I once was a "hard" science guy but I have mellowed. I think that Leon's answer may of been long but show very much the brillance of the man. Good to see that/. kept it all science related because I do not think he would of been happy to answer questions about his what os he uses or does he prefer blondes or brunettes (yes these questions were actually posted but never asked!)
I am interested in them! If we know what people like this think about OSs and what not then it may be possible to create a better distribution. About women well I guess that's a personal preference but it never hurts to get a couple of questions like these in there.
If many more questions had been asked, it wouldn't have been the Mandrake ISO image people would have downloaded.:)
Well it was only 43k. I can transfer more data in one hour using kermit on a 2400bps modem than that anyway. I think it would take about oh 3 minutes at max to get it all on that setup a standard 56k could do that no sweat.
There's a -lot- of good stuff, there, and congratulations all round for one of the best high-end physics interviews I've read.
I would say it's pretty good considering slashdot could get someone so fameous to speak to us mortals.
Compared to typical news interviews, or documentaries (even on Discovery, TLC, or the BBC), I'd say that the quality of Slashdot's journalism is superior to any of the "traditional" media outlets.
I disagree with you there. I watched a documentary on a PBS station a while ago about how the producers of 60 minutes actually do their work. All the extensive review and revision and further review are 1,000,000,000,000x more than slashdot could easily do in a year. This has to be done every week and is the only thing they ever do. Slashdot cannot compete with "traditional" media outlets unless they significantly increase their capital and use streaming video segments 24/7/365 with a whole world wide team of anchors and editors.
FWIW, egcs-1.1.2 is generally considered to be the most recent compiler available which should work safely for just about everything, including the kernel. Heck, if RedHat uses it as their default compiler, the advantages must outweigh the disadvantages of gcc-2.7.3.2. My own personal experiences reflect this.
I took my information from the last look at the Linus Kernel Mailing list faq at lkml faq Apparently the fact that egcs was not stable for a long time I guess influenced the decision for not having it being in more common use for kernel compiling.
I think that these interviews are one of the *best* features of Slashdot.
I think that interviews are nice but what we need is a larger number of stories that can be directly accessed on the main page. Perhaps more of the tech information that gets passed over. My question is who actually knows slashdot exists and who would be willing to actually do an interview.
Something you don't want a Nobel-prize-winning physicist to say: "Oh gosh, that's a hard question."
As I recall the admission that you are a fool is actually better than no saying you are a fool. If there was a person who had a nobel and he/she said that there was not a question that is hard I would be rather unimpressed with them.
They have been saying "Red Hat Compatible" for the last few versions. I believe that started with 6.0 IIRC. They stopped being a Red Hat knock-off after 5.x
Well if we assume that businesses are the main target of redhat and that most of the really neat commercial packages are produced with Red Hat in mind then therefore we have to believe that compatability with Red Hat's commercial partners would be a very smart thing to do to increase a customer base.
1. Most of the physicists were employed in the military doing stuff for the cold war. When the "war" went away a great deal of these people were out of a job. (taken from a careen outlook publication done by the government and the US department of labor so no I am not talking out of my ass) 2. Difficulty: In general physics is one of the more mind bending areas of science. You cannot really believe that anyone would actually be easily able to get a degree in such an area as easy as a CS one. 3. Expense: When you want to do experiments in physics (the really neat modern ones) you need several million dollars and a large research team plus usually 5+ years of study
Why is everyone questioning the versioning?? Mandrake is *not* RedHat -- they're a very different distro and just because they were originally *based* on RedHat does not mean we should treat them as followers forever. Moreover, they're advance in numbers was nothing like Slackware's. Mandrake went from 6.1 to 7; that's pretty normal versioning. Slack went from like 4.0 to 7.0; that's padding.
I actually thought that slackware's major problem was a smoth upgrade (or any upgrade at all). I ran slackware from 3.4 to 3.6 and each and every time I had to blast away the partition and do all the manual configuration and such. Nothing like 10+ hours of swearing at your computer to get you into the mood of getting another upgradeable distribution.
Its nice that there are distro[s] out there using pgcc to get the performance boost but I work with a guy who has tried several versions of Mandrake on different machines, and when he compiles the kernel it invariably causes some problem. It may go weeks or even months without problem but then just crashes for no apparent reason. The linux-kernel guys say not to use pgcc on the kernel because its known to be unstable when you do. However if this is the compiler that comes with Mandrake how are you expected to safely upgrade your system?!
Mandrake uses rpms right? Well so does Red Hat and they don't force you to use the pgcc compiler so therefore the simple solution is to just drop in the standard gcc compiler (make sure it's the older 2.7.3 version because egcs can also make havoc on your system at least back in the 2.1.x days when I compiled kernels and 2.2.x as well) and then do the compile. Pgcc is just an excuse to make something that isn't compatable with others machines.
