Yup. I'm constantly harping on about how we're supposed to have Moon bases and hotels in space, and missions to mars by around about this time.
Pisses me off that we've not moved ahead with that, but hey, I guess we have better things to worry about as a species...
Still, these asteroid adventures seem pretty nifty. If only we'd get heavy industry involved in space expansion, and start putting all our massively destructive industrial manufacturing in space or on one of these asteroids, it seems like we might actually make some progress.
I guess the gravity well is bigger than our ability to overcome it right now, alas...
Re:Good as far as it goes, but still useless
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Itsy Specs Updated
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· Score: 2
My apologies if it sounded like I was criticizing the project for opening up. I was just trying to state that if their goal is to develop an open community of loosly related developers, basing the hardware on a non-commercially available part is silly.
Well, I would think, given what I've been able to glean about this project as I've followed it for the last few years, that their primary goal wasn't so much to build an open hardware platform, but to prototype a bleeding-edge portable platform that just so happened to run Linux, one of the major open source products out there on the 'market' (!) today.
So it's not really fair to say that they're missing their goal of making a broadly useable open design product - I'd say that's a secondary goal for them, which just so happens to have become a reality recently. Otherwise, they would've been open from the beginning, and we wouldn't have this problem...:)
Note that I'm not 'attacking' you - certainly you are an intelligent enough person to see the value of politeness, and I respect that. I'd just like to point out to you that this project wasn't designed to be open from the beginning, and now that it is, yes there will be a few hurdles to overcome.
But, give it time. There are plenty of very skilled hardware hackers out there who are very probably dissecting the schematics right now, looking through reference manuals, and attempting to route around the problem.
I hope you benefit from this as much as I do, and if so, I hope we *both* find ways to contribute any way we can.
Re:Good as far as it goes, but still useless
on
Itsy Specs Updated
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· Score: 2
Well, why don't you download the specs, the schematics, etc. and design it to use commonly available LCD screens yourself?
After all, isn't this what you'd do if it were an Open Source software project?
On the one hand, you disagree with Stallman in making a distinction between hardware and software IP, but on the other hand you refuse to apply the same successful formula to an Open Hardware project as you would to an Open Source project.
I for one can't wait to get the download of these schematics finished, so I can see just what *is* available and compatible with their design...
I can't count how many times over the last 7 or so years I've had to re-generate my PGP keyring because I've lost the keyfiles or the computer crashed, or I'd forgotten to back 'em up before wiping for a full re-install or some such thing.
My problem has been key posession, mostly.
I thought things looked good a few years back when the various Java ring/embedded Java toys started to make their presence felt (free Java rings for developers, hoo boy!), but these seem to have gone nowhere and are not in any open format that allows transportability - at least not that I know.
So where do I keep my keys? Anyone know of a list of good resources for this sort of problem - I'd imagine it's a common one, probably solved by now with some Palm app or some such thing, but it's a real hassle to be platform-bound for key posession, so what're the solutions?
These small info-button'esque issues are a bit of a drag, actually. Credit card companies got it right - the plastic Visa card is a pretty good hardware platform - but that's a whole different can of worms.
Maybe I should consider getting my public key tattoo'ed on some nice private part of my body, unobtrusive-like. Ummm... now I've typed it, maybe not.
The fact is, people will see this headline about the DVD issue, and they'll buy the paper to read it. "Everyone has heard about this DVD issue, it's been gossipped about widely, now I'll read a bit more about it from the MPAA guys..."
Journalistic integrity has *nothing* to do with it. The L.A. Times has been a bastion of controversial whoring for years.
I'm just glad that some of us geeks are starting to see this - we see it now with the DVD issue, will our eyes be opened enough to be able to recognize the L.A. Times pimping itself out on future, non-technology related stories too?
CNN's article on Jon and the DVD issue is actually pretty good. They actually make the point that this case is *not* about piracy, but about playback control.
The URL:http://www.cnn.com/2000/TECH/ptech/01/25/dvd.c harge/index.html
It's one of the better articles on the matter by mainstream press right now - if you need to direct a PHB towards an article to correct any generalizations or alterations they may make on a personal basis about this case (because they don't understand the big picture from the small painting they're seeing from other media sources) then this CNN article is pretty good...
