Don't conflate X's bloat problems with Apple's so flippantly. Example: I occasionally dual-boot Linux and MacOS 8.6 on an unmodified revA iMac, basically used for text editing. The full Mac "system heap" (which includes its full GUI, all "extensions" enabling networking, etc.) wastes 14 of its 32 megs of ram, whereas Linux kernel+X+GNOME+Enlightenment (close as Linux gets to Mac, I think), with no services running, and no connectivity, uses 47, swaps for five minutes if I so much as move the mouse, and offers a fraction of the out-of-the-chute GUI functionality of MacOS (though I love Xterms, and hate to be without them). Point: Apple's coders know what they're doing. I don't expect OSX to run smoothly on the same machine, but I wouldn't be at all surprised if it did. Linux, in its sexed-up desktop configuration, is indeed graceless, and still less screenshot-genic than OSX. Who's fixing it? No one. If anyone tried, he'd be pilloried for being an obvious Mac weenie, and called "gay" on Slashdot. I'm sadder than you are that "desktop Linux" is Windows-but-worse, and that OSX might be the death of it. But what to do?
Actually, Apple is moving toward "standardizing" them. Sort of. At least on the high end. I canceled my order once they announced they'd probably have multi-processor, OSX-loaded G4s coming out next year [insert boner here], but the "revA" G4 has a DVD RAM drive as one of its few options, because it's the only "removable" medium that can hold a fully rendered short film (of, say, 4G) or other huge multi-media whatever on it. Though a stack of Firewire hard drives is what friends of mine use instead, since they're essentally "removable" too, and use a near-standard connector (for the graphics biz, at least), DVD RAM is starting to "get buzz" because it's less volatile during transport than any HD.
Being way more of a book-geek than a computer geek, I have some advice: Choose sf books that aren't just great books, but great books that also serve as "gateway art" to other horizons-broadening material, eg:
Arthur C. Clarke's 2001 is a good sf book, but Kubrick's film version is big-G Great; likewise Lem's Solaris and Tarkovsky's film version. Get 'em hooked, then you can introduce all the other great Kubrick and Tarkovsky movies that would have seemed boring to them before, and pretty soon they'll be begging you to take them to Godard retrospectives instead of the arcade. Phillip K. Dick's, Alfred Bester's, and Robert Anton Wilson's sf+ styles are influenced by/reminiscent of the big-G Great literature of guys like James Joyce, Wyndham Lewis, Samuel Beckett, Donald Barthelme, and William Burroughs (to name a few)--and kids hate that stuff, because, without context, it just seems "difficult"; likewise Neal Stephenson is a kind of lightweight, more-entertaining version of Thomas Pynchon or William Gass. Etc, etc.
If you can use kids' interest in sf to get them interested in other, related, more "arty" art (made more accesible thanks to experience with similar, but less haughty stuff), you're doing them a great favor. I basically did this for myself when I was that age--chased "links" around the library and video store, instead of the internet--and I turned out to be a real smartypants because of it. The more of us the better, IMNSHO.
Actually it's "A Void," by Georges Perec, who wrote it in French, which must have really sucked--and yes, there's an 8 in it, which is cheating. (Well, in the English "no-e" translation it's cheating; Perec cheated with French twenties.) He also wrote the world's longest palindrome, l think it was thirty pages or so. Goofy guy, decent writer.
Got a pile of those across the room from me now. However, since they're "for music" (ie: rackmount effects, amps, etc.), they cost about twice as much as the ones "for business" (ie: computers). Just like "ADAT" tapes cost twice as much as "SuperVHS" tapes, and blank data cds at the music store are $6 when they're $1 or less at Staples or OfficeMax.
A high-quality "flight case" that'll hold a few pcs will cost you in the low two-thousands if you buy it "for music." Never let them think you're a musician.
1) See the earlier links to the Steve Albini piece. Very true, based on...
2) my personal experience: about 40-50% to retailers/distrubutors, who usually are also the label, who as such get another 30-40%; sometimes producers get a cut of the label's share (up to 10%, if the producer's a big name), and the artists get 0%, unless and until they've sold 250,000+ copies, at which point they start getting 1-5% off each additional sale (unless they're already rich; then maybe 10%). Nice, huh? So "go independent!" right? Sorry. Unless it's Dischord or some other mythical honorable label (since I think they're the only one), the retailer gets the same 40-50% (and usually 100%), the label gets 0-60% (since independent labels and their small-time distributors don't have the clout to demand payment from retailers), and the artist gets 0%, max.
My advice: Drop the guitar, get an MBA (or at least get "Microsoft Certified"). The music biz is for suits, not people. And music-as-a-"career" is for people who'll not only do it for free, forever, but invest years in getting good at it, for free (or less), and spend 1000s-upon-1000s on equipment etc., expecting nothing in return, ever, from anyone, ever, at all, but still they have to do it, just because. Like anything that's worthwhile.
synesthesia.com/~milk: smells green synesthesia.com/~green: smells spherical synesthesia.com/~sphere: smells like a Bach fugue synesthesia.com/~Bach: smells like milk
Public Apology (Thoughts Of Roblimo Added)
on
Hole in GNU GPL?
