I think it's the ten times a day :)
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Moderation Ideas
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· Score: 1
I'm pretty sure that in the original details about moderation, part of the moderation criteria was, "people in the middle range": neither those who logged on once a month, nor those who repeatedly reloaded Slashdot in the course of a day. I also think that the amount of reloading that disqualified you was not specifically stated. Just a guess, but plausible, perhaps.
The bottleneck is explained at http://www.thinkgeek.com/slashdotted - they couldn't handle the number of requests and ran out of memory. So someone ran home for another machine...
See the info page I gave the url to (in the reply to the "mirrors?" subject) and you'll find the conditions for doing that: if it's a NASA image then it's public domain. If the copyright belongs to someone, they hyperlink the name so you know who to ask permission of. I've had mixed success with this: one person either doesn't read email or didn't reply (wail! I used the pic for a theme but I haven't uploaded it anywhere) but another time I've had a reply within five minutes saying "Go for it".
The Mir one would be excessively sweet as a theme, yes. There's some even better ones in the archives, too:)
I got this list from the info page on the main site. I've just tried 'em out, and the Swiss one appears to be down but the rest are there.
These all point to the picture of the day (which is of Earth, though it doesn't look like it!), of course: you'll have to head to the archives to find the eclipse picture. They've been carrying loads of eclipse pictures recently, and they're beautiful.
I wouldn't worry. My husband is apparently a combination of Yoda, Han Solo, Ewoks, the Emperor and Leia. The Ewok thing could definitely explain the beard, but I hope his hands don't start crackling with energy when he's at the computer. Could be bad...
Telsa (who is entertained to find she's _not_ a Ewok, all comments about her height to the contrary.)
They're caused by tiny ice crystals very high up, I think? The light is refracted through them. And I simply say a halo around the moon, or a lunar halo, and assume people will know what I mean.:) I've heard the word "moonbow", but I don't think it's a common one (certainly it's not in any of my dictionaries).
There's a folk festival in Oxfordshire which I usually go to which coincides beautifully with the Perseid shower each year. The weather is traditionally wonderful and appalling in alternate years:) In those nights with clear skies, lying back and watching the sky for the Perseids with a drink by you and friends around you is just lovely...The Perseids are definitely one of my annual "look-fors". Eclipses solar and lunar, comets, meteors, haloes around the moon on a cold night... I love these things.
ObEclipse: cloudy in Swansea (95% or so), but the pinhole camera worked. I'd forgotten how much fun such things were. Eerie light quality, and a definite temperature drop.
Well, there's lots of names. Someone on IRC just told me it's called snakebite where they are (Canada, I believe), but in the UK, snakebite is lager and cider. Guinness and cider is a black velvet. (Properly, it's a poor man's black velvet, and I have a vague memory of being told that a real black velvet is Guinness and _champagne_ in equal measures - boggle!) A drink that I used to have a lot as a student (when you do this kind of thing...) was Guinness, cider and black. The black is a dash of blackcurrant cordial in the top. Yummy! The only drink that is harder to get back from the bar to the table in one piece without people coming up and asking to try it is a Green Monster (another name which has lots of varieties: cider, bitter and a measure of blue Bols. Yes, it's bright green.) And then there was the ever-popular game on the first night for new bar staff: asking for a Baileys and coke in a short glass. (It fizzes up and rises over the edge and then results in a thick crust on the top. A spoon helps.) Oh yes. One thing more. The cider in the UK is alcoholic. I gather this is not the case in the US as a rule. We are not talking apple juice here. We are talking a drink that's quite strong enough in its own right.:) Guinness, cider and black is well worth trying. I recommend it.
I don't know whether the word 'sot' is used commonly in the US, but myself, I'd call the attenders slashsots, bent on getting slashsotted. Or slashsozzled, perhaps.
I suppose this is not the place to mention what 'going for a slash' means in the UK, either?
Absolutely. Slashdot is a free-for-all. However, the article's not just talking about the exciting cut-and-thrust of technical well-informed banter (ahem) on here. What the article is talking about is the email floods that press writers are receiving. Remember the "Loneliness of Linux" article that was linked to here? Judith Lewis writing about how she was having to buy a new box for Linux after her old one eventually died? A comment about how she needs Windows to be able to receive Word documents at work resulted in a _deluge_ of flaming, and it wasn't just on here. It was sent straight to her email address. That was the first of three articles. The other two were great (and not linked to by Slashdot). Then followed an account of the email flood she'd received. Which got posted here. (Sigh.) And more flaming to her. Then there was Jack Dyers, who said he could tell to the minute when his article was linked to by Slashdot. The responses he'd had from Linux Today readers took issue with his comments but were polite. The responses that started coming in - to his email address, not on Slashdot - after it was posted here were well beyond what gets posted here, by his account of them.
