Despite the nick I semi randome chose I call it Linux
but sometimes i just call it Gnome, because that is what i use and not necessarily always on Linux. If i were using KDE i would call it KDE because for me it is all about the desktop.
As for Distributions I call them by their names, RedHat, Mandrake, Gentoo, SuSe, and that is usually enough. Some times call Debian by its full title Debian Gnu/Linux as that is the name they chose for their project and I can respect that, but even then i certainly dont pronounce the slash, i mean who pronounces punctation marks! I assume (and hope) that Richard Stallman only does that to make it absolutely clear what he means.
It would be far better to concentrate on Gnu/Hurd than to continue such divisive aguements, it is enough to make me switch to Gnome/BSD.
Seeing as this post will probably get moderated to hell anyway I may as well complain about the name "Free Software", as "Freedome Software" or even better "Software Freedom" would have make far more sense but i guess it too late to try and fix it now, it is as futile as trying to get people to care about the cracker/hacker distinction.
Rich Text Format is a Microsoft "Standard", guideline would be more accurate.
The *guideline* differs from what Microsoft actually does and as it controlled by Microsoft they can and will change it periodically to reflect the reality of what Microsoft Word is actually doing.
OpenOffice.org supports RTF but unfortunately not the most recent version and it can cause some problems.
XML based format
PDF would be a more sincere (less insincere) choice, but i am not sure exactly how open it really is but it is at least widely viewable.
Unusual to see a Bruce Perens post only moderated at 3;)
Unless it has been changed already (it does not seem to have been) the names mentioned are Peter Passell Bernard Reddy Michael Wendy
google Bernard Reddy and you will find this hilarious article titled why does microsoft charge so little! http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/doj/econ/10-1 6e con-b.asp
Peter Passel might be this guy: http://www.milkeninstitute.org/gc2002/bio.cf m?Reco rdID=130
below that agian it says T o t h e E d i t o r :
P e t e r P a s s e l l
M i c h a e l W e n d y
I wonder if this is the same Peter Passel? http://www.milkeninstitute.org/gc2002/bio .cfm?Reco rdID=130
Microsoft Autosave, ha ha ha! this minus spaces was what was inserted at the bottom of the document, these were obviously some of the people who helped review the Document. C:\DocumentsandSettings\username\ApplicationData \M icrosoft\Word\AutoRecoverysaveofMaccriskenletterre SFGate
It seems they used Ms Word 9.
While i am at it, Mr Perens when will you be in Denmark? (I read the recent article at Newsforge and would like to know, the month would be detail enough).
Here is a copy of The Audio Home Recording Act (AHRA) of 1992
I hope you are correct but i cant figure out the relevant section that allows for fair use. I am not a lawyer, but you cant believe much of what you read on slashdot.
Digital Restrictions Mangement (DRM)
on
"Squishy" DRM?
·
· Score: 1
"Squishy" sounds almost cute and harmless, more like "spikey" or "prickley".
I like this bit though (emphasis added):
But it's impossible to put an accurate dollar figure on how much --
or even if -- it's costing the entertainment business.
And for good measure a link to the privacy implications of DRM for the benifit of searchbots, cant have pro DRM propoganda getting listed first in search engines now can we?.
The big strength of OpenOffice is how well it handles microsoft files.
GoBe is pretty cool, its is cross platform and pretty lean but not Open Source yet... http://freeradicalsoftware.com/
If you are really interested in Gnumeric on windows perhaps you should offer a small financial incentive to the developers. Allegedly they have worked very hard to cleanly seperate out the functions into libraries and a port to windows should be doable. If i recall there just is no one particularly interested in doing the necessary work of porting it but it is not impossible and the maintainer Jody Goldberg is not the kind of insecure fool to complain at the mere suggestion. http://mail.gnome.org/archives/gnumeric-list/200 1- March/msg00041.html
I would link to the bug reports section in Bugzilla for the Download manager but Mozilla are smart enough to block direct links from Slashdot.
http://bugzilla.mozilla.org
Find reports, cast your votes. Help weed out duplicates (there are loads of them)!