·
· Score: 1
I (which is the first word of nearly every sentence I write) posted this (fantastic) piece because I (being fantastic) felt (because the fantastic don't have to think) Faré raised some subtle but interesting (although the incongruent natures of subtlety and interest may not be apparent to you, since you're not fantastic) ethical and legal points about the GPL that were worth discussion and clarification (but the possibility that the points' need for clarification renders them unsubtle and uninteresting wasn't feelable by me, and, therefore, not worthy of consideration). I honestly did not expect to get flamed over my (unquestionably fantastic) decision to post his submission.
[The second paragraph has been redacted due to redundancy and its being really boring. --ed.]
But I (who am never wrong) was wrong (but of course I'm lying) to post this to Slashdot, which is obviously not an appropriate (which is the word we fantastic people use in place of "right" or "correct" because it makes our sentences longer and more officious) forum for discussion of subtle ethical matters (because you're all a bunch of dumbasses), and it is apparent that any mention of even a hint of a possible tiny (which highly comical phrasing would make you laugh if you weren't such a bunch of dumbasses) imperfection in the GPL does not belong here (because you're all a bunch of dumbasses), and that anyone who (not being a dumbass) dares (have I mentioned how daring I am already?) to mention any such thing on this website (for dumbasses) must expect - and probably deserves (for not knowing that to deign to speak down to the dumbasses is to become a dumbass oneself) - a series of harsh, even obscene, personal attacks (which is what rational rebukes or comments by dumbasses are called) instead of rational rebukes or comments (which is what harsh, even obscene, personal attacks by me are called).
Please accept my humble apology (by which I mean fuck you, you dumbasses). I was wrong (to lay this pearl before you dumbasses). I will try not to make the mistake of posting anything even remotely like this (or like the Theory of Relativity, to which my every post is comparable) on Slashdot (Where The Dumbasses Don't Block Banner Ads) ever again (because you dumbasses didn't block enough banner ads to keep me in clown college, so I don't really need those flamewar-inspired pageviews anymore).
Matt Groenig has said he wants to age Bart at some point and give him a Frank Zappa mustache--Zappa being obviously the coolest guy in the (nether)world, and the "inspiration" for Groenig's art/career--but Fox/Brooks/everyone-but-me ain't into it. Oh well.
Manchester's where Morrissey came from, right? So yeah--I think most of us dim, ungrammatical, spellin'-everything-wrong aMerkins can understand the vileness spouting from that 'burb. Even though almost none of us know the right English word for "'burb."
Disclaimer: I own a pile of Morrissey/Smiths albums, of which I like about five, and I apologize. And apologise.
I think that computers made great educational tools back when Woz designed them, but that they've become pretty much televisions with keyboards. Or at least that's the impression a schoolkid is likely to get these days.
I consider myself very lucky to have gone to elementary shool in a "backward" place like North Carolina, because as late as 1986, the state's shool computer labs still were filled with Apple ][s. And our "computer class," in the "gifted and talented" school, consisted of just one (that's right, one) day (that's one day--total, ever) of making the Turtle move. And the only way to make the Turtle move was by writing a BASIC-ish program telling it where to go. No mouse, no animated nothin'--just tell it what to do, type RUN, watch it do it. And by the end of that one day, a couple of us had made the Turtle do some cool shit. I wrote what today would be called a screensaver--a kind of butterflying perpetual motion thing that impressed the teacher a lot. But not because it was cool-looking (which, for the time, it was). It was because I'd applied reason to manipulate an utterly unfamiliar device semi-competently. And I learned something else that no one I know who went to a less impoverished shoool did: Computers are tools that do what you (yes, even you, first-day user) tell them to do.
I didn't go on to a career in computer science--though I use computers for all my work in music, art, and writing/publishing, and for some goofing off, too--but I did recently think of something my computer doesn't do that I wish it would, and instead of waiting for it to figure out how by itself, I went to the bookstore, bought the hardcore programming books, and...well, I'll get back to you in a year or so.
A lot of my friends, however, went to "good" schools. Windows everywhere. "Educational software" (silly games) up the wazoo. Used computers every day of their pubescent lives. And they can't do a damned thing with them, but they like to "watch" them. Everyone here knows the type; this doesn't need to get insulting.
But this has gotten too long, so, the point is:
I kind of disagree with Woz, though I admire the guy like almost no one else. Artist and tool, the former using logic and reason to manipulate the latter--that's the level on which a child should meet a computer. Maybe later they can be friends.
Semi-accurate quote from the article: "[In 2000, t]he pirates won't be the only ones making a mint off MP3." And also MP3'll take over the world (again, I suppose).
Many problems with this. Here's four:
1) Raise your hand if you've ever given anyone any money for an illicit MP3....Well? If I were Don Rickles I'd ask if I were at an amputees' convention. Unfortunately, I'm not Don Rickles, so I kind of feel bad for having said he might say that. Sorry.
