Yes, I realize that this isn't a fix, but
if obscurity makes it just a little harder
for people to do bad things then I don't
see why it's such a bad thing. Especially
in the case of Microsoft, where only they
can fix the source, why should the
security companies publish the source on
the web instead of sending it directly to
microsoft?
The trouble is that the history of these
things shows that that companies do not fix
security holes until they're publicized. If
you give the company some kind of advanced
notice before you publicize the security
hole, then they just stall for that much
longer.
And during the period that they're stalling,
it does *not* mean that the security hole
isn't being exploited, it just means that
whoever is doing it is being quiet enough to
keep from embarassing the company.
Scott Culp may sincerely believe that
Microsoft will take prompt action to close
any security holes the moment they're
notified of them, but there's some evidence
that points in the other direction. Why is
it that you can still get infected by a
virus by clicking on an email attachment?
Surely it's obvious by now that the AutoOpen
macros interacts badly with networked
systems. I submit that it's a "feature"
that does much more harm than good: so (a)
dump it; (b) disable it by default; (c)
always ask the user before executing ("This
message attachment comes with executable
code. Are you insane enough to want to run
it on your machine?").
And while
RedHat traditionally isn't quite as easy to set auto-updating up for
as Debian is,
it's still pretty easy to keep up with the security
patches for it.
It seems pretty clear to me that *this* is the
real solution. The problem is lazy sysadmins,
and you get more lazy sysadmins as you get more
popular. So a real "easy to use" linux
distribution has got to include a mechanism
for automated security updates (and it had
better be a *secure* mechanism). It does
indeed sound like Debian is better off than
RedHat in this respect, but eventually even
RedHat will get it's act together...
(How hard can it be to figure out a way to
generate some extra revenue from this? "And
for only $5/month, we'll set you up with the
the Head Patch Automated Reinsecuritator Mechanism.")
Well red hats are better than cutsey penguin's,
that's for sure.
What I'm really looking forward to though, is
having a pronouncable name for "postgresql".
We can say "the RedHat Database" now, and
people will know what we mean...
(Do we hate RedHat? I'm getting a little tired
of releases as buggy as Microsoft products, but
but I wouldn't say I hat them...)
Why would you be "ashamed to say" you agree with
RMS about something?
Most of the slash kids are barely fit to tie
RMS's shoe laces (in fact, it wouldn't surprise
me if they don't know how to tie a set
of shoelaces period), where do you come off
being so condescending?
a robust source of news... ClariNet
on
More On Tragedy
·
· Score: 2
If you happen to get the clarinet newsgroups
in your newsfeed, I would suggest looking at
some things like:
clari.news.conflict.misc
The funny thing about nntp is that it doesn't get slashdotted. Too bad it's so old fashioned and out-of-date, huh?
More about ClariNet itself: www.clarinet.com.
I was particularly interested in the story
The four main radical islamic groups, which
begins
NICOSIA, Sept 11 (AFP) - There are four main radical Islamic
movements -- two Palestinian, one pro-Iranian Lebanese group and a
fourth created by the sought-after Saudi-born alleged terrorist
Osama bin Laden.
Personally, I'd rather have a browsing experince
without any mousing around whatsoever (which
may explain why I'm posting this with lynx).
Mouse-oriented interfaces strike me as being
really brain dead more often than not... they
make a minor effort to throw in keyboard short
cuts, but it's just an after thought. Like what
exactly is the point of making me do a right click
before I can hit a keyboard short cut to pick
something out of the right click menu?
Serious question: is there a window manager
that will let me do X mouse operations using
user definable keyboard commands? E.g. I'd
really like to replace the "middle-click" with,
say, the F12 key.
Unless I am missing someone, that really only leaves SGI as the
remaining "big" Unix vendor. I wonder if they are going to be bought;
wither-and-die; or if they can make a go of it alone.
Heh. Still haven't dumped your SGI stock, eh?
I tried to start one of those "SGI is about to be
aquired" rumors a few times myself before I gave
up on it.
