slashdot != legal advice
on
Abusing the GPL?
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· Score: 2, Interesting
This really sounds like a slimy underhanded offensive thing to do, and my first impulse is to impale the legal-weasel who suggested that such a thing would be a "good idea" on a pike in the foyer of his office. This is an outright immoral thing to do, stealing the skull-sweat from someone who went as far as to provide his/her work to the public through the GPL. However, my personal views aside, you need to evaluate the situation and take into account the subject of this post: "Slashdot != legal advice". As I see it, you have the following options:
Be a good little wage slave and grind out a perl script that does the dirty deed for your immoral employers. This necessitates living with yourself for the rest of your days knowing that you were part of this raping of another person's work and the very concept of the GPL. God help you if I ever catch you at a convention, paper-cuts from flyers will be the least of your worries.
Stand up for your moral values and tell your employer why you refuse to do this criminal act for them. You should take into account that your employer is probably not all that interested in paying you for your moral integrity, so you're probably going to want to check in with your local unemployment office.
Duck for cover and get in touch with the EFF. This is the kind of thing that really requires solid legal advice from an entity that has some muscle in the corporate world. I'm still not aware of many lawyers who are willing to take on tech (and especially GPL related) legal work where there isn't a good chance of sucking blood out of someone.
If anyone wants to prove me wrong, please do so. We need people to stand up for the GPL and protect the hard work that so many people entrust to it's care.
Could you possibly use procmail to drop all that bad spammage that's being sent to the non-existant users on your domain? Even better, don't just drop them, collect them and drop the collection of yahoo-originated spam on their desk; "It's your friggin mess, you clean it up..." all else fails, inform all your users with a nicely worded e-mail along with some e-mail address for the appropriate people who they can complain/rant to at (uselessbastards@yahoo.com) Ask them to forward this to any of their user@yahoo.com associates and put the pressure on from both sides. Good luck and let us know how things turn out.
Is this decision entirely from the goodnless of their hearts, or is there something else afoot with this. I mean we all agree that RAMBUS was poisoning the well with all their crazy licensing and (fradulent) patent demands, but does Intel know something about the future of chip-supply that we don't? From all indications, Rambus has profitability in it's sights, but with Intel freeing themselves from that yoke with the i845 (?) chipset, perhaps Rambus is going to find themselves pushed to niche markets (servers, high-speed clusters, etc...) I mean SiS has a chipset that supports it going forward (correct me if I'm wrong), but who's going to keep on the bandwagon now that Tulloch has been deep 6'ed and some of the original arguements for RAMBUS are getting weak. Is there anyone who has any concrete reasons for shopping mobo's with that feature or are we looking at tech that's going to get leapfroged in the next 6-12 months? hmmm, food for thought from someone who's shopping for a new mobo... (hmmm, Soyo or ABIT?)
well, like the rest of the folks here, or at least the noisy pleading ones, I prefer the DTE (Dead Tree Edition) of my techical references. I would much rather be able to pull a book off a shelf and pull it open to a dog-eared page ("thou shalt free the malloc's") then have to ensure that I have a suitable viewer installed on a secondary machine and then dig around for the chapter I'm looking for.
However, I'm sure that there are folks here on the other side of the coin who would rather have the electronic manual for easy access. Any Road Coders want to chime in here?
I must say that having contracted for the guys who have the zoophilia fetish, not everyone likes the covers. In the words of one stressed artist who was hunched over her screen and tablet trying to setup the clipping paths for one such book cover, "I don't care how friggin cute they are, I'm sick of these damn furry things. If you don't want me to lose my mind, you'll stick to lizards and fish from here on, all these bad-hair-day animals are seriously taxing my sanity"
I would also like to provide you with another possible book title, feel free to use it as you wish.
"Windows XP: for dummies"
Re:other taste sensation brough to you by GeneCorp
on
Healthy Pork? Pinach?
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· Score: 2
I'm actually aware that in some areas, and at some times, margarine was un-colored. My mother and grandmother have mentioned in stories of mixing the yellow coloring packets into the stuff. And I remember signage in some of the corner cafe's in Brooklyn where I ate durring college there was signage regarding how everything served was real butter, and it mentioned the legal statue that governed this.
