I've long hungered for such a book. Important thought IMO: Each recipe should be indexed many ways! (or at least make heavy use of icons and color coding)
o ease of preparation -- so you know whether you're really up for it when it's later than you want to be using your brain for much
o calorie count -- I'd love to see a book with a list of all of its recipes arranged by total calories (in an appendix of course; wouldn't make a very good basic organization)
o basic taste category -- each item might be in more than one category, but they could include things like:
Sweet
Savory
Spicy
Bland
Bittersweet
Fruity
o Origin -- by part of the world, and if possible, time-frame. I like cookbooks that have lots of lore about the foods they describe.
I'm sure you're right about the reason so many people didn't notice that story. Rather than a "weekend updates" (simple reasons -- I think that would be too self-referential, too thin, and extra work:)), what might be a nice option is to turn on a list of say the last 5 stories in the same topic / section to appear beneath the current story.
(So a story under Articles / Debian would show the last 5 articles also posted under Articles / Debian.)
However, if you have a particular implementation idea in mind, note that discussing it here and with me is next to useless: visit Sourceforge and file a feature request:)
Many people apparently didn't see it though, since it's still coming into the submissions bin quite a bit. Proof that it's possible to miss Slashdot stories, if any was needed:) (Says a repentant offender.)
Now -- Gee michael, thanks a lot, now my expected download of Mandrake is going to last well into tomorrow;)
"Okay, I'm a troll, and you're a horrible poster to slashdot. Generalizations are unfair aren't they?"
I wasn't generalizing. And you can block all stories I post if you'd like:)
Always on? That's a joke and a half. It takes less than a minute to connect via dialup, if your email is that important then you really need to find a hobby. A second pohne line with a dialup connection is actually far cheaper than a broadband connection.
Email and IRC are part of my work, and quite a few other people's, not to mention that things like real-time online communication (talk, IRC, AIM, whatever) require being connected to be worth anything. If you don't like those things, you don't like them -- no one can make you, but it's stilly to ascribe your interests and preferences to other people. Do you have a telephone available to you, and do you keep it plugged in, or only when you want to make calls? Back to the walkie talkies.
Right now, it's not a very large percentage, but the possibility for more people to work from where they'd like to is a good argument for always-on service.
Re: cost, it may be "far cheaper" some places to maintain a 2nd phone line and a permanent ISP connection, but for me the prices break down like this: $20-30 for a no-frills local phone line (has varied by state), plus $20-25 for a national ISP. (Mindspring, btw, does *not* like you to keep your connection up all the time, and email asking you to spend less time online.) Some people want only occasional internet access, and there are better deals available if you're willing to deal with a less certain ISP and sharing your voice line for your data calls.
DSL and cable (in the places I've looked) have cost approximately the same ($40-60/mo for low-end service) as telephone line + ISP for much better service. Many DSL providers also provide dial-up provisions either for emergencies (DSL down) or travel (to cushion the blow of not having the national access of something like Earthlink). I've also lived with dial-up as my primary connection to the internet for most of the past 10 years; the price argument alone is no longer valid anywhere I've lived recently (5 states), perhaps it is where you live.
"I bet your TOS says that it can be changed at anytime, doesn't it? Yup! "
No idea -- it might. Like I said, I've never seen any ToS agreement, and certainly haven't signed one.
As far as handguns, you are a simple minded fool for thinking such things.
So I've been told.
I want you to loose someone you love to a handgun and ask yourself how much that they are useful as security devices.
At a gas station in Arkansas, I saw an elderly man attacked (beaten and kicked) by a group of five young men, who seemed uninterested in stopping before another man shooed them away effectively with a (brandished) handgun. The victim got away with hospitalization.
Handguns (and all guns) are dangerous -- that's what they're designed to be. I'd hate for you to lose someone close to you in a vending machine accident (http://www.inforamp.net/~gerry/ttidbits.html) and decide that vending machines are without value. And those aren't even *designed* to be dangerous.
No one hunts with a handgun, and if no one had a handgun there would be no reason for anyone to have one.
Actually, quite a few people hunt with handguns (Of the mainstream manufacturers, Ruger makes some handguns people seem to like for this purpose, though I've never fired any of them), and on farms they come in quite useful. (You can read about the hard times faced by "frustrated handgun hunters" here -- http://www.hawkbullets.com/Handgun.htm) I don't ask that you carry one, or hunt, or take up farming, or enjoy milkshakes. Many people believe that police or other agents of the state should be allowed to carry handguns -- if you share this belief, do you think that agents of the state should be the only ones allowed to do so?
"The biggest argument for handguns is that someone else has one and you want to protect yourself."
That's one good reason, but it generalizes, too -- it's not just whether someone else has a handgun, but whether they represent some other danger to your life / liberty / pursuit of happiness, like being physically dominant and malicious. When Mike Tyson used to beat up old ladies and take their money, he wasn't armed. (http://216.239.51.100/search?q=cache:1ZLgK9fNKkMC:www.orlandosentinel.com/sports/nationworld/orl-as ectyson02060202jun02.story+mike+tyson+mugging+new+ york&hl=en&ie=UTF-8)
Eh, that's all I care to say in this line:)
"Blocking p2p is something that I would look for in a broadband company so that I would know that I can have fast downloads."
versus
" P2P is the only thing that justifies broadband. If you're not using p2p then you can probably get everything you need from a 56K modem and save yourself some money."
OK, so you're a troll, but since this argument gets made even by evident non-trolls, here is a non-comprehensive but adequate response.
- To me (and to many other people I've mentioned this to), the real point of DSL / cable / Merlin / (whatever kind of connection is next) is *not* the high bandwidth. It's that it's always on. The bother of connecting multiple times a day to see if new email has arrived, or to check the local weather forecast, to read a friend's journal or whatever else, is sufficient to discourage doing these things.
Would you argue that a walkie talkie turned on for part of the day was as good as dialtone service?
- Open source or not, there is plenty of stuff online to read, view, listen to, or modify. Always-on connections let people do more and more creative things with their connections than shifting & temporary connections do. (Run a web page about family history, a neighborhood bulletin board, recordings of the family prodigy playing tuba, whatever). You don't have to do those things or like them, and no one can make you, but why impose such a narrow view on other people?
