Yup. I did both the Army and DoD thing, many years ago (hardware and RF) and I am still seeing "new" civilian stuff that I remember from back then. I got to play with a lot of seriously fine electronic-type toys, and even got to drive a tank a few times and play with things that went BOOM! very loudly now and then.
Saying "the government" or "the military" doesn't mean much. Different government agencies and different military units can be as different as civilian companies are from one another, and sometimes you find technical challenges in the government where you wouldn't necessarily expect them. The Department of Agriculture has done some serious supercomputer research. Ditto the National Institutes of Health. The IRS was a sinkhole for puter people for years, full of incompetence, but I have a friend who's doing system design there now and having a great time replacing some of their ancient junk. He took the job because the pay was okay and he wanted stability, not because he thought it would be fun, but he's really gotten into it. No clearance required, either.
There are lots of idiots and bad places to work in the government, but there are also great people and great places. Even in the Army, I generally did interesting things and didn't suffer too much from bureacracy. And as a free benefit, I didn't have to worry about what I was going to wear every day.:)
I always wondered the same thing -- and that's probably why my first weekly online column, on the old Pathfinder (Time.com) Netly News, was called "This Old PC" and talked about how to save money with used hardware and low-cost upgrades. And I first wrote about Linux in that column. As far as I know, that was the first "jornalist installs Linux and lives" piece ever written.
A while later I took my column, under the "Cheap Computing" name I always wanted it to have but Time's people wouldn't allow, to what was then Andover News Network, later Andover.net, now OSDN, and started writing more and more about Linux and free software.
I have always avoided writing "Gee! This new thingie is so wonderful you gotta go buy it right now so you can be kewl" articles. This is probably why I never got "big" in mainstream computer mags and ended up working on Slashdot and NewsForge and now Linux.com.
Funny thing... I'm a lot happier writing about ways ordinary non-rich people can get the most out of limited computer bucks than than I would be writing new product blurbs. And I'm perfectly happy with my mid-to-low-end not-the-latest non-comped hardware. But that's just me.:)
Earlier this evening my wife and I had supper with Linux developer Russell Pavlicek (and wife), security guru Jon Lasser (and girlfriend), and Slashdot compatriot Timothy Lord. We had a great time.
These arethe kind of people you meet when you broaden your computer-oriented writing scope beyond the usual. Better than hanging out with hardware marekting people, believe me!
We've tried all these changes already at one time or another, and pulled back from them for the following reasons:
1) Some interviewees ducked the hardest questions when we let them choose which ones to answer.
2) Many people we interview are too busy to answer more than 10 questions.
3) No matter what we do, the conspiracy theorists will come up with conspiracy theories about why we did it. I long ago accepted the fact that Slashdot is run by (pick one) space aliens; the CIA; the Corporate Conspiracy; the Illuminati; Jews; Nazis; Satan; Democrats; CowboyNeal. (And how do you know this post is from the "real" Roblimo, anyway? Probably an imposter!)
4) Most of the time, if we have more than 10 questions moderated +5, once we eliminate duplicates and those from people who don't understand the meaning of, "One question per post, please," we end up with just about 10 questions.
5) We have never stopped interviewees from answering additional questions, and many do, espcially those who (like Satch) are regular Slashdot readers.
StarOffice makes PowerPoint-type slide shows, no problem. Saves them in.ppt format, opens.ppt format, even. I've given *many* "Linux on the Desktop" demonstrations to Windows users whose Linux-loving friends have told them (falsely) that there is no way to make/present slideshows in Linux. They are always surprised when I show them slides and, if time permits, make a few as part of my demo to show them how easy it is.
I also have trouble with the people who run around saying Flash Web pages won't open in Linux. They do for me, no problem. Netscape + Flash plugin.
I use Linux to perform common home and office computing tasks all day, every day, without even thinking about it. Right now my net connection is through a Wavelan card that worked "out of the box" with no fuss in Mandrake 8.0.
What am I doing wrong with Linux? Apparently there is *something* I haven't figured out that makes Linux hard to use. I have grandchildren who use Linux without any problem (we're talking five years old). My wife's great aunt, who is in her 90s, learned how to make at least minimal use of Netscape on Linux in a few minutes. Her biggest problem is that arthritis makes it hard for her to type.
