If you think it was invented in 1980s, you are wrong.
I agree. Unlike you, I don't recall as specificly when I first saw smileys, but there were so many BBSes whose messages are lost, and some of those BBSes had live chat. DARPAnet likely had its share of college chatters. (I wasn't even familiar with TTY's except I thought they were just for the deaf.) It's incredibly pompous for this guy to think he found the first smiley and for the other guy to claim he invented it.
The way I see it, anything I can think of or do has already been thought of and done long before I was born. Okay, advancing technology allows a few new "first"s, but they are infinitesimally rare, and somebody thought of it before you, anyway.
The only interesting thing I found about this article is the obsolescence of the data storage, but that's a horse than been beaten a few times before. At least now we have CDs, and those will last us for the next few hundred years.:-)
By the way, I was very anti-smiley for YEARS. I think I had been using BBSes and the internet for 16 years before I finally sold my soul and used a smiley. (I believe I used <sigh> and similar angle-bracketed expressions, but not smileys.) It's too late for me, but you can still be saved.
All of the parent post was cut and pasted from http://www.haxial.com/fraud/mikeaba.html as referenced in another/. story, but unfortunately the/. lameness filter forced me to retype it in mixed case.
If you send me $40, I can tell you how to read women's minds.
Dear austad Thanks for your email and willing to help . how are you today,Hope fine.Thank God for making us see a brand new day.I got your email which was quite understood and well digested.I want to assure you that this deal is risk free,because I have every documents to back up the claims so you should not panic. The said sum have been deposited with Global SEC and Fin.Co in Amsterdam Holland. I will issue you with certificate of deposit and authority to claim and the name of the person you will contact with the telephone number and fax number . I will like you to send me your telephone number, fax number and your name if you wish to assist me.Get back to me as quickly as possible via email. Thanks for your co-operations
Regardless, and in a complete Jekell/Hyde move, I think Apple's doing the right thing, at least from the point of view of Apple's continued financial success. People must be forced to move to the new OS for a couple of reasons. First, if the users move, the pushers (software developers) will follow.
I agree that it's a good thing. I was pissed at Apple for killing the Apple// line to promote Mac, but it was the right move. (But I still held a grudge for several years; for some reason Apple instills a machine loyalty that I don't see many other places. I definitely see it in Mac users.) But my Apple// continued to run for several more years, anyway. So will the existing Macs with MacOS 9. Apple isn't forcing the users to change so much as their forcing vendors to support OS X. Vendors will still support MacOS 9 as long as there is enough of a user base willing to pay for support.
The only "forcing" Apple is doing to users is apparently not providing for MacOS 9 to work on new Macs in 2003. But it's not clear to me if they're actively blocking it or just not including it. Example: Neither Microsoft or my PC vendor will support my installing MSDOS 5 and Windows 3.1 on my Athlon XP 1800+, but it will still work if I do it myself. I suspect MacOS 9 will continue to work on the Motorola PPC platform, but new video cards and other new hardware improvments won't get drivers. If they go to IBM PPC then who knows if it will work or not?
Then again, on x86 almost everthing boots off of BIOS int13 calls, even LILO & GRUB & SYSLINUX. If Apple changed the firmware from MacOS * to OS X it might be a different story. I know MacOS * machines display a GUI-like screen with a picture of a floppy disk and a flashing question mark if there are no bootable drives available, and I presume Darwin starts booting in some console-ish mode like other *nix'es. I'm not familiar enough with Macs to know, but I'm sure MacOS * and Darwin are radically different software architectures. If the firmware bootstrap process isn't compatible then MacOS 9 lovers are probably unable to buy a new Mac for it after 2002.
Second, if Apple wants to move to x86, they aren't going to be bringing Classic along with them.
I would love to have OS X on my x86'es. That leads me to believe it won't happen, though. It seems like whatever I want the most isn't offered since I want it because it benefits me way too much. Example: I could have OS X now but I'd have to buy a Mac, and I wouldn't be happy with the cheapest Mac (not enouch expandablility) so I'd buy one of the higher priced ones if I wanted to part with the money. If they made it available for x86 I'd buy a copy at $125 and probably not give Apple any more money for several years.
. ..the typical Mac user is not a geek and has become accustomed to his or her pre OSX box and could really care less about OSX. Who has time to spend learning it. ..?