- whether something is "peer to peer" has nothing to do with whether the content violates copyright law. It's true that p2p applications take bandwidth, and that cable providers for instance should be both more honest and more realistic in their service provisions. My neighborhood cable loop is farly quiet, which is nice for downloading ISOs - but that seems to be mostly luck. I ordered on the phone and paid technicians; I have never seen a user guide, documentation, EULA or ToS so much as mentioning what I can do with the connection. I'm not particulary interested in downloading music off the p2p services, though, so I don't.
And handguns are a security device, among other things.
OK, I admit it: I've tried to install Debian multiple times over the past few years. The installation is plain ol' confusing -- sorry, you can't talk me out of that claim:) Walking through a list of modules to install is... interesting, but anything but intuititive.
Aside: I note in advance that the people who make Debian have no obligation to cater to *anyone* besides themselves, and that they actually do make the many and commendable efforts they do toward friendly usability is way above and beyond the call of duty, kudos and thanks to them.
(Another reason I've only tried occasionally is lack of bandwidth; now that I have a faster connection, apt-get is the wonderful experience it's cracked up to be.)
I do now have a working debian system which has opened my eyes to the reason people like to actually *use* Debian so much -- all other things aside, apt-get is rad rad rad. (Yes, Mandrake has the very nice urpmi as well, deserves high praise for simplifying things on that side of my desktop, but the breadth of available deb packages is astounding.) I've not tried the Red Hat up2date equivalent or a lot of other auto-update tools, but so far, apt-get is the most impressive... informative, smooth.
Getting the darn system *on* though -- that's something I don't that many people are stubborn enough to do, and that's a shame.
The problem with most computer documentation (Debian included, and perhaps an example to keep in mind, but not exclusive) is that the doc. writer is unable or unwilling to repeatedly step all the way through the mental path his directions offer and consider possible missteps in order to build in new guideposts as appropriate. If man pages are all you ever need, great, more power to you, but I thank and appreciate everyone who's ever created a step-by-step tutorial for getting particular aspects of system operation to work.
There are now quite a few of these walk-throughs for free software in general, Linux in particular, Debian in especially particular, and that's a credit to their authors.
If I could magically wake up and find the perfect Debian install disk set under my head (let's say CD-R, DVD opens up too many other good possibilities), I'd like to see a Disk One with an (optionally) graphical installer, perhaps the Progeny woody installer disk I saw mentioned on Debian Planet, and enough of a complete system to run even without downloading anything else, and a Disk Two chock full of tutorials, case-studies, trouble-shooting guides, etc. (And by case studies I mean something like this: "How I turned my Debian system into a PVR," or "One solution to serving thin clients from a Debian-based server." That is, instructive, real-life descriptions of how to approach certain problems which don't need to claim universality.)
Things it would be great to see explained with screenshots, "type exactly this" instructions and human-friendly language might include:
"How to get DVD playback working" (which I'll try next month when I have my debian system, my body, and my new DVD drive in the same room again)
"Getting 3D Acceleration on your Debian system"
"How to set up your sources list for a mixed stable / testing / unstable system"
"Controlling radio-linked vehicles with Debian."
Note -- exccept for that last one, these (paraphrased) are all from real and no doubt redundant tutorials published around the web on personal home pages and on Debian-centric websites. All I'm suggesting is how pleasant it would be for 650MB worth of helpful, explicit, comprehensible, friendly documention to be available in one big well-indexed chunk.
As long as the first disk got far enough to create a working system with X and a browser, a nice documentation disk could be read and used from the desktop without even needing a network connection.
And yes, I am talking about many things well-collected by the Debian Documentation Project (http://www.debian.org/doc/ddp) and one I just found today, the Debian Home Network Documentation Project (http://bogmog.sourceforge.net/), just saying that a "reference" disk somewhat akin to the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy would be a huge benefit to new users, which I will most assuredly continue to be for some time into the future. (The HG2G remember did *not* require a current network connection, though I'm unclear on whether it needed a renewable power source to read...)
a) some people have use for floppies, obviously. I can't argue with anyone who says "But I use floppies for [task X]" -- needs vary etc.
b) BUT -- I hate 'em. I haven't used on in a few years, and before that it was with increasing disdain and dread that I would realize there was something so annoying that it would be easier to use a floppy than figure out something slightly less fun.
c) CD-R and CD-RW, and now increasingly common usb-flash thingies, do everything I can think of I might ever want a floppy to do (Yes, OK, aside from fit in a floppy drive, see a)), and I wish they'd simply start withering even more thoroughly.
Some Walmarts have demo machines set up (usually HP Pavillions, at least the ones I've seen) running Windows. They're not particularly boosting anything about Windows, they're just there to demonstrate that for a thousand dollars, you can get a machine with monitor, a fair chunk of RAM, a CD-RW burner, a DVD drive, modem and printer. However, they're just stock equipment -- those machines come standard with Windows, just need to be plugged together and powered on.
The bravery would come in not for Linux (or Mandrake in particular), but for setting up a demo that's for a product they don't (yet, if ever) sell in-store. I'm not sure how many Wal-Mart locations there are (a few thousandd?), but of the folks who run (or just work in) Wal-Mart electronics sections, some of them are no doubt interested in free software, and it would be neat to see them show what *else* can be done with those kilobuck systems besides go dial up AOL. AOL is a big weird ISP, and better than no internet access at all, but it's not the only possible choice...
is the one mentioned in the 'department' line -- L. Lessig had (or still has) a Morpheus server in his office at Stanford, serving up MP3s of his own speeches. In other words, content that he had complete right to distribute, and which he put on Morpheus to make distribution simpler.
