Awhile ago, before Jaguar, I (inadvertently) found a way to make Mac OS X 10.1.something kernel panic, by writing some absolutely horrid BSD sockets code (the kind you write when you're trying to help a fellow developer but you've not slept in far too long). I submitted it to Apple via the darwin-dev list, and they were very hip on fixing it. A software update including the fix was available I think two weeks later.
Now, i'm sure they had other things in that update, and it wasn't just on my account, but they thought it important enough to roll it in anyway. I thought that was the coolest thing:-)
-- an actual quote (made partly, but not totally in jest, i'm sure) by our CEO, in which he suggested that, a day being 24 hours, a half day would be 12. Yeah -- we thought it was funny, too:-)
Regards,
John
Falling You -- exploring the beauty of voice and sound
I must respectfully disagree with your recent policy decision of putting copy protection on all CDs you release, thereby making teh CDs unplayable on a lot of equipment. I have no intention of purchasing CDs that will not play on my Macintoshes at home or PCs at work, much less my boombox from 5 years ago. I am an artist (http://www.mp3.com/fallingyou), and I have to say that this recent development does not sit well with me.
Please reconsider this decision.
Respectfully,
John Michael Zorko
300 Braemoor Dr
Santa Cruz, CA 95060
Falling You - exploring the beauty of voice and sound
http://www.mp3.com/fallingyou
*****
Remember -- when writing, a courteous tone is much more likely to result in the feedback being actually read than vitriol.
Accolades to Patrick for doing what he believed in. While i'm at it, i'll also say:
Accolades to the 100% of us who don't fit the stereotypes we template ourselves and others with. Kudos to all of us for being _human_ and therefore more than what a few words can portray. Applause is due to all of us who 'win,' all of us who 'lose' and all of us who aren't really concerned with 'winning' or 'losing.' Awards are due to everyone who manages to get through another day (good, bad or indifferent) of what we have made.
What am I trying to say? Simple -- that no one is as shallow as any stereotype portrays them to be, hence any template we try to frame others with is inaccurate and fundamentally flawed. 'Jock' and 'nerd' stereotypes don't measure what sort of parents we are, what sort of partners we are, countless other things. So, bravo! to the jocks, the nerds, the outcasts, the goths, the stoners, the winners, the losers, etc. Congratulations, you're human.
This sounds like an interesting read... still, it occurs to me that where the train is going is much easier to predict once it's already started or, in the case of change, been going in a certain pattern / direction for awhile. I don't think the process of change is linear at all (at least with respect to the train metaphor) but Alvin Toffler said a lot of things years ago, which it seems are recycled by others and branded with their name.
Hey, it's ok though... these things are usually interesting reads regardless of who said what first, imho.
The Bible is a grand, beautiful book, and I think that Christ was one of the greatest teachers and thinkers that ever lived (despite my being agnostic). However, to take the word of the Bible literally (or to "literally imply") is to fall into that same trap as so many others have fallen into i.e. people who have used the word of the Bible to justify all sorts of less-than-cool stuff.
It's one thing to subscribe to a belief system, especially one with as many good things about it as Christianity. But these systems must adapt to the times -- the Christian of today doesn't believe many of the things that a Christian of 1000 years ago believed. Does that make today's Christian more or less of a Christian as judged by the standards that existed then?
Creationists all too often see science as trying to 'disprove' the existence of a divine being. I think that this is a negative way of looking at it. I like to think of science as trying to find out more about the universe that God (if there is a God) made.
