The Phillipines version of the "Wassup!?" Budweiser commercials:
Man stands still for 45 seconds hitting buttons on his cell phone... ...across town another guys cell phone rings. He picks it up to the (text) message "WASSUP!?".
Being in highschool currently, I thought I'd offer some insight into how computers are used in 386/486 and maybe a Pentium or two) computers. They were all networked together, why I have no clue as the school decided that kids were not old enough to handle internet access in the schools currently. In elementary, we had old (ie. classroom. So, the computers were used as a glorified game console. We had DOS, and played stupid games that did not even attempt to be educational, I'm talking Pacman and Mario clones. I can't even remember using the computers on more than two occasions, but the teachers knew so little the person who ran the network was down there every week fixing something.
In highschool, a few classes have computers. Physics, Biology, and the higher math classes like Calculus I believe each have an old outdated PC. We have 2 computer classrooms, each one has about 20-25 400mhz/128MB RAM/17" monitor computers running Windows NT 4. They are networked together to share the two printers in each classroom (Note: this is a private school, I'm sure a large portion of tuition went to pay for the nice computers). For highschool students you can take Computer Literacy ("This is a mouse, you move it around..."), Data Processing ("This is a spreadsheet..."), and Computer Science ("This is C++..."). We also have about 6 decent Pentium computers in the library with net access. They are pretty much useless because the administration has deemed that we need blocking software, which blocks not only porno but every site that we need for research.
I just finished 8th grade and all 8th grade students are required to take Computer Literacy. It spent a semester teaching how to type, use Word, and some Excel. Fortunately, I was spared this course when the first day the teacher gave a timed typing thing to "see where we were". I wracked up about 120 words per minute while the rest of the students got about 5-20. After that incident I was allowed to teach myself C++ from the Computer Science text book even though it's a senior only class.
As for the Computer Science class, they taught C++. The teacher had majored in Computer Science and knew C pretty well. Unfortunately, since putting a lowly 8th grader in a senior class "might hurt their self esteem" I didn't actually get to hear the lessons or take any tests but the course covered the basics of C++ (functions, arrays, 2d arrays, structs, and basic classes).
I don't either. The problem comes in when you listen to an alternative style of music from what they play on the radio. The radio stations here are horrible. We have 5 stations that play only teeny bopper pop. No rock, no metal, and sure as hell no techno or anything else that qualifies as good music, IMHO. Yeah, sure, I can go down to the local CD shop that carries stuff I like and buy a few CDs, but the truth is that prices are so bad I can't afford to.
It sickens me to walk past the pop Britney Spears, Nsync, etc. CDs that are $12 and then to browse through the techno section and see nothing under $25. I don't know why they're marked up so much, but it is totally unreasonable for me to pay that much for an artist I have never heard. The only way for me to find new music is to download MP3s off Napster. Do I buy all the CDs I download off Napster? No. Do I buy CDs that I wouldn't have if I hadn't heard the MP3s first? Yes. Is the RIAA getting more money from me because I download MP3s? Yes, most definitely.
What really scares me is the kids at school. Everyone who has a computer has Napster, and most of them burners. Remember, these are the kids who are flunking out of the "Computer Literacy" class that teaches what a mouse, hard drive, and floppy is. These kids don't give a damn thing about the artist getting money. Most of the kids will get the latest pop CD off Napster, burn a few copies and sell them to the kids at school for $5. The parents encourage them (!) and the kids use the money to buy more blank CDRs to make more CDs to sell, and it goes on and on.
When I point out that what they're doing is illegal, they don't believe me. They really don't believe me. They don't see anything wrong with downloading MP3s and selling someone elses work. Would Napster have become as popular as it has if the RIAA had put commercials on MTV telling kids that downloading MP3s was illegal? Maybe not.
The funny thing was when 3/4ths the kids at school got banned from Napster by Metallica or Dr. Dre. Then it was my turn to make some money and sell registry patches that got them back on =).
