(By the way, I have inserted HTML code into this post such that anyone who has not added me to his "friends" list cannot reply to this post.)
(By the way, if you decide to add me to your "friends" list, HTML code will be added to all of your posts such that only I and my "friends" can read or respond to your posts.)
(Why? Because I believe in the Free Marketplace of Ideas, so long as all of those ideas are mine.)
An anonymous reader submits "This is a few weeks old but we have to talk about this.
Is the anonymous reader Joan Rivers?
Seriously, is this product's OS open source? Is the specification?
No, I'm not being a zealot for the sake of zealotry. I've got an Archos MP3 player. Nice hardware, but the software is merely adequate.
An open source replacement, Rockbox, is far superior (faster, more intuitive user interface, more customizable, adding fonts, controls, configurable displays). In fact, the replacement is so good that Archos plans to use it for one of their newer models. Honestly, having run the replacement software I can't help but think of how much more attractive it makes the Archos jukebox.
But Archos hasn't released their specs or their code, so the Rockbox developers have to laboriously reverse engineer such trivia as appropriate battery levels for different models.
My selfish upshot: I can't (yet) run Rockbox on my Archos, as the Rockbox guys haven't yet reversed engineered my model. I could run it, if Archos would just release some specs. (E.g., low battery level is x volts, high is y volts.)
From now on, I'm not interested in buying closed specification hardware. It just closes off too many good alternatives.
Greater selection at cheaper prices. While I do not and will not download MP3s to which I don't have a license, I can and do subscribe to emusic.com. This gives me an excellent selection of medium quality (128 kbps) MP3s, far more than I could afford as CDs -- and far more than I'd be tempted to "try out", buying CDs I might later find out didn't justify a $10-$20 price tag.
You are full of shit
I probably shouldn't feed the troll, but I don't steal music -- I don't even copy friends' or my family's music. I just don't feel comfortable doing it.
Maybe it's because, in writing code, I'm something of a creative artist too, and I like to get full credit -- both the words of praise and the crisp folding kinds.
But I know it's impossible to convince a thief that you're an honest man, because all thieves presume -- in fact cling to the belief -- that everyone else is as much or more venal than they are.
The author says that the reason Betamax lost the market was that it didn't do what the consumer wanted, to be able to record an entire movie unattended due to their one hour tape versus the VHS two hour tape. He has some other arguments, such as the Betamax was originally higher priced....
Hmmm. Makes me think of MP3s versus CDs. I listen to all of my music on MP3, despite having a (Sony, ironically enough!) 50 CD "jukebox".
Why do I sacrifice quality by listening to MP3s rather than CDs?
Convenience: I can easily set up arbitrarily long, arbitrarily ordered MP3 playlists, and without the time it takes for the "jukebox" to physically chnage CDs.
Greater selection at cheaper prices. While I do not and will not download MP3s to which I don't have a license, I can and do subscribe to emusic.com. This gives me an excellent selection of medium quality (128 kbps) MP3s, far more than I could afford as CDs -- and far more than I'd be tempted to "try out", buying CDs I might later find out didn't justify a $10-$20 price tag.
Portability: Carrying around a portable CD player generally resulted in my listening to a single CD, over and over, as carrying additional CDs was inconvenient (see reason #1, above) and resulted in losing numerous Cds. carrying around my Archos MP3 player gives my my entire music collection (currently about 14 GBs in MP3 format) in my pocket.
Quality: I can't easily hear the difference in quality between a CD and an MP3, even when the MP3 is piped through the (now empty) "jukebox"'s speakers. To the extent that I can hear the difference, I prefer to indulge my eclectic musical taste in quantity rather than fewer selections in quality. Your mileage will undoutedly vary.
Quality's important, don't misunderstand me. But let me chicken out by closing with a few choice cliches: Often the best is the enemy of the good, and enough (quality, ironically, not quantity) is as good as a feast, and more than enough is as bad as a surfeit.