Perhaps what I'm doing wrong is using point/click "user friendly" distributions like Mandrake and SuSE. Yeah, that's it! Maybe if I dump this silly X Window thingie and use Slack from the command line only, I'll have trouble performing simple home/office tasks with Linux.
Now, I can see an ubergeek sysadmin or developer trying to teach a bunch of journalists or other non-tech people how to type in a string of commands that look something like 0adsfkf($#@!) to open and edit a simple text file and getting a lot of bemused stares in return. Mr. Geek affirms his superiority, and everyone else decides Linux is too hard for them and goes back to Windows.
My wife, an artist-type person without a tech bone in her body (psych major, spent most of her working life before she met me as an IRS clerical employee), learned to use Linux as an online working tool in (I swear) less than two hours.
I mentioned my wife's great aunt. She's black, she grew up in rural poverty, only got through 4th grade, and has been a cleaning woman/maid for damn near her entire life. When I hear someone with a college degree, working in a white collar job, complain about Linux being hard to use, something is wrong with either the person doing the complaining or the person who taught them.
But to each their own. I am not as smart as most Slashdot readers, so I have to do things the simplest way, not the most technically elegant, and I have learned to accept the fact that this makes me uncool, even though it allows me to get one hell of a lot of work done in Linux without having to know very much about what's happening behind the monitor screen,
And do not forget the DoJ, which made it hard for IBM to maintain its PC hardware monopoly. I'm sure Gates and Ballmer remember that, and realize that the same could happen to them if, for some reason, the current President and AG suddenly decided to act like public servants instead of Microsoft employees.
The domain I really wanted when I was still active in the limo business was roblimo.md.us because it would have told people where we were (Maryland, USA) at a glance. The old.us domain pattern of including the town and county (roblimo.elkridge.howard.md.us) added too much granularity and was too cumbersome to remember easily, which is why I never got interested in that one.
For local businesses I believe city.state/province.country or just state/province.country is best both for the business owner and potential customers.
I have gotten massive spam urging me to get a.biz domain, but I see no point to having one. I can claim copyright infringement against anyone who uses "Roblimo" in other TLDs if I choose, except perhaps against the Robin Miller in Baltimore, County Cork, Ireland who has a small limo service there, and I think he and I would be more likely to put up a "joint" page than argue, since we're certainly not competing with each other.:)
Everything I write is harmful to minors (and many adults). Please place me on your "banned" list.
obObscenity: FUCK! PISS! SHIT! GEORGE CARLIN!
- Robin "Roblimo" Miller
Editor and Instigator
Re:Why this is a good change
on
Slashdot Updates
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· Score: 4, Insightful
Me too. But that was a much smaller Slashdot. Back then there were what? 100 posts a day on a big day? Rob Malda wrote something almost every day, not just once in a while. It was a little club on an Internet that wasn't yet completely commercial.
Heck, KingKurly and I were listening to WHFS (Baltimore/DC radio station) back then, before Jake Einstein sold it and the new corporate owners canned his son, Damien Einstein, because Damien stuttered and they didn't like that even though he was/is one of the greatest alternarock and freeform "I make my own playlist" DJs ever.
I'll be 49 this October 30, and I'm nostaligic about a lot of things, including an Internet where no one really worried too much about making money.
On the other hand, I was listening to the local NPR station this morning and suddenly, there was a familiar voice -- sounded just like Rob Malda -- talking some sort of shit about using giant Lego robots to invade Afghanistan, and I cracked up. The idea of Rob on a national radio show was sort of funny in itself, and having him being taken seriously by an NPR commentator with a smooth voice was even funnier, -2 all the way, you might say.
So things change, in some ways for the better, in other ways not. Yeah, some of us long for the "good old days" of Slashdot or even of Chips 'n Dips, and in some ways I was happier then, too, but in other ways not.
At least we're trying to hold the line on Slashdot ads as best we can in today's overhyped world, and still trying to get the most interesting people we can to interview (I just emailed RIAA Pres Hilary Rosen yet again -- some Slashdot interviews take a *lot* of time & persistence to arrange, you know) and all that. More story submissions, more users, more comments all the time. I suppose that's success. But it's an ever-increasing workload, too.
I think I will stop spouting and go to bed now. It's almost 11:30 p.m. and I've been up and working since 6 a.m. and I'm tired.:)
- Robin
Re:Why this is a good change
on
Slashdot Updates
·
· Score: 5, Informative
"But then maybe it's just a mad conspiracy theory."
