The submitter seems to consider a critique of MySQL as an attack on the very idea of open-source DBMSs. That might be true if MySQL were the only open-source DBMS. But it's not, not by a long shot. What about PostgreSQL? Interbase, and it's non-Borland branch, Firebird? I think there are others.
And in any case, dismissing all criticisms as anti-OS propaganda is not constructive. The Open Source movement does not have a future if its adherent cop a "The Emperor Cannot Be Naked" attitude.
I'm less impressed with the news page itself (which is pretty good) then with the technology behind it. Web sites that aggregate content are a dime a dozen. But until now, they've been labor intensive enterprises that don't really help the user focus on specific topic areas. This new service not only does a much better job -- it apparently does the job with no human intervention at all.
The new site will be popular and profitable. But what will really line Google's pockets is licensing this technology to content provider and builders of intranet portals.
That's absurd. Weapons designers are always looking for ways to improve the product -- war is a highly competitive business!
Far more likely (I'm really guessing here; would some gun enthusiast mind joining the conversation?), those third-world gun smiths rely on hardened metals that are available on every scrap heap even in the remotest parts of the planet. Which would not be in abundant supply on some farflung planet.
Neither of these new Rios is a replacement for the Rio 600. That would be the Rio 800 or Rio 900. . All of these use the weird, proprietary memory-and-battery "backpacks", whereas the new Rios use standard batteries and flash cards.
I think there must be two distinct groups at SonicBlue designing MP3 players. One does fairly standard players, often sold under somebody else's label. The other grinds out these strange backpack players.
What the second group is smoking is one of the great mysteries of our time. The players and backpacks are filled with strange, inexplicable features. On the other hand, this series is one of the few that supports bookmarks, which are essential to us spoken word types.
If an AK-47 is as "easy" to make as a Winchester '93, how come Sitting Bull never had one? Yeah, it hadn't been invented yet, but that begs the question. Which is more or less equivalent to, If automatic weapons are as easy to make as earlier weapons, why weren't they made earlier?
OK, I speak from a total ignorance of gunsmithing, but I think the answer has to be the same as for any technology: an AK-47 is only easy to make if you have access to all the related technology. And the related technology was, shall we say, inaccessible in 1876. As it would be in 2576, if you lived on a remote planet that cannot afford to import every technology that might be of use.
And even though the blurb mentions that the CPU doesn't need a fan, wouldn't the power supply still need a fan?
Why? To cool it? Not every power supply needs a fan to cool off. It depends on how much heat the PS generates, and how good it is at dissipting heat through convection and radiation.
RAM, Power
on
Tiny Boxen
·
· Score: 2, Informative
Except that RAM only works when the machine is turned on. You need something more reliable for long-term storage.
Truely Quiet and Cheap
on
Tiny Boxen
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
Hmm. If Flash memory gets just a little cheaper, you could have a serious desktop computer with no moving parts at all. Or you could install a disk drive that emphasizes low power consumption and limiting noise, rather than performance. There are a lot of desktop users who hate computer noice and dislike power waste.
Of course this all depends on availability of good Linux apps. It isn't just the Linux emphasis of the boxes designers. Windows is just too bloated to run on this kind of system.
Sure, and everybody on this planet owns a CD player. I mean, it's the best technology available, so why doesn't everybody use it?
People make do with what they can afford to buy. Which is not always the latest and most sophisticated. I'm not a gun person, but people who are tell me that this is particularly true of firearms. New, fancy kinds of guns are always being invented, but never widely adopted. A few people like Winchester, Kalashnikov, and Uzi have come up with designs that have stood the test of time and are easy to reproduce, and their work predominates.
This is gonna be even more true when you have a lot of people living on remote planets with little or no industry. They might have their levitating trains and their force-field bar windows. But these would be imported, at great expense, from industrial planets. So mostly people will make do with what they can manufacture locally -- and a Winchester rifle is a lot easier to manufacture than a ray gun.
Haken lives in Hawaii, whereas I work in dreary cubicle in Scotts Valley, near SiliValley. Lucky guy.