I however was going for the simpler connotation, but you do bring to light a signifcant flaw to the metaphor.
Thanks for reading.
other taste sensation brough to you by GeneCorp!
on
Healthy Pork? Pinach?
·
· Score: 1
hmm, where else will this trend lead us? We already have green ketchup and artificially colored margarine-spread.
How about some mix & match taste sensations!
Liver & Onions Cereal (the kids love it!)
Cod Cheeks & Brussel Sprouts (building health bones and halitosis)
Chicken Nuggets & Scrambled Eggs (Free Salmonella Inside)
the possibilities are endless... (and nauseating!)
it didn't go over my head. I was quite aware of the fact that you were using the cliche'd cmdrtaco reference to show how ludicrous it is. What I was commenting on is the fact that your troll-ish response has a painfully accurate implication in the real world.
But yes, I will agree that it was
>>...meant to be a "dumb crapflood"
that's the general implication. IIRC there are several countries in europe and northern africa where it is illegal to criticise the ruling party/royal family/family-of-the-royal-bed-warmer... wouldn't you love to see every two-bit dictator with an ego-issue sueing cnn.com for 'defamination', 'libel' or here's the clincher... treason.
draw your own conclusions
Well, am I the only one who's bowels clench at the sound of this? Does this mean that e-mails that get routed through California-based servers will be subject to this? What about California residents who have mail servers in different states... their mail 'originates' in the sunny fascist state of CA, but it doesn't get stored there. How about California residents who send e-mail while outside of their home state.
I can only hope that a massive influx of hard, direct questions to the office of the Governor of California - Gray Davis(governor@governor.ca.gov) that this is unacceptable to the people of his constituency.
The/. crowd is fairly militant and reactionary over these issues, but I for one am going to try and do a little more than normal about this. Time to draft an e-mail to all my family members who live in California and see if I can get a few of them to take action on this.
It would also be grand if someone could post a link to (or transcript of) the governor's State of the State speech tonight.
If anyone else is aware of grassroot groups that are actively and positively working on raising the public's awareness to this kind of knee-jerk violation of our rights, please post applicable links here, and see what we can do to keep this getting any worse.
OK, while I'm all for bizarre uses of neat hardware with geek-appeal, you may well be doing your friend a disservice by trying to move him from a PC to a Dreamcast. The first issue I see here is connectivity; you've gotta have it or you're better off just locking him in a closet somewhere with a flashight and a pad of paper.
Having watched the traffic on the dreamcast-linux mailling list devolve into people spouting noise about how someone should just auto-magically develop firmware and drivers for the WinModem and everyone begging for a BBA for less than $150, I have to say that things are lagging. Without a real option for stand-alone connectivity on the dreamcast, you're screwed. Play rogue all you want, but when your friend is done typing his papers in vi he's going to be SOL when he tries to get the info off the dreamcast.
As it stands, the going rate on BBA's is $120-150 (pre-shipping, pre-tax, pre-hey-we're-all-out-of-em) which could easily replace the dead PC that has got you into this mess.
Even if you find a hidden cache of BBAs at an affordable price, you still are going to have him dependant on NFS mounts and other machines for functionality with the Dreamcast.
My mucking about with dreamcast as a thin-client/mp3-player/SNES-emulator is just that... mucking about. I do not delude myself that I can make it a functioning day-to-day desktop system, and I suggest you re-evaluate your friend's needs with a more cynical eye. I wish you the best of luck in this, and would love to hear how you proceed with said endevour, but you may well find that $250 bucks later the PC is just the best option.
Keep us posted
And I for one would like to chime in and wish Dmitry Sklyarov a happy birthday and best wishes for the coming year. I would also like to offer whatever condolences I can for the demeaning treatment and heavy-handed legal fiasco that the U.S. Federal Government has put him through.
I wish him, and his employer (who stood by him through all this, what US company does that these days...) a happy new year and the best of luck in their future plans.
Maybe as american citizens we should see what we can do to prevent this kind of tragic miscarrige of justice from happening again, I for one am ashamed that I was not more vocal and active over the past few years while the ground-work for these flawed laws and regulations was laid. Time for me to check out what I can do for the EFF.
