Re:like How to Promote Your Business on the Intern
on
Joel On Software
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· Score: 0, Offtopic
I guess that's why you're pimping it here on Slashdot, huh.
My father used to say "If you don't toot your own horn, no one else will toot your horn for you."
Sorry you didn't find anything interesting, but I'll be writing several more articles in the coming year, so please bookmark it and check back from time to time.
GoingWare's Bag of Programming Tricks
on
Joel On Software
·
· Score: 1, Offtopic
I've been publishing GoingWare's Bag of Programming Tricks on my website for several years. I don't get as much time to write as Joel does, but there should be some articles there that would be interesting and useful to you.
That looks like just what I need, but I'm wanting to start recording my piano music again, and I'd like to use Agnula to do that - "A GNU/Linux Audio distribution".
Does the m-audio transit work with Linux? I looked for a linux driver on their support page and couldn't find any.
I've been thinking of getting a Creative Audigy NX USB "sound card". It's not really a sound card, but is isolated from the electrical noise because it's an external unit that connects via USB.
But I haven't been able to determine if it works with Linux. Do you know about it?
The best software in the world won't help the noise I've heard in every x86 PC I've ever listened to.
Electromagnetic noise generated by the digital circuits and picked up in the analog circuitry of the sound card, making an audible buzzing and crackling sound that is most obvious when listening to what should be silence, but is often noticable in a lot of music.
I have a really nice pair of Grado Labs headphones and can't stand listening to music on my PC.
Fortunately I have three macintoshes, which all have better audio engineering. Despite posting this message from a win2k PC, I'm listening to Radio Paradise on iTunes running on my Blue & White G3 Mac.
Prefer Linux? Linux sounds best when run on Apple hardware. I also use XMMS sometimes, on an ancient Power Macintosh 8500 that runs Debian Sarge.
Edwards based her book on the results of experiments performed by Roger Sperry of Caltech. Sperry's experiments used people whose brains had been severed in the middle to treat severe epilepsy. By studying how these "split-brain" patients reacted to stimuli sent via the sense organs to one side of the brain or the other, Sperry was able to deduce that our artistic ability is centered in the right hemisphere of the brain, while our logical and verbal ability comes from the left.
Most slashdotters are heavily left-brained people. But artists are right brained people. To create artwork for your software, you have to learn to think with your right hemisphere.
Edwards says in her book that anyone who can learn to think in what she calls "R-Mode" can learn to draw. The earlier lessons in her book focus on stimulating that sort of thought while quieting the interference from the left hemisphere.
She teaches drawing with pencil and paper, but once you've completed the exercises in her book I'm sure you will have a much easier time using computer graphics applications.
The right hemisphere of the brain is responsible for more than just visual art. At the same time as I learned to draw from Drawing on the Right I taught myself to play the piano. In 1994 I borrowed some recording equipment from a friend and recorded my album Geometric Visions, which you can download in MP3 format. (Ogg as soon as I get off my lazy arse and encode it.)
iRATE radio is a free (GPL) mp3 downloader and player. iRATE's central database stores the URLs of about 50,000 music tracks that are made freely available by their copyright holders. Many unsigned and independent artists make such music available as a way to promote themselves.
When you download a track, you rate it according to your tastes. iRATE's server then compares your ratings to those of other people, and sends you music you're likely to enjoy, while avoiding music you will dislike. This process is known as "collaborative filtering".
iRATE is nearing its 0.4 release, which will be much improved over its current 0.3 release. If you'd like to contribute to its development, visit iRATE's sourceforge page.
It is within your power to make the sharing of files - any file - completely legal. While the Constitution permits Congress to enact copyright laws, it doesn't actually require it to do so. Copyright is not a constitutional right like free speech is.
In
Change the Law I discuss the constitutional basis of copyright law in the US, and suggests a number of steps you can take to bring about much needed copyright reform. The steps range from speaking out to practicing civil disobedience.
There are over sixty million people using p2p networks in the US. That's more than voted for George Bush in 2000. That's enough people to bring about change, if you can work together effectively.