In a way it is a conspiracy. NewsForge exists in large part because of advertiser demand for a "serious" Linux and Open Source news site that would appeal to people who have the power to sign purchase orders, combined with endless reader email asking us to turn Slashdot into more of a news site.
But everyone at OSDN *likes* Slashdot in all its anarchic glory. I've liked it longer than 99% of all current Slashdot users (note my UID), and I don't ever want to see its content change because of corporate pressure.
Hence NewsForge. Think of NewsForge as a trick to get our bosses to leave Slashdot alone instead of trying to turn it into something it was never meant to be.
The threats were silly. OSDN got some cease and desists from Digital Convergence about posting Cue:Cat hacking instructions on Slashdot and some of the bar code reader programs hosted on SourceForge.
Our lawyers and I looked at the whole thing (one lawyer got a Cue:Cat because of a Forbes subscription, no less), we talked about it, and in the end we farted it off.
In essence, these people were sending unsolicited out by mail, then trying to control how recipients used them. Try taking *that* one to court!
Hell, we figured 80% of the things were probably thrown away, and the comparatively few Slashdot and/or SourceForge readers who did something *useful* with theirs wouldn't make a noticeable dent in the world's Cue:Cat (over)supply, but might save a little landfill space.
The "bean story" would be a lead item at (hypothetical) "Canned Goods Retailing" or "Modern Supermarket Managmenent" or "Restaurant Purchasing," none of which would give a rat's ass about Mandrake. And general circulation pubs would/will ignore either story.
Seatbelt laws are made by states, yes, but the federal government can and does withhold highway funds from states that don't take appropriate "safety measures" like seatbelt laws and mandated speed limits.
The "no morde federal money" threat was how the national 55 MPH speed limit (later loosened) got put into effect in the 1970s.
The reason for most editorial cuts in newspaper stories is not to give them a "slant" but to make them fit into available space on the page.
Newspapers lay out pages by putting in the ads first, then filling the remaining white space (called the "news hole") with stories. Often there are more stories the boss editors feel are important than there is space to run all of them full length, so some or all of the stories get trimmed to fit. Decisions on what words to cut out of which stories are not made by a group of cackling [liberal; conservative; Zionist; law enforcement] conspirators in a back room, but by overworked (and usually underpaid) wordsmiths watching the clock tick toward the moment when the presses are scheduled to run. These people do not have the power to decide which stories get covered and which do not. They are the hands-on people responsible for getting the paper put together on time every day; the sergeants of the newspaper business, you might say.
Deadline pressure combined with the necessity to make the paper fit as much information as possible onto each (expensive) square inch of newsprint is to blame for at least 99% of all perceived newspaper copyediting errors.
The copyeditor who is making the cuts is also, in most cases, proofreading the stories, checking facts, and writing headlines. It is a brutal job, and out of the hundreds of stories a big newspaper like The Post runs in every edition, chances are approximately 100% that at least a few cuts will be made that are less than perfect.
A big advantage Internet news purveyors have over print news sources, and over broadcast sources too, who have "X" minutes of time to fill, and that's it, is that it costs effectively nothing to run 5 extra paragraphs of text on the WWW if those paragraphs will add more depth or accuracy to a story.
Hands-on, daily deadline copyediting is a brutal job carried out not by "anonymous cowards" but by people who do their best to make stories as accurate and readable as possible in too little time, usually on a copy desk that is a few people short not only because of recent media layoffs, but because competent copyeditors are always in short supply. The job takes an immense range of knowledge, powerful research skills, and a willingness to accept attacks for every mistake made while foregoing public credit when everything goes "just right."
I would be surprised to find out that many of the "don't you dare criticize my government!!!" people posting today have spent any time in the military.
When I was in the Army, I was there to prevent totalitarianism. Back then the communists were the declared enemy. Now I'm a fat, 48-year-old writer and editor, and I sure as hell am not going to let my government turn into even just a tiny bit of what I fought against even if it does it with the best of intentions.
Y'all better listen up to anyone crazy enough to have been in the 82nd, okay? That's a rough unit.
Rep. Rivers is a Democrat, and mentioned that privacy support in Congress has little to do with political party affiliation. She mentioned that she and Barr are big allies on this issue, although they disagree on many others.
