Everything worth getting is already available in MP3 format..And nothing thats currently being put out by the recording industry is worth listening to. It would be a far easier endeavor for the industry to understand and deal with the past two sentences than it would be to write endless piles of additional legislation and licensing agreements.
A couple years ago, I was in the market to buy a new monitor. I had saved up $500 or so to buy a new 21" multisync monitor, and knew the ones that Gateway sold were of good quality (this was 1997, 1998 or so)... So, I gathered up my money and went down to the new "Gateway Country" store that had opened up here in town to go buy a monitor.
With $500 in hand, I was turned away within 30 seconds of entering their store. Their reason:
"Sorry, we don't sell the monitors separately. You'de have to buy a whole system to get the monitor."
My 8MB Pentium 100 had the horsepower to do AA fonts, and that was nearly 10 years ago. The "horsepower" argument just doesn't hold water. This is another "programmers are not aesthetic engineers" problem, i'm afraid. Good code, poor delivery. Whats the use of having a great car engine if the chassis weighs 38,000 tons?
I don't wanna come off like a whiner here, but Mozilla is not going to find much of an audience unless freetype support is _standard_... The days of craptastic font rendering in X are over. Its the #1 reason I switched to Konqueror after having used Mozilla for nearly 3 years--Smooth AA fonts, more control, better appearance. It just seems like Mozilla is not on the same page as everyone else.
Cheers
Pick A Punchline To This Story
on
Time Travel
·
· Score: 2
1) Why bother with time travel when LSD is so much cheaper?
2) This guy doesn't need a grant. He needs a therapist.
3) Time travel will be the easy part.. Convincing his father not to smoke is the real challenge.
4) Someone should tell this guy to go down to the Circle K and get a pack of his own instead of continually bumming them off his dad..
4) Got Relativity?
5) Rumor has it the research is being funded by Bill Buckner and overseen by O.J. Simpson.
6) Uhhh...So this guy is going to risk cancer...to go back in time....to warn his dad about cancer. Mmmkay.
7) Hey, now wait a minute. I just spent $5K on a ring for my girlfriend, and she doesn't look any friggin younger!!
Seriously, I think its a fun idea. Why not. Faster-than-light communication has already a reality, why not time travel? I say go for it. Worst that could happen would be a complete collapse of the fabric of space-time.;)
The thing your looking for is called NIS. A vastly oversimplifed explanation of NIS goes something like this: An NIS-capable host is a system where passwd and group information is kept, and subsequently "pushed" to other hosts. Users log into local machines, the local machines reference their latest NIS maps, and log you in based on that. Its not difficult to set up or maintain, no more difficult than handling localized passwords, at least. Look into it.
NIS is what Sun used to call YP, or Yellow Pages. Pick up a book on NIS administration, and knock yourself out.
I'm sorta surprised this ended up on Slashdot. You'de think that a predominantly Unix-reading crowd would have rejected this one flat out due to it being so obvious.
Assertion #1: Its STUPID. Here's why. For one, this article infers that a pen can be faster than a keyboard in terms of its ability to provide data to a machine. Wrong. Data entry via keyboard is upwards of 10x faster than data entry by hand. That number increases with experience. 250 WPM is not uncommon among most commercial secretaries. Hell, I know people who can type faster than they can talk, let alone write. Besides, pens and their ilk are better suited for manipulation of PRE-EXISTING data, not to enter that data in the first place.
Assertion #2: Its pointless. The problem isnt with the data. Its with our ability to organize and present that data. If theres anything we DONT need, its to increase the rate at which data is already generated. We've got so much data floating around, whole new areas of computer science have to be constructed to learn how to best deal with the backlog.
Assertion #3: Its Non-Intuitive. Any 4th grader who's ever had to write out sentences as punishment can tell you how much fun manually enscribing data is. Right now, you simply cannot beat the keyboard in terms of its ability to move data from meat to metal. Unless, of course, you want a pen with a little 101-key QWERTY mounted on the side. For people who have to enter loads of data, youre not just asking for carpal tunnel, you're asking for arthritis and loss of manual dexterity as T increases.
Like I said. Stupid, pointless, and non-intuitive.
Cheers,
Looks like KDE won the desktop war.
on
KDE 3.0 is Out
·
· Score: -1, Flamebait
And no, i'm not kidding. I'm using it now.. this pretty much puts the final nail in the coffin for GNOME.