I'm not sure what the link leads to. Under Phoenix, got an infinite loop of GET http://www.slushfactory.com/content/EpuFukEpAFFjrI oYJF.php HTTP/1.0
GET http://www.slushfactory.com/takeoverAd.html?http://www.slushfactory.com/content/EpuFukEpAFFjrIoYJF.p hp HTTP/1.0
GET http://mediamgr.ugo.com/html.ng/size=300x250&affil iate=slushfactory&channel=filmtv&subchannel=alsopl aying&Network=affiliates&rating=pg13 HTTP/1.0
Under Internet Explorer, it didn't appear to loop, but stuck at the takeoverAd.html page.
So I never saw the great creative efforts of these idiots, because they were more concerned about "managing" my web experience, sticking a cookie on my machine, or -- if takeoverAd is wahta I suspect it is -- capturing me on a "sticky" page where each time I hit the back button, I get a page that redirects me forward.
This problem isn't limted to these Picassos of comix art: I visted BMG.com today, on a tip from a friend, thinking I might buy a $160.00 set of Gilbert & Sullivan DVDs. The page looks lovely, dark and artsy, but there's no indication of home to search it or use it in any way -- unless it's via javascript and cookies, which I block. Net result: no $160.00 sale, BMG. But your site sure is cute.
I also spent over thirty minutes searching Verizon's site, trying to find tech support's number. Naturally, Verizon is too cool to actually list phone numbers; no, instead there are drop down lists, javascript and cgi and cookies -- again, I had to imcommodate myself to continue in a customer relationship I already have with Verizon. I am noe considering my otyer ISP options.
Beware being so cool nobody can understand you, or figure out how to tell you you're being an ass.
And this enhances education, or NASA's research program, or exploration of space, exactly how?
Oh. It's just a big warm fuzzy, tending to promote fuzzy thinking about space exploration and NASA ("Space is cool! My teacher went there! I wonder if she met Chewbacca?") without providing any real scientific or engineering advance or even teaching kids that to get to space we need to understand math and physics.
Huzzah! Hooray! Let's put a teacher in space everyday!
<fine print = 'sotto voiced'> Offer limited to humanities teachers and "esteem coaches"; we can't spare the few competent math and science teachers we still have. </fine print>
We were supposed to be having vacations on the moon by 2003. Instead we get this. Feh.
Recently the topic of getting people trained in the Linux/UNIX environment has troubled me.... What decent training programs out there have a hands on approach?
Well, with linux, you have three choices:
a turgid man page: it's guaranteed to list every command line switch, and possibly even describe a few of those switches. Unless it's a GNU/utility, in which case you should see the Info page. The Info page is hidden somewhere inside of emacs, which is the real OS.
the source code itself: it's GPL'd after all, and if we have to write it to produce the functionality, you ought to have to read it to use the functionality. Please disregard (but only at your peril) any comments; they're probably out of date, and certainly obscure. Unless the comment mentions "here be dragons" or "may overflow on some architectures".
the hairy ass: kissing the ass of a linux guru will sometimes get you an answer, along with condescension, contempt and strong body odor whilst you're told (between muttered "umask 077" calculations) how it's intuitively obvious.
Hands on. Yeh.
Linux is free: download it, install it, disconnect it from the modem until you know what you're doing, and play with it. That's about as hands on as you can get.
Did I mention it's free? And that rabid OS zealots will be more than happy to help you install it if you act at all attracted to the Kool Aid they're pushing? And did I mention it's free?
Here's some info on Electrochromic Windows in general (the projection window seems to be a particular application of this).
However, according to the site cited above,
Electrochromic technologies are available for license to manufacturers. There are currently no U.S. manufacturers that are producing a true electrochromic window. Liquid crystal "privacy" glazing is available in the United States, for residential use.