Why more teachers don't put lectures up on the web in *some* format (MP3 / Ogg) and either on P2P networks or just as static files on websites is something I don't understand, but I think it would be great if they did. Likewise, audio / video materials in the public domain (like all the films at the Internet Film Archive) and which private citizens (like Lessig) *want* to release are all good justifications for not blocking things like kazaa. (Some bands, for instance, release some music for free, or even all of their music.) I've never used it, but I've seen kazaa being used, and as far as I can see, it's a neutral technology, as well suited for carrying indisputably legitimate content as it is for carrying stolen master tapes of illegal midget porn. If you don't think there's enough non-infringing content available, put up some funny home videos:)
links vs. lynx, I find links renders Slashdot (and many other sites) much better than than lynx does. I still find all-text web browsing somewhat less attractive than the whole beautiful tabbed experience of Mozilla (and soon konqui), but there are situations where it comes in very handy...
Yes, been there, somewhere I even have my "researcher number" but not sure where;)
And Yes, that's the sort of thing I'd like to see in hardware.
It really does bother me not that hard drives are sold blank, but that they tend (outside of operating systems, and very few of those) to only even be offered blank, when there are so many things they could be shipped with instead for a nominal cost...
It would be interesting to constantly skim the cream off the top of H2G2.com (and / or similar sites) in 650MB chunks -- size of a CD -- so you could get one disk, two disks, or however many, but with the highest quality (by *someone's* measure, which I won't propose to outline for good reasons of impossibility!;)) at the top, so if you could download a single CD, it would be the best *stuff* you could get on there... something similar to the Slashdot rating system would seem appropriate, as would the ability to specify location, language and interests of the downloader... custom almanac, bam!
(Going on the idea that this fantasy system will be a laptop, though that may be reading too much into it.)
1) the keyboard can't suck. The best keyboards on laptops (IMO) are the ones found on IBM ThinkPads, though there is some competion from Toshiba. Most laptop keyboards are are not only awful feeling to begin with, they rapidly get worse and stay worse. Unless your entry has to be ultra-ultra lightweight, please consider putting a few justified ounces into a keyboard. Make it something that will be worth typing on in 10 years, like my IBM model M keyboard is.
Also, the keys should be tilted to a sane angle for typing, not a big rectangle of keys. Only a few laptops have ever tried escaping the wrist-killer of normal laptop keyboard layouts. No matter what keyboard layout one ends up using (QUERTY, Dvorak or something else), your hands still need a break.
2) The pointer can't suck, and they all do:) (This is going with the idea that it *would* need one... maybe not.)
IBM-style pointers are my favorite, but they are probably too troublesome and breakage prone: how about an optical trackpad with a replaceable window in the event that the original is scratched / scuffed beyond use? Or an embedded trackball like in the old Powerbooks, but with an optical ball as in current desktop trackballs?
3) Modularity, ports and jacks are all-important.
Realize (or at least grudgingly hypothesize) that some or all of the computer is going to break, and view it as an inherently leaky system. The screen will get pierced by an arrow while you're traipsing through the rain forest, or the hot foreign-aid worker you're respectfully dating will cause you to pour coffee on the keyboard, or the pointer will just decide to go on permanent vacation, or a purse-snatcher will leave you holding only the detachable screen. Gone.
There must be ways built in for the thing to go on functioning at least a little bit, and if at all possible to be field repaired.
Whatever the screen configuration ends up being (conventional clamshell? web-pad? little eye-piece?), it needs to be replaceable with no more than a (makeshift, flat-head) screwdriver and some human fingers.
Provision should be built-in to use number bad or other keyboard part as an alternate pointer controller if the main one busts.
Re ports: USB / USB2 seem like good choices these days for a low-cost machine. I think it would be smarter to provide a bunch of USB(2) ports than try to provide the whole range of ethernet, firewire, serial, parallel, etc etc. Let that be taken care of by emulation and adapters, and encourage everything in the world that could grow a USB port to do so. Has some downside, but simplicity and interchangeability is important. A low-cost computer could be a micro-ISP if it had 8 USB modems and an ethernet adapter hooked to it's 4 USB ports via a couple of powered USB hubs. Or a weather station. Or a Whoooznitz Whutzall Thingamajibber. Point is, modularity should trump built-in featuritus.
Now forget I just said that and let me hypnotize you with this idea: it should have a built-in camera. Randy Waterhouse had one in Cryptonomicon, but despite this obvious hint to the hardware industry, very few laptops really have a camera, and the one on the Sony Picturebooks isn't the dirt-cheap pinhole variety of Randy's.
4) Built in software, in two parts:
a) Really, any open-source operating system would work. Some variety of either BSD or Linux seems the obvious choice right now, either would work fine. Or some other variant, so long as the software's license is open enough to enocourage unhindered distribution, modification.
b) Lots of knowledge on the hard drive.
Why do hard drives come blank? Who knows, but should they? Remember, today's "tiny" hard drive holds more written knowledge than the world possessed in sum not long ago.
I'd like to see on this thing a copy of:
- a good serious world almanac - a good non-serious or at least non-traditional world almanac like the HG2G or similar - lots of maps - a simple word-for-word translator with dictionaries for many languages, so documents could be at least looked at on a very coarse level even if you don't know the language. - the U.S. Constitution (and heck, the communist manifesto, as a "see also" reference) - diagrams for lots of things. - classic literature of several languages
5) Other concerns
- must be workable on world current, at low power. Look at the capabilities of today's 800MHz transmeta chip, or 400MHz Xscale, and aim lower.
- should be built with solar in mind. Casing should have attachment points for a solar panel or two. Low-power LEDs to indicate charge level. Agressive power-throttling.
I hope you don't toss the old screenshots completely -- if you can, I hope you find a directory ("Of Historical Interest"?) where old shots can be displayed.
They're interesting by themselves, and even more so in context... maybe a clickable timeline?:)
Definitely not ready for Best Buy, but... sounds like a pretty neat idea to me:) (there are some similar projects besides this, but this one sprung up high on the list...)
Actually, the comment I made applies to Google just as much as to any other search engine - pages indexed aren't the only thing.
For now, Google is the best search engine I know, but before that, Hotbot was the best search engine I knew, and before that etc etc.
I do admire Google for how well it works, but no worship. I'd love to find an engine that works even better. I think Kartoo (even if only a meta engine) has an interesting approach to the display of results.