This seems to have been a Net-wide pattern; news sites got hard-hit, but all other kinds saw big traffic drop-offs.
There will be a story up at Online Journalism Review before long talking about that -- and about how Slashdot served as an ad hoc news portal in a way no traditional news site could.
That's what I'm going to shortly. Used to do it that way, but I bought a corner computer table a couple of years ago.
The corner table has been making me feel claustrophobic lately.
I'm getting a 78" X 30" door, and laying it on top of two plastic two-drawer 21" high "rollaway" file cabinets with the casters removed. This will give me a big general purpose surface at the 22" height I prefer for typing or taking hardware apart, plus a rollaway laptop cart with a tiltable, adjustable height work surface for either my or a guest's laptop.
I'm getting an "Aeron knockoff" chair from Office Depot; my wife has one of these and loves it.
I already have a bunch of wall shelving but am adding more. I am also moving to a wireless home network to reduce wiring/clutter and so we have the option of working anywhere in the house or yard. We already have Cat-5 outlets in most rooms, but more and more I find I would rather work outdoors as much as possible.
The laptop cart is becoming my "real office" anyway. It has room for my laptop, a coffee mug, my rolodex, and a stack of paper, with a small "hanging file" basket attached for other files and books I need to have handy as I write.
Essentially, my 8X10 office is becoming workroom where the printer, wireless point, cable modem, and fax machine live, someplace I can work in private if I choose and use as book/paperwork storage. It is still my refuge, but is no longer the only place I can work.
The furniture cost for my office has been about $400 total, and wireless gear has set me back about $600, including the access point and 2 pcmcia cards.
Depends on the style guide. OSDN's calls for "email." There was a large discussion of "Internet vocabulary" on the Society of Professional Journalists email list a while back, and no consensus.
I have a few minor installation and usability quibbles about Red Carpet, ones I have discussed with Nat & crew (who are good people). I'm sure these little things will be taken care of soon.
But on the whole, $10 per month for keeping *any distro I have* updated automatically is a great bargain. Just hunting for a working Mandrake mirror takes *way* more than $10 worth of my time!
Yes, there is a free version of Red Carpet, and Debian is on free mirrors, but sooner or later someone pays for the bandwidth one way or another.
Nat (Ximian honcho) is not a very mercenary guy. But his landlord, insurance agent, and many other people want money from _him_. If he is going to keep working full-time on software, he needs income. If Red Carpet service is valuable to me, I am happy to pay for it, and if I start using it more than once in a long while I will consider myself a deadbeat moocher if I *don't* pay.
"What makes KDE as good as it is ? Perhaps a KDE'r can shed some light that other projects would find helpful."
KDE has always respected "Joe Blow" users instead of sneering at us. KDE developers have worked very hard to make things easier for people who are not computer professionals. I have never heard a KDE developer say, "Well, it only takes five minutes to figure out [function], and if you can't, you're too lame to use our software."
Rather, KDE people ask, "How can we make it easier and more intuitive? What suggestions do you have?"
Because of this pleasant attitude, non-coders are more likely to submit bug reports and feature requests to KDE than to projects that have a snobbish attitude toward people who have things to do in their lives besides messing with computers all day.
The funny thing is, some of the "Joe Blow" people others cold off, but KDE encourages and nurtures, go on to learn enough that they can't be sneered at any more by even the apt-gettingest, self-declared l33t hax0r, so KDE gets fresh debug developer blood that can help the next generation of Joe and Joanne Blows figure things out, and the cycle perpetuates itself.
If all Open Source projects had KDE's attitude toward their users, I believe we'd see a lot fewer "start" buttons on computer monitors than we do.
Slashdot Mirror
Saying "the government" or "the military" doesn't mean much. Different government agencies and different military units can be as different as civilian companies are from one another, and sometimes you find technical challenges in the government where you wouldn't necessarily expect them. The Department of Agriculture has done some serious supercomputer research. Ditto the National Institutes of Health. The IRS was a sinkhole for puter people for years, full of incompetence, but I have a friend who's doing system design there now and having a great time replacing some of their ancient junk. He took the job because the pay was okay and he wanted stability, not because he thought it would be fun, but he's really gotten into it. No clearance required, either.