I read Ars Technica and Toms Hardware Guide often enough to know that it's all fun and games, and there are clans and cults of overclocking out there, etc. And if I wanted to, I could get into it and build myself a monster machine.
Well, I don't wanna. I'm too lazy. I've got this aging Pentium Pro/200 system that's slow by todays standards, but which has served me quite well, and actually I just don't wanna mess with hardware anymore.
This doesn't mean I don't want to *own* the fruits of such activities, though. I'd love to have the absolute screamingest machine that a couple G's could buy, and I'm sure there's someone out there that would be happy to provide such an elite box o' power for a small price.
Point is, does anyone know of any companies that build these sorta monster boxes, or is it just better to go with a good quality hardware vendore like VA Systems or something like that for my 'leet hardware needs?
Note that they also have a pretty nifty voice recorder accessory for the Gameboy too, which has just recently been hacked to be able to play back movies on the GB Color.
If you ask me, the Gameboy platform is a hackers delight... I know I love mine, and the tools I've gotten from the Asian GB Hacker contingency definitely make life more interesting.
Nothing like having a high-availabilty, cheap portable computing platform that can be fully hacked on. $50 at most Toy stores here in the US, full development kits available online, and life is sweet once you've gotten a ROM burner for it.
My GameBoy hacking facilities have become a veritable sonic screwdriver...:)
http://www.bunk.com.hk has a ROM Burner kit, and ROM's that can be purchased... if you want to transfer the code written with the aforementioned IDE's to your Gameboy, it can be done.
Note however that these ROM Burners aren't supposed to be sold in the US because of some lawsuit - apparently they were being used to pirate Gameboy ROM's. Lame, but oh well.
They teach themselves Perl and enhance their t-shirt collections.
Hmmm... Are you sure this is an adequate description of someone like, say, ESR, RMS, Larry Wall, Wozniak, Carmack, etc?
Those are the guys I was referring to. Most serious hardcore programmers that I know are very intelligent people, often wandering into realms of Intelligentsa Obscura, and would IMHO be considered worthy recipients of the "Intelligentsia" badge for the new social phenomenon that is being created on the Internet.
This has nothing to do with an "intelligentsia". I'm hoping that you're using "economy" in some figurative sense, 'cause if you're not, you've missed the point more thoroughly than I care to contemplate. It's really not about making a quick buck at all. Crack dealers do that. BFD.
Can't deny that traditionally, 'intelligentsia' hasn't had much to do with money in the past, but I would say that this has changed.
Dramatically.
Perhaps for the better, but perhaps for the worse. It's a matter of purpose. Some of the best thinkers in the world, some of the more poetic and intelligence-oriented people out there are working in the high-tech world for the sake of economic growth and prosperity - not *JUST* for themselves, but for entire realms of other intelligent organisms, such as your aforementioned Perl-teaching T-shirt wearing hackers...
I would argue that this aspect of __economic sensibility__ is what is truly unique about modern intelligentsia, and as a factor that has been omitted all too freely by the "intelligentsia" of past is what has lead to the dirth of intelligent thought in the first place, which I believe Sterling is revealing, or at least attempting to with his manifesto...
Just a few paragraphs into it (haven't read the whole thing yet), I spot this nice line:
"We have a new economy, but we have no new intelligentsia."
What, then, is the Slashdot community? Are the various forums and communities that exist all over the Internet totally devoid of intelligentsia?
I was under the impression that before this 'new economy' came a whole new brand of intelligentsia - the self-teaching, self-enhancing swag of techno-brutes that have been lifting themselves out of the muck of obscurity with the tools of the Internet and creating whole new social spheres, which subsequently resulted in entirely different modes of online economy.
Can someone explain, am I missing something here or is Bruce waxing poetic and I'm just being too literal?
... the rest of us take over their product and continue to enhance and improve it in true OpenSource fashion.
