Everyone I have ever seen who had the label "digerati" applied to them were the kind of people who think that WiReD is cool, describe themselves as "working in New Media" and generally like to talk about "the development of digital nervous systems" and "populating cyberspace" rather than actually DOING anything.
In other words, "digerati" is equivalent to "wannabe loser dork" in my mind and has been since I first saw it several years ago.
Also, am I the only one who thinks that using the preface "cyber" with anything other than recognized constructions like "cybernetics" which predate widespread popularity of the Internet a sure sign of loserhood? Just curious...
raster, have you been playing with Mac OS and AppleScript lately? Because you have just described the "Scriptable Folders" concept under Mac OS >= 8.5:)
Just as an aside, you may not need windows for your hypothetical digicam.
I decided to try gphoto (see freshmeat for more info) last week and while it is early in development (0.38 i believe), i thought it worked rather well. While it would crash instantly if I attempted to view any of the pics from my camera onscreen, it happily downloaded them to my hard drive where i could XV and gimp them to my hearts content.
I am not affiliated with the gphoto project, just a happy user. Keep up the good work guys! And by the way, i was using a Fuji DX-7 with the DX-5 drivers:)
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But Unix ALREADY has this!
on
Browser news
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· Score: 2
it's called "webcollage" and it's a module in xscreensaver. The only difference between it and this neomat thing is that webcollage is completely random.
Okay, I've thought about this a lot and had arguments with people over it...maybe I'm just being shortsighted and unimaginative but:
Given that you can produce nanomachines, how the hell do you tell them what to do?
I understand existing methods of making very small machines. I can buy extrapolating this into Very Small Machines making Even Smaller Machines. But how do these machines know what to do? The people I've discussed this with said "the code will be embedded, of course". Well, I know that, but what will it run on? And how big are these things going to have to start out, since the first generation must contain all sets of code for all generations of nanomachines?
Basically I guess I'm trying to say: how can you make a robot smaller than the smallest possible computer core?
No, the iMac has 2 *USB* ports (on the unit itself), 1 10/100bT jack, 1 RJ11 jack (modem), 1 reset button, 1 interrupt button, 1 audio-in, 1 audio-out.
The only cats that I am aware of that engage in any truly social behaviour are lions, and prides of lions are generally small groupings. So Linux users are like lions?
Well, I guess that would mean that they roam office buildings in small groups at night, the females hunting food while the males bicker with each other. And then they try to do as little as possible during the day. Unless there are some Wildebeest around (I like that word! Wildebeest! A very woody word, not at all tinny).
I hate to burst your bubble, but *ALL* window managers (not Gnome and KDE, they are desktop environments, different thing entirely), even one from Microsoft, require a working X server.
Your understanding of how X actually works appears to be flawed.
No problem (I keep a screenshot script in my WM menu for *just* this reason:)
http://alef.gcsu.edu/~sboyette/gnus_gnu.gif
Yeah, i know it's a GIF but this particular image was much larger as a JPEG *and* PNG and i'm running the risk of slashdotting the server so i have to be careful...
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Re:Gnu + penguin concept?
on
GNU Inside?
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· Score: 1
Have you ever seen a real gnu and penguin? The boggest pengiuns are only a couple of feet tall, whereas gnus are approximately the same size as a cow. I think the illustration was simply using realistic animals rather than cartoonish ones.
I think you're a little bit out of touch with the vast majority of the Linux community.
One of Linux's prime virtues is what it can do with older hardware. I have a friend who wouldn't believe that the Linux machine she was using at my house was a P90 because Netscape/WordPerfect/etc. "felt" as fast as W95 on her PC (a PII/333).
I have three Linux boxes, the (dual) P90 mentioned above, a K6/166 that acts as my web/mail/ftp/telnet/IRC/MOO/everything server and my 386/25 laptop that I use to do my homework.
I would wager that the vast majority of Linux boxes are not high-end monsters but old machines that are "worthless" in the eyes of many people. That is the true power of Linux in my eyes, an attribute that I think is all-too-often ignored here lately.
Microsoft's first product was not Xenix. It was a clone of Wang BASIC written for the Altair computer. Paul Allen wrote it back around 1975 I think. Xenix came somewhat later, around 1982?
Yeah, Xenix had to come later because Xenix ran on Intel hardware. I've worked on a Xenix system...a crusty old 386 server with 5 Wyse-60 terminals. It sucked (this was in 1997:). Still, Xenix was an interesting departure - now it's yet another footnote in computing history, which is filled with oddities and tales of high drama and intrigue.
Somebody should offer a Computing History class or something like that:)
All arguments aside, MacAddict runs on a SGI/Irix box because that's what ALL of Imagine Media's websites run on. MacAddict, IGN64, PSMOnline (or whatever its called these days), Next Generation, PC Accellerator, and all the rest.
