There's nothing wrong with Jon Katz -STORIES-. When he's on subject, he's pretty good. But unless they have an option to remove Jon Katz -movie reviews-, it's just irritating.
Let me summarize.
Stories good.
Reviews pointless.
There's a difference between a troll, and just saying that something just doesn't quite fit.
Really. Why do we have to see Jon Katz do movie reviews? Sure, he's an industry pundit. But it's the technology industry, not the movie industry. News for Nerds. Stuff that matters. Does reading about a technology pundit's opinion on Zoolander matter? Not really. Why don't we put up Jim Barksdale's top ten porn flicks of all time, if that's the case?
Sigh. I usually ignore people that flame about Slashdot losing it's focus, because I know that geekdom has many circles. Sure, LoTR and Star Wars might be just fine. But Zoolander? Ben Stiller is a genius, yes. But there's no particular nerd genre appeal.
Let's all just tell Jon to get a KriticKatz.com website for these things, and keep the front page of Slashdot at least slightly focused. Please?
About two days after the release of Progeny for download, I grabbed a copy. It immediately became my distro of choice, beating out Redhat, SuSE and Mandrake soundly. I really like the Debian package management, and apt-get is just wonderful. But the thing that impressed me most about Progeny was the simple, but still capable install process. I can get a machine up and running with Progeny quite a bit quicker than with my SuSE distro, and it's a lot less of a hassle to upgrade using the Debian packages.
I really didn't even know what NOW was, until... well, now. But I think Progeny offers plenty of value even without something that ambitious on the horizon.
Hardly. First, that implies that people have a credit line that'll get you AmEx. And again, this comes across as just another example of Slashdot elitism. ''We all need to be making huge amounts of money to afford anything neat.'' There are a lot of things out there that truly are affordable, to people even with a lower level of income than what people may be used to with the high-paying (and rapidly vanishing) silicon valley lifestyle. For five dollars, I think something like this that doesn't require a whole hell of a lot of effort to pick up yet has the potential to become an actually useful item to people of all income brackets.
Posts like this, and articles saying that $2000 for a wearable computer is affordable really go a long way toward projecting the image that people that read here really don't have any interest in things that are actually truly affordable.
I'd like to hope we'll start seeing articles about things that are actually reasonably purchased on less than a $50/hr. income, but I doubt it.
Actually, I don't think the card itself stores information on the pad's features. It appears to me that the various inserts that the pad ships with, are each designed to tell the pad software which links to use. Not that the inserts are smart, but that the software is.
Now, the real question is how smart the card itself is? Is it a simple serial number that lets the software do all the work, or can information be stored on it? If the former, that might be better for security applications, and if the latter, it might be better suited toward saving personalized data. As each card is non-numbered, on the outside, appearing to have no way to uniquely ID them, it makes the whole matter completely up in the air. I'd like this to get to the main page so we can see more input.:)
Palm devices have done great things for the people who bought them for contact management, scheduling, and porting small data files with them on the go. But the reason WinCE devices are selling at levels that are beginning to really erode Palm's lead, is that the average consumer simply wants bells and whistles.
I look at my Palm IIIc that I got just this past February for $329, and wonder what I really did get for my money. Having waited just a few months, I could have gotten an m505 with the extra money saved. Though if I were going to do that, and spend five hundred dollars or so, why not get a WinCE device? Expandable memory using more common components than the new stuff in a 500/505, and with a variety of vendors to choose from.
The basic reason Palm needs to make this change, is because simple and reliable isn't impressive. Those of us who -do- know better, are rare indeed. I was a longtime PC fanatic, until I saw a recent iBook, and how well it handily trashed my IBM ThinkPad for reliability. I may be glad I got my IIIc when I did, but I do still feel badly about the fact people with less knowledge get better toys.
I shouldn't rant when I'm tired. Damn this heat.
Palm needs to deliver stability, AND better toys and gimmicks. I just hope they pull it off.
It appears that most of Gracenote's bitching is about the "unauthorized derivative" status of FreeDB. They're claiming that FreeDB is using data from their servers, and acting as though FreeDB were still somehow reliant on the CDDB system. Is this in any way true? I like FreeDB, but I can see Gracenote's point if there's actually a link between FreeDB and the CDDB database.
Another major part of this issue is the claim of breach of contract. That one may be valid, depending on what kind of contract Roxio had signed. I agree completely that this is a really crappy situation, but Roxio might have a little more leverage than we think.