A friend of mine told me of an organization which calls itself "People Against Airplanes." The members of this organization supposedly truly believe than man cannot fly, that all airplanes are a hoax (holograms), that the view you see outside an airplane window is actually a film, and that what people think are airplanes are really high-speed underground subway systems:-)
While I don't run LinuxPPC 2000 on a G3 (I run it on an 8500/200, though I plan on upgrading that to a G3 soon enough), XMMS worked fine the one time I tried it. I installed everything but that funky japanese language thing (so the menus would be in english), coded the PPP connection script, connected, ran Netscape, connected to mp3.com, clicked lo-fi play (33.6k modem for now, ugh), and XMMS came up and started playing the stuff. Actually, it was a little disappointing how it just _worked_...:-)
They should. Even if we manage to properly manage the resources we have on this planet, without a natural predator or some other natural means of trimming our population, we'll eventually outgrow it. I am not advocating ZPG-style politics at all, but once we mature as sentient beings enough to properly manage what we've got here, we will need to face the sobering thought of leaving home eventually.
We should never 'learn' to be satisfied with things the way they are. We should never 'learn' to be fat and happy -- and I believe that, biologically, we can't. The same processes that started life continue to work as we evolve, the sooner we realize to operate 'within' the system which bore us, and not 'on top' of it, the more we will grow, eventually to face some of the really, really big questions.
I am completely, 100% in favor of educating more and more people regarding the power of the personal computer, even programming -- heck, _especially_ programming. Books like the Dummy books are absolutely brilliant -- they pull back the curtain and show the reader what's really going on. It also shows them that they can do it, that they're not the 'dummy' they maybe thought they were.
The power of the personal computer; the power to develop their own solutions, should not be confined to the rarified realm of programmers and engineers. _Everyone_ can benefit from this, and the more this information is brought out into the open, the better. I recently bought a friend of mine a "Visual BASIC for Dummies" book. He was, at first, a bit fearful of it, but once he started, he started really enjoying it. HE called me once about a bug, and when I showed him what the problem was (i'm certainly no VB expert, I work in C++ primarily), he immediately _understood_ it, saying something like "Of course! I checked everything else but that." One could see his esteem growing; it made me feel really good.
Regards, John
PDAs and MIDI (First Newton, now Palm?)
on
Pilot Synthesis
·
· Score: 1
PDAs and MIDI just go together -- anyone ever play with a Yamaha QY10/20? These things rock -- nice and small sequencer. Though my Newtons (130 and 2100) don't sound as well, they sequence and playback MIDI just as well. I've used my MP2100 several times in a live setting, having it play ambient stuff in the background on my JV90 / SY77 / JV880 that other people and I improvise on top of. They rock for this...
Alvin Toffler wrote a book called "The Third Wave" that attempts to explain what many people view as the disintegration of modern society (heck, modern _everything_ pretty much). Mr. Toffler attributes this to a change in era, and draws some interesting similarities between some of the chaos of today and the chaos when the industrial revolution really hit the world.
I'm not saying Mr. Toffler has got it right, but it is an interesting and refreshing book, a good read, and it makes one think a bit (which is what the people at/. are all about, right?) about where we _are_ headed.
Wow... I bought this book last year, then lost it after only getting 1/3 through it (though I did enjoy that 1/3). Now, Greene's on Nightline, Frequency, the book is everywhere. So, I bought it again:-)
Anyway, this "irreconciliable _and_ true" post brought back shades of Everett / Many Worlds / Schrodinger's Cat / etc. I haven't read any of _that_ stuff in a while, either.
There is a big difference between speaking and writing. It's evident Lars was speaking, and this was transcribed. It is no reflection of the intelligence of the speaker.
So, while I disagree with Metallica on this whole thing (i'm more in agreement with Chuck D's position), I also disagree with labelling people. The Big Guy labelling the Little Guy as a 'nerd' or 'thief' is bad. The Little Guy labelling the Big Guy as 'ignorant' or 'stupid' is just as bad.
... and to this I submit that the usefullness of a computer is not necessarily attached to the age of it's technology. In other words, people _use_ them, even if they're not the fastest anymore, or the biggest, or even the prettiest. I've got 2 Mac 8500s at home; one running MacOS 8.6 with a G3/366 card for audio stuff (i'm big into ambient music and sound experiments), the other running LinuxPPC on a 200MHz 604e for everything non-audio. Both of them continue to do everything I ask of them; the audio Mac still runs all of the latest Mac-based audio software well enough.