Stuck using Netscape 4 recently, i had forgotten how dog slow it was and how much i hate popup ad's, on the upside the focus behaves much better and i dont keep having to click on a page before i can use the keys to scroll up and down. This is a big usability flaw for me and significantly slows down all my browsing (if anyone knows a relevant bug number please let me know).
Yeah, i read that his proposed enhancements to CLM were not very popular, but his ability to code accepted and his wealth or ability to do useful things for the Open Source community are two different things.
I find that most Yes No type dialogs make me want to say No! If these programs had more sensible defaults they would not need to ask me so many stupid questions.
Thankfully Esc can be consistantly be used to dismiss the current dialog whether the label say No Cancel Done or Whatever, so despite the need to reach a little further on the keyboard i usually use escape (and since it is in the extreme top left i can easily hit it without needing to look).
I think tools like Glade are invaluable as they not only encourage people to develop lots of Applications they allow people to easily do the right thing and reuse code as well as follow standards.
Does she get naked! not likely. checkout CNDB.com the Celebrity Nudity Database (the whole concept of which makes me laugh).
It was really weird when i realised that it was Eliza Dushku who played the daughter in True Lies.
"Bring it on" a light hearted amusing movie about cheerleading also features Kirsten Dunst and the one who played Glory in Buffy.
Im just another Teenage fanboy!
Mmm Kirsten Dunst in "get over it" pointless and gratuitous scene just so that we get to see her at the pool in a bikini. Mmm Kirsten Dunst in Spiderman, unecessary rain and a tight dress... thanks Sam Raimi;)
Angel has never been the same since they got rid of Doyle. Gotta love the funny stereotypical Irish messer.
On the upside Angle provided plenty of excuses to see more of the gorgeousJulie Benz.
I have always felt that Angel was really weak and even though the style was a little darker i dont think the content was really any darker than buffy, but then i have probably been completely desensitised by watching the HBO prison drama Oz which rocks.
I always thought it was an interesting coincidence how the film "Bring it on" had vampire connections: Kirsten Dunst, interview with a vampire; Elisha Dusku, aka Faith the Vampire Slayer; and whats her name who played Glory in Buffy.
"why is it that developers always release RPMs for fuck-knows whatever RPM-based distros out there but never bother to include us debian-types?"
Debian packagers are usually very strict. RPM packagers are usually fairly lax and the process is easier to do even if it is not done well.
The quality and ease of resolving dependencies that Debian users take such pride in are part of the reason why some developers dont want to spend a whole lot of time and effort producing debian packages only to be told they are not good enough or that debian have decided they want to package the app differntly and use different compile time options from the defaults.
The zealotry and lack of diplomacey of some Debian advocates does not help much. Make it easier to make good packages and developers will produce good packages.
"Linux wont fragment like unix" it will fragment in its own completely differnt way..deb.rpm.tgz if linux is not converging and standardising then it is fragmenting...
There are at least signs of hope with the LSB, the respective KDE and Gnome Human interface Guidelines (HIG) and things like the Gnome System Tools http://www.gnome.org/projects/gst/index.html
I guess if you want a game that has a long what is needed is Game construction kits. Provide the basic game and way for users to build new levels of there own and hopefully contribute them back. In open source the resuable tools libraries and resources that other projects can cannibalize are often more useful than the actual program, standing on the shoulders of giants etc.
I would love to see an open source pinball construction kit or suchlike with a few playable levels to start with and then they users could add their own levels. (I saw a program called Visual Pinball but i dont think it was open source).
Think of the community that has built up around quake mods. Quake is more than just a game it is a whole world and you can get just about anything from Machinema to Chess to racing games out of it.
I really must mention frozen bubble, probably the best open source game i have ever seen. http://www.frozen-bubble.org/ The concept is not new, i have loved Puzzle Bobble for years (but very few other people seem to have heard of it) and there seem to be a new Worms game based around the same concept called Worms Blast. http://wormsblast.team17.com/ Part of what makes the game so good is that it is so polished. You can add levels but i dont think there is a graphical level builder yet. (maybe you could use a tool like Dia to contruct it or customise on of the many map/level builder programs in sourceforge).