There are lots of idiots and bad places to work in the government, but there are also great people and great places. Even in the Army, I generally did interesting things and didn't suffer too much from bureacracy. And as a free benefit, I didn't have to worry about what I was going to wear every day. :)
- Robin
I always wondered the same thing -- and that's probably why my first weekly online column, on the old Pathfinder (Time.com) Netly News, was called "This Old PC" and talked about how to save money with used hardware and low-cost upgrades. And I first wrote about Linux in that column. As far as I know, that was the first "jornalist installs Linux and lives" piece ever written.
:)
A while later I took my column, under the "Cheap Computing" name I always wanted it to have but Time's people wouldn't allow, to what was then Andover News Network, later Andover.net, now OSDN, and started writing more and more about Linux and free software.
I have always avoided writing "Gee! This new thingie is so wonderful you gotta go buy it right now so you can be kewl" articles. This is probably why I never got "big" in mainstream computer mags and ended up working on Slashdot and NewsForge and now Linux.com.
Funny thing... I'm a lot happier writing about ways ordinary non-rich people can get the most out of limited computer bucks than than I would be writing new product blurbs. And I'm perfectly happy with my mid-to-low-end not-the-latest non-comped hardware. But that's just me.
Earlier this evening my wife and I had supper with Linux developer Russell Pavlicek (and wife), security guru Jon Lasser (and girlfriend), and Slashdot compatriot Timothy Lord. We had a great time.
These arethe kind of people you meet when you broaden your computer-oriented writing scope beyond the usual. Better than hanging out with hardware marekting people, believe me!
- Robin
Heroin was also a Bayer brand name once upon a time.
Now anyone can use it...
- Robin
Yes! It's the Masons!
Specifically the Shriners. They control Slashdot interviews.
I flick the tassle on my fez in your general direction...
(kidding)
- Robin
We've tried all these changes already at one time or another, and pulled back from them for the following reasons:
1) Some interviewees ducked the hardest questions when we let them choose which ones to answer.
2) Many people we interview are too busy to answer more than 10 questions.
3) No matter what we do, the conspiracy theorists will come up with conspiracy theories about why we did it. I long ago accepted the fact that Slashdot is run by (pick one) space aliens; the CIA; the Corporate Conspiracy; the Illuminati; Jews; Nazis; Satan; Democrats; CowboyNeal. (And how do you know this post is from the "real" Roblimo, anyway? Probably an imposter!)
4) Most of the time, if we have more than 10 questions moderated +5, once we eliminate duplicates and those from people who don't understand the meaning of, "One question per post, please," we end up with just about 10 questions.
5) We have never stopped interviewees from answering additional questions, and many do, espcially those who (like Satch) are regular Slashdot readers.
- Robin
StarOffice makes PowerPoint-type slide shows, no problem. Saves them in .ppt format, opens .ppt format, even. I've given *many* "Linux on the Desktop" demonstrations to Windows users whose Linux-loving friends have told them (falsely) that there is no way to make/present slideshows in Linux. They are always surprised when I show them slides and, if time permits, make a few as part of my demo to show them how easy it is.
I also have trouble with the people who run around saying Flash Web pages won't open in Linux. They do for me, no problem. Netscape + Flash plugin.
I use Linux to perform common home and office computing tasks all day, every day, without even thinking about it. Right now my net connection is through a Wavelan card that worked "out of the box" with no fuss in Mandrake 8.0.
What am I doing wrong with Linux? Apparently there is *something* I haven't figured out that makes Linux hard to use. I have grandchildren who use Linux without any problem (we're talking five years old). My wife's great aunt, who is in her 90s, learned how to make at least minimal use of Netscape on Linux in a few minutes. Her biggest problem is that arthritis makes it hard for her to type.
Perhaps what I'm doing wrong is using point/click "user friendly" distributions like Mandrake and SuSE. Yeah, that's it! Maybe if I dump this silly X Window thingie and use Slack from the command line only, I'll have trouble performing simple home/office tasks with Linux.
Now, I can see an ubergeek sysadmin or developer trying to teach a bunch of journalists or other non-tech people how to type in a string of commands that look something like 0adsfkf($#@!) to open and edit a simple text file and getting a lot of bemused stares in return. Mr. Geek affirms his superiority, and everyone else decides Linux is too hard for them and goes back to Windows.