Nader's bit about tying the government's behavior (aside from purchasing their software) towards MS to file format openness isn't mine. I have no comment to make here re: Microsoft's "monopoly" (don't want to get into that, really;) -- I think the government should for the most part leave MS alone.),
You ask "companies spend billions of dollars designing software/hardware/business processes/etc to make their products better/faster/etc. why must they be turned over to the public just because they want to sell to government?"
The government is a special player in any market, a necessary evil whose evil has to be carefully monitored and constantly measured against its necessity. If a company wants to sell to the (U.S.) government, they shouldn't get to bypass the rules about benefiting the commonwealth, etc.
There is demonstrable harm done by relying on formats and operating systems which prevent free access to information online bought and paid for with tax dollars: several of the state tax forms I needed were on sites which would only cooperate with Internet Explorer.
Software embedded in specialized devices like the MRI machines you mention aren't as strong a case for mandating open, accessible file formats, though there would probably be merit there too. It might under some circumstances, though. Who owns the MRI machines, whose money is buying them? Can members of the general public see the results of the scans, and so benefit from open file formats enough for this to be worth considering? (Not rhetorical question - from your post, I gather this was a government purchase, but maybe I'm misreading it.) Many millions of dollars means a lot of people's income was diverted to buy that machine... which is the basic unfairness of most government purchases, even the ones which reasonable people would mostly agree were good things to buy.
Also, proposing open *file formats* is far more limited than demanding that all of a maker's software be open source: Microsoft could quite easily make Word's file format open without "turning over to the public" anything else about their software.
Companies are free to enter into agreements which might be against their best interest (they might get sued by their shareholders, of course, but McDonalds *could* decide to switch to all buffalo meat from organic farms, say), but any government body is *not* free to enter such agreements. Doesn't stop 'em much, but they aren't supposed to;)
Because it has a monopoly on legal use of force, and because accountability is usually several layers away, the government should be carefully watched in any market whose natural proceses it's bothering to distort.
Between ASCII, simple HTML and PDF (though its non-editability is a pain), a huge chunk of documents can be reliably stored and presented with a good chance that a user will be able to examine them using a variety of tools / operating systems etc. for the short- and middle-term future.
Open Office is great though, as you say:)
And since the file format is open, I think that would satisfy me, even if it's not plain ascii...
I agree that MS should not be forced to do anything particular about their file formats; they (should be / are) free to make them as obfuscated or open, efficient or ludicrously wasteful as they'd like.
That said, in the interest of responsible stewardship, anyone spending tax dollars (extracted by intimidation, spent much more freely) should be obligated to spend it well and frugally. Open file formats should simply be one of the requirements to describe intelligent tax-paid purchase of any software.
So, force should not enter into it; instead, those people charged with advancing the general welfare and flush with their extortion money should at least have the courtesy to actually avoid reducing the choices of citizens, or spending money on extravagant purchases. Choosing a single-vendor file format is risky on both counts.
a) I find the family trees involved here pretty confusing, and people find plenty to argue about. That's not my point:)
b) the UNIX trademark is one thing; de facto "acts like UNIX" is another. "Variant" seems a fair word for me, though -- if I came up with a workalike system similar enough to the Dewey decimal system that it could be used interchangeably in many circumstances, I think "variant" would be an alright way to describe it. Same with Linux and the BSDs -- based on UNIX, whether or not they're stamped with the name by The Almighty.
c) OS X is widely touted for its UNIX underpinnings (and is an official UNIX, I'm 99% sure, though the right link isn't slapping me in the face yet), and Darwin is open source (and available separately, incl. for x86), even if Aqua isn't.
timothy
Hopefully this will mean more free-space optics :)
on
Wireless Congestion
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
(somewhat informative: http://www.freespaceoptics.org -- one of many sites on the topic, but one which had a nice pic near the top;) )
The site I can't find quickly (anyone?) is one that I know has been mentioned on Slashdot a few times, home-built optical transmitters (In the Czech republic, IIRC) using modified ethernet cards and powerful LEDs to beam multi-kilometer distances...
5 years ago I would not have guessed how widespread and cheap 802.11 stuff would be today; right now, you (point of reference, Americans in the lower 48) can get an 802.11 base station for under $100. Glut isn't quite the right word, but lets say there's *a lot* of somewhat decent, moderately versatile wireless gear available for what is in 1st countries not a huge chunk of disposable income, at least for folks middle-class-and-up. The cost of 7 cds gets a working base station...
Wouldn't it be nice to see a similar flood of products for optical gear? Yes, there will be lawsuits (eye damage! you hurt my eye!), and ugly warning labels, and ISP crackdowns for retransmission and who knows what else, but... I think it will happen. Wait til last year's optical gear is on clearance at Walmart;)
btw, the Mandrake supported-hardware page lists the Magicolor 2+ (but not the Magicolor 2 -- and I don't know where your "cx?" fits in:)) as supported.
My dad's experience so far seems to be along the lines of yours, but not *quite* as bad, and he says the tech he reached was friendly. I can bet you three wooden nickels my dad doesn't give three wooden nickels about color balance; for his print-quantities, shouldn't be a problem.
I would really *like* this to be a good printer, though, because a sub-kilobuck color laser would be a nice addition to my household:)
the QMS/Minolta "MagiColor" (I think that's the name) is sold for a pinch under $1000 at various retailers, both in stores and online.
Data points:
a) I dunno about Linux support, but the short answer is, I doubt it, since a Google search didn't turn up anything useful. If there *was* decent support under Linux without frustration, I might save up for one. Color printing is nice...
b) Heavy. Very heavy. No, not heavy compared to a mainframe, a car, the Earth, a whale, or a very very fat person, but heavy. One strong person *could* move it, but it's not the best idea.
c) Yes, it does come with all 4 toners you need, something I was afraid it would not. (Thought it might come with only a black cart, for instance.)
d) The only example I've actually seen in use is the one my dad bought a few months ago, and I helped him set up. The quality he gets is good, bordering on outstanding for certain uses, but it is *not* a dye-sub or even a high-end inkjet when it comes to color photo printing. He says he gets a lot of printing errors, though, and tech support he called blamed the spooler software. It prints quite speedily when it fees like working, though.
