Oh, if I were a moderator (not saying whether I am or not!), I know I would raise some. I know there have been many times when I have seen a post, thought it really good, and wished I could either raise its score, or ask someone else to.
I'm sure that there are other people out there with similar feelings who would do the same.
Actually, just in the last couple of days, I've seen some posts with scores of 3 and 4 -- so obviously someone is raising them... -- - Sean
You have made a number of assumptions here. I neither dispute nor promote them, but I do propose some alternate assumptions.
I propose the "net community" (post-"Enlightenment") as being closer to AOL than to Slashdot (as did the original poster). I propose that it be populated by more H4xx0Rz than hackers. People who do read headlines with more interest than peer comments.
Have you ever rooted around on a Hotline tracker? Hotline servers today sport a H4xx0R-to-hacker ratio of probably 1000-to1. And Spice Girl MP3's (at least last time I looked) outweighed "real music" MP3's by about the same ratio. -- - Sean
Katz may be right -- this may be the next Golden Age of history. If it is, I'd like to know who our Kant is. Or our Jefferson, our Voltaire, our Nietzche. The depth of thought in this Brave New Pasture goes no further than "don't step in the warm ones".
One Word: MEEPT!!
(But sersiously, though. Despite the outward idiocy he/she/it initially conveys, there is usually underneath it all a keen understanding of the situation. If nothing else, reading MEEPT's posts usually makes me think. Believe it or not, I actively seek them out.) -- - Sean
The people who create things are the movers and shakers of a generation, and by and large, these will prove to be the Digital Industrialists, all of whom are netizens.
Yep.
In the context (of the baby-boom years), I believe it to be no co-incidence that the current US president is one who "never inhaled." -- - Sean
As the reader it's not our problem to resolve Katz's ambiguity, rather it was his problem.
Agreed. He should have stated that it was no co-incidence that one of the more popular WM's was called "Enlightenment", rather than not being a co-incidence that one of/.'s icons was called "Enlightenment". -- - Sean
What I meant about censorship succeeding in Germany was the Compuserve fiasco.
...which, as someone above has pointed out, is fairly specific to Germany and its situation. Because of its paticular past, and the very real threat of Neo-Nazism, the government there has to be careful.
Don't automatically condemn censorship simply because it's censorship. Occasionally (such as in this case), it's quite legitimate.
Where there is a specific reason for it, censorship can and should be condoned. When not, it's just stupid. Too many people can't seem to make this distinction. -- - Sean
Well, maybe no "real" person needs one, but they sure do make your work go a hell of a lot easier. They let you ignore the tedious crap, and actually get to work on the important stuff.
For all its many flaws, the overall paradigm of VB and so on is incredibly important. It allows one to develop much, much faster than without.
An average programmer writes a program. A good programmer writes a program to write his programs for him.
Myself, I am working on writing a GUI interface-builder for Unix, similar in style to VB (except supporting C code, rather than BASIC). And you'd better believe me... just writing a rudimentary one for Gtk+ is proving to be a major hassle.
But I'm still going ahead with it, because it's a gap that needs to be filled -- there is almost nothing currently out there that will do the job.
And while I may not need such a tool, I could sure as hell use one. -- - Sean
Read the original post. He said If you throw a G3 chip to the ground, and merely drop the PII (<STRONG></STRONG> emphasis mine).
Newton's law does dictate that the acceleration of both will be the same 9.8 m/s^2. BUT, if the initial speed of the G3 is greater than the initial speed of the PII (0 m/s), and the distance is the same, then the G3 should have a higher speed all the way through, and hit the ground faster (air resistance notwithstanding).
Of course, it doesn't really matter all that much... -- - Sean
I just got around to deleting Windows from my primary computer (yeah, I hafta change my users.pl stuff) a coupla weeks ago.
Installed RedHat 5.2 on it -- no problem. Got PPP working -- no problem. Upgraded kernel to 2.2.2 -- no problem. DL'ed GNOME rpms.
rpm -Uvh GN<tab><enter> -- oops. Missing a lib.