Version numbers are not terribly informative. In many companies they are nothing more than a marketing tool. Mandrake may have a cool explanation for going to 7, but there's no rule that says they have to stick to some one else's scheme.
If you don't think version numbers matter just look at debian. I can't stress this enough there is usually a difference (as seen in debian changelogs) between linux-package-3.4-56.deb and linux-package-3.4-57.deb even in commercial software the differences between version numbers are important enough because they usually involve change in the user interface or added bug fixes or design improvements. If you want support from the vendor or the community a new version is usually a must and this includes linux.
Newer kernel than RH 6.1, newer drivers than RH6.1, newer utility builds than RH6.1, newer X-Server than RH6.1... et.c. Plus their use their own installer et.c.
Are the packages for RH and it's upates newer or older in general to Mandrake? You have to look at this and ask which is really better? I would think that if updates were newer Mandrake would be better.
Perhaps, because Slack jumped ahead of all the other distributions, others felt it necessary to "keep up with the Jones" and match the version number.
At least debian is sane enough to not do that. I want logical version numbers not marketing trash. My opinion of Mandrake has been lowered if they think they really need to just up the version number. Does Mandrake such that much in terms of Red Hat?
Katz got snowed by those kids, that's what happened. They fed him some line about how their lives sucked because the only things in Idaho are potato farms, that sugar beet plant, and rusty old pickups with shotguns and loud radios tuned to the country music station, and he bought it. I don't know anyone in the area who read the Wired article and took it seriously. GASP! It's hard to imagine a mind as sharp as Katz being "snowballed" he's the smartest guy ever ever EVER!!! His writing can ONLY be compared to the bible. I mean, both have such strong grasps on LOGIC AND REALITY!
Like people in the modern age reality is seen in the eye of the beholder. Maybe it *was* reality in the community that those kids lived in. Perhaps they did live in the sticks and it was true. Unless you live there and could relate the actual physical/social/political conditions of the area you cannot say he was snowballed.
What I was trying to point out is that the way Jon Katz presents his ideas is trite and not creative. One of the many so-called "no-no's" of writing is the use of cliches. Cliches are, by definition, trite. An example of a cliche is: "Tears streamed down her face". You could rephrase this to make it non-cliche: "Tears spasmed over the boundaries of her eye lids, cascading down the trecherous terrain of her face". Do you consider the second one more creative? I do.
Well the mental image of the first seems to be a tender one perhaps evoking sympathy more. The second is indeed creative but it just seems more to concentrate on the physical features of the person in question. Perhaps the second would be good perhaps if the person in question had just fallen down a hill or perhaps we are attempting to impart some sense of the tramatic nature of the event that the tears are being produced for. Not all cliches are bad. If you read a great deal of romance novels I am sure that the first would be perhaps a cliche. But what if you are exposed to say classical literature? How can you effectively judge something to be a cliche? What happens if we run out of effective methods of describing the act of crying? Well in English we have at least one method in creating a continum of words in severity or emotional impact. Consider the act of crying.
We have:
1. watering eyes -- perhaps slight crying 2. crying -- the actual act itself without too much 3. sobbing -- more intense than crying and involves more emphasis. 4. bawling -- more "earthy" generally used to refer to "simple" people or situations less human
Those 4 examples are the only ones that I can come up without stepping too deeply into the metaphor but as you can see there are ways to do it but even the cliche is still necessary to give that sensation.
Well, you obviouslly didn't read what I was talking about. At no point did I say his spelling, grammar, or punctuation was where his flaws were at. I said his flaws were in his content and his organization. I'll thank you for thinking before you're cynical next time.
Specifically on what basis are the arguments bad? How is the content bad? Are there any ways to actually conclusively proving him wrong? Has anything he said actually been documented as wrong. People such as I need hard and conclusive evidence that what is being said is actually the truth. The only thing that I see is that he tries to make predictions on events and social situations that are not easily predictable in most ways. Like some of the sci-fi people in years past. I remember reading a book back in elementary school which said that by the 1990s we would have moon bases and be on our way to mars. Well have any of these things happened? No because people would rather live out their pathetic lives on good ol' planet earth and not actually explore space. Let me give you a little prediction of mine. ST TNG level of technology will be about 30,000 years in the future there is no way that we will have it in 2390 or so.
Now if the subtitle of the movie is "How a gullible journalist got taken in by a couple of lazy kids who can't find jobs in the 3rd fastest growing area in the U.S.", maybe it'll be worth watching as something other than a parody.
