One of the best tech industry books ever written (and if you've read some of the bad prose written on tech history out there, you know what I'm talking about).
I got it from the library, and read it in one weekend -- couldn't put it down.
If you know how to use LaTex, you could set up a lulu.com book in about 10 minutes.
LaTex has had a "book" template for years, and true to its purpose as "type-setting sofware" (created by Donald Knuth at Stanford), it creates an absoutely picture perfect document with chapter headings, and eye-pleasing margins and hyphenation. This is all done automatically according to the principles of typography printers have been using for hundreds of years (though of course they can be manually over-riden). All that is required is that you learn a few html-like mark-up commands to format your text.
I've printed one novel with lulu.com and LaTex, and the inner text was easily as good as hard-cover books from the 50s and 60s (which I consider kind of a golden age of printing). The cover though does require some graphic design skill , as I think a professional designer noted above (though lulu.com does have a gallery of about 50 stock covers you can use).
Also, lulu.com was started by Bob Young, founder of Red Hat Linux, because of the terrible experience he had publishing a book through conventional means. I believe lulu.com runs on FOSS software.
I mark up text files with Latex and then print them out for my own use. I find a two-column layout on 8.5 x 11 paper works best. An average novel usually works out to 30-40 pages printed on both sides of the page. Depending on your printer costs, you can print an entire novel for less than a dollar. Leave an offset on the left for a binding, and what you end up with is alot like a magazine or newspaper (which is where novels used to be published).
Project Gutenberg is an obvious source for text files of public domain books to print. But I've also noticed that most science fiction, from classic to contemporary, is available in text files from a host of torrent sites. Not that I would download them -- that would be piracy! But I will note that used editions of Philip K. Dick's books now run $10.00 at my local bookstore (where other sci-fi writers hover around $5.00). If Dick wrote 50 novels, that's 50 x $10.00 = $500.00!
They brought in a gifted program when I was in Grade 8 (8th Grade in the US). They put me in it, but I asked to get out after a few weeks. It was just me and 2 or 3 other kids in the library doing projects. Which was okay -- but _all_ my friends where in the "normal" class.
When I went back to my old classroom, my friends said they were glad to have me back. How great is that?
(Note: this was in a Canadian public school. I'm not sure how it would compare to a comparable American school. For what it's worth, I ended up at an American Ivy League anyways).
Blackbox worked great on my old Duron box. Its as close as you can get to being in the console while in X.
But literally yesterday, I was configuring X for a new system with an LCD monitor. My distro had the old version of Blackbox -- without anti-aliasing fonts (*gak*). I use the console most of the time to save my eyes. No anti-aliasing on a LCD monitor is almost as bad as using X on a old monitor.
I did alot of hand-wringing over it -- I think fluxbox may have too much eye-candy -- but I switched.
More power to Blackbox though, the concept is still the best.
But a conservative is not a Republican (at least not the Engish kind). Stallman could actually be considered a traditional conservative in Burke's definition -- preserving the institutions of the country (i.e. freely available softwre -- the commons), while raising the condition of the people (users of the common software).
Sorry, Mr. Beckett, but you need a more coherent story.
An alternative weekly sent stories by famous writers (Beckett, Garcia Marquez, Angela Carter) out to 20 literary magazines under different names. 12 were rejected and 8 got no reply. Choice quotes from the rejection letters:
"Not quite, but it's a convincing bit of ventriloquism. I think the Beckett's a bit too loud, especially in the first two pages."
RMS doesn't want to make any concessions. The Open Source community does, and gets taken seriously.
Taken seriously by who, Business Week? Check out this cover story that praises Linus, but then goes on to do a hatchet job on RMS. Both Linus and RMS shared the EFF's inaugral Pioneer Award. Beware of those who play one up and put down another.
Its easy to see what the agenda is here. As FOSS gains mainstream acceptance, the corporate world signals to its members who the trouble-makers are. The ones who managers should avoid.