A lot of us are more interested in _doing things_ with the computer, even if it's 3 years old or more.
If the DMCA is extended to prohibit file sharing over the net, then... um, well, I guess *nix is illegal, as well as NT, Win2000, BeOS, SCO, BSD, MacOS X, um... Palm OS, my Newton, CE, etc. Almost all OSes these days do TCP/IP and FTP. I'm writing my representative about this. This sentence is even more boring than the last one.
"Countries and organisations that have spent their resources on an information infrastructure should feel no need to help others to join it. The poorer countries of the world are already far too dependent upon handouts from the West, and should be encouraged to sort out their problems on their own before joining the rest of us in the Information Age." Oh, I can't accept this. This _whole_ argument breaks down when we get past the "good government, bad government" politics and get down to the atoms of said governments (good and bad) -- namely, the _people_. I ask you, would you apply this same argument to other resources, like water or food? To say "sort your own problems out before you think about joining us" seems almost incomprehensibly evil when these are the resources in need. The internet, free software and freely available technical- and bio-information may not often be needed to feed your family or your children, but there is much more to being alive than eating and drinking. To advocate any ideal that separates people, whether the separator is color, religion, class, or access, etc., is quite hard for me to stomach; walls are usually bad things. Those of us lucky enough to be born in the richer nations should do everything possible to close the gap; after all, we didn't _do_ anything to be born where we were born. We had no say in it, and neither did the billions born in less opportunistic environments. Regards, John
JD, Anyone with a little cash can get on ansi.org, give a credit card number, and download the ISO/IEC 13818-x specs. These are the specs for MPEG2 audio and video, as well as systems, DSM-CC, all sorts of other stuff. With these specs, anyone with some diligence (who doesn't mind reading occasionally obtuse phrases like "Normative references" and "Recommendation | International Standard") can code an mp3 player, a digital television, a digital audio receiver, a digital VCR, a digital remote-control, etc. You can even go to mpeg.org and see all sorts of source (most of which is MPEG1) and see how others have done it. Really... the RIAA doesn't own mp3... Regards, John
Slashdot Mirror
Regards,
John, once again lamenting the human condition
Falling You -- exploring the beauty of voice and sound
I am so happy! I'm doin' the Snoopy dance!
Regards,
John, doin' the Snoopy dance
Falling You -- exploring the beauty of voice and sound
Now, i'm sure they had other things in that update, and it wasn't just on my account, but they thought it important enough to roll it in anyway. I thought that was the coolest thing :-)
Regards,
John
Falling You - exploring the beauty of voice and sound http://www.mp3.com/fallingyou
-- an actual quote (made partly, but not totally in jest, i'm sure) by our CEO, in which he suggested that, a day being 24 hours, a half day would be 12. Yeah -- we thought it was funny, too :-)
Regards, John
Falling You -- exploring the beauty of voice and sound
Bill: "This Windows XP PC is acting all funny, it keeps thinking the LAN card is bad, but it's just fine."
Ted: "Dude, see those words on the screen? It's _listening_ to us! We need to go somewhere where it can't hear us!"
Bill: "How about that spacepod over there?"
Ted: "Excellent! It'll never hear us in there!" (jumps up, slap hands)
(I can't help but wonder: Can WinXP read lips?)
Regards,
John
Falling You - exploring the beauty of voice and sound
http://www.mp3.com/fallingyou
All at Universal ...
I must respectfully disagree with your recent policy decision of putting copy protection on all CDs you release, thereby making teh CDs unplayable on a lot of equipment. I have no intention of purchasing CDs that will not play on my Macintoshes at home or PCs at work, much less my boombox from 5 years ago. I am an artist (http://www.mp3.com/fallingyou), and I have to say that this recent development does not sit well with me.
Please reconsider this decision.