Microsoft products always have bugs, it won't run AOL by definition if AOL doesn't write software that's compatible, XP has been known to have compatibility issues with legacy Windows applications, and.NET seems like it could be the biggest problem for online privacy in ages.
It may not be the most honorable way to deal with this threat to AOL, but it's certainly a method they could legitimately use.
Having gotten online in around 1990 (Tymnet/Telenet) as a wannabe hacker at 15, I got into the net quite solidly once I had Internet access and discovered MUDs. For some reason I completely failed to see the appeal of email, most likely because the people I first started interacting with, I interacted with in a more realtime environment. I remember, sometime in '95 te literally undergoing total net withdrawl during a visit to my mother's house. Ashamedly, I think I have to admit I was quiet irritable and bitchy the entire time, NEEDING to get online and see my friends, write something, talk to someone (Well, type) and demonstrate just how little life I had.
Nowadays, I can go without full access to the net pretty easily for a week or two at a time, longer if I'm visiting one of the good friends I've met there. In fact, I vastly prefer being offline and doing something, to being in front of a keyboard. The only problem really comes in that my entire life has been lived in a virtual manner. My friendships, my relationships, I can't think of more than a half dozen in a decade that weren't first met on the Internet. It's become so much a habit, that even though it isn't an addiction anymore, I find it difficult to socialize in reality.
Now here's my post for the troll of the week award.
Maybe why this generates so much attention, is because of the fact that this is the sort of thing that appears just one step away from being a serious problem. Does the average Linux user have anything to fear here? No, not yet. Does the average company that runs several Windows machines and a few Linux machines? No, not yet. Could this information become dangerous to people that Microsoft wants to hurt? Very likely.
What if Ziff-Davis publishes something bad about Microsoft, and spends a bunch of money on "Naked PC's", then some wag at Microsoft decides it's time to do a license audit on them. Regardless of whether the systems are all legal, it's a major hassle that can do damage to a business. And what company can say for absolute certain that none of it's thousand employees will have anything questionable on a machine? And what's to say Microsoft won't give this information to the Software Publisher's Association to help compile a list of suspected pirates, and tries to snare some of it's critics in the same blow?
Is there anything to fear right now? Probably not. Could there be? Possibly.
I don't like it, either way. I don't think of myself as paranoid, but then again...
The geek subculture has truly lost its status as subculture, and is rapidly being assimilated into the rest of pop culture as a whole. We've all noticed it, some of us have said it, and I really wonder how many of us want it.
Thanks to MP3, Silicon Valley cash, www.everyfuckingthingyouwantinporno.com and media hype over anything and everything to do with the Internet, it seems like things created by geeks have really done a number on society. The evolution of 2600 into semi-responsible corporate wannabes rather than Phiber Optik wannabes was expected, by me at least. When all is said and done, the more morally-ambiguous types will tend toward the path of least resistance, which these days, appears to be the corporate grind for the remnants of the dot-cash.
Just look at Think Geek. Hey, there's a lot of cool stuff there. But who other than a corporate flunky can actually afford any of it? Geeks have to be rich now, to stay geeks. We're being driven to it.
I guess I'll just have to stay at my community college support job until my contract ends, then contemplate surrendering my unfunded geekness. It's too expensive.
Either that, or I'll just have to start coding in C and work on kernel patches. Gotta do it old school.
I recently ran a nice, smooth, time-consuming batch conversion of nearly a hundred MP3 files on my Windows system into the Vorbis format. Now, I felt really bad after doing this. Why? I had made a rather simple mistake, and forgotten to see whether my CD-R software would still let me make music discs without having to manually decode to wave files.
Of course, were I using Linux as my CD-R platform, I'm sure there would be some way to use these files to do a direct CD-Audio burn without the intermediary step, but under Windows, do I have any options?
It seems in retrospect, that my decision to convert everything into the open Vorbis format was a good one... but only if I can find applications that will play them properly. And can someone talk to Lionhead about adding Vorbis support into Black and White?:)
There is no way this is going to work. Projections now say that 55% of online users will be using modems in 2004. That pretty much eliminates your claim that the 'Average users computer' can be online without an ISP. You also fail to realize that even broadband providers are ISP's. Anyone who sells you access to the Internet is an ISP. Whether they're also a phone or cable provider is besides the point. As long as there's money to be spent on infrastructure and money to be made by selling access, it's going to be a corporate deal.