How different is OS X from the older MacOSes from a user's point of view? I know about all the geek changes, but if a non tech savvy user gets up from a MacOS 9 machine and comes back from lunch to an OS X machine is he going to have any problems using it?
I haven't used either enough to know the answer to this, but I'd assume Apple worked their butts off to make the menus, dialogs and clicks all the same even if the architecture changed and the icons are prettier and the docking bar does ten different dances (or whatever it does).
I clicked a couple of icons on the first version of OS X when it was new in the store, and that was before I knew all the geek stuff about it. (Come to think of it I managed to crash it with my couple of clicks so I was wholly unimpressed at the time.) But recently I've been learning to use MacOS 7.5.3 in a Basilisk II emulator assuming that would help acclimate me to an OS X Quartz environment. (I'm coming from a very stong DOS/Windows background and fairly strong bash/Linux/X11 background.)Am I wrong?
. ..I think Apple should provide OSes for free. ..
You're probably talking about current OSes, but you can download MacOS versions up to 7.5.3 from their site. (Apple ][ ProDOS, too.) The links I got (from 68k emulator sites) said they were free, but I never read any licensing terms so I don't know what kind of free they are. I suppose Apple provides them so users of old Macs can effect some self support. It wasn't clear to me if Apple cared or not if they were used on Apple hardware (i.e. not in emulators) or if you bought MacOS 6.x and downloaded 7.5.3 to upgrade.
When seeing this story I immeiately wondered if the older (than OS X, newer than MacOS 7.5.3) versions would be made downloadable soon, too. (You may see 8.x downloads now, but they are upgrades. AFAICT 7.5.3 is the highest version you can get to by downloading from their site if you don't already have MacOS.)
I never had a Mac. (Had an Apple ][+, Apple//e and Apple//c, but that's another story.) I wanted one from time to time but never got one because I always got more bang for the buck upgrading my x86 hardware. But OS X has me excited and I recently started playing with Basilisk II Mac emulator and am playing around with the older MacOSes. I like them so far and would like to try MacOS 8.x. But I understand about 8.6 and higher are only usuable on PPC's and there are no PPC Mac emulators. I guess I'll have to go to the store to play with Jaguar. (I tought somebody spelled it "Jagwyre" but apparently it wasn't Apple since their site spells it "Jaguar".)
There should be a slashdot "whack-a-mole" (whack-a-troll?) game where nerds pop up instead of moles and say things like Imagine a Beowulf cluster of these, and Yeah, but can you run linux on it.
There already is. It's here. But you get at least three hammers: the "-1 Troll", "-1 Flamebait" and "-1 Overrated" hammers. You have to sign up and then watch for a few weeks, however, before you can use the hammers, or at least that's how I understand it.
Just out of curiousity, and on an only remotely related note, how many people here have ever actually seen a beowulf cluster? I think they're like nerd unicorns.
I went to the Beowulf site once but didn't inhale^H^H^H^H^H^Hdownload.
Maybe you're right. Maybe The Beowulf Cluster is geekdom's response to all the broken flying car promises of Popular Mechanics.
On second thought, no one here's seen one because it doesn't improve Quake III fps and doesn't run on Windows.:) "I promote Linux and Ogg Vorbis but use Windows and WMP for my MP3's. But I'm leet, really." <whack!>
There are problems that simply cannot be solved on networked clusters, precisely because of network latency.
I agree. A while back (when clustering were a hot IT discussion topic) I got interested in throwing a few PCs together an making a Beowulf cluster to learn how to do it, but I never did it because I couldn't find a use for it. The network delay and clustering overhead kills the benefit for any application I personally would use.
I suppose I could use the clustering to compile with GCC, but I'm not a developer and rarely compile. It makes more sense to reboot my fast Windows PC into my Debian partition and compile on that if I can't wait for the PII 333 dedicated Debian PC to compile.
I'm actually about to install a cluster at work in a week or so, but it's a cluster for redundancy, not speed. (Novell 6 2-node cluster w/SAN.)
That's funny? It's not even the first beowulf cluster comment on this story. jeez.
Damn. I checked before I posted, but someone submited after I checked and before I posted. Wouldn't have done it if I knew it wouldn't be the first.
Yeah, it's dumb anyway. But I posted it from work so I got paid for it.
It got quickly modded down after +1 Funny. Later got a +1 Underrated but the moderators drug it back down quickly. I'm in no danger of getting above- or below-average karma anytime soon.