And if you're interested in a Red-Hat based distribution that is supposed to have a fairly complete collection of spanish instructions, check out: conectiva.com. These guys also have a spanish-language publication that you might be interested in looking into. You might even want to sign up your new admin for a year or so.
hmmm, it's amazing what you can find in 15 seconds with Google, isn't it?
I must say, terminatorX looks like the best open-source/low-cost solution I've seen all year (in this arena). This is definitly something that I'm going to look into. Thanx for sharing the.nfo!
well, I've seen these and played with them in a few stores, and let's face it, they ain't the miracle 'wheels of steel'... mixing is a tactile, sensory, feedback driven 'process' for lack of a better term. Watch a true DJ play the decks, they drag fingers on the label to slow a track down just enough to get the beats matched. They twist the post between their fingers to get a little more speed and make magic happen.
I've been learning for years, and I still don't feel that I'm half as good as I should to be when I spin at house-parties. I'm still learning some basic tricks, tweak-scratches, roll-backs, all of the tools the man (and woman!) behind the wheels rely on to move a party and make the choons bump.
I've also gotten pretty heavily into tools like Sonic Foundry's ACID and the old MIDI and.mod players that I still use on my BeOS boxen. They provide a clinical, digital interface that allows you to play with musical themes, components and transitions in ways that your average beginner cannot even approach. But again, I still consider it just a tool to further my knowledge of how a good groove works and how to utilize all the musical influence that there is around me.
The DM2 is another tool in this arena, but it is not the philospher's stone, and I doubt that in it's present incarnation it will go much beyond the starter-kit market who doesn't want to cough up $500 for two cheezy belt-drive 'tables and a mixer that cross-fades like a brick. It does however present an opportunity to expose more people to the aspects of 'turntablism' that seems to be the vogue.
I would like to note that blahtree brought up an important tool that I remember from the days when BeOS was still considered viable...:) the Final Scratch [finalscratch.com]. By using true turntables as the proven interface, you allow the masters of wax to use all their flare, body-scratches, almost everything they have spend countless hours practicing and refining (well, everything but hydroplaning). But the actual sound is created through the digital manipulation and control of MP3's and other audio formats. While it may not be a truely optimal solution for some, it does meld the two most popular aspects of the old-school vinyl camp with the digital precison and endurance of the new digital-era digi-jays. I cannot count the number of times I have had to retire old vinyl that had given it's best and finally just gotten to worn to play. These days I'm prone to rip stuff to mp3 and play with it there for a while before I start eating away at it's life-span by putting it under the needle.
Now while I do have all my classics on vinyl (I've culled it down to 200-300 of my favorites) I would love to be able to show up at a gig with just a wallet of DVD's and not have to worry about herniating over 120lbs of wax. (tho' the final scratch still requires you to haul your 90 lbs. coffin. Hey, those SL-1200's are 40 friggin' pounds each, but that just keep us "I've been DJ'ing parties 7 nights a week and haven't seen daylight in a month" phreaks in shape.)
As I have heard said, "In the 80's every kid wanted a guitar, now they all want their own set of turntables."
try again troll-boy, the post states:
"I recently installed NTAS on a 486DX2/66 over a previous installation of the release version of NT..."
"After a successful installation, I proceeded to add TCP/IP, FTP server, and Services for Macintosh. NTAS would reach the login dialog, then die the blue screen death. After some experimentation, I determined that Services for Macintosh was conflicting with the 3COM Elnk16 ethernet card..."
I think that it would be rather obvious that he is in fact working on a BSOD-capable platform. The 'macintosh' here is simply the 'Services for Macintosh' component, which at the time was known to be buggy as hell.
Check your facts or go home...
Well, considering that those of us in the Boston area just had record-breaking 70 degree temps in the first week of December, we should make plans to colonize Mars before the weather there gets any worse.
But hey, don't worry, global warming (be it a natural cycle in the global ecosystem, a condition caused by man's encroachment on the carbon sinks of the planet, depletion of the ozone layer, of just plain bad luck) isn't anything to worry about. Just think of it as an extra reason to work on your tan.
A friend of mine had something like this for his Cavalier a couple years ago. When the alarm was triggered, the bullhorn under the hood cranked out this (fairly realistic) female scream followed by "Help! I'm being molested! Help!" in a rather 'I-work-in-blue-movies-now-but-I-really-want-to-do -shakespeare' voice. It would then go into a more standard car alarm warble for a few seconds, only to repeat the female voice again.