Even if (that's a pretty big if) we were forced to move to encrypted speakers, you have to hear it eventually. Most speakers have a headphone jack, and since I don't see these going out of style any time soon, all you have to do is connect a male to male cable from the headphone jack to the recording device of your choice, whether it's tape or minidisc to record the music. -Antipop
I think the potential (and demand) for things like this is great. What other projects are there that are designed to turn low-end hardware into MP3 players? I was only aware of mp3box, does anyone know of any others? -Antipop
I believe that this may be what you're looking for. Get a 486, install mpg123 and those scripts and just insert your CDR of MP3s and it'll play. Works great and it's cheaper than something like these MPTrip Discmans which are $115, which isn't too bad but you can't beat free =). -Antipop
You can do this easily already. All you need is a 486, a soundcard, and a CD drive. Put good 'ole Linux on it and use these scripts. Take a CDR with MP3s burned on it and put it in and listen. You can just run a standard audio cable from the speaker out on the soundcard to the AUX in on your stereo and you have a perfectly good MP3 player. I'm sure it wouldn't be a big deal to mount it in your car. It's a heck of a lot cheaper than $250 for this thing. -Antipop
I wonder if we can train it to go and search and destroy missions? "Quick Intellimouse! Eliminate the neighbors and bring their caffeine to me!" =). -Antipop
Also, no users of Illustrator or Freehand are going to jump to Linux when CorelDraw arrives. It'll not even register a blip on their radar screens...
I'm not talking about the graphic artists under Windows, I'm talking about the ones already using Linux. I hate rebooting to play games as it is, but I don't play games for a living. If I did graphic design for a living, I might learn to use Gimp/CorelDraw a little better so I wouldn't constantly be rebooting to use Photoshop. Linux needs more killer apps like the Gimp to successfully compete with other graphic platforms like Mac. -Antipop
I agree. All it's going to take is one company to be smart enough to port. That company (like Corel) will have complete control over the commercial graphics market for Linux, the competitors will have to port if they don't want to miss their chance at taking a slice of the pie. When MS splits, what's going to stop MS Applications from porting Office? They'd only be letting StarOffice take their money. It's a domino effect, a few companies want to get as much market share as possible by being the first to port, their competitors can either ignore it and lose users or port and compete with them. I think that this is one of the first in a trend of porting popular applications to Linux. -Antipop
Last night I reduced sound to almost silent by using an extra pillow. All I did was put it against the back of the computer and shove it as far as it would go into the wall. That stopped almost all the sound coming from the power supply fan. -Antipop
Just one. I think it's the fan on the CPU, or maybe the one in the power supply. I'll try sticking a screw driver in there to stop it and see if it helps. -Antipop
As computers become more and more commonplace, a lot of them are put into bedrooms. Do you know how much frickin' noise my P200 makes at night? I'd love to hit high uptimes to brag to my friends, but I can't cuz I have to shut the thing off at night! Anyone know of a cheap, easy way to reduce noise? I've heard of people placing carpet padding on the sides of their case, I'm going to try this and see if it helps. -Antipop
A better way to do it is to have the nanobots know how to do things like trim hair, color/highlight hair, etc. and then transmit the haircut style you want to them via infrared and have them go at it. I can see it now, "Download the newest hair styles today! Click here!" =). The true fun comes in when you figure out how to take over your friends/enemies hair nanobots and give them the haircut from hell. -Antipop
The vitamin dependent nanobot is a good idea, but what about the flipside? What if, for example, Kool Aid Corp. decides to put nanobots in their packages. The bots are dependent on Kool Aid and if they don't get any, the person gets headaches/feels bad/whatever until they drink more Kool Aid. I'm glad that the Foresight Institute is looking ahead into regulating these things, because being addicted to something truly horrible, like health food, would be very, very bad =). -Antipop
But the speed of the mouse was too low, and refresh was too high. So you get pains because if you move the mouse a cm, it doesn't go anywhere. Mouse support in XWindows needs to be improved. These things need to be simplified. There shouldn't be ANY work to play your favorite game.
I hear lots of newbies always complaining that mouse control absolutely sucks in X. I've never had the problem, but you can adjust your mouse sensitivity and speed in the KDE Control Center (I think, I'm not a KDE fan) or changing some settings in XF86Setup usually fixes it. I agree about gaming being idiot-proof. Game installations should be quick and painless because the users who play the most games generally don't know the most about their systems. Setting up Quake 3 should not be on the same level as editing a text config file.
There shouldn't be ANY work to use your desktop. Everything should be still accessible by experts if they prefer to do it the tedious way too. Do linux developers believe that simple is evil or something? There is some SERIOUS UI attention needed in the desktop. I could care less about KExplorer if the UI is still crappy.