My wife, an artist-type person without a tech bone in her body (psych major, spent most of her working life before she met me as an IRS clerical employee), learned to use Linux as an online working tool in (I swear) less than two hours.
I mentioned my wife's great aunt. She's black, she grew up in rural poverty, only got through 4th grade, and has been a cleaning woman/maid for damn near her entire life. When I hear someone with a college degree, working in a white collar job, complain about Linux being hard to use, something is wrong with either the person doing the complaining or the person who taught them.
But to each their own. I am not as smart as most Slashdot readers, so I have to do things the simplest way, not the most technically elegant, and I have learned to accept the fact that this makes me uncool, even though it allows me to get one hell of a lot of work done in Linux without having to know very much about what's happening behind the monitor screen,
- Robin
And do not forget the DoJ, which made it hard for IBM to maintain its PC hardware monopoly. I'm sure Gates and Ballmer remember that, and realize that the same could happen to them if, for some reason, the current President and AG suddenly decided to act like public servants instead of Microsoft employees.
- Robin
So true.
.us domain pattern of including the town and county (roblimo.elkridge.howard.md.us) added too much granularity and was too cumbersome to remember easily, which is why I never got interested in that one.
.biz domain, but I see no point to having one. I can claim copyright infringement against anyone who uses "Roblimo" in other TLDs if I choose, except perhaps against the Robin Miller in Baltimore, County Cork, Ireland who has a small limo service there, and I think he and I would be more likely to put up a "joint" page than argue, since we're certainly not competing with each other. :)
The domain I really wanted when I was still active in the limo business was roblimo.md.us because it would have told people where we were (Maryland, USA) at a glance. The old
For local businesses I believe city.state/province.country or just state/province.country is best both for the business owner and potential customers.
I have gotten massive spam urging me to get a
- Robin
Dear SafeSurf:
Everything I write is harmful to minors (and many adults). Please place me on your "banned" list.
obObscenity: FUCK! PISS! SHIT! GEORGE CARLIN!
- Robin "Roblimo" Miller
Editor and Instigator
Me too. But that was a much smaller Slashdot. Back then there were what? 100 posts a day on a big day? Rob Malda wrote something almost every day, not just once in a while. It was a little club on an Internet that wasn't yet completely commercial.
:)
Heck, KingKurly and I were listening to WHFS (Baltimore/DC radio station) back then, before Jake Einstein sold it and the new corporate owners canned his son, Damien Einstein, because Damien stuttered and they didn't like that even though he was/is one of the greatest alternarock and freeform "I make my own playlist" DJs ever.
I'll be 49 this October 30, and I'm nostaligic about a lot of things, including an Internet where no one really worried too much about making money.
On the other hand, I was listening to the local NPR station this morning and suddenly, there was a familiar voice -- sounded just like Rob Malda -- talking some sort of shit about using giant Lego robots to invade Afghanistan, and I cracked up. The idea of Rob on a national radio show was sort of funny in itself, and having him being taken seriously by an NPR commentator with a smooth voice was even funnier, -2 all the way, you might say.
So things change, in some ways for the better, in other ways not. Yeah, some of us long for the "good old days" of Slashdot or even of Chips 'n Dips, and in some ways I was happier then, too, but in other ways not.
At least we're trying to hold the line on Slashdot ads as best we can in today's overhyped world, and still trying to get the most interesting people we can to interview (I just emailed RIAA Pres Hilary Rosen yet again -- some Slashdot interviews take a *lot* of time & persistence to arrange, you know) and all that. More story submissions, more users, more comments all the time. I suppose that's success. But it's an ever-increasing workload, too.
I think I will stop spouting and go to bed now. It's almost 11:30 p.m. and I've been up and working since 6 a.m. and I'm tired.
- Robin
"But then maybe it's just a mad conspiracy theory."
In a way it is a conspiracy. NewsForge exists in large part because of advertiser demand for a "serious" Linux and Open Source news site that would appeal to people who have the power to sign purchase orders, combined with endless reader email asking us to turn Slashdot into more of a news site.
But everyone at OSDN *likes* Slashdot in all its anarchic glory. I've liked it longer than 99% of all current Slashdot users (note my UID), and I don't ever want to see its content change because of corporate pressure.
Hence NewsForge. Think of NewsForge as a trick to get our bosses to leave Slashdot alone instead of trying to turn it into something it was never meant to be.