Ooh, just got another +1 Funny on it. But I bet it will be modded down again in another minute.
Just to put something sort of on-topic, software OpenGL *could* be fast enough with this kind of memory bandwidtch if the video bandwidth was also high and the processor were fast enough. "Hardware" OpenGL is just a specialized CPU with specialized firmware and high-speed pathways from video memory to the CRT. But I doubt this machine was designed for Quake III or Doom III.
It's occured to me a few times that naming and calling Ogg Vorbis files ".og3's" (oh-gee-three) might lessen the unkown factor for the general public. "What's OG3? Oh, it's like a newer, better MP3. Better sound, less space. Try it. The new [insert hardware Ogg player here] plays them and your crappy old MP3's!"
In a way it's stupid, but I think it could help. It's akin to Athlon XP's "1800+" naming scheme; it's saying "you don't know us well, but we're like this well known product but a better value."
Besides, IIRC Vorbis is the codec and Ogg is a chunked/taggged file format that could be used for other audio codecs and even video, so using ".ogg" for Ogg Vorbis is shortsighted anyway. When Xiph finishes their viedo codec maybe it could be ".og4" or whatever number to match MPEG video's latest version (if they use Ogg file format for it).
By the way, I tried to explain Ogg Vorbis to my mom about a month ago. I said I'd like a player for it and told her that MP3 is covered by patents and charges for encoding and creating commercial decoders while Ogg Vorbis is patent and royalty free. She said "I don't care". She has her 20-gigabyte MP3 player with all her favorites ripped to MP3 (by my brother and I) on it. She doesn't care if it's MP3, Ogg, MiniDisc (what she used before this) or CD as long as it's convenient and she can listen to it at work. I think "the revolution" will have to come from the hardware and software vendors and not the typical consumer. The consumer will buy what they can listen to their music on. Ogg Vorbis isn't there yet.
While I'm a big fan of Ogg Vorbis I haven't reripped my CD's yet, even though I almost exclusively use software players that can play.ogg just fine. My only MP3-only device is a DLink player that I rarely use.
. ..if the Linux community were. . .. The question is, are we too individualistic to work together as a community?
Duh, yeah. That's pretty much what Linux is. What is the "Linux community", anyway? Some want it do dominate the commercial OS market, some have political views, and everyone has their own idea of the ideal UI. KDE, Gnome, Qt, GNUstep. Which one is best? Try to get a consensus answer from the Linux community on that. (You might get a consensus on bash, but then again there are probably csh and ksh lovers around, too; or are they all on SunOS?)
The Linux community isn't about consensus, but flexibilty, freedom and maybe some elitism. (Okay, Windows, MacOS, *BSD, SunOS, BeOS, Plan 9, OS/2, OpenVMS and AtheOS can be about elitism, too.)
You make many good points, but "The Linux Community" isn't going to all agree on The Right Way to do things. It will take a distribution to push a consistent look and feel, and then that distribution will get criticized for it by many.
For me, Linux has been the best learning tool for protocols and hardware that I've ever had. Way better than school and books in most cases. But there are too many problems for me to use it as my main client OS. I held a grudge against Apple Macs for years because they killed Apple II (way back; but it was the right business move), but I've been dabbling with MacOS emulators and reading up on OS X, and I'd really like to use OS X, but I have 5 x86'es and don't plan on spending the dough for an OS X capable Apple Mac real soon.
I can't stand his writing, and I'm not a fan of all his music, but I can't help but be impressed at the range of music styles he performs. So many artists these days have songs that all sound alike. He has quite a few different styles and sounds, and I respect that.
Use a hands-free kit and some of the problem goes away. I don't have an easy answer with the first point I made, though.
I have a really bad feeling about those hands-free kits, especially because they're touted as safe. I think the cellphone-while driving danger is mostly due to the driver's attention being off the road and on the conversation. How many of you normally drive with two hands on the wheel all the time, anyway? Granted, if you have a cellphone, drink or food in your hand you might have a brief conflict of interest in an emergency deciding whether to drop the offending object--since your brain is trained not to drop expensive items or food--to grab the steering wheel with your 2nd hand. But I think the illusion--no, the promoted "safety"--of hands free kits exacerbates the danger.
