I don't know you and never met you, but I've been reading Slashdot for over a decade (as my user # will tell you). It's been my home page for forever. I just wanted to let you know how much I have appreciated what you created, and how useful it is. Though I don't always agree with the majority opinion here, I can't tell you how many times Slashdot has been the source of one interesting story after another. I've found it so helpful that I've actually featured it in my book, which should be out in a month (Liferay in Action), as one of the first, if not the first, community blog on the Internet.
So thank you. Thank you for starting Slashdot, for building it into something that could be sustained, and for keeping it going all these years. I wish you much success in the future, both personally and professionally, and am hoping that you find whatever it is that will enable to continue fulfilling your dreams.
This is just weird. It's almost like Apple's operating as though they have no competition. Example: if an ebook from Amazon or B&N is 30% more expensive on the iPad than it is on, say a Nook or Android tablet (because book sellers will *have* to pass on that extra 30% to the customer), then another tablet is a better option, no? Eventually, it'll squeeze all the other publishers out, and only Apple will be able to sell ebooks on the iPad, which is probably their ultimate goal. I mean, if I were a 3rd party bookseller, I'd rather take my business elsewhere, because Apple's store will always be less expensive on their device. On other devices, however, I'd be able to compete--which increases the value of other devices, and ultimately, hurts Apple.
I was going to post exactly the same thing. I still think Nook is a better choice than a Kindle, Kobo, or Sony Reader, though. I was almost expecting this to happen to Border's, but not B&N.
Dawkins' web site is the one who made the inference that some/most/all (take your pick) inane posts are the result of students taking the course, which is highly unlikely (given the size of the University and the class size). He then used that to make the argument that we have one more reason to ignore / discount / ridicule posts coming from ID supporters because they're just trying to complete certain course requirements. Then Slashdot picked up the story and ran with it as though we should all be morally outraged at such a thing.
I'll agree that the comment link you posted is inappropriate and, well, pretty dumb--especially if you are trying to convince someone of your position. But I'd encourage you to take a look at the comments on the Dawkins site that are attached to the article. Most of them are a complete dismissal of ID supporters, along with some name calling: "IDiots," "Cretinsts," etc. That's not going to further your cause either.
This whole story is ridiculous tripe. Consider the source: the article comes from Richard Dawkins' web site; hardy an unbiased source on this particular topic. So what we have here is a story from one side of the argument complaining about a course at a university whose topic is APOLOGETICS. When studying apologetics, you learn how to defend a particular position (see definition two at dictionary.com here). What better exercise for learning a skill like that than to go out there and defend a particular position publicly? Certainly ID gets attacked enough by Darwinists (many of them ad hominem or straw man attacks--examples of which can be found in posts above this one) that people shouldn't get too upset when ID proponents start defending their position.
Why assume the students are going out there and randomly "making posts" but not contributing to the discussion? Maybe the professor grades the posts specifically on the quality of the discussion, with the 10 or more posts in a single back-and-forth discussion being worth more than trolling 10 different web sites. Who knows? We don't, and certainly Dawkins doesn't. Either way, it seems that this is a very appropriate exercise when learning something like apologetics. Certainly making blanket judgments and name calling doesn't move this issue forward at all. Nobody's going to be persuaded by a flippant dismissal of their position without giving any reasoning.
We had our child's cord blood banked with CBR (http://www.cordblood.com). We are very happy to not have had to use it, and the ongoing cost ($100/yr) is pretty low.
One thing that helps keep the cost down: you get a free year if you refer somebody else to them. And there are other things they've done that we didn't expect: they send my daughter stuff from time to time (children's books, etc.). So you don't feel like you're throwing your $100 down a hole every year, and I think most of the initial cost has to do with the courier they send to collect the blood after the birth.
On the off chance that something happens and she needs the stem cells, it's nice to know we have them stored. Yes, the chance is small (thankfully), but who knows where the research will take us?
I'm reminded of that picture of a rat with a human ear on its back from a year or so ago. Accidents happen. You do what you can as a parent to provide for your children as best as you can. I'm happy to pay $100 bucks a year to give my daughter a chance that I didn't get--even if it's a long shot. And if you live in the US, you get way more than that back in taxes per child, so to me, it's not much of a sacrifice.
Agreed. And not only that, he's said he'd let the Bush tax cuts expire, which means everybody's taxes go up in two years. Not a good way to stimulate the economy.