How did Idaho get that rating in the first place? What's the source I wold be quite suprised at this considering the low population density of most of the state and your earlier descriptions of the place being possibly home to large quantities of hillbillies.
Quite. The Katz PR machine is on overdrive: a reality check is essential, for which see the following:
Is there anything better? Could andover afford these people? Come on this isn't Time or US News and World Report or even Variety this is an internet site and because of this and it's theme "News for Nerds: Stuff that Matters" we have a rather low selection because this isn't a trade magazine or anything like that. I think the more information that is posted to slashdot the better in terms of idea flow. The flow ideas is what created the open source movement and it is the only thing preventing it's demise. I would really like to see someone (from slashdot that is) produce an essay on the same topic as John Katz and have people judge if it is better. I don't think it's as easy as it looks.
PS. (And no random perl scripts that use syntastic english grammer parsers to recreate not so funny combinations of "essays" are only funny for about 2.567334 minutes exactly).
It's quite amazing how a persons image can shine high above their abilities. Since Jon Katz is a self professed source for all that is worthy in technology news, that makes him a prime example for what I'm saying. Although Jon Katz seems to be well educated, his written skills leave something to be desired. As many have pointed out his writing style is trite and not creative. One get's the feeling that he does this to boost his already inflated public image, and in so doing keeping the dollar signs rolling in. It's hard to blame him though, money can make people do strange things. Best of luck your endevours Mr. Katz as I'm sure you know exactly what it is you're doing.
Why all this emphasis on what we term "creativity"? There eventually comes a time when all literary forms become trite and obsolete and boring. The only thing left after about 1950 that was absolutely really new and groundbreaking in terms of literature was perhaps random groups of text that meant nothing; and even that can be done in emacs with the dissociated press program. Just because this guy is probably as old as my father and that he has a very traditional concept of what the future is dosn't mean that his opioion is crap. I mean if you look at things like The Wizard of Oz (basically a kind of projection about what the future city would look like) you can see this in action. How about old crappy science fiction things. There is no chance that people will ever do anything in such a tacky manner.
Do you know something about this book/movie that the rest of us don't? I only ask because all that I know about either is that it's a nonfictional account of two people from Idaho who meet over the internet. That's _really_ vague. The only movie that I remember that this even remotely resembles is "You've Got Mail", which better reminds me of "Sleepless in Seattle".
Well that's really not that interesting at all. Geeks by their very nature are not lonely but are a social amalgm between computers and humans. I for one if I had a good enough computer would never leave my house only for the most basic of necessities.
I can't say that watching a couple of lonely geeks using usenet and e-mail makes for an intriguing plot, though. Nevertheless, I hope that I'm underestimating it.
Not only that I can't really see a logical group (which I assume most of slashdot is) would actual type of thing. Logic is the norm of the universe so says chaso theory.
Movies should take advantage of all the actual technology that we have nowadays. Failing that we should have movies that actualy have acturate depictions or proper decision making and perhaps more utilitarian concepts. Take a look at the last ST movie for an example of what you should *not* do. People are not and should not be portrayed as fools. Making them appear to be foolish makes the entire plot less believable.
Generally you should not let a group of individuals who have little to gain affect the general betterment of the group. In real life such sacrifices do not get anywhere because they are pointless except for allegorical purposes for future generations nothing more.
Pander to what the public wants. If the public seems to enjoy one prequel released 22 years after the original, then they want every movie to have a prequel released 22years afterwards. If they like "scary" movies that have no visible scary entity, they want all movies to have no visible scary entity. If we liked one girl band, then we'll love it when there's 1000 of them
No I don't think *everyone* wanted it. I thought it was a stupid move just for fanatics of the movies in the 70s but I guess that's just me. The future of the world isn't going to change at all it's just what one person decides to do with their time. Why do people always see conspiracies in areas that don't really have the brains to create them? Movie producers and people in the music industry are the last people I would actually credit with anything significant.
It's all about money, and trends.
Maybe but not everyone buys into hype and such. Just wait until all of the people who are living now get a little older and start to throw their weight around a little more. I very much doubt that anything you see will continue.
Actually I only used AOL for a total of 1 week in my entire life (daytime only). I use linux all the time from about 1997 or so. You base generalizations do not fit sorry.
