I find it kind of shocking how a good portion of slashdotters don't care much for Obama.
Ah, so we're not the army of drones you thought we were?
quit your shit talking, and wait 4 years until we know for certain how things are going to pan out.
Your candidate won the election, remember? So now that you got your way, you don't think others should be complaining about the president they didn't vote for? Get real.
As a martial artist, I now only do dynamic stretches before practice or sparring. I stopped doing *static* stretches before I spar or work out because it made me slower. My stretching coach told me the same - do the splits and stuff afterward, and do range of motion stuff (like doing light stretch kicks until you build up to your maximum range) beforehand. This is also very important in Judo, where any leg stretches you do beforehand may make your footwork slower and hence make it easier to be thrown. Dynamic stretches also have the advantage of not slowing down your heart rate before your big event.
I like MOCP (Music On Console Player). I recently had to do music for a local skit night-type thing and I found it fast, unobtrusive, and hilariously scary to everybody who walked by. Number of kids who touched my laptop with that thing taking up the screen? Zero.:-)
Is Banshee available for OS X? There's one player I'd still want to use if I ever bought a Mac. It feels just simple enough to be usable, but is also very powerful and unbloated.
However, Songbird and Amarok are both pretty fantastic.
The other Linux music-related app I've seen Mac users drool over very recently is LMMS. This is basically a Fruityloops clone that is mainly used by Windows and Linux people so far. It should run on a Mac but there's no Mac maintainer, just a bunch of source code sitting around. Pretty amazing piece of software with a fast dev cycle and awesome features.
...to make trial runs at size and weight metrics. I loved reading that part. It makes you wonder...who is doing the equivalent right now? I'll bet somebody over at the DoD is estimating how many nanobots they can cram inside a nostril or something, using a funnel and a salt shaker perhaps.
Also, if it really was the 40th year, I'd say it was a pretty fantastic year for laptops, with netbooks and the Macbook Air and all those new ideas coming into popularity.
Does this assume that the thief has your login password, or does your machine login automatically? I assume the latter, since you don't mind if people break into your house.:-)
(Although, it sounds like you'd prefer to be broken into by some Boy Scouts, considering your rather curious expectation of benevolence on their part;-))
XFCE is nice. I installed Puppy on my in-laws' computer after Windows XP became horribly slow. They found the default menu a little hard to navigate, and were confused by the huge number of desktop icons. So I installed XFCE (packages are available), cleaned off the desktop, and made some icons representing their favorite websites, video streams, etc. I put those icons in the dock and they used it with no problems.
In my mind, the major weakness of Puppy is that the startup sequence barfs out so much text...they felt like they had to ask me to watch over their shoulder while they started the computer, in case any warnings came up. Once past that though, everything worked great.
>I decided to revitilize my grandparent's old Celeron 500 w/ 128MB of RAM with Xubuntu.
Ouch. I have a machine with those exact specs here, and there's no way on earth I would try Xubuntu on it. In my experience, Xubuntu is faster and lighter than the "normal" Ubuntu desktop, but it's not really a "legacy PC" distro to me. My normal choice for legacy PCs has been Puppy Linux, and it has *never,* *ever* let me down in that capacity. It's always fast, does a wonderful job supporting dialup modems, old video cards, and has "wizards" included that help you do common setup tasks.
It works well on modern machines, too; When I couldn't get Renoise working without JACK on my Ubuntu laptop due to high CPU use, I booted into Puppy and it ran fine.
In my experience, Xubuntu gets mentioned here a lot by people who have just heard of it, and not tried it.
With that said, the web is a different place now, with high demands. An afternoon's worth of footwork should net you a *much* better used machine for grandma and grandpa, for free or $10. Try Craigslist, local mailing lists, doctor's offices, etc.
...because when an independent game developer bans you from his forum, not only does he shut down your account, but he writes you into the game as a boss character. >:-)
is it appropriate to do it on the backs of your students?
This is the same rhetoric that always gets brought up in these/. discussions. As if an instructor would just cart in Open Source software one day and tell students they are forbidden to use some in-demand commercial package. Yeah, that sounds like a love of freedom to me.~
I can understand the blank stares.