Also, that tightwad Josh Whedon has yet to pay me for all my shill work. I'm pissed I tell you!
And if you believe that, then I guess you couldn't be bothered to to check out the the 1660 comments and 40-odd stories (11 accepted) that I've posted on Slashdot over the last two years. Wait a minute -- 1660? I gotta get a life!
You're right, I did like the pilot ("Serenity") rather more than the first ep ("The Train Job"). Which I hadn't actually seen when I wrote all those raving rants yesterday. Still, I thought "The Train Job" was a decent piece of work, and had a lot about it -- mainly the pervasive sense of a future reality -- that made me like "Serenity."
I do think that Fox shot itself in the foot by holding back "Serenity". They spent a lot of money making it, and so the production values were fancier, there were more fancy effects, etc. Worst of all, "The Train Job" had to hurriedly re-introduce a lot of characters and plot points that were established in a leisurely and interesting fashion in "Serenity". I think that's really going to hurt the shot. People hate coming in on the middle of a story.
Uhm, have you ever registered a domain? You have to submit name, address, phone number. Of course, registrars never check these, so people who want anonymity just make something up.
I haven't seen Outlaw Star, and I'll bet Joss Whedon hasn't either. Oddly enough, people who make TV are usually too busy to watch it.
Firefly "borrows" from a lot of sources. In particular, there's a conspicuous influence from those old John Wayne/John Ford westerns. (Which Whedon admits he has seen, and is a big fan of. Wonder if that's also true of the creators of Outlaw Star?) There are obvious derivations for other genre movies as well: Alien, Mad Max, Night and the City, lots more. There's even shades of the X-Files.
But Firefly has a look and feel that's uniquely its own. If you're assuming it's just of variation of something else, you're mistaken.
"Geek Friendly" was my shorthand for nitpicky hard-SF details that you have to be pretty geeky to care about. For example, on Firefly, sound does not travel through a vacuum. So no whoosh as the space ship goes by. Now, not all geeks care about this kind of detail, but I think arguing passionately about whether spaceships should woosh makes you a geek, and having your eyes glaze over when such topics are raised positively identifies you as a non-geek.
Another example is such minor technology as the six-shooters that most of the character carry. Most people have been assuming its just part of the "stagecoach in space" theme. But in fact it's part of a complicated set of hard SF assumptions and interences that only a self-proclaimed geek like Joss Whedon would care about. Here's a thread on the subject.
The mention of the time is exactly as I put it in when I submitted the story. I remember because I almost forgot to include it. Does that "almost" make you feel better?
One amusing edit: Rob changed "the leading fan site" to "a leading fan site".
Farscape follows a similar formula; that is; avoid formulas, and avoid cliches.
This is true, and it's the main thing I like about Farscape. But I think you'll find Firefly just a tad more imaginative and engaging.
And face it, Farscape is beginning to get stale. Like the continuing pop culture references, which were very funny at first, but which are now a cliche in their own right. The fact is, if I weren't anxious to see all the plots resolved, I might not be sorry that Farscape got cancelled.
Yeah, Brimstone was good. Nicely acted, nicely written, very sly sense of humor. But how can you expect a show based on the nastiest parts of the Old Testament to survive? I mean, the biggest recurring villain was a pagan priestess who thought it was terribly unfair that she should suffer eternal damnation just because she sacrificed her own daughter to the gods. One of my favorite TV bad guys, but no show with a character like that could possibly last!
I do have a few small issues with Star Wars. Yeah, it's been a geek benchmark for longer than I care to think about. But for all that, it's blatantly commercial, totally unimaginative, and has absolutely nothing to say. It uses (or rather abuses) a bunch of Joseph Campbell gimmicks to give itself a "mythological" status. Most people actually like that, but I find it grotesque.
Worst of all, Star Wars is very bad science fiction. I mean, sounds in a vacuum have become conventional, but how can you sit still for spaceships that behave as if they had airfoils? And armor that doesn't protect its wearers against rocks and sticks? And space pilots who think a light year is a unit of time?