People say RMS is a great coder and spokesmen too, but his real legacy is the GPL. It will go down with Magna Carta and the Declaration of Independence as one of the great documents of history. Its already spawned the creative commons, copyleft movement that is transforming our culture.
Seriously. Up here, self-employed people who get sick don't face financial ruin. You probably can't find a better argument about why universal medicare benefits a country. Someone like Pat can run a one or two person business that benefits his community in an enormous way, without the risk of losing his shirt if he gets sick.
You could probably get in on one of those "genius" visas. I think we have them up here too.
A UBC lecturer also was fined for anti-American comments after September 11th.
This is not true. In this case, a policeman from the national hate crimes unit (part of the RCMP) mused on TV that the hate crime law could be used to investigate someone who made anti-American comments, like the lecturer. There was no invesitagtion, fine or anything like that
There was an immediate backlash in public opinion, and the RCMP officer retracted the statement the next day. It should be noted, this was also in the weeks after Sept 11th, which is probably why the lecturer was singled out.
The hate speech laws do limit free speech. But Canadians have a history of giving their government some heavy powers, but then seeing that they are almost never used. Political violence in Canada is almost unknown, and the democracy still functions to a degree that controversial actions recieve extensive debate.
I just wanted to chime in and say this is really sad. The propaganda efforts have reached Soviet-era levels of hilarity. How soon before they airbrush Linus out of his highschool yearbook?
I can remember getting realtime updates from IMC Italy during the anti-Globalization protests in Genoa. The police were storming the IMC headquarters were activists were sleeping, eating, typing in news-stories etc. People were getting smashed with truncheons, taken down, beaten--the Rodney King-type treatment. Those arrested were taken to police barracks where they were threatened with rape and where the police were singing Mussonlini-era facist hymns.
Long afterwards, a judge found the entire raid on the IMC headquarters had been a complete fabrication. The police had planted Molotov cocktails, a sledgehammer, knives etc. in the building. As for agent provocateurs, there is no doubt these were operating in Italy--though they were probably oldtime fascist sympathizers, not undercover cops (though in Italy, the line is blurred).
When you say how many stories has IMC broken, I think you miss the point. How many stories has Slashdot "broken"--and by this I think you mean stories that have made it into national and international media? IMC, like Slashdot, is community media, and serves to communicate information and build connections between those who use it. Thanks to IMC, I was in North America yet I knew what was happening to comrades in Italy.
IMC keeps the flow of information open because it has an open posting policy. With more and more online newspapers disappearing behind subscription walls, often times the only way an important article can released into the wild is by posting on IMC. More "legit" sites won't post entire articles that covered by copyright, say stories on E-Voting from the New York Times or Washington Post. Google hits an IMC site once, and that article is forever cached in its entirety.
This also begs the question, what important stories has the New York Times broken recently? It all seems to be happening at the New Yorker with Seymour Hersh...
Mutella runs in the console. Use it with Screen. Keep it running in one console window, and you can run other apps including X in other windows if you need to.
The Romanitc poets (Blake, Wordsworth, Shelley etc.) began writing their pastoral poems in response to the growing industrial revolution around them. Their poems could be called fantasy, as they described an environment that was ceasing to exist.
The popularity of fantasy novels over sci-fi could be a product of the second industrial revolution we are undergoing. Technology that once existed only in the imagination (and sci-fi novels) is now integrated into everyday life. Perhaps, like the Romantic poets, people want a counter-environment --some place to go for relief, a different way of living they can compare to a normal 21st century life.
Slashdot Mirror
Read this book: Masters of Doom.
One of the best tech industry books ever written (and if you've read some of the bad prose written on tech history out there, you know what I'm talking about).
I got it from the library, and read it in one weekend -- couldn't put it down.
If you know how to use LaTex, you could set up a lulu.com book in about 10 minutes.
