>>This is a tremendous departure for a mainstream publisher.
ORA has done this already with a MySQL book. At the time of publication no less.
Granted, it's the printed version of the electronic reference manual. But it IS an open source book. I think they're calling it O'Reilly Community press.
Additionally, ORA open sources some of their out of prints.
I think the guys over at Lucasfilm turned an SGI box into a beer tap during the production of Episode 1. It was big enough to keep a keg in, so they hollowed it out, and put a spout on it.
I can't find the link to the Wired article. I do remember reading this jsut before Ep1 came out.
In any event, drunken artists and such may explain something about how that movie turned out.
This is really just a matter of taste. I happen to think that they were 2 good looking buildings. I've photographed them extensively over the years.
No matter where I went in the Tri State area(NY, NJ, CT) and PA too, I would always try to find those buildings. To me, they were a pointer to home.
As someone who enjoyed seeing those buildings, has worked in them, and who saw them fall(I was on West Street In Tribecca for both collapses), I don't believe that they should be rebuilt.
Whatever is done with that 16 acres of land, I think that is should be a fresh design, while at the same time memorializing the 1993 bombing and 911.
>>Publishers like Manning, Wrox, and Microsoft Press have been able to offer books that blow away the competing O'Reilly books and at a fraction of the cost.
I agree that ORA books have been getting a wee bit more expensive lately. But I don't really think the quality of their content is slipping.
ADW has been putting out quality books for years. In some cases the books are better than ORA's. Though they're a bit dryer in content and style.
WROX and MS Press? I guess that we all have our tastes. If they work for you, then go for it. Personally, I have a hard time reading both. The typesetting is hard to read. And the books themselves...just look cheap. ORA's are easy to read and have a touch of class to them.
In the case of WROX, my past experience with them has been that their books are full of tecnical errors. More than the average textbook. If someone can confirm that their quality has improved, I'll start looking at their books again.
The only thing I can really contribute to this discussion is this:
O'Reilly has some of the best books available on the topics covered. They have helped me enhance my skills more than any other source of information. When I need to learn something tech related, I always check ORA first to see if there's a book available.
My bookshelves at work and home are predominantly blue, pink, and green.:)
I can't thank them here properly, words don't really do the job. So I plan on continuing to buy their books. That's my thank you.
>>Taking a cue from home audio equipment, there's a nice gold trim around the 4 feet on the bottom of the case. I do question the colour choice though, as being a silver case, a silver trim would be a better colour match for the rest of the case.
Yeah, one should care about how the case's feet look when they're beneath their desk retreiving a dropped pen, or reseating a network cable.
"Mmm. Where's my pen? It's sure dusty down here, oh there's the potato chip I dropped last week. Whoa! check out the feet on the Cooler Master! Nice. Too bad they're not silver though"
I usually name throwaway variables (1 use loop sentries, string buffers etc) after tv show or movie plot elements. Just as long as the purpose of the variable can be obtained from it's use, on the spot, I give it a 'meaningless' name.
For example: int vader = strlen(george); int anakin; for( anakin = 0 ; anakin vader ; anakin++ )
doSomething( anakin );
char kramer[vader*2] = "\0" strcpy( kramer, george );
Yeah. But does that mean that we just give up and go home?
Hell no. MS is worth fighting.
The day that they decided that they could ask me to agree to an EULA that would let them look at my setup is the day that I decided that they've gone too far.
So Dell's and Gateway's programs bombed. Failure is good. If they won't learn from their mistakes and try again, someone else should.
Like others here, I build my own machines. I'm no idiot.
What's wrong with going to WalMart to buy a cheap consumer grade box for Granny or youir kid to surf the web? A cheap PC is more than adequate for a homeowner's (AKA NON-TECHIE) computer needs. Web, email, spreadsheet, investment tracking.
I don't think I suggested that more sophisticated users like developers or artists should do this.
I was merely trying to say that choices are good. Maybe with some competition, things in the industry can change a bit. Lindows boxes at WalMart can be the first step. Perhaps tomorrow, Dell or Gateway or Micron will see potential in something like this and offer something other than... you know what.
If it's going to happen, it's gotta' start somewhere.
