Actually I'm glad this group is getting together. Lindows and Big Head Mike are annoying as hell. The circumstances surrounding the botched Linux Desktop Summit were the last straw. The sooner that lame-ass marketdroid gets off the stage, the better.
The people involved with the Desktop Linux Consortium are all actively working to make the Linux desktop experience better. All Big Head Mike has going for him is an uncanny ability to get ink in the media. Maybe the media will devote their attention to the real pioneers in getting Linux onto the desktop now. Big Head Mike has the guns, but the Desktop Linux Consortium has the numbers now.
Hopefully Red Hat will get on board and make it a full house.
I totally, completely disagree. Some people actually use IRC for its initial purpose, which was to communicate.
Maybe the more IRC networks do this, there will be less netsplitting, less attacks by lamerz, and perhaps IRC will be more enjoyable again.
I have made some really good friends in IRC. Really. People whom I now know in real life. There used to be actual COMMUNITY on IRC. Now maybe it will be possible again. It is possible on some of the little IRC networks out there. I regularly hang out on one. Will I mention it here, on Slashdot? Naaah. Don't want trolls, crapflooders and other random creeps finding out about it.
BTW: to the guy who posted about the Open and Free Technology Community: does your ircd do hostmask obfuscation? If so, I am SO there. Freenode doesn't and should. Slashnet does, to its credit. I got hax0r3d on Freenode and avoid it now because it's too easy for lamers to get your IP address and attack you there.
I like Notes the way it's being used here...primarily for inter-office, intranet use. As far as a POP/SMTP client goes, I would rather be using Kmail (KmailCool looks very interesting) or Eudora. You don't use a screwdriver as the tool of choice to hammer a nail. Notes is not the proper tool for email, it's the proper tool for internal communications in a big company.
Now only if I could get the Lotus gang to hammer out a linux Notes client I could kiss the MS desktop goodbye forever.
Absolutely. I actually LIKE Notes. It's what LookOut should be but isn't. I use it at work. Maybe if there was a Linux client I could persuade someone to try out Linux as an alternative OS here. Then again, this is a big company and they LOVE Microsoft here.
...yourRAMnow before this news gets out and the price gets jacked up. This is real bad news indeed. Fscktards. Oh yeah...my.SIG is a great ironic comment on this whole affair, considering that RAMBUS prolly bought this verdict by smokin' Duh!bya's johnson.
Samsung's hard drives were crap. A friend of mine got three factory replacements before I got him a Quantum which he's using to this day. All three got bad clusters that would increase over time. Their optical drives have improved over the years, though, so it might be that their QC has improved and their HDs would show similar improvement.
Oddly enough, some of the best products Gibson has made recently has come out of their low-end line...we've got two Epiphone guitars here, a TV-Yellow LP Junior, and a "Mo-Baby" which is a semi-hollow guitar shaped like a Moderne with a Pignose-stylee amp inside. Both have really amazing sound when they're plugged in, and the "Mo-Baby" even sounds pretty damn good with the internal amp.
My husband teaches music, and he will often just bring the "Mo-Baby" to lessons...easier than lugging an amp.
At the time we grabbed those guitars, we spent a lot of time with other guitars in the store. Amazingly enough, the more expensive stuff didn't sound so hot next to them. I don't know what Epiphone is doing in their Korean and Chinese plants, but they are putting out some good guitars that just happen to be inexpensive too. Maybe the New Regime hasn't made it to Gibson's offshore plants yet.
It's not a fridge addiction folks...longterm Heroin usage can pooch out a person's face/body if they aren't experiencing Heroin-related anorexia. For another good example of this phenomenon, check out the later episodes of "Married With Children" during Christina Applegate's junkie phase. Ms. Applegate in that period had a face that made Margaret Cho's look positively chiseled.
Regardless of appearance problems, Jimmy Page still has the touch musically. The Plant/Page "No Quarter" album is great. Aging's also not been kind to Robert Plant either, but those pipes are unchanged. Glorious. Pity Page wasn't asked to compose the "LOTR" scores because I have a hardwired connection in my brain between the Tolkien books and Zeppelin. I can't help it, I'm a child of the '70s. They should have at least put "Battle Of Evermore" on the soundtrack, dammit!
