..Heh, well, you're certainly entitled to your opinion. For me, this one ranks right up there with the infamous "Here's my caseless computer" post from about a year ago.:) For me, I could care less that a Turkish Linux users group has its membership fees increased.. Big deal. This news (if you could even call it that) is about something that affects >90 people , as stated in the post..Most of which i'd even venture to say don't care either!
Lemmie try and explain my point, here.. We've got a Linux user's group here in town with about 4 times as many people. I suppose if the decision was made to order our pizza for the next meeting from Pizza Hut instead of Dominos, that it deserves mention on Slashdot as well? I can see it now..TUCSON FREE UNIX GROUP SWITCHES TO PIZZA HUT. Gimmie a break.
No offense to the Turkish guys, but this sort of thing doesn't really qualify as "News for Nerds" nor "Stuff That Matters"..Its a local issue. Bowie J. Poag
They're gonna have to price it agressively to compete down here..Local phonecalls within Tucson city limits (read: about 800,000 people spread across about 500 square miles of terrain) are absolutely free.. That means if you live in Tucson, and want to stay connected to your ISP 24 hours a day 365 days a year, it costs you a grand total of $0.00:)
Low crime, low taxes, great scenery, great University, great weather, nice babes, easy access to beer, pizza and caffiene. You cant go wrong down here.:)
No kidding.. I've been trying to get a piece aired here on Slashdot for two friggin weeks, offering free hosting space on a monster-sized server for Linux community projects.. Something that could really help alot of people. Apparently, Abe and his spiffy skydiving adventure takes greater precedence, however.
I could launch into a diatribe here, about there being two types of computer geeks..But I think its already abundantly clear to all of us where Abe falls. This guy has no less than 9 pictures of himself on his homepage..you figure it out.
The solution to the PR problem is simple -- Keep doing what we've always been doing. Develop publically, talk privately. Not the other way around.
You'll notice that in every situation where a person in a management role must also fulfill a spokesman role, that the whole situation will begin to slowly fall apart. Management and spokesmanship are mutually exclusive activities -- You cant perform one duty without somehow taking away from or harming your ability to perform the other...A veeeery important lesson I learned not too long ago. Anyone remember the GNOME Style Guide? (*grin*)
The press is basically looking for another Gates to put in the other corner of the computer industry's boxing ring. We'd be smart to let them stay confused rather than divert our attention to clueing them in. If you think about it, the press hasn't even comprehended the idea that nobody owns Linux yet. Its their responsibility to inform themselves, not ours, imho.
For years since Commodore's demise the the early 90s' (and even some *before* then) companies have been building knock-offs of Amiga models, and giving them similar names. The A1500, A3500 and A5000 come to mind..Machines that sure-enough ran like Amigas, and looked like Amigas, but were not actual production models made by the company. Often, they were simply package deals made by independant shops to attract attention.
For the sake of comedy, it should be pointed out that the "Amiga 1010" has already been used as a name--The first external 3.5" disk drive Commodore made for the Amiga back in '86 was named the "Amiga 1010". Sorry, guys..its been taken.:)
I posted an article about "Celebration" to Slashdot two months ago, written by another writer.. It never aired.
Where Katz got the idea to write about it doesn't concern me. The idea that people think its a "good idea" to let a company control what theyre able to buy, hear, or listen to is what really scares me. Makes me wonder how many years before Disneyland succeeds from the Union and declares itself an independant country. Theyre halfway there -- They already have their own police force and judicial system.
Indeed, this is an old, old trick...and why it gets attention here is beyond me.
There's even a name for it. "The Voice of God" trick... I've used this technique to determine if hardware is working when you have absolutely no other way of determining the health of a system. For example, I picked up an SGI Indigo 2 at a surplus auction a while back.. didnt have a keyboard, a monitor, or a mouse to plug into it. I basically had a power light, and thats it. Putting an AM radio in close proximity to the motherboard and tuning it to a clear frequency will result in your being able hear the motherboard go through its self check. If you hear nothing, the board is dead. If you hear alot of chatter happening on the bus, you can be fairly certain the machine is at least salvagable.