My article has been read by over six hundred thousand people so far but I'd like to see all sixty million American p2p users read it by the time of the 2006 midterm elections. I'd like to see copyright reform become a hotbutton issue in the next election.
If you're sad that Kerry lost November 2nd, consider that Kerry voted for the DMCA. Both the Democratic and Republican parties are on the side of the RIAA and MPAA. They're on the side of the big-money donors after all. That needs to change.
There are very few elected officials who feel that the DMCA is any sort of problem. They think it's the solution. Our elected officials view people who share files as the problem.
If you feel as I do that more people need to read my article, you can help by linking to it from your website, weblog or from message boards.
I bicycle ten miles every day, and every other day I go to the gym, work out on the step machine for twenty minutes, and then lift weights for an hour.
I just feel the need to write right now. Something has gone terribly wrong with the country I was raised to love. The good things that America stands for are being trampled into the dirt by those charged with the burden of protecting them.
I was raised to be a patriotic American. I grew up a military brat - my father was a proud officer of the United States Navy, who served in the Vietnam War. When I was young, I was always told that my father was fighting to preserve the freedoms that were guaranteed us by the United States Constitution.
In the first grade, I attended a school run by the U.S. Navy in Gaeta, Italy, where my father was stationed aboard the U.S.S. Springfield. Each day when we started school we sang patriotic songs and said the Pledge of Allegiance. We were told that America stood for freedom and democracy and justice.
What's it gonna be like if the rest of the world gets together and decides that the USA is a danger to civilization, and has to take up arms to put it back in its place?
Considering that the US still has thousands of nuclear weapons, and more conventional arms than the whole rest of the world combined, that is a terrible thought to contemplate.
I want all of you to get the word out on this atrocity by linking to indymedia.it's press release from your website, weblog, or other message boards. Here's the URL:
Except that I used CSS colors to make it stand out more.
Every US voter should know about this, and understand why they should be outraged about it, before the election happens.
It is within our power to put a stop to this nonsense. But to do that, we have to tell the world, and then we have to vote that war criminal out of office November 2nd.
David Politzer's name sure sounded familiar to me. Then I remembered:
Back when I was at CalTech in the early 80's (studying physics myself), a friend named Scott Lewicki, and his friend Doug Priest got David Politzer to record a rap song called The Simple Harmonic Oscillator Rap.
Google doesn't find me an MP3 of it, but the lyrics are in
this PDF document. Search in the text of the document for "Politzer" and you'll find the lyrics.
I want to talk today about things that shake,
And I hope my words aren't too opaque.
One degree of freedom moving to and fro,
Just how it moves, we'd like to know.
We can represent all kinds of things
By a single mass between ideal springs.
Each spring's connected to a wall.
So the outer ends don't move at all.
If a musician makes one of his songs available for download, and also if he asserts copyright over it, then it's his responsibility to make sure he has the right to do so.
I know what you mean, it's hard to tell whether the songwriter has given permission to the musician to make the track available, but it's up to the musician to get that permission.
I feel pretty comfortable in saying that iRATE's developers don't have anything to worry about in helping others find the tracks that musicians have already posted. All the music download sites I listed appear to me to be legit.
You can enjoy free music without getting in trouble by downloading the legal music many unsigned and independent artists provide as a way to promote themselves.
The easiest way to do it is with iRATE radio. It downloads tracks from music hosting services like the Internet Underground Music Archive, using a collaborative filtering system to select the tracks you're most likely to enjoy.
The client fetches the URLs of a few tracks from iRATE's central database server, then downloads them directly from the servers where the musicians have them hosted. When you listen to the new tracks, you rate them according to how much you like and dislike them. The next time iRATE contacts the server, it submits your ratings, which are then correllated with the ratings of other users to find the best tracks for you.
Basically, if you and I enjoy the same kind of music, iRATE will fetch for you all the same music I like. If we disagree on our taste in music, iRATE will avoid downloading for you the music I enjoy.
iRATE radio is free software, licensed under the GNU GPL. A new version, 0.4, is expected to be released within a couple weeks. You can help with testing if you try out the unstable builds and report bugs using SourceForge's bug tracking system.