1. I am not an @home customer 2. I have never spammed anyone and I probably never will. I don't think bulk e-mail is very effective and considerig how many people act like they haven't taken their prozac today I guess I really shouldn't try. 3. If anyone even tries to sue me they would have wished they haden't. I can't believe that people are that dense. 4. I just want to back up the feelings that I have and that have been growing due to rampant abuses of power and the fact that a little conspiracy has essentially screwed a whole class of people over. I have had smart ass sysadmins pull things on me in the past for extremely sketchy reasons. 5. The net shouldn't cost so god damned much in the first place. Technology is advancing right? Well instead of wasting that time playing quake improve the backbone of your news servers or make it possible for anyone to run a news server. For example people have pointed out that mirrorign all of the groups would be "impossible" (yeah right) but what about one? I think that a single 40Gb hd would work quite well for just one group for at least a week or more wouldn't you agree? 6. I have yet to actually control a coputer totally that was connected to any network at all. Most of the poeple who have are in fact incompetents and don't really belong with that type of power in the first place. 7. As we have found out in the world of computing compression is our best friend. Just compress the files and then transmit them compressed simple as that.
Please don't threaten me or personally attack me again ok?
Just as a whole bunch of people who own a club may decide, collectively, that they don't want some other person in it, the whole bunch of people who own the network's computers may decide that they don't want some other person's computer using it. That's perfectly legal. As has been explained to you over and over and over and over. But you don't seem to get it, and will continue not to get it.
About the club concept I have similar reactions and say that (from the mind of Homer Simpson) that I am ashamed of this "crappy club for jerks". If I own a resteraunt can I just deny a certain class of people let's just say anyone I want from comming in? Perhaps anyone who has red on that day cannot in any way enter my establishment because I hate red. Is this fair. The federal government says no (not necessarily the states but they are funny anyway any not too concerned about collevtive rights or freedoms merely about money). I may not get it because I do not agree. If I provide a public service I cannot exclude on a certain class of people. Every case must be handled on a case, by case basis. When you get into networks of computers or networks of people you have to objectively look at each case and decide for yourself. Such blanket rulings have been completely repealed in regards to laws why not about another equally bad problem of access? Will you just start an ISP called "KKKISSp" where only members of the clan can join? They tried this type of thing at the Citadel and it didn't fly because it was ruled that even though it was manely a private school it had to let someone in. They violated rules that are there to keep things in a fair playing field. God do you really think if it we just trivially easy to set up an equal service that the UDP would mean anything. By logic we can see that the barrier to entry (like almost every single network app in the universe) has been raised to prevent the "rabble" from getting in.
Oh well...at least you're providing a good reason for dozens of informed people to post their explanations so that those who are merely ignorant of the facts instead of stubbornly wrong-headed can make up their minds...
How about talking to some of the @home customers who were effected by the UDP maybe if they actually rely on the internet and usenet in particlar they would not see eye to eye with you or anyone who wants to make the internet the next experiment in some utopian plan. Utopias have constantly failed throughout history. Now I see the internet in it's true light for what it is. It's not a utopia but a group of little grubby extreme capitalist scrooges who just want to create an extension of the "gentleman's club" to new and frightening extreme. You my friends have created 1984. You can think of me as a fool and an idiot. You can even moderate each and every single post and reduce my karma to -100 I still feel that I have a valid point about how we stricture public resources and how we should interact with people who are not to our liking. If you want a new internet then create one. If you want a new slashdot then create one. If you want to create that gentleman's club and invite all your rich little friends to play then fine but just don't tout it as the be all and the end all of communications. Get all the major fortune 500 companies on it and then get everyone and their mother to be there too (need a big hall to get all those in). Then you leave about 10 people standing out in the bleak, dark, cold and assume that you cannot have responsibility for making sure that those people are invited when it becomes a de facto standard. I hope that usenet dies a horrible, screaming, bloody, death, I hope that your news groups get spammed silly and that you keep instituting various measures that are designed to 'help' matters in various ways. That will only kill the open nature of the forum and make it useless and a waste of time (like it's not already). Do I care? Well I like to have things open so that anyone can actually join and participate but when the next emergent Stalin comes down the pike I can't just let it live.
NNTP is different from e-mail. e-mail is a "push" system where everything ends up in your mail folder -- you don't really have a choice of not receiving your e-mail. NNTP is a "pull" system where you as a reader can actually choose which newsgroups and which posts to read. Think about NNTP of something like the forums here on/. Would you rather read them online or have all posts in your mail folder? Didn't think so...
If I could use an offline modeling system to get them, organize them, and use them in any way possible them yes. As it is now I miss out on all the really interesting stuff because I just happen to be away from a dedicated t-1 (that is constantly denied the the average citizen) and cannot see what others have posted or respond to it. I have more access to e-mail or perhaps an offline modeling system than access to some random IP based service. If someone would just make sure that everyone had equal access we wouldn't have the lawsuits from the ADA about equal unfettered access to various services.
