In case anyone's interested, the (UK) Guardian's "Online" section printed this article today. I was quite impressed that they'd even heard of Richard Stallman... although it did amuse me that at the end of the article they said something like "Richard Stallman invented the GNU operating system in 1984, better known as Linux". (ducks)
I dare say it'll also be on the Guardian's web site soon.
Sorry, but (as everyone else is saying) the minidisc is nowhere near dead. In the UK, it's catching on in a big way - to the extent that almost all decent hi-fis come with a minidisc deck as standard. The minidisc is the new walkman
As far as sound quality goes, I personally can not tell the difference between a digitally recorded MD and a CD. MP3, on the other hand... sounds crap. Minidiscs are tiny, very resilient, and most importantly look cool. I got my minidisc recorder (the very nice Sharp 722) at Christmas and my MD collection is already larger than my CD collection.
All I can say is that those of you in the States are missing out. And as for price... you can now get recorders for as little as 99UKP and discs for under 2UKP.
Let us say that the site gets Slashdotted, or there's some other reason why people can't reach it. Or maybe this hidden text disappears after a day or two. Don't you think it might be handy for it to be duplicated here? Also, it makes it easier to comment on it.
On the contrary... why on earth does there have to be some kind of connection between having a brain and being able to have a decent conversation, and being a geek? For a start, in that conversation you are at least as guilty as the girl - as soon as she says she does English (obviously a subject for morons, because it doesn't involve equations and/or TLAs!) you've stereotyped her as a bit of fluff.
Most people don't *want* to tell some perfect stranger all their deepest goals for their lives. The process of getting to know someone starts with casual conversation... anyway, I'm bored of typing now, and this is essentially a pointless thread.
I support using "un" for an unspecified gender, because it sounds great if you say it in a rural accent, eg. "that young'un over there". But anyway, this is a very silly conversation.
I'm sure everyone's sick of hearing people say "well, my favourite books are...", but I just have to take the time to recommend "The Saga of the Exiles" by Julian May. If you have any interest in Celtic myth, fantasy in general, psychic powers, etc., then you'll love it.
As far as "books which all geeks should read" goes, I spose the Hitch-Hiker's Guide would have to be no. 1. If not that, then the obvious choices like stuff by William Gibson and Isaac Asimov.
I don't think that this strategy will benefit M$ that much, for this simple reason: I would hazard a guess that many, if not most, of those who go into s/w development, network administration, etc. after graduating were interested in computing before they went to university, and probably were interested in developing software too. These people are the ones who end up running networks, creating products, and generally making decisions about which brand to buy. How can someone aged 16 (or whatever) afford to buy a copy of Visual C++? They can't. So they get Linux (or whatever) instead, for free, which comes with a plethora of development tools. They continue to use this through university, and when they graduate, their thought patterns are set and they love the penguin. So if you want to blame anyone for corrupting youth with their OS, blame Linus Torvalds;)
The irony being that your comment, which was marked up, is a descendant of the one you refer to. Thus proving that survival of the fittest does not apply to Slashdot - survival of the lamest is another matter...
I agree. Personally (speaking as an obsessed Pratchett reader who's read just about everything he's written), it's my favourite of all his books. It's also good for introducing ppl who "don't like fantasy" to his work.
That is, software can start being developed (indeed, must be developed) in some other model before being released into the bazaar. It must first be a runnable, testable program before people will come along and turn their eyes to it.
The new bounty model is a model that fits just this first step. The program gets written. After the bounty has been collected, the program is now open source, and has all the benefits that any other open source program has.
But (imho), the difference is that many open-source projects (eg. the Linux kernel) don't need to be developed in a "closed" environment very long before they seem interesting to other developers. The so-called bounty model encourages companies to advertise for complete works - taking the same example, if Linux was developed under the bounty model to start with, the advert would read "Full Unix-like kernel to run on Intel hardware required". Even assuming that Linux 1.0 was good enough, would the development resulting from this have been as effective as the group effort that actually occurred?
I admit that there are some projects, such as those where a great deal of design and specification are needed, and those which just fill a not-very-interesting gap in a current package, which can benefit from the bounty model. But in general, I would say that the bazaar model would be far more productive (and enjoyable).
Pissed at an Aussie ISP or just think that sex for pleasure should be banned? Call the police and complain that you searched for "Jenny" and found Jennycam. Why wasn't it blocked?
Of course, the whole "Jenny" thing isn't too helpful anyway, seeing as it's called "Jennicam"... Maybe they're just worried at the obvious exhibitionist tendencies of ppl called Jenny, who knows?;)
It's absolutely ridiculous. Although it is quite funny that blocking "Pamela" would not allow the classic book of the same name written hundreds of years ago to be published online. And the book was about morals:)
Having said that, I'm sure many countries' censorship laws are equally stupid, they're just ignored as required.
