up, though.
(I need to finish reading it and get it back to the library before they send me to collections.)
I dunno. We like to think that it's short-sighted, 'cuz, y'know, we want our net stuff. But according to a friend of mine, who is a major name in the gaming industry, having written or edited for many of the major gaming companies (and even written some tie-in novels for at least one of them), GW depends pretty much primarily on the retail outlets to survive--and the Internet sales are undercutting those to a substantial degree. And for a gaming company that's so heavily into miniatures, being able to show the customer a beautiful spread of figures and merchandise is an important sales feature.
We geeks can complain and rant and rave about it all we want, 'cuz they're casting aspersion on our beautiful Internet and limiting the bargains we can get, but it seems premature to claim that it's going to be bad for GW's business without a deeper understanding of how that business works. Time will tell how this affects GW's bottom line.
(I just about fell over when I saw it for sale in that local campus bookstore. "Bwah?!")
Re:Jumping the gun guys....
on
Duke3d in Linux
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
The state of Linux gaming is kind of sad, maybe, but......I mean, come on! This is Duke Nukem we're talking about here! Though Quake and Unreal might be more advanced, and Half-Life has an awesome story and neat FX, I have to say that Duke 3D rates as one of the most flat-out fun first person shooters I've ever played. Especially with all the sly in-jokey references to other FPSes of the day, or the utterly hilarious "secret areas." (Duke on the bridge of the Enterprise-D: "Looks like I have the conn.")
I think that DN3D in Linux is a GOOD thing, and more than worthy of a Slashdot report. Finally, I can use that Atomic Edition CDROM for something other than listening to the "Grab Bag" CD audio track.
Actually, there are some exceptions (and for all I know, Miyazaki may be one of them), but most animated films are made the opposite way: it's animated first, then the voice actors match their voices to the movements.
Slashdot Mirror
Whatever you get, make sure it's quiet. I attempted taking notes with an old-old IBM laptop at one point (one of the ones with LCD screen and 2 3.5" drives in it, ya know?). Was politely asked by professor not to bring it back the next day. Too noisy.
I also got some odd looks when I toted a full-size keyboard around to use with my IIIe Palm and Happy Hacker Cradle during later college.
Finally I used a Visor Deluxe with Targus Stowaway and it worked a bit better. Except in statistics class. Pesky PDAs, no keys for Greek letters...
Speaking of beer and geekery, I think that the book Beer, for Pete's Sake by Pete Slosberg epitomizes the hacker spirit. Slosberg, the Pete behind Pete's Wicked Ale, talks about his life, the history of beer, and the story behind the formation of Pete's Brewing Company, and how they intertwine and overlap. It's largely thanks to Pete, you know, that you can find microbrewed beers in every liquor and grocery store across the country. His Wicked Ale was the first to become more than a regional curiosity, paving the way for all the others that followed.
I think there's just something about a rags to riches, in your spare time, having fun with it kind of success story that epitomizes the hacker ethic. The fact that it's kind of an esoteric field doesn't hurt, but I don't know that it's strictly necessary.
Yeah, they've been saying stuff like that there the last day or so, ever since this Slashdot story came out. Something about how they were having trouble keeping up with user bandwidth as it was, and then Slashdot came along. (My favorite was when they had the page title read "CmdrTaco's wife is fat". :) I imagine they'll be back in another day or so. Maybe by then they'll have switched to the new faster server they were able to afford with recent donations.
Two words for you, my friend:
traffic shaping
...bittorrent will be most useful as an alternative to web downloading huge legitimate files, like the Baen CD-ROMs or Linux distros. It's blazing fast, or can be, but it's just too easy to shut down a tracker/website, just like what was done to Napster. There's no anonymity here, and the only reason sites like torrentse.cx are around at all is that the RIAA/MPAA haven't noticed them yet. Once they do, kiss 'em goodbye.
I sure hope that torrentse.cx comes back. They've been having problems enough lately as it is, without having to be slashdotted, too.
It's too bad, because BitTorrent is a cool way to harness the "slashdot effect" in a useful way: the more people are downloading a file at a time, the more chances a new downloader has to start receiving file components faster.
I can't even remember where I heard this story--from some friend of mine, or fellow attendee of a Trek convention--so it may be apocryphal, but I heard about one Trek fan who found himself in a small Japanese town, needing some directions. He didn't speak Japanese, the kid he was speaking to didn't English...but then he tried Klingon, and to his surprise, they were able to hold a conversation.
I don't really see Klingon as being any different from a language like, say, Esperanto when you get right down to it. Sure, it's associated with a TV show, but it's still a complete language.
...can be found here.
Props to The Digital Bits for the link.
ITYM "Jim".