Any conessions Microsoft would make towards the Open Source community would be an enourmous mistake. It would only succeed in showing their customer base "The Microsoft Way" is not the best way, which is what they are paying to hear.
In 2002, the IT industry is going to have to take sides in a war. Traditional versus Innovative, Closed versus Open, Agressive Development versus Passive Development, Cathedral versus Bazaar. No matter what you call it, you're going to have to firmly identify yourself on one side or the other.
The Microsoft Way says that there should be one company to spearhead development, and lead everyone else down a primrose path. Not only should you follow your shepherd Microsoft, but you should shell out gobs of money for the mere opportunity to follow this shepherd, as it tends to be comfortable inside the herd, and youre surrounded by other sheep you can point fingers at in the event of a catastrophe.
The "Other" Way, or, more clearly, OUR way, goes something like this: I am personally accountable for my actions. If I assume responsibility for something outside my sphere of competence, I do so at my own risk. Professionally, I will chose what works best for my company, regardless of platform affinity. My preferences often do not extend to encompass others. I know Mildren over in Accounting doesnt know what "grep" is. If something goes catastrophically wrong, its a lesson that would have been learned anyway. I dont care where the herd is going. I am the Sheperd, not the sheep.
Here's the general breakdown for how languages affect sexual performance:
BASIC - Slow, but good for beginners. COBOL - Tends to make you rigid. FORTRAN - Almost nobody does it. ASSEMBLY - Too short, and too fast for most people. JAVA - It will cause your Object to be extended. C - Sometimes you just wanna do it for the helluvit. C# - Dont worry, it'll clear up in a few weeks. Korn Shell - Quick and dirty. Perl - Allows you to do it any way you want, anywhere, anytime!
Cheers,
Just when you thought Slashdot hit bottom...
on
Best High-Tech Toilet?
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
Incase you missed it, here's the whole Ask Slashdot article summed up in two lines:
"Dear Slashdot....I enjoy jets of water shot at my anus, and i'm willing to pay the big bucks for it!! Any suggestions?"
Think about the sum total of what you've just read, then maybe it will hit you. Slashdot certainly isnt what it used to be, is it....And you thought Yahoo Internet Life was bad? Welcome to the new Slashdot, folks -- What once was the proud sentinel of geekdom has been reduced to running stories on toilets. Sure smacks of "stuff that matters" to me, I tell ya. Anyway, before you go off and moderate me down for being off-topic or trollsome, ask yourself this: How many other articles were rejected (re: meaningful, important articles, peoples work, interesting points of view, etc.) so that this story could make it in? On Easter, of all days. Simply charming.
Surprisingly, i'm not trying to troll here. I'm trying to make a point. Just a day or two ago, I had written to Ask Slashdot regarding the issue of Linux on the desktop, and whether it was truly fair to call it "dead", when infact viable, stable, professional-quality desktops are available for Linux. HP certainly doesnt think the Linux desktop is dead -- They bundle GNOME with HP-UX. IBM isn't crazy either; They bundle both KDE -and- GNOME in AIX... So whats all the hub-bub about Linux being dead on the desktop? But, nope, we cant discuss that.....Not here on Slashdot. There are more important things to address in a public forum such as this..
Like how to have jets of water shoot at our anuses.
Cheers,
Be happy its only 6 months...
on
New Clie Handhelds
·
· Score: 0, Offtopic
After all...Everything else in Canada is 5 years behind America.;)
Anyone whos seen KDE 3.0 can tell you that. Why people seem to want to ignore this, I dont know. GNOME may be toast, but Linux on the Desktop is already here.
"Themoconductive carbon foam"? Puh-leaze. We had this shit when I was a kid. Magic Snakes -- You put em on the sidewalk and light them on fire. Just like the one that nearly wiped out South Park last 4th of July.:)
Amusingly, Slashdot rejected an article submission I had for fractal antennas and how they are vastly superior in terms of reception to whats on the market today. Better than the stuff mentioned in this article, certianly.
Actually...I do know what Toonami is. I also know what "psychosexual disorders" are, having taken a few courses in Abnormal Psychology here at the U. This sort of stuff falls quite easilly into what I would call a fetish, since it seems the majority of interest expressed in Anime is not for its style and its content, but rather of its emphasis on sex.