Do any of you turn your radio down or dim your interior lights when you're confused/lost while driving in a strange place? I do, because it helps me concentrate, and my brain isn't consciously involved with observing those things like it is with a phone conversation. (Well, most conversations. I guess sometimes on the phone with a woman I go into ignore mode and pay attention to what I'm doing otherwise.:)
I'm not perfect in avoiding phone calls while driving, but I don't make them and I try to pull over if I can when receiving them. But this is only for work; I don't even own a personal cell phone at the moment.
Maybe I can finally pickup an aeron chair and some nerf equipment.
Hey, there's a liquidation revenue increase idea: sell their dotcom toys on eBay as nostalgia/history. Several Slashdot commenters seem to think Napster is the martyr before a digital/resonable-price revolution in the music industry. Heck, even I felt compelled to save the "Napster was Here" page and "Ded Kitty" jpg to disk and I think the RIAA will crush all opposition.
What I really want, though, is that Pets.com sock puppet. That cracked me up the first couple of times I saw it. I loved it when he knocked on the door or you could see the big hairy arm. Just the first few times, though; it got old after the n-hundredth time.
Chapter 7 means Ded Kitty. No more business. No more Napster. (Yes, that Napster link appears several more times in these comments. I saved it and the main page to disk; not sure why; maybe a bit of history.)
I wonder who drew the "Ded Kitty" jpg? Did they get hacked or does the webmaster have a cool sense of humor? Is there a webmaster? Can't be getting paid much.
Well, if you truly only care for your own life it isn't important as falling coconuts. But falling coconuts, bees and CowboyNeal are less likely to render humans extinct than a large asteroid over the next several million years.
Of course everybody doesn't individually need to worry about it, but it is important in the long term.
I have no idea if meteors are the biggest long term threat, though.
Slashdot Mirror
Anyway, my point is that there is no reason to get frustrated with scientists. The science will explain everything to us in due time.
Yeah, but will they do it before the sun explodes in a bunch of 24Mg or 16O, or, um, rotary girders?
What is Slashdot going to do next? Post an article titled "WIN FREE SEX"?
Well, okay, but I need a bigger penis and some cheap Viagra substitute first.
Call me again when they power it with a Tesla coil.
And how about some goatse with that?
Ok, if you insist:
(_O_)
If you think it was invented in 1980s, you are wrong.
:-)
I agree. Unlike you, I don't recall as specificly when I first saw smileys, but there were so many BBSes whose messages are lost, and some of those BBSes had live chat. DARPAnet likely had its share of college chatters. (I wasn't even familiar with TTY's except I thought they were just for the deaf.) It's incredibly pompous for this guy to think he found the first smiley and for the other guy to claim he invented it.
The way I see it, anything I can think of or do has already been thought of and done long before I was born. Okay, advancing technology allows a few new "first"s, but they are infinitesimally rare, and somebody thought of it before you, anyway.
The only interesting thing I found about this article is the obsolescence of the data storage, but that's a horse than been beaten a few times before. At least now we have CDs, and those will last us for the next few hundred years.
By the way, I was very anti-smiley for YEARS. I think I had been using BBSes and the internet for 16 years before I finally sold my soul and used a smiley. (I believe I used <sigh> and similar angle-bracketed expressions, but not smileys.) It's too late for me, but you can still be saved.
Here is slashdot's first (*) asshole.
Too skinny, I suspect, for most of the nerds here. Try this:
(_*_)
All of the parent post was cut and pasted from http://www.haxial.com/fraud/mikeaba.html as referenced in another /. story, but unfortunately the /. lameness filter forced me to retype it in mixed case.
If you send me $40, I can tell you how to read women's minds.
.Get back to me as quickly as possible via email .
Dear austad
Thanks for your email and willing to help . how are you today,Hope fine.Thank God for making us see a
brand new day.I got your email which was quite understood and well digested.I want to assure you that this deal is risk free,because I have every documents to back up the claims so you should not panic. The said sum have been deposited with Global SEC and Fin.Co in Amsterdam Holland. I will issue you with certificate of deposit and authority to claim and the name of the person you will contact with the telephone number and fax number . I will like you to send me your telephone number, fax number and your name if you wish to assist me
Thanks for your co-operations
Regardless, and in a complete Jekell/Hyde move, I think Apple's doing the right thing, at least from the point of view of Apple's continued financial success. People must be forced to move to the new OS for a couple of reasons. First, if the users move, the pushers (software developers) will follow.