I don't understand how Obama gets away with his "95% of Americans will get a tax cut" statement when:
1. He's going to raise the capital gains tax, which will affect 100 million Americans, and
2. 40% of that 95% don't pay income taxes at all, because they don't make enough. So he's going to in essence give them a welfare check?
Every time the Dems start talking about only raising taxes on "the rich," the truth is buried in all kinds of semantics.
BTW, I would argue that Bush is not a true fiscal conservative. The spending under his administration was completely out of control (not all his fault--Congress has some blame). We need somebody who is going to control spending too, and I trust McCain more to do that.
Well, this has dropped off the home page, so I doubt anybody'll even see this post, but I figured I'd chime in anyway.
I've got the VMWare player installed and installed this just to see what it would do if you threw something, uh, let's say esoteric at it (http://aros.sourceforge.net). The VM locks up on the nightly build, and I'm not having good success with the snapshot either.
Next up: OS/2 (which I could never get working on either VMWare or QEMU).
I replaced the hard drives in my server at home (two drives, mirrored), simply because I was running out of space.
When it came time to build a small "jukebox" system to play music on, I decided to use one of the drives that had been in my server to save a little money. About a month after building the box, I started to get hdd errors. Ran fsck several times, but more and more bad clusters would appear. Eventually, I had to replace the drive with the other mirrored drive that had been in the server.
Same deal. Got about a month's use out of it, and then had the same problems. I then bought a new drive.
I don't know if it was a coincidence that I was able to replace the drives in my server before they both died at the same time, or if it was just the process of lying dormant for about six months before being put in a new box that caused them to die. The drives were about four years old.
I'm thinking now that even though I've got a mirrored system on the server (hence, I don't do backups), I better replace the drives at least once every four years, even if I haven't run out of space on them.
True, but he also mentioned MP3 files which, while I believe there are DRM schemes for it, none of them are widely used.
Mindawn has a nice, cross-platform client that allows you to download tracks and listen to them (in the client) a specified number of times before buying them. Once you buy the tracks, they're yours. So in a sense, they're non-transferable until you buy them, after which, they can be copied, burned, etc. It's a nice compromise, I think, that benefits the consumer.
Now if only more portables supported ogg and flac....:-)
Sounds like http://www.mindawn.com/ is what you're looking for. They sell lossless (flac) and lossy (ogg) sound files. No DRM. Their catalog is growing steadily, and they work with a lot of independents.
I've done the same thing. Started when I got my Neuros (an ogg-compatible player). I still think that Vorbis support is something that'll eventually be standard in devices. Because it takes more CPU to play an ogg (very hard without a floating-point CPU, I understand), vendors still have to go through hoops to support it.
As various devices become more powerful, I think we'll see vorbis support become more prevalent, even if it's so the vendors can tout that their product supports another format. Once you've got the processing power, there are really no barriers for them: the codec is free, the xiph code is free, so they don't have to license anything from anybody or pay any exhorbitant fees to support it.
I guess all of this is to say that I'm trying to be patient. Right now, you can find a handful of players out there that support it, and that's enough for me (though I'd love it if my car CD player supported oggs as it does mp3s).
Use either eMusic (http://www.emusic.com/ or Mindawn (http://www.mindawn.com./ It's the only way to be sure the music is yours to do with as you please. If either of these sites don't have the title I'm looking for, I buy the CD and rip it myself.
What about the proprietary drivers from ATI and NVidia? Do we need to start lobbying them to support X.org rather than xfree86, or will the existing drivers work?
Um, the previous owner of MoneyDance, Appgen, has such a program. It's called MyBooks.
$99 for a 5 user license. You can use it standalone on one machine, of course, but to get the most bang for your $99, you need to install the server version on a Linux box, and the clients on your choice of Linux, MacOSX, or Windows.
I've been running it for a year, and it's been fantastic.
I dropped Sharp's OS a couple of months ago in favor of OpenZaurus, and found nothing but improvements. (Almost) every complaint I had about the original software was addressed:
1. The calendar app is much more stable. My one remaining issue is with repeating appointments: if you modify a repeating appointment on the Z, it'll duplicate itself and you'll have two appointments in the same spot: one with the old info, and one with the new. If you instead modify the appt. with the Qtopia Desktop software (Linux--I never use the Windows version), you don't have this problem.