Essentially i think game construction kits would really appeal to hackers a lot more. It just occured to me while reading the parent post
No more satirewire, i guess i will have to add the book to my wishlist.
Just in case it gets slashdotted:
SATIREWIRE HAS LANDED DEC. 1999 -- AUG. 2002 Please Check Your Seats for Any Personal Items
New Haven, Conn. (SatireWire.com) -- Citing creative differences, SatireWire's founder and sole employee, Andrew Marlatt, announced that as of today, the site will no longer be updated. Moi
Unlike everything else on the site, this is not a joke. Not even the "creative differences" part.
"I've been producing SatireWire by myself for 159 Internet years (2.67 Earth years), and in a staff meeting yesterday, I all agreed it's time for me to move on," said Marlatt. "While the decision was certainly difficult, the meeting was actually quite harmonious. I brought doughnuts."
The site will still exist, but as an archive of (mostly) intelligent humor pieces that, in their own small way, reflected the times in which they were wrought.
But let's skip to the questions...
WHAT THE HELL?
No, I was not indicted for insider trading. I have not been exposed by the TIPS program. I did not at any time meet with Dick Cheney to discuss anything.
OK, SO YOU'RE CLEAN. THEN WHAT'S UP?
I started the site (originally called The FNwire) back in December of 1999, at the height of the Internet boom. It was a great creative outlet, and it was a marvelous way for me to get a wider audience for my writing. That first month, for those first few stories, I think I had about 400 visitors. Last month, in July of 2002, the site had about 1 million visitors. So, oddly enough...
It's not about the money. The site actually makes money -- through advertising, through the book "Economy of Errors," and (primarily) through selling pieces from the site to publications like, say, the Washington Post, the Cleveland Plain Dealer, or the National Post in Canada. Nice little setup, actually. I've been very lucky. But the bottom line is, it has ceased to be fun. My heart is not in it. My head is not in it. (And please, no emails saying, "Yeah, lately we could kinda tell." Like I need to hear that.)
The thing is, SatireWire, successful as it has been, is also suffocating. I work best tangentially, meaning I work best when I let ideas just come at me, flitting about my head like confetti as I marvel at all the pretty colors, the way they turned in the wind. I would pick out the ones I liked, put them together, make a story. But the confetti no longer falls. It's all on the ground now. The parade is over. I'm just sweeping up ideas off the pavement. And that's not good enough.
SO WHAT ARE YOU GOING TO DO NOW?
Challenge myself. Explore. Focus on just writing (gleefully abandoning the business side of SatireWire, which was exhausting). I'll probably continue to write humor pieces for some of the print publications I have worked with, and perhaps some others. Perhaps even something regular. Haven't really thought about it. Odds are I'll also have pieces (though what "style" is a blessed mystery to me) appear on the Internet now and again. I might also get into longer fiction. I might produce a book entirely of SatireWiry charts. I might get invited to a backstage party for Moby. Who knows?
IS THIS MOVE WISE?
Oh God no. SatireWire is one of the most popular humor sites on the Net. And with a book just out in June, ("Economy of Errors"), it's completely counter-intuitive to stop now when the site so successfully supports the book, and is making good money. But I run an Internet site for a living. What do I know from intuitive?
YOU'RE JUST GOING TO LET IT SIT AND ROT?
As some of you know from reading The Magic School Bus books, rot is important to the life cycle. But yes, most likely, it's going to simply be an archive of SW stories, with updated information only on "Economy of Errors," which as you know is available at bookstores everywhere and makes a perfect Christmas gift.
WHY NOT SELL THE SITE?
Friends and colleagues asked me if it were for sale about 15 seconds after I told them the news. So would I consider it? Doubtful. It would have to be to the right people, people who were talented and funny and could keep it updated regularly. Proven track record and all that. Marketing people would say it's a waste to let all that traffic just disappear. I am not a marketing person. Buy SatireWire's new book!