// line to promote Mac, but it was the right move. (But I still held a grudge for several years; for some reason Apple instills a machine loyalty that I don't see many other places. I definitely see it in Mac users.) But my Apple // continued to run for several more years, anyway. So will the existing Macs with MacOS 9. Apple isn't forcing the users to change so much as their forcing vendors to support OS X. Vendors will still support MacOS 9 as long as there is enough of a user base willing to pay for support.
I agree that it's a good thing. I was pissed at Apple for killing the Apple
The only "forcing" Apple is doing to users is apparently not providing for MacOS 9 to work on new Macs in 2003. But it's not clear to me if they're actively blocking it or just not including it. Example: Neither Microsoft or my PC vendor will support my installing MSDOS 5 and Windows 3.1 on my Athlon XP 1800+, but it will still work if I do it myself. I suspect MacOS 9 will continue to work on the Motorola PPC platform, but new video cards and other new hardware improvments won't get drivers. If they go to IBM PPC then who knows if it will work or not?
Then again, on x86 almost everthing boots off of BIOS int13 calls, even LILO & GRUB & SYSLINUX. If Apple changed the firmware from MacOS * to OS X it might be a different story. I know MacOS * machines display a GUI-like screen with a picture of a floppy disk and a flashing question mark if there are no bootable drives available, and I presume Darwin starts booting in some console-ish mode like other *nix'es. I'm not familiar enough with Macs to know, but I'm sure MacOS * and Darwin are radically different software architectures. If the firmware bootstrap process isn't compatible then MacOS 9 lovers are probably unable to buy a new Mac for it after 2002.
Second, if Apple wants to move to x86, they aren't going to be bringing Classic along with them.
I would love to have OS X on my x86'es. That leads me to believe it won't happen, though. It seems like whatever I want the most isn't offered since I want it because it benefits me way too much. Example: I could have OS X now but I'd have to buy a Mac, and I wouldn't be happy with the cheapest Mac (not enouch expandablility) so I'd buy one of the higher priced ones if I wanted to part with the money. If they made it available for x86 I'd buy a copy at $125 and probably not give Apple any more money for several years.
. . .the typical Mac user is not a geek and has become accustomed to his or her pre OSX box and could really care less about OSX. Who has time to spend learning it. . .?
How different is OS X from the older MacOSes from a user's point of view? I know about all the geek changes, but if a non tech savvy user gets up from a MacOS 9 machine and comes back from lunch to an OS X machine is he going to have any problems using it?
I haven't used either enough to know the answer to this, but I'd assume Apple worked their butts off to make the menus, dialogs and clicks all the same even if the architecture changed and the icons are prettier and the docking bar does ten different dances (or whatever it does).
I clicked a couple of icons on the first version of OS X when it was new in the store, and that was before I knew all the geek stuff about it. (Come to think of it I managed to crash it with my couple of clicks so I was wholly unimpressed at the time.) But recently I've been learning to use MacOS 7.5.3 in a Basilisk II emulator assuming that would help acclimate me to an OS X Quartz environment. (I'm coming from a very stong DOS/Windows background and fairly strong bash/Linux/X11 background.)Am I wrong?
. . .I think Apple should provide OSes for free. . .
//e and Apple //c, but that's another story.) I wanted one from time to time but never got one because I always got more bang for the buck upgrading my x86 hardware. But OS X has me excited and I recently started playing with Basilisk II Mac emulator and am playing around with the older MacOSes. I like them so far and would like to try MacOS 8.x. But I understand about 8.6 and higher are only usuable on PPC's and there are no PPC Mac emulators. I guess I'll have to go to the store to play with Jaguar. (I tought somebody spelled it "Jagwyre" but apparently it wasn't Apple since their site spells it "Jaguar".)
You're probably talking about current OSes, but you can download MacOS versions up to 7.5.3 from their site. (Apple ][ ProDOS, too.) The links I got (from 68k emulator sites) said they were free, but I never read any licensing terms so I don't know what kind of free they are. I suppose Apple provides them so users of old Macs can effect some self support. It wasn't clear to me if Apple cared or not if they were used on Apple hardware (i.e. not in emulators) or if you bought MacOS 6.x and downloaded 7.5.3 to upgrade.
When seeing this story I immeiately wondered if the older (than OS X, newer than MacOS 7.5.3) versions would be made downloadable soon, too. (You may see 8.x downloads now, but they are upgrades. AFAICT 7.5.3 is the highest version you can get to by downloading from their site if you don't already have MacOS.)
