Ben and Jerry's was acquired by Unilever, a food and grocery product conglomerate, so the analogy still holds (SCO buying out the homegrown AT&T Unix).
More importantly, Ben and Jerry published an ice cream recipe book, which includes a variety of recipes for their special ice cream flavours. They even include tips on how to quickly and easily shatter 25 pounds of Heath (tm) bar to add to ice cream.
Now since SCO is talking about "enterprise" capabilities, you'd have to pick an "enterprise" level flavour. Actually, since Ben and Jerry's is "enterprise" level ice cream, you'd have to change the analogy to, say, Baskin Robbins sueing B&J for publishing the recipe to some marginally wacky flavour BR doesn't even make, like, say Cherry Garcia.
I give you -1, Bad Analogy, 10 yards and loss of down.
You learn a lot if you have a commute by car on which to listen to NPR.
Better yet, turn off your TV, unplug the cable TV line (or dish), and get *all* your news from NPR for a few weeks. Then watch an hour of CNN. Will you be able to tell which news source is part of an entertainment media conglomerate? You sure will. The useful thing about CNN is their corporate bias is fairly evident, and relatively easy to filter out.
Then, ignore any magazine you can see from the grocery store line (except maybe the Weekly World News). Subscribe to Utne Reader, or maybe even the Nation. Watch your disgust with the current excuse for a president grow by orders of magnitude.
Stockpiles of WMD? Did we say stockpiles? We meant residual evidence.
Keep in mind that the elements that make up recently living organic stuff comes from the atmosphere, plants, etc. The carbon dioxide you burn with biodiesel (or SVO) goes back into the plants to make more biodiesel. The carbon dioxide from petroleum (e.g. pressurized dinosaurs and plant material) has been locked in the ground for ages, and adds to the amount of greenhouse gases.
Specifically, when you see other projects you think of as being successful, including references to your project in their documentation. Even if it's telling users how to workaround your program and its, um, features.
It was a strange thrill to see ESD called out by name in the Quake (2?) for Linux documentation from Id software. I knew the project was onto something when Id deemed it necessary to warn people that my simple software audio mixer would interfere with the audio in Quake. They were expecting it to be enough of a problem to head it off in the official documentation. That's a user base.
If you have a program for Linux, inclusion in one or more major distributions is also a sure sign that lots of people are getting some use out of your program. If that many people are using your program, it may even outlive your ability to contribute to it...
Earth Girls are Easy: Julie Brown " 'Cause I'm a Blonde, B-L-I-N-D." and Geena Davis. Jim Carrey and Damon Wayans in some of their earliest performances. Classic Valley Girl flick.
Better Off Dead: John Cusack, the French foreign exchange student, and, er, Booger. Every line in the movie is quotable.
"It's a crying shame when folk's be throwin' away a perfectly good white boy like that."
"Go that way, real fast. If something gets in your way, turn."
"This mountain is pure snow. Do you have any idea what the street value of this mountain is?"
"I can't even get real drugs in this town! (...holding a can of whipped cream)"
"Lane, you're really bringing me (checks book _How to Talk to Your Teenager_) over, man."
"I want my two dollars!"
(ok, I may be a little off on some of these, it's been a while...)
In my area, you can have the phone company refuse calls to your phone from withheld numbers (for the low low fee of $5 a month). However, you can set a 4 digit password for the number, so anyone whose call would otherwise be blocked gets a message:
"Your call will not be completed as the person you're calling does not elect to receive calls from unknown or privacy blocked numbers. If you know their password, enter it now and your call will be completed."
Frequently, pay phones ("my car broke down can you pick me up?") show up as unknown on caller id units. This allows actual humans to contact you if their stuck using a strange phone, and gives the wardialing telemarketers an excuse to hang up early.
If you're into the "maximum shred guitarist" genre, you might want to check out http://www.emusic.com . They have a lot of the old Metal Blade label's artists, and all the Guitar Magazine offerings.