They all run on Irix. I really don't know *why* because it seems to give them nothing but trouble.
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No future with that piece of crap iMac mouse!!
on
Motorola G4 Chip News
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· Score: 2
I think his point was that most window managers expect a three-button mouse and have very basic functionalities that depend on this.
With 2 buttons, you can use a chording technique to emulate 3 buttons but with only one, you have to resort to the very unsatisfactory method of combining keystrokes and mouseclicks.
It is stupid of Apple to introduce contextual menus into the OS and stick with a 1-button mouse design.
And I'm not a Mac-basher (although I used to be)...I own 3 Macs. And a Kensington Orbit:)
Speakers are analog devices - hooking them up to an ultra-high-speed digital serial connection would probably result only in severe ear/speaker damage:)
I'll not defend my intelligence but I will back up my claims about the inefficiency of Visual C++.
While I cannot provide hard numbers, as I do not have any machines which use any Microsoft products and only use Solaris machines at school, I can provide the following evidence (albeit anecdotal to all of you, it is first hand to me):
I have seen two people attempt to compile simple, introductory C++ programs with VC++ and have it fail because there was insufficient space on the floppy they were using for compilation. *NOT* because of the final executable size, but because of the several 200-500k intermediate files left behind by the compiler. I cannot say what these files were (they didn't end in ".o") or what they did.
They were using new 1.44M floppies, btw. I have *seen* an 8-incher once - on an old Osborne 1...but that's neither here nor there.
I have also seen students spend 30 minutes trying to figure out how to use VC++. You can't just open up a new source file, type and compile. Visual C++ may be the finest tool available for high-end Windows development - I wouldn't know - but it is completely unsuitable for use in this situation. Of course, this is not Microsoft's problem, but rather my school's. It does, perhaps, point out a problem with IDEs in general, IMHO.
As for the ad-hominem assaults, I apologize. That was uncalled for and I graciously accept your calling me an ignoramus. We tend to get hot-headed when things we love are threatened, ne?
> Why am I replying to this? No idea. I work on > Visual Studio, so Office2k is nothing to do > with me.
Oh. So *you're* the one who made a C++ compiler that generates code so bloated that a 20 line program cannot be compiled on a floppy disk.
VisualStudio is an abomination. You should see the poor dupes at school trying to use it...their machines lock up 2 or 3 times before it will ever load successfully. Probably because the machines are pitiful P90s with 16 megs of RAM, and we all know that that's nowhere near anouth hardware to develop programs on, right?
I hope nobody ever tells my 386/25 laptop that, because it can run emacs, gcc, g++, perl and python just fine in its 8 megs of RAM and 120 megs of hard disk.
Go away, Microsoft Boy.
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What's the point of grouping people like this ?
on
Jargon File v4.1.0
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· Score: 1
He's not making assumptions, he's making observations. I assume you're referring to the hacker profile section at the back; I've always found it to be very correct - it sounds like *most* of the hackers I know and I doubt that I know any of the same people ESR knows.
While you're certainly right that the programmer/techie community is *very* diverse, and is far, far different from the majority of humanity, we do share an amazing number of characteristics and some of the most commonly-shared ones are found in the Jargon File.
The Jargon File is a wonderful way to learn the history of the movement you are a part of. It's a great way to learn How Not To Be 1337.
It's our heiritage and we should all read it and treasure it.
OS X isn't A/UX, it's Rhapsody, which is in turn NeXTSTEP. Of course, I'm no expert on NeXTSTEP and it is entirely possible that it is a derivative of A/UX, but I don't think so because it's all 4.4 BSD-ish and Mach microkernely and stuff.
Plus I severely, *severely* doubt Steve Jobs would have used anything Apple-derived at NeXT given the circumstances under which it was created.
MS has never earned anything. Their very first product, a BASIC interpreter was based on code stolen from Wang and was written (by Paul Allen) on a governmental time-sharing system in violation of their terms of use.
"Word" was originally called "Quill" and was written by some little company in Louisiana around 1981. MS bought it when they needed a word processor to sell to a Japanese client.
MS never writes anything, and they don't make excellent products. They buy OK products and then make them unstable, unfriendly and unusable (oops, I meant to say "user-friendly").
Learn the truth before you go spouting the MS Party Line.
Hey, not only that, but Mary, David and the Angel are blonde! And everybody is caucasian! And Job and David are wearing PANTS which I thought happened in the middle ages (at least in europe).
And you have to love Job's "Festering Open Wound Action". Get that man some Neosporin, stat!
Slashdot Mirror
Everyone I have ever seen who had the label "digerati" applied to them were the kind of people who think that WiReD is cool, describe themselves as "working in New Media" and generally like to talk about "the development of digital nervous systems" and "populating cyberspace" rather than actually DOING anything.