DL the lib from wherever.
rpm -Uvh lib<tab><enter> rpm -Uvh GN<tab><enter> -- no problem.
Reconfigured the default WM to WindowMaker -- no problem.
And this from someone whose prior experience with Linux amounted to a couple of hours at max.
Now I do have to admit that when I tried to upgrade WMaker from 0.20.1 (the default with RH5.2) to 0.50, I ran into all sorts of problems. It wanted libungif4, whereas GNOME (and WMaker 0.20) was using libungif3, and so a whole buncha things conflicted, and I ended up going back to WMaker 0.20.
But seriously... that was the only problem I had that was related to GNOME at all. And you could definitely call me a new Linux user. And yes, I was doing this entirely on my own. It hasn't crashed since (except for that power outage a week or so ago.)
Well... I dunno about you... but my home computer is a standalone... no network in sight.
About the most I would have gone to would be copying it (the CD) onto a FAT16 partition, then installing from there.
That is reasonable. NFS or PLIP (when there is no network) is not. Not for someone who's just playing around for an article, and doesn't necessarily have a passion for Linux.
Nowadays, if I couldn't get it to install, I might go to such measures. But when I was installing Linux for the first time, I sure as hell wouldn't have. -- - Sean
I know which one I would read!
on
Linux on CNN
·
· Score: 1
Now I'm not a "fifth-rate journalistic hack," I know for sure which one I'd be more likely ro read and take seriously.
While I may not do much either way in response to the second one ("While I appreciate your trying to demystify [...]"), I know that any letter that started off with, "Hey you ignorant moron, toot toot!" would be instantly chucked in the trash without my reading another word of it.
It may make the sender feel better, but would probably never even be read, let alone paid attention to by the recipient. -- - Sean
...or so it seems, anyway. I've had a number of people trying to convert me... going back a while...
But MP3 is still ubiquitous... vqf is no more than a fringe technology.
And to be quite honest, that's fine with me. The quality of my MP3's is quite fine, thanks. I have almost 3 gigs that I encoded off my albums, and I can play the 2 back and hear no discernable difference.
And yes, my sound system is quite high quality. Still no problems. -- - Sean
Hmm, what does a dash look like then? Don't we have a 7- or 8-bit ASCII representation for that?
Nope. The closest is micros~1's attempt at embracing and extending. Which means that you end up getting ? interspersed throughout your text (or something similar.)
I believe the "real" name is an em-dash (single hyphen in the word intentional.) It basically looks like a long hyphen. Which is why the double hyphen (--) is used to emulate it. Can't be represented by ASCII, though. Just like a number of other typographical symbols (such as "real" quotes--the proper way to do them is ``text'', rather than "text," but that way looks crappy on most displays, so I don't do it.)
Will it be possible for to train the slashdot circus midgets to place MyNetscape channels on the right side of slashdot itself?
Well... I can't be bothered to check out exactly what these channels are, or how they are done (it's way too early in the morning here on the West Coast), but if you can grab the data using plain HTML, then you can already do this.
One of the optional boxes is called "My Slashbox" (or something like that), where you can define the HTML that makes up the content of the box.
Slashdot Mirror
Oh, if I were a moderator (not saying whether I am or not!), I know I would raise some. I know there have been many times when I have seen a post, thought it really good, and wished I could either raise its score, or ask someone else to.
I'm sure that there are other people out there with similar feelings who would do the same.
Actually, just in the last couple of days, I've seen some posts with scores of 3 and 4 -- so obviously someone is raising them...
--
- Sean
Version 2.0... :-)
--
- Sean
Can anyone imagine "Dark Side of the Moon" with some of the tracks ripped out?
YUCK!!!!!
--
- Sean
The music.
Unbelievable.
After watching it once, I was humming that damn haunting song all day...
--
- Sean
You have made a number of assumptions here. I neither dispute nor promote them, but I do propose some alternate assumptions.
I propose the "net community" (post-"Enlightenment") as being closer to AOL than to Slashdot (as did the original poster). I propose that it be populated by more H4xx0Rz than hackers. People who do read headlines with more interest than peer comments.