Slashdot Mirror
I once was a "hard" science guy but I have mellowed. I think that Leon's answer may of been long but show very much the brillance of the man. Good to see that /. kept it all
science related because I do not think he would of been happy to answer questions about his what os he uses or does he prefer blondes or brunettes (yes these questions were actually
posted but never asked!)
I am interested in them! If we know what people like this think about OSs and what not then it may be possible to create a better distribution. About women well I guess that's a personal preference but it never hurts to get a couple of questions like these in there.
If many more questions had been asked, it wouldn't have been the Mandrake ISO image people would have downloaded. :)
Well it was only 43k. I can transfer more data in one hour using kermit on a 2400bps modem than that anyway. I think it would take about oh 3 minutes at max to get it all on that setup a standard 56k could do that no sweat.
There's a -lot- of good stuff, there, and congratulations all round for one of the best high-end physics interviews I've read.
I would say it's pretty good considering slashdot could get someone so fameous to speak to us mortals.
Compared to typical news interviews, or documentaries (even on Discovery, TLC, or the BBC), I'd say that the quality of Slashdot's journalism is superior to any of the
"traditional" media outlets.
I disagree with you there. I watched a documentary on a PBS station a while ago about how the producers of 60 minutes actually do their work. All the extensive review and revision and further review are 1,000,000,000,000x more than slashdot could easily do in a year. This has to be done every week and is the only thing they ever do. Slashdot cannot compete with "traditional" media outlets unless they significantly increase their capital and use streaming video segments 24/7/365 with a whole world wide team of anchors and editors.
FWIW, egcs-1.1.2 is generally considered to be the most recent compiler available which should work safely for just about everything, including the kernel. Heck, if RedHat uses it
as their default compiler, the advantages must outweigh the disadvantages of gcc-2.7.3.2. My own personal experiences reflect this.
I took my information from the last look at the Linus Kernel Mailing list faq at lkml faq Apparently the fact that egcs was not stable for a long time I guess influenced the decision for not having it being in more common use for kernel compiling.
I think that these interviews are one of the *best* features of Slashdot.
I think that interviews are nice but what we need is a larger number of stories that can be directly accessed on the main page. Perhaps more of the tech information that gets passed over. My question is who actually knows slashdot exists and who would be willing to actually do an interview.
Something you don't want a Nobel-prize-winning physicist to say: "Oh gosh, that's a hard question."
As I recall the admission that you are a fool is actually better than no saying you are a fool. If there was a person who had a nobel and he/she said that there was not a question that is hard I would be rather unimpressed with them.
They have been saying "Red Hat Compatible" for the last few versions. I believe that started with 6.0 IIRC. They stopped being a Red Hat knock-off after 5.x
Well if we assume that businesses are the main target of redhat and that most of the really neat commercial packages are produced with Red Hat in mind then therefore we have to believe that compatability with Red Hat's commercial partners would be a very smart thing to do to increase a customer base.
1. Most of the physicists were employed in the military doing stuff for the cold war. When the "war" went away a great deal of these people were out of a job. (taken from a careen outlook publication done by the government and the US department of labor so no I am not talking out of my ass)
2. Difficulty: In general physics is one of the more mind bending areas of science. You cannot really believe that anyone would actually be easily able to get a degree in such an area as easy as a CS one.
3. Expense: When you want to do experiments in physics (the really neat modern ones) you need several million dollars and a large research team plus usually 5+ years of study
Why is everyone questioning the versioning?? Mandrake is *not* RedHat -- they're a very different distro and just because they were originally *based* on RedHat does not mean
we should treat them as followers forever. Moreover, they're advance in numbers was nothing like Slackware's. Mandrake went from 6.1 to 7; that's pretty normal versioning. Slack
went from like 4.0 to 7.0; that's padding.
I actually thought that slackware's major problem was a smoth upgrade (or any upgrade at all). I ran slackware from 3.4 to 3.6 and each and every time I had to blast away the partition and do all the manual configuration and such. Nothing like 10+ hours of swearing at your computer to get you into the mood of getting another upgradeable distribution.
Its nice that there are distro[s] out there using pgcc to get the performance boost but I work with a guy who has tried several versions of Mandrake on different machines, and when
he compiles the kernel it invariably causes some problem. It may go weeks or even months without problem but then just crashes for no apparent reason. The linux-kernel guys say
not to use pgcc on the kernel because its known to be unstable when you do. However if this is the compiler that comes with Mandrake how are you expected to safely upgrade your
system?!
Mandrake uses rpms right? Well so does Red Hat and they don't force you to use the pgcc compiler so therefore the simple solution is to just drop in the standard gcc compiler (make sure it's the older 2.7.3 version because egcs can also make havoc on your system at least back in the 2.1.x days when I compiled kernels and 2.2.x as well) and then do the compile. Pgcc is just an excuse to make something that isn't compatable with others machines.
