i attended a press conference about this. a couple of strange things about them: a. the company is planning to use decomissioned Russian ICBMs to launch them... something formerly poised to rain nuclear death down on you may be launching your senior thesis project into space. b. the CEO of the company or whatever advocated buying one for the purposes of launching one's medical records into space along with a transmitter, so that if one were on safari and ill, a doctor could use a rudimentary receiver pointed at the sat when it passed over to retreive them. faster than postal mail, slower than JUST BRINGING YOUR G'DAMN RECORDS WITH YOU! or the Internet....
i know in new york, the org new york cares has a fairly healthy list of tech volunteer work. looking for a sorta meta-non profit that provides services for other non-profits might be the way to go.
Bob Metcalfe's "Linux's '60s technology, open-sores ideology won't beat W2K, but what will?" should be relegated to the same garbage heap as the opinions of those who hold that tobacco smoking isn't hazardous to your health or that the Holocaust never really occured. He uses the same circular reasoning and knee-jerk Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt propaganda disguised as logic as any hyperconservative reactionary. Metcalfe's two main points are never really backed up in any useful way.
His assertion that "the Open Source Movement's ideology is utopian balderdash" is ostensibly backed by two flimsy metaphors. He starts by comparing Open Source Software to Communism and then the Back-to-the-Earth Movement and then making statements that attempt at debunking those two philisophical ideologies, which is intended to sabotage OSS's credibility. But where's the link between OSS and Communism, for example? Because they're both shamelessly idealistic? Are we to believe that just because Communists also had an idea that was different for the time and had a good go but failed at making it work out, OSS should fail as well? Or is it that the Open source community isn't making any money, just as Communism attempts in a different way to abolish class distinctions? Does the quality of a product come from the fact that the authors profited from it? Obviously not; the proof is in the statistics. Just browse the Web and look for Linux server uptime stats vs. those of NT.
Metcalf's other main assertion, that "Linux is 30-year-old technology," also implies fallacious reasoning. He even earlier counterdicts it himself, saying decent software "... can't be written in a weekend" How does Linux ask us to ignore "three decades of innovation?' It's not as if the Unix concept was implimented once and then abandoned, and now the Linux community is trying to emulate a product from thirty years ago. Besides, do we abandon our automobiles because they're based on 115 year-old technology? (As an aside: So many Microsoft backers use the term 'innovation' when they really should be saying "proprietary standards leveraged by an undue market share used to further eliminate competetion.") Then Metcalf goes on to demolish his own point by openly saying that "W2K is software also from the distant past -- VAX/VMS for Windows," Why the hell should we keep on reading at this point? Got me.
I'm not saying that my arguments above imply that there will be a Linux firestorm tomorrow that will put Microsoft out of business. All I'm trying to say is that an op-ed piece has to do a little more than express an opinion and pad the rest of the article out with rhetorical bunk. If this sort of vapid tripe passes as publishable material at your mag, may I offer my own services as an author? Benefit to you: rational, well thought-out opinions, that, while not always true, at least advance the public debate. Benefit to me: the opportunity to be inebriated at work and still do a better job than the last guy."
but of course the people that finally developed and released it weren't Xerox. The poor guy at PARC that invented and implimented it for the first time never got them to do anything with it (even after 20 years).
"Electronic ink? Wait, then people won't need photocopiers! Our sales will plummet! I think we should sit on this idea. Throw it in the secret vault with the other fourteen million mindnumbingly cool ideas that'll never see the light of day."
True. But my point was that in creating this propulsion system, they've only offset the emmissions, not eliminated them. Centralizing power production usually makes more sense... except for nuclear!
... a recording engineer and slashdotter who uses 'Low' as an audio quality reference. amazing. wouldn't have pictured that. (btw: low is good.)
i can see why 44.1 was a slight compromise even at the time cd's were recorded (should have been 48 kHz, but past 24 kHz you get from it aren't you reproducing stuff only your dog can hear?) and maybe 16 bit is sort of laughable now (esp. with those 'DSP' circuits in components that are supposed to enhance the sound but sound like a cheesy-ass digital eq averaging bits to the nearest power of 2). and the concept of some mathematical codec being able to decide what i can and can't perceive is almost facist. but the point of mp3 isn't really to be as 'digital' as a professionally-mastered digital recording. think of them as tapes. and as an engineer, these people aren't paying you diddley when they pirate your music, so aren't you glad they aren't appreciating the painstaking effort you put into making every instrument jump out of the mix and lick you. let them screw themselves.
ADAT actually comes in two different formats. The Alesis version stores 8 tracks of audio at varying bitdepth/rates on SVHS tapes. The Tascam format uses Hi8mm videotapes. From what I can tell, the more film/video people use Tascam more and the strictly music people use Alesis.
i have a friend that's a producer who has a whole stack of the Alesis ADATs and a BRC (Big Remote Control, i assume it stands for) that looks like something out of Star Trek(*). pretty rad with the lights out and all the lights flashing along to the music.
so, anyway, you aren't going to be able to play ADAT format music on a normal dat deck of any variety. DAT Hi8mm (**)
cygnus "i feel like a quote out of context."