Now, if this guy were to have actually written code to play -music- by running data through his mobo at different rates, that would be different. Until then, i'll sit back and wait for someone to top the ultimate trick:
Make a Commodore 64 play "A Bicycle Built For Two" by grinding the stepper motor back and forth on the read/write head of a 1541 disk drive. Saw this done back in 1987.:)
more_fun_flame_mode(on); {// I enjoy debate. I dont take it personally.
If I remember what I learned in Chemistry a few years ago, the critical mass of plutonium is about 2,000 pounds.. Meaning, in any warhead, there must be at least 2,000 pounds of high-grade plutonium to smash together in order for an explosion to occur.
2,000 pounds. Compared to 75.
Now, multiply that 2000 figure by the number of plutonium warheads that were tested out here in the desert, and out in the pacific for the past 40 years. Compare that figure against the 75 pound nuclear payload aboard the Cassini. The difference between the "threat" of Cassini and what _has already been released into the atmosphere_ is so laughably huge that it doesnt even warrant a concern on our part. You'de be more likely to have your life disrupted by tripping over a crease in the sidewalk than you would have it disrupted by Cassini coming back down to earth.
You need neither be a rocket scientist, nor a mathematician to figure out that all the whining over the Cassini probe is nothing more than radical hippy whiners who think we should make rockets out of hemp and fuel them with manure. The whinings occasionally get picked up by the media, which is why you're hearing about it here.
Yeesh. All this whining makes me wonder why people aren't impressed with heavy-duty science anymore. Instead of the thrill of discovery, people would rather occupy their time panicking and whining about a 75 pound lump of "angry rock".
Reminds me of that episode in All In The Family where Gloria complains to Archie about how many people die every year by guns. Archie quips back, "Well little girl, would you be happier if they got pushed out of windows?"
Lets suppose for a moment that 75 pounds of plutonium *did* come hurtling through our atmosphere. First and foremost, it would probably be so badly degraded upon re-entry that it wouldnt matter *what* it was. You could send a damn dump truck full of boubonic plague through the Earth's atmosphere, it would probably disintegrate before ever reaching the ground. The earth is continually bombarbed by fairly large chucks of threatening debris 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year. Its been this way for millions, if not billions of years. There's a _reason_ why we arent living in a sea of craters, kids.
Besides.. Earth has already seen far worse man-made ecological disasters over the past 200 years than 75 pounds of plutonium could ever cause.
The Industrial Revolution, Hiroshima, Nagasaki, thousands of Cold War nuclear tests , Love Canal, Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, The Gulf War, just to name a few... I'd be willing to bet that if you took every single person who experienced irreversible physical illness as a result of these catastrophies, you could probably arrive at a figure of around 400,000 to 500,000 people grand total. And as tragic as those numbers are, they amount to less than one one-thousandth of a percent of Earth's human population. 75 pounds of plutonium, even *if* it came back to earth, would not reduce us to the level of a bunch of custard-eating Teletubbies living below ground for the next 10,000 years. Besides, i'd trust an engineer over a hippy, wouldnt you?
In other words, the 90's are over. We can all put down out guitars and quit whining now. Putting limits on what science can investigate is far more dangerous than sending a silly little spacecraft out for a spin.
Hiya Mandrake..:) I sure I could probably ask you this question on IRC, but it might be good for the crowd to hear an answer..:)
Q: In your opinion, which makes for better code? A pint of Guinness, a bottle of Evian, or a can of Dew?
Bowie J. Poag
Katz Milks The Columbine Cow.. AGAIN..
on
Quack!
·
· Score: 1
Just for shits and grins, I decided to run a search on Katz's article for the word "Columbine"..and found it. When will this guy give it up? Its like Katz can even manage to write an article without mentioning Columbine at *least* once. This sort of incessant cow-milking borders on the bizzare.
Funky. We've come a long way, I guess.. I remember being in awe when I saw my first non-beige machine back in '88 or so..I'm really surprised nobody has gotten into the market for selling customized parts for cases. I think my box would look excellent with 15 coats of cherry red paint and some chrome on the front.:) Bowie J. Poag
This is just sad. I seem to recall Microsoft bashing Sun for the same basic idea less than a year ago..Now they want in on it. Hmmm.. If I rent a car, and crash it..I have to pay for it. I wonder if it works the same for renting Microsoft applications. Ahha! Now I get it -- You have to pay for it if you crash it! So that's why theyre doing it!:)
It just astounds me to what degrees people put up with this company. Whats next? "Microsoft Office 2000 -- $500 Down, And zero-point-nine percent financing!"....?