The first couple times it scared the shite out of me, but I got desensized to it by the time he traded up for a new vehicle. I think the device was from RatShack, but all I know is that I have yet to hear an alarm like it since.
Anyone else heard that one?
different people are liable to answer this one in different ways. Some deep linux folks are going to approach this for the challenge. Other people are going to explore the world of embedded systems and game console magic. Some folks like myself are going to try and get another tool into the house. I'm looking forward to being able to turn on a 'device' in my TV cabinet and play MP3's over the network, pop-up a browser, maybe even let someone hop onto their web-mail.
This is the niche that I would like to fill with a thin-client solution.
And with a good implementation of Linux on PS2, I may have that thin-client.
But the beauty of this is that everyone else out there is going to be porting MAME, AIM, Mozilla, Gnutella, and kitchen_sink.8(alpha) onto this platform.
Imagine a thousand users, with a thousand consoles, each with their own killer-app. THAT is what I forsee with this. PS2 is not the new business desktop, it isn't necessarily what you want to give Grandma to e-mail the grandkids. It is a tool that has great possibilites for a broad-range of people who are interested in playing with this platform. I would urge people to make this happen. Buy the kit, learn how it works, create stand-alone (DiskJuggler, Nero, or ISO) images that the more technically inclined can produce and distribute to their non-geek friends.
I've got a fresh batch of cookies waiting for the first person to point me to a workable image that I can use to let my friend play all his old SuperNintendo games (he still has the game cartridges in the attic, so don't whine about copyright!) on his shiny PS2.
I have worked in desk-side and phone support for close to a decade... people can (and will!) do this in whatever OS you give them. I can't tell you how many engineers in my company thought they would save some space by moving the c:/winnt directory to the trash. I mean, c'mon, you guys upgraded me to Windows 2000 last week, I don't need Windows NT any more! Hey, it doesn't work! you broke it!!!
Without some pretty drastic UI-level intervention you are never going to drool-proof a machine. by the time you idiot-proof a process, only an idiot will be interested in using it. besides, the universe is eternally developing bigger, better, and more inventive idiots...
I'm just imagining the horrid phonetic contortions the poor chip would produce trying to interpret the acronym-laden jargon that us techie folks throw around so loosely. I mean, we have enough trouble agreeing on how you should pronounce something simple like MMPOG. And then there are people's habits of using code-speak and syntax fragments? the poor punctuation checker will shoot itself.
The mind reels in horror...
hmm, sounds to me like you've got a very noble project on your hands; use technology to assist the scientific process. However, I think you're going to have a bit of trouble finding those kinds of deep technical specs for hardware devices that you may be re-purposing beyond their intended usage... I remember many a HP Chromograph system that had to be completely replaced (or radically upgraded) at great expense when a simple hardware hack could have provided a strap-on solution to the problem. In particular I'm recalling a heating/ventilation issue that some ingenious soul had resolved by building a simple hot-box inside the machine with a peltier, thermistor and some PICs to maintain even sample temperature for some device. HP's solution was a whole new piece of kit that cost more than a car, but someone rev-engineered it and saved some serious beer-money for the lab. HP, I'm sure, doesn't approve of these things (I'm not knocking HP, it's a corporate survival instinct). Now you may have the best intentions in the world, but I find it pretty hard to believe that the manufacturers are going to go out of their way to make this info available to you, so a little research is probably in order.
a) See if anyone in the open-source community is working on projects utilizing this hardware. Heck, see if you can find some uber-geek who's been involved in creating linux drivers for a bunch of scanners; maybe you'll find someone who has a great storehouse of eclectic ccd-centric knowledge they would be glad to dump on you.
b) Never underestimate the power of documentation.As I always was told, "documentation is like sex, even when it's bad, it's better than nothing..." Maybe they've listed component manufacturers in the crufty stuff they pack in the back of some of the user manuals.
c) Love your service technician. If you're working with equipment that requires outside support, get friendly with him/her and see if you can't wheedle yourself a set of old support/repair documentation. Most of these people are wage-slaves like us and may well be interested in your little projects.