These aren't slaggings-off on Slashdot. These are written by people who are reading the linked-to articles and then emailing the author direct with abuse. And yes, the Astroturf theory has occurred to me, but frankly, I _really_ doubt that MS is paying a bunch of people to do this for them when it's blindingly obvious that we have plenty of people who are quite happy to do this off their own bat.
In addition, although being selective with your news and hitting LWN, Slashdot, Linux Today, linux.com and so on is very common, there are a _lot_ of people who really, honestly, truly, haven't heard of Linux, haven't heard of BeOS, haven't heard of *BSD. If they read introductory articles, take part in discussions, or subscribe to comp.os.linux.* and the first things they see are some of the more.. er.. intolerant articles: yes, they _will_ assume that's typical of the Linux (/BeOS/*BSD/whatever their new interest is) community. Especially if they see nothing done to stop it. If my mates tell me there's a cool new nightclub in town and we go there, and people keep spilling my drink or fights keep breaking out, I might listen to them say "Oh, really cool folks come here, and the music is well cool." But I will certainly be influenced by the fact that the drink-spiller doesn't offer to buy me a new one, and no bouncers show up to stop a fight, and it's most unlikely I'll be convinced to go again.
Slashdot used to post browser stats of recent visits to the site. I can't find them any more (where'd they go, or has my playing with my preferences accidentally lost them from my view?), but as I recall, there were a _lot_ of people using Windows.
I was beginning to think that I was the only one who found the dismissal of a book on grounds of "dry, academic" writing style a little startling on Slashdot, a site for nerds. One would assume nerds aren't afraid of words with more than one syllable, sentences with more than one clause, and concepts that take some explaining. Or is only "hard science" allowed to have its own vocabulary, jargon and different ideas? Ideas which have been so bandied around in buzzword form that it's possible that some definitions, clarifications of terms and references to writers in the field might be warranted before launching into developing an argument any further.
It may not be that kind of book at all, of course. For a book review, this was singularly uninforming. I learnt more about it from comments than from Katz's description, which was essentially three or four one-sentence paragraphs at the centre of an extended discussion on which authors on the subject he personally prefers. That should surely have been an opinion piece, not a review. A review is supposed to tell you a little more than (a) it's dry and academic - or study notes for a 12-step program (not two genres which I would have thought had a great deal in common, but still); and (b) it develops an argument which results in a discussion on how we think (goodness! A psychologist looking at that! What a surprise...)
I don't believe it's entirely fair to criticise use of coinages such as "memeplex", either. We can't all generate snap buzzwords for concepts such as the hopeful monster (Gould) or the selfish gene (Dawkins -- and it's _gene_, Katz, not meme). In fact such cool phrases can be truly annoying: therre is a limit to how often the butterfly flapping its wings can be alluded to without people ultimately forgetting all about what it was intended to illuminate. Introducing "memeplex" instead of a three-word (long-winded? Dry? Academic?) alternative might be an entirely reasonable ploy.
I have a number of books on psychology, psychiatry (note -- they are different, a distinction which escapes those who take it upon themselves to complain about the conflation of cracker and hacker. Sorry. Pet peeve), sociology, anthropology and the rest. They're not necessarily easy reading. They look at big subjects and they have their own language. There is a spectrum ranging from the "make a quick buck" variety, with their absent index and lack of references replaced by "Scientists say... Therefore it is obvious that... ", and the PhD thesis which gets turned into a book, complete with all footnotes, references and appendices. And a very wide spectrum it is.
Beyond a complaint about unnecessarily complicated language and a quick reference to 12 step programs, Jon Katz's "review" doesn't even tell me at which end of the market this book is aimed.
BOF: birds of a feather, I believe. Idea is that if you have a thousand or so folks there, there's lots of stuff which won't generate enough interest for a big talk (or maybe a big talk isn't the right format) but you'll certainly find 20 or 30 people interested in kernel documentation, porting blah to some-odd-architecture, using a particular suite of programs, or discussing different licences. So you set up a couple of rooms and they have different BOF sessions one after the other. Most of them are set up in advance, but I think it's common to have at least a couple where the first bunches of people to go "Hey! We're all interested in this! Let's schedule a BOF and see who else there is, too!" can do so.