Puhlease.. This ranks right up there with "Scientists Discover Doors Make Homes Vulnerable To Intrusion." Lets see some real studies.. You know, NOT one meant to push a product? Bowie J. Poag
SCO, and change..Tell me about it.
on
SCO does Linux
·
· Score: 2
I had the opportunity to speak with a SCO recruiter (got an uber-kewl "I (heart) UNIX" bumper sticker too..heh) on campus a couple months ago during a job fair.. Not to say anything bad about SCO, but, the recruiter seemed to give me the impression that they were fairly frightened about Linux's impact on their marketshare. It seemed like they were almost distancing themselves from their own product in order to prepare to embrace Linux if need-be. Looks like theyre making steps in that direction. A good thing, imho. Kudos to SCO!
A) I dont think the penguins endured any severe hardships. As someone already pointed out, these are trained penguins who apparently do this sort of crap fairly often.
B) I also dont think they belonged at the conference to begin with..Sometimes cute==stupid. By doing something as boneheaded as bringing live penguins to a convention you're *inviting* people to make accusations that youre mistreating the animals. I guess you cant expect people who make money off of parading penguins around at conventions to have enough intelligence to understand that concept, however.
Lets just hope this doesnt repeat itself at the next show.
Slashdot Mirror
..Heh, well, you're certainly entitled to your opinion. For me, this one ranks right up there with the infamous "Here's my caseless computer" post from about a year ago.
Lemmie try and explain my point, here.. We've got a Linux user's group here in town with about 4 times as many people. I suppose if the decision was made to order our pizza for the next meeting from Pizza Hut instead of Dominos, that it deserves mention on Slashdot as well? I can see it now..TUCSON FREE UNIX GROUP SWITCHES TO PIZZA HUT. Gimmie a break.
No offense to the Turkish guys, but this sort of thing doesn't really qualify as "News for Nerds" nor "Stuff That Matters"..Its a local issue.
Bowie J. Poag
They're gonna have to price it agressively to compete down here..Local phonecalls within Tucson city limits (read: about 800,000 people spread across about 500 square miles of terrain) are absolutely free.. That means if you live in Tucson, and want to stay connected to your ISP 24 hours a day 365 days a year, it costs you a grand total of $0.00
Low crime, low taxes, great scenery, great University, great weather, nice babes, easy access to beer, pizza and caffiene. You cant go wrong down here.
A happy Tucson resident since 1996,
Bowie J. Poag
No kidding.. I've been trying to get a piece aired here on Slashdot for two friggin weeks, offering free hosting space on a monster-sized server for Linux community projects.. Something that could really help alot of people. Apparently, Abe and his spiffy skydiving adventure takes greater precedence, however.
I could launch into a diatribe here, about there being two types of computer geeks..But I think its already abundantly clear to all of us where Abe falls. This guy has no less than 9 pictures of himself on his homepage..you figure it out.
Bowie J. Poag
Heh...And people accuse me of being a narcissist. Have you people seen this guy's page?
Bowie J. Poag
The solution to the PR problem is simple -- Keep doing what we've always been doing. Develop publically, talk privately. Not the other way around.
You'll notice that in every situation where a person in a management role must also fulfill a spokesman role, that the whole situation will begin to slowly fall apart. Management and spokesmanship are mutually exclusive activities -- You cant perform one duty without somehow taking away from or harming your ability to perform the other...A veeeery important lesson I learned not too long ago. Anyone remember the GNOME Style Guide? (*grin*)
The press is basically looking for another Gates to put in the other corner of the computer industry's boxing ring. We'd be smart to let them stay confused rather than divert our attention to clueing them in. If you think about it, the press hasn't even comprehended the idea that nobody owns Linux yet. Its their responsibility to inform themselves, not ours, imho.