Beyond that, keep your nose to the grindstone and good luck. Let us know how it goes.
Yaaay!
I remember this one back in the day, and now we've got the double-header of it being ported to Linux and even more importantly, visable signs of life from Loki. Get out the good word and force your friends to pre-order this little jem. I spent many a night hunched over a screen, slaughtering mailmen and innocent bystandards.
I wonder if they have toned down the gib-factor at all? Then again, with America's recent blood-lust, this may sell quite well.
Slashdot Mirror
If anyone wants to prove me wrong, please do so. We need people to stand up for the GPL and protect the hard work that so many people entrust to it's care.
Could you possibly use procmail to drop all that bad spammage that's being sent to the non-existant users on your domain?
Even better, don't just drop them, collect them and drop the collection of yahoo-originated spam on their desk;
"It's your friggin mess, you clean it up..."
all else fails, inform all your users with a nicely worded e-mail along with some e-mail address for the appropriate people who they can complain/rant to at (uselessbastards@yahoo.com)
Ask them to forward this to any of their user@yahoo.com associates and put the pressure on from both sides. Good luck and let us know how things turn out.
Is this decision entirely from the goodnless of their hearts, or is there something else afoot with this. I mean we all agree that RAMBUS was poisoning the well with all their crazy licensing and (fradulent) patent demands, but does Intel know something about the future of chip-supply that we don't? From all indications, Rambus has profitability in it's sights, but with Intel freeing themselves from that yoke with the i845 (?) chipset, perhaps Rambus is going to find themselves pushed to niche markets (servers, high-speed clusters, etc...) I mean SiS has a chipset that supports it going forward (correct me if I'm wrong), but who's going to keep on the bandwagon now that Tulloch has been deep 6'ed and some of the original arguements for RAMBUS are getting weak. Is there anyone who has any concrete reasons for shopping mobo's with that feature or are we looking at tech that's going to get leapfroged in the next 6-12 months?
hmmm, food for thought from someone who's shopping for a new mobo... (hmmm, Soyo or ABIT?)
congratulations to both CmdrTaco and Kathleen. Now you can spawn all kinds of child-processes! whooohoo!
well, like the rest of the folks here, or at least the noisy pleading ones, I prefer the DTE (Dead Tree Edition) of my techical references. I would much rather be able to pull a book off a shelf and pull it open to a dog-eared page ("thou shalt free the malloc's") then have to ensure that I have a suitable viewer installed on a secondary machine and then dig around for the chapter I'm looking for.
However, I'm sure that there are folks here on the other side of the coin who would rather have the electronic manual for easy access. Any Road Coders want to chime in here?
I must say that having contracted for the guys who have the zoophilia fetish, not everyone likes the covers. In the words of one stressed artist who was hunched over her screen and tablet trying to setup the clipping paths for one such book cover, "I don't care how friggin cute they are, I'm sick of these damn furry things. If you don't want me to lose my mind, you'll stick to lizards and fish from here on, all these bad-hair-day animals are seriously taxing my sanity"
I would also like to provide you with another possible book title, feel free to use it as you wish.
"Windows XP: for dummies"
I'm actually aware that in some areas, and at some times, margarine was un-colored. My mother and grandmother have mentioned in stories of mixing the yellow coloring packets into the stuff. And I remember signage in some of the corner cafe's in Brooklyn where I ate durring college there was signage regarding how everything served was real butter, and it mentioned the legal statue that governed this.
I however was going for the simpler connotation, but you do bring to light a signifcant flaw to the metaphor.
Thanks for reading.
hmm, where else will this trend lead us? We already have green ketchup and artificially colored margarine-spread.
How about some mix & match taste sensations!
Liver & Onions Cereal (the kids love it!)