At least, that's my understanding. (I saw the BOF sessions advertised last year for something and had to go and find out, too:)) My examples of what are typical BOF interests might be a bit skewed, as this is yet another area I wot not of. They're usually scheduled against the evenings, but they can clash with talks, too. They do try to schedule them sensibly (a kernel internals talk against a graphics BOF, for example) but it's not easy, given the typical range of interests of many conference attenders.
How typical. I write all that and _then_ check the Jargon File. Oh well, apparently I'm roughly right: BOF in Jargon File (I hope).
"Age old managers' guide" - the Peter Seebach one?
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How to Manage Geeks?
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· Score: 5
It wasn't called the "Managers' Guide to Geeks", but rather, "The Hacker FAQ", and Peter Seebach wrote it. It's for managers, about understanding your hacker:). It's on www.plethora.net/~seebs/faqs/hacker.html and is worth a read if you haven't seen it before.
Thanks for the kind words. Gosh, it's amazing what offhand comments can stir up. (Five people letting me know who wrote "Bears find fire", for a start:)).
Eccentricity -- well, your best bet is to grab the books from www.amazon.com. The book I first got doesn't seem to be there, but the weightier tome, "Eccentrics: the scientific study" (which is what I actually ordered at my bookshop and didn't get) is there, as is a more anecdotal account (maybe mine under a new name?) Weeks saw lots of work being done on normal and decidedly not normal, but nothing on the borders, and launched a large study into the phenomenon. He identified a number of traits which he held to be shared by all or most eccentrics, and without going to my bookshelf I may get this wrong, but here goes:
Intelligence, intense curiosity, non-conformist, idealistic, not in need of social reinforcement, obsessive about a number of different (wildly different) things at once, sense of humour, poor speller...There were also differences in the way they spoke, and they tend to be off the scale in personality tests which measure the strength of different characteristics. (off the scale in either direction). Although "having eccentric relatives" is apparently common in some forms of mental illness, having mentally ill relatives didn't seem particularly common in eccentrics (about the same as "normal people").
What struck me was the "Portrait of J Random Hacker" in the back of the Jargon File, which also mentions humour, lots of wide-ranging interests, confidence that you're right, not caring what others think, and being more likely to have unusual philosophies and act on them. There seemed, as I say, to be a slight overlap:)
I just did a quick google search on "David Weeks eccentricity" and got a pile of hits: apparently he did a lot of interviews when the latest book came out. They'll give you more information and the books more yet.
I wouldn't get _too_ excited about this. I do enjoy stuff about the boundaries between normality and non-normality (don't get me onto the subject of how many people hear voices, for example:)) and it just struck me that there were similarities. I can think of one or two people who are both hackers and eccentric, but I wouldn't say it's an automatic link. On the other hand, they're both very small segments of the population, and the chances of so many (as I perceive it) overlapping must be low.
Anyway, this is too long, but those are the books you want to look at (or the interviews, but they mostly focus on the arty eccentrics rather than the scientific ones (think of Newton and his bed having to be north-south, and Franklin, and Cavendish)).
Telsa (who does read Slashdot, yes, and knows this is probably off-topic, but what the hell, someone asked:))
I do wonder whether it's even worth putting such links on Slashdot. It sends their hits sky-high, so the advertisers love it, the editor loves it, and enough Slashdot readers send unpleasant responses for the columnist to base their next column on the phenomenon. I don't see why we should give them more grist for their mill.
The funniest thing is that he links to a joke page
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Generative Quickies
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· Score: 1
Gah! How I hate frames! But at least he put a table of contents for non-frames browsers. And indeed, his solitary link on his links page is to that "The Force=Satan!" page. Nosing around that site will quickly reveal that it was a joke. Given that he doesn't spot sarcasm in one of the emails he quotes in his "interesting email responses", I suspect he doesn't realise that the "The Force=Satan!" page is a joke, either. Ouch.
Wow. A question I can answer. That's rare. You probably want to look at Joseph Pranevich's list of changes which was put out in January for 2.2.0.
I found this by going to Linux Weekly News and looking through the archives for the week that 2.2.0 came out. Hope this helps.
You haven't encountered Junkbuster? Get it.