Slashdot Mirror
o ease of preparation -- so you know whether you're really up for it when it's later than you want to be using your brain for much
o calorie count -- I'd love to see a book with a list of all of its recipes arranged by total calories (in an appendix of course; wouldn't make a very good basic organization)
o basic taste category -- each item might be in more than one category, but they could include things like:
o Origin -- by part of the world, and if possible, time-frame. I like cookbooks that have lots of lore about the foods they describe.
o Time to Prepare, with categories like:
o Messiness:
Good luck with this project!
I'm sure you're right about the reason so many people didn't notice that story. Rather than a "weekend updates" (simple reasons -- I think that would be too self-referential, too thin, and extra work :)), what might be a nice option is to turn on a list of say the last 5 stories in the same topic / section to appear beneath the current story.
.)
:)
(So a story under Articles / Debian would show the last 5 articles also posted under Articles / Debian
However, if you have a particular implementation idea in mind, note that discussing it here and with me is next to useless: visit Sourceforge and file a feature request
Cheers,
timothy
It was posted here:
7 21 5
:)
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=02/07/22/232
Front page vs. sectional, eh, everyone has different priorites and preferences, and everyone complains no matter what happens
timothy
Actually, we did run a post on the release of Debian 3.0. The URL is here:
4 21 1&mode=thread&tid=90
:) (Says a repentant offender.)
;)
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=02/07/19/221
Many people apparently didn't see it though, since it's still coming into the submissions bin quite a bit. Proof that it's possible to miss Slashdot stories, if any was needed
Now -- Gee michael, thanks a lot, now my expected download of Mandrake is going to last well into tomorrow
timothy
I wasn't generalizing. And you can block all stories I post if you'd like :)
Always on? That's a joke and a half. It takes less than a minute to connect via dialup, if your email is that important then you really need to find a hobby. A second pohne line with a dialup connection is actually far cheaper than a broadband connection.
Email and IRC are part of my work, and quite a few other people's, not to mention that things like real-time online communication (talk, IRC, AIM, whatever) require being connected to be worth anything. If you don't like those things, you don't like them -- no one can make you, but it's stilly to ascribe your interests and preferences to other people. Do you have a telephone available to you, and do you keep it plugged in, or only when you want to make calls? Back to the walkie talkies.
Right now, it's not a very large percentage, but the possibility for more people to work from where they'd like to is a good argument for always-on service.
Re: cost, it may be "far cheaper" some places to maintain a 2nd phone line and a permanent ISP connection, but for me the prices break down like this: $20-30 for a no-frills local phone line (has varied by state), plus $20-25 for a national ISP. (Mindspring, btw, does *not* like you to keep your connection up all the time, and email asking you to spend less time online.) Some people want only occasional internet access, and there are better deals available if you're willing to deal with a less certain ISP and sharing your voice line for your data calls.
DSL and cable (in the places I've looked) have cost approximately the same ($40-60/mo for low-end service) as telephone line + ISP for much better service. Many DSL providers also provide dial-up provisions either for emergencies (DSL down) or travel (to cushion the blow of not having the national access of something like Earthlink). I've also lived with dial-up as my primary connection to the internet for most of the past 10 years; the price argument alone is no longer valid anywhere I've lived recently (5 states), perhaps it is where you live.
"I bet your TOS says that it can be changed at anytime, doesn't it? Yup! "
No idea -- it might. Like I said, I've never seen any ToS agreement, and certainly haven't signed one.
As far as handguns, you are a simple minded fool for thinking such things.
So I've been told.
I want you to loose someone you love to a handgun and ask yourself how much that they are useful as security devices.
At a gas station in Arkansas, I saw an elderly man attacked (beaten and kicked) by a group of five young men, who seemed uninterested in stopping before another man shooed them away effectively with a (brandished) handgun. The victim got away with hospitalization.
Handguns (and all guns) are dangerous -- that's what they're designed to be. I'd hate for you to lose someone close to you in a vending machine accident (http://www.inforamp.net/~gerry/ttidbits.html) and decide that vending machines are without value. And those aren't even *designed* to be dangerous.
No one hunts with a handgun, and if no one had a handgun there would be no reason for anyone to have one.
Actually, quite a few people hunt with handguns (Of the mainstream manufacturers, Ruger makes some handguns people seem to like for this purpose, though I've never fired any of them), and on farms they come in quite useful. (You can read about the hard times faced by "frustrated handgun hunters" here -- http://www.hawkbullets.com/Handgun.htm) I don't ask that you carry one, or hunt, or take up farming, or enjoy milkshakes. Many people believe that police or other agents of the state should be allowed to carry handguns -- if you share this belief, do you think that agents of the state should be the only ones allowed to do so?
"The biggest argument for handguns is that someone else has one and you want to protect yourself."
That's one good reason, but it generalizes, too -- it's not just whether someone else has a handgun, but whether they represent some other danger to your life / liberty / pursuit of happiness, like being physically dominant and malicious. When Mike Tyson used to beat up old ladies and take their money, he wasn't armed. (http://216.239.51.100/search?q=cache:1ZLgK9fNKkMC :www.orlandosentinel.com/sports/nationworld/orl-as ectyson02060202jun02.story+mike+tyson+mugging+new+ york&hl=en&ie=UTF-8)
Eh, that's all I care to say in this line :)
timothy
OK, so you're a troll, but since this argument gets made even by evident non-trolls, here is a non-comprehensive but adequate response.
- To me (and to many other people I've mentioned this to), the real point of DSL / cable / Merlin / (whatever kind of connection is next) is *not* the high bandwidth. It's that it's always on. The bother of connecting multiple times a day to see if new email has arrived, or to check the local weather forecast, to read a friend's journal or whatever else, is sufficient to discourage doing these things.
Would you argue that a walkie talkie turned on for part of the day was as good as dialtone service?
- Open source or not, there is plenty of stuff online to read, view, listen to, or modify. Always-on connections let people do more and more creative things with their connections than shifting & temporary connections do. (Run a web page about family history, a neighborhood bulletin board, recordings of the family prodigy playing tuba, whatever). You don't have to do those things or like them, and no one can make you, but why impose such a narrow view on other people?
