C.M. Kornbluth, "Those Marching Morons". A story about the future, where the people are sheep with room-temperature IQs, because low-intelligence people bred like cattle while the intelligencia had one or two kids each.
From what I remember, id noticed the wave of mods. People had reverse-engineered file formats, types, etc, and hooked their own stuff to it. Rather than sue the living bejeezus out of them, id encouraged them. That model is worth emulating.
In all, it sounds like Dan's a geek, knows what Linux is
Which are both prerequisites for reading Slashdot. Which Dan apparently does. He appears to have a userid in the 78000s. Interesting. Maybe a better question should've been what he thinks about slashdot's stories.
Here's a novel idea I brainstormed up earlier today, while rejoicing in the probably-but-not-quite-yet dead DC. (Read the article kids, they're still in business for a while)
Say I scan in my CDs. I later (somehow) am told that band X (or author X) is on tour near me. How cool is that, I wouldn't have known otherwise! I really don't read the paper or listen to non-NPR radio, so I don't know these things. The last couple of concerts and book signings I went to were due to pure luck, and I'm sure I'm not the only one. DC got greedy, which if done incorrectly or improperly is a mortal sin for a company (M$ excluded)
There were useful uses. They just refused to see them. And like someone else said, making customers happy is one of the big rules of capitalism.
I remember reading/hearing somewhere about a missing scene from the movie. I wonder if this is the extra bit. Timing-wise, it sounds right:
(near the end, when they're about to get on the boat)
"It's the bridgekeeper from scene 13!"
"shhhh!"
Bridgekeeper: "All ye who must cross the see of fate, must answer me these questions twenty-eight."
the two knights look at each other
together: RIGHT! the two knights pick up the bridgekeeper and throw him into the lake, then climb into the boat
I really hope they add the commentary from the Criterion Laserdisc; that was easily as funny as the movie, and I loved the way that the two Terrys (the two Pythons who did the commentary) would wander off to talking about python, Graham showing up drunk, etc, etc, for minutes at a time, blindly ignoring the movie. It's priceless. If you have the chance, do get it.
Someone mod this up. They've done a BUNCH of radio shows staring the actual actors. IIRC, they've had Doctors 3,5-7 (and talks with Tom Baker). These are actually really good.
You don't need to use it these days, but for a while the nightly that came out after the milestone was considerably better. Another great thing about Open Source; people would bang on Moz for several hours, the big problems would get noted, bug reports made, fixes discussed, implemented, and posted several hours later, so you could almost see the bugs disappear (actually, you can; go to bugzilla.mozilla.org if you have a bug!). If it was Windows.... (well, you know the rest).
ObPlug: mozillazine.org , which has a "build bar" that gives the quality of the most recent nightly, and other Moz updates.
now people will be distributing those episodes of "Seinfeld" on the Internet for everyone to watch at anytime
Um, you missed it. That was posted a few weeks ago on a.b.m. It's already being done... people with video cards and digital satellite "tape" the show onto their computer, encode it (VCD & DivX) and then post it. It's really nice, since I now have a copy of shows that will never be shown on TV, and can't be bought.
ObTopic: all this hack does right now is make it easier for the geeks to do geeky things. Some people use video cards and PCs, others will use TiVo and the hack. Only difference is this (depending on how easy it is to implement) could get widespread. And even if they do [encrypt|delete|workaround] the hack, the people with the video cards will still be out there. I leave the morality of this to the reader.
What this really says more about is the number of servers one can reach. I normally start up Quake, let it grab a few hundred (out of several thousand) servers, and pick the one that looks best based on Ping time, Map, and Number of openings. The more servers I check on, the more servers I see that will meet my criteria. If there are very few servers, I'll raise my criteria (more maps, higher ping, etc). 150 appears to be a magic number, but all that really says is that his server is an average server of people with a 150 ping. (did that make sense) Read the article, it's interesting. But he's wrong.