I know, I know, because it's fun. Just ignore me, I had a lousy childhood.
Hmm, how weird. First a karma whore rips off a rant that I directly linked to when I submitted this story (I wrote the rant too). Then they post the karma whorage as an AC! I think this most be the same strange person who keeps reporting the death of Steven King!
The PR for Firefly is pretty hopeless. Like the page you mention. They also did this really horrible poster by somebody who thought a firefly was a kind of house fly that glowed. Like most shows, the publicity has almost nothing to do with the actual content.
So it's a spoofed address. Are you willing to share your real name, address, phone number? Didn't think so.
I'm actually sort-of-friends with Haken, the owner of fireflyfans.net. He hacked it together from ASP and other ActiveX technologies. I agree he did a very good job. People are often suprised when they find out he built it from scratch -- if using standard web components counts as "from scratch".
By contrast the official site is a simplistic HTML/Javascript/Flash thing, obviously done by a total newbie working sparetime and using FrontPage or something similar. If Fox or Mutant Enemy were going to spend a lot of money on web presence, I think they'd start by hiring a proper webmaster for their own site, before branching out into bogus fan sites.
A valid point. I was kind of stuck for a proper adverb. What I was trying to say was that the feel of the show is very real. There's a scene in the pilot where Shepherd Book is wandering through a spaceport. The place is full of ordinary life: people going back and forth on foot, bicycle, horse, and flying car; there are children perched on piles of cargo and vendors cooking and selling food from crude stalls. He stops and peers up at the Serenity, which is towering over him. We see it from his POV: it does indeed look like a giant firefly beetle, and there are other spaceships and aircraft going back and forth in the background. The sense of reality is quite disconcerting!
Slashdot Mirror
And in any case, dismissing all criticisms as anti-OS propaganda is not constructive. The Open Source movement does not have a future if its adherent cop a "The Emperor Cannot Be Naked" attitude.
The new site will be popular and profitable. But what will really line Google's pockets is licensing this technology to content provider and builders of intranet portals.
Far more likely (I'm really guessing here; would some gun enthusiast mind joining the conversation?), those third-world gun smiths rely on hardened metals that are available on every scrap heap even in the remotest parts of the planet. Which would not be in abundant supply on some farflung planet.
Which is evidence of what? Your story doesn't relate to anything I said.
I think there must be two distinct groups at SonicBlue designing MP3 players. One does fairly standard players, often sold under somebody else's label. The other grinds out these strange backpack players.
What the second group is smoking is one of the great mysteries of our time. The players and backpacks are filled with strange, inexplicable features. On the other hand, this series is one of the few that supports bookmarks, which are essential to us spoken word types.
OK, I speak from a total ignorance of gunsmithing, but I think the answer has to be the same as for any technology: an AK-47 is only easy to make if you have access to all the related technology. And the related technology was, shall we say, inaccessible in 1876. As it would be in 2576, if you lived on a remote planet that cannot afford to import every technology that might be of use.
Except that RAM only works when the machine is turned on. You need something more reliable for long-term storage.
Of course this all depends on availability of good Linux apps. It isn't just the Linux emphasis of the boxes designers. Windows is just too bloated to run on this kind of system.
People make do with what they can afford to buy. Which is not always the latest and most sophisticated. I'm not a gun person, but people who are tell me that this is particularly true of firearms. New, fancy kinds of guns are always being invented, but never widely adopted. A few people like Winchester, Kalashnikov, and Uzi have come up with designs that have stood the test of time and are easy to reproduce, and their work predominates.
This is gonna be even more true when you have a lot of people living on remote planets with little or no industry. They might have their levitating trains and their force-field bar windows. But these would be imported, at great expense, from industrial planets. So mostly people will make do with what they can manufacture locally -- and a Winchester rifle is a lot easier to manufacture than a ray gun.
Also, that tightwad Josh Whedon has yet to pay me for all my shill work. I'm pissed I tell you!
