I just finished working on a chapter about the Mac OS X Speech interface, also known IMO as one of the most annoying things you can use on a computer when you don't have a private office [1]. Anyway, the OS X Speech interface is pretty good, honestly: add some terms in the custom dictionary and it should be at least mostly achieveable. [1] Decided against opening the chapter with my real opinion, which was "Speech is the worst built-in feature to enable on your Mac unless you live and work alone, and it should only be reserved for shoegazer albums by Radiohead and that ilk." [2] The editors would have just deleted it. [2] Don't take that badly, I like Radiohead. Their use of the "Fred" voice on _Ok Computer_ was the reason I referenced them.
A local SAGE chapter had the senior sysadmin for CNN come in to give a presentation on managing a large webserver farm. I remember the admin said their weekly staff meetings frequently discussed the answer to the question "What if the president declares war this week?" and the servers' readiness for the load, projected from the traffic they received during Desert Storm. In general, I seem to recall their main strategy revolved around scalable or easily-expanded network connections to the data center, and a large pool of servers used as a testbed and development set that could be switched over to production use (I believe they were using a round-robin DNS strategy similar to Netscape's ftp server system in Netscape's early days. I atttended this presentation, so while the description above is first-hand, my memory of the details may well have dimmed with time.
It's the book I currently recommend to people from a UNIX background who are interested in OS X. Yes, it's a bit dated right now as of the Jaguar release, but it's decent even now, and the highly-likely updated version for Jaguar should be out soon (in my opinion, I don't know any specifics or inside info on publlishing dates).
and encourage non-commercial trading of live performances of their shows. A given venue they are playing at may not permit taping, of course. Some links if you're unfamiliar with the Dots: fall 2002 north american tour dates so you can go tape:), The Official Live LPD Archive, roughly 30 live shows complete, over much of their twenty-year history LPD official website (Not an affiliate of any kind, just a fan)))
I wish I had the attribution for this quote, I didn't come up with it: "I wandered over to the IRC channel I was looking for, and was disappointed that everyone there was ignoring the official topic, and talking about what everyone does on IRC - sex, d eath, and operating systems."Â
Caitlin Kiernan, the horror and fantasy writer, has a long comment on the cancellation of Farscape along with contact information and actions to take, including contacts for the advertisers on the show. She doesn't have links to individual days, so read the journal and look for the entry for Saturday, September 07, 2002. http://www.caitlin-r-kiernan.com/journal.ht mlÂÂ
I'm still carrying my Newton 2100...
on
Newton Won't Die
·
· Score: 2, Redundant
and yes it's huge compared to a Palm Pilot/Handspring Visor, but it lets me enter pretty fast, hadnwriting works fine for me once it learned how I write (the reverse of Graffiti, where you get to learn how to write the way it needs you to). I can use the backlighting as an emergency flashlight. What I need to do is figure out how to convert the data from the backups to a format readable by other systems. What I really want to do is export my contact list from my Newton to my iPod, but I haven't taken the time to research the intermediate steps. u
Re:link to article, a quote, and my response
on
Mr Anti-Google
·
· Score: 2
Sure it does, and I didn't mean to imply I disapproved of it. I don't mind that google brings up critical (as in criticizing) links, I don't mind that at all. The sense I read into Brandt's arguments is that he'd like the critical material to be returned in a google search ranked *higher* than the original material. My attitude comes from a historian and journalist perspective: I like primary sources first. Then secondary sources commenting on the primary source. I want to read the story first before the commentary. If I wanted critical material, I'd search appropriately. r
link to article, a quote, and my response
on
Mr Anti-Google
·
· Score: 5, Interesting
First, a link to the article: http://www.salon.com/tech/feature/2002/0 8/29/googl e_watch/index.html
(might be a space inserted in the URL by the browser submission, apologies)
Second, a quote from the article: "Brandt sees this as Google's major flaw. "I'm not saying there aren't some sites that are more important that others, bu t in Google the sites that do well are the spammy sites, sites which have Google psyched out, and a lot of big sites, corporate headquarters' sites -- they show up before sites that criticize those companies.
In other words, Brandt recognizes that ther e has to be some order to Google's results, and that some sites might deserve to come up before others. He just disagrees with the way Google does it. In Brandt's ideal world, if you searched for "United Airlines," you would see untied.com -- a site crit i cal of United -- before you see United's page. And if you searched for Rumsfeld, you'd see NameBase's dossier on him before the Defense Department's site on the "The Honorabl e Donald Rumsfeld."