Just a friendly reminder, there are still 2-3 good geek-oriented shows on Friday nights
The Invisible Man. The plots may not be the world's best, but the characters are fun, there's a lot of chemistry, and they do a lot more than just "invisible guy solves problem".
Farscape- If you haven't watched it, do. Go online and find a copy of "Farscape Undressed", it gets you up to speed. Tonight's episode is a winner anyhow, a decent body-swap episode. Great Space Opera.
I know it does more than 128, I believe I have some 192s it plays fine. I don't have any VBR, but IIRC a review (mp3.com or highwaymp3.com) mentioned that it plays it, but that the time counter is off (big whoop, IMHO)
Of course, you could always hop over to a circuit city and check. I'm rather certain that the one I have is not the original 1.0, since certain things in the manual are different.
Yes, I'll admit that the show has its painful spots. Too self-deprecating for about 5 minutes an episode. However, much like Jimmy, its heart is in the right place. Yeah, the speak is DEFINITELY off, but the stories are decent enough, and the characters can play off each other. And, oh, yeah, it has a good sense of humor.
Go to the page referenced, there are 2 PDFs, one on the unit, the other on developing games on the unit. Looks cool, if it really does do everything (PVR, Loki, Linux, MP3s) I may have to get one.
I just got the Kenwood MP8017 installed last Friday. The cat's meow. I looked at the 300$ Aiwa, but the Kenwood impressed me more.
If I use ISO9660 level 2, it reads the first 32 characters (of both the folder names and file names). Otherwise, 8.
ID3v1 tags. (it shows the track name, then scrolls over to the artist name, then starts over. Makes an impressive demo.)
Fairly easy to scroll folders. (there are basically only 5 buttons you need to navigate folders/tracks, and 4 of them are in a diamond configuration)
It reads my CD-RWs and CD-Rs.
Low bitrate not a problem, listened to 4 old radio shows yesterday.
Not one skip, and I live near some bad roads. Hell, my tape deck had problems with it. But it keeps playing and playing and playing.
If you're at all interested, let me give a no-holds-barred thumbs up.
One caveat. I went in expecting to pay a decent amount less than I did. 340$ for the player. $40 for Circuit City's 2-year warranty. 30$ to install (and that's with the free installation!). $450 total. And worth every penny.
Yes. Not only that, it shows that Linux can win hands down when the number of processors is double the competition and the price is more than double the next runner-up.
Sounds good to me. Proves to the PHBs that Linux can do everything Microsoft can... such as cost more.
They could get every big name actor involved, with a budget of $50 million per episode, and it will STILL suck.
Why? Rhymes with "Berman". The problem isn't the actors. Scott will do an amazing job, and his only hindrance will be the crappy scripts. Someone else mentioned that they need to actually write SciFi instead of Political Commentary. AGREED.
The problem, for a while, has been the writing. DS9, from what I gathered, finally had good writing in the last couple years.
Ditch Berman, get some real SciFi in there, and watch it grow. Hopefully, but I wouldn't bet on it. Anyone know how many writers from Voyager will be writing for Enterprise?
ObGoodSciFi: Babylon 5- Legend of the Rangers. This fall, hopefully, on SciFi. SciFi that DOESN'T suck.
When I was at a Dell conference, they were rolling out their new laptops, and crowed about how their batteries were really high tech, and so they'd never have the problems those *snicker* Apple laptops had *guffaw*. Nice to see Dell nail themselves like that.
we're having the opposite thing happen with us. Our developers (web and otherwise) are moving from C++ to Java, since it's a cleaner language, code's written faster, and they have the option to clean it up enough to run on more than just Windows (they have to clean since our other main platform is Mac OS 8.x, which runs old Java). Oh, and they love using it. No garbage collection or the like. Yes, the speed ain't there, and they are mainly writing for the server, not the client, but I don't see Java going away. Heck, most colleges I'm aware of are moving from Pascal (as an intro language) to Java.
Slashdot Mirror
First, for the Star Trekkers....