Bowie J. Poag
For years since Commodore's demise the the early 90s' (and even some *before* then) companies have been building knock-offs of Amiga models, and giving them similar names. The A1500, A3500 and A5000 come to mind..Machines that sure-enough ran like Amigas, and looked like Amigas, but were not actual production models made by the company. Often, they were simply package deals made by independant shops to attract attention.
:)
For the sake of comedy, it should be pointed out that the "Amiga 1010" has already been used as a name--The first external 3.5" disk drive Commodore made for the Amiga back in '86 was named the "Amiga 1010". Sorry, guys..its been taken.
Bowie J. Poag
Good time to buy SGI stock if you ask me. :)
Bowie J. Poag
I posted an article about "Celebration" to Slashdot two months ago, written by another writer.. It never aired.
Where Katz got the idea to write about it doesn't concern me. The idea that people think its a "good idea" to let a company control what theyre able to buy, hear, or listen to is what really scares me. Makes me wonder how many years before Disneyland succeeds from the Union and declares itself an independant country. Theyre halfway there -- They already have their own police force and judicial system.
Bowie J. Poag
News For News, Stuff That Matters.. Ahh, the good ol' days. I remember them well.
Bowie J. Poag
Indeed, this is an old, old trick...and why it gets attention here is beyond me.
:)
There's even a name for it. "The Voice of God" trick... I've used this technique to determine if hardware is working when you have absolutely no other way of determining the health of a system. For example, I picked up an SGI Indigo 2 at a surplus auction a while back.. didnt have a keyboard, a monitor, or a mouse to plug into it. I basically had a power light, and thats it. Putting an AM radio in close proximity to the motherboard and tuning it to a clear frequency will result in your being able hear the motherboard go through its self check. If you hear nothing, the board is dead. If you hear alot of chatter happening on the bus, you can be fairly certain the machine is at least salvagable.
Now, if this guy were to have actually written code to play -music- by running data through his mobo at different rates, that would be different. Until then, i'll sit back and wait for someone to top the ultimate trick:
Make a Commodore 64 play "A Bicycle Built For Two" by grinding the stepper motor back and forth on the read/write head of a 1541 disk drive. Saw this done back in 1987.
Bowie J. Poag
Anyone who get into Linux for the money, raise your hand.
Meanwhile, the rest of us will keep doing what we've been doing since 91.
Bowie J. Poag
Hahaha, lord help us all if someone comes up as the long-lost brother of Jar Jar.
Bowie J. Poag
AMEN!
Bowie J. Poag
Doh, youre right. I stand corrected... Hmm, thought it was 2000 for some reason. Go figure.
Bowie J. Poag
more_fun_flame_mode(on); // I enjoy debate. I dont take it personally.
{
If I remember what I learned in Chemistry a few years ago, the critical mass of plutonium is about 2,000 pounds.. Meaning, in any warhead, there must be at least 2,000 pounds of high-grade plutonium to smash together in order for an explosion to occur.
2,000 pounds. Compared to 75.
Now, multiply that 2000 figure by the number of plutonium warheads that were tested out here in the desert, and out in the pacific for the past 40 years. Compare that figure against the 75 pound nuclear payload aboard the Cassini. The difference between the "threat" of Cassini and what _has already been released into the atmosphere_ is so laughably huge that it doesnt even warrant a concern on our part. You'de be more likely to have your life disrupted by tripping over a crease in the sidewalk than you would have it disrupted by Cassini coming back down to earth.
You need neither be a rocket scientist, nor a mathematician to figure out that all the whining over the Cassini probe is nothing more than radical hippy whiners who think we should make rockets out of hemp and fuel them with manure. The whinings occasionally get picked up by the media, which is why you're hearing about it here.
}
more_fun_flame_mode(off);
Bowie J. Poag
wildly_inflammatory_editorial_mode(on);
{
Yeesh. All this whining makes me wonder why people aren't impressed with heavy-duty science anymore. Instead of the thrill of discovery, people would rather occupy their time panicking and whining about a 75 pound lump of "angry rock".
Reminds me of that episode in All In The Family where Gloria complains to Archie about how many people die every year by guns. Archie quips back, "Well little girl, would you be happier if they got pushed out of windows?"