I'm really surprised this didn't get modded as a troll. But it's early.:)
One thing I've noticed after over a year of lurking on/., and only recently starting to post regularly, is that readers here tend to be inclined to buy expensive toys. Now why is it a concern all of a sudden, if Internet access (Particularly broadband) becomes more expensive? Any time a 'Neat New Toy' comes around, it seems that the only mention it gets on Slashdot is if it's something expensive and/or hard to find. As a budget-conscious (Read: Damn Poor) geek, the only thing on Slashdot that's been mentioned lately, is the Dreamcast hardware going to bargain-basement levels. And I bought one of those right-quick.
To see an article like this, showing concern about the already low price of Internet access seems kind of like whining. I shell out $20 a month for less than a thirtieth of the bandwidth an average DSL or cable user gets, plus the expense of the dedicated phoneline, another $20. For my $40, I get busy signals, dropped lines, and 3.4K downloads when I'm lucky.
Prices will rise, that's a fact right now. There are more users, spending more time online, that's for certain. But anyone trying to make a huge deal about it just hasn't thought about the economics of it all.
I would love to eliminate all the MP3's on my system, as a way to encourage friends to use the Vorbis format. I currently have several gigs of MP3 files sitting on my hard drive, and occasionally give copies of the entire archive to friends so we can all listen to the same playlists while writing or hanging out.
However, reading this article pointed out one comment that I really wish I hadn't seen. They say it isn't necessary to convert existing MP3's into Vorbis files. I'd -really- like them to come out with a semi-official program to batch convert, and this remark makes me feel like it's less likely now. Is there such a thing available, something I could get and use to do an unattended conversion? I looked a while ago, but after a few days of not finding anything that didn't do it one-file-at-a-time, gave up. If someone comes out with a file like that, it'd be a great way for people to get others into using Vorbis instead of MP3. Force your friends to upgrade.:)
For the past three years, I've lived in one major metropolitan area, two cities of over 100K people, and two smaller cities. In every case, less than six months after I moved away, broadband became available. So you might say I'm kind of jaded. But.
At the same time, I see no reason why modem gamers shouldn't be able to enjoy many online games. I play Counterstrike quite respectably with a modem, though I am better at it when I use the frame relay at school. In gameplay, pings of under 250 are usually completely playable, though that does depend a great deal on the quality of the network code in your game.
The sad truth (Saddest for me as the town I live in now is barely 10K people) is that companies just don't want to invest in broadband if they can't reach a large number of users, users that are demographically inclined to use the net, from the central office location. Cablemodem has been in the process of coming here to Calais for several months now, but the cable company refuses to give us a date, despite the fact the college I attend has a comparatively large and rapidly growing computer tech program. Dozens of hyperactive 20 year olds wanting internet access like they have in school, once they graduate, are a target market that really doesn't make much impact. I'm glad to see this advance in modem technology, and hope my ISP and modem maker allow me to upgrade to it. If not... Anyone got a flashable modem I can have to put in my Linux box? I'm sure someone out there with broadband can spare an old modem.;)
If you don't want a non-traditional mouse, get used to having them die. Optical and wireless would be really hard to do properly, due to the amount of polling needed on the wireless frequency to get smooth movement, I think. 3-4 months between mouse deaths, is just plain silly. What're you using for a surface, a Shih-Tzu?
I haven't owned a traditional mouse in years. Got one of the very first ALPS Glidepoint desktop units, and only recently switched to a plain-Jane Logitech marble mouse.
How is the BSD license more "free" than GPL licensing? This I fail to see. The GPL seems to be designed to enforce freedom, which I admit seems odd on the surface, but it does make sense. It purports to help perpetuate the publicization of code. (That's a lotta P's.)
Okay. In a way, that would be better than the release of the XP source tree. The headlines screaming "Microsoft Convicted of Copyright Infringement" would be another nail in the coffin.
Slashdot Mirror
There's nothing wrong with Jon Katz -STORIES-. When he's on subject, he's pretty good. But unless they have an option to remove Jon Katz -movie reviews-, it's just irritating.
Let me summarize.
Stories good.
Reviews pointless.
There's a difference between a troll, and just saying that something just doesn't quite fit.
Really. Why do we have to see Jon Katz do movie reviews? Sure, he's an industry pundit. But it's the technology industry, not the movie industry. News for Nerds. Stuff that matters. Does reading about a technology pundit's opinion on Zoolander matter? Not really. Why don't we put up Jim Barksdale's top ten porn flicks of all time, if that's the case?