* i abhor star trek, to the point of yelling at the top of my lungs and lunging for the remote whenever it comes on. just wanted to get that off of my chest. ** BASIC rules!
Alright, the whole open source argument is kind of getting silly. Apple deciding to open the source to OS 10 should be regarded as a good thing, not like they're GNU wannabes that didn't have the balls to go all the way. Deriding Apple for only releasing part isn't very constructive. M$ hasn't released anything, why don't people sh*t on them more? Saying that since Apple isn't releasing all of their code, they're as bad as a company notorious for not releasing all of their API's to external developers is pretty damn dumb.
>If that not enough there is the Tracking number issue. How many people want to go naked on the Internet ?
The irony of this kind of cracked me up. Go to any search engine, type 'naked', and hit the button. The only useful metaphor I could draw from that is "look how many stupid people there are!"
...Do you folks really think there's a Linux daemon for this ad thing that would automatically install on your partition if you made one? Doesn't sound to me like there's going to be anything to redirect...
And, as far as the legal thing goes, wouldn't it make more sense (since the thing IS free) to just spring $200 for a new drive and get to use your whole drive instead of having however much swallowed by ads? You could just leave the old one in there and remove the IDE cable. Leave the power one in, it'd give you that extra little technicality thing to be smug about...
Main Entry: diphthong Pronunciation: 'dif-"tho[ng], 'dip- Function: noun Etymology: Middle English diptonge, from Middle French diptongue, from Late Latin dipthongus, from Greek diphthongos, from di- + phthongos voice, sound Date: 15th century 1 : a gliding monosyllabic speech sound (as the vowel combination at the end of toy) that starts at or near the articulatory position for one vowel and moves to or toward the position of another 2 : DIGRAPH 3 : the ligature æ or [oe] -----------
Whoah, man! You really told all of them! And although I agree on which side of the Intel/Motorola duality you're on, this isn't really that valid of an argument. Just because people post anonymously and are labeled "coward" on this site, doesn't mean they don't have anything valuable to say. Or that they're two letters smooshed together.
Slashdot Mirror
this post isn't moderated down far enough...
talk about being asinine. by 'common man,' it isn't intended to mean every single human being on the planet! grow up!
i attended a press conference about this. a couple of strange things about them: a. the company is planning to use decomissioned Russian ICBMs to launch them... something formerly poised to rain nuclear death down on you may be launching your senior thesis project into space. b. the CEO of the company or whatever advocated buying one for the purposes of launching one's medical records into space along with a transmitter, so that if one were on safari and ill, a doctor could use a rudimentary receiver pointed at the sat when it passed over to retreive them. faster than postal mail, slower than JUST BRINGING YOUR G'DAMN RECORDS WITH YOU! or the Internet....
i'm laughing really loudly right now. that's the funniest thing i think i've ever read on slashdot. no, really!
i know in new york, the org new york cares has a fairly healthy list of tech volunteer work. looking for a sorta meta-non profit that provides services for other non-profits might be the way to go.
- ECHELON
- DICTONARY
oh, crap, i probably just set off what i was talking about. oh well.cygnus
"i feel like a quote out of context."
"To the Editor:
Bob Metcalfe's "Linux's '60s technology, open-sores ideology won't beat W2K, but what will?" should be relegated to the same garbage heap as the opinions of those who hold that tobacco smoking isn't hazardous to your health or that the Holocaust never really occured. He uses the same circular reasoning and knee-jerk Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt propaganda disguised as logic as any hyperconservative reactionary. Metcalfe's two main points are never really backed up in any useful way.
His assertion that "the Open Source Movement's ideology is utopian balderdash" is ostensibly backed by two flimsy metaphors. He starts by comparing Open Source Software to Communism and then the Back-to-the-Earth Movement and then making statements that attempt at debunking those two philisophical ideologies, which is intended to sabotage OSS's credibility. But where's the link between OSS and Communism, for example? Because they're both shamelessly idealistic? Are we to believe that just because Communists also had an idea that was different for the time and had a good go but failed at making it work out, OSS should fail as well? Or is it that the Open source community isn't making any money, just as Communism attempts in a different way to abolish class distinctions? Does the quality of a product come from the fact that the authors profited from it? Obviously not; the proof is in the statistics. Just browse the Web and look for Linux server uptime stats vs. those of NT.
Metcalf's other main assertion, that "Linux is 30-year-old technology," also implies fallacious reasoning. He even earlier counterdicts it himself, saying decent software "... can't be written in a weekend" How does Linux ask us to ignore "three decades of innovation?' It's not as if the Unix concept was implimented once and then abandoned, and now the Linux community is trying to emulate a product from thirty years ago. Besides, do we abandon our automobiles because they're based on 115 year-old technology? (As an aside: So many Microsoft backers use the term 'innovation' when they really should be saying "proprietary standards leveraged by an undue market share used to further eliminate competetion.") Then Metcalf goes on to demolish his own point by openly saying that "W2K is software also from the distant past -- VAX/VMS for Windows," Why the hell should we keep on reading at this point? Got me.