I know: "I hear IBM is going to buy SGI in order to make
sure they look bigger than HP on paper."
Re:Ravages of the new economy
on
HP Buys Compaq
·
· Score: 1
> My prediction is in 2010, slashdot will be full of anti HP slogans
just as it is from anti intel and microsoft ones. I will link this
post 10 years from now while my karma goes up for +funny or
+informative.
Dude, if you can't jack your karma up to the
ceiling of 50 in ten years, you really should
just pack it in...
Finally, HP did not fire CEO. The fucker's name is Rick Beluzzo
(doesn't it sound familiar?), and CEO's name was Lew Platt who
peacefully retired. Beluzzo was the one pushing M$ into all holes.
Later he went to head SGI (hence THEIR NT boxen), and now works where
he belongs - in BillG's brothel.
Much as I enjoy hearing criticism of Rick Beluzzo,
as I remember it SGI was already toying with NT before
he signed on there. On the other hand, they didn't drop the
NT nonsense until he after he left, and it could be that he
kept the company going in that direction while he was
there.
(My personal opinion is that if you're looking for evidence
that Beluzzo is a jerk, consider the fact that he
implemented a "no dogs in the workplace" rule when he signed
on at SGI. Now, the reason that SGI has so many good people
still working for them, rather than moving a few blocks over
to Sun is that SGI has always treated it's employees really
well, (whereas Scott McNeally has a reputation as a
fascist). If you *want* to keep your employees, taking away
some of their traditional privileges is *not* a good idea.)
Just wanted to point out that under the Mac
system, the fact that you can click on two
different files of the same type and end up
in a different applications can actually be
*tremendously* confusing to a naive user. This
capability isn't necessarily something to be
proud of.
Similarly, the windows system, with file extension
associations that are essentially a total mystery
to the average user is also tremendously confusing.
You can install some lame-ass scanner software and
have it decide that it owns all the image file types you
used to have associated with photoshop. Now, how
do you get back to normal?
The point that I'm making is that doing almost
anything "automagically" has the potential of
being a source of confusion. UI designers need
to think a little bit more about empowering the
user rather than just concealing things from
them. Obscurity != ease of use.
(I strongly suspect that hiding file extensions
by default was a really bad idea.)
What advice should you give to someone who's
clearly got a bad case of SirCam?
If you look at the
CERT Advisory,
the only fix it discusses is installing
commercial anti-virus software... While that
might be a good idea, I would think that there's
got to be some other proceedure, like Delete
this or that, reinstall MS Word, go into the
Control Panel and click the little box that says
"I'm not a complete fool, and I care slightly about
system security, so don't run any damn macros
without asking me", or whatever.
Has anyone seen cleanup proceedures discussed?
I know little about the Windows world these
days, but my friends still have me pegged as
The Computer Expert.
Well, here's my third try at answering
this one (slashdot ate it once, and my
software -- lynx no less! -- hung
once). If anyone still cares here's a
quick summary.
Oh, and in case it ain't obvious,
while I work for Emusic, I don't speak
for them.
It seems to me that a strategy of
lots of different things with a narrow
appeal can acheive a wide appeal.
Whether an indie-only strategy would
work (or is even desireable) I don't
really know. But then Emusic isn't
trying to be indie-only.
I don't have access to financial
numbers at Emusic, which is good,
because I wouldn't be allowed to talk
about them if I did. I do know that
people here are pretty happy with the
way numbers of subscribers are ramping
up. Supposedly EMusic has a record in
the business for numbers of
subscribers.
And actually, this is pretty
impressive considering the weird
absence of any media attention to
Emusic. They keep running stories
like "The online music biz is now
switching to the subscription model!
It'll be here in only a few years!".
By the way, a freind of mine points
out that epitonic
has some pretty cool music up,
evidentally available for free
download. I don't know if they're
trying to be ad supported, or if
they're just volunteers or what, but
they're worth a look.
Absolutely NOTHING is preventing a.com (lord knows they had the $) from signing up independent artists and promoting and distributing their music.