- Robin "Roblimo" Miller
Editor in Chief, OSDN
The threats were silly. OSDN got some cease and desists from Digital Convergence about posting Cue:Cat hacking instructions on Slashdot and some of the bar code reader programs hosted on SourceForge.
Our lawyers and I looked at the whole thing (one lawyer got a Cue:Cat because of a Forbes subscription, no less), we talked about it, and in the end we farted it off.
In essence, these people were sending unsolicited out by mail, then trying to control how recipients used them. Try taking *that* one to court!
Hell, we figured 80% of the things were probably thrown away, and the comparatively few Slashdot and/or SourceForge readers who did something *useful* with theirs wouldn't make a noticeable dent in the world's Cue:Cat (over)supply, but might save a little landfill space.
- Robin
The "bean story" would be a lead item at (hypothetical) "Canned Goods Retailing" or "Modern Supermarket Managmenent" or "Restaurant Purchasing," none of which would give a rat's ass about Mandrake. And general circulation pubs would/will ignore either story.
This is why we have niche media, okay?
- Robin
Seatbelt laws are made by states, yes, but the federal government can and does withhold highway funds from states that don't take appropriate "safety measures" like seatbelt laws and mandated speed limits.
The "no morde federal money" threat was how the national 55 MPH speed limit (later loosened) got put into effect in the 1970s.
- Robin
1. The real Philip spells his last name "Zimmermann," not "Zimmerman."
2. The real Philip has my home and cellular telephone numbers. I have his, too.
3. He has a distinctive phone voice and set of verbal mannerisms that would be hard to duplicate.
4. He phoned me and said "I am sending you an email right now" both times.
- Robin
The reason for most editorial cuts in newspaper stories is not to give them a "slant" but to make them fit into available space on the page.
Newspapers lay out pages by putting in the ads first, then filling the remaining white space (called the "news hole") with stories. Often there are more stories the boss editors feel are important than there is space to run all of them full length, so some or all of the stories get trimmed to fit. Decisions on what words to cut out of which stories are not made by a group of cackling [liberal; conservative; Zionist; law enforcement] conspirators in a back room, but by overworked (and usually underpaid) wordsmiths watching the clock tick toward the moment when the presses are scheduled to run. These people do not have the power to decide which stories get covered and which do not. They are the hands-on people responsible for getting the paper put together on time every day; the sergeants of the newspaper business, you might say.
Deadline pressure combined with the necessity to make the paper fit as much information as possible onto each (expensive) square inch of newsprint is to blame for at least 99% of all perceived newspaper copyediting errors.
The copyeditor who is making the cuts is also, in most cases, proofreading the stories, checking facts, and writing headlines. It is a brutal job, and out of the hundreds of stories a big newspaper like The Post runs in every edition, chances are approximately 100% that at least a few cuts will be made that are less than perfect.
A big advantage Internet news purveyors have over print news sources, and over broadcast sources too, who have "X" minutes of time to fill, and that's it, is that it costs effectively nothing to run 5 extra paragraphs of text on the WWW if those paragraphs will add more depth or accuracy to a story.
Hands-on, daily deadline copyediting is a brutal job carried out not by "anonymous cowards" but by people who do their best to make stories as accurate and readable as possible in too little time, usually on a copy desk that is a few people short not only because of recent media layoffs, but because competent copyeditors are always in short supply. The job takes an immense range of knowledge, powerful research skills, and a willingness to accept attacks for every mistake made while foregoing public credit when everything goes "just right."
- Robin
"For those eager, or at least not reluctant, to temporarily give up your liberties...," I personally recommend enlisting in the U.S. Armed Forces.
:)
The Army's best. At least in my opinion. Those in (or who *were* in) other services will probably disagree.
- Robin
Always happy to hear from a brother-in-arms. :)
I would be surprised to find out that many of the "don't you dare criticize my government!!!" people posting today have spent any time in the military.
When I was in the Army, I was there to prevent totalitarianism. Back then the communists were the declared enemy. Now I'm a fat, 48-year-old writer and editor, and I sure as hell am not going to let my government turn into even just a tiny bit of what I fought against even if it does it with the best of intentions.
Y'all better listen up to anyone crazy enough to have been in the 82nd, okay? That's a rough unit.