IF THERE ARE ANY UPDATES ON YOU OR YOUR WORK, CAN WE CHECK SATIREWIRE.COM?
Good idea. I'll try to incorporate something like that on the home page. In the meantime, you can always buy the book.
SO THAT'S IT THEN, IS IT?
No, there are also the thanks. Many thanks for many people, not least of whom are the thousands upon thousands of subscribers from all over the world, the hundreds of thousands of regular visitors, and those who've emailed support, and, yes, even opprobrium. And there are individuals. Susan and Brian and Linda and David and Doug and two other Davids and Angel and Tom and Regina and Jeff and Mike and Michael and Daniel and Becky and Laura and this is stupid you know who you are.
OK, SOME OF US HAVE ALWAYS WONDERED, ARE YOU BRITISH?
No.
CANADIAN?
No.
YOU MUST BE AUSTRALIAN, RIGHT?
Nope.
SO WHO ARE YOU?
Geographically, I am a Connecticut (US) resident, raised in Atlanta, Georgia. Educationally, I was schooled at the University of Georgia. Professionally, I was a journalist for a good while after school, writing for newspapers and, later, as a magazine freelancer. Psychologically, I am a goof, (although lately, unfortunately, a serious goof). And personally, I have a wonderful wife and two terrific young boys, with whom I intend to spend much more time. They are the most brightly colored confetti of all.
How do we now this is not just another part of the joke.
A slashdottting seems like a great way to shut down the site:)
Satire is a really powerful way to get a message across. This weeks story telling boring people not to encrypt stuff will help me to convince people why they do need cryptography. http://satirewire.com/news/aug02/encryption.shtm l
My personal favorite story has to be this one about Microsoft Outlook, i inlcude it anytime some sends me a virus warning. http://www.satirewire.com/news/0103/outlook.shtm l classic just classic Foot-and-Mouth First Virus Unable To Spread Through Microsoft Outlook
Satire is a powerful weapon. Satirewire will be dearly missed.
Maybe use Mr Project? Did you file any bug reports feature requests against any open source programs?
(another comment mentions cvsgraph which looks good)
Licensing: licensed VHS to pretty much anyone
on
Sony Kills Betamax
·
· Score: 1
Karma be damned, im gonna comment anyway.
"VHS to pretty much anyone willing to write a check"
It is all about the Pr0n. Always earlier adopters of technologies that make them more profit. You could not get pornography on Betamax because of the licensing. (same goes for why DivX is so popular)
the answer is for more programs to make themselves work as compenents either libraries (preferably) or embeddable compontents (bonobo/Kparts etc).
part of the problem is just knowing what is out there and the people who are actually doing all the programming are not the ones hanging around on slashdot all day and trawling through freshmeat and sourceforge getting to the know all the other projects that are out there.
So many Gnome projects neglect to provide a GTK only version, not even a stripped down version and even less KDE projects seem to provide a QT only version. (although theKompany.com have seen the wisdom of this).
Even after that there is always someone who wants it done differntly and is unwilling to compromise which is why we have various Gnome, Gtk, KDE, XUL, MFC browser versions based on Gecko all of which could stand to share a whole lot more code.
People talk about code reuse but unless there are easily availabe libraries most projects dont seem to bother.
It just makes me sad.
Re:Direct XMen2 trailer links
on
Sen To, X-Men 2
·
· Score: 1
the links dont work anymore maybe we managed to Slashdot Akamai:)
Slashdot Mirror
Despite the nick I semi randome chose I call it Linux
but sometimes i just call it Gnome, because that is what i use and not necessarily always on Linux.
If i were using KDE i would call it KDE because for me it is all about the desktop.
As for Distributions I call them by their names, RedHat, Mandrake, Gentoo, SuSe, and that is usually enough.