Have you ever rooted around on a Hotline tracker? Hotline servers today sport a H4xx0R-to-hacker ratio of probably 1000-to1. And Spice Girl MP3's (at least last time I looked) outweighed "real music" MP3's by about the same ratio.
--
- Sean
Katz may be right -- this may be the next Golden Age of history. If it is, I'd like to know who our Kant is. Or our Jefferson, our Voltaire, our Nietzche. The depth of thought in this Brave New Pasture goes no further than "don't step in the warm ones".
One Word: MEEPT!!
(But sersiously, though. Despite the outward idiocy he/she/it initially conveys, there is usually underneath it all a keen understanding of the situation. If nothing else, reading MEEPT's posts usually makes me think. Believe it or not, I actively seek them out.)
--
- Sean
The people who create things are the movers and shakers of a generation, and by and large, these will prove to be the Digital Industrialists, all of whom are netizens.
Yep.
In the context (of the baby-boom years), I believe it to be no co-incidence that the current US president is one who "never inhaled."
--
- Sean
As the reader it's not our problem to resolve Katz's ambiguity, rather it was his problem.
/.'s icons was called "Enlightenment".
Agreed. He should have stated that it was no co-incidence that one of the more popular WM's was called "Enlightenment", rather than not being a co-incidence that one of
--
- Sean
What I meant about censorship succeeding in Germany was the Compuserve fiasco.
...which, as someone above has pointed out, is fairly specific to Germany and its situation. Because of its paticular past, and the very real threat of Neo-Nazism, the government there has to be careful.
Don't automatically condemn censorship simply because it's censorship. Occasionally (such as in this case), it's quite legitimate.
Where there is a specific reason for it, censorship can and should be condoned. When not, it's just stupid. Too many people can't seem to make this distinction.
--
- Sean
Guess why? Because no real person needs one
Well, maybe no "real" person needs one, but they sure do make your work go a hell of a lot easier. They let you ignore the tedious crap, and actually get to work on the important stuff.
For all its many flaws, the overall paradigm of VB and so on is incredibly important. It allows one to develop much, much faster than without.
An average programmer writes a program. A good programmer writes a program to write his programs for him.
Myself, I am working on writing a GUI interface-builder for Unix, similar in style to VB (except supporting C code, rather than BASIC). And you'd better believe me... just writing a rudimentary one for Gtk+ is proving to be a major hassle.
But I'm still going ahead with it, because it's a gap that needs to be filled -- there is almost nothing currently out there that will do the job.
And while I may not need such a tool, I could sure as hell use one.
--
- Sean
Read the original post. He said If you throw a G3 chip to the ground, and merely drop the PII (<STRONG></STRONG> emphasis mine).
Newton's law does dictate that the acceleration of both will be the same 9.8 m/s^2. BUT, if the initial speed of the G3 is greater than the initial speed of the PII (0 m/s), and the distance is the same, then the G3 should have a higher speed all the way through, and hit the ground faster (air resistance notwithstanding).
Of course, it doesn't really matter all that much...
--
- Sean
Uh, I dont know why this is *here*, but if you want you can make the dock single click, its only a bit of code...
Where is *here*?
Is the code actually available, or is that just an invitation to dive in and change it? I might be willing to, if I can dig up the free time.
(Also, have to get around to grabbing the 0.5 x version, still sitting at 0.20.1 meself.)
But I would definitely like to see that.
Oh, and BTW: your homepage (http://pendragon.ex.ac.uk/~yarn/) is broken; just gives a "Cannot connect to server."
--
- Sean
Uhhh... how many people use Windows?
:-) :-)
:-)
--
- Sean
I don't -- WindowMaker works fine for me.
E isn't part of GNOME, or vice-versa.
--
- Sean
I just got around to deleting Windows from my primary computer (yeah, I hafta change my users.pl stuff) a coupla weeks ago.
Installed RedHat 5.2 on it -- no problem.
Got PPP working -- no problem.
Upgraded kernel to 2.2.2 -- no problem.