This is a good point. Joe Smith doesn't care if he's using Gnome or KDE or if he can get rid of all the annoying buttons in Netscape by editing his.Xdefaults, he just wants a button that says "Email", "Internet", and "Word Processing" to get stuff done. The fact is, the average user could care less about setting things up to their liking, they just want to use their computer. Does this mean we should abolish the text config files? Replace the command line with a happy UI with a nice button that says "Start"? The command line should be accessible to the people who want to use it (myself included) but to get a real foothold in Microsoft's desktop territory we have to cater to the average user, and that means making things simple, easy, and graphical. We need a GUI as simple to use as a Mac, with the solid foundation of Linux. Maybe Eazel will accomplish this.
But as a desktop, and a gaming platform Windows 2000 is superior.
To me, gaming and desktop are different. I use Linux on the desktop because it is superior in its speed, customization, and stability of which Windows has none of the three. The factors that determine a gaming platform are the availibility of games, performance, and the ease of installation. Windows has this advantage (well, maybe not in performance, but it's not too bad).
I figure Mandrake, Corel, Redhat, etc are leaning towards this route. Though they are becoming bloatware too.(i'm a slack lover)
The trend that I see with distros like Redhat and Corel is that they become more and more bloated with each new version. How many times have we seen newbies on IRC or in the newsgroups saying that Linux absolutely sucks because it is so slow? The people at fault for making them believe that is Redhat and the like, who by default on the desktop installation start Apache and many other servers that a desktop machine will never need. Another thing is KDE/Gnome have become such system resource hogs that they will make a Linux box run much slower than a Windows one. I know that KDE is supposed to be great for migrating Windows users, but it's still going to be different no matter how much they rip off the horrible Microsoft UI. Would it be traumatic for a new Linux user to see a Window Maker, IceWM, or Blackbox desktop when they first boot up? I'm in Blackbox as I type this on my P233 machine and it is performs better than my friends K6-400 with Gnome/E! We must stop bloating Linux and provide the tools that users will need on the desktop (hint: Apache isn't one of them). -Antipop
Let's look at the situation: the artists say they're losing record sales to MP3, and Napster has no way to turn a profit. Most artists right now have no way of selling records without the RIAA to distribute it for them. Instead of every artist one by one sueing Napster, why doesn't Napster come up with a plan to sell MP3s, from the artist to consumers without a label?
Let's say Metallica comes out with a new CD. They allow users to download one song from the CD as a sample. Then they let Napster sell single songs in MP3 format for $.50, Napster gets $.05 per song sold and Metallica pockets $.45. If the Metallica CD is 12 songs total, then the consumer can buy and download it immediately for the total cost of $6. Napster makes $.60 and Metallica gets $5.40 per CD they sell on Napster. The consumer gets the CD immediately for a 1/3 of the cost without leaving their home.
That's great for Metallica and all, some will say, but what about the bands nobody has ever heard of? Well, taking a cue from CDNow.com, Napster could offer links to artists that sound similiar to bands that they know they like. A user can download one song for no charge to see if it is something they like. If it is, that unknown band just got $5.40 and a new fan, if not, they haven't lost anything and neither has the consumer.
This sort of system isn't perfect, but it helps everyone (minus the RIAA). Everybody would benefit from something like this; Napster makes a profit, consumers get cheap CDs, and the bands make money without having a label taking a cut out of their work. -Antipop
Yeah, but somehow being able to say "I'm serving my discussion site out of a matchbox." is so much cooler than having a server sitting in your bedroom keeping you up at night because the fan makes so much noise;). -Antipop
I wonder if we'll be able to sell X-Box systems, games, and peripherals on Ebay or if Microsoft will get it canceled and make your feedback neutral. -Antipop
Slashdot Mirror
The Phillipines version of the "Wassup!?" Budweiser commercials:
...across town another guys cell phone rings. He picks it up to the (text) message "WASSUP!?".
Man stands still for 45 seconds hitting buttons on his cell phone...