Maybe they left coz they didn't like the idea of the old paradigm of computer software development being replaced by a new one that allows for a greater product and better tools for everyone?
One thing I hoped would come out of this...
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Apocalypse Not
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· Score: 2
... is a newfound disrespect for modern media sources.
I mean, for the last year or so we've been bombarded with stories and articles about the end of the world at the hands of the Y2K bug. Modern media has been making a *killing* off of scaring people into thinking that there were going to be catastrophes and chaos come January 1, 2000.
Now that it's over, and it was all a big hoax, I for one hope that there's a backlash - that people start to realize that not everything they see on CNN or read in Time magazine is worth even thinking about, and that there is more to the world than being victims of hype, consumers of bad news.
So all I really have to say about Y2K is that its gone, and lets see if anyone has learned a lesson.
Won't be long before this becomes a commodity in the PC market, and when that happens, as all new technologies that enter the PC realm, it'll become faster, cheaper, lighter, and more and more powerful within a very short period of time...
... and frankly, I think its a waste. Sure, its nice to be able to do quick audio editing on the fly out in the field (using Sound Forge on the train or bus to edit just-recorded audio does rock, I'll admit), but for the most part I find it hard to understand why laptop manufacturers insist on putting more and more processing power into portable computers.
I'd be quite happy with a 400mhz laptop with good *connectivity* options - if someone came out with a P2/400 that was fairly simple in the performance ratio department, but had 128k radio connectivity within a 4 to 6 mile radius back to a home base unit I could put on my network, I'd be in total geek heaven.
I don't understand why this isn't more of an issue for people these days - I guess in a nation of commuters (I walk to work every day), this is not as important as having the 'latest and greatest processor' to cart back and forth, but I'm hoping that in the coming year or so we'll start to see more innovation in the WAN department for portable computer users than we will in processor designs...
In fact, if laptops *DEVOLVED* into simple video/screen/mouse interfaces with extremely good spread spectrum radio connectivity back to a home base unit that could be connected to a Monster P3/1Ghz system, that would be *ideal*.
Why bother engineering to take all that luggage with you, when we could just engineer to leave the luggage at home and just take a... dare I say it... "window" into that luggage on the road with us...
These new wireless WedPad type devices are more and more becoming an attractive occupation of time and geek attention, in my book... They'll surely evolve to something closely approximating what I described above. Hopefully, anyway.
"Jay, while I agree in principal with what you are stating, AND with what you are actually DOING; a haven like you propose does get stale after time, and a bigger arena, in this case a city, needs to be available. Look at yourself for instance, how many times have you "re-invented" yourself. From 1 Wilshire, to Earthlink, to Teklab. Things got stale for you too!"
Actually, it went ELN -> 1 Wilshire, etc. I left ELN for political reasons (long story, beaten to death).
1 Wilshire was cool though - no lack of bandwidth down there what with the UUNet hubs and MFS fibre all over the place to support the financial district, but the reason I left was the same reason that I'm an advocate of Vermont - there was *NO* Geek supporting infrastructure down there in downtown LA.
It was all business/corporate, and it was extremely limited in terms of choice, selection, and more importantly: hours of operation. After 5pm, the place died. No point staying down there if I can't hack past 2am and still be able to reliably get a decent cup of coffee during a decompression walk... not to mention that LA Downtown turns downright spooky at 3am in the morning.
So I don't disagree with you that the scale is important in these Geek Ecosystems - on the Vermont corridor, I see a lot of opportunity however, because this is a veritable real estate waste land, particulary on the easterly sections of Hollywood Blvd where there is an abundance of empty and abandoned office space.
Word is that the land lords in that area are doing all they can to survive -- given bandwidth, this area could become a Geek haven. I know a lot of us in this area are happy with the DSL services and options available, that's for sure.
And Vermont has certainly got the counter culture swing in its favour... the place is already full of geeks as it is, albeit fashion geeks not computer geeks...