My guess is, Anime fans are fans because getting off on cartoon tits is somehow safe, and non-threatening. Its a one-way relationship, which allows the individual to develop their own arousal in a controlled way, versus risking the emotions of someone else. Fear of pussy, essentially.
Bottom line, more and more these days, Anime is a fetishist activity. Thats what makes me sick. Enjoy a cartoon for what it is. A cartoon. Entertainment. Like a movie, or a play. Getting sexually aroused by a cartoon equates with assigning a personality to a blow-up doll. Its just plain fucked up.
For the record, the reason why I read the post is because I'm a fan of Sealab. Its one of the funniest fucking things i've ever seen.:)
About a year and a half ago, I wrote a little piece of satire called the "Anime Convention FAQ"...an everything-you-need-to-know guide to attending Anime conventions. At the risk of explaining a good joke, all the FAQ covered was masturbation etiquette, and how to openly masturbate with others at a convention. The joke being, that fans of Anime have some sort of bizarro sexual fetish that causes them to be sexually attracted to cartoon characters.
Now... Looking at this article that Rob posted, I go there to find that like 80 friggin percent of the document discusses what.......you guessed it....cartoon sex. Out of 23 questions in this interview, questions 3, 5, 7, 8, 9, 10, and 17 deal with how to handle important issues like a cartoon characters boobs and nipples, gay cartoon characters, cartoon sex, even down to handle the friggin camera angles of cartoon sex. Theres something really, really wrong with people who watch Anime, especially if it means they're forming some sort of sexual fixation on it.
For cryin out loud, its a damn CARTOON, guys. Wanting to fuck a cartoon puts you right up there with people who assign personalities to inflatible sex dolls. Look, Anime is fine if you enjoy the style and the content, but if you're getting some sort of sexual arousal out of it, thats patently fucked up.
Its sad to see what started as a joke snowball into something increasingly true as time goes on..Especially one takes into account the number of "anime porn" sites on the web, that cater to freaks with this sort of fetish/compulsion. Anime isn't for people who appreciate artistic style, it seems. Its for homely guys who cant get a date, and are tired of taking "Rosey Palm and her five sisters" out on a date.
Real girlfriends should be 36-25-36. Not 1024x768.
Tell your Microsoft rep, "Oh, I dunno.. Microsoft Linux 2002 has a nice ring to it.":)
AFAIK, Win32 has a two node limit, but i've heard rumors of 4 and even 8 node support floating around in the form of CA releases. It wouldnt be too wild an idea to see Win32 support 4 nodes in the not too distant future.
Windows is the runt of the clustering litter. Even Novell wipes the floor with Win32 in that arena. The hands down winner is still Beowulf.. you cant beat the flexibility, low-level control, support, documentation, and bang-per-buck ratio that PVM offers.
While Doug certainly had alot to do with bringing the machine to the people, he didn't quite invent all of the ideas shown in the '68 Demo. Some of them had been around for years, and in some cases, decades. Alot of people tend to think that 50's and 60's computing were archaic and limited in scope..That everything before the personal computer was miserably bad, terribly slow and difficult to handle. Not true.
For example, Ivan Sutherland was doing primitive virtual reality, complete with head-mounted displays and motion sensors, by 1969.. Of course, it wasnt like Quake or anything, but the idea was there, the code was there, and the people to do it were there. Analog voice synthesis goes back to 1939. Realtime text-to-speech synthesis popped up in 1962. Your MP3 collection is the great, great, great grandson of research done in 1958 on digital sound synthesis.
More interestingly, perhaps, is videoconferencing. Videoconferencing, as an idea, was first demonstrated in 1926. If you can find Fritz Lang's "Metropolis" at Blockbuster, rent it. Like Englebart, Lang's vision was horrifyingly ahead of its time. Theres a scene in the film where one person dials up another person (complete with an on-screen display of the dialing process!) and within a few seconds, it connects and thye begin talking to eachother via video.
Slashdot Mirror
tar zxvf bag.tar.gz ; cd bag ; mv $feline
Everything worth getting is already available in MP3 format..And nothing thats currently being put out by the recording industry is worth listening to. It would be a far easier endeavor for the industry to understand and deal with the past two sentences than it would be to write endless piles of additional legislation and licensing agreements.