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ShutUp Software
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· Score: 1
Using Lynx for years as I did, I missed the rise in banner ads, really. I just saw links to "Click here!" and doubleclick and so on. When I got Netscape, I started taking about 10 times longer to download pages, and they all had these damned "Click here for your speed" and on clicking, you got redirected to adverts. It took me not very long at all to realise why people had eulogised the Internet Junkbuster. I have a slow link, and this program _really_ _helps_ cut down on the rubbish. Now if only they recognised content-free sites...:) Deals with a lot of other things, too, like cookies. It's not a block all/block none choice, either; you can select places you do trust with cookies. Definitely recommended: makes the web a lot faster. For those of us unlike Katz who don't feel compelled to give all sources of information equal priority, it's a handy thing.
I saw announcement of a kernel documentation mailing list on (urrr..) Linux Weekly News some time ago. kernel-doc? Hosted in Europe somewhere. (Helpful, no?)
GNU also has a proof-readers' mailing list, where potential proof-readers lurk and people with documentation needing checking send calls for 'I've got this, can people get back to me on it?' or 'I write in this language, can someone check my English?'
Loads of websites for projects seem to have contacts for feedback. Even if nothing's said about documenting, those are a good start. A lot of them have documentation - but of course each new release means someone has to update the lot - or at least check it!
Or, as you say, you could offer your services at large. Or wait til someone posts 'new release... documentation isn't complete yet' to Usenet and dive in to that. Or email the author. Or the maintainer, if that's someone different.
As someone who relies heavily on HOWTOs and man pages and so on, I have to say: pick one! And good luck and thanks in advance:)
Might be wrong (it's a weird angle) but if that isn't Dave Miller talking to the police guy, it really looks like him. I thought this was really really funny: I loved the bit at the end about "model prisoners... they built a crude but listenable radio from a lightbulb, a crayon, a square of toilet paper and a rock. They say they'll have Linux on it by next week. I'll hate to see them go."
Beautiful, lyrical, absorbing, and full of fascinating arguments and arguments on - well, everything from the DoJ/MS case to the image of the Batmobile and the geodesic dome to represent certain products and communities. (Which cracked me up. How apt!) I've probably put everyone off, now, but honestly, even the "Essays shouldn't be on slashdot" people will find this relevant. One caveat: I do think it deserves reading thoroughly, rather than skimming. Expect to spend some time reading it. And going "Yes!" out loud and double-taking at various stages, with luck. In common with several other people, I feel this merited more than a "quite interesting" comment buried amid SGI's new logo and the Slashdot dance.
Yes. What you tend to see in reports of court cases here is something to the effect of "Damages of some-money awarded to Mr Sued-him." And then sometimes, "Judge ordered court costs to be paid by (one of the two parties)." It's not automatic that the loser in a case pays for all costs, but it is a possibility. It is possible for someone who brings a lawsuit to be awarded small damages but not to have costs paid for by the other person: a moral victory but not a financial one. In fact costs can outweigh the damages so you end up out of pocket. I hadn't realised this wasn't done in the US.
A side=note: those interested in a "traditional" UK libel trial, with all sorts of bizarre twists and turns, could do worse than check out the McSpotlight site. It's a huge site, with not a lot of news for nerds on it, but it does have some clear explanations of the absolute worst-case legal situation (in terms of complication rather than possible penalties): big multinational sues "the little people" and the little people, discovering that you can't get Legal Aid (assistance with the costs for legal action) for libel and slander cases, opt to defend themselves against a barrage of lawyers -- and achieve at least a partial victory.
I should add that from ouside the US, America is seen as an incredibly litigious country. A common complaint here when reports of a particularly pathetic case turn up, is "It's getting as bad as America". It's nice to see that not everyone in the US thinks that the first recourse should be the courts. Although it's noticeable that the first reaction to a lot of MS stuff here, and to the UserFriendly tale, has been "Class action lawsuit!" (what on earth is that, anyway? It sounds - severe.) But anyway, it was reassuring to see people laughing this one - well, I was going to say laughing out of court, but maybe that's premature:)
Slashdot Mirror
I'm pretty sure that in the original details about moderation, part of the moderation criteria was, "people in the middle range": neither those who logged on once a month, nor those who repeatedly reloaded Slashdot in the course of a day. I also think that the amount of reloading that disqualified you was not specifically stated. Just a guess, but plausible, perhaps.