Lets suppose for a moment that 75 pounds of plutonium *did* come hurtling through our atmosphere. First and foremost, it would probably be so badly degraded upon re-entry that it wouldnt matter *what* it was. You could send a damn dump truck full of boubonic plague through the Earth's atmosphere, it would probably disintegrate before ever reaching the ground. The earth is continually bombarbed by fairly large chucks of threatening debris 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year. Its been this way for millions, if not billions of years. There's a _reason_ why we arent living in a sea of craters, kids.
Besides.. Earth has already seen far worse man-made ecological disasters over the past 200 years than 75 pounds of plutonium could ever cause.
The Industrial Revolution, Hiroshima, Nagasaki, thousands of Cold War nuclear tests , Love Canal, Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, The Gulf War, just to name a few... I'd be willing to bet that if you took every single person who experienced irreversible physical illness as a result of these catastrophies, you could probably arrive at a figure of around 400,000 to 500,000 people grand total. And as tragic as those numbers are, they amount to less than one one-thousandth of a percent of Earth's human population. 75 pounds of plutonium, even *if* it came back to earth, would not reduce us to the level of a bunch of custard-eating Teletubbies living below ground for the next 10,000 years. Besides, i'd trust an engineer over a hippy, wouldnt you?
In other words, the 90's are over. We can all put down out guitars and quit whining now. Putting limits on what science can investigate is far more dangerous than sending a silly little spacecraft out for a spin.
}
wildly_inflammatory_editorial_mode(off);
Bowie J. Poag
...Tesla Coil on wheels. :)
Bowie J. Poag
Hiya Mandrake.. :) I sure I could probably ask you this question on IRC, but it might be good for the crowd to hear an answer.. :)
Q: In your opinion, which makes for better code? A pint of Guinness, a bottle of Evian, or a can of Dew?
Bowie J. Poag
Just for shits and grins, I decided to run a search on Katz's article for the word "Columbine"..and found it. When will this guy give it up? Its like Katz can even manage to write an article without mentioning Columbine at *least* once. This sort of incessant cow-milking borders on the bizzare.
Bowie J. Poag
Funky. We've come a long way, I guess.. I remember being in awe when I saw my first non-beige machine back in '88 or so..I'm really surprised nobody has gotten into the market for selling customized parts for cases. I think my box would look excellent with 15 coats of cherry red paint and some chrome on the front. :)
Bowie J. Poag
This is just sad. I seem to recall Microsoft bashing Sun for the same basic idea less than a year ago..Now they want in on it.
Hmmm.. If I rent a car, and crash it..I have to pay for it. I wonder if it works the same for renting Microsoft applications. Ahha! Now I get it -- You have to pay for it if you crash it! So that's why theyre doing it!
It just astounds me to what degrees people put up with this company. Whats next? "Microsoft Office 2000 -- $500 Down, And zero-point-nine percent financing!"
Bowie J. Poag
PROPAGANDA
Bowie J. Poag
Puhlease.. This ranks right up there with "Scientists Discover Doors Make Homes Vulnerable To Intrusion." Lets see some real studies.. You know, NOT one meant to push a product?
Bowie J. Poag
I had the opportunity to speak with a SCO recruiter (got an uber-kewl "I (heart) UNIX" bumper sticker too..heh) on campus a couple months ago during a job fair.. Not to say anything bad about SCO, but, the recruiter seemed to give me the impression that they were fairly frightened about Linux's impact on their marketshare. It seemed like they were almost distancing themselves from their own product in order to prepare to embrace Linux if need-be. Looks like theyre making steps in that direction. A good thing, imho. Kudos to SCO!
Bowie
PROPAGANDA
Bowie J. Poag
Dont get him started. :) We havent heard anything from Katz in the past week or so... dont jinx it :)
Bowie J. Poag
A) I dont think the penguins endured any severe hardships. As someone already pointed out, these are trained penguins who apparently do this sort of crap fairly often.
B) I also dont think they belonged at the conference to begin with..Sometimes cute==stupid. By doing something as boneheaded as bringing live penguins to a convention you're *inviting* people to make accusations that youre mistreating the animals. I guess you cant expect people who make money off of parading penguins around at conventions to have enough intelligence to understand that concept, however.
Lets just hope this doesnt repeat itself at the next show.
Bowie J. Poag