Some times call Debian by its full title
Debian Gnu/Linux as that is the name they chose for their project and I can respect that, but even then i certainly dont pronounce the slash, i mean who pronounces punctation marks! I assume (and hope) that Richard Stallman only does that to make it absolutely clear what he means.
It would be far better to concentrate on Gnu/Hurd than to continue such divisive aguements, it is enough to make me switch to Gnome/BSD.
Seeing as this post will probably get moderated to hell anyway I may as well complain about the name "Free Software", as "Freedome Software" or even better "Software Freedom" would have make far more sense but i guess it too late to try and fix it now, it is as futile as trying to get people to care about the cracker/hacker distinction.
Rich Text Format is a Microsoft "Standard", guideline would be more accurate.
The *guideline* differs from what Microsoft actually does and as it controlled by Microsoft they can and will change it periodically to reflect the reality of what Microsoft Word is actually doing.
OpenOffice.org supports RTF but unfortunately not the most recent version and it can cause some problems.
XML based format
PDF would be a more sincere (less insincere) choice, but i am not sure exactly how open it really is but it is at least widely viewable.
Unusual to see a Bruce Perens post only moderated at 3 ;)
1 6e con-b.asp
f m?Reco rdID=130
o .cfm?Reco rdID=130
a \M icrosoft\Word\AutoRecoverysaveofMaccriskenletterre SFGate
Unless it has been changed already (it does not seem to have been) the names mentioned are
Peter Passell
Bernard Reddy
Michael Wendy
google Bernard Reddy and you will find this hilarious article titled why does microsoft charge so little!
http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/doj/econ/10-
Peter Passel might be this guy:
http://www.milkeninstitute.org/gc2002/bio.c
below that agian it says
T o t h e E d i t o r :
P e t e r P a s s e l l
M i c h a e l W e n d y
I wonder if this is the same Peter Passel?
http://www.milkeninstitute.org/gc2002/bi
Microsoft Autosave, ha ha ha!
this minus spaces was what was inserted at the bottom of the document, these were obviously some of the people who helped review the Document.
C:\DocumentsandSettings\username\ApplicationDat
It seems they used Ms Word 9.
While i am at it, Mr Perens when will you be in Denmark? (I read the recent article at Newsforge and would like to know, the month would be detail enough).
SDL, Simple Direct Media Layer isn't that at least three words? Err four
SDL rocks, and Frozen Bubble is too much fun
The Audio Home Recording Act (AHRA) of 1992
I hope you are correct but i cant figure out the relevant section that allows for fair use. I am not a lawyer, but you cant believe much of what you read on slashdot.
"Squishy" sounds almost cute and harmless, more like "spikey" or "prickley".
I like this bit though (emphasis added):
And for good measure a link to the privacy implications of DRM for the benifit of searchbots, cant have pro DRM propoganda getting listed first in search engines now can we?.
The big strength of OpenOffice is how well it handles microsoft files.
...
0 1- March/msg00041.html
GoBe is pretty cool, its is cross platform and pretty lean but not Open Source yet
http://freeradicalsoftware.com/
If you are really interested in Gnumeric on windows perhaps you should offer a small financial incentive to the developers. Allegedly they have worked very hard to cleanly seperate out the functions into libraries and a port to windows should be doable. If i recall there just is no one particularly interested in doing the necessary work of porting it but it is not impossible and the maintainer Jody Goldberg is not the kind of insecure fool to complain at the mere suggestion.
http://mail.gnome.org/archives/gnumeric-list/20
I would link to the bug reports section in Bugzilla for the Download manager but Mozilla are smart enough to block direct links from Slashdot.
http://bugzilla.mozilla.org
Find reports, cast your votes.
Help weed out duplicates (there are loads of them)!
Stuck using Netscape 4 recently, i had forgotten how dog slow it was and how much i hate popup ad's, on the upside the focus behaves much better and i dont keep having to click on a page before i can use the keys to scroll up and down. This is a big usability flaw for me and significantly slows down all my browsing (if anyone knows a relevant bug number please let me know).