2) Your average connection (mine, for example) is still 56k. Your average MP3 is what, 3-5 megs? Let's not break our "0" keys punching out the math on how much lifeblood downloading, say, the new Metallica album will suck outta you.
3) Three of the five (mostly famous) browsers I've got on my system consider ".mp3" to be a text file extension, so they save them to disk that way. That doesn't freak me out, but I'm a dork. It would be hard for my cute-but-normal little sister to click the little icon and listen to Jennifer Lopez in Xemacs, so I can totally see her thinking "MP3" is some kinda virus or something, because it looks like L;AKDSFGLVNAOINOWNAOIOAINSEOIU!@#$%^&*() x7000 and just sits there mysteriously silent. Dumber shit has happened.
4) MP3s sound real crappy. And don't gimme no audiophile quiz-show benchmarky thingees that say I'm wrong, or tell me how half-assed my soundcard is; my stuff us above-average, non-1337 stuff, and MP3s make me long for the crispy warmth of 8-tracks. I have about two thousand cds--because I really like music and buying things--and about one undeleted MP3; I can't even imagine paying for that kinda crappy bitstream. And I've actually paid for those big bad bloaty things Adobe makes, so it's not like I'm a warez dood. MP3s are last-resort, gotta-hear-that-song-tonight-and-never-again material.
1)/. links to yet another "lookie - habitable moons out there by Beta Pictoris or whatever, we swear it's true this time, they're, like, fulla spacedudes" story (or at least that's what too many people seem to think it says).
2)/. is flooded with (among other things) "Hey, man, wouldn't it be kickass if we could go there and check out those undoubtedly habitable planets and mate with their silicon women and I wonder if that means they'd consider our computer chips to be made of meat because they're silicon, right? get it? we all gotta gang up and write our congressmen and get NASA more money (sample letter-to-congressman on my homepage)!"-type comments, strewn with sub-scientific crudspeak memorized from stinky sf books by guys who are dead now (except for AC (-larke)).
3) AC (-oward) mocks 2) (above), misspells "masturbate," makes me laugh my ass off.
That's, er, Funny.
I'd give it a 3.99 (close to perfect, but -.01 for that "masterbate [sic]" thing, and -1 for poor taste in petrified women (for future reference: Ai Hayama, Ai Hiyoshi, Ai Ijima, and Ai Mizuno would be good choices for/., because 1) their first names are all AI (which is cool and dorky and reminds us of RMS), 2) Google (the one true search engine) will get more hits when we all go looking for pictures of them because we don't know who they are (and not knowing everything pisses us off at/.), and 3) they're already naked (usually))(and nested parentheses are also cool; use some!)).
2. [...]you may distribute the Distributions in binary code form only under the NCL or a license agreement containing a prominent notice informing recipients how to obtain the Distributions in source code form under the NCL;
3. If the Distributions contain derivative works created by you, you must place a Notice in the source code of the derivative works stating that your derivative works are being made available under the NCL;
Unquote.
What this seems to me to say is that (2.) non-NCL licensing (a work containing?) an unaltered Novell binary is allowed so long as notice of said binary having originally been NCLed is kept (which keeps it from being GPLed, BSDed, &c.), but that (3.) derivative works would be NCLed "virally." Which is odd.
I assume that my reading doesn't reflect Novell's intent, and I'm neither a lawyer nor a potential developer of Novell-derivative works, so I might be wrong and it doesn't matter if I am; but, some clarification here might be helpful/needed before the NCL goes official.
(And apologies to/. and BP if this is redundant, but I spent a while pondering the license before I posted (which is also odd).)
(aside from *Gravity's Rainbow* being a good source of passwords that'll keep kiddies at bay)
I'd suggest deriving passwords from Things You Know About Yourself That You're Not Likely To Tell Anyone Else -- examples (mostly utterly hypothetical): your favorite song is "Sundown" by Gordon Lightfoot; you voted for Lyndon LaRouche; you have diaper rash from sitting at your terminal for x-squared years; you have a years-long crush on Janeane Garofalo -- so you can remember them easily, but guesswork won't likely crack 'em.
If you need a couple numbers in there, the circumference of your penis is a good place to start (about 44% of the time).
Then again, my root password is "etoot," so ignoring my advice might be a good idea.
I have to agree with the majority-opinion-so-far, that the distinction between "cyberpunk" and its "post-" in this case is pretty trivial, even by the standards of other "post-"s, like, say, postcoital or postmodern. The examples above are just cyberpunk books without the famous eighties' attitude (Miami Vice, Tom Waits (blah blah blah &c &c)).
In order for something to be post-something-else, I'd say it has to be both unimaginable without Whatever it's post-ing, and so foreign to Whatever, that practitioners and diehard fans of Whatever will consider it totally shitty in comparison. (Nice sentence, eh?)