Version numbers are not terribly informative. In many companies they are nothing more than a marketing tool. Mandrake may have a cool explanation for going to 7, but there's no
rule that says they have to stick to some one else's scheme.
If you don't think version numbers matter just look at debian. I can't stress this enough there is usually a difference (as seen in debian changelogs) between linux-package-3.4-56.deb and linux-package-3.4-57.deb even in commercial software the differences between version numbers are important enough because they usually involve change in the user interface or added bug fixes or design improvements. If you want support from the vendor or the community a new version is usually a must and this includes linux.
Newer kernel than RH 6.1, newer drivers than RH6.1, newer utility builds than RH6.1, newer X-Server than RH6.1... et.c. Plus their use their own installer et.c.
Are the packages for RH and it's upates newer or older in general to Mandrake? You have to look at this and ask which is really better? I would think that if updates were newer Mandrake would be better.
Perhaps, because Slack jumped ahead of all the other distributions, others felt it necessary to "keep up with the Jones" and match the version number.
At least debian is sane enough to not do that. I want logical version numbers not marketing trash. My opinion of Mandrake has been lowered if they think they really need to just up the version number. Does Mandrake such that much in terms of Red Hat?
Katz got snowed by those kids, that's what happened. They fed him some line about how their lives sucked because the only things in Idaho are potato farms, that sugar beet
plant, and rusty old pickups with shotguns and loud radios tuned to the country music station, and he bought it. I don't know anyone in the area who read the Wired article and
took it seriously. GASP! It's hard to imagine a mind as sharp as Katz being "snowballed" he's the smartest guy ever ever EVER!!! His writing can ONLY be compared to the bible.
I mean, both have such strong grasps on LOGIC AND REALITY!
Like people in the modern age reality is seen in the eye of the beholder. Maybe it *was* reality in the community that those kids lived in. Perhaps they did live in the sticks and it was true. Unless you live there and could relate the actual physical/social/political conditions of the area you cannot say he was snowballed.
What I was trying to point out is that the way Jon Katz presents his ideas is trite and not creative. One of the many so-called "no-no's" of writing is the use of cliches. Cliches are,
by definition, trite. An example of a cliche is: "Tears streamed down her face". You could rephrase this to make it non-cliche: "Tears spasmed over the boundaries of her eye lids,
cascading down the trecherous terrain of her face". Do you consider the second one more creative? I do.
Well the mental image of the first seems to be a tender one perhaps evoking sympathy more. The second is indeed creative but it just seems more to concentrate on the physical features of the person in question. Perhaps the second would be good perhaps if the person in question had just fallen down a hill or perhaps we are attempting to impart some sense of the tramatic nature of the event that the tears are being produced for. Not all cliches are bad. If you read a great deal of romance novels I am sure that the first would be perhaps a cliche. But what if you are exposed to say classical literature? How can you effectively judge something to be a cliche? What happens if we run out of effective methods of describing the act of crying? Well in English we have at least one method in creating a continum of words in severity or emotional impact. Consider the act of crying.
We have:
1. watering eyes -- perhaps slight crying
2. crying -- the actual act itself without too much
3. sobbing -- more intense than crying and involves more emphasis.
4. bawling -- more "earthy" generally used to refer to "simple" people or situations less human
Those 4 examples are the only ones that I can come up without stepping too deeply into the metaphor but as you can see there are ways to do it but even the cliche is still necessary to give that sensation.
Well, you obviouslly didn't read what I was talking about. At no point did I say his spelling, grammar, or punctuation was where his flaws were at. I said his flaws were in his
content and his organization. I'll thank you for thinking before you're cynical next time.
Specifically on what basis are the arguments bad? How is the content bad? Are there any ways to actually conclusively proving him wrong? Has anything he said actually been documented as wrong. People such as I need hard and conclusive evidence that what is being said is actually the truth. The only thing that I see is that he tries to make predictions on events and social situations that are not easily predictable in most ways. Like some of the sci-fi people in years past. I remember reading a book back in elementary school which said that by the 1990s we would have moon bases and be on our way to mars. Well have any of these things happened? No because people would rather live out their pathetic lives on good ol' planet earth and not actually explore space. Let me give you a little prediction of mine. ST TNG level of technology will be about 30,000 years in the future there is no way that we will have it in 2390 or so.
Now if the subtitle of the movie is "How a gullible journalist got taken in by a couple of lazy kids who can't find jobs in the 3rd fastest growing area in the U.S.", maybe it'll be
worth watching as something other than a parody.