LaTex has had a "book" template for years, and true to its purpose as "type-setting sofware" (created by Donald Knuth at Stanford), it creates an absoutely picture perfect document with chapter headings, and eye-pleasing margins and hyphenation. This is all done automatically according to the principles of typography printers have been using for hundreds of years (though of course they can be manually over-riden). All that is required is that you learn a few html-like mark-up commands to format your text.
I've printed one novel with lulu.com and LaTex, and the inner text was easily as good as hard-cover books from the 50s and 60s (which I consider kind of a golden age of printing). The cover though does require some graphic design skill , as I think a professional designer noted above (though lulu.com does have a gallery of about 50 stock covers you can use).
Also, lulu.com was started by Bob Young, founder of Red Hat Linux, because of the terrible experience he had publishing a book through conventional means. I believe lulu.com runs on FOSS software.
It also makes the baby Jesus cry.
Through much trial and error:
k }t =.269in]{geometry}
\documentclass[10pt,openany,letter,twocolumn]{boo
\usepackage{times}
\usepackage{scalefnt}
\usepackage[margin=0.47in,bindingoffset=0.5in,foo
\usepackage{fancyhdr}
\setlength{\columnseprule}{1pt}
\setlength{\columnsep}{20pt}
\pagestyle{fancy}
\fancyhf{}
\fancyfoot[LE,RO]{\small {\thepage}}
\renewcommand{\headrulewidth}{0pt}
\renewcommand{\footrulewidth}{0pt}
\renewcommand{\footruleskip}{0pt}
\begin{document}
I mark up text files with Latex and then print them out for my own use. I find a two-column layout on 8.5 x 11 paper works best. An average novel usually works out to 30-40 pages printed on both sides of the page. Depending on your printer costs, you can print an entire novel for less than a dollar. Leave an offset on the left for a binding, and what you end up with is alot like a magazine or newspaper (which is where novels used to be published).
Project Gutenberg is an obvious source for text files of public domain books to print. But I've also noticed that most science fiction, from classic to contemporary, is available in text files from a host of torrent sites. Not that I would download them -- that would be piracy! But I will note that used editions of Philip K. Dick's books now run $10.00 at my local bookstore (where other sci-fi writers hover around $5.00). If Dick wrote 50 novels, that's 50 x $10.00 = $500.00!
To paraphrase an eminent American scientist:
He who trades freedom for convenience will have neither.
Case and point: Redmond.
They brought in a gifted program when I was in Grade 8 (8th Grade in the US). They put me in it, but I asked to get out after a few weeks. It was just me and 2 or 3 other kids in the library doing projects. Which was okay -- but _all_ my friends where in the "normal" class.
When I went back to my old classroom, my friends said they were glad to have me back. How great is that?
(Note: this was in a Canadian public school. I'm not sure how it would compare to a comparable American school. For what it's worth, I ended up at an American Ivy League anyways).
Geist actually holds a prestigious Canada Research Chair.
These are national research chairs, and very hard to get.
Joe Coleman
really? by reading slashdot, it feels more like devolution to me! :)
Are we not men?
We are Slashdot.
Leave it to Slashdot to have April Fool's with an elbow in the ribs.
A Star Trek that isn't "totally gay"?
Hasn't Star Trek always been about knowledge, exploration and understanding?
Homophobia obviously has no place in this tradition as the joke underlines.
Blackbox worked great on my old Duron box. Its as close as you can get to being in the console while in X.
But literally yesterday, I was configuring X for a new system with an LCD monitor. My distro had the old version of Blackbox -- without anti-aliasing fonts (*gak*). I use the console most of the time to save my eyes. No anti-aliasing on a LCD monitor is almost as bad as using X on a old monitor.
I did alot of hand-wringing over it -- I think fluxbox may have too much eye-candy -- but I switched.
More power to Blackbox though, the concept is still the best.
But a conservative is not a Republican (at least not the Engish kind). Stallman could actually be considered a traditional conservative in Burke's definition -- preserving the institutions of the country (i.e. freely available softwre -- the commons), while raising the condition of the people (users of the common software).
Sorry, Mr. Beckett, but you need a more coherent story.