And BTW, Souls at Zero? Surely you mean Wrathchild America, right? =)
The Sci-Fi channel's versions are cool, if only to show that good storytelling nowadays doesn't require a $200 million budget. Yes, the backdrops in the first Dune series were obviously painted. Transcribing the story behind Dune to any multimedia format is exceedingly difficult, as so much of the story goes on in the characters' heads. Sci-Fi's version did a reasonable job of telling the story.
Look into the future, after the fall of the RIAA and MPAA, to a time when actors and sports stars make a wage commensurate with their offerings to society. You'll probably be lucky to see cinema half as elaborate as what you see in this telling of the story. More power to them.
The problem is that without some level of integration with the video system (i.e. X), synchronizing full audio/video streams via an external daemon mixing process will result in noticeable latency. That latency can be minimized to about 100 ms or so before you run into the problem of "stutterring" audio streams (audio not reaching the mixer fast enough). This latency is irrelevant for "long, continuous" streams (such as mp3's), and barely noticeable for "sporadic" events (window manager squonks, game bleeps, etc.).
Five years ago, when esd, arts, etc. were in design, the majority of the (Linux) desktop environments that were in existence were limited to xanim and realplayer for a/v playback, which only played back a limited amount of the media available at the time. I figured allowing the capability to have ESD release control of the sound card for "incompatible" programs (quake, low latency audio mastering software, etc.) would be sufficient.
And judging by the fact that it's still available on most distributions today, that original feature set (hear messenging and wm beeps while playing mp3s) seems to hold up well. The problem is going to the next level beyond the external audio mixer, into the realm of synchronized A/V streams (much more prevalent today) and for that an integrated solution is necessary. NAS was the closest thing "back then", i.e. 5 years ago, and I couldn't get it working on Linux for more than two seconds, regardless of whose patches I applied. I assume none of the other mixing daemon authors could either...
Or, 51% of the population are able to vote to enslave the other 49%
Or, in the US, if you have the right split in the electoral college (or a brother in a key swing state), 49% are able to vote to enslave the other 51%.
Personally, I liked Deborah Gibson's music even then. Accepted for what it was (cheesy bubblegum pop), she did at least posess the ability to compose and produce music, and I'm glad to see she's still making money at it. But my original point still, I believe, stands. In order to achieve some measure of success 10 years after her initial success, she has had to change her style, and incorporate different influences into her music. She couldn't keep releasing "Variations on themes from Electric Youth" and achieve the level of success she enjoys today.
Now, as for Tiffany, all I ever heard from her (back in the day) were covers of older songs, and tours in shopping malls. Know your target audience, I guess. However, I never forgave her for "I Saw Him Standing There", so feel free to take that personal bias into consideration... =)
I believe I did say that about Madonna back in the Holiday and Lucky Star days, as well as Debbie Gibson, Tiffany, Toni Basil, Kylie Minogue, The Jets, DeBarge, New Kids on the Block, Risk Astley, and a host of others.
Madonna achieved success largely due to the reactionary right wing religious crowd, who gave her far more exposure and publicity (good, bad, it's all the same) than she (or her record label) could ever achieve on their own. Which is kind of interesting: If she didn't have that opposition to battle in the press, she would have drifted into the same one or two hit early 80's pop star bargain bin compilations as the rest of them. Compare and contrast the public response to Body Count's "Cop Killer" vs. N.W.A.'s "F**k the Police." (For extra credit, add in Bob Marley's "I Shot the Sherriff".)
*If* Britney Spears is still making new records 5 years from now, she won't be making the same over-produced, geared-for-the-choreography, teen drivel she's famous for now. Compare Madonna's early pop hits with her later work. Hell, compare the Beatles, Led Zeppelin, Rush, and just about any band with more than 5 albums out. Bands achieve longetivity by incorporating new influences into their music, and evolving.
Those of you over 25, check out your record collection, and see how much of that stuff you have any interest in listening to 10 or 20 years later. You'll gain great insight into what makes a band with great staying power.
Re:For folks near Disney...
on
Robocoaster
·
· Score: 2
Imagine riding a rollercoaster in near complete darkeness!