I'm not saying that my arguments above imply that there will be a Linux firestorm tomorrow that will put Microsoft out of business. All I'm trying to say is that an op-ed piece has to do a little more than express an opinion and pad the rest of the article out with rhetorical bunk. If this sort of vapid tripe passes as publishable material at your mag, may I offer my own services as an author? Benefit to you: rational, well thought-out opinions, that, while not always true, at least advance the public debate. Benefit to me: the opportunity to be inebriated at work and still do a better job than the last guy."
cygnus
"Electronic ink? Wait, then people won't need photocopiers! Our sales will plummet! I think we should sit on this idea. Throw it in the secret vault with the other fourteen million mindnumbingly cool ideas that'll never see the light of day."
cygnus
"i feel like a quote out of context."
True. But my point was that in creating this propulsion system, they've only offset the emmissions, not eliminated them. Centralizing power production usually makes more sense... except for nuclear!
cygnus
"i feel like a quote out of context."
...that we'll all be driving mailtrucks in the future?
BTW, low emmissions don't mean bullpucky if the thing making your energy to make your fuel is a coal-fired electric plant...
cygnus
"i feel like a quote out of context."
... a recording engineer and slashdotter who uses 'Low' as an audio quality reference. amazing. wouldn't have pictured that. (btw: low is good.)
i can see why 44.1 was a slight compromise even at the time cd's were recorded (should have been 48 kHz, but past 24 kHz you get from it aren't you reproducing stuff only your dog can hear?) and maybe 16 bit is sort of laughable now (esp. with those 'DSP' circuits in components that are supposed to enhance the sound but sound like a cheesy-ass digital eq averaging bits to the nearest power of 2). and the concept of some mathematical codec being able to decide what i can and can't perceive is almost facist. but the point of mp3 isn't really to be as 'digital' as a professionally-mastered digital recording. think of them as tapes. and as an engineer, these people aren't paying you diddley when they pirate your music, so aren't you glad they aren't appreciating the painstaking effort you put into making every instrument jump out of the mix and lick you. let them screw themselves.
cygnus
"i feel like a quote out of context."
yes! i finally get to be smart for once!
ADAT actually comes in two different formats. The Alesis version stores 8 tracks of audio at varying bitdepth/rates on SVHS tapes. The Tascam format uses Hi8mm videotapes. From what I can tell, the more film/video people use Tascam more and the strictly music people use Alesis.
i have a friend that's a producer who has a whole stack of the Alesis ADATs and a BRC (Big Remote Control, i assume it stands for) that looks like something out of Star Trek(*). pretty rad with the lights out and all the lights flashing along to the music.
so, anyway, you aren't going to be able to play ADAT format music on a normal dat deck of any variety. DAT Hi8mm (**)
cygnus
"i feel like a quote out of context."
* i abhor star trek, to the point of yelling at the top of my lungs and lunging for the remote whenever it comes on. just wanted to get that off of my chest.
** BASIC rules!
Alright, the whole open source argument is kind of getting silly. Apple deciding to open the source to OS 10 should be regarded as a good thing, not like they're GNU wannabes that didn't have the balls to go all the way. Deriding Apple for only releasing part isn't very constructive. M$ hasn't released anything, why don't people sh*t on them more? Saying that since Apple isn't releasing all of their code, they're as bad as a company notorious for not releasing all of their API's to external developers is pretty damn dumb.
>If that not enough there is the Tracking number issue. How many people want to go naked on the Internet ?
The irony of this kind of cracked me up. Go to any search engine, type 'naked', and hit the button. The only useful metaphor I could draw from that is "look how many stupid people there are!"
Cygnus
"I feel like a quote out of context."
...Do you folks really think there's a Linux daemon for this ad thing that would automatically install on your partition if you made one? Doesn't sound to me like there's going to be anything to redirect...
And, as far as the legal thing goes, wouldn't it make more sense (since the thing IS free) to just spring $200 for a new drive and get to use your whole drive instead of having however much swallowed by ads? You could just leave the old one in there and remove the IDE cable. Leave the power one in, it'd give you that extra little technicality thing to be smug about...
cygnus
"I feel like a quote out of context."
From Mirriam-Webster:
Main Entry: diphthong
Pronunciation: 'dif-"tho[ng], 'dip-
Function: noun
Etymology: Middle English diptonge, from Middle French diptongue, from Late Latin dipthongus, from Greek diphthongos, from di- + phthongos voice,
sound
Date: 15th century
1 : a gliding monosyllabic speech sound (as the vowel combination at the end of toy) that starts at or near the articulatory position for one vowel and moves to or
toward the position of another
2 : DIGRAPH
3 : the ligature æ or [oe]
-----------
Whoah, man! You really told all of them! And although I agree on which side of the Intel/Motorola duality you're on, this isn't really that valid of an argument. Just because people post anonymously and are labeled "coward" on this site, doesn't mean they don't have anything valuable to say. Or that they're two letters smooshed together.
cygnus
"I feel like a quote out of context"