As those connectors stand, they wouldn't do for this spec...those connectors are only certified for 10 base T. However, it should be trivial to improve them for Cat 5/5a/6 compliance. Spiffy.
Yes, but copyrights, in turn, must be rational. It is a pity that the Founders trusted the guh'mint enough to not codify into law what they meant by "limited times" in the Constitution. They had much more faith in human rationality than was warranted.
Copyright was not meant to last forever. Up until the extensions that have been rammed through Congress, Copyright lasted about a generation. Just enough to reward the Copyright owner for their efforts, not enough to keep Copyrighted works out of the Public Domain after a reasonable time. As it is, I will not live long enough to see "Rhapsody In Blue," "Brave New World" and "Little Caesar" enter the Public Domain.:P
Then again, you've probably heard this all before so I'll shut up.
I have been doing some thinking about the fact that "LaGrande"-type crypto co-processor circuitry will be available soon on CPUs from AMD, Intel, Transmeta and VIA. There might actually be an upside to this circuitry in a "free" (in this use of the word, unencumbered by DRM) OS.
How about using the crypto co-processor to offload encryption overhead? You take a performance hit when you use strong encryption like that in SSH, IPSec and so forth. If the math-intensive encryption/decryption could be off-loaded to a crypto co-processor, you could have nearly effortless crypto protection of communications. Imagine VPN tunneling without feeling like you've downshifted into second gear. Imagine SSH that is as fast as cleartext Telnet. Encrypted VNC that doesn't feel like you're back on an analog modem again.
I don't like DRM. I like having r00t on my machines. That's why, when I run Windows 2K, (and that's getting rarer and rarer between Linux and MacOS)I don't apply Service Pack 3. That's why I am totally against Palladium and other TCPA crap.
But if TCPA is supposed to have an "off" switch so that you can run non-DRM OSes like Linux (and since Intel and IBM are both pro-Linux most of the time, and much of TCPA was formulated by IBM and Intel, it's a likely feature) then perhaps we can harness the crypto co-processor for good applications like accelerating encrypted tunneling. When a software company like Microsoft gets a hold of this technology, of course, watch out for your cornhole. But maybe there is an upside buried in the midst of all of this.
If you think that 16-track recording and 16-channel mixing is going to give you results like Sony or WB puts out, you are deluded.
Pet Sounds, The Beach Boys
Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, The Beatles
Led Zeppelin, Led Zeppelin
That's only naming three. Sure, they were from the 1960s, but people are still trying to approach the wonderful sound of those albums today. Sgt. Pepper was recorded on a FOUR TRACK, buddy. That's the truth.
Another thing: this 16 track machine records digitally, so there is no generational loss when bouncing from track to track. A 16-track hard disk recording portastudio like that one could allow for some amazingly complex mixes.
I chose to point out the self-contained unit rather than a PC or Mac running ProTools or Vegas or whatever because anyone with even the slightest bit of studio experience would hit the ground running with it. The digital audio workstation programs require a bit of a learning curve for non-geeks. Like my husband, who is a musician but not a computer geek, for instance.
The reason why DAT got neutered in the US was that the RIAA feared the possibility of a digital portastudio. They didn't think of the potential of hard disk recording, flash RAM recording, and the CD-RW. When the RIAA whines about "piracy," translate it as "we don't want indie musicians to be able to put out pro-quality music." That's the REAL issue, folks. The Five Families of the Record Industry don't want competition from the Great Unwashed. Surprise! It's out there.
24-track digital multi-track recorder($3,500) ; 40-channel mixer/sound board($6,000) ; studio musicians ($???/hour) ; booth construction (ca. $10,000) ; sundries such as cables, media, beer, etc. ($1,000)
This is just to record. Now each artist has to remaster their own music (a very technically difficult job for which people study years).
The same device I linked to will create a legal Red Book Audio master you can take to a pressing plant to get pressed CDs made for it.