Cod Cheeks & Brussel Sprouts (building health bones and halitosis)
Chicken Nuggets & Scrambled Eggs (Free Salmonella Inside)
the possibilities are endless... (and nauseating!)
it didn't go over my head. I was quite aware of the fact that you were using the cliche'd cmdrtaco reference to show how ludicrous it is. What I was commenting on is the fact that your troll-ish response has a painfully accurate implication in the real world. ...meant to be a "dumb crapflood"
But yes, I will agree that it was
>>
that's the general implication. IIRC there are several countries in europe and northern africa where it is illegal to criticise the ruling party/royal family/family-of-the-royal-bed-warmer... wouldn't you love to see every two-bit dictator with an ego-issue sueing cnn.com for 'defamination', 'libel' or here's the clincher... treason.
draw your own conclusions
Well, am I the only one who's bowels clench at the sound of this? Does this mean that e-mails that get routed through California-based servers will be subject to this? What about California residents who have mail servers in different states... their mail 'originates' in the sunny fascist state of CA, but it doesn't get stored there. How about California residents who send e-mail while outside of their home state. /. crowd is fairly militant and reactionary over these issues, but I for one am going to try and do a little more than normal about this. Time to draft an e-mail to all my family members who live in California and see if I can get a few of them to take action on this.
I can only hope that a massive influx of hard, direct questions to the office of the Governor of California - Gray Davis(governor@governor.ca.gov) that this is unacceptable to the people of his constituency.
The
It would also be grand if someone could post a link to (or transcript of) the governor's State of the State speech tonight.
If anyone else is aware of grassroot groups that are actively and positively working on raising the public's awareness to this kind of knee-jerk violation of our rights, please post applicable links here, and see what we can do to keep this getting any worse.
OK, while I'm all for bizarre uses of neat hardware with geek-appeal, you may well be doing your friend a disservice by trying to move him from a PC to a Dreamcast. The first issue I see here is connectivity; you've gotta have it or you're better off just locking him in a closet somewhere with a flashight and a pad of paper.
Having watched the traffic on the dreamcast-linux mailling list devolve into people spouting noise about how someone should just auto-magically develop firmware and drivers for the WinModem and everyone begging for a BBA for less than $150, I have to say that things are lagging. Without a real option for stand-alone connectivity on the dreamcast, you're screwed. Play rogue all you want, but when your friend is done typing his papers in vi he's going to be SOL when he tries to get the info off the dreamcast.
As it stands, the going rate on BBA's is $120-150 (pre-shipping, pre-tax, pre-hey-we're-all-out-of-em) which could easily replace the dead PC that has got you into this mess.
Even if you find a hidden cache of BBAs at an affordable price, you still are going to have him dependant on NFS mounts and other machines for functionality with the Dreamcast.
My mucking about with dreamcast as a thin-client/mp3-player/SNES-emulator is just that... mucking about. I do not delude myself that I can make it a functioning day-to-day desktop system, and I suggest you re-evaluate your friend's needs with a more cynical eye. I wish you the best of luck in this, and would love to hear how you proceed with said endevour, but you may well find that $250 bucks later the PC is just the best option.
Keep us posted
And I for one would like to chime in and wish Dmitry Sklyarov a happy birthday and best wishes for the coming year. I would also like to offer whatever condolences I can for the demeaning treatment and heavy-handed legal fiasco that the U.S. Federal Government has put him through.
I wish him, and his employer (who stood by him through all this, what US company does that these days...) a happy new year and the best of luck in their future plans.
Maybe as american citizens we should see what we can do to prevent this kind of tragic miscarrige of justice from happening again, I for one am ashamed that I was not more vocal and active over the past few years while the ground-work for these flawed laws and regulations was laid. Time for me to check out what I can do for the EFF.
hmmm, well, for starters you might wish to look at www.linuxdoc.org/linuxfocus/Castellano which I would assume is a repository of Spanish-language documentation for Linux.
There is also the Debian translation repository at: www.debian.org/international/Spanish
And if you're interested in a Red-Hat based distribution that is supposed to have a fairly complete collection of spanish instructions, check out: conectiva.com. These guys also have a spanish-language publication that you might be interested in looking into. You might even want to sign up your new admin for a year or so.
hmmm, it's amazing what you can find in 15 seconds with Google, isn't it?
I must say, terminatorX looks like the best open-source/low-cost solution I've seen all year (in this arena). This is definitly something that I'm going to look into. Thanx for sharing the .nfo!
well, I've seen these and played with them in a few stores, and let's face it, they ain't the miracle 'wheels of steel'... mixing is a tactile, sensory, feedback driven 'process' for lack of a better term. Watch a true DJ play the decks, they drag fingers on the label to slow a track down just enough to get the beats matched. They twist the post between their fingers to get a little more speed and make magic happen. .mod players that I still use on my BeOS boxen. They provide a clinical, digital interface that allows you to play with musical themes, components and transitions in ways that your average beginner cannot even approach. But again, I still consider it just a tool to further my knowledge of how a good groove works and how to utilize all the musical influence that there is around me.