The bottleneck is explained at http://www.thinkgeek.com/slashdotted - they couldn't handle the number of requests and ran out of memory. So someone ran home for another machine...
The Mir one would be excessively sweet as a theme, yes. There's some even better ones in the archives, too :)
- http://www.star.ucl.ac.uk/~apod/ apod/astropix.html, UK,(London)
- http://www.phy.mtu.edu/apod/astropix.html , US (Midwest)
- http://mirrors.inside.net/apod/, Switzerland
- http://www.sai.msu.su/apod/: Russia
- http://phyhp.phy. ncku.edu.tw/~astrolab/mirrors/apod/astropix.html Taiwan (Chinese)
- http://phyhp.ph y.ncku.edu.tw/~astrolab/mirrors/apod_e/astropix.h
t ml: Taiwan (English) - http://apod.aguianet.com.br/: Brazil
- http://www.astro.cz/apod/
I got this list from the info page on the main site. I've just tried 'em out, and the Swiss one appears to be down but the rest are there.These all point to the picture of the day (which is of Earth, though it doesn't look like it!), of course: you'll have to head to the archives to find the eclipse picture. They've been carrying loads of eclipse pictures recently, and they're beautiful.
Telsa (who is entertained to find she's _not_ a Ewok, all comments about her height to the contrary.)
They're caused by tiny ice crystals very high up, I think? The light is refracted through them. And I simply say a halo around the moon, or a lunar halo, and assume people will know what I mean. :) I've heard the word "moonbow", but I don't think it's a common one (certainly it's not in any of my dictionaries).
At least one version is here, at http://www.lwn.net/1999/features/199 8timeline.
ObEclipse: cloudy in Swansea (95% or so), but the pinhole camera worked. I'd forgotten how much fun such things were. Eerie light quality, and a definite temperature drop.
Well, there's lots of names. Someone on IRC just told me it's called snakebite where they are (Canada, I believe), but in the UK, snakebite is lager and cider. Guinness and cider is a black velvet. (Properly, it's a poor man's black velvet, and I have a vague memory of being told that a real black velvet is Guinness and _champagne_ in equal measures - boggle!) A drink that I used to have a lot as a student (when you do this kind of thing...) was Guinness, cider and black. The black is a dash of blackcurrant cordial in the top. Yummy! The only drink that is harder to get back from the bar to the table in one piece without people coming up and asking to try it is a Green Monster (another name which has lots of varieties: cider, bitter and a measure of blue Bols. Yes, it's bright green.) And then there was the ever-popular game on the first night for new bar staff: asking for a Baileys and coke in a short glass. (It fizzes up and rises over the edge and then results in a thick crust on the top. A spoon helps.) Oh yes. One thing more. The cider in the UK is alcoholic. I gather this is not the case in the US as a rule. We are not talking apple juice here. We are talking a drink that's quite strong enough in its own right. :) Guinness, cider and black is well worth trying. I recommend it.
I suppose this is not the place to mention what 'going for a slash' means in the UK, either?
These aren't slaggings-off on Slashdot. These are written by people who are reading the linked-to articles and then emailing the author direct with abuse. And yes, the Astroturf theory has occurred to me, but frankly, I _really_ doubt that MS is paying a bunch of people to do this for them when it's blindingly obvious that we have plenty of people who are quite happy to do this off their own bat.
In addition, although being selective with your news and hitting LWN, Slashdot, Linux Today, linux.com and so on is very common, there are a _lot_ of people who really, honestly, truly, haven't heard of Linux, haven't heard of BeOS, haven't heard of *BSD. If they read introductory articles, take part in discussions, or subscribe to comp.os.linux.* and the first things they see are some of the more.. er.. intolerant articles: yes, they _will_ assume that's typical of the Linux (/BeOS/*BSD/whatever their new interest is) community. Especially if they see nothing done to stop it. If my mates tell me there's a cool new nightclub in town and we go there, and people keep spilling my drink or fights keep breaking out, I might listen to them say "Oh, really cool folks come here, and the music is well cool." But I will certainly be influenced by the fact that the drink-spiller doesn't offer to buy me a new one, and no bouncers show up to stop a fight, and it's most unlikely I'll be convinced to go again.
Slashdot used to post browser stats of recent visits to the site. I can't find them any more (where'd they go, or has my playing with my preferences accidentally lost them from my view?), but as I recall, there were a _lot_ of people using Windows.