Then they have to shop around for a place to stamp CDs for them.
I'm in Los Angeles, this is child's play. This is only one example of places which will produce industry-quality CDs for $1,100 per thousand, with quantity discounts and repeat order discounts likely. And these places will do business with you over the Internet even if you live in West Bumblefsck, RFD.
They ask for CMYK artwork already transferred to film masters. This means finding some guy with Photoshop and a Service Bureau. Again, child's play in LA and most big cities.
All you add is talent...something which is not trivial, true, but if you have it, you have it.
The fact is that artists as renowned as Prince have been able to make far more money selling their music online than they have working on the Record Industry Plantation. The Do It Yourself spirit is alive and well, you just have to diga little.
You don't have to be Kreskin to predict that the Music Industry's dying. It's not a bad thing, though. I look forward to dancing on its grave.
Nobody has mentioned this very obvious problem: almost all of these Cybercafes/Baaaangs/Whatevers are very Windows-centric. Most 31337 64m3rz run XP on their "chopped and lowered" rigs. The possibility for transmitting viruses, trojans and other random malware is a hideously strong one.
I am not sure if HLC/S runs on Linux yet or not. However, UT runs on Linux and so does Quake. All the various servers run on free *NIXen. But you really don't see alternative OSes at Cybercafes.
And there is the small problem of wannabe hoodlums starting shit at the Cybercafes. This is so absurd it's not even funny. California is going to seriously crack down on anything resembling a Cybercafe this legislative session. Thanks a lot, assholes.
So with all these concerns, I would rather tote my box to a LAN party amongst friends rather than a Cybercafe full of strangers.
I built a PC that may very well end up being a PVR-type device in this case. It requires a SFX-S power supply, though, which limits you to a few anemic power supplies, the best with a wattage of 185W. You can get good ones at PC Power And Cooling. I didn't trust the no-name PS that came with the case.
If you limit yourself to PIII mATX or EPIA-M motherboards, you will be able to build a nice TiVo-like device in it. However, you'll have to live with the beige color scheme, unless you want to go Yoshi on its @$$ and paint it up purdy:)...
However, Microsoft "Embraced and Extended" RTF format, to the point where an RTF created in ClarisWorks, aka AppleWorks, is gibberish to MS Office and vice/versa. RTF was created by Apple as part of the original Macintosh effort.
Alas, only.PDF works as a somewhat universal document format. And that's read-only unless you are either running Linux/MacOS X/*BSD or have Acrobat on the Windows/Classic MacOS side.
This is absolutely absurd. Nobody's going to be able to fork Linux and make it proprietary, not IBM, not anyone.
If IBM, or Intel, for that matter, tweaked the kernel source in such a way that gcc was prevented from compiling it, there is nothing to stop another group of people from excising IBM or Intel's code and optimizing it to compile under gcc again.
Besides, IBM and/or Intel would be nice big targets for a GPL violation lawsuit if they tried something like that.
Imagine this: Visual Basic, the OS! Yeah, I know VB's not entirely platform independent. But imagine what a beastly trainwreck of an OS that would be! [shudder]
It was not written for geeks, it was intended to be a great article to print out and give to the PHB. It's short and to the point...Executive Summary-style.
It hasn't been a software issue for months, but rather a hardware issue. It's quite easy to build a GUI via software, but quite another to build a nice, clean hardware interface.
Check this out: http://www.spartantech.com/product.asp?m1=pw&pid=S HSN41G2. This is the new Shuttle XPC based on the NVidia NForce2 chipset. Just add CPU, RAM, vidcap card and drives, and you are set. The capture card MythTV is based on is dirt cheap. The NForce2 basically has a GeForce 4 MX 440 as part of the package. If you want to game with this, get a GF4Ti 4200, 4600 if you want a real monster video card. This barebones box has video out and even Firewire.
It might be more expensive than a TiVo, but you can DO MORE with it. And it's about the size of a shoebox and weighs about 10 pounds. Take the ride.
Slashdot Mirror
Nail. Hammer. Direct hit! W00t!