Sounds like Space Mountain, available at your nearest Disney park. That second left turn really messed up my neck the last time I rode it...
People call it Sourceforget because there are so many projects in the pre-planning stage that never seem to get worked on. They are mostly toy programs people build, post, and forget about.
...removable hard drives. Pick one or the other (or use both, for greater redundnacy). Better yet, here's a neat drive enclosure: http://www.addonics.com/products/external_hdd/comb o_hd.asp . Add the appropriate cable to the back for USB, Firewire, IDE, or PCMCIA connection. How's that for versatility?
With the USB and/or Firewire hard drives approaching or exceeding 120 GB capacity, you'd only need a handful to get a decent set of rotating backup images. And with multiple interfaces on some of the drives, you have a greater chance of being able to read the media in the future. Good Luck
No, the quality is not any better, nor would I consider the quality "hi-fi". However, if I'm listening to music on my computer, or in my car, the difference between 128kbps and 192kbps encoded mp3s is undetectable [1]. The difference between 128kbps and the actual CD is only detectable (on such equipment) for audio segments that are troublesome to mp3 compression anyway (cymbals, certain effects, etc.).
I can go so far as to burn audio CDs for my wife to listen to, and she can't tell the difference at all. I suspect the overwhelming majority of their customer base falls into this category of listener. As a bonus, the few that I've burned into audio CDs get detected by freedb/cddb as the original disc it was ripped from. =)
It's a price vs. value consideration for me. For the low, low, price of $10/month, I can download all the mp3s I want out of their collection. I've managed to fill in a few gaping holes in my music collection in this process (Ennio Morricone, The Residents, Sun Ra, Dozens of Jazz Masters, etc.). Consider that I download about twenty full length albums every month, and calculate the savings. Is the slight degradation in quality worth it? It is to me.
More importantly, it's worth it to me to support a reasonably priced, unencumbered mp3 distribution model. *That* alone is well worth my $10/month entry fee.
[1] I am a musician, and my ears are precise enough to detect mp3 artifacts if I'm listening to the music on "real" equipment. My car stereo does not qualify.
Big Giant Head (Shatner): I thought I saw something on the wing, but noone believed me.
High Commander (Lithgow): The same thing happened to me!
Hands down, the funniest moment ever on broadcast television. I missed half of the episode, clutching my sides in laughter. No one else in the room got it... Their loss. =)
Who's still around from the "early" days?
on
Slashdot Turns 5
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
As you can see from my user id number, I've been around here for a while. And I didn't even get an account for a while... Anyone with a lower id still around? What do *you* remember from 5 years ago?
Reminiscing for a minute: Remember when...
* the Enlightenment window manager was still using DR (development release) in the versions?
* having to download 50 different graphics libraries to install Enlightenment?
* the first time someone told you to run "ldconfig -v" ?
* the first time someone told you to run "rm -rf/, as root" (or similar destructive advice)?
* a time before GNOME vs. KDE, because there was neither?
* you were the only kid on your block (in your school, at your job) who knew what an mp3 was?
* big companies announcing Linux support was a big deal?
* when XFree86 supported about 10 video cards?
This is the route I went in picking out a ring for my beloved. I found a beautiful antique ring with a diamond and two sapphires, and paid about 50% of the appraisal value. Not that either of us would ever sell the ring, but it does still have its full resale value, and has probably appreciated slightly from when I bought it. The ring also has something most modern "engagement" rings don't: character. Most modern rings are a simple band of gold, and a diamond of whatever size you can afford whacked in the middle of it. It's obvious to all around who look at the ring (and her friends will scrutinize this) how much you care about her, as judged by the size of the diamond in the middle of the ring. Find a small local antique shop, and support your local merchant. They probably shop locally, too. I guarantee not one cent from that sale went directly to fund any terrorist activity (unless you count putting gas in the shopkeeper's car).
At any rate, it's possible to get a decent ring, at a decent price, and you need not feel guilty about slave labour, or supporting terrorism. Buy a ring. Choose wisely.
What are the main differences in the types of yeast used for making bread, versus the types of yeast used for making beer? Could someone, for example, take a beer yeast culture and make a decent sourdough from it?