And if you believe that, then I guess you couldn't be bothered to to check out the the 1660 comments and 40-odd stories (11 accepted) that I've posted on Slashdot over the last two years. Wait a minute -- 1660? I gotta get a life!
I do think that Fox shot itself in the foot by holding back "Serenity". They spent a lot of money making it, and so the production values were fancier, there were more fancy effects, etc. Worst of all, "The Train Job" had to hurriedly re-introduce a lot of characters and plot points that were established in a leisurely and interesting fashion in "Serenity". I think that's really going to hurt the shot. People hate coming in on the middle of a story.
Uhm, have you ever registered a domain? You have to submit name, address, phone number. Of course, registrars never check these, so people who want anonymity just make something up.
Hey, you fell into that one
...tell Cliff. This is the second "I need legal advice" Ask Slashdot this week!
Firefly "borrows" from a lot of sources. In particular, there's a conspicuous influence from those old John Wayne/John Ford westerns. (Which Whedon admits he has seen, and is a big fan of. Wonder if that's also true of the creators of Outlaw Star?) There are obvious derivations for other genre movies as well: Alien, Mad Max, Night and the City, lots more. There's even shades of the X-Files.
But Firefly has a look and feel that's uniquely its own. If you're assuming it's just of variation of something else, you're mistaken.
Another example is such minor technology as the six-shooters that most of the character carry. Most people have been assuming its just part of the "stagecoach in space" theme. But in fact it's part of a complicated set of hard SF assumptions and interences that only a self-proclaimed geek like Joss Whedon would care about. Here's a thread on the subject.
One amusing edit: Rob changed "the leading fan site" to "a leading fan site".
And face it, Farscape is beginning to get stale. Like the continuing pop culture references, which were very funny at first, but which are now a cliche in their own right. The fact is, if I weren't anxious to see all the plots resolved, I might not be sorry that Farscape got cancelled.
Yeah, Brimstone was good. Nicely acted, nicely written, very sly sense of humor. But how can you expect a show based on the nastiest parts of the Old Testament to survive? I mean, the biggest recurring villain was a pagan priestess who thought it was terribly unfair that she should suffer eternal damnation just because she sacrificed her own daughter to the gods. One of my favorite TV bad guys, but no show with a character like that could possibly last!
Worst of all, Star Wars is very bad science fiction. I mean, sounds in a vacuum have become conventional, but how can you sit still for spaceships that behave as if they had airfoils? And armor that doesn't protect its wearers against rocks and sticks? And space pilots who think a light year is a unit of time?
I know, I know, because it's fun. Just ignore me, I had a lousy childhood.
Hmm, how weird. First a karma whore rips off a rant that I directly linked to when I submitted this story (I wrote the rant too). Then they post the karma whorage as an AC! I think this most be the same strange person who keeps reporting the death of Steven King!
The PR for Firefly is pretty hopeless. Like the page you mention. They also did this really horrible poster by somebody who thought a firefly was a kind of house fly that glowed. Like most shows, the publicity has almost nothing to do with the actual content.
I'm actually sort-of-friends with Haken, the owner of fireflyfans.net. He hacked it together from ASP and other ActiveX technologies. I agree he did a very good job. People are often suprised when they find out he built it from scratch -- if using standard web components counts as "from scratch".
By contrast the official site is a simplistic HTML/Javascript/Flash thing, obviously done by a total newbie working sparetime and using FrontPage or something similar. If Fox or Mutant Enemy were going to spend a lot of money on web presence, I think they'd start by hiring a proper webmaster for their own site, before branching out into bogus fan sites.
A valid point. I was kind of stuck for a proper adverb. What I was trying to say was that the feel of the show is very real. There's a scene in the pilot where Shepherd Book is wandering through a spaceport. The place is full of ordinary life: people going back and forth on foot, bicycle, horse, and flying car; there are children perched on piles of cargo and vendors cooking and selling food from crude stalls. He stops and peers up at the Serenity, which is towering over him. We see it from his POV: it does indeed look like a giant firefly beetle, and there are other spaceships and aircraft going back and forth in the background. The sense of reality is quite disconcerting!