I have had my high tech business in the Vermont Ave area of Los Angeles for the last 3 years, primarily because it's a convenient neighbourhood when it comes to late night hacking - there are plenty of restaurants open very late, including a couple of 24 hour places, and plenty of interesting places to eat along the Hollywood Blvd (east end) area. An endless supply and variety of Thai food, small Mexican eateries, swish and luxurious restaurants, and cheap eats abound in this area.
So I'd say that it's all about convenience.
Generation Geek likes to be able to have everything within walking distance - food, laundry, entertainment, etc.
There are 2 very cool movie theatres within walking distance of my office here, the subway (as pitiful as the LA subway system is, it is often useful for quick jaunts downtown for access to Little Tokyo and China Town) is accessible and easy to get to, and there are a number of video arcades within walking distance as well for those late-night decompression sessions.
There are plenty of 'expendable income' supporting stores along the Vermont corridor, including a very good record store (Vinyl Fetish), a tattoo parlour, an *excellent* hair salon (Purple Circle, specializing in dreads and dyes), and tons of cool clothing shops. Not to mention Wacko, just down the street, for all that a Geek would ever need for his or her desktop entertainment needs.
Until recently, the only thing missing in my area was a good quality coffee shop - but this has since been resolved, much to my (and my Geek friends) delight, with the new "Psychobabble" coffeeshop just up Vermont - again, within walking distance.
In addition to all of this, a big part of the Geek scene that's evolving here on Vermont is the community aspect.
I've been working hard at getting similarly minded geeks moved into the small and quaint office complex that I occupy, and so far its been quite successful - I'm already very happy to have similarly minded Geek neighbours. Right next door I have a friend who owns an electronic music studio, which is nice for me because I write music software for a living, and just down the hall is another friend who is a computer consultant with similar interests (Linux, music, etc), as well as a DJ for a lot of local clubs - so there's a veritable community feel going in this complex right now.
These are all things that make up the high tech startup experience, and while the Vermont corridor may not exactly be a "Sillicon [V]Alley", its certainly got all the makings for a viable Geek ecosystem...
FWIW, if anyone in the Los Angeles area is looking for a cool place to set up shop, I'd be more than happy to give you a guided tour around this neighbourhood and show you why it's a great place for a small high tech startup!
Quit your wining. He's just saying that the only other OS that has a stable TCP/IP stack in his experience is Linux. So what?
It gives an insight into the sort of person the reviewer is, and I personally appreciate that - given that I may participate in OmniSky's program based on his review, its nice to know that the fellow is not your average Windows user, knows a bit about other Operating systems, and could be considered a fellow hacker.
I was far from being annoyed by hearing that he's had experience with Linux in the TCP/IP stack usage department, and in fact it gave me a reference point for his experiences with the TCP/IP stack under Palm OS. It shows, to a small degree, that he's not just an average user for whom 'problems with the TCP/IP stack' may have been a result of user error.
Sheesh. Why are you so sensitive to a pro-Linux viewpoint?
That's cool, didn't know that about Slack7. I'm happy to see there are still some companies doing this in their distributions - I guess this is one of the disadvantages to sticking with one distribution all this time (after Yggdrasil I've pretty much been RedHat/Mandrake happy).
I'm not intentially trying to milk for karma if that's what you mean.
I think you've missed my point. I simply wanted to know what company he works for that he's getting so many calls to get NT installed for end users...
And by saying I'm in "same boat, different waters", I get *similar* sorts of calls, albeit for people who want to set up Linux and get rid of their hassles with NT - and yes, because Linux is an Internet operating system (whereas NT isn't, thus the apples/oranges factoid, which I can accept as a fair comment to have made about my first post in this thread) this inevitably turns into a network administration type of call for me.
I wouldn't say I'm off topic, either... the original poster had a point that he gets a lot of "how do I delete Linux" type calls, and I simply wanted to know more about the environment where those calls are being received...
Well, I guess I've managed to get sucked into the "justify your post to an Anonymous Coward" trap, but oh well...
Slashdot Mirror
Yup. I'm constantly harping on about how we're supposed to have Moon bases and hotels in space, and missions to mars by around about this time.
...
Pisses me off that we've not moved ahead with that, but hey, I guess we have better things to worry about as a species...