In fact, maybe the cracker-hacker confusion is good - it means that those who don't know what being a hacker is are less likely to call themselves one, thus making hackerdom less obtainable. Zen...
While I agree that this was an interesting and relevant comment, and it's always nice to hear what the "star personalities" of the Linux world have to say... it's weird that this post got immediately moderated up to 5. The content of a post is (usually) more important than who wrote it.
Of the 10 key programmers working on the Linux kernel, the core part of the software, four work for Red Hat as contractors, including one in Hungary and one in Scotland.
Are they thinking of Alan Cox? And if so, I might be greatly mistaken, but doesn't he live in Wales?
All I ask is someone make a conserted to take a very professional looking page one step further. If nothing else, read the post as you type. Take a few seconds to fix the spaceing
Sorry, but I do find this quite funny. The hypocrisy of all these people ranting and raving about spelling and grammar has reached ridiculous heights. We should make a "conserted" what?
As was discussed ad infinitum after the last Raster-related story, the article Slashdot put up last time is completely unrelated to the one that was faked (from ages ago). Although it is pretty ironic given what he said that time round...
On the contrary, it's seemed to me in the past that many of the best programmers I've known (myself being the obvious exception;) have had some of the worst spelling and grammar. If his code works, who cares if he can't spell?
Remember the Enlightenment release notes, where Rasterman said that E could cause crashes by throwing up bugs in X? Now it's even demonstrating bugs in Slashdot...:)
Slashdot Mirror
http://www.citypages.com/d atabank/20/991/article8260.asp.
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I dare say it'll also be on the Guardian's web site soon.
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As far as sound quality goes, I personally can not tell the difference between a digitally recorded MD and a CD. MP3, on the other hand... sounds crap. Minidiscs are tiny, very resilient, and most importantly look cool. I got my minidisc recorder (the very nice Sharp 722) at Christmas and my MD collection is already larger than my CD collection.
All I can say is that those of you in the States are missing out. And as for price... you can now get recorders for as little as 99UKP and discs for under 2UKP.
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Let us say that the site gets Slashdotted, or there's some other reason why people can't reach it. Or maybe this hidden text disappears after a day or two. Don't you think it might be handy for it to be duplicated here? Also, it makes it easier to comment on it.
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Most people don't *want* to tell some perfect stranger all their deepest goals for their lives. The process of getting to know someone starts with casual conversation... anyway, I'm bored of typing now, and this is essentially a pointless thread.
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I support using "un" for an unspecified gender, because it sounds great if you say it in a rural accent, eg. "that young'un over there". But anyway, this is a very silly conversation.
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As far as "books which all geeks should read" goes, I spose the Hitch-Hiker's Guide would have to be no. 1. If not that, then the obvious choices like stuff by William Gibson and Isaac Asimov.
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The new bounty model is a model that fits just this first step. The program gets written. After the bounty has been collected, the program is now open source, and has all the benefits that any other open source program has.
But (imho), the difference is that many open-source projects (eg. the Linux kernel) don't need to be developed in a "closed" environment very long before they seem interesting to other developers. The so-called bounty model encourages companies to advertise for complete works - taking the same example, if Linux was developed under the bounty model to start with, the advert would read "Full Unix-like kernel to run on Intel hardware required". Even assuming that Linux 1.0 was good enough, would the development resulting from this have been as effective as the group effort that actually occurred?
I admit that there are some projects, such as those where a great deal of design and specification are needed, and those which just fill a not-very-interesting gap in a current package, which can benefit from the bounty model. But in general, I would say that the bazaar model would be far more productive (and enjoyable).
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*slaps wrist* You mean Windows 2000. All will comply with the mighty Bill's naming scheme.
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Of course, the whole "Jenny" thing isn't too helpful anyway, seeing as it's called "Jennicam"... Maybe they're just worried at the obvious exhibitionist tendencies of ppl called Jenny, who knows? ;)
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Having said that, I'm sure many countries' censorship laws are equally stupid, they're just ignored as required.
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Packer?
Backer?
Tracker?
(etc...)
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Of the 10 key programmers working on the Linux kernel, the core part of the software, four work for Red Hat as contractors, including one in Hungary and one in Scotland.
Are they thinking of Alan Cox? And if so, I might be greatly mistaken, but doesn't he live in Wales?
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Sorry, but I do find this quite funny. The hypocrisy of all these people ranting and raving about spelling and grammar has reached ridiculous heights. We should make a "conserted" what?
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