I must disagree with the ideal expressed here as Mr. Bran dt's. If I was searching for material on the Web about Donald Rumsfeld, I would rarely search for information critical of him *first*. If I was ego surfing on myself, I'd want to see my own material about me returned by Google, ahead of negative reviews and sites. I don't think that's an unfair way for Google to operate. While some of the issues Mr. Brandt raises might be valid, I do not feel that Google is required to promote or support Mr. Brandt's agenda over the agenda of the people and organizations Mr. Brandt chooses to focus on. M
No, thankfully I am not blind at present. I think you might have overlooked the part of my comment where I wrote "for people who need this". My comment was speaking of pioneering from an elective option standpoint, a la the Shadowrun/Cyberpunk 2020 roleplaying game wiring options brought up several times in other responses to this article. Similarly, if I had a disease that didn't respond to current treatment I'd be signing up for every clinical trial with a sane-sounding model.
I will NOT be volunteering for beta-testing of. No, no and no. I'll wait for other people to pioneer this field. I like my brain, and until they get the "regenerate and repair of brain damage" thing down pat I'll wait. For people who need this, I'm happy it's advancing, but I want to give the tech a bit to mature to the point it's a viable elective option.
I don't think the powerglove will affect the theremin at all (I play theremin, but have no powerglove or I'd test it first). The theremin reacts the your body's electromagnetic field. Touching a metal part of the signal chain (such as the case of a stompbox or rackmount effects box the theremin might be plugged into, or a metal part of the speaker cabinet). If the powerglove doesn't have any conductive surfaces making contact with the hand it's on, it shouldn't affect the tone. If it does, it might affect the tone a little, like shifting a specific point in the air a certain distance from the pitch antenna that's normally a C note up to a C#, or down to a B. I can get this kind of pitch shift by touching the strings of the Chapman Stick, a guitar-like instrume nt I play, when the Stick is plugged into the amplifier. I've tried using an E-Bow with theremin and it had no effect on the tone whatsoever. links: http://www.stick.com/ http://www.therem inworld.com/ http://www.moogmusic.com/ http://ww w.e-bow.com/ .
Captured By Robots is this amazing one-man performance with one of the most intricate rigs I've ever seen. He's really impressive to see live, and I recommend checking his tour/shows page especially if you're on the West Coast. At least one regular slashdot poster has taken his/. handle from the guy's act (The Ape With No Name), or I'm assuming that's where it's from. s
I suggest consulting Gaiman's weblog which he tends to update at least daily. That way you get his writing without having to wait for the next book, comments, opinions, essays, little short stori es he throws in just because, cool things he's found, etc. a
PETER GIBBONS 'So I was sitting in my cubicle today, and I realized, ever since I started working, every single day of my life has been worse than the day before it. So that means that every single day that you see me, that's me on the worst day of my life..'.
That seems more plausible to me than this Sealand thingy. Plausible? Cryptonomicon was a novel. Sealand is a real and physical creation. I acknowledge your point the datahaven in Cryptonomicon has potentially longer-term chances for survival, but it's simply not real, in that you can't store your data in the fictional underground datahaven. Sealand is real in that they will take your money and host your data. I forget which writer commented works of fiction have to be more plausible than real life, even if they might contain fantastical elements. l
I do not think Spielberg is capable of making such a dark movie. I'm not flaming you, but did you see Schindler's List and consider it not dark? Spielberg can do dark enough for EpIII. It's not as though we're looking at the sequel to Se7en or something. o
I believe Esther Dyson said once (going from memory so it may not be a direct quote, but a close paraphrase): "If you wait, there will always be a cheaper and faster computer later. But while you wait you have nothing." I see a PS2/Linux box acting as a webserver today. I don't see the XBox doing the same.
from http://news.theolympian.com/specialsections/Acad em yAwards/20020130/9313.shtml
"``[A Beatiful] Mind'''s Jennifer Connelly is perhaps the most shocking SAG nominee announced Tuesday -- not because she was nominated, but because she was nominated in the ``wrong'' category.Because of a clerical error at Universal Pictures, Connelly was submitted to SAG for consideration in the best-actress category. But in ads in Hollywood trade newspapers, Universal has been pushing Connelly for a best-supporting-actress Oscar nomination. "
Do you think the Bowie machine has the power to make the music industry see the light?"