- whether something is "peer to peer" has nothing to do with whether the content violates copyright law. It's true that p2p applications take bandwidth, and that cable providers for instance should be both more honest and more realistic in their service provisions. My neighborhood cable loop is farly quiet, which is nice for downloading ISOs - but that seems to be mostly luck. I ordered on the phone and paid technicians; I have never seen a user guide, documentation, EULA or ToS so much as mentioning what I can do with the connection. I'm not particulary interested in downloading music off the p2p services, though, so I don't.
And handguns are a security device, among other things.
timothyAside: I note in advance that the people who make Debian have no obligation to cater to *anyone* besides themselves, and that they actually do make the many and commendable efforts they do toward friendly usability is way above and beyond the call of duty, kudos and thanks to them.
(Another reason I've only tried occasionally is lack of bandwidth; now that I have a faster connection, apt-get is the wonderful experience it's cracked up to be.)
I do now have a working debian system which has opened my eyes to the reason people like to actually *use* Debian so much -- all other things aside, apt-get is rad rad rad. (Yes, Mandrake has the very nice urpmi as well, deserves high praise for simplifying things on that side of my desktop, but the breadth of available deb packages is astounding.) I've not tried the Red Hat up2date equivalent or a lot of other auto-update tools, but so far, apt-get is the most impressive
Getting the darn system *on* though -- that's something I don't that many people are stubborn enough to do, and that's a shame.
The problem with most computer documentation (Debian included, and perhaps an example to keep in mind, but not exclusive) is that the doc. writer is unable or unwilling to repeatedly step all the way through the mental path his directions offer and consider possible missteps in order to build in new guideposts as appropriate. If man pages are all you ever need, great, more power to you, but I thank and appreciate everyone who's ever created a step-by-step tutorial for getting particular aspects of system operation to work.
There are now quite a few of these walk-throughs for free software in general, Linux in particular, Debian in especially particular, and that's a credit to their authors.
If I could magically wake up and find the perfect Debian install disk set under my head (let's say CD-R, DVD opens up too many other good possibilities), I'd like to see a Disk One with an (optionally) graphical installer, perhaps the Progeny woody installer disk I saw mentioned on Debian Planet, and enough of a complete system to run even without downloading anything else, and a Disk Two chock full of tutorials, case-studies, trouble-shooting guides, etc. (And by case studies I mean something like this: "How I turned my Debian system into a PVR," or "One solution to serving thin clients from a Debian-based server." That is, instructive, real-life descriptions of how to approach certain problems which don't need to claim universality.)
Things it would be great to see explained with screenshots, "type exactly this" instructions and human-friendly language might include:
- "How to get DVD playback working" (which I'll try next month when I have my debian system, my body, and my new DVD drive in the same room again)
- "Getting 3D Acceleration on your Debian system"
- "How to set up your sources list for a mixed stable / testing / unstable system"
- "Controlling radio-linked vehicles with Debian."
Note -- exccept for that last one, these (paraphrased) are all from real and no doubt redundant tutorials published around the web on personal home pages and on Debian-centric websites. All I'm suggesting is how pleasant it would be for 650MB worth of helpful, explicit, comprehensible, friendly documention to be available in one big well-indexed chunk.As long as the first disk got far enough to create a working system with X and a browser, a nice documentation disk could be read and used from the desktop without even needing a network connection.
And yes, I am talking about many things well-collected by the Debian Documentation Project (http://www.debian.org/doc/ddp)
and one I just found today, the Debian Home Network Documentation Project (http://bogmog.sourceforge.net/), just saying that a "reference" disk somewhat akin to the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy would be a huge benefit to new users, which I will most assuredly continue to be for some time into the future. (The HG2G remember did *not* require a current network connection, though I'm unclear on whether it needed a renewable power source to read
timothy
a) some people have use for floppies, obviously. I can't argue with anyone who says "But I use floppies for [task X]" -- needs vary etc.
b) BUT -- I hate 'em. I haven't used on in a few years, and before that it was with increasing disdain and dread that I would realize there was something so annoying that it would be easier to use a floppy than figure out something slightly less fun.
c) CD-R and CD-RW, and now increasingly common usb-flash thingies, do everything I can think of I might ever want a floppy to do (Yes, OK, aside from fit in a floppy drive, see a)), and I wish they'd simply start withering even more thoroughly.
timothy
Some Walmarts have demo machines set up (usually HP Pavillions, at least the ones I've seen) running Windows. They're not particularly boosting anything about Windows, they're just there to demonstrate that for a thousand dollars, you can get a machine with monitor, a fair chunk of RAM, a CD-RW burner, a DVD drive, modem and printer. However, they're just stock equipment -- those machines come standard with Windows, just need to be plugged together and powered on.
...
The bravery would come in not for Linux (or Mandrake in particular), but for setting up a demo that's for a product they don't (yet, if ever) sell in-store. I'm not sure how many Wal-Mart locations there are (a few thousandd?), but of the folks who run (or just work in) Wal-Mart electronics sections, some of them are no doubt interested in free software, and it would be neat to see them show what *else* can be done with those kilobuck systems besides go dial up AOL. AOL is a big weird ISP, and better than no internet access at all, but it's not the only possible choice
timothy
is the one mentioned in the 'department' line -- L. Lessig had (or still has) a Morpheus server in his office at Stanford, serving up MP3s of his own speeches. In other words, content that he had complete right to distribute, and which he put on Morpheus to make distribution simpler.
:)
Why more teachers don't put lectures up on the web in *some* format (MP3 / Ogg) and either on P2P networks or just as static files on websites is something I don't understand, but I think it would be great if they did. Likewise, audio / video materials in the public domain (like all the films at the Internet Film Archive) and which private citizens (like Lessig) *want* to release are all good justifications for not blocking things like kazaa. (Some bands, for instance, release some music for free, or even all of their music.) I've never used it, but I've seen kazaa being used, and as far as I can see, it's a neutral technology, as well suited for carrying indisputably legitimate content as it is for carrying stolen master tapes of illegal midget porn. If you don't think there's enough non-infringing content available, put up some funny home videos
timothy
links vs. lynx, I find links renders Slashdot (and many other sites) much better than than lynx does. I still find all-text web browsing somewhat less attractive than the whole beautiful tabbed experience of Mozilla (and soon konqui), but there are situations where it comes in very handy ...
timothy
Yes, been there, somewhere I even have my "researcher number" but not sure where ;)
...