Slashdot Mirror
Ben and Jerry's was acquired by Unilever, a food and grocery product conglomerate, so the analogy still holds (SCO buying out the homegrown AT&T Unix).
More importantly, Ben and Jerry published an ice cream recipe book, which includes a variety of recipes for their special ice cream flavours. They even include tips on how to quickly and easily shatter 25 pounds of Heath (tm) bar to add to ice cream.
Now since SCO is talking about "enterprise" capabilities, you'd have to pick an "enterprise" level flavour. Actually, since Ben and Jerry's is "enterprise" level ice cream, you'd have to change the analogy to, say, Baskin Robbins sueing B&J for publishing the recipe to some marginally wacky flavour BR doesn't even make, like, say Cherry Garcia.
I give you -1, Bad Analogy, 10 yards and loss of down.
Then, ignore any magazine you can see from the grocery store line (except maybe the Weekly World News). Subscribe to Utne Reader, or maybe even the Nation. Watch your disgust with the current excuse for a president grow by orders of magnitude.
Stockpiles of WMD? Did we say stockpiles? We meant residual evidence.
It's fun. You know you want to.
Keep in mind that the elements that make up recently living organic stuff comes from the atmosphere, plants, etc. The carbon dioxide you burn with biodiesel (or SVO) goes back into the plants to make more biodiesel. The carbon dioxide from petroleum (e.g. pressurized dinosaurs and plant material) has been locked in the ground for ages, and adds to the amount of greenhouse gases.
Specifically, when you see other projects you think of as being successful, including references to your project in their documentation. Even if it's telling users how to workaround your program and its, um, features.
It was a strange thrill to see ESD called out by name in the Quake (2?) for Linux documentation from Id software. I knew the project was onto something when Id deemed it necessary to warn people that my simple software audio mixer would interfere with the audio in Quake. They were expecting it to be enough of a problem to head it off in the official documentation. That's a user base.
If you have a program for Linux, inclusion in one or more major distributions is also a sure sign that lots of people are getting some use out of your program. If that many people are using your program, it may even outlive your ability to contribute to it...
Better yet, get one that says "Anybody but" and add it to cars that have your least favourite candidate's sticker.
Earth Girls are Easy: Julie Brown " 'Cause I'm a Blonde, B-L-I-N-D." and Geena Davis. Jim Carrey and Damon Wayans in some of their earliest performances. Classic Valley Girl flick.
Better Off Dead: John Cusack, the French foreign exchange student, and, er, Booger. Every line in the movie is quotable.
"It's a crying shame when folk's be throwin' away a perfectly good white boy like that."
"Go that way, real fast. If something gets in your way, turn."
"This mountain is pure snow. Do you have any idea what the street value of this mountain is?"
"I can't even get real drugs in this town! (...holding a can of whipped cream)"
"Lane, you're really bringing me (checks book _How to Talk to Your Teenager_) over, man."
"I want my two dollars!"
(ok, I may be a little off on some of these, it's been a while...)
The veritable peak of Valley Girl culture. Like, fer shurr, y'know?
In my area, you can have the phone company refuse calls to your phone from withheld numbers (for the low low fee of $5 a month). However, you can set a 4 digit password for the number, so anyone whose call would otherwise be blocked gets a message:
"Your call will not be completed as the person you're calling does not elect to receive calls from unknown or privacy blocked numbers. If you know their password, enter it now and your call will be completed."
Frequently, pay phones ("my car broke down can you pick me up?") show up as unknown on caller id units. This allows actual humans to contact you if their stuck using a strange phone, and gives the wardialing telemarketers an excuse to hang up early.
If you're into the "maximum shred guitarist" genre, you might want to check out http://www.emusic.com . They have a lot of the old Metal Blade label's artists, and all the Guitar Magazine offerings.