Here's an example: Joyce's *Ulysses* is widely agreed to be exemplary of "modernism," and Mark Leyner's *My Cousin, My Gastroenterologist* is, whatever other insults you feel like hurling at it, a famous example of the "postmodern." You think James Joyce would like the look of his heir? Hardly. Does anyone you know who celebrates every Bloomsday also enthuse about the grandness of Leyner? Probably not. But if it weren't for Joyce's example in the artfully-recombined-doody-makes-great-literature department, *My Cousin* would be as tedious and pretentious as anything by John Barth or David Foster Wallace.
In fact, I think Leyner's peak stuff from a decade or so ago would be a better candidate for "post-cyberpunk" enshrinement than any of the works mentioned above (by the unimaginable-without-X/mostly-hated-by-X standard). (But then again, he wrote my sig for me, so....)
And there's a thing in a Derrida book about some prank calls he got from Heidegger's ghost that I should probably use to bolster my argument, but the book's, like, nine feet from my chair, and I'm feelin' kinda post-cogent today, so f it.
I'll have to scoop out that burnout/Deadhead/typical-Berkeley-guy image of Stallman I've had in my head until now, and reread his manifestiiiiii as products of the mind of a Conlon Nancarrow fan, a.k.a. a great mind. It was such fun pretending everything he said had "One Tin Soldier" playing in the background. Damn.
And since I couldn't come up with a decent question --
Hey Bruce: You might be interested in Melt-Banana's *Charlie* cd; they mangle punk rock as frighteningly/inspiringly/virtuosically as Nancarrow does ragtime -- like what Shudder to Think does to cock rock, if you've heard that. (Also they're from Japan, which I think gives them an automatic jack-up on the cyber-coolness scale.)
While this story isn't anything more than yet another anti-luser screed from a tech with probably too much (and misplaced) self-esteem, and re: mIgrowsoft tells us only that, yes - oh the humanity - they're checking out Linux-as-OS-for-people-with-suntans to see if they should be worried about a (highly unlikely) migration away from Windows, the comments reveal Linux's weakest feature: developers are directing its development. That's why Corel (argh!) is pretty much alone in making a simplified distro (there's YDL for PPC, too, but I haven't seen a release date for their Gone Home version); Corel is just like the world - full of lusers who, when a/.er says quote [sigh/chuckle] All you have to do is
$ tar zxvf tarball.tar.gz $ cd tarball $./configure $ make $ su -c "make install"
- what are you, retarded? unquote, will say "No, *that's* retarded. The mouse has been around for 15 years. Why can't I just poke the file with it?" And so Corel tries to make it happen, while RHAT makes its manual a hundred pages longer.
Now, before you get all worked up and start goin' root-this and null-that, you should know that I *want* to use a *nix, because I know what's good about all of 'em: they work right. That's why I don't use WinAnything, even though I "should," being a luser. I've got a relatively useless iMac staring at me right now that I want to run YDL on once the G4 arrives, because I figure a Linux OS will make better use of the little girl's limited memory while doing silly crap like slashdotting and visiting alt.fan.traci-lords. For me (non-sysadmin, non-dev), that's about all Linux offers right now. But to do work, I need two things (aside from Photoshop; don't get me started about GIMP (argh!)): solid uptime (which *nix has) and a GUI for every occasion. Mac OS 8.6, though it chews through memory like mad, almost has the second. There are Windows-style pop-up menus down in the left corner, GNOME-type open-app buttons in the right, a bunch of specialized 3rd-party menu-bar pulldowns and "virtual desktops," and, as a plus, the native scripting language is ridiculously simple (and works with almost every application). I use all of these, all the time. What I want is a command line. I know how much faster it is to grep than it is to use the Finder, and I'd like to be able to do more while keeping all my windows open (script-on-the-fly, for example). A real "EasyLinux" would be perfect. But there isn't one. Not even close. I don't wanna *make* nothin' but pretty pictures and invoices.
And unfortunately for The Movement (which I truly do love), Mac OSX Client, a prettied-up and expensive BSD, probably will be exactly what I (and most everyone I know, almost uniformly Mac- and Be-using graphics/publishing/music pros) need. We don't like that it's not really Free(TM) and isn't particularly anti-MS, but so what? Got work to do (if I ever shut up).
And if Linux can't even convince a super-luser like me, it's valid to ask what my mom (whose computer is so damn nice I pray for her death daily) and some doofus trying to play CivIII and listen to Korn mp3s are going to think of it. The word "retarded" springs to mind.
Slashdot Mirror
Apologies. That last bit was supposed to be "and think that OSX might be the death of it." I doubt you think that.