-Antipop
Being in highschool currently, I thought I'd offer some insight into how computers are used in 386/486 and maybe a Pentium or two) computers. They were all networked together, why I have no clue as the school decided that kids were not old enough to handle internet access in the schools currently. In elementary, we had old (ie. classroom. So, the computers were used as a glorified game console. We had DOS, and played stupid games that did not even attempt to be educational, I'm talking Pacman and Mario clones. I can't even remember using the computers on more than two occasions, but the teachers knew so little the person who ran the network was down there every week fixing something.
In highschool, a few classes have computers. Physics, Biology, and the higher math classes like Calculus I believe each have an old outdated PC. We have 2 computer classrooms, each one has about 20-25 400mhz/128MB RAM/17" monitor computers running Windows NT 4. They are networked together to share the two printers in each classroom (Note: this is a private school, I'm sure a large portion of tuition went to pay for the nice computers). For highschool students you can take Computer Literacy ("This is a mouse, you move it around..."), Data Processing ("This is a spreadsheet..."), and Computer Science ("This is C++..."). We also have about 6 decent Pentium computers in the library with net access. They are pretty much useless because the administration has deemed that we need blocking software, which blocks not only porno but every site that we need for research.
I just finished 8th grade and all 8th grade students are required to take Computer Literacy. It spent a semester teaching how to type, use Word, and some Excel. Fortunately, I was spared this course when the first day the teacher gave a timed typing thing to "see where we were". I wracked up about 120 words per minute while the rest of the students got about 5-20. After that incident I was allowed to teach myself C++ from the Computer Science text book even though it's a senior only class.
As for the Computer Science class, they taught C++. The teacher had majored in Computer Science and knew C pretty well. Unfortunately, since putting a lowly 8th grader in a senior class "might hurt their self esteem" I didn't actually get to hear the lessons or take any tests but the course covered the basics of C++ (functions, arrays, 2d arrays, structs, and basic classes).
-Antipop
I don't have a problem parting with $12.
I don't either. The problem comes in when you listen to an alternative style of music from what they play on the radio. The radio stations here are horrible. We have 5 stations that play only teeny bopper pop. No rock, no metal, and sure as hell no techno or anything else that qualifies as good music, IMHO. Yeah, sure, I can go down to the local CD shop that carries stuff I like and buy a few CDs, but the truth is that prices are so bad I can't afford to.
It sickens me to walk past the pop Britney Spears, Nsync, etc. CDs that are $12 and then to browse through the techno section and see nothing under $25. I don't know why they're marked up so much, but it is totally unreasonable for me to pay that much for an artist I have never heard. The only way for me to find new music is to download MP3s off Napster. Do I buy all the CDs I download off Napster? No. Do I buy CDs that I wouldn't have if I hadn't heard the MP3s first? Yes. Is the RIAA getting more money from me because I download MP3s? Yes, most definitely.
What really scares me is the kids at school. Everyone who has a computer has Napster, and most of them burners. Remember, these are the kids who are flunking out of the "Computer Literacy" class that teaches what a mouse, hard drive, and floppy is. These kids don't give a damn thing about the artist getting money. Most of the kids will get the latest pop CD off Napster, burn a few copies and sell them to the kids at school for $5. The parents encourage them (!) and the kids use the money to buy more blank CDRs to make more CDs to sell, and it goes on and on.
When I point out that what they're doing is illegal, they don't believe me. They really don't believe me. They don't see anything wrong with downloading MP3s and selling someone elses work. Would Napster have become as popular as it has if the RIAA had put commercials on MTV telling kids that downloading MP3s was illegal? Maybe not.
The funny thing was when 3/4ths the kids at school got banned from Napster by Metallica or Dr. Dre. Then it was my turn to make some money and sell registry patches that got them back on =).
-Antipop
Even if (that's a pretty big if) we were forced to move to encrypted speakers, you have to hear it eventually. Most speakers have a headphone jack, and since I don't see these going out of style any time soon, all you have to do is connect a male to male cable from the headphone jack to the recording device of your choice, whether it's tape or minidisc to record the music.
-Antipop
Hey, it's a trade off. You don't have to wait 20 minutes in line to pay $20 for a drink and popcorn.
-Antipop
Wouldn't those monkeys have evolved by now? They can probaly survive in the vacuum and shoot explosive tentacles. We should stay away from space...
And about the hyperlinking patent, shouldn't those guys take it up with Gore, since he created the internet and all?
-Antipop
I think the potential (and demand) for things like this is great. What other projects are there that are designed to turn low-end hardware into MP3 players? I was only aware of mp3box, does anyone know of any others?