--------
I think that for LINUX,(or anything else really) needs a couple of things to gain acceptance by the home user:
1. A variety of printer and hardware support(MODEMS, video cards), just like Windoze. For this to happen, the hardware vendors must contribute.
2. A killer app (or 2). I thought that Star Office would do this. Not sure what the problem is with that package. It COULD take off. Or maybe AOL should release a LINUX version. We need something that would make the non-windows platform useable by the general public.
3. A killer UI. X's problems have been discussed to death. But mom, or Joe small busines user needs to be blown away by a smooth and easy to use UI.
4. Phase in more applications to go with the new platform(s). Make sure that there's no reason for the users to go back to MS after the novelty of the new platforw wears off.
We need to do what MS did in the 90's to undo what MS did in the 90's. But we need to do it with more ethics, and in an open, community oriented fashion. Money can be made by everyone involved.. it just doesn't have to go to 1 giant privacy invading, bloated monopoly.
Not just for LINUX advocates and users, but I think for the tech community in general.
Seeing those Lindows boxes at WaLMart kinda reminds me of the computing scene in the 80's. There were all kinds of different technologies coming out, and competing with each other. You could walk into any electronics store and find some brand of computer, peripherals and software for sale.
IMO It was a period of excitement and innovation. It felt good to me personally. There were so many choices to be made.
Open source, has that feeling of goodness about it. Change, innovation, choice.
What I'm trying to say is that this is the first time since the late 80's/early 90's that I feel good about consumer options for software.
It's only 1 OS on sale at 1 store, but it is a start. Hopefully other vendors will be brave enough to put together solutions, and stores will be brave enough to put them on the shelves.
I think it's time everyone stands up to the evil empire.
Sure, standardization was good. But monopolistic practices, forced licenses, security holes, bloated OS code, and applications is starting to suck. It's time to shake up the industry a little folks.
One more thing. I can still hear that boing sound that Pac Man made in my head.
The first time I played the game, I expected to hear CHOMP CHOMP CHOMP Instead I heard that BOING BOING BOING.
The sound was part of what killed that game for me. I understood that the graphics wouldn't be 'exactly' the same as the arcade because of the screen format and the 4k memory limit.
Don't get me wrong, after about 30 seconds the true suck factor of the graphics became apparent. Combined with the lousy sounds, I immediately labeled the game a loser.
I didn't get past the first level. I swapped in Adventure, and went looking for Warren's magic dot.
Every kid I knew in the 7th and 8th grade was excited about the prospect of playing Pac Man at home. No more trips to the arcade. No more standing in line. No more scrounging for quarters. Everything was going to be right with the world.
On the day of the game's release, there were lines at the electronics stores, lines at Sears, lines at K-Mart, lines everywhere that sold 2600 stuff. Some places had given out lottery bracelets (like they do at ticketmasters). But there were lines anyway. All these people were waiting to bring the magic of Pac Man home with them.
Then the game came home. What a horrible, horrible dissapointment it was. Ugh. I think that was the beginning of the end for Atari. They pissed off a lot of kids (and parents) with that piece of crap.
This was also about the time that the TRaSh 80 was out, along with the Commodore and Vic machines (I think). Anyway, some of us started getting interested in computer based games after the Pac man debacle. Shortly after that, a number of us left our 2600's behind for the promise of real computers.
Personally, I haven't had a new game console since the 2600. Not because of the Pac Man mess though. I don't see the point of having a dedicated, fixed hardware game platform. A PC does so much more, and the games are generally better than those available on a console.
I'm 35 now, having been born in 1967. There are 3 things that I consider to be my earliest memories.
I remember crying for a bottle in my crib one night. I was crying so much that my Mom thoght that I wanted to see her. I remember her saying so. She wheeled my to the other end of my bedroom so I could see her & Dad sitting on the living room couch.
I remember crying and crying, and she gave me 2 bottles of milk. I drank them both. I remember her telling my Father that I must be hungry, but they didn't have any milk left. So Mom gave me a water bottle. I wanted milk, and I kept crying.
