I read about letterboxing in an issue of Smithsonian magazine and it sounded fun, but time-consuming and Anglocentric. Not a racist or cultural problem, but a geographic one; I live in California, USA, and letterboxing sounded like a European phenomenon.
Then, of course, there's the fact that I'm trying to boycott the MPAA...</obscure
"No, if it hasn't occurred to you yet, you can ONLY be president/senator/representative if:
[snip]
c.) You are a christian (just TRY being agnostic/athiest/anything else)."
Note: Joseph Lieberman, currently Senator from Connecticut, is an Orthodox Jew. True, he's still part of the Judeo-Christian tradition, but he's not a Christian.
My sister and a few friends and I were arguing yesterday about whether to count the deist Founding Fathers as "Christian" or what. I maintain that, while their culture was Christian, the actual religion of such as Ben Franklin WAS NOT.
A Salon article a few days ago proposed, somewhat in jest, that our next non-Christian higher-up federal official will be a Muslim secretary of state, since Muslims, like Jews and Christians, have connections to the Judeo-Christian heritage, have one holy scripture, etc. I could see a strict Sunni Muslim as Secretary of -- well, not State anytime soon, but maybe something like Transportation (blanked out for a moment -- thanks, Google!).
[sarcasm] But a black man? Heavens, no! [/sarcasm] Except for Colin Powell, who makes up for being black by being a hawk. Rednecks just don't know what to do!
Speaking of race and power -- wasn't it an Indian-American judge, one Marilyn Patel or something, who made one of the recent Napster rulings? Go, Indians!
No, I'd just skip it, deselect the beastiality checkbox in my user preferences or think it was the final straw and move to kuro5hin.
Or Advogato or Bruce Perens's Technocrat.net or RootPrompt (of the Cracked! series), or even SmokeDot (though I don't frequent the last one). Slashdot alternatives are a dime a dozen, although I personally think Advogato is really neat, and that K5 was at or near its tipping point to gain equal stature with/. when it went down (which raises suspicions of/.-Andover.net-VALinux conspiracies in minds bogglier than mine). I have a paper I wrote about what makes/. popular, and what would make other sites replace/. Email me to get it.
Anyway, I
don't believe Taco has an obligation to post what he thinks the/. readership is interested in. I think he should select what he's interested in and
maybe then make a subselection of what he thinks would interest the readers. IMO the personality of the authors is what makes slashdot
interesting and when you take that away it loses its charm.
Rob has a bit in the FAQ about that, as to why he won't do K5-type story moderation and submission. He basically says that he think/. is the way it is, and special, because of the unique, exclusive mix of editors and their interests, and he will only go so far in 'open-sourcing' the story posting process. I say, K5 was the first site to take OS philosophy all the way in a/.-style site, and the next one might be the "Slashdot-killer."
First of all: it IS a criminal activity to kill someone as you defined. I believe the officers involved in Louima's (sp?) killing have been acquitted, but that doesn't mean that the law does not exist that makes it illegal.
Which leads me to:"THE LAW IS NOT WHAT IS WRITTEN IN BOOKS IT IS WHAT SOCIETY DEFINES IT TO BE." Well, this is supposed to be a country "of laws, not of men," meaning that the interpretation of the laws (which are written down in books) should not depend on who's in power at the time. Yes, enforcement of laws can be arbitrary and depend on society's whims, but the police may not arrest someone under a law that has not been written down.
Yes, yes, troll replies bad, offtopic bad, but I just got a bill from Maximum Linux magazine and I'm peeved. No, I haven't received the six issues you say you've sent me. I don't even remember receiving one issue aside from the free trial copy. Anyone else had bad experiences with MLM?
"I can name my child Rewodjfuekjslcnvuekskchvow if I so desire"
I was listening to a National Public Radio broadcast a year ago or more...you can't just name your child whatever you want in Germany. An American couple living abroad wanted to name its child "Robin" or something unconventional, and the German gov't wouldn't issue the birth certificate, IIRC. Names have to be easily distinguishable as male or female, and I think there are other criteria, too. No "Myxylplikt" or "Grignr" for you (Eye of Argon reference)...
Perhaps you might consider working for a local/small ISP to develop your all-around talents -- not just as a programmer, but as an admin, customer service rep, troubleshooter, etc. Well-roundedness would be your reward. Money would vary, I imagine.
Internships are relatively easy to find via the university's career-center-like-dealie. (I don't know if they make those services available to students on leave, but it couldn't hurt to ask.) Make sure, if you decide to do an internship, that you have a mentor who will look out for you, who will direct interesting and challenging-yet-doable projects (from which you will learn) towards you, and with whom you get along. Without a mentor, you're just a cheap temp.