Respectfully,
John Michael Zorko
300 Braemoor Dr
Santa Cruz, CA 95060
Falling You - exploring the beauty of voice and sound
http://www.mp3.com/fallingyou
*****
Remember -- when writing, a courteous tone is much more likely to result in the feedback being actually read than vitriol.
Regards,
John
Accolades to the 100% of us who don't fit the stereotypes we template ourselves and others with. Kudos to all of us for being _human_ and therefore more than what a few words can portray. Applause is due to all of us who 'win,' all of us who 'lose' and all of us who aren't really concerned with 'winning' or 'losing.' Awards are due to everyone who manages to get through another day (good, bad or indifferent) of what we have made.
What am I trying to say? Simple -- that no one is as shallow as any stereotype portrays them to be, hence any template we try to frame others with is inaccurate and fundamentally flawed. 'Jock' and 'nerd' stereotypes don't measure what sort of parents we are, what sort of partners we are, countless other things. So, bravo! to the jocks, the nerds, the outcasts, the goths, the stoners, the winners, the losers, etc. Congratulations, you're human.
Regards,
John
This sounds like an interesting read ... still, it occurs to me that where the train is going is much easier to predict once it's already started or, in the case of change, been going in a certain pattern / direction for awhile. I don't think the process of change is linear at all (at least with respect to the train metaphor) but Alvin Toffler said a lot of things years ago, which it seems are recycled by others and branded with their name.
Hey, it's ok though ... these things are usually interesting reads regardless of who said what first, imho.
Regards,
John
My brother once told me of a movie entitled "The Legend of the Loch Ness Monster" or something like that. He then said that it starred Ted Danson.
My immediate response was, "Wow, that's a LOT of makeup!" :-)
Regards,
John
Wow, it's amazing what you can do with makeup these days :-)
Regards,
John
I had no idea I was _so_ close to the Truth :-)
Regards,
John
P.S. That was _quite_ funny -- thanks for a good laugh!
Emerson,
The Bible is a grand, beautiful book, and I think that Christ was one of the greatest teachers and thinkers that ever lived (despite my being agnostic). However, to take the word of the Bible literally (or to "literally imply") is to fall into that same trap as so many others have fallen into i.e. people who have used the word of the Bible to justify all sorts of less-than-cool stuff.
It's one thing to subscribe to a belief system, especially one with as many good things about it as Christianity. But these systems must adapt to the times -- the Christian of today doesn't believe many of the things that a Christian of 1000 years ago believed. Does that make today's Christian more or less of a Christian as judged by the standards that existed then?
Creationists all too often see science as trying to 'disprove' the existence of a divine being. I think that this is a negative way of looking at it. I like to think of science as trying to find out more about the universe that God (if there is a God) made.
Regards,
John
A friend of mine told me of an organization which calls itself "People Against Airplanes." The members of this organization supposedly truly believe than man cannot fly, that all airplanes are a hoax (holograms), that the view you see outside an airplane window is actually a film, and that what people think are airplanes are really high-speed underground subway systems :-)
Regards,
John
While I don't run LinuxPPC 2000 on a G3 (I run it on an 8500/200, though I plan on upgrading that to a G3 soon enough), XMMS worked fine the one time I tried it. I installed everything but that funky japanese language thing (so the menus would be in english), coded the PPP connection script, connected, ran Netscape, connected to mp3.com, clicked lo-fi play (33.6k modem for now, ugh), and XMMS came up and started playing the stuff. Actually, it was a little disappointing how it just _worked_ ... :-)
Regards,
John
They should. Even if we manage to properly manage the resources we have on this planet, without a natural predator or some other natural means of trimming our population, we'll eventually outgrow it. I am not advocating ZPG-style politics at all, but once we mature as sentient beings enough to properly manage what we've got here, we will need to face the sobering thought of leaving home eventually.