True, BUT--
Don't conflate X's bloat problems with Apple's so flippantly. Example: I occasionally dual-boot Linux and MacOS 8.6 on an unmodified revA iMac, basically used for text editing. The full Mac "system heap" (which includes its full GUI, all "extensions" enabling networking, etc.) wastes 14 of its 32 megs of ram, whereas Linux kernel+X+GNOME+Enlightenment (close as Linux gets to Mac, I think), with no services running, and no connectivity, uses 47, swaps for five minutes if I so much as move the mouse, and offers a fraction of the out-of-the-chute GUI functionality of MacOS (though I love Xterms, and hate to be without them). Point: Apple's coders know what they're doing. I don't expect OSX to run smoothly on the same machine, but I wouldn't be at all surprised if it did. Linux, in its sexed-up desktop configuration, is indeed graceless, and still less screenshot-genic than OSX. Who's fixing it? No one. If anyone tried, he'd be pilloried for being an obvious Mac weenie, and called "gay" on Slashdot. I'm sadder than you are that "desktop Linux" is Windows-but-worse, and that OSX might be the death of it. But what to do?
Actually, Apple is moving toward "standardizing" them. Sort of. At least on the high end. I canceled my order once they announced they'd probably have multi-processor, OSX-loaded G4s coming out next year [insert boner here], but the "revA" G4 has a DVD RAM drive as one of its few options, because it's the only "removable" medium that can hold a fully rendered short film (of, say, 4G) or other huge multi-media whatever on it. Though a stack of Firewire hard drives is what friends of mine use instead, since they're essentally "removable" too, and use a near-standard connector (for the graphics biz, at least), DVD RAM is starting to "get buzz" because it's less volatile during transport than any HD.
Being way more of a book-geek than a computer geek, I have some advice: Choose sf books that aren't just great books, but great books that also serve as "gateway art" to other horizons-broadening material, eg:
Arthur C. Clarke's 2001 is a good sf book, but Kubrick's film version is big-G Great; likewise Lem's Solaris and Tarkovsky's film version. Get 'em hooked, then you can introduce all the other great Kubrick and Tarkovsky movies that would have seemed boring to them before, and pretty soon they'll be begging you to take them to Godard retrospectives instead of the arcade. Phillip K. Dick's, Alfred Bester's, and Robert Anton Wilson's sf+ styles are influenced by/reminiscent of the big-G Great literature of guys like James Joyce, Wyndham Lewis, Samuel Beckett, Donald Barthelme, and William Burroughs (to name a few)--and kids hate that stuff, because, without context, it just seems "difficult"; likewise Neal Stephenson is a kind of lightweight, more-entertaining version of Thomas Pynchon or William Gass. Etc, etc.
If you can use kids' interest in sf to get them interested in other, related, more "arty" art (made more accesible thanks to experience with similar, but less haughty stuff), you're doing them a great favor. I basically did this for myself when I was that age--chased "links" around the library and video store, instead of the internet--and I turned out to be a real smartypants because of it. The more of us the better, IMNSHO.
Actually it's "A Void," by Georges Perec, who wrote it in French, which must have really sucked--and yes, there's an 8 in it, which is cheating. (Well, in the English "no-e" translation it's cheating; Perec cheated with French twenties.) He also wrote the world's longest palindrome, l think it was thirty pages or so. Goofy guy, decent writer.
Got a pile of those across the room from me now. However, since they're "for music" (ie: rackmount effects, amps, etc.), they cost about twice as much as the ones "for business" (ie: computers). Just like "ADAT" tapes cost twice as much as "SuperVHS" tapes, and blank data cds at the music store are $6 when they're $1 or less at Staples or OfficeMax.
A high-quality "flight case" that'll hold a few pcs will cost you in the low two-thousands if you buy it "for music." Never let them think you're a musician.
1) See the earlier links to the Steve Albini piece. Very true, based on...
2) my personal experience: about 40-50% to retailers/distrubutors, who usually are also the label, who as such get another 30-40%; sometimes producers get a cut of the label's share (up to 10%, if the producer's a big name), and the artists get 0%, unless and until they've sold 250,000+ copies, at which point they start getting 1-5% off each additional sale (unless they're already rich; then maybe 10%). Nice, huh? So "go independent!" right? Sorry. Unless it's Dischord or some other mythical honorable label (since I think they're the only one), the retailer gets the same 40-50% (and usually 100%), the label gets 0-60% (since independent labels and their small-time distributors don't have the clout to demand payment from retailers), and the artist gets 0%, max.
My advice: Drop the guitar, get an MBA (or at least get "Microsoft Certified"). The music biz is for suits, not people. And music-as-a-"career" is for people who'll not only do it for free, forever, but invest years in getting good at it, for free (or less), and spend 1000s-upon-1000s on equipment etc., expecting nothing in return, ever, from anyone, ever, at all, but still they have to do it, just because. Like anything that's worthwhile.
synesthesia.com/~milk: smells green
synesthesia.com/~green: smells spherical
synesthesia.com/~sphere: smells like a Bach fugue
synesthesia.com/~Bach: smells like milk
Okay, fine. I suck today.
{faketag} new /. teeshirt, XL {faketag}
...since there's nothing there now.