;)) at the top, so if you could download a single CD, it would be the best *stuff* you could get on there ... something similar to the Slashdot rating system would seem appropriate, as would the ability to specify location, language and interests of the downloader ... custom almanac, bam!
And Yes, that's the sort of thing I'd like to see in hardware.
It really does bother me not that hard drives are sold blank, but that they tend (outside of operating systems, and very few of those) to only even be offered blank, when there are so many things they could be shipped with instead for a nominal cost
It would be interesting to constantly skim the cream off the top of H2G2.com (and / or similar sites) in 650MB chunks -- size of a CD -- so you could get one disk, two disks, or however many, but with the highest quality (by *someone's* measure, which I won't propose to outline for good reasons of impossibility!
timothy
isn't the nose only cartilaginous, rather than true bone?
;)
...
Seems like a technicality either way, but still
My mom's nose was once broken by (someone else's) ski pole. They didn't even stop to apologize, which did not please her.
Best book I've read on the SoT is the one by (iirc) John Heller, quoted on some of the sites I've seen today
timothy
(Going on the idea that this fantasy system will be a laptop, though that may be reading too much into it.)
:) (This is going with the idea that it *would* need one ... maybe not.)
1) the keyboard can't suck. The best keyboards on laptops (IMO) are the ones found on IBM ThinkPads, though there is some competion from Toshiba. Most laptop keyboards are are not only awful feeling to begin with, they rapidly get worse and stay worse. Unless your entry has to be ultra-ultra lightweight, please consider putting a few justified ounces into a keyboard. Make it something that will be worth typing on in 10 years, like my IBM model M keyboard is.
Also, the keys should be tilted to a sane angle for typing, not a big rectangle of keys. Only a few laptops have ever tried escaping the wrist-killer of normal laptop keyboard layouts. No matter what keyboard layout one ends up using (QUERTY, Dvorak or something else), your hands still need a break.
2) The pointer can't suck, and they all do
IBM-style pointers are my favorite, but they are probably too troublesome and breakage prone: how about an optical trackpad with a replaceable window in the event that the original is scratched / scuffed beyond use? Or an embedded trackball like in the old Powerbooks, but with an optical ball as in current desktop trackballs?
3) Modularity, ports and jacks are all-important.
Realize (or at least grudgingly hypothesize) that some or all of the computer is going to break, and view it as an inherently leaky system. The screen will get pierced by an arrow while you're traipsing through the rain forest, or the hot foreign-aid worker you're respectfully dating will cause you to pour coffee on the keyboard, or the pointer will just decide to go on permanent vacation, or a purse-snatcher will leave you holding only the detachable screen. Gone.
There must be ways built in for the thing to go on functioning at least a little bit, and if at all possible to be field repaired.
Whatever the screen configuration ends up being (conventional clamshell? web-pad? little eye-piece?), it needs to be replaceable with no more than a (makeshift, flat-head) screwdriver and some human fingers.
Provision should be built-in to use number bad or other keyboard part as an alternate pointer controller if the main one busts.
Re ports: USB / USB2 seem like good choices these days for a low-cost machine. I think it would be smarter to provide a bunch of USB(2) ports than try to provide the whole range of ethernet, firewire, serial, parallel, etc etc. Let that be taken care of by emulation and adapters, and encourage everything in the world that could grow a USB port to do so. Has some downside, but simplicity and interchangeability is important. A low-cost computer could be a micro-ISP if it had 8 USB modems and an ethernet adapter hooked to it's 4 USB ports via a couple of powered USB hubs. Or a weather station. Or a Whoooznitz Whutzall Thingamajibber. Point is, modularity should trump built-in featuritus.
Now forget I just said that and let me hypnotize you with this idea: it should have a built-in camera. Randy Waterhouse had one in Cryptonomicon, but despite this obvious hint to the hardware industry, very few laptops really have a camera, and the one on the Sony Picturebooks isn't the dirt-cheap pinhole variety of Randy's.
4) Built in software, in two parts:
a) Really, any open-source operating system would work. Some variety of either BSD or Linux seems the obvious choice right now, either would work fine. Or some other variant, so long as the software's license is open enough to enocourage unhindered distribution, modification.
b) Lots of knowledge on the hard drive.
Why do hard drives come blank? Who knows, but should they? Remember, today's "tiny" hard drive holds more written knowledge than the world possessed in sum not long ago.
I'd like to see on this thing a copy of:
- a good serious world almanac
- a good non-serious or at least non-traditional world almanac like the HG2G or similar
- lots of maps
- a simple word-for-word translator with dictionaries for many languages, so documents could be at least looked at on a very coarse level even if you don't know the language.
- the U.S. Constitution (and heck, the communist manifesto, as a "see also" reference)
- diagrams for lots of things.
- classic literature of several languages
5) Other concerns
- must be workable on world current, at low power. Look at the capabilities of today's 800MHz transmeta chip, or 400MHz Xscale, and aim lower.
- should be built with solar in mind. Casing should have attachment points for a solar panel or two. Low-power LEDs to indicate charge level. Agressive power-throttling.
Phew.
timothy
Luis:
... maybe a clickable timeline? :)
I hope you don't toss the old screenshots completely -- if you can, I hope you find a directory ("Of Historical Interest"?) where old shots can be displayed.
They're interesting by themselves, and even more so in context
Cheers,
timothy
http://www.linuxdevices.com/links/LK8294110575
... sounds like a pretty neat idea to me :) (there are some similar projects besides this, but this one sprung up high on the list ...)
Definitely not ready for Best Buy, but
timothy
Well, surpisingly, both spellings are listed by the American Heritage dictionary, but it *was* a goof, so I changed it :)
timothy
Actually, the comment I made applies to Google just as much as to any other search engine - pages indexed aren't the only thing.
For now, Google is the best search engine I know, but before that, Hotbot was the best search engine I knew, and before that etc etc.