I want every p2p network user to read my article. If you also feel that more people should read it, you can help by linking to it from your website, weblog, or from message boards.
It's not the responsiblity of the content distributors to enforce copyright laws.
Actually, it is specifically the content distributors responsibility to enforce copyright laws. Copyright infringement is a civil offense, which means that it is the responsibility of the copyright holder to sue the infringer in civil court.
The police, FBI, etc. have nothing to do with it.
The only assistance the government ordinarily provides to help with copyright enforcement is to provide a court and a judge to hear the case, and to enforce collection of the judgement if the copyright holder wins the case.
It's important that it stay that way. Not just because we don't want kids going to jail for something they only would have had to pay money for (if they lost a lawsuit), but because the copyright holders are trying to shift the expense of enforcing their copyrights from themselves to the unsuspecting public.
It's expensive to sue somebody. You have to pay for the use of the court, pay your attorneys, pay for discovery process and so on. If you sue and lose, you might be required to pay the defendant's legal fees.
But if copyright infringement can be criminalized, this cost will be born by the taxpayer, and the movie and record industry corporations (who are by no means short of cash) will not have to pay a dime to have their copyrights enforced. You and I will pay, through are taxes.
Not just to pay for the police, FBI and the courts, but to pay for the imprisonment of the convicted copyright infringers. Do you know how much is costs to keep someone in prison, even for just a year?
Downhill Battle's Save Betamax campaign is organizing a mass call in today to oppose the INDUCE Act, which would reverse the Supreme Court's Betamax decision which held that Sony was not liable for copyright infringement because it manufactured videocassette recorders.
If the INDUCE Act becomes law, those who publish filesharing software will become liable for the copyright infringement committed by the users of the software, even if the publishers themselves did not infringe anyone's copyright.
This would include not only the publishers of commercial software, but of open source filesharing software like eMule and gtk-gnutella.
What you do at the call in page is enter your name, email address and zip code. The EFF will email you the phone numbers of both your Senators, as well as some suggestions for how to talk to the staff member who answers the phone.
This comment helpfully identifies the bill as the "Piracy Deterrence and Education of 2004".
Now what I want you to do is go to www.congress.org and enter your zip code in the box under where it says "Write Elected Officials". It will show President Bush, your two Senators, and your House Representative.
Click the "info" link below each of your Senator's names to get their phone number and call it. When someone answers, politely give your name, and say you're calling because you want the senator to oppose the Piracy Deterrence and Education Act of 2004.
I did this just now, calling the offices of Senators Snowe and Collins from Maine. The staffers who answered asked me to repeat the name of the bill slowly so they could write it down, and then asked for my address.
I live in Canada, but am a Maine voter (where I lived before I moved). I explained that to them before giving them my address here in Canada. Just to point out you still can call your Senator if you live in a foreign country.
In a week or two they'll send you a reply letter on Senate stationery, suitable for framing.
Slashdot Mirror
Something like fifty articles, essays, rants and scrawls.
The author of DrunkenBlog says of Living with Schizoaffective Disorder " It's the kind of thing that reminds you of why the web is cool."
Sorry you didn't find anything interesting, but I'll be writing several more articles in the coming year, so please bookmark it and check back from time to time.
It is Google's #1 hit for programming tricks.
I have quite a wide range of interests, so the articles aren't really just about programming anymore.
Does the m-audio transit work with Linux? I looked for a linux driver on their support page and couldn't find any.
Thanks!
I've been thinking of getting a Creative Audigy NX USB "sound card". It's not really a sound card, but is isolated from the electrical noise because it's an external unit that connects via USB.
But I haven't been able to determine if it works with Linux. Do you know about it?
Electromagnetic noise generated by the digital circuits and picked up in the analog circuitry of the sound card, making an audible buzzing and crackling sound that is most obvious when listening to what should be silence, but is often noticable in a lot of music.