- Klingonstrator or Klingonart or Klingart
- Kirkillustrator
For the M.A.S.H. crowd...- Klingerstrator
- Klingerart
For Superman fans...- Kryptonart
A real "cool" suggestion:- KryoStrator
A metric suggestion:- KiloStrator
Others:C.M. Kornbluth, "Those Marching Morons". A story about the future, where the people are sheep with room-temperature IQs, because low-intelligence people bred like cattle while the intelligencia had one or two kids each.
Have them read it.
From what I remember, id noticed the wave of mods. People had reverse-engineered file formats, types, etc, and hooked their own stuff to it. Rather than sue the living bejeezus out of them, id encouraged them. That model is worth emulating.
In all, it sounds like Dan's a geek, knows what Linux is
Which are both prerequisites for reading Slashdot. Which Dan apparently does. He appears to have a userid in the 78000s. Interesting. Maybe a better question should've been what he thinks about slashdot's stories.
Here's a novel idea I brainstormed up earlier today, while rejoicing in the probably-but-not-quite-yet dead DC. (Read the article kids, they're still in business for a while)
Say I scan in my CDs. I later (somehow) am told that band X (or author X) is on tour near me. How cool is that, I wouldn't have known otherwise! I really don't read the paper or listen to non-NPR radio, so I don't know these things. The last couple of concerts and book signings I went to were due to pure luck, and I'm sure I'm not the only one. DC got greedy, which if done incorrectly or improperly is a mortal sin for a company (M$ excluded)
There were useful uses. They just refused to see them. And like someone else said, making customers happy is one of the big rules of capitalism.
I remember reading/hearing somewhere about a missing scene from the movie. I wonder if this is the extra bit. Timing-wise, it sounds right:
(near the end, when they're about to get on the boat)
"It's the bridgekeeper from scene 13!"
"shhhh!"
Bridgekeeper: "All ye who must cross the see of fate, must answer me these questions twenty-eight."
the two knights look at each other
together: RIGHT!
the two knights pick up the bridgekeeper and throw him into the lake, then climb into the boat
I really hope they add the commentary from the Criterion Laserdisc; that was easily as funny as the movie, and I loved the way that the two Terrys (the two Pythons who did the commentary) would wander off to talking about python, Graham showing up drunk, etc, etc, for minutes at a time, blindly ignoring the movie. It's priceless. If you have the chance, do get it.
Someone mod this up. They've done a BUNCH of radio shows staring the actual actors. IIRC, they've had Doctors 3,5-7 (and talks with Tom Baker). These are actually really good.
Actually, the silicon is 70% faster, so the chip will wind up being 35% faster. Much more impressive.
Does anyone know if this works alongside SOI? And where will these chips wind up? My bet is Apples, since (IIRC) SOI is on the G4 chip.
You don't need to use it these days, but for a while the nightly that came out after the milestone was considerably better. Another great thing about Open Source; people would bang on Moz for several hours, the big problems would get noted, bug reports made, fixes discussed, implemented, and posted several hours later, so you could almost see the bugs disappear (actually, you can; go to bugzilla.mozilla.org if you have a bug!). If it was Windows.... (well, you know the rest).
ObPlug: mozillazine.org , which has a "build bar" that gives the quality of the most recent nightly, and other Moz updates.
Check out some of the other posts. The Hauppage has a hardware MPEG2 encoder.
now people will be distributing those episodes of "Seinfeld" on the Internet for everyone to watch at anytime
Um, you missed it. That was posted a few weeks ago on a.b.m. It's already being done... people with video cards and digital satellite "tape" the show onto their computer, encode it (VCD & DivX) and then post it. It's really nice, since I now have a copy of shows that will never be shown on TV, and can't be bought.
ObTopic: all this hack does right now is make it easier for the geeks to do geeky things. Some people use video cards and PCs, others will use TiVo and the hack. Only difference is this (depending on how easy it is to implement) could get widespread. And even if they do [encrypt|delete|workaround] the hack, the people with the video cards will still be out there. I leave the morality of this to the reader.