I never had a Mac. (Had an Apple ][+, Apple
There should be a slashdot "whack-a-mole" (whack-a-troll?) game where nerds pop up instead of moles and say things like Imagine a Beowulf cluster of these, and Yeah, but can you run linux on it.
:) "I promote Linux and Ogg Vorbis but use Windows and WMP for my MP3's. But I'm leet, really." <whack!>
There already is. It's here. But you get at least three hammers: the "-1 Troll", "-1 Flamebait" and "-1 Overrated" hammers. You have to sign up and then watch for a few weeks, however, before you can use the hammers, or at least that's how I understand it.
Just out of curiousity, and on an only remotely related note, how many people here have ever actually seen a beowulf cluster? I think they're like nerd unicorns.
I went to the Beowulf site once but didn't inhale^H^H^H^H^H^Hdownload.
Maybe you're right. Maybe The Beowulf Cluster is geekdom's response to all the broken flying car promises of Popular Mechanics.
On second thought, no one here's seen one because it doesn't improve Quake III fps and doesn't run on Windows.
There are problems that simply cannot be solved on networked clusters, precisely because of network latency.
I agree. A while back (when clustering were a hot IT discussion topic) I got interested in throwing a few PCs together an making a Beowulf cluster to learn how to do it, but I never did it because I couldn't find a use for it. The network delay and clustering overhead kills the benefit for any application I personally would use.
I suppose I could use the clustering to compile with GCC, but I'm not a developer and rarely compile. It makes more sense to reboot my fast Windows PC into my Debian partition and compile on that if I can't wait for the PII 333 dedicated Debian PC to compile.
I'm actually about to install a cluster at work in a week or so, but it's a cluster for redundancy, not speed. (Novell 6 2-node cluster w/SAN.)
That's funny? It's not even the first beowulf cluster comment on this story. jeez.
Damn. I checked before I posted, but someone submited after I checked and before I posted. Wouldn't have done it if I knew it wouldn't be the first.
Yeah, it's dumb anyway. But I posted it from work so I got paid for it.
It got quickly modded down after +1 Funny. Later got a +1 Underrated but the moderators drug it back down quickly. I'm in no danger of getting above- or below-average karma anytime soon.
Ooh, just got another +1 Funny on it. But I bet it will be modded down again in another minute.
Just to put something sort of on-topic, software OpenGL *could* be fast enough with this kind of memory bandwidtch if the video bandwidth was also high and the processor were fast enough. "Hardware" OpenGL is just a specialized CPU with specialized firmware and high-speed pathways from video memory to the CRT. But I doubt this machine was designed for Quake III or Doom III.
It's occured to me a few times that naming and calling Ogg Vorbis files ".og3's" (oh-gee-three) might lessen the unkown factor for the general public. "What's OG3? Oh, it's like a newer, better MP3. Better sound, less space. Try it. The new [insert hardware Ogg player here] plays them and your crappy old MP3's!"
.ogg just fine. My only MP3-only device is a DLink player that I rarely use.
In a way it's stupid, but I think it could help. It's akin to Athlon XP's "1800+" naming scheme; it's saying "you don't know us well, but we're like this well known product but a better value."
Besides, IIRC Vorbis is the codec and Ogg is a chunked/taggged file format that could be used for other audio codecs and even video, so using ".ogg" for Ogg Vorbis is shortsighted anyway. When Xiph finishes their viedo codec maybe it could be ".og4" or whatever number to match MPEG video's latest version (if they use Ogg file format for it).
By the way, I tried to explain Ogg Vorbis to my mom about a month ago. I said I'd like a player for it and told her that MP3 is covered by patents and charges for encoding and creating commercial decoders while Ogg Vorbis is patent and royalty free. She said "I don't care". She has her 20-gigabyte MP3 player with all her favorites ripped to MP3 (by my brother and I) on it. She doesn't care if it's MP3, Ogg, MiniDisc (what she used before this) or CD as long as it's convenient and she can listen to it at work. I think "the revolution" will have to come from the hardware and software vendors and not the typical consumer. The consumer will buy what they can listen to their music on. Ogg Vorbis isn't there yet.
While I'm a big fan of Ogg Vorbis I haven't reripped my CD's yet, even though I almost exclusively use software players that can play
Imagine a Beowulf cluster of these. . .
[ducks quickly]
. . .if the Linux community were. . . .
The question is, are we too individualistic to work together as a community?