:) the Final Scratch [finalscratch.com]. By using true turntables as the proven interface, you allow the masters of wax to use all their flare, body-scratches, almost everything they have spend countless hours practicing and refining (well, everything but hydroplaning). But the actual sound is created through the digital manipulation and control of MP3's and other audio formats. While it may not be a truely optimal solution for some, it does meld the two most popular aspects of the old-school vinyl camp with the digital precison and endurance of the new digital-era digi-jays. I cannot count the number of times I have had to retire old vinyl that had given it's best and finally just gotten to worn to play. These days I'm prone to rip stuff to mp3 and play with it there for a while before I start eating away at it's life-span by putting it under the needle.
I've been learning for years, and I still don't feel that I'm half as good as I should to be when I spin at house-parties. I'm still learning some basic tricks, tweak-scratches, roll-backs, all of the tools the man (and woman!) behind the wheels rely on to move a party and make the choons bump.
I've also gotten pretty heavily into tools like Sonic Foundry's ACID and the old MIDI and
The DM2 is another tool in this arena, but it is not the philospher's stone, and I doubt that in it's present incarnation it will go much beyond the starter-kit market who doesn't want to cough up $500 for two cheezy belt-drive 'tables and a mixer that cross-fades like a brick. It does however present an opportunity to expose more people to the aspects of 'turntablism' that seems to be the vogue.
I would like to note that blahtree brought up an important tool that I remember from the days when BeOS was still considered viable...
Now while I do have all my classics on vinyl (I've culled it down to 200-300 of my favorites) I would love to be able to show up at a gig with just a wallet of DVD's and not have to worry about herniating over 120lbs of wax. (tho' the final scratch still requires you to haul your 90 lbs. coffin. Hey, those SL-1200's are 40 friggin' pounds each, but that just keep us "I've been DJ'ing parties 7 nights a week and haven't seen daylight in a month" phreaks in shape.)
As I have heard said, "In the 80's every kid wanted a guitar, now they all want their own set of turntables."
try again troll-boy, the post states:
"I recently installed NTAS on a 486DX2/66 over a previous installation of the release version of NT..."
"After a successful installation, I proceeded to add TCP/IP, FTP server, and Services for Macintosh. NTAS would reach the login dialog, then die the blue screen death. After some experimentation, I determined that Services for Macintosh was conflicting with the 3COM Elnk16 ethernet card..."
I think that it would be rather obvious that he is in fact working on a BSOD-capable platform. The 'macintosh' here is simply the 'Services for Macintosh' component, which at the time was known to be buggy as hell.
Check your facts or go home...
Well, considering that those of us in the Boston area just had record-breaking 70 degree temps in the first week of December, we should make plans to colonize Mars before the weather there gets any worse.
But hey, don't worry, global warming (be it a natural cycle in the global ecosystem, a condition caused by man's encroachment on the carbon sinks of the planet, depletion of the ozone layer, of just plain bad luck) isn't anything to worry about. Just think of it as an extra reason to work on your tan.
A friend of mine had something like this for his Cavalier a couple years ago. When the alarm was triggered, the bullhorn under the hood cranked out this (fairly realistic) female scream followed by "Help! I'm being molested! Help!" in a rather 'I-work-in-blue-movies-now-but-I-really-want-to-do -shakespeare' voice. It would then go into a more standard car alarm warble for a few seconds, only to repeat the female voice again.
The first couple times it scared the shite out of me, but I got desensized to it by the time he traded up for a new vehicle. I think the device was from RatShack, but all I know is that I have yet to hear an alarm like it since.
Anyone else heard that one?
different people are liable to answer this one in different ways. Some deep linux folks are going to approach this for the challenge. Other people are going to explore the world of embedded systems and game console magic. Some folks like myself are going to try and get another tool into the house. I'm looking forward to being able to turn on a 'device' in my TV cabinet and play MP3's over the network, pop-up a browser, maybe even let someone hop onto their web-mail. .8(alpha) onto this platform.