Yeah, i read that his proposed enhancements to CLM were not very popular, but his ability to code accepted and his wealth or ability to do useful things for the Open Source community are two different things.
I find that most Yes No type dialogs make me want to say No!
If these programs had more sensible defaults they would not need to ask me so many stupid questions.
Thankfully Esc can be consistantly be used to dismiss the current dialog whether the label say No Cancel Done or Whatever, so despite the need to reach a little further on the keyboard i usually use escape (and since it is in the extreme top left i can easily hit it without needing to look).
I think tools like Glade are invaluable as they not only encourage people to develop lots of Applications they allow people to easily do the right thing and reuse code as well as follow standards.
From the Archivesp l?sid=99/1 2/10/0821224&mode=nested&tid=98
http://interviews.slashdot.org/article.
I would be very interested to know how Mr Open Source himself, Guns not Gnu's, Eric S. Raymond is doing.
What of the paper millionares created by VA Software, formerly VA Linux, it is still parent company of Slashdot right?
Surely Slashdot could source some insights from their parent company, or perhaps an interview from ESR himself.
> the new Debian installer
they have another one besides the text based and the graphical one they got from Progeny?
http://hackers.progeny.com/pgi/
African?
I would have sworn Kendra was Afro-Carribean.
That was a carribean accent she was attempting right?
For crying out loud!
A direct link to 45MB on the front page of Slashdot, how irresponsible is that.
It is already gone, anyone got a link?
I am still trying to get the Xmen 2 trailer that was pulled after it got slashdotted a few weeks back!
Does she get naked! not likely.
... thanks Sam Raimi ;)
checkout CNDB.com the Celebrity Nudity Database (the whole concept of which makes me laugh).
It was really weird when i realised that it was Eliza Dushku who played the daughter in True Lies.
"Bring it on"
a light hearted amusing movie about cheerleading
also features Kirsten Dunst and the one who played Glory in Buffy.
Im just another Teenage fanboy!
Mmm Kirsten Dunst in "get over it" pointless and gratuitous scene just so that we get to see her at the pool in a bikini.
Mmm Kirsten Dunst in Spiderman, unecessary rain and a tight dress
On the upside Angle provided plenty of excuses to see more of the gorgeous Julie Benz.
I have always felt that Angel was really weak and even though the style was a little darker i dont think the content was really any darker than buffy, but then i have probably been completely desensitised by watching the HBO prison drama Oz which rocks.
I always thought it was an interesting coincidence how the film "Bring it on" had vampire connections: Kirsten Dunst, interview with a vampire; Elisha Dusku, aka Faith the Vampire Slayer; and whats her name who played Glory in Buffy.
wow, you must be a really big fan of Charisma Carpenter !
"why is it that developers always release RPMs for fuck-knows whatever RPM-based distros out there but never bother to include us debian-types?"
.deb .rpm .tgz ...
Debian packagers are usually very strict. RPM packagers are usually fairly lax and the process is easier to do even if it is not done well.
The quality and ease of resolving dependencies that Debian users take such pride in are part of the reason why some developers dont want to spend a whole lot of time and effort producing debian packages only to be told they are not good enough or that debian have decided they want to package the app differntly and use different compile time options from the defaults.
The zealotry and lack of diplomacey of some Debian advocates does not help much.
Make it easier to make good packages and developers will produce good packages.
"Linux wont fragment like unix"
it will fragment in its own completely differnt way.
if linux is not converging and standardising then it is fragmenting
There are at least signs of hope with the LSB, the respective KDE and Gnome Human interface Guidelines (HIG) and things like the Gnome System Tools
http://www.gnome.org/projects/gst/index.html
I guess if you want a game that has a long what is needed is Game construction kits.
Provide the basic game and way for users to build new levels of there own and hopefully contribute them back. In open source the resuable tools libraries and resources that other projects can cannibalize are often more useful than the actual program, standing on the shoulders of giants etc.
I would love to see an open source pinball construction kit or suchlike with a few playable levels to start with and then they users could add their own levels. (I saw a program called Visual Pinball but i dont think it was open source).