Duh, yeah. That's pretty much what Linux is. What is the "Linux community", anyway? Some want it do dominate the commercial OS market, some have political views, and everyone has their own idea of the ideal UI. KDE, Gnome, Qt, GNUstep. Which one is best? Try to get a consensus answer from the Linux community on that. (You might get a consensus on bash, but then again there are probably csh and ksh lovers around, too; or are they all on SunOS?)
The Linux community isn't about consensus, but flexibilty, freedom and maybe some elitism. (Okay, Windows, MacOS, *BSD, SunOS, BeOS, Plan 9, OS/2, OpenVMS and AtheOS can be about elitism, too.)
You make many good points, but "The Linux Community" isn't going to all agree on The Right Way to do things. It will take a distribution to push a consistent look and feel, and then that distribution will get criticized for it by many.
For me, Linux has been the best learning tool for protocols and hardware that I've ever had. Way better than school and books in most cases. But there are too many problems for me to use it as my main client OS. I held a grudge against Apple Macs for years because they killed Apple II (way back; but it was the right business move), but I've been dabbling with MacOS emulators and reading up on OS X, and I'd really like to use OS X, but I have 5 x86'es and don't plan on spending the dough for an OS X capable Apple Mac real soon.
I can't stand his writing, and I'm not a fan of all his music, but I can't help but be impressed at the range of music styles he performs. So many artists these days have songs that all sound alike. He has quite a few different styles and sounds, and I respect that.
Thanks for the translation! I swear I couldn't read two paragraphs of that shortcut writing crap.
Actually I didn't get through the whole translation, either. It got too long winded, but it was a much smoother read.
Use a hands-free kit and some of the problem goes away. I don't have an easy answer with the first point I made, though.
:)
I have a really bad feeling about those hands-free kits, especially because they're touted as safe. I think the cellphone-while driving danger is mostly due to the driver's attention being off the road and on the conversation. How many of you normally drive with two hands on the wheel all the time, anyway? Granted, if you have a cellphone, drink or food in your hand you might have a brief conflict of interest in an emergency deciding whether to drop the offending object--since your brain is trained not to drop expensive items or food--to grab the steering wheel with your 2nd hand. But I think the illusion--no, the promoted "safety"--of hands free kits exacerbates the danger.
Do any of you turn your radio down or dim your interior lights when you're confused/lost while driving in a strange place? I do, because it helps me concentrate, and my brain isn't consciously involved with observing those things like it is with a phone conversation. (Well, most conversations. I guess sometimes on the phone with a woman I go into ignore mode and pay attention to what I'm doing otherwise.
I'm not perfect in avoiding phone calls while driving, but I don't make them and I try to pull over if I can when receiving them. But this is only for work; I don't even own a personal cell phone at the moment.
Maybe I can finally pickup an aeron chair and some nerf equipment.
Hey, there's a liquidation revenue increase idea: sell their dotcom toys on eBay as nostalgia/history. Several Slashdot commenters seem to think Napster is the martyr before a digital/resonable-price revolution in the music industry. Heck, even I felt compelled to save the "Napster was Here" page and "Ded Kitty" jpg to disk and I think the RIAA will crush all opposition.
What I really want, though, is that Pets.com sock puppet. That cracked me up the first couple of times I saw it. I loved it when he knocked on the door or you could see the big hairy arm. Just the first few times, though; it got old after the n-hundredth time.
Chapter 11 means still in business.
Chapter 7 means Ded Kitty. No more business. No more Napster. (Yes, that Napster link appears several more times in these comments. I saved it and the main page to disk; not sure why; maybe a bit of history.)
I wonder who drew the "Ded Kitty" jpg? Did they get hacked or does the webmaster have a cool sense of humor? Is there a webmaster? Can't be getting paid much.
This helps the California wine growers. They could then call their sparkling wine "champagne" without all the whining.
It would also cut back slightly on sappy US-produced romance films and instant coffee commercials. I see that as a benefit.
any other protected species on the pole?
Well, I don't think polar bears are protected, but they're so darn CUTE! Cuter than penguins, really.
Well, if you truly only care for your own life it isn't important as falling coconuts. But falling coconuts, bees and CowboyNeal are less likely to render humans extinct than a large asteroid over the next several million years.
Of course everybody doesn't individually need to worry about it, but it is important in the long term.
I have no idea if meteors are the biggest long term threat, though.