I have a really nice pair of Grado Labs headphones and can't stand listening to music on my PC.
Fortunately I have three macintoshes, which all have better audio engineering. Despite posting this message from a win2k PC, I'm listening to Radio Paradise on iTunes running on my Blue & White G3 Mac.
Prefer Linux? Linux sounds best when run on Apple hardware. I also use XMMS sometimes, on an ancient Power Macintosh 8500 that runs Debian Sarge.
Who's James Lipton?
Edwards based her book on the results of experiments performed by Roger Sperry of Caltech. Sperry's experiments used people whose brains had been severed in the middle to treat severe epilepsy. By studying how these "split-brain" patients reacted to stimuli sent via the sense organs to one side of the brain or the other, Sperry was able to deduce that our artistic ability is centered in the right hemisphere of the brain, while our logical and verbal ability comes from the left.
Most slashdotters are heavily left-brained people. But artists are right brained people. To create artwork for your software, you have to learn to think with your right hemisphere.
Edwards says in her book that anyone who can learn to think in what she calls "R-Mode" can learn to draw. The earlier lessons in her book focus on stimulating that sort of thought while quieting the interference from the left hemisphere.
She teaches drawing with pencil and paper, but once you've completed the exercises in her book I'm sure you will have a much easier time using computer graphics applications.
The right hemisphere of the brain is responsible for more than just visual art. At the same time as I learned to draw from Drawing on the Right I taught myself to play the piano. In 1994 I borrowed some recording equipment from a friend and recorded my album Geometric Visions, which you can download in MP3 format. (Ogg as soon as I get off my lazy arse and encode it.)
When you download a track, you rate it according to your tastes. iRATE's server then compares your ratings to those of other people, and sends you music you're likely to enjoy, while avoiding music you will dislike. This process is known as "collaborative filtering".
iRATE is nearing its 0.4 release, which will be much improved over its current 0.3 release. If you'd like to contribute to its development, visit iRATE's sourceforge page.
In Change the Law I discuss the constitutional basis of copyright law in the US, and suggests a number of steps you can take to bring about much needed copyright reform. The steps range from speaking out to practicing civil disobedience.
There are over sixty million people using p2p networks in the US. That's more than voted for George Bush in 2000. That's enough people to bring about change, if you can work together effectively.
My article has been read by over six hundred thousand people so far but I'd like to see all sixty million American p2p users read it by the time of the 2006 midterm elections. I'd like to see copyright reform become a hotbutton issue in the next election.
If you're sad that Kerry lost November 2nd, consider that Kerry voted for the DMCA. Both the Democratic and Republican parties are on the side of the RIAA and MPAA. They're on the side of the big-money donors after all. That needs to change.
There are very few elected officials who feel that the DMCA is any sort of problem. They think it's the solution. Our elected officials view people who share files as the problem.
If you feel as I do that more people need to read my article, you can help by linking to it from your website, weblog or from message boards.
-
How Overseas US Citizens Can Register to Vote
Unfortunately its too late to register for most states, but if you register now, you'll still be registered in 2006.You get off your lazy ass, lardbucket.
Followup question: if he doesn't step down, what will the military do?
- http://www.indymedia.org/
But they say lots of the local indymedia sites are still down.-
Is This the America I Love?
From the essay:Considering that the US still has thousands of nuclear weapons, and more conventional arms than the whole rest of the world combined, that is a terrible thought to contemplate.
-
http://www.indymedia.it/press_release_en.html (English)
I just put a prominent link up at the top of this page of mine which is getting 5000 hits a day lately. Here's how my link looks: Except that I used CSS colors to make it stand out more.Every US voter should know about this, and understand why they should be outraged about it, before the election happens.
It is within our power to put a stop to this nonsense. But to do that, we have to tell the world, and then we have to vote that war criminal out of office November 2nd.
Back when I was at CalTech in the early 80's (studying physics myself), a friend named Scott Lewicki, and his friend Doug Priest got David Politzer to record a rap song called The Simple Harmonic Oscillator Rap.