WUSTL? If you know Josh Brockman, say hello to him for me.
I know exactly how you feel. The last few summer jobs I've had have been not my cup of tea -- great money for a college student with bills to pay (rent in Berkeley! argh!), but living in or commuting to Silicon Valley for some of them was so not fun. And colleagues can be focused to the point of obsession. And maybe I don't WANT to be immersed in technical specs for eight to ten hours a day. Maybe I'd prefer talking with and writing for people and not engineers.
Part of the solution can be changing habits -- this is for long-term fatigue, not just temporary 'block.' If you aren't enjoying yourself, AT ALL, maybe you should try coming in at different hours (a lot of workplaces allow flextime now because they want to keep their laborers and keep them happy); morning-afternoon or afternoon-evening or morning-evening! Eat small meals, spaced out in the day -- or eat a few big meals, for 45-minute breaks. Instead of putting off the work you hate, try doing it for 15 minutes, then rewarding yourself with a trip to sluggy.com or something. (Or posting on Slashdot...)
But when it comes down to it, if you find yourself dreading work EVERY DAY, don't do what I did -- just try to get through your prison sentence until fall comes and you can go back to school. This is a hot economy. You can quit (most contracts I see say 'you can quit at any time with or without a reason and/or notice) and temp for a while. Find something you LIKE, at least, and if possible, LOVE. You only live once.
What will Napster users do -- continue d/ling like there's no tomorrow from Napster, or look for alternatives out of realizing that other means might be safer? Any Napster users know firsthand?
Why is Slashdot popular with open-source-type-people? Yes, there's some path dependency -- "it's popular because it's popular." But also, because the process of moderation, participation, etc. reflects OS-type values. Meritocracy, being able to build a reputation, incredible customizability, and so on. And the moderation system here has been an incremental solution to an underlying problem that has also grown incrementally.
As at least one person has noted (in another discussion, on k5, about controlling noise in discussions), CmdrTaco notes in the new FAQ that technical arms races will always be won by the trollers, because there are more of them and they have more time than you. (Kinda like cathedrals vs. bazaars, no?)
The/. system only works with a critical mass of people with civic virtue who participate consistently. The k5 experiment seemed to work very well, but rusty himself deleted trolls/spam/etc., and you don't want to be a deleter full-time. You could simply leave yourself open to checking posts whose unique IDs people mail you (postabuse@whatever.com), but then you run into fake-alert harrassment there. Anyone else?
I wrote an essay partly on this topic; e-mail me for it.
If you're glad we've won this one, you should be ready for the Napster fight. The hearing is today to allow the RIAA an injunction against Napster (sorry if my terminology is wrong).
Napster CEO Optimistic for Hearing on Wednesday Updated 1:31 AM ET July 26, 2000
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Napster Chief Executive Hank Barry said Tuesday he was optimistic the company will prevail at a hearing in federal court Wednesday to decide if Napster's popular song-swap service should be shut down amid claims it is promoting digital piracy. 'We're very optimistic about our legal positions and our legal team,' Barry told Reuters in an interview Tuesday.
I can't find resources for pro-Napster resources on the web. Are you interested? Help us out by posting 'em if you find 'em, most notably the time and place of this thing? I would love to go - maybe you CAN!
If you can take time off work today, you may want to visit the hearing today in SF, where RIAA might get an injunction against Napster.
Napster CEO Optimistic for Hearing on Wednesday Updated 1:31 AM ET July 26, 2000
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Napster Chief Executive Hank Barry said Tuesday he was optimistic the company will prevail at a hearing in federal court Wednesday to decide if Napster's popular song-swap service should be shut down amid claims it is promoting digital piracy. 'We're very optimistic about our legal positions and our legal team,' Barry told Reuters in an interview Tuesday.
I can't find resources for pro-Napster resources on the web. Can you?
Or up, seeing as that would also work in keeping you immune. With, what, baking soda and deep breaths? It's been a while since I read good old TAS, and my acid/base knowledgebase never was great.
Your "all that will exist" remark reminds me of a post I saw on Craig's List, selling a used HP printer:
"This printer will last forever! After the nuclear holocaust there will be rats and cockroaches and HP printers!!!"
As at least one poster -- and another -- has mentioned, Michael Crichton's novel (later a film) _The Andromeda Strain_ tells us there's some danger in bringing space-mutated bacteria back to earth.
BTW, did you know Crichton came up with the title first, then the plot? Kinda like the stunt-creators on Double Dare.
(teamed up with Cleopatra 2525? What the hell is that?)