I wants me a window with an opaque switch, I wants it, my precious! Not only is this so much more conveneent that blinds, I imagine it would be easily controlled by the PC.
jovlinger's recommendations are on target. (Though I can't say I've heard of McLeod.)
Ley me also say that I just finished, and pretty well enjoyed David Brin's Kiln People, despite its flirtations with Dr. Roger Penrose's "quantum mind" silliness. (No, I'm usually far to respectful of hard-science Ph.D.s to call their theories "silly", but for Penrose's speculations outside his own field, I'll make an exception.)
I'd mod jovlinger's post up, except I wanna make my own recommendations too. (Sorry. It's not all about Karma, is it? Oh.)
Ever read MLK's "Letters from the Birmington Marriot"? No, because he didn't write them from there.
Hilarious and insightful at the same time.
<pedantic> Martin Luther King's letter is usually cited as "Letter from a Birmingham Jail", so perhaps you should ask about his "Letter from a Birmingham Marriott" (Marriott, two "r"s, two "t"s). </pedantic>
And what a mental picture: MLK sitting on carbon-copy hotel furniture, writing his letters on the complimentary Marriot notepad provided on every Marriot nightstand next to the standard-issue Marriot bed with the standard-issue Marriot bedspread.
(Of course, to the contrary, Thoreau's aunt brought him cookies when he was in the Concord jail. And I'm not sure destroying the plague vials was civil disobedience. But love the "Letters from the Birmington Marriot" bit.)
Slashdot Mirror
So this is how "vertical integration" works!
(By the way, I have inserted HTML code into this post such that anyone who has not added me to his "friends" list cannot reply to this post.)
(By the way, if you decide to add me to your "friends" list, HTML code will be added to all of your posts such that only I and my "friends" can read or respond to your posts.)
(Why? Because I believe in the Free Marketplace of Ideas, so long as all of those ideas are mine.)
How about logging in by executing some steps on your Dance Dance Revolution pad?
So now I can use my Microsoft Passport when I take a plane to France?
To paraphrase Tom Lehrer:
"Once the [potatoes] are up, who cares where they come down?
That's not my department," says Wernher von Braun
-- from the song "Wernher von Braun"
>>> How is a smart redheaded girl going to find a decent guy that is not intimidated by the softer sex?
;-)
:0)
>> You don't happen to live near Amsterdam do you?
> BTW: If I told you were I lived you would not even believe me
I know where the cute red-headed geek girl who needs a date lives!
Where?
Right next to the Easter Bunny. Two doors down from the Tooth-Fairy. On Peter Pan's block in Never Never Land.
tell me, what the hell is a tau lepton?
Broadway singer. He's in The Producers right now.
An anonymous reader submits "This is a few weeks old but we have to talk about this.
Is the anonymous reader Joan Rivers?
Seriously, is this product's OS open source? Is the specification?
No, I'm not being a zealot for the sake of zealotry. I've got an Archos MP3 player. Nice hardware, but the software is merely adequate.
An open source replacement, Rockbox, is far superior (faster, more intuitive user interface, more customizable, adding fonts, controls, configurable displays). In fact, the replacement is so good that Archos plans to use it for one of their newer models. Honestly, having run the replacement software I can't help but think of how much more attractive it makes the Archos jukebox.
But Archos hasn't released their specs or their code, so the Rockbox developers have to laboriously reverse engineer such trivia as appropriate battery levels for different models.
My selfish upshot: I can't (yet) run Rockbox on my Archos, as the Rockbox guys haven't yet reversed engineered my model. I could run it, if Archos would just release some specs. (E.g., low battery level is x volts, high is y volts.)
From now on, I'm not interested in buying closed specification hardware. It just closes off too many good alternatives.
You are full of shit
I probably shouldn't feed the troll, but I don't steal music -- I don't even copy friends' or my family's music. I just don't feel comfortable doing it.
Maybe it's because, in writing code, I'm something of a creative artist too, and I like to get full credit -- both the words of praise and the crisp folding kinds.