I (which is the first word of nearly every sentence I write) posted this (fantastic) piece because I (being fantastic) felt (because the fantastic don't have to think) Faré raised some subtle but interesting (although the incongruent natures of subtlety and interest may not be apparent to you, since you're not fantastic) ethical and legal points about the GPL that were worth discussion and clarification (but the possibility that the points' need for clarification renders them unsubtle and uninteresting wasn't feelable by me, and, therefore, not worthy of consideration). I honestly did not expect to get flamed over my (unquestionably fantastic) decision to post his submission.
[The second paragraph has been redacted due to redundancy and its being really boring. --ed.]
But I (who am never wrong) was wrong (but of course I'm lying) to post this to Slashdot, which is obviously not an appropriate (which is the word we fantastic people use in place of "right" or "correct" because it makes our sentences longer and more officious) forum for discussion of subtle ethical matters (because you're all a bunch of dumbasses), and it is apparent that any mention of even a hint of a possible tiny (which highly comical phrasing would make you laugh if you weren't such a bunch of dumbasses) imperfection in the GPL does not belong here (because you're all a bunch of dumbasses), and that anyone who (not being a dumbass) dares (have I mentioned how daring I am already?) to mention any such thing on this website (for dumbasses) must expect - and probably deserves (for not knowing that to deign to speak down to the dumbasses is to become a dumbass oneself) - a series of harsh, even obscene, personal attacks (which is what rational rebukes or comments by dumbasses are called) instead of rational rebukes or comments (which is what harsh, even obscene, personal attacks by me are called).
Please accept my humble apology (by which I mean fuck you, you dumbasses). I was wrong (to lay this pearl before you dumbasses). I will try not to make the mistake of posting anything even remotely like this (or like the Theory of Relativity, to which my every post is comparable) on Slashdot (Where The Dumbasses Don't Block Banner Ads) ever again (because you dumbasses didn't block enough banner ads to keep me in clown college, so I don't really need those flamewar-inspired pageviews anymore).
-Robin (The Smartest Man Who Ever Lived, Dumbass)
And also I have no idea why I misspelled Groening's name (twice).
D'oh.
Matt Groenig has said he wants to age Bart at some point and give him a Frank Zappa mustache--Zappa being obviously the coolest guy in the (nether)world, and the "inspiration" for Groenig's art/career--but Fox/Brooks/everyone-but-me ain't into it. Oh well.
That last part should be "Hey baby...wanna kill all humans?" which is, in fact, only the second best Bender quote.
"Bodies are for hookers and fat people" stomps all over it.
I've been thinking of making that my sig, since mine seems to confuse and annoy people more than I thought it would.
[Insert rant about how no one reads books anymore.]
Manchester's where Morrissey came from, right? So yeah--I think most of us dim, ungrammatical, spellin'-everything-wrong aMerkins can understand the vileness spouting from that 'burb. Even though almost none of us know the right English word for "'burb."
Disclaimer: I own a pile of Morrissey/Smiths albums, of which I like about five, and I apologize. And apologise.
I think that computers made great educational tools back when Woz designed them, but that they've become pretty much televisions with keyboards. Or at least that's the impression a schoolkid is likely to get these days.
I consider myself very lucky to have gone to elementary shool in a "backward" place like North Carolina, because as late as 1986, the state's shool computer labs still were filled with Apple ][s. And our "computer class," in the "gifted and talented" school, consisted of just one (that's right, one) day (that's one day--total, ever) of making the Turtle move. And the only way to make the Turtle move was by writing a BASIC-ish program telling it where to go. No mouse, no animated nothin'--just tell it what to do, type RUN, watch it do it. And by the end of that one day, a couple of us had made the Turtle do some cool shit. I wrote what today would be called a screensaver--a kind of butterflying perpetual motion thing that impressed the teacher a lot. But not because it was cool-looking (which, for the time, it was). It was because I'd applied reason to manipulate an utterly unfamiliar device semi-competently. And I learned something else that no one I know who went to a less impoverished shoool did: Computers are tools that do what you (yes, even you, first-day user) tell them to do.
I didn't go on to a career in computer science--though I use computers for all my work in music, art, and writing/publishing, and for some goofing off, too--but I did recently think of something my computer doesn't do that I wish it would, and instead of waiting for it to figure out how by itself, I went to the bookstore, bought the hardcore programming books, and...well, I'll get back to you in a year or so.
A lot of my friends, however, went to "good" schools. Windows everywhere. "Educational software" (silly games) up the wazoo. Used computers every day of their pubescent lives. And they can't do a damned thing with them, but they like to "watch" them. Everyone here knows the type; this doesn't need to get insulting.
But this has gotten too long, so, the point is:
I kind of disagree with Woz, though I admire the guy like almost no one else. Artist and tool, the former using logic and reason to manipulate the latter--that's the level on which a child should meet a computer. Maybe later they can be friends.
A stick or two, I think you mean.
...Cuz, y'know, he's, like, wooden, wants to be a real boy someday....teehee....
Oh, man, I kill me.
Semi-accurate quote from the article: "[In 2000, t]he pirates won't be the only ones making a mint off MP3." And also MP3'll take over the world (again, I suppose).