I work for a company called Emusic. This is exactly what Emusic is about. Emusic carrries loads of artists, many of them (though not all of them) are independants. Emusic works on a subscription model: you pay roughly the price of a CD every month, and you get unlimited access to the entire collection (and there's a one month trial period where you can play with site and cancel the sub if you don't like). And weirdly enough, the artists actually get paid royalties if you listen to their stuff.
I submit that this is actually a fairly sensible business model, as online businesses go. But something-for-next-to-nothing just doesn't sound that exciting compared to something-for-nothing, does it? Real internet businesses didn't have a chance to get going when the VC/stock speculation/tulip mania was going on... I'm really glad to see all that bullshit go.
As for the idea that small guys can't do anything interesting in the music world any more: Phfftpt.
Here's just one example: Limited Sedition. This is a CD-R record label that covers improvised music in the bay area scene. Typical releases are limited to something like 100 CDs, and it's all great, really strange, creative music (albiet a little low on teen angst for some tastes).
For any one who cares about music, there's a million different directions to go now, for anyone who chooses stick their head just a little bit above the LCD.
When the starts throw down there Britany's, we will water capitol with our kidneys
One of the big problems with the idea of paying
for stuff on line is that it's worth is reduced
enormously by the fact that it is online and
you've got to look at it on a computer screen
with awful resolution compared to a piece of
paper. And you also have to try and focus on
it while the hard drive and electronics are
shrieking at you at various frequencies, while you
hold your hands fixed in weird positions
hovering over the mouse or keyboard.
Consider the fact that people are willing to
pay quite a bit of money for computer books,
even if they (or the equivalent information)
is available online.
It all comes down to the fact that computers
really, really suck, in many ways.
And the ways in which computers *don't* suck
have largely to do with providing new ways for
people to interact with each other on a personal
level. It's got little to do with connecting
to big batches of canned content.
(Weird thought: celebrities could probably
sell pen-pal rights. A well-known person can't
possibly respond to every piece of random email,
but maybe they could follow the email from 100
people willing to kick in $1000 each for the
right to that consideration...)
Here's another detail: I started getting a PayPal
account, and noticed that my spam rate at least
doubled after I gave them my email address.
If they're not selling your email, someone is
doing something clever to spy on their traffic.
It certainly didn't make me feel inclined to
continue with the process of getting an
account.
You need fancy server hardware on the stuff that
can't fail, e.g. if you've got your database
running on one box (and the odds that that one
box is going to be Intel based is pretty low).
Using (relatively) cheap boxes as front-end webservers is an entirely reasonable thing to
do. If one dies, oh well, you lose a few hits,
but the next box in line takes over.
I've never really understood how VA Linux was
supposed to work as a hardware business. Why
buy from VA when you can get supercheap generic
PCs? Even if you didn't have linux pre-installed
by the generic vendors, it isn't that hard to
crunch through an installation yourself, and
the folks setting up server farms are certainly
capable of doing this. Out in my corner of the
real world, people would buy one or two VA Linux
boxes to see what they were like, realize they
weren't getting much for their money, and go back
to the cheap boxes.
And why should VA have a geek-cool buzz about
them in some place like slash? I went up to
a VA Linux booth at linuxworld once. First
question "Do you have any alpha boxes?";
Second question "Uh, any AMDs?". Hm, just
Intel processors, huh? See you...
And if they can't make money in the web biz, oh
well, those are the breaks. The open source movement doesn't *really* need corporate success to survive.
Remember: free software will get you through
times of no money better than money will get you
through times of no free software.
As I remember it, the phrasing is: "I do not
know what the computer language of the future
will look like. However, I do know that we
will call it Fortran."
(I can't remember the attribution, though,
and can't find it on the web at the moment.)
For an updated version of this joke, do a
s/Fortran/Perl/
Now, I am a huge Emacs fan, but I have seen way too many Emacs users
with serious RSI problems to think that this isn't more than
coincidental. So next time you need to hit some obscure key chord to
get emacs to do something cool remember to take it easy, and don't put
your fingers in an uncomfortable position.