Cheers,
What, Ion Storm was going to send reviewers 50-pound sacks of buffalo crap in anticipation of Daikatana's release?
...can be summed up in this story:
A couple years ago, I was in the market to buy a new monitor. I had saved up $500 or so to buy a new 21" multisync monitor, and knew the ones that Gateway sold were of good quality (this was 1997, 1998 or so)... So, I gathered up my money and went down to the new "Gateway Country" store that had opened up here in town to go buy a monitor.
With $500 in hand, I was turned away within 30 seconds of entering their store. Their reason:
"Sorry, we don't sell the monitors separately. You'de have to buy a whole system to get the monitor."
My 8MB Pentium 100 had the horsepower to do AA fonts, and that was nearly 10 years ago. The "horsepower" argument just doesn't hold water. This is another "programmers are not aesthetic engineers" problem, i'm afraid. Good code, poor delivery. Whats the use of having a great car engine if the chassis weighs 38,000 tons?
I don't wanna come off like a whiner here, but Mozilla is not going to find much of an audience unless freetype support is _standard_
Cheers
1) Why bother with time travel when LSD is so much cheaper?
2) This guy doesn't need a grant. He needs a therapist.
3) Time travel will be the easy part.. Convincing his father not to smoke is the real challenge.
4) Someone should tell this guy to go down to the Circle K and get a pack of his own instead of continually bumming them off his dad..
4) Got Relativity?
5) Rumor has it the research is being funded by Bill Buckner and overseen by O.J. Simpson.
6) Uhhh...So this guy is going to risk cancer...to go back in time....to warn his dad about cancer. Mmmkay.
7) Hey, now wait a minute. I just spent $5K on a ring for my girlfriend, and she doesn't look any friggin younger!!
Seriously, I think its a fun idea. Why not. Faster-than-light communication has already a reality, why not time travel? I say go for it. Worst that could happen would be a complete collapse of the fabric of space-time.
Cheers,
The thing your looking for is called NIS. A vastly oversimplifed explanation of NIS goes something like this: An NIS-capable host is a system where passwd and group information is kept, and subsequently "pushed" to other hosts. Users log into local machines, the local machines reference their latest NIS maps, and log you in based on that. Its not difficult to set up or maintain, no more difficult than handling localized passwords, at least. Look into it.
NIS is what Sun used to call YP, or Yellow Pages. Pick up a book on NIS administration, and knock yourself out.
I'm sorta surprised this ended up on Slashdot. You'de think that a predominantly Unix-reading crowd would have rejected this one flat out due to it being so obvious.
Pens? Come on.
Assertion #1: Its STUPID. Here's why. For one, this article infers that a pen can be faster than a keyboard in terms of its ability to provide data to a machine. Wrong. Data entry via keyboard is upwards of 10x faster than data entry by hand. That number increases with experience. 250 WPM is not uncommon among most commercial secretaries. Hell, I know people who can type faster than they can talk, let alone write. Besides, pens and their ilk are better suited for manipulation of PRE-EXISTING data, not to enter that data in the first place.
Assertion #2: Its pointless. The problem isnt with the data. Its with our ability to organize and present that data. If theres anything we DONT need, its to increase the rate at which data is already generated. We've got so much data floating around, whole new areas of computer science have to be constructed to learn how to best deal with the backlog.
Assertion #3: Its Non-Intuitive. Any 4th grader who's ever had to write out sentences as punishment can tell you how much fun manually enscribing data is. Right now, you simply cannot beat the keyboard in terms of its ability to move data from meat to metal. Unless, of course, you want a pen with a little 101-key QWERTY mounted on the side. For people who have to enter loads of data, youre not just asking for carpal tunnel, you're asking for arthritis and loss of manual dexterity as T increases.
Like I said. Stupid, pointless, and non-intuitive.
Cheers,
And no, i'm not kidding. I'm using it now.. this pretty much puts the final nail in the coffin for GNOME.
Cheers,
Any conessions Microsoft would make towards the Open Source community would be an enourmous mistake. It would only succeed in showing their customer base "The Microsoft Way" is not the best way, which is what they are paying to hear.