I do admire Google for how well it works, but no worship. I'd love to find an engine that works even better. I think Kartoo (even if only a meta engine) has an interesting approach to the display of results.
I get good results from alltheweb.
timothy
You ask "companies spend billions of dollars designing software/hardware/business processes/etc to make their products better/faster/etc. why must they be turned over to the public just because they want to sell to government?"
The government is a special player in any market, a necessary evil whose evil has to be carefully monitored and constantly measured against its necessity. If a company wants to sell to the (U.S.) government, they shouldn't get to bypass the rules about benefiting the commonwealth, etc.
There is demonstrable harm done by relying on formats and operating systems which prevent free access to information online bought and paid for with tax dollars: several of the state tax forms I needed were on sites which would only cooperate with Internet Explorer.
Software embedded in specialized devices like the MRI machines you mention aren't as strong a case for mandating open, accessible file formats, though there would probably be merit there too. It might under some circumstances, though. Who owns the MRI machines, whose money is buying them? Can members of the general public see the results of the scans, and so benefit from open file formats enough for this to be worth considering?
(Not rhetorical question - from your post, I gather this was a government purchase, but maybe I'm misreading it.) Many millions of dollars means a lot of people's income was diverted to buy that machine
Also, proposing open *file formats* is far more limited than demanding that all of a maker's software be open source: Microsoft could quite easily make Word's file format open without "turning over to the public" anything else about their software.
Companies are free to enter into agreements which might be against their best interest (they might get sued by their shareholders, of course, but McDonalds *could* decide to switch to all buffalo meat from organic farms, say), but any government body is *not* free to enter such agreements. Doesn't stop 'em much, but they aren't supposed to
Because it has a monopoly on legal use of force, and because accountability is usually several layers away, the government should be carefully watched in any market whose natural proceses it's bothering to distort.
timothy
Between ASCII, simple HTML and PDF (though its non-editability is a pain), a huge chunk of documents can be reliably stored and presented with a good chance that a user will be able to examine them using a variety of tools / operating systems etc. for the short- and middle-term future.
:)
...
Open Office is great though, as you say
And since the file format is open, I think that would satisfy me, even if it's not plain ascii
timothy
I agree that MS should not be forced to do anything particular about their file formats; they (should be / are) free to make them as obfuscated or open, efficient or ludicrously wasteful as they'd like.
That said, in the interest of responsible stewardship, anyone spending tax dollars (extracted by intimidation, spent much more freely) should be obligated to spend it well and frugally. Open file formats should simply be one of the requirements to describe intelligent tax-paid purchase of any software.
So, force should not enter into it; instead, those people charged with advancing the general welfare and flush with their extortion money should at least have the courtesy to actually avoid reducing the choices of citizens, or spending money on extravagant purchases. Choosing a single-vendor file format is risky on both counts.
timothy
a) I find the family trees involved here pretty confusing, and people find plenty to argue about. That's not my point :)
b) the UNIX trademark is one thing; de facto "acts like UNIX" is another. "Variant" seems a fair word for me, though -- if I came up with a workalike system similar enough to the Dewey decimal system that it could be used interchangeably in many circumstances, I think "variant" would be an alright way to describe it. Same with Linux and the BSDs -- based on UNIX, whether or not they're stamped with the name by The Almighty.
c) OS X is widely touted for its UNIX underpinnings (and is an official UNIX, I'm 99% sure, though the right link isn't slapping me in the face yet), and Darwin is open source (and available separately, incl. for x86), even if Aqua isn't.
timothy
(somewhat informative: http://www.freespaceoptics.org -- one of many sites on the topic, but one which had a nice pic near the top ;) )
...
...
... I think it will happen. Wait til last year's optical gear is on clearance at Walmart ;)
The site I can't find quickly (anyone?) is one that I know has been mentioned on Slashdot a few times, home-built optical transmitters (In the Czech republic, IIRC) using modified ethernet cards and powerful LEDs to beam multi-kilometer distances
5 years ago I would not have guessed how widespread and cheap 802.11 stuff would be today; right now, you (point of reference, Americans in the lower 48) can get an 802.11 base station for under $100. Glut isn't quite the right word, but lets say there's *a lot* of somewhat decent, moderately versatile wireless gear available for what is in 1st countries not a huge chunk of disposable income, at least for folks middle-class-and-up. The cost of 7 cds gets a working base station
Wouldn't it be nice to see a similar flood of products for optical gear? Yes, there will be lawsuits (eye damage! you hurt my eye!), and ugly warning labels, and ISP crackdowns for retransmission and who knows what else, but
timothy
thanks for the data point there ...
:)) as supported.
:)
btw, the Mandrake supported-hardware page lists the Magicolor 2+ (but not the Magicolor 2 -- and I don't know where your "cx?" fits in
My dad's experience so far seems to be along the lines of yours, but not *quite* as bad, and he says the tech he reached was friendly. I can bet you three wooden nickels my dad doesn't give three wooden nickels about color balance; for his print-quantities, shouldn't be a problem.
I would really *like* this to be a good printer, though, because a sub-kilobuck color laser would be a nice addition to my household
timothy
the QMS/Minolta "MagiColor" (I think that's the name) is sold for a pinch under $1000 at various retailers, both in stores and online.
...
Data points:
a) I dunno about Linux support, but the short answer is, I doubt it, since a Google search didn't turn up anything useful. If there *was* decent support under Linux without frustration, I might save up for one. Color printing is nice
b) Heavy. Very heavy. No, not heavy compared to a mainframe, a car, the Earth, a whale, or a very very fat person, but heavy. One strong person *could* move it, but it's not the best idea.
c) Yes, it does come with all 4 toners you need, something I was afraid it would not. (Thought it might come with only a black cart, for instance.)
d) The only example I've actually seen in use is the one my dad bought a few months ago, and I helped him set up. The quality he gets is good, bordering on outstanding for certain uses, but it is *not* a dye-sub or even a high-end inkjet when it comes to color photo printing. He says he gets a lot of printing errors, though, and tech support he called blamed the spooler software. It prints quite speedily when it fees like working, though.