"Although, PLEASE, lets not give it its own awful colour scheme! "
I agree.
Also, during the first slashback, I thought I saw other users mention that a seperate section and icon for this section would be helpful. I like "Slashback" for the name, how about ".\" for the icon?
It sounds like a great idea - have moderators narrow down the field of early submissions. If neccesary, pass on the resulting short list to Taco and Hemos, who would then choose what to post.
This would result in alleviating several problems:
1. The workload on Hemos, Taco, and the others would decrease. Right now, they have to wade through 3000+ submissions a week. Imagine how many of those are _duplicates_. This number would be greatly decreased if the topics had been extensively picked over and streamlined by the time they got to them.
2. Because of this increase in efficiency, more daily stories could be posted. I think it would be great to see 20 or more new stories in a day, instead of a dozen or so. With the current model of story selection, 20 stories a day would mean really, really long workdays for the/. team. Let willing participants (presumably those in good karmic standing, etc. etc..) assume some of the load.
2. This degree of participation in Slashdot would be a nice extension of the already significantly democratic nature of the place. I know I would be intersted in contributing more to the selection of stories - wouldn't you?
Remember, in The Cathederal and the Bazaar, what Eric Raymond said about the "Delphi Effect?"
He said:
"the averaged opinion of a mass of equally expoert (or equally ignorant) observers is quite a bit more reliable a predictor than that of a single randomly-chosen one of the observers."
I read recently on AppleInsider (www.appleinsider.com) that Apple has increased the stated memory requirements from 32 MB to 64MB of physical RAM. Here is a quote from the article AppleInsider (http://www.appleinsider.com/macosx.shtml):
------quote------ Mac OS X Hardware Requirements The iMac will be the ideal machine to run Mac OS X. Apple is telling customers with questions on Mac OS X hardware requirements to look at the iMac. * 233 MHz Apple Power Macintosh G3 System or Greater * 64MB of Pyysical RAM (up from 32 MB) * 1-2 GByte Hard Disk (though anything over a GByte should do) * CD-ROM Drive * 15" Monitor (this does not apply to Apple PowerBooks) Please Note: These requirements were taken directly from Apple in early '99. Whether they have decided to change them since then is unknown. ------/quote-------
I searched around Apple's pages on Mac OS X (http://www.apple.com/macosx) and couldn't find any specific information on memory requirements. This isn't really surprising, as the OS is still in early development and the requirements could change drastically. There is this little blurb on the new Virtual Memory manager, though.
-----quote---- We Didn't Forget Virtual Memory Along with the protected memory mechanism, Darwin provides a super-efficient virtual memory manager to handle that protected memory space. So you no longer have to worry about how much memory an application like Photoshop needs to open large files. When an applications needs memory, the virtual memory manager automatically allocates precisely the amount of memory needed by the application--no more, and no less. The result? Out-of-memory messages are out of here. ------/quote-------
After a (somewhat funny) conversation with a bewildered @Home help desk lackey, I was told that noone in _entire office_ (including his supervisor) knew what I was even talking about. I was directed to e-mail abuse@home.com.
The following is the text of my e-mail message to them. I would encourage other @Home customers to write letters of their own. Perhaps @Home will get the point and begin acting more responsibly.
-----email follows-----
to: (several addresses, repeated in body of msg.) from: (Chris Stearns)
-- I would like to know what @Home intends to do about the Usenet UDP that is scheduled to begin on Tues, Jan. 18 at 1700 PST.
Usenet access (reading and posting) is one of the services I pay @Home for. Now, because of @Home's continuing reluctance to address the abuse of its mail servers by spammers, my Usenet postings may be blocked by various sysadmins, who have elected to reject all traffic originating from within the home.com domain.
This would be an unacceptable interruption of service. @Home has an obligation to ensure that the services I subscribe to are available to me.
Futhermore, @Home has an obligation to ensure that its mail servers are not being abused by spammers. The requests for action that have been forwarded to @Home (by myself and others) are apparently being ignored. My own requests have been met with excuses. David Ritz, the originator of the UDP, details largely the same experience when describing his attempts to contact @Home. These responses from @Home - deferral, ignorance - are not good enough.
The remedy to this problem is completely within @Home's ability to to enact. I am a paying customer who wants to know what is being done. Tell me, what are you going to do to clean up your act? When?
I have attached a copy of the UDP notice, originally posted by David Ritz in news.admin.net-abuse.usenet. This message, as well as the original notice, has been mailed to abuse@home.com, abuse@corp.home.net, news@corp.home.net, noc@corp.home.net, abuse@rogers.home.net, and Internet.Abuse@shaw.ca
I can remember, as a child, the exiting trips to the toy store to buy the new "2001: A Space Odyssey" action figures.
My favourite game was to spend hours pondering the deep, inscrutable surface of the Monolith, awonder with the obscure cosmic possibilities it intimated. Dave Bowman and Frank Poole were idols in my childhood fantasies. I wanted to be just like them when I grew up - incomprehensibly altered by a mysterious alien intelligence; annhiliated in the cold depths of space. Hal was a favourite, too - an insane intelligence driven into a murdering fever by contradicted loyalties. Many happy hours were passed recreating these fun conflicts on the playground.
Have I made my point? Star Wars has been a marketing exercise from the moment Lucas procured the merchandising rights. Quality storytelling? No room for that.