...Well? If I were Don Rickles I'd ask if I were at an amputees' convention. Unfortunately, I'm not Don Rickles, so I kind of feel bad for having said he might say that. Sorry.
Many problems with this. Here's four:
1) Raise your hand if you've ever given anyone any money for an illicit MP3.
2) Your average connection (mine, for example) is still 56k. Your average MP3 is what, 3-5 megs? Let's not break our "0" keys punching out the math on how much lifeblood downloading, say, the new Metallica album will suck outta you.
3) Three of the five (mostly famous) browsers I've got on my system consider ".mp3" to be a text file extension, so they save them to disk that way. That doesn't freak me out, but I'm a dork. It would be hard for my cute-but-normal little sister to click the little icon and listen to Jennifer Lopez in Xemacs, so I can totally see her thinking "MP3" is some kinda virus or something, because it looks like L;AKDSFGLVNAOINOWNAOIOAINSEOIU!@#$%^&*() x7000 and just sits there mysteriously silent. Dumber shit has happened.
4) MP3s sound real crappy. And don't gimme no audiophile quiz-show benchmarky thingees that say I'm wrong, or tell me how half-assed my soundcard is; my stuff us above-average, non-1337 stuff, and MP3s make me long for the crispy warmth of 8-tracks. I have about two thousand cds--because I really like music and buying things--and about one undeleted MP3; I can't even imagine paying for that kinda crappy bitstream. And I've actually paid for those big bad bloaty things Adobe makes, so it's not like I'm a warez dood. MP3s are last-resort, gotta-hear-that-song-tonight-and-never-again material.
Anyone got some more?
I think he meant "the strap-on my girlfriend shows," actually. Or at least that's what I would have meant.
Here's how I think this went:
/. links to yet another "lookie - habitable moons out there by Beta Pictoris or whatever, we swear it's true this time, they're, like, fulla spacedudes" story (or at least that's what too many people seem to think it says).
/. is flooded with (among other things) "Hey, man, wouldn't it be kickass if we could go there and check out those undoubtedly habitable planets and mate with their silicon women and I wonder if that means they'd consider our computer chips to be made of meat because they're silicon, right? get it? we all gotta gang up and write our congressmen and get NASA more money (sample letter-to-congressman on my homepage)!"-type comments, strewn with sub-scientific crudspeak memorized from stinky sf books by guys who are dead now (except for AC (-larke)).
/., because 1) their first names are all AI (which is cool and dorky and reminds us of RMS), 2) Google (the one true search engine) will get more hits when we all go looking for pictures of them because we don't know who they are (and not knowing everything pisses us off at /.), and 3) they're already naked (usually))(and nested parentheses are also cool; use some!)).
1)
2)
3) AC (-oward) mocks 2) (above), misspells "masturbate," makes me laugh my ass off.
That's, er, Funny.
I'd give it a 3.99 (close to perfect, but -.01 for that "masterbate [sic]" thing, and -1 for poor taste in petrified women (for future reference: Ai Hayama, Ai Hiyoshi, Ai Ijima, and Ai Mizuno would be good choices for
From the draft licence:
/. and BP if this is redundant, but I spent a while pondering the license before I posted (which is also odd).)
2. [...]you may distribute the Distributions in binary code form only under the NCL or a license agreement containing a prominent notice informing recipients how to obtain the Distributions in source code form under the NCL;
3. If the Distributions contain derivative works created by you, you must place a Notice in the source code of the derivative works stating that your derivative works are being made available under the NCL;
Unquote.
What this seems to me to say is that (2.) non-NCL licensing (a work containing?) an unaltered Novell binary is allowed so long as notice of said binary having originally been NCLed is kept (which keeps it from being GPLed, BSDed, &c.), but that (3.) derivative works would be NCLed "virally." Which is odd.
I assume that my reading doesn't reflect Novell's intent, and I'm neither a lawyer nor a potential developer of Novell-derivative works, so I might be wrong and it doesn't matter if I am; but, some clarification here might be helpful/needed before the NCL goes official.
(And apologies to
(aside from *Gravity's Rainbow* being a good source of passwords that'll keep kiddies at bay)
I'd suggest deriving passwords from Things You Know About Yourself That You're Not Likely To Tell Anyone Else -- examples (mostly utterly hypothetical): your favorite song is "Sundown" by Gordon Lightfoot; you voted for Lyndon LaRouche; you have diaper rash from sitting at your terminal for x-squared years; you have a years-long crush on Janeane Garofalo -- so you can remember them easily, but guesswork won't likely crack 'em.
If you need a couple numbers in there, the circumference of your penis is a good place to start (about 44% of the time).
Then again, my root password is "etoot," so ignoring my advice might be a good idea.
I have to agree with the majority-opinion-so-far, that the distinction between "cyberpunk" and its "post-" in this case is pretty trivial, even by the standards of other "post-"s, like, say, postcoital or postmodern. The examples above are just cyberpunk books without the famous eighties' attitude (Miami Vice, Tom Waits (blah blah blah &c &c)).