Still, these asteroid adventures seem pretty nifty. If only we'd get heavy industry involved in space expansion, and start putting all our massively destructive industrial manufacturing in space or on one of these asteroids, it seems like we might actually make some progress.
I guess the gravity well is bigger than our ability to overcome it right now, alas
Well, I would think, given what I've been able to glean about this project as I've followed it for the last few years, that their primary goal wasn't so much to build an open hardware platform, but to prototype a bleeding-edge portable platform that just so happened to run Linux, one of the major open source products out there on the 'market' (!) today.
So it's not really fair to say that they're missing their goal of making a broadly useable open design product - I'd say that's a secondary goal for them, which just so happens to have become a reality recently. Otherwise, they would've been open from the beginning, and we wouldn't have this problem... :)
Note that I'm not 'attacking' you - certainly you are an intelligent enough person to see the value of politeness, and I respect that. I'd just like to point out to you that this project wasn't designed to be open from the beginning, and now that it is, yes there will be a few hurdles to overcome.
But, give it time. There are plenty of very skilled hardware hackers out there who are very probably dissecting the schematics right now, looking through reference manuals, and attempting to route around the problem.
I hope you benefit from this as much as I do, and if so, I hope we *both* find ways to contribute any way we can.
Well, why don't you download the specs, the schematics, etc. and design it to use commonly available LCD screens yourself?
After all, isn't this what you'd do if it were an Open Source software project?
On the one hand, you disagree with Stallman in making a distinction between hardware and software IP, but on the other hand you refuse to apply the same successful formula to an Open Hardware project as you would to an Open Source project.
I for one can't wait to get the download of these schematics finished, so I can see just what *is* available and compatible with their design...
I can't count how many times over the last 7 or so years I've had to re-generate my PGP keyring because I've lost the keyfiles or the computer crashed, or I'd forgotten to back 'em up before wiping for a full re-install or some such thing.
... now I've typed it, maybe not.
My problem has been key posession, mostly.
I thought things looked good a few years back when the various Java ring/embedded Java toys started to make their presence felt (free Java rings for developers, hoo boy!), but these seem to have gone nowhere and are not in any open format that allows transportability - at least not that I know.
So where do I keep my keys? Anyone know of a list of good resources for this sort of problem - I'd imagine it's a common one, probably solved by now with some Palm app or some such thing, but it's a real hassle to be platform-bound for key posession, so what're the solutions?
These small info-button'esque issues are a bit of a drag, actually. Credit card companies got it right - the plastic Visa card is a pretty good hardware platform - but that's a whole different can of worms.
Maybe I should consider getting my public key tattoo'ed on some nice private part of my body, unobtrusive-like. Ummm
Private key jewelry, anyone?
Ha! See, what'd I tell you! Ha! Even the SJ Mercury news admits it now...
:)
Linus is an ALIEN!!!!!
Okay, so I'm burning a few karma points, oh well... What else are they good for now and then, eh?
... that's all there is to it.
The fact is, people will see this headline about the DVD issue, and they'll buy the paper to read it. "Everyone has heard about this DVD issue, it's been gossipped about widely, now I'll read a bit more about it from the MPAA guys..."
Journalistic integrity has *nothing* to do with it. The L.A. Times has been a bastion of controversial whoring for years.
I'm just glad that some of us geeks are starting to see this - we see it now with the DVD issue, will our eyes be opened enough to be able to recognize the L.A. Times pimping itself out on future, non-technology related stories too?
I would hope so.
CNN's article on Jon and the DVD issue is actually pretty good. They actually make the point that this case is *not* about piracy, but about playback control.
c harge/index.html
The URL:http://www.cnn.com/2000/TECH/ptech/01/25/dvd.
It's one of the better articles on the matter by mainstream press right now - if you need to direct a PHB towards an article to correct any generalizations or alterations they may make on a personal basis about this case (because they don't understand the big picture from the small painting they're seeing from other media sources) then this CNN article is pretty good...
I read Ars Technica and Toms Hardware Guide often enough to know that it's all fun and games, and there are clans and cults of overclocking out there, etc. And if I wanted to, I could get into it and build myself a monster machine.