2. I used to lose all my to-dos everytime I synced with the Sharp software. Fixed.
3. You can get ipks from the Zaurus Software Index (http://www.killefiz.de/zaurus) to preserve the Jeode environment as well as the Hancom apps and Opera, so you can still use them on OpenZaurus. These utilities will convert them to ipks which you can copy to your machine. When you install OpenZaurus, you can just reinstall these apps as normal. I can testify that the Jeode one works: I don't have a need for the Hancom apps or Opera, so I never reinstalled them.
4. The theme feature is there in OpenZaurus, so if you're using it, you've already got what Sharp gives you in the 5600. I'm using the Liquid theme.
5. There's a nice Today app in OpenZaurus that gives you a snapshot of your day--both to-dos and calendar appointments.
6. I haven't encountered a 3rd party ipk that I used to use in Sharp's rom that doesn't work with the OZ rom.
7. I had to upgrade Sharp's rom to use a 128MB SD card. This also broke my connection to the Linux version (some "security patch" was also included in this upgrade that prevented the Linux Qtopia desktop from connecting, and also disabled ftp). Installing OZ fixed all of these issues.
8. OZ includes OpenSSH by default, so it's much easier to get into the Z and copy files.
9. The Sharp ROM crashed all the time. And I mean ALL THE TIME. I don't have that problem with OZ.
To get to the point, I would recommend to anyone who runs Linux and is purchasing a 5500 right now to save yourself the headaches and replace the default ROM with OpenZaurus. If you back up Jeode, Hancom, and Opera, you won't lose anything by doing it, and you'll have a much more stable PDA.
Slashdot Mirror
Hey Rob,
I don't know you and never met you, but I've been reading Slashdot for over a decade (as my user # will tell you). It's been my home page for forever. I just wanted to let you know how much I have appreciated what you created, and how useful it is. Though I don't always agree with the majority opinion here, I can't tell you how many times Slashdot has been the source of one interesting story after another. I've found it so helpful that I've actually featured it in my book, which should be out in a month (Liferay in Action), as one of the first, if not the first, community blog on the Internet.
So thank you. Thank you for starting Slashdot, for building it into something that could be sustained, and for keeping it going all these years. I wish you much success in the future, both personally and professionally, and am hoping that you find whatever it is that will enable to continue fulfilling your dreams.
--
Rich Sezov
This is just weird. It's almost like Apple's operating as though they have no competition. Example: if an ebook from Amazon or B&N is 30% more expensive on the iPad than it is on, say a Nook or Android tablet (because book sellers will *have* to pass on that extra 30% to the customer), then another tablet is a better option, no? Eventually, it'll squeeze all the other publishers out, and only Apple will be able to sell ebooks on the iPad, which is probably their ultimate goal. I mean, if I were a 3rd party bookseller, I'd rather take my business elsewhere, because Apple's store will always be less expensive on their device. On other devices, however, I'd be able to compete--which increases the value of other devices, and ultimately, hurts Apple.
Easiest solution: get a Palm Pre. There's a palm emulator called Classic for it. Run your old apps.
Might I suggest Liferay (http://www.liferay.com)? Open source, but also commercial, and more featureful than both Plone and Confluence.
I was going to post exactly the same thing. I still think Nook is a better choice than a Kindle, Kobo, or Sony Reader, though. I was almost expecting this to happen to Border's, but not B&N.
http://www.liferay.com/products Open source, Java-based, commercial support if you need it.
The effects look good. Will definitely have to check this out!
Used to race home from school to watch this. I wanted them to fire the wave motion gun in every episode. :-)
http://www.starblazers.com
Dawkins' web site is the one who made the inference that some/most/all (take your pick) inane posts are the result of students taking the course, which is highly unlikely (given the size of the University and the class size). He then used that to make the argument that we have one more reason to ignore / discount / ridicule posts coming from ID supporters because they're just trying to complete certain course requirements. Then Slashdot picked up the story and ran with it as though we should all be morally outraged at such a thing.
I'll agree that the comment link you posted is inappropriate and, well, pretty dumb--especially if you are trying to convince someone of your position. But I'd encourage you to take a look at the comments on the Dawkins site that are attached to the article. Most of them are a complete dismissal of ID supporters, along with some name calling: "IDiots," "Cretinsts," etc. That's not going to further your cause either.