In 2002, the IT industry is going to have to take sides in a war. Traditional versus Innovative, Closed versus Open, Agressive Development versus Passive Development, Cathedral versus Bazaar. No matter what you call it, you're going to have to firmly identify yourself on one side or the other.
The Microsoft Way says that there should be one company to spearhead development, and lead everyone else down a primrose path. Not only should you follow your shepherd Microsoft, but you should shell out gobs of money for the mere opportunity to follow this shepherd, as it tends to be comfortable inside the herd, and youre surrounded by other sheep you can point fingers at in the event of a catastrophe.
The "Other" Way, or, more clearly, OUR way, goes something like this: I am personally accountable for my actions. If I assume responsibility for something outside my sphere of competence, I do so at my own risk. Professionally, I will chose what works best for my company, regardless of platform affinity. My preferences often do not extend to encompass others. I know Mildren over in Accounting doesnt know what "grep" is. If something goes catastrophically wrong, its a lesson that would have been learned anyway. I dont care where the herd is going. I am the Sheperd, not the sheep.
Take your pick.
Here's the general breakdown for how languages affect sexual performance:
BASIC - Slow, but good for beginners.
COBOL - Tends to make you rigid.
FORTRAN - Almost nobody does it.
ASSEMBLY - Too short, and too fast for most people.
JAVA - It will cause your Object to be extended.
C - Sometimes you just wanna do it for the helluvit.
C# - Dont worry, it'll clear up in a few weeks.
Korn Shell - Quick and dirty.
Perl - Allows you to do it any way you want, anywhere, anytime!
Cheers,
Incase you missed it, here's the whole Ask Slashdot article summed up in two lines:
"Dear Slashdot....I enjoy jets of water shot at my anus, and i'm willing to pay the big bucks for it!! Any suggestions?"
Think about the sum total of what you've just read, then maybe it will hit you. Slashdot certainly isnt what it used to be, is it....And you thought Yahoo Internet Life was bad? Welcome to the new Slashdot, folks -- What once was the proud sentinel of geekdom has been reduced to running stories on toilets. Sure smacks of "stuff that matters" to me, I tell ya. Anyway, before you go off and moderate me down for being off-topic or trollsome, ask yourself this: How many other articles were rejected (re: meaningful, important articles, peoples work, interesting points of view, etc.) so that this story could make it in? On Easter, of all days. Simply charming.
Surprisingly, i'm not trying to troll here. I'm trying to make a point. Just a day or two ago, I had written to Ask Slashdot regarding the issue of Linux on the desktop, and whether it was truly fair to call it "dead", when infact viable, stable, professional-quality desktops are available for Linux. HP certainly doesnt think the Linux desktop is dead -- They bundle GNOME with HP-UX. IBM isn't crazy either; They bundle both KDE -and- GNOME in AIX... So whats all the hub-bub about Linux being dead on the desktop? But, nope, we cant discuss that.....Not here on Slashdot. There are more important things to address in a public forum such as this..
Like how to have jets of water shoot at our anuses.
Cheers,
After all...Everything else in Canada is 5 years behind America.
Cheers,
Anyone whos seen KDE 3.0 can tell you that. Why people seem to want to ignore this, I dont know. GNOME may be toast, but Linux on the Desktop is already here.
"VA is a good company. They care about the Linux community." - Everyone, a year ago.
"Themoconductive carbon foam"? Puh-leaze. We had this shit when I was a kid. Magic Snakes -- You put em on the sidewalk and light them on fire. Just like the one that nearly wiped out South Park last 4th of July.
We were swimming in the stuff!
And to think I actually -owned- streamcast.org for a while. Yeesh.
3 minutes, at nearly $600 per second. About half of that time will be spent vomiting, so now you're looking at more than $1000 per second.
Not since "Glitter" hit the theaters has so much money been made by causing people to barf.
Cheers,
Amusingly, Slashdot rejected an article submission I had for fractal antennas and how they are vastly superior in terms of reception to whats on the market today. Better than the stuff mentioned in this article, certianly.
Cheers, and yes PROPAGANDA will be back soon.
Actually...I do know what Toonami is. I also know what "psychosexual disorders" are, having taken a few courses in Abnormal Psychology here at the U. This sort of stuff falls quite easilly into what I would call a fetish, since it seems the majority of interest expressed in Anime is not for its style and its content, but rather of its emphasis on sex.