Well, I don't wanna. I'm too lazy. I've got this aging Pentium Pro/200 system that's slow by todays standards, but which has served me quite well, and actually I just don't wanna mess with hardware anymore.
This doesn't mean I don't want to *own* the fruits of such activities, though. I'd love to have the absolute screamingest machine that a couple G's could buy, and I'm sure there's someone out there that would be happy to provide such an elite box o' power for a small price.
Point is, does anyone know of any companies that build these sorta monster boxes, or is it just better to go with a good quality hardware vendore like VA Systems or something like that for my 'leet hardware needs?
Its bung.com.hk, not bunk. Sorry about that!
See this page for more details:
http://www.bung.com.hk/html/2nd_results.htm
DOH!
Sorry, that URL should be:
http://www.bung.com.hk/
http://www.bunk.com.hk/
:)
Note that they also have a pretty nifty voice recorder accessory for the Gameboy too, which has just recently been hacked to be able to play back movies on the GB Color.
If you ask me, the Gameboy platform is a hackers delight... I know I love mine, and the tools I've gotten from the Asian GB Hacker contingency definitely make life more interesting.
Nothing like having a high-availabilty, cheap portable computing platform that can be fully hacked on. $50 at most Toy stores here in the US, full development kits available online, and life is sweet once you've gotten a ROM burner for it.
My GameBoy hacking facilities have become a veritable sonic screwdriver...
http://www.bunk.com.hk has a ROM Burner kit, and ROM's that can be purchased... if you want to transfer the code written with the aforementioned IDE's to your Gameboy, it can be done.
Note however that these ROM Burners aren't supposed to be sold in the US because of some lawsuit - apparently they were being used to pirate Gameboy ROM's. Lame, but oh well.
They teach themselves Perl and enhance their t-shirt collections.
Hmmm... Are you sure this is an adequate description of someone like, say, ESR, RMS, Larry Wall, Wozniak, Carmack, etc?
Those are the guys I was referring to. Most serious hardcore programmers that I know are very intelligent people, often wandering into realms of Intelligentsa Obscura, and would IMHO be considered worthy recipients of the "Intelligentsia" badge for the new social phenomenon that is being created on the Internet.
This has nothing to do with an "intelligentsia". I'm hoping that you're using "economy" in some figurative sense, 'cause if you're not, you've missed the point more thoroughly than I care to contemplate. It's really not about making a quick buck at all. Crack dealers do that. BFD.
Can't deny that traditionally, 'intelligentsia' hasn't had much to do with money in the past, but I would say that this has changed.
Dramatically.
Perhaps for the better, but perhaps for the worse. It's a matter of purpose. Some of the best thinkers in the world, some of the more poetic and intelligence-oriented people out there are working in the high-tech world for the sake of economic growth and prosperity - not *JUST* for themselves, but for entire realms of other intelligent organisms, such as your aforementioned Perl-teaching T-shirt wearing hackers...
I would argue that this aspect of __economic sensibility__ is what is truly unique about modern intelligentsia, and as a factor that has been omitted all too freely by the "intelligentsia" of past is what has lead to the dirth of intelligent thought in the first place, which I believe Sterling is revealing, or at least attempting to with his manifesto...
Just a few paragraphs into it (haven't read the whole thing yet), I spot this nice line:
"We have a new economy, but we have no new intelligentsia."
What, then, is the Slashdot community? Are the various forums and communities that exist all over the Internet totally devoid of intelligentsia?
I was under the impression that before this 'new economy' came a whole new brand of intelligentsia - the self-teaching, self-enhancing swag of techno-brutes that have been lifting themselves out of the muck of obscurity with the tools of the Internet and creating whole new social spheres, which subsequently resulted in entirely different modes of online economy.
Can someone explain, am I missing something here or is Bruce waxing poetic and I'm just being too literal?
... the rest of us take over their product and continue to enhance and improve it in true OpenSource fashion.
Maybe they left coz they didn't like the idea of the old paradigm of computer software development being replaced by a new one that allows for a greater product and better tools for everyone?