Actually I'm glad this group is getting together. Lindows and Big Head Mike are annoying as hell. The circumstances surrounding the botched Linux Desktop Summit were the last straw. The sooner that lame-ass marketdroid gets off the stage, the better.
The people involved with the Desktop Linux Consortium are all actively working to make the Linux desktop experience better. All Big Head Mike has going for him is an uncanny ability to get ink in the media. Maybe the media will devote their attention to the real pioneers in getting Linux onto the desktop now. Big Head Mike has the guns, but the Desktop Linux Consortium has the numbers now.
Hopefully Red Hat will get on board and make it a full house.
I totally, completely disagree. Some people actually use IRC for its initial purpose, which was to communicate.
Maybe the more IRC networks do this, there will be less netsplitting, less attacks by lamerz, and perhaps IRC will be more enjoyable again.
I have made some really good friends in IRC. Really. People whom I now know in real life. There used to be actual COMMUNITY on IRC. Now maybe it will be possible again. It is possible on some of the little IRC networks out there. I regularly hang out on one. Will I mention it here, on Slashdot? Naaah. Don't want trolls, crapflooders and other random creeps finding out about it.
BTW: to the guy who posted about the Open and Free Technology Community: does your ircd do hostmask obfuscation? If so, I am SO there. Freenode doesn't and should. Slashnet does, to its credit. I got hax0r3d on Freenode and avoid it now because it's too easy for lamers to get your IP address and attack you there.
I like Notes the way it's being used here...primarily for inter-office, intranet use. As far as a POP/SMTP client goes, I would rather be using Kmail (KmailCool looks very interesting) or Eudora. You don't use a screwdriver as the tool of choice to hammer a nail. Notes is not the proper tool for email, it's the proper tool for internal communications in a big company.
Absolutely. I actually LIKE Notes. It's what LookOut should be but isn't. I use it at work. Maybe if there was a Linux client I could persuade someone to try out Linux as an alternative OS here. Then again, this is a big company and they LOVE Microsoft here.
...your RAM now before this news gets out and the price gets jacked up. This is real bad news indeed. Fscktards. Oh yeah...my .SIG is a great ironic comment on this whole affair, considering that RAMBUS prolly bought this verdict by smokin' Duh!bya's johnson.
Samsung's hard drives were crap. A friend of mine got three factory replacements before I got him a Quantum which he's using to this day. All three got bad clusters that would increase over time. Their optical drives have improved over the years, though, so it might be that their QC has improved and their HDs would show similar improvement.
Oddly enough, some of the best products Gibson has made recently has come out of their low-end line...we've got two Epiphone guitars here, a TV-Yellow LP Junior, and a "Mo-Baby" which is a semi-hollow guitar shaped like a Moderne with a Pignose-stylee amp inside. Both have really amazing sound when they're plugged in, and the "Mo-Baby" even sounds pretty damn good with the internal amp.
My husband teaches music, and he will often just bring the "Mo-Baby" to lessons...easier than lugging an amp.
At the time we grabbed those guitars, we spent a lot of time with other guitars in the store. Amazingly enough, the more expensive stuff didn't sound so hot next to them. I don't know what Epiphone is doing in their Korean and Chinese plants, but they are putting out some good guitars that just happen to be inexpensive too. Maybe the New Regime hasn't made it to Gibson's offshore plants yet.
It's not a fridge addiction folks...longterm Heroin usage can pooch out a person's face/body if they aren't experiencing Heroin-related anorexia. For another good example of this phenomenon, check out the later episodes of "Married With Children" during Christina Applegate's junkie phase. Ms. Applegate in that period had a face that made Margaret Cho's look positively chiseled.
Regardless of appearance problems, Jimmy Page still has the touch musically. The Plant/Page "No Quarter" album is great. Aging's also not been kind to Robert Plant either, but those pipes are unchanged. Glorious. Pity Page wasn't asked to compose the "LOTR" scores because I have a hardwired connection in my brain between the Tolkien books and Zeppelin. I can't help it, I'm a child of the '70s. They should have at least put "Battle Of Evermore" on the soundtrack, dammit!