I'm of the opinion that Emacs plus really lousy keyboards
is what does you in (like, what moron decided that control
below shift was a good idea?).
I'm a fan of the Kinesis contoured models, which put all the
heavy use keys under your thumbs (Ctrl, Alt, Enter, Space,
BS, Delete). Also all keys are programmable, so you can fix
any quirk about it that you don't like (e.g. the Caps Lock
next to the A can be made to do something useful).
The Maltrox (sp?) looks interesting too. Possibly better,
though more expensive (and the Kinesis ain't cheap to begin
with).
By the way, I've been a heavy keyboard user for decades now,
and I didn't feel any ill effects for the first 10 years or
so of typing. So you slash kiddies who're feeling smug
because your fingers are never sore, remember that you're
just getting started...
If I remember right, there's a decent college
radio station in Nebraska that you can tune-in
to when driving along route 80. (It's a pretty
weird experience really, driving along through
a wasteland of garbage radio signals, and to
suddenly hit something cool in Nebraska.)
I don't know what part of the state you're
in, maybe you can't hear it where you are...
but remember that it's a good rule of thumb
when scanning the airwaves in the united
states to start at the bottom of the dial
(or "left of the dial", as the Replacements
put it before they became replaceable).
With few exceptions, the only interesting radio
in the states are the faint noncommercial
signals below 92FM or so...
(The main exception seems to be the Pacifica
stations: they've been around long enough that
they've got frequencies in random places
out of this ghetto.)
Sure, I could find good independent music on the internet too, if I
had the time to wade through lots of crap. Thus my question: how do
you find good independent music without wading through lots of crap?
Admittedly, having to wade through some crap is inevitable, as each
person's definition of "crap" varies with taste. I'd like to listen to
more independent music, but I don't have the time to listen to twenty
bands I don't like in order to find one I do.
Obviously, the way wade through all the crap quickly is to
use some filters that you trust.
A lot of college radiostations are (still?) broadcast on the
internet. Many of them are really independant: the DJs are
largely free to follow their own interests. All you have to
do is find one adventurous DJ whose taste you trust, and
you've got a pipeline feeding you with more good, new stuff
than you can possibly deal with.
(The station I'm involved with is KZSU, the Stanford
radio station, but I'd need to know more about what kind of
music you're after before I could recommend a particular show
on the air.)
Another thing you can do is find a site/zine/magazine that
you can more or less trust. Most of the slick glossies are
pretty clearly sold-out to the crap machine, but even so I
can think of things like
The Wire (note, not
"-ed"). This is a UK based magazine that in my opinion does
a great job of covering interesting music almost without
regard to genre (e.g. some recent issues have focused on
Sigur Ros, Talvin Singh, and John Cale).
Another move of course, is to look for news groups and
mailing lists that talk about stuff you're interested in.
Just drop in and say "I like *Foo*, where do I find more?"
(Though you need to be prepared to be flamed if you ask
about "Nine Inch Nails" on rec.music.industrial or "Marilyn
Manson" on alt.gothic).
I realize this is besides the point, but I really can't let
this slide:
Pink Floyd's The Wall set the standard for amazing stage shows. It was
the kind of thing that makes me wish I'd lived in L.A. or New York in
1980 (and been out of grade school, I guess). In February 1980, they
played five sold-out L.A. shows, inflatable pig, airplane and all, the
epicenter of cool. The double album was number one and would stay
there for four months.
In my opinion, "The Wall" show was a really tedious event.
I have to give them credit for trying to do *something* with
the arena rock form (which has is one of the stupidist
inventions of American culture, and I realize there's a lot
of competition), but what they did just wasn't that
interesting. A dorky puppet 20 stories high is just an
expensive form of dorky puppet. Having an army of stage
hands assemble a "wall" between the band and the audience is
a cute concept, but the thing about concepts like this is
that it only takes a couple of sentences to describe them,
they get a lot less interesting if you actually have to
watch them play out for a couple of hours.