... is a newfound disrespect for modern media sources.
I mean, for the last year or so we've been bombarded with stories and articles about the end of the world at the hands of the Y2K bug. Modern media has been making a *killing* off of scaring people into thinking that there were going to be catastrophes and chaos come January 1, 2000.
Now that it's over, and it was all a big hoax, I for one hope that there's a backlash - that people start to realize that not everything they see on CNN or read in Time magazine is worth even thinking about, and that there is more to the world than being victims of hype, consumers of bad news.
So all I really have to say about Y2K is that its gone, and lets see if anyone has learned a lesson.
Godamnit Slashdot.
Can we *PLEASE* consider refraining from being totally Y2K smitten for the next 72 hours?
Shit. What happened to the "Y2K Pledge" that someone (Hemos?) posted a while back.
I am *so* sick of Y2K.
... then it must be the wave of the future:
:P
http://www.apple.com/ibook/airport.html
Won't be long before this becomes a commodity in the PC market, and when that happens, as all new technologies that enter the PC realm, it'll become faster, cheaper, lighter, and more and more powerful within a very short period of time...
So
:)
... and frankly, I think its a waste. Sure, its nice to be able to do quick audio editing on the fly out in the field (using Sound Forge on the train or bus to edit just-recorded audio does rock, I'll admit), but for the most part I find it hard to understand why laptop manufacturers insist on putting more and more processing power into portable computers.
... dare I say it ... "window" into that luggage on the road with us...
I'd be quite happy with a 400mhz laptop with good *connectivity* options - if someone came out with a P2/400 that was fairly simple in the performance ratio department, but had 128k radio connectivity within a 4 to 6 mile radius back to a home base unit I could put on my network, I'd be in total geek heaven.
I don't understand why this isn't more of an issue for people these days - I guess in a nation of commuters (I walk to work every day), this is not as important as having the 'latest and greatest processor' to cart back and forth, but I'm hoping that in the coming year or so we'll start to see more innovation in the WAN department for portable computer users than we will in processor designs...
In fact, if laptops *DEVOLVED* into simple video/screen/mouse interfaces with extremely good spread spectrum radio connectivity back to a home base unit that could be connected to a Monster P3/1Ghz system, that would be *ideal*.
Why bother engineering to take all that luggage with you, when we could just engineer to leave the luggage at home and just take a
These new wireless WedPad type devices are more and more becoming an attractive occupation of time and geek attention, in my book... They'll surely evolve to something closely approximating what I described above. Hopefully, anyway.
Hunahpu wrote:
"Jay, while I agree in principal with what you are stating, AND with what you are actually DOING; a haven like you propose does get stale after time, and a bigger arena, in this case a city, needs to be available. Look at yourself for instance, how many times have you "re-invented" yourself. From 1 Wilshire, to Earthlink, to Teklab. Things got stale for you too!"
Actually, it went ELN -> 1 Wilshire, etc. I left ELN for political reasons (long story, beaten to death).
1 Wilshire was cool though - no lack of bandwidth down there what with the UUNet hubs and MFS fibre all over the place to support the financial district, but the reason I left was the same reason that I'm an advocate of Vermont - there was *NO* Geek supporting infrastructure down there in downtown LA.
It was all business/corporate, and it was extremely limited in terms of choice, selection, and more importantly: hours of operation. After 5pm, the place died. No point staying down there if I can't hack past 2am and still be able to reliably get a decent cup of coffee during a decompression walk... not to mention that LA Downtown turns downright spooky at 3am in the morning.
So I don't disagree with you that the scale is important in these Geek Ecosystems - on the Vermont corridor, I see a lot of opportunity however, because this is a veritable real estate waste land, particulary on the easterly sections of Hollywood Blvd where there is an abundance of empty and abandoned office space.
Word is that the land lords in that area are doing all they can to survive -- given bandwidth, this area could become a Geek haven. I know a lot of us in this area are happy with the DSL services and options available, that's for sure.
And Vermont has certainly got the counter culture swing in its favour... the place is already full of geeks as it is, albeit fashion geeks not computer geeks...