As those connectors stand, they wouldn't do for this spec...those connectors are only certified for 10 base T. However, it should be trivial to improve them for Cat 5/5a/6 compliance. Spiffy.
Yes, but copyrights, in turn, must be rational. It is a pity that the Founders trusted the guh'mint enough to not codify into law what they meant by "limited times" in the Constitution. They had much more faith in human rationality than was warranted.
:P
Copyright was not meant to last forever. Up until the extensions that have been rammed through Congress, Copyright lasted about a generation. Just enough to reward the Copyright owner for their efforts, not enough to keep Copyrighted works out of the Public Domain after a reasonable time. As it is, I will not live long enough to see "Rhapsody In Blue," "Brave New World" and "Little Caesar" enter the Public Domain.
Then again, you've probably heard this all before so I'll shut up.
CORPORATE RADIO SUCKS, try some alternatives sometime. You might be pleasantly surprised.
I have been doing some thinking about the fact that "LaGrande"-type crypto co-processor circuitry will be available soon on CPUs from AMD, Intel, Transmeta and VIA. There might actually be an upside to this circuitry in a "free" (in this use of the word, unencumbered by DRM) OS.
How about using the crypto co-processor to offload encryption overhead? You take a performance hit when you use strong encryption like that in SSH, IPSec and so forth. If the math-intensive encryption/decryption could be off-loaded to a crypto co-processor, you could have nearly effortless crypto protection of communications. Imagine VPN tunneling without feeling like you've downshifted into second gear. Imagine SSH that is as fast as cleartext Telnet. Encrypted VNC that doesn't feel like you're back on an analog modem again.
I don't like DRM. I like having r00t on my machines. That's why, when I run Windows 2K, (and that's getting rarer and rarer between Linux and MacOS)I don't apply Service Pack 3. That's why I am totally against Palladium and other TCPA crap.
But if TCPA is supposed to have an "off" switch so that you can run non-DRM OSes like Linux (and since Intel and IBM are both pro-Linux most of the time, and much of TCPA was formulated by IBM and Intel, it's a likely feature) then perhaps we can harness the crypto co-processor for good applications like accelerating encrypted tunneling. When a software company like Microsoft gets a hold of this technology, of course, watch out for your cornhole. But maybe there is an upside buried in the midst of all of this.
That's only naming three. Sure, they were from the 1960s, but people are still trying to approach the wonderful sound of those albums today. Sgt. Pepper was recorded on a FOUR TRACK, buddy. That's the truth.
Another thing: this 16 track machine records digitally, so there is no generational loss when bouncing from track to track. A 16-track hard disk recording portastudio like that one could allow for some amazingly complex mixes.
I chose to point out the self-contained unit rather than a PC or Mac running ProTools or Vegas or whatever because anyone with even the slightest bit of studio experience would hit the ground running with it. The digital audio workstation programs require a bit of a learning curve for non-geeks. Like my husband, who is a musician but not a computer geek, for instance.
The reason why DAT got neutered in the US was that the RIAA feared the possibility of a digital portastudio. They didn't think of the potential of hard disk recording, flash RAM recording, and the CD-RW. When the RIAA whines about "piracy," translate it as "we don't want indie musicians to be able to put out pro-quality music." That's the REAL issue, folks. The Five Families of the Record Industry don't want competition from the Great Unwashed. Surprise! It's out there.
24-track digital multi-track recorder($3,500) ; 40-channel mixer/sound board($6,000) ; studio musicians ($???/hour) ; booth construction (ca. $10,000) ; sundries such as cables, media, beer, etc. ($1,000)
Ok, here's a solution to that which lists for less than $2K and which Sam Ash is selling for less than $1K.
This is just to record. Now each artist has to remaster their own music (a very technically difficult job for which people study years).
The same device I linked to will create a legal Red Book Audio master you can take to a pressing plant to get pressed CDs made for it.
Then they have to shop around for a place to stamp CDs for them.