It may not be that kind of book at all, of course. For a book review, this was singularly uninforming. I learnt more about it from comments than from Katz's description, which was essentially three or four one-sentence paragraphs at the centre of an extended discussion on which authors on the subject he personally prefers. That should surely have been an opinion piece, not a review. A review is supposed to tell you a little more than (a) it's dry and academic - or study notes for a 12-step program (not two genres which I would have thought had a great deal in common, but still); and (b) it develops an argument which results in a discussion on how we think (goodness! A psychologist looking at that! What a surprise...)
I don't believe it's entirely fair to criticise use of coinages such as "memeplex", either. We can't all generate snap buzzwords for concepts such as the hopeful monster (Gould) or the selfish gene (Dawkins -- and it's _gene_, Katz, not meme). In fact such cool phrases can be truly annoying: therre is a limit to how often the butterfly flapping its wings can be alluded to without people ultimately forgetting all about what it was intended to illuminate. Introducing "memeplex" instead of a three-word (long-winded? Dry? Academic?) alternative might be an entirely reasonable ploy.
I have a number of books on psychology, psychiatry (note -- they are different, a distinction which escapes those who take it upon themselves to complain about the conflation of cracker and hacker. Sorry. Pet peeve), sociology, anthropology and the rest. They're not necessarily easy reading. They look at big subjects and they have their own language. There is a spectrum ranging from the "make a quick buck" variety, with their absent index and lack of references replaced by "Scientists say... Therefore it is obvious that... ", and the PhD thesis which gets turned into a book, complete with all footnotes, references and appendices. And a very wide spectrum it is.
Beyond a complaint about unnecessarily complicated language and a quick reference to 12 step programs, Jon Katz's "review" doesn't even tell me at which end of the market this book is aimed.
At least, that's my understanding. (I saw the BOF sessions advertised last year for something and had to go and find out, too :)) My examples of what are typical BOF interests might be a bit skewed, as this is yet another area I wot not of. They're usually scheduled against the evenings, but they can clash with talks, too. They do try to schedule them sensibly (a kernel internals talk against a graphics BOF, for example) but it's not easy, given the typical range of interests of many conference attenders.
How typical. I write all that and _then_ check the Jargon File. Oh well, apparently I'm roughly right: BOF in Jargon File (I hope).
It wasn't called the "Managers' Guide to Geeks", but rather, "The Hacker FAQ", and Peter Seebach wrote it. It's for managers, about understanding your hacker :). It's on www.plethora.net/~seebs/faqs/hacker .html and is worth a read if you haven't seen it before.
Eccentricity -- well, your best bet is to grab the books from www.amazon.com. The book I first got doesn't seem to be there, but the weightier tome, "Eccentrics: the scientific study" (which is what I actually ordered at my bookshop and didn't get) is there, as is a more anecdotal account (maybe mine under a new name?) Weeks saw lots of work being done on normal and decidedly not normal, but nothing on the borders, and launched a large study into the phenomenon. He identified a number of traits which he held to be shared by all or most eccentrics, and without going to my bookshelf I may get this wrong, but here goes:
Intelligence, intense curiosity, non-conformist, idealistic, not in need of social reinforcement, obsessive about a number of different (wildly different) things at once, sense of humour, poor speller...There were also differences in the way they spoke, and they tend to be off the scale in personality tests which measure the strength of different characteristics. (off the scale in either direction). Although "having eccentric relatives" is apparently common in some forms of mental illness, having mentally ill relatives didn't seem particularly common in eccentrics (about the same as "normal people").
What struck me was the "Portrait of J Random Hacker" in the back of the Jargon File, which also mentions humour, lots of wide-ranging interests, confidence that you're right, not caring what others think, and being more likely to have unusual philosophies and act on them. There seemed, as I say, to be a slight overlap :)
I just did a quick google search on "David Weeks eccentricity" and got a pile of hits: apparently he did a lot of interviews when the latest book came out. They'll give you more information and the books more yet.
I wouldn't get _too_ excited about this. I do enjoy stuff about the boundaries between normality and non-normality (don't get me onto the subject of how many people hear voices, for example :)) and it just struck me that there were similarities. I can think of one or two people who are both hackers and eccentric, but I wouldn't say it's an automatic link. On the other hand, they're both very small segments of the population, and the chances of so many (as I perceive it) overlapping must be low.
Anyway, this is too long, but those are the books you want to look at (or the interviews, but they mostly focus on the arty eccentrics rather than the scientific ones (think of Newton and his bed having to be north-south, and Franklin, and Cavendish)).