In other words, "digerati" is equivalent to "wannabe loser dork" in my mind and has been since I first saw it several years ago.
Also, am I the only one who thinks that using the preface "cyber" with anything other than recognized constructions like "cybernetics" which predate widespread popularity of the Internet a sure sign of loserhood? Just curious...
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raster, have you been playing with Mac OS and AppleScript lately? Because you have just described the "Scriptable Folders" concept under Mac OS >= 8.5 :)
--
Just as an aside, you may not need windows for your hypothetical digicam.
:)
I decided to try gphoto (see freshmeat for more info) last week and while it is early in development (0.38 i believe), i thought it worked rather well. While it would crash instantly if I attempted to view any of the pics from my camera onscreen, it happily downloaded them to my hard drive where i could XV and gimp them to my hearts content.
I am not affiliated with the gphoto project, just a happy user. Keep up the good work guys! And by the way, i was using a Fuji DX-7 with the DX-5 drivers
--
it's called "webcollage" and it's a module in xscreensaver. The only difference between it and this neomat thing is that webcollage is completely random.
but from what i've read, so is neomat.
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This thread has more *cough* Illuminating *cough* comments than any other I've ever seen I think.
YOD NON RESH YOD
DO NOT MEDDLE IN THE AFFAIRS OF WIZARDS
IT MAKES THEM SOGGY AND HARD TO LIGHT
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Okay, I've thought about this a lot and had arguments with people over it...maybe I'm just being shortsighted and unimaginative but:
Given that you can produce nanomachines, how the hell do you tell them what to do?
I understand existing methods of making very small machines. I can buy extrapolating this into Very Small Machines making Even Smaller Machines. But how do these machines know what to do? The people I've discussed this with said "the code will be embedded, of course". Well, I know that, but what will it run on? And how big are these things going to have to start out, since the first generation must contain all sets of code for all generations of nanomachines?
Basically I guess I'm trying to say: how can you make a robot smaller than the smallest possible computer core?
--
No, the iMac has 2 *USB* ports (on the unit itself), 1 10/100bT jack, 1 RJ11 jack (modem), 1 reset button, 1 interrupt button, 1 audio-in, 1 audio-out.
--
"A Linux Cult is like a herd of cats"
:)
What? Nonexistant?
The only cats that I am aware of that engage in any truly social behaviour are lions, and prides of lions are generally small groupings. So Linux users are like lions?
Well, I guess that would mean that they roam office buildings in small groups at night, the females hunting food while the males bicker with each other. And then they try to do as little as possible during the day. Unless there are some Wildebeest around (I like that word! Wildebeest! A very woody word, not at all tinny).
Nah, I just don't see it
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I hate to burst your bubble, but *ALL* window managers (not Gnome and KDE, they are desktop environments, different thing entirely), even one from Microsoft, require a working X server.
Your understanding of how X actually works appears to be flawed.
--
No problem (I keep a screenshot script in my WM menu for *just* this reason :)
http://alef.gcsu.edu/~sboyette/gnus_gnu.gif
Yeah, i know it's a GIF but this particular image was much larger as a JPEG *and* PNG and i'm running the risk of slashdotting the server so i have to be careful...
--
Have you ever seen a real gnu and penguin? The boggest pengiuns are only a couple of feet tall, whereas gnus are approximately the same size as a cow. I think the illustration was simply using realistic animals rather than cartoonish ones.
--
I agree wholeheartedly. the GNUS gnu is stylish, elegant and powerful. How about it, GNU people?
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I think you're a little bit out of touch with the vast majority of the Linux community.
One of Linux's prime virtues is what it can do with older hardware. I have a friend who wouldn't believe that the Linux machine she was using at my house was a P90 because Netscape/WordPerfect/etc. "felt" as fast as W95 on her PC (a PII/333).
I have three Linux boxes, the (dual) P90 mentioned above, a K6/166 that acts as my web/mail/ftp/telnet/IRC/MOO/everything server and my 386/25 laptop that I use to do my homework.
I would wager that the vast majority of Linux boxes are not high-end monsters but old machines that are "worthless" in the eyes of many people. That is the true power of Linux in my eyes, an attribute that I think is all-too-often ignored here lately.
IMHO, YMMV.
--
Microsoft's first product was not Xenix. It was a clone of Wang BASIC written for the Altair computer. Paul Allen wrote it back around 1975 I think. Xenix came somewhat later, around 1982?
:). Still, Xenix was an interesting departure - now it's yet another footnote in computing history, which is filled with oddities and tales of high drama and intrigue.
:)
Yeah, Xenix had to come later because Xenix ran on Intel hardware. I've worked on a Xenix system...a crusty old 386 server with 5 Wyse-60 terminals. It sucked (this was in 1997
Somebody should offer a Computing History class or something like that
--
All arguments aside, MacAddict runs on a SGI/Irix box because that's what ALL of Imagine Media's websites run on. MacAddict, IGN64, PSMOnline (or whatever its called these days), Next Generation, PC Accellerator, and all the rest.