Think of the community that has built up around quake mods. Quake is more than just a game it is a whole world and you can get just about anything from Machinema to Chess to racing games out of it.
I really must mention frozen bubble, probably the best open source game i have ever seen.
http://www.frozen-bubble.org/
The concept is not new, i have loved Puzzle Bobble for years (but very few other people seem to have heard of it) and there seem to be a new Worms game based around the same concept called Worms Blast. http://wormsblast.team17.com/
Part of what makes the game so good is that it is so polished.
You can add levels but i dont think there is a graphical level builder yet. (maybe you could use a tool like Dia to contruct it or customise on of the many map/level builder programs in sourceforge).
Essentially i think game construction kits would really appeal to hackers a lot more. It just occured to me while reading the parent post
No more satirewire, i guess i will have to add the book to my wishlist.
Just in case it gets slashdotted:
SATIREWIRE HAS LANDED
DEC. 1999 -- AUG. 2002
Please Check Your Seats for Any Personal Items
New Haven, Conn. (SatireWire.com) -- Citing creative differences, SatireWire's founder and sole employee, Andrew Marlatt, announced that as of today, the site will no longer be updated.
Moi
Unlike everything else on the site, this is not a joke. Not even the "creative differences" part.
"I've been producing SatireWire by myself for 159 Internet years (2.67 Earth years), and in a staff meeting yesterday, I all agreed it's time for me to move on," said Marlatt. "While the decision was certainly difficult, the meeting was actually quite harmonious. I brought doughnuts."
The site will still exist, but as an archive of (mostly) intelligent humor pieces that, in their own small way, reflected the times in which they were wrought.
But let's skip to the questions...
WHAT THE HELL?
No, I was not indicted for insider trading. I have not been exposed by the TIPS program. I did not at any time meet with Dick Cheney to discuss anything.
OK, SO YOU'RE CLEAN. THEN WHAT'S UP?
I started the site (originally called The FNwire) back in December of 1999, at the height of the Internet boom. It was a great creative outlet, and it was a marvelous way for me to get a wider audience for my writing. That first month, for those first few stories, I think I had about 400 visitors. Last month, in July of 2002, the site had about 1 million visitors. So, oddly enough...
It's not about the money. The site actually makes money -- through advertising, through the book "Economy of Errors," and (primarily) through selling pieces from the site to publications like, say, the Washington Post, the Cleveland Plain Dealer, or the National Post in Canada. Nice little setup, actually. I've been very lucky. But the bottom line is, it has ceased to be fun. My heart is not in it. My head is not in it. (And please, no emails saying, "Yeah, lately we could kinda tell." Like I need to hear that.)
The thing is, SatireWire, successful as it has been, is also suffocating. I work best tangentially, meaning I work best when I let ideas just come at me, flitting about my head like confetti as I marvel at all the pretty colors, the way they turned in the wind. I would pick out the ones I liked, put them together, make a story. But the confetti no longer falls. It's all on the ground now. The parade is over. I'm just sweeping up ideas off the pavement. And that's not good enough.
SO WHAT ARE YOU GOING TO DO NOW?
Challenge myself. Explore. Focus on just writing (gleefully abandoning the business side of SatireWire, which was exhausting). I'll probably continue to write humor pieces for some of the print publications I have worked with, and perhaps some others. Perhaps even something regular. Haven't really thought about it. Odds are I'll also have pieces (though what "style" is a blessed mystery to me) appear on the Internet now and again. I might also get into longer fiction. I might produce a book entirely of SatireWiry charts. I might get invited to a backstage party for Moby. Who knows?
IS THIS MOVE WISE?
Oh God no. SatireWire is one of the most popular humor sites on the Net. And with a book just out in June, ("Economy of Errors"), it's completely counter-intuitive to stop now when the site so successfully supports the book, and is making good money. But I run an Internet site for a living. What do I know from intuitive?
YOU'RE JUST GOING TO LET IT SIT AND ROT?