How did Idaho get that rating in the first place? What's the source I wold be quite suprised at this considering the low population density of most of the state and your earlier descriptions of the place being possibly home to large quantities of hillbillies.
Quite. The Katz PR machine is on overdrive: a reality check is essential, for which see the following:
Is there anything better? Could andover afford these people? Come on this isn't Time or US News and World Report or even Variety this is an internet site and because of this and it's theme "News for Nerds: Stuff that Matters" we have a rather low selection because this isn't a trade magazine or anything like that. I think the more information that is posted to slashdot the better in terms of idea flow. The flow ideas is what created the open source movement and it is the only thing preventing it's demise. I would really like to see someone (from slashdot that is) produce an essay on the same topic as John Katz and have people judge if it is better. I don't think it's as easy as it looks.
PS. (And no random perl scripts that use syntastic english grammer parsers to recreate not so funny combinations of "essays" are only funny for about 2.567334 minutes exactly).
It's quite amazing how a persons image can shine high above their abilities. Since Jon Katz is a self professed source for all that is worthy in technology news, that makes him a
prime example for what I'm saying. Although Jon Katz seems to be well educated, his written skills leave something to be desired. As many have pointed out his writing style is
trite and not creative. One get's the feeling that he does this to boost his already inflated public image, and in so doing keeping the dollar signs rolling in. It's hard to blame him
though, money can make people do strange things. Best of luck your endevours Mr. Katz as I'm sure you know exactly what it is you're doing.
Why all this emphasis on what we term "creativity"? There eventually comes a time when all literary forms become trite and obsolete and boring. The only thing left after about 1950 that was absolutely really new and groundbreaking in terms of literature was perhaps random groups of text that meant nothing; and even that can be done in emacs with the dissociated press program. Just because this guy is probably as old as my father and that he has a very traditional concept of what the future is dosn't mean that his opioion is crap. I mean if you look at things like The Wizard of Oz (basically a kind of projection about what the future city would look like) you can see this in action. How about old crappy science fiction things. There is no chance that people will ever do anything in such a tacky manner.
Do you know something about this book/movie that the rest of us don't? I only ask because all that I know about either is that it's a nonfictional account of two people from Idaho
who meet over the internet. That's _really_ vague. The only movie that I remember that this even remotely resembles is "You've Got Mail", which better reminds me of "Sleepless
in Seattle".
Well that's really not that interesting at all. Geeks by their very nature are not lonely but are a social amalgm between computers and humans. I for one if I had a good enough computer would never leave my house only for the most basic of necessities.
I can't say that watching a couple of lonely geeks using usenet and e-mail makes for an intriguing plot, though. Nevertheless, I hope that I'm underestimating it.
Not only that I can't really see a logical group (which I assume most of slashdot is) would actual type of thing. Logic is the norm of the universe so says chaso theory.
What do you want to see done?
Movies should take advantage of all the actual technology that we have nowadays. Failing that we should have movies that actualy have acturate depictions or proper decision making and perhaps more utilitarian concepts. Take a look at the last ST movie for an example of what you should *not* do. People are not and should not be portrayed as fools. Making them appear to be foolish makes the entire plot less believable.
Generally you should not let a group of individuals who have little to gain affect the general betterment of the group. In real life such sacrifices do not get anywhere because they are pointless except for allegorical purposes for future generations nothing more.
Pander to what the public wants.
If the public seems to enjoy one prequel released 22 years after the original, then they want every movie to have a prequel released 22years afterwards. If they like "scary" movies that
have no visible scary entity, they want all movies to have no visible scary entity.
If we liked one girl band, then we'll love it when there's 1000 of them
No I don't think *everyone* wanted it. I thought it was a stupid move just for fanatics of the movies in the 70s but I guess that's just me. The future of the world isn't going to change at all it's just what one person decides to do with their time. Why do people always see conspiracies in areas that don't really have the brains to create them? Movie producers and people in the music industry are the last people I would actually credit with anything significant.
It's all about money, and trends.
Maybe but not everyone buys into hype and such. Just wait until all of the people who are living now get a little older and start to throw their weight around a little more. I very much doubt that anything you see will continue.
Actually I only used AOL for a total of 1 week in my entire life (daytime only). I use linux all the time from about 1997 or so. You base generalizations do not fit sorry.
1. I am not an @home customer
2. I have never spammed anyone and I probably never will. I don't think bulk e-mail is very effective and considerig how many people act like they haven't taken their prozac today I guess I really shouldn't try.