(roblimo high-fives TheLinuxWarrior)
- Robin
Rep. Rivers is a Democrat, and mentioned that privacy support in Congress has little to do with political party affiliation. She mentioned that she and Barr are big allies on this issue, although they disagree on many others.
- Robin
This seems to have been a Net-wide pattern; news sites got hard-hit, but all other kinds saw big traffic drop-offs.
There will be a story up at Online Journalism Review before long talking about that -- and about how Slashdot served as an ad hoc news portal in a way no traditional news site could.
- Robin
That's what I'm going to shortly. Used to do it that way, but I bought a corner computer table a couple of years ago.
The corner table has been making me feel claustrophobic lately.
I'm getting a 78" X 30" door, and laying it on top of two plastic two-drawer 21" high "rollaway" file cabinets with the casters removed. This will give me a big general purpose surface at the 22" height I prefer for typing or taking hardware apart, plus a rollaway laptop cart with a tiltable, adjustable height work surface for either my or a guest's laptop.
I'm getting an "Aeron knockoff" chair from Office Depot; my wife has one of these and loves it.
I already have a bunch of wall shelving but am adding more. I am also moving to a wireless home network to reduce wiring/clutter and so we have the option of working anywhere in the house or yard. We already have Cat-5 outlets in most rooms, but more and more I find I would rather work outdoors as much as possible.
The laptop cart is becoming my "real office" anyway. It has room for my laptop, a coffee mug, my rolodex, and a stack of paper, with a small "hanging file" basket attached for other files and books I need to have handy as I write.
Essentially, my 8X10 office is becoming workroom where the printer, wireless point, cable modem, and fax machine live, someplace I can work in private if I choose and use as book/paperwork storage. It is still my refuge, but is no longer the only place I can work.
The furniture cost for my office has been about $400 total, and wireless gear has set me back about $600, including the access point and 2 pcmcia cards.
- Robin
Depends on the style guide. OSDN's calls for "email." There was a large discussion of "Internet vocabulary" on the Society of Professional Journalists email list a while back, and no consensus.
- Robin
I have a few minor installation and usability quibbles about Red Carpet, ones I have discussed with Nat & crew (who are good people). I'm sure these little things will be taken care of soon.
But on the whole, $10 per month for keeping *any distro I have* updated automatically is a great bargain. Just hunting for a working Mandrake mirror takes *way* more than $10 worth of my time!
Yes, there is a free version of Red Carpet, and Debian is on free mirrors, but sooner or later someone pays for the bandwidth one way or another.
Nat (Ximian honcho) is not a very mercenary guy. But his landlord, insurance agent, and many other people want money from _him_. If he is going to keep working full-time on software, he needs income. If Red Carpet service is valuable to me, I am happy to pay for it, and if I start using it more than once in a long while I will consider myself a deadbeat moocher if I *don't* pay.
- Robin
"What makes KDE as good as it is ? Perhaps a KDE'r can shed some light that other projects would find helpful."
KDE has always respected "Joe Blow" users instead of sneering at us. KDE developers have worked very hard to make things easier for people who are not computer professionals. I have never heard a KDE developer say, "Well, it only takes five minutes to figure out [function], and if you can't, you're too lame to use our software."
Rather, KDE people ask, "How can we make it easier and more intuitive? What suggestions do you have?"
Because of this pleasant attitude, non-coders are more likely to submit bug reports and feature requests to KDE than to projects that have a snobbish attitude toward people who have things to do in their lives besides messing with computers all day.
The funny thing is, some of the "Joe Blow" people others cold off, but KDE encourages and nurtures, go on to learn enough that they can't be sneered at any more by even the apt-gettingest, self-declared l33t hax0r, so KDE gets fresh debug developer blood that can help the next generation of Joe and Joanne Blows figure things out, and the cycle perpetuates itself.
If all Open Source projects had KDE's attitude toward their users, I believe we'd see a lot fewer "start" buttons on computer monitors than we do.
- Robin
Steve Gilliard, who wrote the Netslaves article, is a good friend of mine. For some reason he has trouble getting Linux going.
:)
For me it's exactly the opposite. I'm not smart enough to use Windows, so I stick with Linux.
- Robin
PS- PRIVATE MESSAGE TO STEVE G -- you got linked to from Slashdot, and I didn't have a thing to do with it. Are you happy now?