To my ear, I thought the best music of the show was the
stuff they played immediately after the wall was assembled,
when you couldn't actually see the band. I later found out
that they weren't actually bothering to play when they were
out of sight of the audience: live performance at its
finest.
There's nothing wrong with the general themes of The Wall
album, (freedom/alienation) and in my opinion it had a few
good tracks on it, but overall I thought the handling was
fairly trite and adolescent.
If you're going to feel bad about missing out on something
from that period, how about being in New York to see Talking
Heads play at a small club like CBGBs? I got to see the
Ramones play in a small place out on Long Island around
then, (and they were completely shown-up by their warmup
band, the "A"s, an act that no one has heard of these
days). Probably the best show that I remember from around
then: Patti Smith and Richard Hell on a double bill at the
briefly lived "CBGB's Second Avenue".
(Oh, and I'm pretty sure that the inflatable
pig was used on the Animals tour only, which I
thankfully did not attend, since that was possibly
their worst album...)
If you're going to seriously think about nuclear powered
cars, I suggest looking up some of the historical data on the
nuclear powered airplane project:
Slashdot Mirror
And during the period that they're stalling, it does *not* mean that the security hole isn't being exploited, it just means that whoever is doing it is being quiet enough to keep from embarassing the company.
Scott Culp may sincerely believe that Microsoft will take prompt action to close any security holes the moment they're notified of them, but there's some evidence that points in the other direction. Why is it that you can still get infected by a virus by clicking on an email attachment? Surely it's obvious by now that the AutoOpen macros interacts badly with networked systems. I submit that it's a "feature" that does much more harm than good: so (a) dump it; (b) disable it by default; (c) always ask the user before executing ("This message attachment comes with executable code. Are you insane enough to want to run it on your machine?").
(How hard can it be to figure out a way to generate some extra revenue from this? "And for only $5/month, we'll set you up with the the Head Patch Automated Reinsecuritator Mechanism.")
Well red hats are better than cutsey penguin's,
that's for sure.
What I'm really looking forward to though, is
having a pronouncable name for "postgresql".
We can say "the RedHat Database" now, and
people will know what we mean...
(Do we hate RedHat? I'm getting a little tired
of releases as buggy as Microsoft products, but
but I wouldn't say I hat them...)
Most of the slash kids are barely fit to tie RMS's shoe laces (in fact, it wouldn't surprise me if they don't know how to tie a set of shoelaces period), where do you come off being so condescending?
The funny thing about nntp is that it doesn't get slashdotted. Too bad it's so old fashioned and out-of-date, huh? More about ClariNet itself: www.clarinet.com.
I was particularly interested in the story The four main radical islamic groups, which begins
movements -- two Palestinian, one pro-Iranian Lebanese group and a fourth created by the sought-after Saudi-born alleged terrorist Osama bin Laden.Serious question: is there a window manager that will let me do X mouse operations using user definable keyboard commands? E.g. I'd really like to replace the "middle-click" with, say, the F12 key.
(My personal opinion is that if you're looking for evidence that Beluzzo is a jerk, consider the fact that he implemented a "no dogs in the workplace" rule when he signed on at SGI. Now, the reason that SGI has so many good people still working for them, rather than moving a few blocks over to Sun is that SGI has always treated it's employees really well, (whereas Scott McNeally has a reputation as a fascist). If you *want* to keep your employees, taking away some of their traditional privileges is *not* a good idea.)
But he *didn't* close the tag off,
he forgot the forward slash.
I took a look at these comments just to see how
many people were hassling him about it, but
*no one* has even noticed it.
Slashdot is really going downhill
Similarly, the windows system, with file extension associations that are essentially a total mystery to the average user is also tremendously confusing. You can install some lame-ass scanner software and have it decide that it owns all the image file types you used to have associated with photoshop. Now, how do you get back to normal?