3. If anyone even tries to sue me they would have wished they haden't. I can't believe that people are that dense.
4. I just want to back up the feelings that I have and that have been growing due to rampant abuses of power and the fact that a little conspiracy has essentially screwed a whole class of people over. I have had smart ass sysadmins pull things on me in the past for extremely sketchy reasons.
5. The net shouldn't cost so god damned much in the first place. Technology is advancing right? Well instead of wasting that time playing quake improve the backbone of your news servers or make it possible for anyone to run a news server. For example people have pointed out that mirrorign all of the groups would be "impossible" (yeah right) but what about one? I think that a single 40Gb hd would work quite well for just one group for at least a week or more wouldn't you agree?
6. I have yet to actually control a coputer totally that was connected to any network at all. Most of the poeple who have are in fact incompetents and don't really belong with that type of power in the first place.
7. As we have found out in the world of computing compression is our best friend. Just compress the files and then transmit them compressed simple as that.
Please don't threaten me or personally attack me again ok?
Just as a whole bunch of people who own a club may decide, collectively, that they don't want some other person in it, the whole bunch of people who own the network's
computers may decide that they don't want some other person's computer using it. That's perfectly legal. As has been explained to you over and over and over and over. But you
don't seem to get it, and will continue not to get it.
About the club concept I have similar reactions and say that (from the mind of Homer Simpson) that I am ashamed of this "crappy club for jerks". If I own a resteraunt can I just deny a certain class of people let's just say anyone I want from comming in? Perhaps anyone who has red on that day cannot in any way enter my establishment because I hate red. Is this fair. The federal government says no (not necessarily the states but they are funny anyway any not too concerned about collevtive rights or freedoms merely about money). I may not get it because I do not agree. If I provide a public service I cannot exclude on a certain class of people. Every case must be handled on a case, by case basis. When you get into networks of computers or networks of people you have to objectively look at each case and decide for yourself. Such blanket rulings have been completely repealed in regards to laws why not about another equally bad problem of access? Will you just start an ISP called "KKKISSp" where only members of the clan can join? They tried this type of thing at the Citadel and it didn't fly because it was ruled that even though it was manely a private school it had to let someone in. They violated rules that are there to keep things in a fair playing field. God do you really think if it we just trivially easy to set up an equal service that the UDP would mean anything. By logic we can see that the barrier to entry (like almost every single network app in the universe) has been raised to prevent the "rabble" from getting in.
Oh well...at least you're providing a good reason for dozens of informed people to post their explanations so that those who are merely ignorant of the facts instead of stubbornly
wrong-headed can make up their minds...
How about talking to some of the @home customers who were effected by the UDP maybe if they actually rely on the internet and usenet in particlar they would not see eye to eye with you or anyone who wants to make the internet the next experiment in some utopian plan. Utopias have constantly failed throughout history. Now I see the internet in it's true light for what it is. It's not a utopia but a group of little grubby extreme capitalist scrooges who just want to create an extension of the "gentleman's club" to new and frightening extreme. You my friends have created 1984. You can think of me as a fool and an idiot. You can even moderate each and every single post and reduce my karma to -100 I still feel that I have a valid point about how we stricture public resources and how we should interact with people who are not to our liking. If you want a new internet then create one. If you want a new slashdot then create one. If you want to create that gentleman's club and invite all your rich little friends to play then fine but just don't tout it as the be all and the end all of communications. Get all the major fortune 500 companies on it and then get everyone and their mother to be there too (need a big hall to get all those in). Then you leave about 10 people standing out in the bleak, dark, cold and assume that you cannot have responsibility for making sure that those people are invited when it becomes a de facto standard. I hope that usenet dies a horrible, screaming, bloody, death, I hope that your news groups get spammed silly and that you keep instituting various measures that are designed to 'help' matters in various ways. That will only kill the open nature of the forum and make it useless and a waste of time (like it's not already). Do I care? Well I like to have things open so that anyone can actually join and participate but when the next emergent Stalin comes down the pike I can't just let it live.
NNTP is different from e-mail. e-mail is a "push" system where everything ends up in your mail folder -- you don't really have a choice of not receiving your e-mail. NNTP is a /. Would you ...
"pull" system where you as a reader can actually choose which newsgroups and which posts to read. Think about NNTP of something like the forums here on
rather read them online or have all posts in your mail folder? Didn't think so
If I could use an offline modeling system to get them, organize them, and use them in any way possible them yes. As it is now I miss out on all the really interesting stuff because I just happen to be away from a dedicated t-1 (that is constantly denied the the average citizen) and cannot see what others have posted or respond to it. I have more access to e-mail or perhaps an offline modeling system than access to some random IP based service. If someone would just make sure that everyone had equal access we wouldn't have the lawsuits from the ADA about equal unfettered access to various services.