-Antipop
I believe that this may be what you're looking for. Get a 486, install mpg123 and those scripts and just insert your CDR of MP3s and it'll play. Works great and it's cheaper than something like these MPTrip Discmans which are $115, which isn't too bad but you can't beat free =).
-Antipop
You can do this easily already. All you need is a 486, a soundcard, and a CD drive. Put good 'ole Linux on it and use these scripts. Take a CDR with MP3s burned on it and put it in and listen. You can just run a standard audio cable from the speaker out on the soundcard to the AUX in on your stereo and you have a perfectly good MP3 player. I'm sure it wouldn't be a big deal to mount it in your car. It's a heck of a lot cheaper than $250 for this thing.
-Antipop
I wonder if we can train it to go and search and destroy missions? "Quick Intellimouse! Eliminate the neighbors and bring their caffeine to me!" =).
-Antipop
Also, no users of Illustrator or Freehand are going to jump to Linux when CorelDraw arrives. It'll not even register a blip on their radar screens...
I'm not talking about the graphic artists under Windows, I'm talking about the ones already using Linux. I hate rebooting to play games as it is, but I don't play games for a living. If I did graphic design for a living, I might learn to use Gimp/CorelDraw a little better so I wouldn't constantly be rebooting to use Photoshop. Linux needs more killer apps like the Gimp to successfully compete with other graphic platforms like Mac.
-Antipop
I agree. All it's going to take is one company to be smart enough to port. That company (like Corel) will have complete control over the commercial graphics market for Linux, the competitors will have to port if they don't want to miss their chance at taking a slice of the pie. When MS splits, what's going to stop MS Applications from porting Office? They'd only be letting StarOffice take their money. It's a domino effect, a few companies want to get as much market share as possible by being the first to port, their competitors can either ignore it and lose users or port and compete with them. I think that this is one of the first in a trend of porting popular applications to Linux.
-Antipop
Hey! How come I never noticed that the Gimp logo thing (forget its name) for Slashdot has animated eyes? It freaked me out when I saw it...
-Antipop
How do you find that stuff out?
-Antipop
Last night I reduced sound to almost silent by using an extra pillow. All I did was put it against the back of the computer and shove it as far as it would go into the wall. That stopped almost all the sound coming from the power supply fan.
-Antipop
How many hard drives do you have in the thing?
Just one. I think it's the fan on the CPU, or maybe the one in the power supply. I'll try sticking a screw driver in there to stop it and see if it helps.
-Antipop
As computers become more and more commonplace, a lot of them are put into bedrooms. Do you know how much frickin' noise my P200 makes at night? I'd love to hit high uptimes to brag to my friends, but I can't cuz I have to shut the thing off at night! Anyone know of a cheap, easy way to reduce noise? I've heard of people placing carpet padding on the sides of their case, I'm going to try this and see if it helps.
-Antipop
A better way to do it is to have the nanobots know how to do things like trim hair, color/highlight hair, etc. and then transmit the haircut style you want to them via infrared and have them go at it. I can see it now, "Download the newest hair styles today! Click here!" =). The true fun comes in when you figure out how to take over your friends/enemies hair nanobots and give them the haircut from hell.
-Antipop
The vitamin dependent nanobot is a good idea, but what about the flipside? What if, for example, Kool Aid Corp. decides to put nanobots in their packages. The bots are dependent on Kool Aid and if they don't get any, the person gets headaches/feels bad/whatever until they drink more Kool Aid. I'm glad that the Foresight Institute is looking ahead into regulating these things, because being addicted to something truly horrible, like health food, would be very, very bad =).
-Antipop
From what I understand, it's for Canadian citizens, but nothing's stopping you from viewing it in the US.
-Antipop
But the speed of the mouse was too low, and refresh was too high. So you get pains because if you move the mouse a cm, it doesn't go anywhere. Mouse support in XWindows needs to be improved. These things need to be simplified. There shouldn't be ANY work to play your favorite game.
.Xdefaults, he just wants a button that says "Email", "Internet", and "Word Processing" to get stuff done. The fact is, the average user could care less about setting things up to their liking, they just want to use their computer. Does this mean we should abolish the text config files? Replace the command line with a happy UI with a nice button that says "Start"? The command line should be accessible to the people who want to use it (myself included) but to get a real foothold in Microsoft's desktop territory we have to cater to the average user, and that means making things simple, easy, and graphical. We need a GUI as simple to use as a Mac, with the solid foundation of Linux. Maybe Eazel will accomplish this.