They all run on Irix. I really don't know *why* because it seems to give them nothing but trouble.
--
I think his point was that most window managers expect a three-button mouse and have very basic functionalities that depend on this.
:)
With 2 buttons, you can use a chording technique to emulate 3 buttons but with only one, you have to resort to the very unsatisfactory method of combining keystrokes and mouseclicks.
It is stupid of Apple to introduce contextual menus into the OS and stick with a 1-button mouse design.
And I'm not a Mac-basher (although I used to be)...I own 3 Macs. And a Kensington Orbit
--
Firewire speakers?
:)
Speakers are analog devices - hooking them up to an ultra-high-speed digital serial connection would probably result only in severe ear/speaker damage
--
I'll not defend my intelligence but I will back up my claims about the inefficiency of Visual C++.
While I cannot provide hard numbers, as I do not have any machines which use any Microsoft products and only use Solaris machines at school, I can provide the following evidence (albeit anecdotal to all of you, it is first hand to me):
I have seen two people attempt to compile simple, introductory C++ programs with VC++ and have it fail because there was insufficient space on the floppy they were using for compilation. *NOT* because of the final executable size, but because of the several 200-500k intermediate files left behind by the compiler. I cannot say what these files were (they didn't end in ".o") or what they did.
They were using new 1.44M floppies, btw. I have *seen* an 8-incher once - on an old Osborne 1...but that's neither here nor there.
I have also seen students spend 30 minutes trying to figure out how to use VC++. You can't just open up a new source file, type and compile. Visual C++ may be the finest tool available for high-end Windows development - I wouldn't know - but it is completely unsuitable for use in this situation. Of course, this is not Microsoft's problem, but rather my school's. It does, perhaps, point out a problem with IDEs in general, IMHO.
As for the ad-hominem assaults, I apologize. That was uncalled for and I graciously accept your calling me an ignoramus. We tend to get hot-headed when things we love are threatened, ne?
Thank you for the dialogue.
--
> Why am I replying to this? No idea. I work on
> Visual Studio, so Office2k is nothing to do
> with me.
Oh. So *you're* the one who made a C++ compiler that generates code so bloated that a 20 line program cannot be compiled on a floppy disk.
VisualStudio is an abomination. You should see the poor dupes at school trying to use it...their machines lock up 2 or 3 times before it will ever load successfully. Probably because the machines are pitiful P90s with 16 megs of RAM, and we all know that that's nowhere near anouth hardware to develop programs on, right?
I hope nobody ever tells my 386/25 laptop that, because it can run emacs, gcc, g++, perl and python just fine in its 8 megs of RAM and 120 megs of hard disk.
Go away, Microsoft Boy.
--
He's not making assumptions, he's making observations. I assume you're referring to the hacker profile section at the back; I've always found it to be very correct - it sounds like *most* of the hackers I know and I doubt that I know any of the same people ESR knows.
While you're certainly right that the programmer/techie community is *very* diverse, and is far, far different from the majority of humanity, we do share an amazing number of characteristics and some of the most commonly-shared ones are found in the Jargon File.
The Jargon File is a wonderful way to learn the history of the movement you are a part of. It's a great way to learn How Not To Be 1337.
It's our heiritage and we should all read it and treasure it.
--
OS X isn't A/UX, it's Rhapsody, which is in turn NeXTSTEP. Of course, I'm no expert on NeXTSTEP and it is entirely possible that it is a derivative of A/UX, but I don't think so because it's all 4.4 BSD-ish and Mach microkernely and stuff.
Plus I severely, *severely* doubt Steve Jobs would have used anything Apple-derived at NeXT given the circumstances under which it was created.
--
You spelled "parallel" wrong :)
Ato de!
--
MS has never earned anything. Their very first product, a BASIC interpreter was based on code stolen from Wang and was written (by Paul Allen) on a governmental time-sharing system in violation of their terms of use.
"Word" was originally called "Quill" and was written by some little company in Louisiana around 1981. MS bought it when they needed a word processor to sell to a Japanese client.
MS never writes anything, and they don't make excellent products. They buy OK products and then make them unstable, unfriendly and unusable (oops, I meant to say "user-friendly").
Learn the truth before you go spouting the MS Party Line.
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> Okay.
>
> The "Adam" action figure has a navel.
Hey, not only that, but Mary, David and the Angel are blonde! And everybody is caucasian! And Job and David are wearing PANTS which I thought happened in the middle ages (at least in europe).
And you have to love Job's "Festering Open Wound Action". Get that man some Neosporin, stat!
--
Nahhh, that's what IPv6 is for. Doesn't it provide on the order of 10^24 IP addresses for every square meter of the earth's surface?
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