Learn more (as they used to say on CBS) about "Cleopatra 2525" here, at this week's The Onion news briefs.
...Cleopatra, an exotic dancer cryogenically frozen in 2001 and accidentally thawed out in 2525 by two female warriors, race through a futuristic cityscape to evade a horde of murderous Betrayer robots.
"I wish I could see this movie, but I don't think I will, not paying money, anyway. If I do, it will be with a sad heart. It hurts to be a conscious consumer sometimes."
so what happened?
I still can't completely justify myself. "One person doesn't make a difference," "making other people aware of the controversy performs more functionality than a silent boycott," lots of rationalization. I'm human, and it hurts.
Slashdot Mirror
Check out Steve Weber's work on the topic. WP 140, "The Political Economy of Open Source," articulates some interesting stuff.
Then, of course, there's the fact that I'm trying to boycott the MPAA...</obscure
How, oh, how will we explain this to our (non-script-)kiddies?
The CIA for Kids Homepage!
Doesn't it make you feel like expatriating?
[snip]
c.) You are a christian (just TRY being agnostic/athiest/anything else)."
Note: Joseph Lieberman, currently Senator from Connecticut, is an Orthodox Jew. True, he's still part of the Judeo-Christian tradition, but he's not a Christian.
My sister and a few friends and I were arguing yesterday about whether to count the deist Founding Fathers as "Christian" or what. I maintain that, while their culture was Christian, the actual religion of such as Ben Franklin WAS NOT.
A Salon article a few days ago proposed, somewhat in jest, that our next non-Christian higher-up federal official will be a Muslim secretary of state, since Muslims, like Jews and Christians, have connections to the Judeo-Christian heritage, have one holy scripture, etc. I could see a strict Sunni Muslim as Secretary of -- well, not State anytime soon, but maybe something like Transportation (blanked out for a moment -- thanks, Google!).
[sarcasm] But a black man? Heavens, no! [/sarcasm] Except for Colin Powell, who makes up for being black by being a hawk. Rednecks just don't know what to do!
Speaking of race and power -- wasn't it an Indian-American judge, one Marilyn Patel or something, who made one of the recent Napster rulings? Go, Indians!
http://www.cia.gov/cia/ciakids/index.html
Or Advogato or Bruce Perens's Technocrat.net or RootPrompt (of the Cracked! series), or even SmokeDot (though I don't frequent the last one). Slashdot alternatives are a dime a dozen, although I personally think Advogato is really neat, and that K5 was at or near its tipping point to gain equal stature with /. when it went down (which raises suspicions of /.-Andover.net-VALinux conspiracies in minds bogglier than mine). I have a paper I wrote about what makes /. popular, and what would make other sites replace /. Email me to get it.
Anyway, I don't believe Taco has an obligation to post what he thinks the /. readership is interested in. I think he should select what he's interested in and
maybe then make a subselection of what he thinks would interest the readers. IMO the personality of the authors is what makes slashdot
interesting and when you take that away it loses its charm.
Rob has a bit in the FAQ about that, as to why he won't do K5-type story moderation and submission. He basically says that he think /. is the way it is, and special, because of the unique, exclusive mix of editors and their interests, and he will only go so far in 'open-sourcing' the story posting process. I say, K5 was the first site to take OS philosophy all the way in a /.-style site, and the next one might be the "Slashdot-killer."
Which leads me to:"THE LAW IS NOT WHAT IS WRITTEN IN BOOKS IT IS WHAT SOCIETY DEFINES IT TO BE." Well, this is supposed to be a country "of laws, not of men," meaning that the interpretation of the laws (which are written down in books) should not depend on who's in power at the time. Yes, enforcement of laws can be arbitrary and depend on society's whims, but the police may not arrest someone under a law that has not been written down.
Just my two cents.
Yes, yes, troll replies bad, offtopic bad, but I just got a bill from Maximum Linux magazine and I'm peeved. No, I haven't received the six issues you say you've sent me. I don't even remember receiving one issue aside from the free trial copy. Anyone else had bad experiences with MLM?
Incidentally, Courtney Love mentioned this bit in her speech, transcribed on Salon.com here (the Snow Crash ref is here).
I was listening to a National Public Radio broadcast a year ago or more...you can't just name your child whatever you want in Germany. An American couple living abroad wanted to name its child "Robin" or something unconventional, and the German gov't wouldn't issue the birth certificate, IIRC. Names have to be easily distinguishable as male or female, and I think there are other criteria, too. No "Myxylplikt" or "Grignr" for you (Eye of Argon reference)...