This whole story is ridiculous tripe. Consider the source: the article comes from Richard Dawkins' web site; hardy an unbiased source on this particular topic. So what we have here is a story from one side of the argument complaining about a course at a university whose topic is APOLOGETICS. When studying apologetics, you learn how to defend a particular position (see definition two at dictionary.com here). What better exercise for learning a skill like that than to go out there and defend a particular position publicly? Certainly ID gets attacked enough by Darwinists (many of them ad hominem or straw man attacks--examples of which can be found in posts above this one) that people shouldn't get too upset when ID proponents start defending their position.
Why assume the students are going out there and randomly "making posts" but not contributing to the discussion? Maybe the professor grades the posts specifically on the quality of the discussion, with the 10 or more posts in a single back-and-forth discussion being worth more than trolling 10 different web sites. Who knows? We don't, and certainly Dawkins doesn't. Either way, it seems that this is a very appropriate exercise when learning something like apologetics. Certainly making blanket judgments and name calling doesn't move this issue forward at all. Nobody's going to be persuaded by a flippant dismissal of their position without giving any reasoning.
We had our child's cord blood banked with CBR (http://www.cordblood.com). We are very happy to not have had to use it, and the ongoing cost ($100/yr) is pretty low.
One thing that helps keep the cost down: you get a free year if you refer somebody else to them. And there are other things they've done that we didn't expect: they send my daughter stuff from time to time (children's books, etc.). So you don't feel like you're throwing your $100 down a hole every year, and I think most of the initial cost has to do with the courier they send to collect the blood after the birth.
On the off chance that something happens and she needs the stem cells, it's nice to know we have them stored. Yes, the chance is small (thankfully), but who knows where the research will take us?
I'm reminded of that picture of a rat with a human ear on its back from a year or so ago. Accidents happen. You do what you can as a parent to provide for your children as best as you can. I'm happy to pay $100 bucks a year to give my daughter a chance that I didn't get--even if it's a long shot. And if you live in the US, you get way more than that back in taxes per child, so to me, it's not much of a sacrifice.
It's coming.
See http://www.liferay.com/web/guest/products/social_office.
Full disclosure: I work for Liferay, Inc.
http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/228/
Maybe it would be wiser to check your own assumptions before calling people names.
Agreed. And not only that, he's said he'd let the Bush tax cuts expire, which means everybody's taxes go up in two years. Not a good way to stimulate the economy.
I don't understand how Obama gets away with his "95% of Americans will get a tax cut" statement when:
1. He's going to raise the capital gains tax, which will affect 100 million Americans, and
2. 40% of that 95% don't pay income taxes at all, because they don't make enough. So he's going to in essence give them a welfare check?
Every time the Dems start talking about only raising taxes on "the rich," the truth is buried in all kinds of semantics.
BTW, I would argue that Bush is not a true fiscal conservative. The spending under his administration was completely out of control (not all his fault--Congress has some blame). We need somebody who is going to control spending too, and I trust McCain more to do that.
why would a Mac or Linux user be immune?
Probably because the executable inside is a Windows executable, and won't run on a Mac or Linux.
Well, this has dropped off the home page, so I doubt anybody'll even see this post, but I figured I'd chime in anyway.
I've got the VMWare player installed and installed this just to see what it would do if you threw something, uh, let's say esoteric at it (http://aros.sourceforge.net). The VM locks up on the nightly build, and I'm not having good success with the snapshot either.
Next up: OS/2 (which I could never get working on either VMWare or QEMU).
I replaced the hard drives in my server at home (two drives, mirrored), simply because I was running out of space.
When it came time to build a small "jukebox" system to play music on, I decided to use one of the drives that had been in my server to save a little money. About a month after building the box, I started to get hdd errors. Ran fsck several times, but more and more bad clusters would appear. Eventually, I had to replace the drive with the other mirrored drive that had been in the server.
Same deal. Got about a month's use out of it, and then had the same problems. I then bought a new drive.
I don't know if it was a coincidence that I was able to replace the drives in my server before they both died at the same time, or if it was just the process of lying dormant for about six months before being put in a new box that caused them to die. The drives were about four years old.
I'm thinking now that even though I've got a mirrored system on the server (hence, I don't do backups), I better replace the drives at least once every four years, even if I haven't run out of space on them.