The second one goes like this: I remember Apollo 11. I remember watching the launch. And I remember sitting at the apartment window a couple of days later, looking at the Moon with my Aunt, who was explaining to me that "there are 2 men walking on the moon right now. they are very far away from home now, but they're going to come back with moon rocks for scientists to study".
I was fascinated, and this was what got me interested in astronomy, science, and eventually computers.
The other thing I remember, is watching Star Trek in it's first run. I remember, very early on, sitting next to Dad on the living room floor, watching the Enterprise scrolling across the screen in front of a planet.
Kirk was going through his captain's log routine. I had no idea at the time what a log or a stardate was. But I remember thinking that the captain's log was the warp nacelle. and that maybe the number on the log changed all the time. I knew after a while that the stardates always changed.
Even though I couldn't read, I knew that letters and numbers were different, from each other, and that printed and spoken letters and numbers were the same. So knowing that Kirk was saying numbers, and knowing that numbers were written on the side of the 'log', I imagined that the numbers must change on the 'log' every time.
I can only imagine what must be going through my 20 month old daughter's head right now.:-)
I hope that she's as fascinated with her toys, TV and her imagination as I was.
Slashdot Mirror
>>This is a tremendous departure for a mainstream publisher.
ORA has done this already with a MySQL book. At the time of publication no less.
Granted, it's the printed version of the electronic reference manual. But it IS an open source book. I think they're calling it O'Reilly Community press.
Additionally, ORA open sources some of their out of prints.
Here's a link to a site where a guy describes his plans to restore one of these classic machines.
It's a short read, but it's nice to see someone trying to restore one of thse boxes.
Ken Thompson used to have a link on his page to someone who was restoring one of these. But since he's retired, it's not there now.
>> I learnt (now useless) assembly programming on it (although I will say that it was fun)... EBCDIC anyone?
You never know where your career may take you..
That knowledge may be more valuable than you think.
>>Bill Gates is a top flight programmer.
/. crowd.
Agreed. I also hear that he was (is?) an awesome tester.
I didn't intend to poke fun at Bill himself. It's just a stab at M$ for the
I think the guys over at Lucasfilm turned an SGI box into a beer tap during the production of Episode 1. It was big enough to keep a keg in, so they hollowed it out, and put a spout on it.
I can't find the link to the Wired article. I do remember reading this jsut before Ep1 came out.
In any event, drunken artists and such may explain something about how that movie turned out.
Wasn't the Model 100 the last computer that Billy G. wrote software for?
Hmmm. Let me verify this.
< google... >
Confirmed. I knew it. The last useful thing MS did. Definitely one for the archives.
Here's the google search.
I guess that my old Pong and Atari 2600 consoles don't count either eh?
I just threw away my 486 about 2 months ago... I guess that wouldn't have counted either.
Oh well.
Hey, is anyone selling an old IBM 370? My wife would love that in the basement. "But honey, it's a collectors item. Really."
>>World Trade Center 1. An ugly office building.
This is really just a matter of taste. I happen to think that they were 2 good looking buildings. I've photographed them extensively over the years.
No matter where I went in the Tri State area(NY, NJ, CT) and PA too, I would always try to find those buildings. To me, they were a pointer to home.
As someone who enjoyed seeing those buildings, has worked in them, and who saw them fall(I was on West Street In Tribecca for both collapses), I don't believe that they should be rebuilt.
Whatever is done with that 16 acres of land, I think that is should be a fresh design, while at the same time memorializing the 1993 bombing and 911.
>>Publishers like Manning, Wrox, and Microsoft Press have been able to offer books that blow away the competing O'Reilly books and at a fraction of the cost.
I agree that ORA books have been getting a wee bit more expensive lately. But I don't really think the quality of their content is slipping.
ADW has been putting out quality books for years. In some cases the books are better than ORA's. Though they're a bit dryer in content and style.
WROX and MS Press? I guess that we all have our tastes. If they work for you, then go for it. Personally, I have a hard time reading both. The typesetting is hard to read. And the books themselves...just look cheap. ORA's are easy to read and have a touch of class to them.
In the case of WROX, my past experience with them has been that their books are full of tecnical errors. More than the average textbook. If someone can confirm that their quality has improved, I'll start looking at their books again.