The point that I'm making is that doing almost anything "automagically" has the potential of being a source of confusion. UI designers need to think a little bit more about empowering the user rather than just concealing things from them. Obscurity != ease of use.
(I strongly suspect that hiding file extensions by default was a really bad idea.)
If you look at the CERT Advisory, the only fix it discusses is installing commercial anti-virus software... While that might be a good idea, I would think that there's got to be some other proceedure, like Delete this or that, reinstall MS Word, go into the Control Panel and click the little box that says "I'm not a complete fool, and I care slightly about system security, so don't run any damn macros without asking me", or whatever.
Has anyone seen cleanup proceedures discussed? I know little about the Windows world these days, but my friends still have me pegged as The Computer Expert.
Oh, and in case it ain't obvious, while I work for Emusic, I don't speak for them.
It seems to me that a strategy of lots of different things with a narrow appeal can acheive a wide appeal. Whether an indie-only strategy would work (or is even desireable) I don't really know. But then Emusic isn't trying to be indie-only.
I don't have access to financial numbers at Emusic, which is good, because I wouldn't be allowed to talk about them if I did. I do know that people here are pretty happy with the way numbers of subscribers are ramping up. Supposedly EMusic has a record in the business for numbers of subscribers.
And actually, this is pretty impressive considering the weird absence of any media attention to Emusic. They keep running stories like "The online music biz is now switching to the subscription model! It'll be here in only a few years!".
By the way, a freind of mine points out that epitonic has some pretty cool music up, evidentally available for free download. I don't know if they're trying to be ad supported, or if they're just volunteers or what, but they're worth a look.
I work for a company called Emusic. This is exactly
what Emusic is about. Emusic carrries loads of artists, many of them
(though not all of them) are independants. Emusic works on a
subscription model: you pay roughly the price of a CD every
month, and you get unlimited access to the entire collection
(and there's a one month trial period where you can play
with site and cancel the sub if you don't like). And
weirdly enough, the artists actually get paid royalties if
you listen to their stuff.
I submit that this is actually a fairly sensible business
model, as online businesses go. But
something-for-next-to-nothing just doesn't sound that
exciting compared to something-for-nothing, does it? Real
internet businesses didn't have a chance to get going when
the VC/stock speculation/tulip mania was going on... I'm
really glad to see all that bullshit go.
As for the idea that small guys can't do anything
interesting in the music world any more: Phfftpt.
Here's just one example: Limited Sedition.
This is a CD-R record label that covers improvised music
in the bay area scene. Typical releases are limited to
something like 100 CDs, and it's all great, really strange,
creative music (albiet a little low on teen angst for some
tastes).
For any one who cares about music, there's a million
different directions to go now, for anyone who chooses
stick their head just a little bit above the LCD.
When the starts throw down there Britany's,
we will water capitol with our kidneys
Consider the fact that people are willing to pay quite a bit of money for computer books, even if they (or the equivalent information) is available online.
It all comes down to the fact that computers really, really suck, in many ways.
And the ways in which computers *don't* suck have largely to do with providing new ways for people to interact with each other on a personal level. It's got little to do with connecting to big batches of canned content.
(Weird thought: celebrities could probably sell pen-pal rights. A well-known person can't possibly respond to every piece of random email, but maybe they could follow the email from 100 people willing to kick in $1000 each for the right to that consideration...)
Here's another detail: I started getting a PayPal
account, and noticed that my spam rate at least
doubled after I gave them my email address.
If they're not selling your email, someone is
doing something clever to spy on their traffic.
It certainly didn't make me feel inclined to
continue with the process of getting an
account.
You need fancy server hardware on the stuff that
can't fail, e.g. if you've got your database
running on one box (and the odds that that one
box is going to be Intel based is pretty low).
Using (relatively) cheap boxes as front-end webservers is an entirely reasonable thing to
do. If one dies, oh well, you lose a few hits,
but the next box in line takes over.
And why should VA have a geek-cool buzz about them in some place like slash? I went up to a VA Linux booth at linuxworld once. First question "Do you have any alpha boxes?"; Second question "Uh, any AMDs?". Hm, just Intel processors, huh? See you...