Internships are relatively easy to find via the university's career-center-like-dealie. (I don't know if they make those services available to students on leave, but it couldn't hurt to ask.) Make sure, if you decide to do an internship, that you have a mentor who will look out for you, who will direct interesting and challenging-yet-doable projects (from which you will learn) towards you, and with whom you get along. Without a mentor, you're just a cheap temp.
WUSTL? If you know Josh Brockman, say hello to him for me.
I imagine that "Top Five Records" from High Fidelity (based on the book by Nick Hornsby) would by non-RIAA...
(-;
Part of the solution can be changing habits -- this is for long-term fatigue, not just temporary 'block.' If you aren't enjoying yourself, AT ALL, maybe you should try coming in at different hours (a lot of workplaces allow flextime now because they want to keep their laborers and keep them happy); morning-afternoon or afternoon-evening or morning-evening! Eat small meals, spaced out in the day -- or eat a few big meals, for 45-minute breaks. Instead of putting off the work you hate, try doing it for 15 minutes, then rewarding yourself with a trip to sluggy.com or something. (Or posting on Slashdot...)
But when it comes down to it, if you find yourself dreading work EVERY DAY, don't do what I did -- just try to get through your prison sentence until fall comes and you can go back to school. This is a hot economy. You can quit (most contracts I see say 'you can quit at any time with or without a reason and/or notice) and temp for a while. Find something you LIKE, at least, and if possible, LOVE. You only live once.
Gotta go -- boss here...
http://boycott-riaa.com/ is another boycott site.
No new info there, either.
I don't know of any boycotts except this one:
http://www.RIAAboycott.org/
http://www.RIAAboycott.org/ has no new info...
What will Napster users do -- continue d/ling like there's no tomorrow from Napster, or look for alternatives out of realizing that other means might be safer?
Any Napster users know firsthand?
http://www.netcraft.com/whats/?host =www.nsa.gov
Why did your webmaster choose to run Apache on Solaris?
That is, unless you're fooling Netcraft, which is a valid possibility...
The Once and Future Cool Site:
As at least one person has noted (in another discussion, on k5, about controlling noise in discussions), CmdrTaco notes in the new FAQ that technical arms races will always be won by the trollers, because there are more of them and they have more time than you. (Kinda like cathedrals vs. bazaars, no?)
The /. system only works with a critical mass of people with civic virtue who participate consistently. The k5 experiment seemed to work very well, but rusty himself deleted trolls/spam/etc., and you don't want to be a deleter full-time. You could simply leave yourself open to checking posts whose unique IDs people mail you (postabuse@whatever.com), but then you run into fake-alert harrassment there. Anyone else?
I wrote an essay partly on this topic; e-mail me for it.
Napster CEO Optimistic for Hearing on Wednesday
Updated 1:31 AM ET July 26, 2000
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Napster Chief Executive Hank Barry said Tuesday he was optimistic the company will prevail at a hearing in federal court Wednesday to decide if Napster's popular song-swap service should be shut down amid claims it is promoting digital piracy. 'We're very optimistic about our legal positions and our legal team,' Barry told Reuters in an interview Tuesday.
I can't find resources for pro-Napster resources on the web. Are you interested? Help us out by posting 'em if you find 'em, most notably the time and place of this thing? I would love to go - maybe you CAN!
Napster CEO Optimistic for Hearing on Wednesday
Updated 1:31 AM ET July 26, 2000
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Napster Chief Executive Hank Barry said Tuesday he was optimistic the company will prevail at a hearing in federal court Wednesday to decide if Napster's popular song-swap service should be shut down amid claims it is promoting digital piracy. 'We're very optimistic about our legal positions and our legal team,' Barry told Reuters in an interview Tuesday.
I can't find resources for pro-Napster resources on the web. Can you?
Or up, seeing as that would also work in keeping you immune. With, what, baking soda and deep breaths? It's been a while since I read good old TAS, and my acid/base knowledgebase never was great.
Your "all that will exist" remark reminds me of a post I saw on Craig's List, selling a used HP printer:
"This printer will last forever! After the nuclear holocaust there will be rats and cockroaches and HP printers!!!"
BTW, did you know Crichton came up with the title first, then the plot? Kinda like the stunt-creators on Double Dare.
Learn more (as they used to say on CBS) about "Cleopatra 2525" here, at this week's The Onion news briefs.
Fun stuff, this issue of The Onion. Check it out.
Er, those last two links seem the same...
so what happened?
I still can't completely justify myself. "One person doesn't make a difference," "making other people aware of the controversy performs more functionality than a silent boycott," lots of rationalization. I'm human, and it hurts.