The only thing I can really contribute to this discussion is this:
:)
O'Reilly has some of the best books available on the topics covered. They have helped me enhance my skills more than any other source of information. When I need to learn something tech related, I always check ORA first to see if there's a book available.
My bookshelves at work and home are predominantly blue, pink, and green.
I can't thank them here properly, words don't really do the job. So I plan on continuing to buy their books. That's my thank you.
>>Taking a cue from home audio equipment, there's a nice gold trim around the 4 feet on the bottom of the case. I do question the colour choice though, as being a silver case, a silver trim would be a better colour match for the rest of the case.
Yeah, one should care about how the case's feet look when they're beneath their desk retreiving a dropped pen, or reseating a network cable.
"Mmm. Where's my pen? It's sure dusty down here, oh there's the potato chip I dropped last week. Whoa! check out the feet on the Cooler Master! Nice. Too bad they're not silver though"
I usually name throwaway variables (1 use loop sentries, string buffers etc) after tv show or movie plot elements. Just as long as the purpose of the variable can be obtained from it's use, on the spot, I give it a 'meaningless' name.
:)
For example:
int vader = strlen(george);
int anakin;
for( anakin = 0 ; anakin vader ; anakin++ )
doSomething( anakin );
char kramer[vader*2] = "\0"
strcpy( kramer, george );
You get the idea.
We really don't need another regex book.
This one does just fine.
I hear you. And you are correct.
What can I say?
Change has gotta' start somewhere. People have to be exposed to new ideas somehow.
Yeah. But does that mean that we just give up and go home?
Hell no. MS is worth fighting.
The day that they decided that they could ask me to agree to an EULA that would let them look at my setup is the day that I decided that they've gone too far.
So Dell's and Gateway's programs bombed. Failure is good. If they won't learn from their mistakes and try again, someone else should.
Please ignore the above AC post.
Like others here, I build my own machines. I'm no idiot.
What's wrong with going to WalMart to buy a cheap consumer grade box for Granny or youir kid to surf the web? A cheap PC is more than adequate for a homeowner's (AKA NON-TECHIE) computer needs. Web, email, spreadsheet, investment tracking.
I don't think I suggested that more sophisticated users like developers or artists should do this.
I was merely trying to say that choices are good. Maybe with some competition, things in the industry can change a bit. Lindows boxes at WalMart can be the first step. Perhaps tomorrow, Dell or Gateway or Micron will see potential in something like this and offer something other than... you know what.
If it's going to happen, it's gotta' start somewhere.
--------
I think that for LINUX,(or anything else really) needs a couple of things to gain acceptance by the home user:
1. A variety of printer and hardware support(MODEMS, video cards), just like Windoze. For this to happen, the hardware vendors must contribute.
2. A killer app (or 2). I thought that Star Office would do this. Not sure what the problem is with that package. It COULD take off. Or maybe AOL should release a LINUX version. We need something that would make the non-windows platform useable by the general public.
3. A killer UI. X's problems have been discussed to death. But mom, or Joe small busines user needs to be blown away by a smooth and easy to use UI.
4. Phase in more applications to go with the new platform(s). Make sure that there's no reason for the users to go back to MS after the novelty of the new platforw wears off.
We need to do what MS did in the 90's to undo what MS did in the 90's. But we need to do it with more ethics, and in an open, community oriented fashion. Money can be made by everyone involved.. it just doesn't have to go to 1 giant privacy invading, bloated monopoly.
Not just for LINUX advocates and users, but I think for the tech community in general.
Seeing those Lindows boxes at WaLMart kinda reminds me of the computing scene in the 80's. There were all kinds of different technologies coming out, and competing with each other. You could walk into any electronics store and find some brand of computer, peripherals and software for sale.
IMO It was a period of excitement and innovation. It felt good to me personally. There were so many choices to be made.
Open source, has that feeling of goodness about it. Change, innovation, choice.
What I'm trying to say is that this is the first time since the late 80's/early 90's that I feel good about consumer options for software.
It's only 1 OS on sale at 1 store, but it is a start. Hopefully other vendors will be brave enough to put together solutions, and stores will be brave enough to put them on the shelves.