And if they can't make money in the web biz, oh well, those are the breaks. The open source movement doesn't *really* need corporate success to survive.
Remember: free software will get you through times of no money better than money will get you through times of no free software.
(I can't remember the attribution, though, and can't find it on the web at the moment.)
For an updated version of this joke, do a s/Fortran/Perl/
I'm a fan of the Kinesis contoured models, which put all the heavy use keys under your thumbs (Ctrl, Alt, Enter, Space, BS, Delete). Also all keys are programmable, so you can fix any quirk about it that you don't like (e.g. the Caps Lock next to the A can be made to do something useful).
The Maltrox (sp?) looks interesting too. Possibly better, though more expensive (and the Kinesis ain't cheap to begin with).
By the way, I've been a heavy keyboard user for decades now, and I didn't feel any ill effects for the first 10 years or so of typing. So you slash kiddies who're feeling smug because your fingers are never sore, remember that you're just getting started...
I don't know what part of the state you're in, maybe you can't hear it where you are... but remember that it's a good rule of thumb when scanning the airwaves in the united states to start at the bottom of the dial (or "left of the dial", as the Replacements put it before they became replaceable). With few exceptions, the only interesting radio in the states are the faint noncommercial signals below 92FM or so...
(The main exception seems to be the Pacifica stations: they've been around long enough that they've got frequencies in random places out of this ghetto.)
A lot of college radiostations are (still?) broadcast on the internet. Many of them are really independant: the DJs are largely free to follow their own interests. All you have to do is find one adventurous DJ whose taste you trust, and you've got a pipeline feeding you with more good, new stuff than you can possibly deal with.
(The station I'm involved with is KZSU, the Stanford radio station, but I'd need to know more about what kind of music you're after before I could recommend a particular show on the air.)
Another thing you can do is find a site/zine/magazine that you can more or less trust. Most of the slick glossies are pretty clearly sold-out to the crap machine, but even so I can think of things like The Wire (note, not "-ed"). This is a UK based magazine that in my opinion does a great job of covering interesting music almost without regard to genre (e.g. some recent issues have focused on Sigur Ros, Talvin Singh, and John Cale).
Another move of course, is to look for news groups and mailing lists that talk about stuff you're interested in. Just drop in and say "I like *Foo*, where do I find more?" (Though you need to be prepared to be flamed if you ask about "Nine Inch Nails" on rec.music.industrial or "Marilyn Manson" on alt.gothic).
To my ear, I thought the best music of the show was the stuff they played immediately after the wall was assembled, when you couldn't actually see the band. I later found out that they weren't actually bothering to play when they were out of sight of the audience: live performance at its finest.
There's nothing wrong with the general themes of The Wall album, (freedom/alienation) and in my opinion it had a few good tracks on it, but overall I thought the handling was fairly trite and adolescent.
If you're going to feel bad about missing out on something from that period, how about being in New York to see Talking Heads play at a small club like CBGBs? I got to see the Ramones play in a small place out on Long Island around then, (and they were completely shown-up by their warmup band, the "A"s, an act that no one has heard of these days). Probably the best show that I remember from around then: Patti Smith and Richard Hell on a double bill at the briefly lived "CBGB's Second Avenue".
(Oh, and I'm pretty sure that the inflatable pig was used on the Animals tour only, which I thankfully did not attend, since that was possibly their worst album...)
If you're going to seriously think about nuclear powered cars, I suggest looking up some of the historical data on the nuclear powered airplane project:
- The Decay of the Atomic Powered Aircraft Program (12 Nov 1992)
- NUCLEAR POWERED AIRCRAFT - Nuclear Thermal Propulsion
- INEL News, March 19, 1996 - nuclear aircraft engines on display at INEL - (google cache)
I also recommend the novel "Steambird" by Hilbert Schenk: an alternate history in which this turkey actually flew.(And personally, I think it's pretty funny he gets called a "quitter" by people who've never started anything...)