This is the niche that I would like to fill with a thin-client solution.
And with a good implementation of Linux on PS2, I may have that thin-client.
But the beauty of this is that everyone else out there is going to be porting MAME, AIM, Mozilla, Gnutella, and kitchen_sink
Imagine a thousand users, with a thousand consoles, each with their own killer-app. THAT is what I forsee with this. PS2 is not the new business desktop, it isn't necessarily what you want to give Grandma to e-mail the grandkids. It is a tool that has great possibilites for a broad-range of people who are interested in playing with this platform. I would urge people to make this happen. Buy the kit, learn how it works, create stand-alone (DiskJuggler, Nero, or ISO) images that the more technically inclined can produce and distribute to their non-geek friends.
I've got a fresh batch of cookies waiting for the first person to point me to a workable image that I can use to let my friend play all his old SuperNintendo games (he still has the game cartridges in the attic, so don't whine about copyright!) on his shiny PS2.
I have worked in desk-side and phone support for close to a decade... people can (and will!) do this in whatever OS you give them. I can't tell you how many engineers in my company thought they would save some space by moving the c:/winnt directory to the trash. I mean, c'mon, you guys upgraded me to Windows 2000 last week, I don't need Windows NT any more! Hey, it doesn't work! you broke it!!!
Without some pretty drastic UI-level intervention you are never going to drool-proof a machine. by the time you idiot-proof a process, only an idiot will be interested in using it. besides, the universe is eternally developing bigger, better, and more inventive idiots...
I'm just imagining the horrid phonetic contortions the poor chip would produce trying to interpret the acronym-laden jargon that us techie folks throw around so loosely. I mean, we have enough trouble agreeing on how you should pronounce something simple like MMPOG. And then there are people's habits of using code-speak and syntax fragments? the poor punctuation checker will shoot itself.
The mind reels in horror...
hmm, sounds to me like you've got a very noble project on your hands; use technology to assist the scientific process. However, I think you're going to have a bit of trouble finding those kinds of deep technical specs for hardware devices that you may be re-purposing beyond their intended usage... I remember many a HP Chromograph system that had to be completely replaced (or radically upgraded) at great expense when a simple hardware hack could have provided a strap-on solution to the problem. In particular I'm recalling a heating/ventilation issue that some ingenious soul had resolved by building a simple hot-box inside the machine with a peltier, thermistor and some PICs to maintain even sample temperature for some device. HP's solution was a whole new piece of kit that cost more than a car, but someone rev-engineered it and saved some serious beer-money for the lab. HP, I'm sure, doesn't approve of these things (I'm not knocking HP, it's a corporate survival instinct). Now you may have the best intentions in the world, but I find it pretty hard to believe that the manufacturers are going to go out of their way to make this info available to you, so a little research is probably in order.
a) See if anyone in the open-source community is working on projects utilizing this hardware. Heck, see if you can find some uber-geek who's been involved in creating linux drivers for a bunch of scanners; maybe you'll find someone who has a great storehouse of eclectic ccd-centric knowledge they would be glad to dump on you.
b) Never underestimate the power of documentation. As I always was told, "documentation is like sex, even when it's bad, it's better than nothing..." Maybe they've listed component manufacturers in the crufty stuff they pack in the back of some of the user manuals.
c) Love your service technician. If you're working with equipment that requires outside support, get friendly with him/her and see if you can't wheedle yourself a set of old support/repair documentation. Most of these people are wage-slaves like us and may well be interested in your little projects.
Beyond that, keep your nose to the grindstone and good luck. Let us know how it goes.
Yaaay!
I remember this one back in the day, and now we've got the double-header of it being ported to Linux and even more importantly, visable signs of life from Loki. Get out the good word and force your friends to pre-order this little jem. I spent many a night hunched over a screen, slaughtering mailmen and innocent bystandards.
I wonder if they have toned down the gib-factor at all? Then again, with America's recent blood-lust, this may sell quite well.
hmmm...
because I would find it much more enjoyable to know that .sux is associated to a Microsoft endeavor than with one of my own .ass projects.
hmmm, maybe someone on the inside could sneak .sux under PHB radar in the Micro$oft camp? Anyone feeling adventurous?