Sigh. I usually ignore people that flame about Slashdot losing it's focus, because I know that geekdom has many circles. Sure, LoTR and Star Wars might be just fine. But Zoolander? Ben Stiller is a genius, yes. But there's no particular nerd genre appeal.
Let's all just tell Jon to get a KriticKatz.com website for these things, and keep the front page of Slashdot at least slightly focused. Please?
I really didn't even know what NOW was, until... well, now. But I think Progeny offers plenty of value even without something that ambitious on the horizon.
Hardly. First, that implies that people have a credit line that'll get you AmEx. And again, this comes across as just another example of Slashdot elitism. ''We all need to be making huge amounts of money to afford anything neat.'' There are a lot of things out there that truly are affordable, to people even with a lower level of income than what people may be used to with the high-paying (and rapidly vanishing) silicon valley lifestyle. For five dollars, I think something like this that doesn't require a whole hell of a lot of effort to pick up yet has the potential to become an actually useful item to people of all income brackets.
Posts like this, and articles saying that $2000 for a wearable computer is affordable really go a long way toward projecting the image that people that read here really don't have any interest in things that are actually truly affordable.
I'd like to hope we'll start seeing articles about things that are actually reasonably purchased on less than a $50/hr. income, but I doubt it.
Now, the real question is how smart the card itself is? Is it a simple serial number that lets the software do all the work, or can information be stored on it? If the former, that might be better for security applications, and if the latter, it might be better suited toward saving personalized data. As each card is non-numbered, on the outside, appearing to have no way to uniquely ID them, it makes the whole matter completely up in the air. I'd like this to get to the main page so we can see more input. :)
Palm devices have done great things for the people who bought them for contact management, scheduling, and porting small data files with them on the go. But the reason WinCE devices are selling at levels that are beginning to really erode Palm's lead, is that the average consumer simply wants bells and whistles.
I look at my Palm IIIc that I got just this past February for $329, and wonder what I really did get for my money. Having waited just a few months, I could have gotten an m505 with the extra money saved. Though if I were going to do that, and spend five hundred dollars or so, why not get a WinCE device? Expandable memory using more common components than the new stuff in a 500/505, and with a variety of vendors to choose from.
The basic reason Palm needs to make this change, is because simple and reliable isn't impressive. Those of us who -do- know better, are rare indeed. I was a longtime PC fanatic, until I saw a recent iBook, and how well it handily trashed my IBM ThinkPad for reliability. I may be glad I got my IIIc when I did, but I do still feel badly about the fact people with less knowledge get better toys.
I shouldn't rant when I'm tired. Damn this heat.
Palm needs to deliver stability, AND better toys and gimmicks. I just hope they pull it off.
Another major part of this issue is the claim of breach of contract. That one may be valid, depending on what kind of contract Roxio had signed. I agree completely that this is a really crappy situation, but Roxio might have a little more leverage than we think.
Whoa. Modded down for trolling? *boggles* And for once, I never actually -intended- to troll. Sigh. :)
It may not be the most honorable way to deal with this threat to AOL, but it's certainly a method they could legitimately use.
Nowadays, I can go without full access to the net pretty easily for a week or two at a time, longer if I'm visiting one of the good friends I've met there. In fact, I vastly prefer being offline and doing something, to being in front of a keyboard. The only problem really comes in that my entire life has been lived in a virtual manner. My friendships, my relationships, I can't think of more than a half dozen in a decade that weren't first met on the Internet. It's become so much a habit, that even though it isn't an addiction anymore, I find it difficult to socialize in reality.
Maybe I need to get a copy of this book. Sigh.
Maybe why this generates so much attention, is because of the fact that this is the sort of thing that appears just one step away from being a serious problem. Does the average Linux user have anything to fear here? No, not yet. Does the average company that runs several Windows machines and a few Linux machines? No, not yet. Could this information become dangerous to people that Microsoft wants to hurt? Very likely.
What if Ziff-Davis publishes something bad about Microsoft, and spends a bunch of money on "Naked PC's", then some wag at Microsoft decides it's time to do a license audit on them. Regardless of whether the systems are all legal, it's a major hassle that can do damage to a business. And what company can say for absolute certain that none of it's thousand employees will have anything questionable on a machine? And what's to say Microsoft won't give this information to the Software Publisher's Association to help compile a list of suspected pirates, and tries to snare some of it's critics in the same blow?