Google doesn't find me an MP3 of it, but the lyrics are in this PDF document. Search in the text of the document for "Politzer" and you'll find the lyrics.
You can purchase it on a CD called Physics Pholk Songs for $15.00.
Here's the first verse:
Enjoy!I know what you mean, it's hard to tell whether the songwriter has given permission to the musician to make the track available, but it's up to the musician to get that permission.
I feel pretty comfortable in saying that iRATE's developers don't have anything to worry about in helping others find the tracks that musicians have already posted. All the music download sites I listed appear to me to be legit.
The easiest way to do it is with iRATE radio. It downloads tracks from music hosting services like the Internet Underground Music Archive, using a collaborative filtering system to select the tracks you're most likely to enjoy.
The client fetches the URLs of a few tracks from iRATE's central database server, then downloads them directly from the servers where the musicians have them hosted. When you listen to the new tracks, you rate them according to how much you like and dislike them. The next time iRATE contacts the server, it submits your ratings, which are then correllated with the ratings of other users to find the best tracks for you.
Basically, if you and I enjoy the same kind of music, iRATE will fetch for you all the same music I like. If we disagree on our taste in music, iRATE will avoid downloading for you the music I enjoy.
iRATE radio is free software, licensed under the GNU GPL. A new version, 0.4, is expected to be released within a couple weeks. You can help with testing if you try out the unstable builds and report bugs using SourceForge's bug tracking system.
I discuss iRATE and many other ways to download music free and legally in my article Links to Tens of Thousands of Legal Music Downloads.
I want every p2p network user to read my article. If you also feel that more people should read it, you can help by linking to it from your website, weblog, or from message boards.
Thank you for your attention.
The police, FBI, etc. have nothing to do with it.
The only assistance the government ordinarily provides to help with copyright enforcement is to provide a court and a judge to hear the case, and to enforce collection of the judgement if the copyright holder wins the case.
It's important that it stay that way. Not just because we don't want kids going to jail for something they only would have had to pay money for (if they lost a lawsuit), but because the copyright holders are trying to shift the expense of enforcing their copyrights from themselves to the unsuspecting public.
It's expensive to sue somebody. You have to pay for the use of the court, pay your attorneys, pay for discovery process and so on. If you sue and lose, you might be required to pay the defendant's legal fees.
But if copyright infringement can be criminalized, this cost will be born by the taxpayer, and the movie and record industry corporations (who are by no means short of cash) will not have to pay a dime to have their copyrights enforced. You and I will pay, through are taxes.
Not just to pay for the police, FBI and the courts, but to pay for the imprisonment of the convicted copyright infringers. Do you know how much is costs to keep someone in prison, even for just a year?
We must stop this from happening.
If the INDUCE Act becomes law, those who publish filesharing software will become liable for the copyright infringement committed by the users of the software, even if the publishers themselves did not infringe anyone's copyright.
This would include not only the publishers of commercial software, but of open source filesharing software like eMule and gtk-gnutella.
What you do at the call in page is enter your name, email address and zip code. The EFF will email you the phone numbers of both your Senators, as well as some suggestions for how to talk to the staff member who answers the phone.
C'mon, call. You'll be glad you did.
Now what I want you to do is go to www.congress.org and enter your zip code in the box under where it says "Write Elected Officials". It will show President Bush, your two Senators, and your House Representative.
Click the "info" link below each of your Senator's names to get their phone number and call it. When someone answers, politely give your name, and say you're calling because you want the senator to oppose the Piracy Deterrence and Education Act of 2004.
I did this just now, calling the offices of Senators Snowe and Collins from Maine. The staffers who answered asked me to repeat the name of the bill slowly so they could write it down, and then asked for my address.
I live in Canada, but am a Maine voter (where I lived before I moved). I explained that to them before giving them my address here in Canada. Just to point out you still can call your Senator if you live in a foreign country.
In a week or two they'll send you a reply letter on Senate stationery, suitable for framing.