No. But the man has my respect for setting an example and putting more than idle chatter behind it. His bowieart.com project, for example, is
another way of using his power to give back to the kinds of people he was and hung out with (art students and new artists). He's an expert at the
uses of media, and open to trying new ideas. I think the Creative Commons initiative is also a good similarly-minded idea to look at.
The moment every panel begins, the room echoes to a deafening squeal of "FIRST POST!", the trolls argue and whine incessantly, the cops are called to settle the Linux/BSD rumble, anyone self-identifying as a Windows admin is branded "tool of Gates" with a branding iron improvised from a hotelroom coffeemaker, JonKatz is hung from the ballroom ceiling and used as a pinata, the hotel's network crashes under the load of Snow Crash-inspired gargoyles walking around transmitting live webcam footage from everywhere simultaneously - not to mention the raging hackwars across the hotel network and the perpetual Unreal/Quake tournament. Noo...
I started to have problems with my wrists and fingers in typing about five years ago when I was working as a technical writer and writing books in the evenings and weekends. These pains were starting to interfere with my daily routine, and were being worr isome. I never got around to seeing a specialist, as the company I worked for collapsed and no one was retained. I'm much much better now. I did the following things: 1) I switched mostly to using laptops for my typing, mostly Apple Powerbooks. The keybo ards require much less force than the majority of desktop keyboards I'm used to, plus putting the keyboard in my lap allowed me to drop my shoulders for better posture. 2) More frequent and short breaks from typing. If I'm not typing, or thinking, I'll d rop either or both arms and relax them down through the wrists, hands and fingers. I'll also stretch and flex the arms and hands, and take short walks, even if I never leave the area of my desk. 3) I took up music again after a few years off: I play a Chapman Stick which is a guitar/bass guitar-like instrument, played almost entirely by "hammer-on" tapping finger motions very similar to striking a keyboard (piano, or computer). By playing an instrument where I tap, but over a much wider area than on a computer keyboard, I'm exercising a wider and more varied range of motion of finger tapping than on a keyboard.
Slashdot Mirror
I just finished working on a chapter about the Mac OS X Speech interface, also known IMO as one of the most annoying things you can use on a computer when you don't have a private office [1]. Anyway, the OS X Speech interface is pretty good, honestly: add some terms in the custom dictionary and it should be at least mostly achieveable.
[1] Decided against opening the chapter with my real opinion, which was "Speech is the worst built-in feature to enable on your Mac unless you live and work alone, and it should only be reserved for shoegazer albums by Radiohead and that ilk." [2] The editors would have just deleted it.
[2] Don't take that badly, I like Radiohead. Their use of the "Fred" voice on _Ok Computer_ was the reason I referenced them.
A local SAGE chapter had the senior sysadmin for CNN come in to give a presentation on managing a large webserver farm. I remember the admin said their weekly staff meetings frequently discussed the answer to the question "What if the president declares war this week?" and the servers' readiness for the load, projected from the traffic they received during Desert Storm. In general, I seem to recall their main strategy revolved around scalable or easily-expanded network connections to the data center, and a large pool of servers used as a testbed and development set that could be switched over to production use (I believe they were using a round-robin DNS strategy similar to Netscape's ftp server system in Netscape's early days.
I atttended this presentation, so while the description above is first-hand, my memory of the details may well have dimmed with time.
It's the book I currently recommend to people from a UNIX background who are interested in OS X. Yes, it's a bit dated right now as of the Jaguar release, but it's decent even now, and the highly-likely updated version for Jaguar should be out soon (in my opinion, I don't know any specifics or inside info on publlishing dates).
and encourage non-commercial trading of live performances of their shows. A given venue they are playing at may not permit taping, of course. :),
Some links if you're unfamiliar with the Dots:
fall 2002 north american tour dates so you can go tape
The Official Live LPD Archive, roughly 30 live shows complete, over much of their twenty-year history
LPD official website
(Not an affiliate of any kind, just a fan)))
I'd love ogg vorbis as optional for use on my Apple iPod.