I think it's time everyone stands up to the evil empire.
Sure, standardization was good. But monopolistic practices, forced licenses, security holes, bloated OS code, and applications is starting to suck. It's time to shake up the industry a little folks.
Not a lot of new info, but yadda yadda yadda, it's a slow day, so here's a filler story.
In Soviet Russia, Pac Man thinks YOU suck.
>> think you may have gone too far with your science fiction computer gamer imagination
I'm not sure what you mean. Please explain.
I really haven't had a console since the 2600.
One more thing. I can still hear that boing sound that Pac Man made in my head.
The first time I played the game, I expected to hear CHOMP CHOMP CHOMP Instead I heard that BOING BOING BOING.
The sound was part of what killed that game for me. I understood that the graphics wouldn't be 'exactly' the same as the arcade because of the screen format and the 4k memory limit.
Don't get me wrong, after about 30 seconds the true suck factor of the graphics became apparent. Combined with the lousy sounds, I immediately labeled the game a loser.
I didn't get past the first level. I swapped in Adventure, and went looking for Warren's magic dot.
Every kid I knew in the 7th and 8th grade was excited about the prospect of playing Pac Man at home. No more trips to the arcade. No more standing in line. No more scrounging for quarters. Everything was going to be right with the world.
On the day of the game's release, there were lines at the electronics stores, lines at Sears, lines at K-Mart, lines everywhere that sold 2600 stuff. Some places had given out lottery bracelets (like they do at ticketmasters). But there were lines anyway. All these people were waiting to bring the magic of Pac Man home with them.
Then the game came home. What a horrible, horrible dissapointment it was. Ugh. I think that was the beginning of the end for Atari. They pissed off a lot of kids (and parents) with that piece of crap.
This was also about the time that the TRaSh 80 was out, along with the Commodore and Vic machines (I think). Anyway, some of us started getting interested in computer based games after the Pac man debacle. Shortly after that, a number of us left our 2600's behind for the promise of real computers.
Personally, I haven't had a new game console since the 2600. Not because of the Pac Man mess though. I don't see the point of having a dedicated, fixed hardware game platform. A PC does so much more, and the games are generally better than those available on a console.
I'm 35 now, having been born in 1967. There are 3 things that I consider to be my earliest memories.
:-)
I remember crying for a bottle in my crib one night. I was crying so much that my Mom thoght that I wanted to see her. I remember her saying so. She wheeled my to the other end of my bedroom so I could see her & Dad sitting on the living room couch.
I remember crying and crying, and she gave me 2 bottles of milk. I drank them both. I remember her telling my Father that I must be hungry, but they didn't have any milk left. So Mom gave me a water bottle. I wanted milk, and I kept crying.
The second one goes like this: I remember Apollo 11. I remember watching the launch. And I remember sitting at the apartment window a couple of days later, looking at the Moon with my Aunt, who was explaining to me that "there are 2 men walking on the moon right now. they are very far away from home now, but they're going to come back with moon rocks for scientists to study".
I was fascinated, and this was what got me interested in astronomy, science, and eventually computers.
The other thing I remember, is watching Star Trek in it's first run. I remember, very early on, sitting next to Dad on the living room floor, watching the Enterprise scrolling across the screen in front of a planet.
Kirk was going through his captain's log routine. I had no idea at the time what a log or a stardate was. But I remember thinking that the captain's log was the warp nacelle. and that maybe the number on the log changed all the time. I knew after a while that the stardates always changed.
Even though I couldn't read, I knew that letters and numbers were different, from each other, and that printed and spoken letters and numbers were the same. So knowing that Kirk was saying numbers, and knowing that numbers were written on the side of the 'log', I imagined that the numbers must change on the 'log' every time.
I can only imagine what must be going through my 20 month old daughter's head right now.
I hope that she's as fascinated with her toys, TV and her imagination as I was.
>>the internet is many individual people, each of them complex and intelligent
Are you sure about the complex and intelligent part of that statement?
>>This is kind of logical becoz normally there are 2 people moaning
:P
I dunno about that. I've seen a lot of trios & 5 ways in my day.