Telsa (who does read Slashdot, yes, and knows this is probably off-topic, but what the hell, someone asked :))
It's in /etc/rc.d/init.d in RH 5.2.
I do wonder whether it's even worth putting such links on Slashdot. It sends their hits sky-high, so the advertisers love it, the editor loves it, and enough Slashdot readers send unpleasant responses for the columnist to base their next column on the phenomenon. I don't see why we should give them more grist for their mill.
Gah! How I hate frames! But at least he put a table of contents for non-frames browsers. And indeed, his solitary link on his links page is to that "The Force=Satan!" page. Nosing around that site will quickly reveal that it was a joke. Given that he doesn't spot sarcasm in one of the emails he quotes in his "interesting email responses", I suspect he doesn't realise that the "The Force=Satan!" page is a joke, either. Ouch.
I found this by going to Linux Weekly News and looking through the archives for the week that 2.2.0 came out. Hope this helps.
Using Lynx for years as I did, I missed the rise in banner ads, really. I just saw links to "Click here!" and doubleclick and so on. When I got Netscape, I started taking about 10 times longer to download pages, and they all had these damned "Click here for your speed" and on clicking, you got redirected to adverts. It took me not very long at all to realise why people had eulogised the Internet Junkbuster. I have a slow link, and this program _really_ _helps_ cut down on the rubbish. Now if only they recognised content-free sites...:) Deals with a lot of other things, too, like cookies. It's not a block all/block none choice, either; you can select places you do trust with cookies. Definitely recommended: makes the web a lot faster. For those of us unlike Katz who don't feel compelled to give all sources of information equal priority, it's a handy thing.
- The Linux Documentation Project has everything from mini-HOWTOs on single specific issues to books.
- The GNU website has pointers to documentation guidelines and a list of projects.
- I saw announcement of a kernel documentation mailing list on (urrr..) Linux Weekly News some time ago. kernel-doc? Hosted in Europe somewhere. (Helpful, no?)
- GNU also has a proof-readers' mailing list, where potential proof-readers lurk and people with documentation needing checking send calls for 'I've got this, can people get back to me on it?' or 'I write in this language, can someone check my English?'
- Loads of websites for projects seem to have contacts for feedback. Even if nothing's said about documenting, those are a good start. A lot of them have documentation - but of course each new release means someone has to update the lot - or at least check it!
Or, as you say, you could offer your services at large. Or wait til someone posts 'new release... documentation isn't complete yet' to Usenet and dive in to that. Or email the author. Or the maintainer, if that's someone different.As someone who relies heavily on HOWTOs and man pages and so on, I have to say: pick one! And good luck and thanks in advance :)
Rioter number 36. Apparently.
Beautiful, lyrical, absorbing, and full of fascinating arguments and arguments on - well, everything from the DoJ/MS case to the image of the Batmobile and the geodesic dome to represent certain products and communities. (Which cracked me up. How apt!) I've probably put everyone off, now, but honestly, even the "Essays shouldn't be on slashdot" people will find this relevant. One caveat: I do think it deserves reading thoroughly, rather than skimming. Expect to spend some time reading it. And going "Yes!" out loud and double-taking at various stages, with luck. In common with several other people, I feel this merited more than a "quite interesting" comment buried amid SGI's new logo and the Slashdot dance.
A side=note: those interested in a "traditional" UK libel trial, with all sorts of bizarre twists and turns, could do worse than check out the McSpotlight site. It's a huge site, with not a lot of news for nerds on it, but it does have some clear explanations of the absolute worst-case legal situation (in terms of complication rather than possible penalties): big multinational sues "the little people" and the little people, discovering that you can't get Legal Aid (assistance with the costs for legal action) for libel and slander cases, opt to defend themselves against a barrage of lawyers -- and achieve at least a partial victory.
I should add that from ouside the US, America is seen as an incredibly litigious country. A common complaint here when reports of a particularly pathetic case turn up, is "It's getting as bad as America". It's nice to see that not everyone in the US thinks that the first recourse should be the courts. Although it's noticeable that the first reaction to a lot of MS stuff here, and to the UserFriendly tale, has been "Class action lawsuit!" (what on earth is that, anyway? It sounds - severe.) But anyway, it was reassuring to see people laughing this one - well, I was going to say laughing out of court, but maybe that's premature :)