But I know it's impossible to convince a thief that you're an honest man, because all thieves presume -- in fact cling to the belief -- that everyone else is as much or more venal than they are.
Mickey will be my backdoor bitch...
Forever!!!
And please enjoy tonight's heart-warming "Walt Disney Show", entitled "Uncle Mickey's Cabin."
-- yours, Michael Eisner
Those models can do more for you than you can imagine my friend ;)
<mindset='slashdot geek'>
You mean like they can install BSD and go a-war-chalking with me? Neato!! I mean, 133t!
Now that I know this, I'll clean my Mom's basement and invite one over.
No, wait. I might get cooties. And she might want to go outside. Nevermind.
But I'd be happy to frag her if she plays EverCrack.
</mindset>
Hmmm. Makes me think of MP3s versus CDs. I listen to all of my music on MP3, despite having a (Sony, ironically enough!) 50 CD "jukebox".
Why do I sacrifice quality by listening to MP3s rather than CDs?
- Convenience: I can easily set up arbitrarily long, arbitrarily ordered MP3 playlists, and without the time it takes for the "jukebox" to physically chnage CDs.
- Greater selection at cheaper prices. While I do not and will not download MP3s to which I don't have a license, I can and do subscribe to emusic.com. This gives me an excellent selection of medium quality (128 kbps) MP3s, far more than I could afford as CDs -- and far more than I'd be tempted to "try out", buying CDs I might later find out didn't justify a $10-$20 price tag.
- Portability: Carrying around a portable CD player generally resulted in my listening to a single CD, over and over, as carrying additional CDs was inconvenient (see reason #1, above) and resulted in losing numerous Cds. carrying around my Archos MP3 player gives my my entire music collection (currently about 14 GBs in MP3 format) in my pocket.
- Quality: I can't easily hear the difference in quality between a CD and an MP3, even when the MP3 is piped through the (now empty) "jukebox"'s speakers. To the extent that I can hear the difference, I prefer to indulge my eclectic musical taste in quantity rather than fewer selections in quality. Your mileage will undoutedly vary.
Quality's important, don't misunderstand me. But let me chicken out by closing with a few choice cliches: Often the best is the enemy of the good, and enough (quality, ironically, not quantity) is as good as a feast, and more than enough is as bad as a surfeit.the link leads to an ad, not an article
I oYJF.php HTTP/1.0
/ /www.slushfactory.com/content/EpuFukEpAFFjrIoYJF.p hp HTTP/1.0
l iate=slushfactory&channel=filmtv&subchannel=alsopl aying&Network=affiliates&rating=pg13 HTTP/1.0
I'm not sure what the link leads to. Under Phoenix, got an infinite loop of
GET http://www.slushfactory.com/content/EpuFukEpAFFjr
GET http://www.slushfactory.com/takeoverAd.html?http:
GET http://mediamgr.ugo.com/html.ng/size=300x250&affi
Under Internet Explorer, it didn't appear to loop, but stuck at the takeoverAd.html page.
So I never saw the great creative efforts of these idiots, because they were more concerned about "managing" my web experience, sticking a cookie on my machine, or -- if takeoverAd is wahta I suspect it is -- capturing me on a "sticky" page where each time I hit the back button, I get a page that redirects me forward.
This problem isn't limted to these Picassos of comix art: I visted BMG.com today, on a tip from a friend, thinking I might buy a $160.00 set of Gilbert & Sullivan DVDs. The page looks lovely, dark and artsy, but there's no indication of home to search it or use it in any way -- unless it's via javascript and cookies, which I block. Net result: no $160.00 sale, BMG. But your site sure is cute.
I also spent over thirty minutes searching Verizon's site, trying to find tech support's number. Naturally, Verizon is too cool to actually list phone numbers; no, instead there are drop down lists, javascript and cgi and cookies -- again, I had to imcommodate myself to continue in a customer relationship I already have with Verizon. I am noe considering my otyer ISP options.