As some of you know from reading The Magic School Bus books, rot is important to the life cycle. But yes, most likely, it's going to simply be an archive of SW stories, with updated information only on "Economy of Errors," which as you know is available at bookstores everywhere and makes a perfect Christmas gift.
WHY NOT SELL THE SITE?
Friends and colleagues asked me if it were for sale about 15 seconds after I told them the news. So would I consider it? Doubtful. It would have to be to the right people, people who were talented and funny and could keep it updated regularly. Proven track record and all that. Marketing people would say it's a waste to let all that traffic just disappear. I am not a marketing person.
Buy SatireWire's new book!
IF THERE ARE ANY UPDATES ON YOU OR YOUR WORK, CAN WE CHECK SATIREWIRE.COM?
Good idea. I'll try to incorporate something like that on the home page. In the meantime, you can always buy the book.
SO THAT'S IT THEN, IS IT?
No, there are also the thanks. Many thanks for many people, not least of whom are the thousands upon thousands of subscribers from all over the world, the hundreds of thousands of regular visitors, and those who've emailed support, and, yes, even opprobrium. And there are individuals. Susan and Brian and Linda and David and Doug and two other Davids and Angel and Tom and Regina and Jeff and Mike and Michael and Daniel and Becky and Laura and this is stupid you know who you are.
OK, SOME OF US HAVE ALWAYS WONDERED, ARE YOU BRITISH?
No.
CANADIAN?
No.
YOU MUST BE AUSTRALIAN, RIGHT?
Nope.
SO WHO ARE YOU?
Geographically, I am a Connecticut (US) resident, raised in Atlanta, Georgia. Educationally, I was schooled at the University of Georgia. Professionally, I was a journalist for a good while after school, writing for newspapers and, later, as a magazine freelancer. Psychologically, I am a goof, (although lately, unfortunately, a serious goof). And personally, I have a wonderful wife and two terrific young boys, with whom I intend to spend much more time. They are the most brightly colored confetti of all.
How do we now this is not just another part of the joke.
:)
m l
m l
A slashdottting seems like a great way to shut down the site
Satire is a really powerful way to get a message across. This weeks story telling boring people not to encrypt stuff will help me to convince people why they do need cryptography.
http://satirewire.com/news/aug02/encryption.sht
My personal favorite story has to be this one about Microsoft Outlook, i inlcude it anytime some sends me a virus warning.
http://www.satirewire.com/news/0103/outlook.sht
classic just classic
Foot-and-Mouth First Virus Unable To Spread Through Microsoft Outlook
Satire is a powerful weapon.
Satirewire will be dearly missed.
http://mrproject.codefactory.se/screenshot-large.p hp?image=mrproject-gantt.png&desc=The%20main%20win dow%20featuring%20the%20Gantt%20component.
Maybe use Mr Project?
Did you file any bug reports feature requests against any open source programs?
(another comment mentions cvsgraph which looks good)
Karma be damned, im gonna comment anyway.
"VHS to pretty much anyone willing to write a check"
It is all about the Pr0n. Always earlier adopters of technologies that make them more profit.
You could not get pornography on Betamax because of the licensing.
(same goes for why DivX is so popular)
the answer is for more programs to make themselves work as compenents either libraries (preferably) or embeddable compontents (bonobo/Kparts etc).
part of the problem is just knowing what is out there and the people who are actually doing all the programming are not the ones hanging around on slashdot all day and trawling through freshmeat and sourceforge getting to the know all the other projects that are out there.
So many Gnome projects neglect to provide a GTK only version, not even a stripped down version and even less KDE projects seem to provide a QT only version. (although theKompany.com have seen the wisdom of this).
Even after that there is always someone who wants it done differntly and is unwilling to compromise which is why we have various Gnome, Gtk, KDE, XUL, MFC browser versions based on Gecko all of which could stand to share a whole lot more code.
People talk about code reuse but unless there are easily availabe libraries most projects dont seem to bother.
It just makes me sad.
the links dont work anymore :)
maybe we managed to Slashdot Akamai