An alternative weekly sent stories by famous writers (Beckett, Garcia Marquez, Angela Carter) out to 20 literary magazines under different names. 12 were rejected and 8 got no reply. Choice quotes from the rejection letters:
and
RMS doesn't want to make any concessions. The Open Source community does, and gets taken seriously.
Taken seriously by who, Business Week? Check out this cover story that praises Linus, but then goes on to do a hatchet job on RMS. Both Linus and RMS shared the EFF's inaugral Pioneer Award. Beware of those who play one up and put down another.
Its easy to see what the agenda is here. As FOSS gains mainstream acceptance, the corporate world signals to its members who the trouble-makers are. The ones who managers should avoid.
People say RMS is a great coder and spokesmen too, but his real legacy is the GPL. It will go down with Magna Carta and the Declaration of Independence as one of the great documents of history. Its already spawned the creative commons, copyleft movement that is transforming our culture.
His legacy for the future is huge.
Seriously. Up here, self-employed people who get sick don't face financial ruin. You probably can't find a better argument about why universal medicare benefits a country. Someone like Pat can run a one or two person business that benefits his community in an enormous way, without the risk of losing his shirt if he gets sick.
You could probably get in on one of those "genius" visas. I think we have them up here too.
I ain't gettin' on no planes.
Try to take an "mp3 player in a mint case" through security, and you'll be taking the greyhound bus for the rest of your life.
Scribus is a robust open source desktop publishing app. Editing pdfs is one of its most killer tools.
This guy has gray hair. He just "retired". Does he even know how to use a computer, or does he still call it an "adding machine?"
This is not true. In this case, a policeman from the national hate crimes unit (part of the RCMP) mused on TV that the hate crime law could be used to investigate someone who made anti-American comments, like the lecturer. There was no invesitagtion, fine or anything like that
There was an immediate backlash in public opinion, and the RCMP officer retracted the statement the next day. It should be noted, this was also in the weeks after Sept 11th, which is probably why the lecturer was singled out.
The hate speech laws do limit free speech. But Canadians have a history of giving their government some heavy powers, but then seeing that they are almost never used. Political violence in Canada is almost unknown, and the democracy still functions to a degree that controversial actions recieve extensive debate.
I just wanted to chime in and say this is really sad. The propaganda efforts have reached Soviet-era levels of hilarity. How soon before they airbrush Linus out of his highschool yearbook?
Long afterwards, a judge found the entire raid on the IMC headquarters had been a complete fabrication. The police had planted Molotov cocktails, a sledgehammer, knives etc. in the building. As for agent provocateurs, there is no doubt these were operating in Italy--though they were probably oldtime fascist sympathizers, not undercover cops (though in Italy, the line is blurred).
When you say how many stories has IMC broken, I think you miss the point. How many stories has Slashdot "broken"--and by this I think you mean stories that have made it into national and international media? IMC, like Slashdot, is community media, and serves to communicate information and build connections between those who use it. Thanks to IMC, I was in North America yet I knew what was happening to comrades in Italy.
IMC keeps the flow of information open because it has an open posting policy. With more and more online newspapers disappearing behind subscription walls, often times the only way an important article can released into the wild is by posting on IMC. More "legit" sites won't post entire articles that covered by copyright, say stories on E-Voting from the New York Times or Washington Post. Google hits an IMC site once, and that article is forever cached in its entirety.
This also begs the question, what important stories has the New York Times broken recently? It all seems to be happening at the New Yorker with Seymour Hersh...
No X = less drag and better security.
Thus, IE 6 is not a "modern" browser.
In the same way The Strokes are not The Modern Lovers.
The popularity of fantasy novels over sci-fi could be a product of the second industrial revolution we are undergoing. Technology that once existed only in the imagination (and sci-fi novels) is now integrated into everyday life. Perhaps, like the Romantic poets, people want a counter-environment --some place to go for relief, a different way of living they can compare to a normal 21st century life.