Between the time I submitted the story and the time it was run, the website hosting the ISO went offline, undoubtedly due to bandwidth issues. However, Scarywater did pick it up, and has quite a few people torrenting it now. I hardly think I need to remind people to leave their BitTorrent clients open for a while after their own download finishes, do I? :)
...because the IMAX theater near me, in Branson, often picks a mainstream movie (usually the one with the best special effects) to show on its big screen along with all its specialized IMAX films. Even if this hadn't been announced, I would have expected it to show up there sooner or later anyway.
:)
Seems like a lot of mainstream cinematographers are going more IMAX these days. James Cameron and Bill Paxton's recent IMAX documentary on the Titanic, for instance. (I can't help but think I'd find that documentary a little nervewracking, though. I mean, Bill Paxton in a submarine at crush depth in a James Cameron movie? I'd keep expecting him to die a horrible death about 3/4 of the way through the film.
Another good type of subscriber to Netflix-type services would be people like my parents, who live miles out in the country, too far away from a town with a video rental place to want to make a regular trip in to rent, then have to go back in to return the movie.
Indeed. I've been learning some of the most interesting things from my job as a phone conglomerate customer service rep.
To wit, if you want to try saving some money from your current long distance phone company, call them up and say you'd like to cancel. They'll offer you some kind of saves promotion (like a discount off your next bill, or free Saturdays for the next six months), and/or put you on a less expensive long distance plan.
(You really should be updating your plan once a year or so anyway...phone companies are constantly moving to cheaper/more featured plans but they never tell any of the customers this...since as long as the customer is content to pay 12 cents a minute, it'd be stupid to proactively offer to cut their rates down to 5.)
True enough...but if I'm gonna pay money to rent a disc from Netflix, I'm gonna want to rent the version of the disc that has everything on it. If I want just the movie, I know where Kazaa is.
I'm not a member of Netflix, though now that I have a job I might consider it. But it seems to me that if you're returning something like that, which has a great deal of value, you shouldn't take chances. Drop it in a USPS mailbox or hand it to the maildude directly.
Huh. Maybe I should write more chapters in Whole-Life, the Half-Life fanfic I began but only wrote one chapter.
Well, apparently there's stuff that even Morpheus doesn't know, since the first Animatrix short seems to disagree with Morpheus's tale on at least a couple of key points.
And, since the Wachowski brothers wrote it, it is canonical.
Welcome to the Desert of the Real: The Philosophy of the Matrix. It's a collection of essays on various philosophical and religious points of view as espoused in The Matrix, by the same guy who edited the Simpsons and Seinfeld philosophy books. I would link to it, but my work computer system is retarded enough not to allow cut and paste. A websearch should turn it up, though.
(I need to finish reading it and get it back to the library before they send me to collections.)
...they could get this guy together with that spammer who needed to contact someone with a time machine.
I dunno. We like to think that it's short-sighted, 'cuz, y'know, we want our net stuff. But according to a friend of mine, who is a major name in the gaming industry, having written or edited for many of the major gaming companies (and even written some tie-in novels for at least one of them), GW depends pretty much primarily on the retail outlets to survive--and the Internet sales are undercutting those to a substantial degree. And for a gaming company that's so heavily into miniatures, being able to show the customer a beautiful spread of figures and merchandise is an important sales feature.
We geeks can complain and rant and rave about it all we want, 'cuz they're casting aspersion on our beautiful Internet and limiting the bargains we can get, but it seems premature to claim that it's going to be bad for GW's business without a deeper understanding of how that business works. Time will tell how this affects GW's bottom line.
...compulsory spell-checker "lcensing"?
Just get Serious Sam for PalmOS instead.
(I just about fell over when I saw it for sale in that local campus bookstore. "Bwah?!")
The state of Linux gaming is kind of sad, maybe, but... ...I mean, come on! This is Duke Nukem we're talking about here! Though Quake and Unreal might be more advanced, and Half-Life has an awesome story and neat FX, I have to say that Duke 3D rates as one of the most flat-out fun first person shooters I've ever played. Especially with all the sly in-jokey references to other FPSes of the day, or the utterly hilarious "secret areas." (Duke on the bridge of the Enterprise-D: "Looks like I have the conn.")
I think that DN3D in Linux is a GOOD thing, and more than worthy of a Slashdot report. Finally, I can use that Atomic Edition CDROM for something other than listening to the "Grab Bag" CD audio track.
Or is this just a cruel Slashdot April Fool's prank?
:)
Oh, and first (subjectively, anyway) post!
Actually, there are some exceptions (and for all I know, Miyazaki may be one of them), but most animated films are made the opposite way: it's animated first, then the voice actors match their voices to the movements.