I hear lots of newbies always complaining that mouse control absolutely sucks in X. I've never had the problem, but you can adjust your mouse sensitivity and speed in the KDE Control Center (I think, I'm not a KDE fan) or changing some settings in XF86Setup usually fixes it. I agree about gaming being idiot-proof. Game installations should be quick and painless because the users who play the most games generally don't know the most about their systems. Setting up Quake 3 should not be on the same level as editing a text config file.
There shouldn't be ANY work to use your desktop. Everything should be still accessible by experts if they prefer to do it the tedious way too. Do linux developers believe that simple is evil or something? There is some SERIOUS UI attention needed in the desktop. I could care less about KExplorer if the UI is still crappy.
This is a good point. Joe Smith doesn't care if he's using Gnome or KDE or if he can get rid of all the annoying buttons in Netscape by editing his
But as a desktop, and a gaming platform Windows 2000 is superior.
To me, gaming and desktop are different. I use Linux on the desktop because it is superior in its speed, customization, and stability of which Windows has none of the three. The factors that determine a gaming platform are the availibility of games, performance, and the ease of installation. Windows has this advantage (well, maybe not in performance, but it's not too bad).
I figure Mandrake, Corel, Redhat, etc are leaning towards this route. Though they are becoming bloatware too.(i'm a slack lover)
The trend that I see with distros like Redhat and Corel is that they become more and more bloated with each new version. How many times have we seen newbies on IRC or in the newsgroups saying that Linux absolutely sucks because it is so slow? The people at fault for making them believe that is Redhat and the like, who by default on the desktop installation start Apache and many other servers that a desktop machine will never need. Another thing is KDE/Gnome have become such system resource hogs that they will make a Linux box run much slower than a Windows one. I know that KDE is supposed to be great for migrating Windows users, but it's still going to be different no matter how much they rip off the horrible Microsoft UI. Would it be traumatic for a new Linux user to see a Window Maker, IceWM, or Blackbox desktop when they first boot up? I'm in Blackbox as I type this on my P233 machine and it is performs better than my friends K6-400 with Gnome/E! We must stop bloating Linux and provide the tools that users will need on the desktop (hint: Apache isn't one of them).
-Antipop
Hmm. We have all those slashdot "Geeks in Space" episodes just sitting around....
Heh, I'm going to go rename all my GiS episodes right now...
-Antipop
Let's look at the situation: the artists say they're losing record sales to MP3, and Napster has no way to turn a profit. Most artists right now have no way of selling records without the RIAA to distribute it for them. Instead of every artist one by one sueing Napster, why doesn't Napster come up with a plan to sell MP3s, from the artist to consumers without a label?
Let's say Metallica comes out with a new CD. They allow users to download one song from the CD as a sample. Then they let Napster sell single songs in MP3 format for $.50, Napster gets $.05 per song sold and Metallica pockets $.45. If the Metallica CD is 12 songs total, then the consumer can buy and download it immediately for the total cost of $6. Napster makes $.60 and Metallica gets $5.40 per CD they sell on Napster. The consumer gets the CD immediately for a 1/3 of the cost without leaving their home.
That's great for Metallica and all, some will say, but what about the bands nobody has ever heard of? Well, taking a cue from CDNow.com, Napster could offer links to artists that sound similiar to bands that they know they like. A user can download one song for no charge to see if it is something they like. If it is, that unknown band just got $5.40 and a new fan, if not, they haven't lost anything and neither has the consumer.
This sort of system isn't perfect, but it helps everyone (minus the RIAA). Everybody would benefit from something like this; Napster makes a profit, consumers get cheap CDs, and the bands make money without having a label taking a cut out of their work.
-Antipop
Yeah, but somehow being able to say "I'm serving my discussion site out of a matchbox." is so much cooler than having a server sitting in your bedroom keeping you up at night because the fan makes so much noise ;).
-Antipop
I wonder if we'll be able to sell X-Box systems, games, and peripherals on Ebay or if Microsoft will get it canceled and make your feedback neutral.
-Antipop