I wish I had the attribution for this quote, I didn't come up with it:
"I wandered over to the IRC channel I was looking for, and was disappointed that everyone there was ignoring the official topic, and talking about what everyone does on IRC - sex, d eath, and operating systems."Â
Caitlin Kiernan, the horror and fantasy writer, has a long comment on the cancellation of Farscape along with contact information and actions to take, including contacts for the advertisers on the show. She doesn't have links to individual days, so read the journal and look for the entry for Saturday, September 07, 2002.t mlÂÂ
http://www.caitlin-r-kiernan.com/journal.h
and yes it's huge compared to a Palm Pilot/Handspring Visor, but it lets me enter pretty fast, hadnwriting works fine for me once it learned how I write (the reverse of Graffiti, where you get to learn how to write the way it needs you to). I can use the backlighting as an emergency flashlight. What I need to do is figure out how to convert the data from the backups to a format readable by other systems. What I really want to do is export my contact list from my Newton to my iPod, but I haven't taken the time to research the intermediate steps. u
Sure it does, and I didn't mean to imply I disapproved of it. I don't mind that google brings up critical (as in criticizing) links, I don't mind that at all. The sense I read into Brandt's arguments is that he'd like the critical material to be returned in a google search ranked *higher* than the original material. My attitude comes from a historian and journalist perspective: I like primary sources first. Then secondary sources commenting on the primary source. I want to read the story first before the commentary.
If I wanted critical material, I'd search appropriately. r
First, a link to the article:0 8/29/googl e_watch/index.html
http://www.salon.com/tech/feature/2002/
(might be a space inserted in the URL by the browser submission, apologies)
Second, a quote from the article:
"Brandt sees this as Google's major flaw. "I'm not saying there aren't some sites that are more important that others, bu t in Google the sites that do well are the spammy sites, sites which have Google psyched out, and a lot of big sites, corporate headquarters' sites -- they show up before sites that criticize those companies.
In other words, Brandt recognizes that ther e has to be some order to Google's results, and that some sites might deserve to come up before others. He just disagrees with the way Google does it. In Brandt's ideal world, if you searched for "United Airlines," you would see untied.com -- a site crit i cal of United -- before you see United's page. And if you searched for Rumsfeld, you'd see NameBase's dossier on him before the Defense Department's site on the "The Honorabl e Donald Rumsfeld."
I must disagree with the ideal expressed here as Mr. Bran dt's. If I was searching for material on the Web about Donald Rumsfeld, I would rarely search for information critical of him *first*. If I was ego surfing on myself, I'd want to see my own material about me returned by Google, ahead of negative reviews and sites. I don't think that's an unfair way for Google to operate. While some of the issues Mr. Brandt raises might be valid, I do not feel that Google is required to promote or support Mr. Brandt's agenda over the agenda of the people and organizations Mr. Brandt chooses to focus on. M
but my first thought was "great set for a photo shoot or a film".
No, thankfully I am not blind at present. I think you might have overlooked the part of my comment where I wrote "for people who need this". My comment was speaking of pioneering from an elective option standpoint, a la the Shadowrun/Cyberpunk 2020 roleplaying game wiring options brought up several times in other responses to this article. Similarly, if I had a disease that didn't respond to current treatment I'd be signing up for every clinical trial with a sane-sounding model.
I will NOT be volunteering for beta-testing of. No, no and no. I'll wait for other people to pioneer this field. I like my brain, and until they get the "regenerate and repair of brain damage" thing down pat I'll wait. For people who need this, I'm happy it's advancing, but I want to give the tech a bit to mature to the point it's a viable elective option.
I don't think the powerglove will affect the theremin at all (I play theremin, but have no powerglove or I'd test it first).m inworld.com/w w.e-bow.com/ .
The theremin reacts the your body's electromagnetic field. Touching a metal part of the signal chain (such as the case of a stompbox or rackmount effects box the theremin might be plugged into, or a metal part of the speaker cabinet). If the powerglove doesn't have any conductive surfaces making contact with the hand it's on, it shouldn't affect the tone. If it does, it might affect the tone a little, like shifting a specific point in the air a certain distance from the pitch antenna that's normally a C note up to a C#, or down to a B. I can get this kind of pitch shift by touching the strings of the Chapman Stick, a guitar-like instrume nt I play, when the Stick is plugged into the amplifier. I've tried using an E-Bow with theremin and it had no effect on the tone whatsoever.
links:
http://www.stick.com/
http://www.there
http://www.moogmusic.com/
http://w
Captured By Robots is this amazing one-man performance with one of the most intricate rigs I've ever seen. He's really impressive to see live, and I recommend checking his tour/shows page especially if you're on the West Coast. At least one regular slashdot poster has taken his /. handle from the guy's act (The Ape With No Name), or I'm assuming that's where it's from. s
I suggest consulting Gaiman's weblog which he tends to update at least daily. That way you get his writing without having to wait for the next book, comments, opinions, essays, little short stori es he throws in just because, cool things he's found, etc. a
follow the IMDB link to learn about Office Space.