I'm in Los Angeles, this is child's play. This is only one example of places which will produce industry-quality CDs for $1,100 per thousand, with quantity discounts and repeat order discounts likely. And these places will do business with you over the Internet even if you live in West Bumblefsck, RFD.
They ask for CMYK artwork already transferred to film masters. This means finding some guy with Photoshop and a Service Bureau. Again, child's play in LA and most big cities.
All you add is talent...something which is not trivial, true, but if you have it, you have it.
The fact is that artists as renowned as Prince have been able to make far more money selling their music online than they have working on the Record Industry Plantation. The Do It Yourself spirit is alive and well, you just have to dig a little.
You don't have to be Kreskin to predict that the Music Industry's dying. It's not a bad thing, though. I look forward to dancing on its grave.
Nobody has mentioned this very obvious problem: almost all of these Cybercafes/Baaaangs/Whatevers are very Windows-centric. Most 31337 64m3rz run XP on their "chopped and lowered" rigs. The possibility for transmitting viruses, trojans and other random malware is a hideously strong one.
I am not sure if HLC/S runs on Linux yet or not. However, UT runs on Linux and so does Quake. All the various servers run on free *NIXen. But you really don't see alternative OSes at Cybercafes.
And there is the small problem of wannabe hoodlums starting shit at the Cybercafes. This is so absurd it's not even funny. California is going to seriously crack down on anything resembling a Cybercafe this legislative session. Thanks a lot, assholes.
So with all these concerns, I would rather tote my box to a LAN party amongst friends rather than a Cybercafe full of strangers.
http://www.a-top.com/at777.htm.
I built a PC that may very well end up being a PVR-type device in this case. It requires a SFX-S power supply, though, which limits you to a few anemic power supplies, the best with a wattage of 185W. You can get good ones at PC Power And Cooling. I didn't trust the no-name PS that came with the case.
If you limit yourself to PIII mATX or EPIA-M motherboards, you will be able to build a nice TiVo-like device in it. However, you'll have to live with the beige color scheme, unless you want to go Yoshi on its @$$ and paint it up purdy :) ...
Heh. Lawyers are tools. Truer words have never been said.
However, Microsoft "Embraced and Extended" RTF format, to the point where an RTF created in ClarisWorks, aka AppleWorks, is gibberish to MS Office and vice/versa. RTF was created by Apple as part of the original Macintosh effort.
.PDF works as a somewhat universal document format. And that's read-only unless you are either running Linux/MacOS X/*BSD or have Acrobat on the Windows/Classic MacOS side.
Alas, only
What, you mean like THIS?
O brave new world, that hath such people in it!
No, Intellivision was made by Mattel.
This is absolutely absurd. Nobody's going to be able to fork Linux and make it proprietary, not IBM, not anyone.
If IBM, or Intel, for that matter, tweaked the kernel source in such a way that gcc was prevented from compiling it, there is nothing to stop another group of people from excising IBM or Intel's code and optimizing it to compile under gcc again.
Besides, IBM and/or Intel would be nice big targets for a GPL violation lawsuit if they tried something like that.
Imagine this: Visual Basic, the OS! Yeah, I know VB's not entirely platform independent. But imagine what a beastly trainwreck of an OS that would be! [shudder]
It was not written for geeks, it was intended to be a great article to print out and give to the PHB. It's short and to the point...Executive Summary-style.
Check this out:S HSN41G2. This is the new Shuttle XPC based on the NVidia NForce2 chipset. Just add CPU, RAM, vidcap card and drives, and you are set. The capture card MythTV is based on is dirt cheap. The NForce2 basically has a GeForce 4 MX 440 as part of the package. If you want to game with this, get a GF4Ti 4200, 4600 if you want a real monster video card. This barebones box has video out and even Firewire.
http://www.spartantech.com/product.asp?m1=pw&pid=
It might be more expensive than a TiVo, but you can DO MORE with it. And it's about the size of a shoebox and weighs about 10 pounds. Take the ride.
Turn of the 20th Century: Thomas Alva Edison
Turn of the 21st Century: William Gates III
Yeah, that's about right...