And BTW, Souls at Zero? Surely you mean Wrathchild America, right? =)
Damn, you beat me by 18. =)
The Sci-Fi channel's versions are cool, if only to show that good storytelling nowadays doesn't require a $200 million budget. Yes, the backdrops in the first Dune series were obviously painted. Transcribing the story behind Dune to any multimedia format is exceedingly difficult, as so much of the story goes on in the characters' heads. Sci-Fi's version did a reasonable job of telling the story.
Look into the future, after the fall of the RIAA and MPAA, to a time when actors and sports stars make a wage commensurate with their offerings to society. You'll probably be lucky to see cinema half as elaborate as what you see in this telling of the story. More power to them.
The problem is that without some level of integration with the video system (i.e. X), synchronizing full audio/video streams via an external daemon mixing process will result in noticeable latency. That latency can be minimized to about 100 ms or so before you run into the problem of "stutterring" audio streams (audio not reaching the mixer fast enough). This latency is irrelevant for "long, continuous" streams (such as mp3's), and barely noticeable for "sporadic" events (window manager squonks, game bleeps, etc.).
Five years ago, when esd, arts, etc. were in design, the majority of the (Linux) desktop environments that were in existence were limited to xanim and realplayer for a/v playback, which only played back a limited amount of the media available at the time. I figured allowing the capability to have ESD release control of the sound card for "incompatible" programs (quake, low latency audio mastering software, etc.) would be sufficient.
And judging by the fact that it's still available on most distributions today, that original feature set (hear messenging and wm beeps while playing mp3s) seems to hold up well. The problem is going to the next level beyond the external audio mixer, into the realm of synchronized A/V streams (much more prevalent today) and for that an integrated solution is necessary. NAS was the closest thing "back then", i.e. 5 years ago, and I couldn't get it working on Linux for more than two seconds, regardless of whose patches I applied. I assume none of the other mixing daemon authors could either...
Or, in the US, if you have the right split in the electoral college (or a brother in a key swing state), 49% are able to vote to enslave the other 51%.
Personally, I liked Deborah Gibson's music even then. Accepted for what it was (cheesy bubblegum pop), she did at least posess the ability to compose and produce music, and I'm glad to see she's still making money at it. But my original point still, I believe, stands. In order to achieve some measure of success 10 years after her initial success, she has had to change her style, and incorporate different influences into her music. She couldn't keep releasing "Variations on themes from Electric Youth" and achieve the level of success she enjoys today.
Now, as for Tiffany, all I ever heard from her (back in the day) were covers of older songs, and tours in shopping malls. Know your target audience, I guess. However, I never forgave her for "I Saw Him Standing There", so feel free to take that personal bias into consideration... =)
I believe I did say that about Madonna back in the Holiday and Lucky Star days, as well as Debbie Gibson, Tiffany, Toni Basil, Kylie Minogue, The Jets, DeBarge, New Kids on the Block, Risk Astley, and a host of others.
Madonna achieved success largely due to the reactionary right wing religious crowd, who gave her far more exposure and publicity (good, bad, it's all the same) than she (or her record label) could ever achieve on their own. Which is kind of interesting: If she didn't have that opposition to battle in the press, she would have drifted into the same one or two hit early 80's pop star bargain bin compilations as the rest of them.
Compare and contrast the public response to Body Count's "Cop Killer" vs. N.W.A.'s "F**k the Police." (For extra credit, add in Bob Marley's "I Shot the Sherriff".)
*If* Britney Spears is still making new records 5 years from now, she won't be making the same over-produced, geared-for-the-choreography, teen drivel she's famous for now. Compare Madonna's early pop hits with her later work. Hell, compare the Beatles, Led Zeppelin, Rush, and just about any band with more than 5 albums out. Bands achieve longetivity by incorporating new influences into their music, and evolving.
Those of you over 25, check out your record collection, and see how much of that stuff you have any interest in listening to 10 or 20 years later. You'll gain great insight into what makes a band with great staying power.
Sounds like Space Mountain, available at your nearest Disney park. That second left turn really messed up my neck the last time I rode it...
People call it Sourceforget because there are so many projects in the pre-planning stage that never seem to get worked on. They are mostly toy programs people build, post, and forget about.