PETER GIBBONS
'So I was sitting in my cubicle today, and I realized, ever since I started working, every single day of my life has been worse than the day before it. So that means that every single day that you see me, that's me on the worst day of my life..'.
That seems more plausible to me than this Sealand thingy.
Plausible? Cryptonomicon was a novel. Sealand is a real and physical creation. I acknowledge your point the datahaven in Cryptonomicon has potentially longer-term chances for survival, but it's simply not real, in that you can't store your data in the fictional underground datahaven. Sealand is real in that they will take your money and host your data. I forget which writer commented works of fiction have to be more plausible than real life, even if they might contain fantastical elements. l
I do not think Spielberg is capable of making such a dark movie.
I'm not flaming you, but did you see Schindler's List and consider it not dark? Spielberg can do dark enough for EpIII. It's not as though we're looking at the sequel to Se7en or something. o
I believe Esther Dyson said once (going from memory so it may not be a direct quote, but a close paraphrase):
"If you wait, there will always be a cheaper and faster computer later. But while you wait you have nothing." I see a PS2/Linux box acting as a webserver today. I don't see the XBox doing the same.
fromd em yAwards/20020130/9313.shtml
http://news.theolympian.com/specialsections/Aca
"``[A Beatiful] Mind'''s Jennifer Connelly is perhaps the most shocking SAG nominee announced Tuesday -- not because she was nominated, but because she was nominated in the ``wrong'' category.Because of a clerical error at Universal Pictures, Connelly was submitted to SAG for consideration in the best-actress category. But in ads in Hollywood trade newspapers, Universal has been pushing Connelly for a best-supporting-actress Oscar nomination. "
Do you think the Bowie machine has the power to make the music industry see the light?" No. But the man has my respect for setting an example and putting more than idle chatter behind it. His bowieart.com project, for example, is another way of using his power to give back to the kinds of people he was and hung out with (art students and new artists). He's an expert at the uses of media, and open to trying new ideas. I think the Creative Commons initiative is also a good similarly-minded idea to look at.
The moment every panel begins, the room echoes to a deafening squeal of "FIRST POST!", the trolls argue and whine incessantly, the cops are called to settle the Linux/BSD rumble, anyone self-identifying as a Windows admin is branded "tool of Gates" with a branding iron improvised from a hotelroom coffeemaker, JonKatz is hung from the ballroom ceiling and used as a pinata, the hotel's network crashes under the load of Snow Crash-inspired gargoyles walking around transmitting live webcam footage from everywhere simultaneously - not to mention the raging hackwars across the hotel network and the perpetual Unreal/Quake tournament. Noo...
I read manuals out of professional courtesy. No one else will.n
I started to have problems with my wrists and fingers in typing about five years ago when I was working as a technical writer and writing books in the evenings and weekends. These pains were starting to interfere with my daily routine, and were being worr isome. I never got around to seeing a specialist, as the company I worked for collapsed and no one was retained. I'm much much better now.
I did the following things:
1) I switched mostly to using laptops for my typing, mostly Apple Powerbooks. The keybo ards require much less force than the majority of desktop keyboards I'm used to, plus putting the keyboard in my lap allowed me to drop my shoulders for better posture.
2) More frequent and short breaks from typing. If I'm not typing, or thinking, I'll d rop either or both arms and relax them down through the wrists, hands and fingers. I'll also stretch and flex the arms and hands, and take short walks, even if I never leave the area of my desk.
3) I took up music again after a few years off: I play a Chapman Stick which is a guitar/bass guitar-like instrument, played almost entirely by "hammer-on" tapping finger motions very similar to striking a keyboard (piano, or computer). By playing an instrument where I tap, but over a much wider area than on a computer keyboard, I'm exercising a wider and more varied range of motion of finger tapping than on a keyboard.