Beware being so cool nobody can understand you, or figure out how to tell you you're being an ass.
And this enhances education, or NASA's research program, or exploration of space, exactly how?
/fine print>
Oh. It's just a big warm fuzzy, tending to promote fuzzy thinking about space exploration and NASA ("Space is cool! My teacher went there! I wonder if she met Chewbacca?") without providing any real scientific or engineering advance or even teaching kids that to get to space we need to understand math and physics.
Huzzah! Hooray! Let's put a teacher in space everyday!
<fine print = 'sotto voiced'>
Offer limited to humanities teachers and "esteem coaches"; we can't spare the few competent math and science teachers we still have.
<
We were supposed to be having vacations on the moon by 2003. Instead we get this. Feh.
Well, with linux, you have three choices:
Hands on. Yeh.
Linux is free: download it, install it, disconnect it from the modem until you know what you're doing, and play with it. That's about as hands on as you can get.
Did I mention it's free? And that rabid OS zealots will be more than happy to help you install it if you act at all attracted to the Kool Aid they're pushing? And did I mention it's free?
funny, as a consumer who actually buys the tires, I don't remember ever asking for this
Amen! Mod parent up!
However, according to the site cited above,
I wants me a window with an opaque switch, I wants it, my precious! Not only is this so much more conveneent that blinds, I imagine it would be easily controlled by the PC.
So what.... ...does this look like from the outside?
That's the thing. Most slashdotters will never know.
Hell, they'll never even know what "outside" looks like.
--
But in my Mom's basement, I'm an arch-wizard.
Maybe someone can explain why an on-topic question gets a -1 Overrated?
I'd like to experiment with my own anti-spam software; to do so I'd like to be able to modify a pop/smtp proxy.
Anyone know of a decent GPL'd (BSD'd, MIT'd) pop and smtp proxy coded in C or (better) C++?
How about one that runs under MS-Windows?
Thanks.
Ok do the following, then maybe I'll care about your opinion: 1. Solve world hunger so tribe in africa don't need pork to survive ....
Yum, cat farms!
Tastes just like chicken, and keep down the rat population.
Meeeeeeeooowwww!
jovlinger's recommendations are on target. (Though I can't say I've heard of McLeod.)
Ley me also say that I just finished, and pretty well enjoyed David Brin's Kiln People, despite its flirtations with Dr. Roger Penrose's "quantum mind" silliness. (No, I'm usually far to respectful of hard-science Ph.D.s to call their theories "silly", but for Penrose's speculations outside his own field, I'll make an exception.)
I'd mod jovlinger's post up, except I wanna make my own recommendations too. (Sorry. It's not all about Karma, is it? Oh.)
Ever read MLK's "Letters from the Birmington Marriot"? No, because he didn't write them from there.
Hilarious and insightful at the same time.
<pedantic> Martin Luther King's letter is usually cited as "Letter from a Birmingham Jail", so perhaps you should ask about his "Letter from a Birmingham Marriott" (Marriott, two "r"s, two "t"s). </pedantic>
And what a mental picture: MLK sitting on carbon-copy hotel furniture, writing his letters on the complimentary Marriot notepad provided on every Marriot nightstand next to the standard-issue Marriot bed with the standard-issue Marriot bedspread.
(Of course, to the contrary, Thoreau's aunt brought him cookies when he was in the Concord jail. And I'm not sure destroying the plague vials was civil disobedience. But love the "Letters from the Birmington Marriot" bit.)
Find out what VMS uses for grep and then type the equivalent of this at the command line:
grep "Here's where the buffer under-run starts" *.c
Even with "excellent" karma, it doesn't mod to +2 automatically anymore.
Testing with "No Karma Bonus" checked.
Even with "excellent" karma, it doesn't mod to +2 automatically anymore.>
:)
Testing with "No Karma Bonus" unchecked.
Please mod this test up, +1 informative.