In order for something to be post-something-else, I'd say it has to be both unimaginable without Whatever it's post-ing, and so foreign to Whatever, that practitioners and diehard fans of Whatever will consider it totally shitty in comparison. (Nice sentence, eh?)
Here's an example: Joyce's *Ulysses* is widely agreed to be exemplary of "modernism," and Mark Leyner's *My Cousin, My Gastroenterologist* is, whatever other insults you feel like hurling at it, a famous example of the "postmodern." You think James Joyce would like the look of his heir? Hardly. Does anyone you know who celebrates every Bloomsday also enthuse about the grandness of Leyner? Probably not. But if it weren't for Joyce's example in the artfully-recombined-doody-makes-great-literature department, *My Cousin* would be as tedious and pretentious as anything by John Barth or David Foster Wallace.
In fact, I think Leyner's peak stuff from a decade or so ago would be a better candidate for "post-cyberpunk" enshrinement than any of the works mentioned above (by the unimaginable-without-X/mostly-hated-by-X standard). (But then again, he wrote my sig for me, so....)
And there's a thing in a Derrida book about some prank calls he got from Heidegger's ghost that I should probably use to bolster my argument, but the book's, like, nine feet from my chair, and I'm feelin' kinda post-cogent today, so f it.
I'll have to scoop out that burnout/Deadhead/typical-Berkeley-guy image of Stallman I've had in my head until now, and reread his manifestiiiiii as products of the mind of a Conlon Nancarrow fan, a.k.a. a great mind. It was such fun pretending everything he said had "One Tin Soldier" playing in the background. Damn.
And since I couldn't come up with a decent question --
Hey Bruce: You might be interested in Melt-Banana's *Charlie* cd; they mangle punk rock as frighteningly/inspiringly/virtuosically as Nancarrow does ragtime -- like what Shudder to Think does to cock rock, if you've heard that. (Also they're from Japan, which I think gives them an automatic jack-up on the cyber-coolness scale.)
Thanks for stopping by.
I just did a Google on the original stuff Clarke refers to (trying to be "informative" for once), and got a lot of results that contained the string
Diamond: Uranus. Release stress...
so I stopped searching.
While this story isn't anything more than yet another anti-luser screed from a tech with probably too much (and misplaced) self-esteem, and re: mIgrowsoft tells us only that, yes - oh the humanity - they're checking out Linux-as-OS-for-people-with-suntans to see if they should be worried about a (highly unlikely) migration away from Windows, the comments reveal Linux's weakest feature: developers are directing its development. That's why Corel (argh!) is pretty much alone in making a simplified distro (there's YDL for PPC, too, but I haven't seen a release date for their Gone Home version); Corel is just like the world - full of lusers who, when a /.er says quote [sigh/chuckle] All you have to do is
./configure
$ tar zxvf tarball.tar.gz
$ cd tarball
$
$ make
$ su -c "make install"
- what are you, retarded? unquote, will say "No, *that's* retarded. The mouse has been around for 15 years. Why can't I just poke the file with it?" And so Corel tries to make it happen, while RHAT makes its manual a hundred pages longer.
Now, before you get all worked up and start goin' root-this and null-that, you should know that I *want* to use a *nix, because I know what's good about all of 'em: they work right. That's why I don't use WinAnything, even though I "should," being a luser. I've got a relatively useless iMac staring at me right now that I want to run YDL on once the G4 arrives, because I figure a Linux OS will make better use of the little girl's limited memory while doing silly crap like slashdotting and visiting alt.fan.traci-lords. For me (non-sysadmin, non-dev), that's about all Linux offers right now. But to do work, I need two things (aside from Photoshop; don't get me started about GIMP (argh!)): solid uptime (which *nix has) and a GUI for every occasion. Mac OS 8.6, though it chews through memory like mad, almost has the second. There are Windows-style pop-up menus down in the left corner, GNOME-type open-app buttons in the right, a bunch of specialized 3rd-party menu-bar pulldowns and "virtual desktops," and, as a plus, the native scripting language is ridiculously simple (and works with almost every application). I use all of these, all the time. What I want is a command line. I know how much faster it is to grep than it is to use the Finder, and I'd like to be able to do more while keeping all my windows open (script-on-the-fly, for example). A real "EasyLinux" would be perfect. But there isn't one. Not even close. I don't wanna *make* nothin' but pretty pictures and invoices.
And unfortunately for The Movement (which I truly do love), Mac OSX Client, a prettied-up and expensive BSD, probably will be exactly what I (and most everyone I know, almost uniformly Mac- and Be-using graphics/publishing/music pros) need. We don't like that it's not really Free(TM) and isn't particularly anti-MS, but so what? Got work to do (if I ever shut up).
And if Linux can't even convince a super-luser like me, it's valid to ask what my mom (whose computer is so damn nice I pray for her death daily) and some doofus trying to play CivIII and listen to Korn mp3s are going to think of it. The word "retarded" springs to mind.