Is there anything to fear right now? Probably not. Could there be? Possibly.
I don't like it, either way. I don't think of myself as paranoid, but then again...
Yep, it was indeed a blatant ripoff of your sig. I have the balls to admit it.
Thanks to MP3, Silicon Valley cash, www.everyfuckingthingyouwantinporno.com and media hype over anything and everything to do with the Internet, it seems like things created by geeks have really done a number on society. The evolution of 2600 into semi-responsible corporate wannabes rather than Phiber Optik wannabes was expected, by me at least. When all is said and done, the more morally-ambiguous types will tend toward the path of least resistance, which these days, appears to be the corporate grind for the remnants of the dot-cash.
Just look at Think Geek. Hey, there's a lot of cool stuff there. But who other than a corporate flunky can actually afford any of it? Geeks have to be rich now, to stay geeks. We're being driven to it.
I guess I'll just have to stay at my community college support job until my contract ends, then contemplate surrendering my unfunded geekness. It's too expensive.
Either that, or I'll just have to start coding in C and work on kernel patches. Gotta do it old school.
Of course, were I using Linux as my CD-R platform, I'm sure there would be some way to use these files to do a direct CD-Audio burn without the intermediary step, but under Windows, do I have any options?
It seems in retrospect, that my decision to convert everything into the open Vorbis format was a good one... but only if I can find applications that will play them properly. And can someone talk to Lionhead about adding Vorbis support into Black and White? :)
This gets left at a 1, where my joke about webcams was modded up to a 2, then down to 0 and called offtopic? WTF? Wake up, mods.
I'm really surprised this didn't get modded as a troll. But it's early. :)
To see an article like this, showing concern about the already low price of Internet access seems kind of like whining. I shell out $20 a month for less than a thirtieth of the bandwidth an average DSL or cable user gets, plus the expense of the dedicated phoneline, another $20. For my $40, I get busy signals, dropped lines, and 3.4K downloads when I'm lucky.
Prices will rise, that's a fact right now. There are more users, spending more time online, that's for certain. But anyone trying to make a huge deal about it just hasn't thought about the economics of it all.
This is one of those days I'm truly glad I was alive to see.
However, reading this article pointed out one comment that I really wish I hadn't seen. They say it isn't necessary to convert existing MP3's into Vorbis files. I'd -really- like them to come out with a semi-official program to batch convert, and this remark makes me feel like it's less likely now. Is there such a thing available, something I could get and use to do an unattended conversion? I looked a while ago, but after a few days of not finding anything that didn't do it one-file-at-a-time, gave up. If someone comes out with a file like that, it'd be a great way for people to get others into using Vorbis instead of MP3. Force your friends to upgrade. :)
At the same time, I see no reason why modem gamers shouldn't be able to enjoy many online games. I play Counterstrike quite respectably with a modem, though I am better at it when I use the frame relay at school. In gameplay, pings of under 250 are usually completely playable, though that does depend a great deal on the quality of the network code in your game.
The sad truth (Saddest for me as the town I live in now is barely 10K people) is that companies just don't want to invest in broadband if they can't reach a large number of users, users that are demographically inclined to use the net, from the central office location. Cablemodem has been in the process of coming here to Calais for several months now, but the cable company refuses to give us a date, despite the fact the college I attend has a comparatively large and rapidly growing computer tech program. Dozens of hyperactive 20 year olds wanting internet access like they have in school, once they graduate, are a target market that really doesn't make much impact. I'm glad to see this advance in modem technology, and hope my ISP and modem maker allow me to upgrade to it. If not... Anyone got a flashable modem I can have to put in my Linux box? I'm sure someone out there with broadband can spare an old modem. ;)
It's no secret, really. Glen A. Larson is Mormon. 'nuff said.
I haven't owned a traditional mouse in years. Got one of the very first ALPS Glidepoint desktop units, and only recently switched to a plain-Jane Logitech marble mouse.
How is the BSD license more "free" than GPL licensing? This I fail to see. The GPL seems to be designed to enforce freedom, which I admit seems odd on the surface, but it does make sense. It purports to help perpetuate the publicization of code. (That's a lotta P's.)
Only six hundred more nails to go... (sigh).
Just find out who the punks are that did this and beat the shinola out of them. :)