What this really says more about is the number of servers one can reach. I normally start up Quake, let it grab a few hundred (out of several thousand) servers, and pick the one that looks best based on Ping time, Map, and Number of openings. The more servers I check on, the more servers I see that will meet my criteria. If there are very few servers, I'll raise my criteria (more maps, higher ping, etc). 150 appears to be a magic number, but all that really says is that his server is an average server of people with a 150 ping. (did that make sense) Read the article, it's interesting. But he's wrong.
I wonder what this will get modded up/down to, hosemonkey. :-b
I love it. The only thing stronger than anti-Mac stories on Slashdot is the horde of Mac Zealots jumping in to show the facts. Heh. :)
:)
And yes, I can be a Mac Zealot when the need shows itself.
I know it does more than 128, I believe I have some 192s it plays fine. I don't have any VBR, but IIRC a review (mp3.com or highwaymp3.com) mentioned that it plays it, but that the time counter is off (big whoop, IMHO)
Of course, you could always hop over to a circuit city and check. I'm rather certain that the one I have is not the original 1.0, since certain things in the manual are different.
Yes, I'll admit that the show has its painful spots. Too self-deprecating for about 5 minutes an episode. However, much like Jimmy, its heart is in the right place. Yeah, the speak is DEFINITELY off, but the stories are decent enough, and the characters can play off each other. And, oh, yeah, it has a good sense of humor.
For those who did like the show, go to the "Lone Gunmen Second Season campaign". http://lonegunmen.furvect.com/lgmseas2.htm
Go to the page referenced, there are 2 PDFs, one on the unit, the other on developing games on the unit. Looks cool, if it really does do everything (PVR, Loki, Linux, MP3s) I may have to get one.
If you're at all interested, let me give a no-holds-barred thumbs up.
One caveat. I went in expecting to pay a decent amount less than I did. 340$ for the player. $40 for Circuit City's 2-year warranty. 30$ to install (and that's with the free installation!). $450 total. And worth every penny.
Yes. Not only that, it shows that Linux can win hands down when the number of processors is double the competition and the price is more than double the next runner-up.
Sounds good to me. Proves to the PHBs that Linux can do everything Microsoft can... such as cost more.
They could get every big name actor involved, with a budget of $50 million per episode, and it will STILL suck.
Why? Rhymes with "Berman". The problem isn't the actors. Scott will do an amazing job, and his only hindrance will be the crappy scripts. Someone else mentioned that they need to actually write SciFi instead of Political Commentary. AGREED.
The problem, for a while, has been the writing. DS9, from what I gathered, finally had good writing in the last couple years.
Ditch Berman, get some real SciFi in there, and watch it grow. Hopefully, but I wouldn't bet on it. Anyone know how many writers from Voyager will be writing for Enterprise?
ObGoodSciFi: Babylon 5- Legend of the Rangers. This fall, hopefully, on SciFi. SciFi that DOESN'T suck.
it doesn't run because ALL the other universes decided to fuck with us and not turn theirs on.
But instead they let the engineers run the show which will ultimatly be their downfall.
That's a first. Normally the downfall involves letting the Marketroids run the show.
When I was at a Dell conference, they were rolling out their new laptops, and crowed about how their batteries were really high tech, and so they'd never have the problems those *snicker* Apple laptops had *guffaw*. Nice to see Dell nail themselves like that.
we're having the opposite thing happen with us. Our developers (web and otherwise) are moving from C++ to Java, since it's a cleaner language, code's written faster, and they have the option to clean it up enough to run on more than just Windows (they have to clean since our other main platform is Mac OS 8.x, which runs old Java). Oh, and they love using it. No garbage collection or the like. Yes, the speed ain't there, and they are mainly writing for the server, not the client, but I don't see Java going away. Heck, most colleges I'm aware of are moving from Pascal (as an intro language) to Java.