True, but he also mentioned MP3 files which, while I believe there are DRM schemes for it, none of them are widely used.
:-)
Mindawn has a nice, cross-platform client that allows you to download tracks and listen to them (in the client) a specified number of times before buying them. Once you buy the tracks, they're yours. So in a sense, they're non-transferable until you buy them, after which, they can be copied, burned, etc. It's a nice compromise, I think, that benefits the consumer.
Now if only more portables supported ogg and flac....
Sounds like http://www.mindawn.com/ is what you're looking for. They sell lossless (flac) and lossy (ogg) sound files. No DRM. Their catalog is growing steadily, and they work with a lot of independents.
I've done the same thing. Started when I got my Neuros (an ogg-compatible player). I still think that Vorbis support is something that'll eventually be standard in devices. Because it takes more CPU to play an ogg (very hard without a floating-point CPU, I understand), vendors still have to go through hoops to support it.
As various devices become more powerful, I think we'll see vorbis support become more prevalent, even if it's so the vendors can tout that their product supports another format. Once you've got the processing power, there are really no barriers for them: the codec is free, the xiph code is free, so they don't have to license anything from anybody or pay any exhorbitant fees to support it.
I guess all of this is to say that I'm trying to be patient. Right now, you can find a handful of players out there that support it, and that's enough for me (though I'd love it if my car CD player supported oggs as it does mp3s).
Use either eMusic (http://www.emusic.com/ or Mindawn (http://www.mindawn.com./ It's the only way to be sure the music is yours to do with as you please. If either of these sites don't have the title I'm looking for, I buy the CD and rip it myself.
What about the proprietary drivers from ATI and NVidia? Do we need to start lobbying them to support X.org rather than xfree86, or will the existing drivers work?
If you want a laptop, go to http://www.powernotebooks.com. They sell OS-less laptops and laptops with Mandrake (and Xig's X server) preloaded.
Um, the previous owner of MoneyDance, Appgen, has such a program. It's called MyBooks.
$99 for a 5 user license. You can use it standalone on one machine, of course, but to get the most bang for your $99, you need to install the server version on a Linux box, and the clients on your choice of Linux, MacOSX, or Windows.
I've been running it for a year, and it's been fantastic.
I dropped Sharp's OS a couple of months ago in favor of OpenZaurus, and found nothing but improvements. (Almost) every complaint I had about the original software was addressed:
1. The calendar app is much more stable. My one remaining issue is with repeating appointments: if you modify a repeating appointment on the Z, it'll duplicate itself and you'll have two appointments in the same spot: one with the old info, and one with the new. If you instead modify the appt. with the Qtopia Desktop software (Linux--I never use the Windows version), you don't have this problem.
2. I used to lose all my to-dos everytime I synced with the Sharp software. Fixed.
3. You can get ipks from the Zaurus Software Index (http://www.killefiz.de/zaurus) to preserve the Jeode environment as well as the Hancom apps and Opera, so you can still use them on OpenZaurus. These utilities will convert them to ipks which you can copy to your machine. When you install OpenZaurus, you can just reinstall these apps as normal. I can testify that the Jeode one works: I don't have a need for the Hancom apps or Opera, so I never reinstalled them.
4. The theme feature is there in OpenZaurus, so if you're using it, you've already got what Sharp gives you in the 5600. I'm using the Liquid theme.
5. There's a nice Today app in OpenZaurus that gives you a snapshot of your day--both to-dos and calendar appointments.
6. I haven't encountered a 3rd party ipk that I used to use in Sharp's rom that doesn't work with the OZ rom.
7. I had to upgrade Sharp's rom to use a 128MB SD card. This also broke my connection to the Linux version (some "security patch" was also included in this upgrade that prevented the Linux Qtopia desktop from connecting, and also disabled ftp). Installing OZ fixed all of these issues.
8. OZ includes OpenSSH by default, so it's much easier to get into the Z and copy files.
9. The Sharp ROM crashed all the time. And I mean ALL THE TIME. I don't have that problem with OZ.
To get to the point, I would recommend to anyone who runs Linux and is purchasing a 5500 right now to save yourself the headaches and replace the default ROM with OpenZaurus. If you back up Jeode, Hancom, and Opera, you won't lose anything by doing it, and you'll have a much more stable PDA.