We should never 'learn' to be satisfied with things the way they are. We should never 'learn' to be fat and happy -- and I believe that, biologically, we can't. The same processes that started life continue to work as we evolve, the sooner we realize to operate 'within' the system which bore us, and not 'on top' of it, the more we will grow, eventually to face some of the really, really big questions.
Regards,
John
The power of the personal computer; the power to develop their own solutions, should not be confined to the rarified realm of programmers and engineers. _Everyone_ can benefit from this, and the more this information is brought out into the open, the better. I recently bought a friend of mine a "Visual BASIC for Dummies" book. He was, at first, a bit fearful of it, but once he started, he started really enjoying it. HE called me once about a bug, and when I showed him what the problem was (i'm certainly no VB expert, I work in C++ primarily), he immediately _understood_ it, saying something like "Of course! I checked everything else but that." One could see his esteem growing; it made me feel really good.
Regards, JohnFor a taste, try this
Regards, John
Alvin Toffler wrote a book called "The Third Wave" that attempts to explain what many people view as the disintegration of modern society (heck, modern _everything_ pretty much). Mr. Toffler attributes this to a change in era, and draws some interesting similarities between some of the chaos of today and the chaos when the industrial revolution really hit the world.
I'm not saying Mr. Toffler has got it right, but it is an interesting and refreshing book, a good read, and it makes one think a bit (which is what the people at /. are all about, right?) about where we _are_ headed.
Regards, John
Anyway, this "irreconciliable _and_ true" post brought back shades of Everett / Many Worlds / Schrodinger's Cat / etc. I haven't read any of _that_ stuff in a while, either.
Regards, John
So, while I disagree with Metallica on this whole thing (i'm more in agreement with Chuck D's position), I also disagree with labelling people. The Big Guy labelling the Little Guy as a 'nerd' or 'thief' is bad. The Little Guy labelling the Big Guy as 'ignorant' or 'stupid' is just as bad.
Life is Bigger than the Internet.
Regards, John
A lot of us are more interested in _doing things_ with the computer, even if it's 3 years old or more.
If the DMCA is extended to prohibit file sharing over the net, then ... um, well, I guess *nix is illegal, as well as NT, Win2000, BeOS, SCO, BSD, MacOS X, um ... Palm OS, my Newton, CE, etc. Almost all OSes these days do TCP/IP and FTP. I'm writing my representative about this. This sentence is even more boring than the last one.
"Countries and organisations that have spent their resources on an information infrastructure should feel no need to help others to join it. The poorer countries of the world are already far too dependent upon handouts from the West, and should be encouraged to sort out their problems on their own before joining the rest of us in the Information Age." Oh, I can't accept this. This _whole_ argument breaks down when we get past the "good government, bad government" politics and get down to the atoms of said governments (good and bad) -- namely, the _people_. I ask you, would you apply this same argument to other resources, like water or food? To say "sort your own problems out before you think about joining us" seems almost incomprehensibly evil when these are the resources in need. The internet, free software and freely available technical- and bio-information may not often be needed to feed your family or your children, but there is much more to being alive than eating and drinking. To advocate any ideal that separates people, whether the separator is color, religion, class, or access, etc., is quite hard for me to stomach; walls are usually bad things. Those of us lucky enough to be born in the richer nations should do everything possible to close the gap; after all, we didn't _do_ anything to be born where we were born. We had no say in it, and neither did the billions born in less opportunistic environments. Regards, John
JD, Anyone with a little cash can get on ansi.org, give a credit card number, and download the ISO/IEC 13818-x specs. These are the specs for MPEG2 audio and video, as well as systems, DSM-CC, all sorts of other stuff. With these specs, anyone with some diligence (who doesn't mind reading occasionally obtuse phrases like "Normative references" and "Recommendation | International Standard") can code an mp3 player, a digital television, a digital audio receiver, a digital VCR, a digital remote-control, etc. You can even go to mpeg.org and see all sorts of source (most of which is MPEG1) and see how others have done it. Really ... the RIAA doesn't own mp3 ... Regards, John