DL'ed GNOME rpms.
rpm -Uvh GN<tab><enter> -- oops. Missing a lib.
DL the lib from wherever.
rpm -Uvh lib<tab><enter>
rpm -Uvh GN<tab><enter> -- no problem.
Reconfigured the default WM to WindowMaker -- no problem.
And this from someone whose prior experience with Linux amounted to a couple of hours at max.
Now I do have to admit that when I tried to upgrade WMaker from 0.20.1 (the default with RH5.2) to 0.50, I ran into all sorts of problems. It wanted libungif4, whereas GNOME (and WMaker 0.20) was using libungif3, and so a whole buncha things conflicted, and I ended up going back to WMaker 0.20.
But seriously... that was the only problem I had that was related to GNOME at all. And you could definitely call me a new Linux user. And yes, I was doing this entirely on my own. It hasn't crashed since (except for that power outage a week or so ago.)
Stable and straightforward to set up.
*shrug*
Mebbe I'm just lucky...
--
- Sean
--Hey Rob! /. blunted my angle brackets! ;)
Use < and > to produce < and >.
--
- Sean
Well... I dunno about you... but my home computer is a standalone... no network in sight.
About the most I would have gone to would be copying it (the CD) onto a FAT16 partition, then installing from there.
That is reasonable. NFS or PLIP (when there is no network) is not. Not for someone who's just playing around for an article, and doesn't necessarily have a passion for Linux.
Nowadays, if I couldn't get it to install, I might go to such measures. But when I was installing Linux for the first time, I sure as hell wouldn't have.
--
- Sean
Now I'm not a "fifth-rate journalistic hack," I know for sure which one I'd be more likely ro read and take seriously.
While I may not do much either way in response to the second one ("While I appreciate your trying to demystify [...]"), I know that any letter that started off with, "Hey you ignorant moron, toot toot!" would be instantly chucked in the trash without my reading another word of it.
It may make the sender feel better, but would probably never even be read, let alone paid attention to by the recipient.
--
- Sean
This guy is very much hung up on the concept of "free" as meaning "free beer" and not "free speech".
heh. Absolutely.
hmm... mebbe whe should get him together in an enclosed space with RMS!
Now there'd be a good use for the guy!
--
- Sean
but some of his comments seem to indicate that Linux is far from being his primary OS. :-(
So what?
So he likes BeOS.
Big deal--his prerogative.
Get a life.
sheesh.
--
- Sean
Did I beat those stupid "First Post"ers?
No. You just became one.
(don't take it personally -- I'm just in a shitty mood right now.)
--
- Sean
--
- Sean
...or so it seems, anyway. I've had a number of people trying to convert me... going back a while...
But MP3 is still ubiquitous... vqf is no more than a fringe technology.
And to be quite honest, that's fine with me. The quality of my MP3's is quite fine, thanks. I have almost 3 gigs that I encoded off my albums, and I can play the 2 back and hear no discernable difference.
And yes, my sound system is quite high quality. Still no problems.
--
- Sean
Hmm, what does a dash look like then? Don't we have a 7- or 8-bit ASCII representation for that?
Nope. The closest is micros~1's attempt at embracing and extending. Which means that you end up getting ? interspersed throughout your text (or something similar.)
I believe the "real" name is an em-dash (single hyphen in the word intentional.) It basically looks like a long hyphen. Which is why the double hyphen (--) is used to emulate it. Can't be represented by ASCII, though. Just like a number of other typographical symbols (such as "real" quotes--the proper way to do them is ``text'', rather than "text," but that way looks crappy on most displays, so I don't do it.)
ASCII sucks for proper typesetting.
--
- Sean
Will it be possible for to train the slashdot circus midgets to place MyNetscape channels on the right side of slashdot itself?
Well... I can't be bothered to check out exactly what these channels are, or how they are done (it's way too early in the morning here on the West Coast), but if you can grab the data using plain HTML, then you can already do this.
One of the optional boxes is called "My Slashbox" (or something like that), where you can define the HTML that makes up the content of the box.
Just check out your prefs page.
--
- Sean