Slashdot Mirror
Oh God. I just looked at my website with the Lynx viewer. Ouch. That'll teach me not to substitute paragraphs with line breaks...
...back to the markup, time to do some corrections.
"Although, PLEASE, lets not give it its own awful colour scheme! "
I agree.
Also, during the first slashback, I thought I saw other users mention that a seperate section and icon for this section would be helpful. I like "Slashback" for the name, how about ".\" for the icon?
Maybe I'll go play around in Photoshop right now.
-chris
This would result in alleviating several problems:
1. The workload on Hemos, Taco, and the others would decrease. Right now, they have to wade through 3000+ submissions a week. Imagine how many of those are _duplicates_. This number would be greatly decreased if the topics had been extensively picked over and streamlined by the time they got to them.
2. Because of this increase in efficiency, more daily stories could be posted. I think it would be great to see 20 or more new stories in a day, instead of a dozen or so. With the current model of story selection, 20 stories a day would mean really, really long workdays for the
2. This degree of participation in Slashdot would be a nice extension of the already significantly democratic nature of the place. I know I would be intersted in contributing more to the selection of stories - wouldn't you?
Remember, in The Cathederal and the Bazaar, what Eric Raymond said about the "Delphi Effect?"
He said:
It will work.
-chris
.
Hey Saxton,
I read recently on AppleInsider (www.appleinsider.com) that Apple has increased the stated memory requirements from 32 MB to 64MB of physical RAM. Here is a quote from the article AppleInsider (http://www.appleinsider.com/macosx.shtml):
------quote------
Mac OS X Hardware Requirements
The iMac will be the ideal machine to run Mac OS X. Apple is telling customers with questions on Mac OS X hardware requirements to look at the iMac.
* 233 MHz Apple Power Macintosh G3 System or Greater
* 64MB of Pyysical RAM (up from 32 MB)
* 1-2 GByte Hard Disk (though anything over a GByte should do)
* CD-ROM Drive
* 15" Monitor (this does not apply to Apple PowerBooks)
Please Note: These requirements were taken directly from Apple in early '99. Whether they have decided to change them since then is unknown.
------/quote-------
I searched around Apple's pages on Mac OS X (http://www.apple.com/macosx) and couldn't find any specific information on memory requirements. This isn't really surprising, as the OS is still in early development and the requirements could change drastically. There is this little blurb on the new Virtual Memory manager, though.
-----quote----
We Didn't Forget Virtual Memory
Along with the protected memory mechanism, Darwin provides a super-efficient virtual memory manager to handle that protected memory space. So you no longer have to worry about how much memory an application like Photoshop needs to open large files. When an applications needs memory, the virtual memory manager automatically allocates precisely the amount of memory needed by the application--no more, and no less. The result? Out-of-memory messages are out of here.
------/quote-------
Hope this helps.
-chris
.
After a (somewhat funny) conversation with a bewildered @Home help desk lackey, I was told that noone in _entire office_ (including his supervisor) knew what I was even talking about. I was directed to e-mail abuse@home.com.
The following is the text of my e-mail message to them. I would encourage other @Home customers to write letters of their own. Perhaps @Home will get the point and begin acting more responsibly.
-----email follows-----
to: (several addresses, repeated in body of msg.)
from: (Chris Stearns)
--
I would like to know what @Home intends to do about the Usenet UDP that is scheduled to begin on Tues, Jan. 18 at 1700 PST.
Usenet access (reading and posting) is one of the services I pay @Home for. Now, because of @Home's continuing reluctance to address the abuse of its mail servers by spammers, my Usenet postings may be blocked by various sysadmins, who have elected to reject all traffic originating from within the home.com domain.
This would be an unacceptable interruption of service. @Home has an obligation to ensure that the services I subscribe to are available to me.
Futhermore, @Home has an obligation to ensure that its mail servers are not being abused by spammers. The requests for action that have been forwarded to @Home (by myself and others) are apparently being ignored. My own requests have been met with excuses. David Ritz, the originator of the UDP, details largely the same experience when describing his attempts to contact @Home. These responses from @Home - deferral, ignorance - are not good enough.
The remedy to this problem is completely within @Home's ability to to enact. I am a paying customer who wants to know what is being done.
Tell me, what are you going to do to clean up your act? When?
I have attached a copy of the UDP notice, originally posted by David Ritz in news.admin.net-abuse.usenet. This message, as well as the original notice, has been mailed to abuse@home.com, abuse@corp.home.net, news@corp.home.net, noc@corp.home.net, abuse@rogers.home.net, and Internet.Abuse@shaw.ca
A timely response would be appreciated.
Chris Stearns
(email address omitted)
(UDP notice was attached here)
-------end email message------------
Happy writing!
Chris Stearns
I can remember, as a child, the exiting trips to the toy store to buy the new "2001: A Space Odyssey" action figures.
My favourite game was to spend hours pondering the deep, inscrutable surface of the Monolith, awonder with the obscure cosmic possibilities it intimated. Dave Bowman and Frank Poole were idols in my childhood fantasies. I wanted to be just like them when I grew up - incomprehensibly altered by a mysterious alien intelligence; annhiliated in the cold depths of space. Hal was a favourite, too - an insane intelligence driven into a murdering fever by contradicted loyalties. Many happy hours were passed recreating these fun conflicts on the playground.
Have I made my point?
Star Wars has been a marketing exercise from the moment Lucas procured the merchandising rights. Quality storytelling? No room for that.
Chris Stearns.