I have had my high tech business in the Vermont Ave area of Los Angeles for the last 3 years, primarily because it's a convenient neighbourhood when it comes to late night hacking - there are plenty of restaurants open very late, including a couple of 24 hour places, and plenty of interesting places to eat along the Hollywood Blvd (east end) area. An endless supply and variety of Thai food, small Mexican eateries, swish and luxurious restaurants, and cheap eats abound in this area.
So I'd say that it's all about convenience.
Generation Geek likes to be able to have everything within walking distance - food, laundry, entertainment, etc.
There are 2 very cool movie theatres within walking distance of my office here, the subway (as pitiful as the LA subway system is, it is often useful for quick jaunts downtown for access to Little Tokyo and China Town) is accessible and easy to get to, and there are a number of video arcades within walking distance as well for those late-night decompression sessions.
There are plenty of 'expendable income' supporting stores along the Vermont corridor, including a very good record store (Vinyl Fetish), a tattoo parlour, an *excellent* hair salon (Purple Circle, specializing in dreads and dyes), and tons of cool clothing shops. Not to mention Wacko, just down the street, for all that a Geek would ever need for his or her desktop entertainment needs.
Until recently, the only thing missing in my area was a good quality coffee shop - but this has since been resolved, much to my (and my Geek friends) delight, with the new "Psychobabble" coffeeshop just up Vermont - again, within walking distance.
In addition to all of this, a big part of the Geek scene that's evolving here on Vermont is the community aspect.
I've been working hard at getting similarly minded geeks moved into the small and quaint office complex that I occupy, and so far its been quite successful - I'm already very happy to have similarly minded Geek neighbours. Right next door I have a friend who owns an electronic music studio, which is nice for me because I write music software for a living, and just down the hall is another friend who is a computer consultant with similar interests (Linux, music, etc), as well as a DJ for a lot of local clubs - so there's a veritable community feel going in this complex right now.
These are all things that make up the high tech startup experience, and while the Vermont corridor may not exactly be a "Sillicon [V]Alley", its certainly got all the makings for a viable Geek ecosystem...
FWIW, if anyone in the Los Angeles area is looking for a cool place to set up shop, I'd be more than happy to give you a guided tour around this neighbourhood and show you why it's a great place for a small high tech startup!
Quit your wining. He's just saying that the only other OS that has a stable TCP/IP stack in his experience is Linux. So what?
It gives an insight into the sort of person the reviewer is, and I personally appreciate that - given that I may participate in OmniSky's program based on his review, its nice to know that the fellow is not your average Windows user, knows a bit about other Operating systems, and could be considered a fellow hacker.
I was far from being annoyed by hearing that he's had experience with Linux in the TCP/IP stack usage department, and in fact it gave me a reference point for his experiences with the TCP/IP stack under Palm OS. It shows, to a small degree, that he's not just an average user for whom 'problems with the TCP/IP stack' may have been a result of user error.
Sheesh. Why are you so sensitive to a pro-Linux viewpoint?
That's cool, didn't know that about Slack7. I'm happy to see there are still some companies doing this in their distributions - I guess this is one of the disadvantages to sticking with one distribution all this time (after Yggdrasil I've pretty much been RedHat/Mandrake happy).
I'm not intentially trying to milk for karma if that's what you mean.
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I think you've missed my point. I simply wanted to know what company he works for that he's getting so many calls to get NT installed for end users
And by saying I'm in "same boat, different waters", I get *similar* sorts of calls, albeit for people who want to set up Linux and get rid of their hassles with NT - and yes, because Linux is an Internet operating system (whereas NT isn't, thus the apples/oranges factoid, which I can accept as a fair comment to have made about my first post in this thread) this inevitably turns into a network administration type of call for me.
I wouldn't say I'm off topic, either... the original poster had a point that he gets a lot of "how do I delete Linux" type calls, and I simply wanted to know more about the environment where those calls are being received...
Well, I guess I've managed to get sucked into the "justify your post to an Anonymous Coward" trap, but oh well...