...removable hard drives. Pick one or the other (or use both, for greater redundnacy). Better yet, here's a neat drive enclosure: http://www.addonics.com/products/external_hdd/comb o_hd.asp . Add the appropriate cable to the back for USB, Firewire, IDE, or PCMCIA connection. How's that for versatility?
With the USB and/or Firewire hard drives approaching or exceeding 120 GB capacity, you'd only need a handful to get a decent set of rotating backup images. And with multiple interfaces on some of the drives, you have a greater chance of being able to read the media in the future. Good Luck
No, the quality is not any better, nor would I consider the quality "hi-fi". However, if I'm listening to music on my computer, or in my car, the difference between 128kbps and 192kbps encoded mp3s is undetectable [1]. The difference between 128kbps and the actual CD is only detectable (on such equipment) for audio segments that are troublesome to mp3 compression anyway (cymbals, certain effects, etc.).
I can go so far as to burn audio CDs for my wife to listen to, and she can't tell the difference at all. I suspect the overwhelming majority of their customer base falls into this category of listener. As a bonus, the few that I've burned into audio CDs get detected by freedb/cddb as the original disc it was ripped from. =)
It's a price vs. value consideration for me. For the low, low, price of $10/month, I can download all the mp3s I want out of their collection. I've managed to fill in a few gaping holes in my music collection in this process (Ennio Morricone, The Residents, Sun Ra, Dozens of Jazz Masters, etc.). Consider that I download about twenty full length albums every month, and calculate the savings. Is the slight degradation in quality worth it? It is to me.
More importantly, it's worth it to me to support a reasonably priced, unencumbered mp3 distribution model. *That* alone is well worth my $10/month entry fee.
[1] I am a musician, and my ears are precise enough to detect mp3 artifacts if I'm listening to the music on "real" equipment. My car stereo does not qualify.
In the South, it's not the Civil War; it's the War of Northern Aggression. Also, no matter how far south you go, anyone north of you is a damn Yankee.
Big Giant Head (Shatner): I thought I saw something on the wing, but noone believed me.
High Commander (Lithgow): The same thing happened to me!
Hands down, the funniest moment ever on broadcast television. I missed half of the episode, clutching my sides in laughter. No one else in the room got it... Their loss. =)
As you can see from my user id number, I've been around here for a while. And I didn't even get an account for a while... Anyone with a lower id still around? What do *you* remember from 5 years ago?
/, as root" (or similar destructive advice)?
Reminiscing for a minute: Remember when...
* the Enlightenment window manager was still using DR (development release) in the versions?
* having to download 50 different graphics libraries to install Enlightenment?
* the first time someone told you to run "ldconfig -v" ?
* the first time someone told you to run "rm -rf
* a time before GNOME vs. KDE, because there was neither?
* you were the only kid on your block (in your school, at your job) who knew what an mp3 was?
* big companies announcing Linux support was a big deal?
* when XFree86 supported about 10 video cards?
What else?
I suspect that if it weren't for slashdot running mysql, it would have long since died off, especially, amongst the free software zealot crowd.
This is the route I went in picking out a ring for my beloved. I found a beautiful antique ring with a diamond and two sapphires, and paid about 50% of the appraisal value. Not that either of us would ever sell the ring, but it does still have its full resale value, and has probably appreciated slightly from when I bought it. The ring also has something most modern "engagement" rings don't: character. Most modern rings are a simple band of gold, and a diamond of whatever size you can afford whacked in the middle of it. It's obvious to all around who look at the ring (and her friends will scrutinize this) how much you care about her, as judged by the size of the diamond in the middle of the ring. Find a small local antique shop, and support your local merchant. They probably shop locally, too. I guarantee not one cent from that sale went directly to fund any terrorist activity (unless you count putting gas in the shopkeeper's car).
At any rate, it's possible to get a decent ring, at a decent price, and you need not feel guilty about slave labour, or supporting terrorism. Buy a ring. Choose wisely.
What are the main differences in the types of yeast used for making bread, versus the types of yeast used for making beer? Could someone, for example, take a beer yeast culture and make a decent sourdough from it?