My guess is, Anime fans are fans because getting off on cartoon tits is somehow safe, and non-threatening. Its a one-way relationship, which allows the individual to develop their own arousal in a controlled way, versus risking the emotions of someone else. Fear of pussy, essentially.
Bottom line, more and more these days, Anime is a fetishist activity. Thats what makes me sick. Enjoy a cartoon for what it is. A cartoon. Entertainment. Like a movie, or a play. Getting sexually aroused by a cartoon equates with assigning a personality to a blow-up doll. Its just plain fucked up.
For the record, the reason why I read the post is because I'm a fan of Sealab. Its one of the funniest fucking things i've ever seen.
About a year and a half ago, I wrote a little piece of satire called the "Anime Convention FAQ"
Now... Looking at this article that Rob posted, I go there to find that like 80 friggin percent of the document discusses what.......you guessed it....cartoon sex. Out of 23 questions in this interview, questions 3, 5, 7, 8, 9, 10, and 17 deal with how to handle important issues like a cartoon characters boobs and nipples, gay cartoon characters, cartoon sex, even down to handle the friggin camera angles of cartoon sex. Theres something really, really wrong with people who watch Anime, especially if it means they're forming some sort of sexual fixation on it.
For cryin out loud, its a damn CARTOON, guys. Wanting to fuck a cartoon puts you right up there with people who assign personalities to inflatible sex dolls. Look, Anime is fine if you enjoy the style and the content, but if you're getting some sort of sexual arousal out of it, thats patently fucked up.
Its sad to see what started as a joke snowball into something increasingly true as time goes on..Especially one takes into account the number of "anime porn" sites on the web, that cater to freaks with this sort of fetish/compulsion. Anime isn't for people who appreciate artistic style, it seems. Its for homely guys who cant get a date, and are tired of taking "Rosey Palm and her five sisters" out on a date.
Real girlfriends should be 36-25-36. Not 1024x768.
Cheers,
I'd trust Gates about as far as I could throw a Buick.
Anyone remember words to this effect?
"Bill Gates, CEO of Microsoft Corp. a fiercely competitive company(...)" - Microsoft Encarta, 1996
"Bill Gates, CEO of Microsoft is a contributor to several charitable causes, including...(...)" Microsoft Encarta 2000
Theyre called "Low riders".
Theyre used mainly by inner-city minorities and retarded white kids who find the cul-de-sac an inappropriate place to express their blackness.
Ever get the feeling that all that bass is being used to compensate for not being held enough as children?
Cheers,
Tell your Microsoft rep, "Oh, I dunno.. Microsoft Linux 2002 has a nice ring to it."
AFAIK, Win32 has a two node limit, but i've heard rumors of 4 and even 8 node support floating around in the form of CA releases. It wouldnt be too wild an idea to see Win32 support 4 nodes in the not too distant future.
Windows is the runt of the clustering litter. Even Novell wipes the floor with Win32 in that arena. The hands down winner is still Beowulf.. you cant beat the flexibility, low-level control, support, documentation, and bang-per-buck ratio that PVM offers.
Cheers,
While Doug certainly had alot to do with bringing the machine to the people, he didn't quite invent all of the ideas shown in the '68 Demo. Some of them had been around for years, and in some cases, decades. Alot of people tend to think that 50's and 60's computing were archaic and limited in scope..That everything before the personal computer was miserably bad, terribly slow and difficult to handle. Not true.
For example, Ivan Sutherland was doing primitive virtual reality, complete with head-mounted displays and motion sensors, by 1969.. Of course, it wasnt like Quake or anything, but the idea was there, the code was there, and the people to do it were there. Analog voice synthesis goes back to 1939. Realtime text-to-speech synthesis popped up in 1962. Your MP3 collection is the great, great, great grandson of research done in 1958 on digital sound synthesis.
More interestingly, perhaps, is videoconferencing. Videoconferencing, as an idea, was first demonstrated in 1926. If you can find Fritz Lang's "Metropolis" at Blockbuster, rent it. Like Englebart, Lang's vision was horrifyingly ahead of its time. Theres a scene in the film where one person dials up another person (complete with an on-screen display of the dialing process!) and within a few seconds, it connects and thye begin talking to eachother via video.
Not bad for 1926.
Cheers,
Bowie