Does this type of presuppositional thinking usually help you communicate? It's failing here because you seem to be asking a question I've already answered.
What would they expect from the class?
My more advanced students want to know what I do at work, since I teach part-time as a hobby. They want to know how I can keep running my own business in a creative way, and in a dead-end, isolated town. They want to be high-tech so badly that they'll follow me around the school, asking for private lessons, portfolio reviews, or whatever. They've already responded well to the concept of Open Source, mainly because they see pros in advanced fields using it alongside proprietary stuff more and more. And they would *love* to be able to spend money on nice hardware like a Wacom tablet rather than paying for locked up software. Anyway, I seem to sympathize with my students much better than you would even attempt to, so there's no use explaining beyond that. The bottom line is, your straw man ran away; deal with it.
only when you use GIMP will you become a "graphic designer, creative person, illustrator, web designer, etc".
"You seem to be setting up a straw man. Can I help you with that?" -Clippy (because no, I never said what you suggest I did)
Why don't you teach GIMP instead of Photoshop?
Most of my students have no context in which to understand the difference between the two. But since you asked, I will be teaching GIMP soon, as the art faculty in my college have demonstrated an interest in helping students grasp the Open Source aesthetic. Also, you may have noticed that I *do* teach GIMP currently, as an optional item.
Oh, that's right - nobody will pay you to teach it.
I'm not sure where you heard that. The school has already shown interest in paying me more to develop a curriculum for more advanced students which would heavily involve Open Source software. We also like the idea of establishing a one-of-a-kind creative lab by spending more money on capable hardware installations than on software. You may have seen this happen at schools like MIT. But still, I come to/. to hear the old arguments against Open Source stuff, so...well played, my literal-nicked friend.
Eh, one tool or two they can still be damn crappy designers.
Actually, I've identified the one-tool-only scenario as a stumblingblock for *my* students. So an extra tool thrown in there does seem to help. Other instructors may see things differently.
And a good designer could use a pencil and crayons and be completely computer illiterate.
I don't see where I disagreed with that. But that's at a very high level, and perhaps some of these students will get tired of supporting Adobe, switch to GIMP, or find themselves in some similar situation. I was a design student once and that's how I turned out.
I doubt it shows anything except that without understanding how a tool works, you can't use it well.
As I said in another reply to a similar comment, the assignment helps me create situations in which I'm able to teach tenets of graphic design to my students. It works well at that, so I'll keep using it. You can do whatever the heck you want.
If they think knowing Photoshop makes them good designers, then it means you're a bad teacher
Not really, but your comment may indicate that you're a bad reader. I was referring to my "new" students, the ones that come in on the first day with lots of presuppositions.
GIMP does pale as a Photoshop replacement for professionals
I don't see where I argue against that in my post. Also, "pales" is one of those words that doesn't exactly help anyone understand your point. More than needing to hear specific reasons, I'd want to know why you would feel the need to list them, considering the fact that you own both.
You can draw Mona Lisa in MS Paint [youtube.com].
Are you saying that you can do that? Because for many who can't, this is actually a powerful lesson to learn. Many aspiring designers learn this lesson too late; I know a few who use adobe software not because "it works and I can express myself with it" but because "it makes me look professional in conversation." In fact, I am considering dropping a subcontractor for this reason. He can use the software, but he makes excuses for his lack of design training.
It's not a test, it's an extra-credit assignment that is optional. The assignment exposes their response when given a new tool to use. This is valuable because it answers this question: Do they discard the new tool because they've only learned craftmanship with one tool, or do they attempt to use it and seek help where required?
If a student views himself as a craftsman who uses one tool, he needs to know that he is selling himself short, that is all. Half of the student's grade in these classes is based in the application of design principles independent of any specific specific software package. So for an extra credit assignment, that's more than appropriate.
Also, If I were teaching a keyboarding class, I'd have no problem exposing my students to Dvorak or Das Keyboard in similar optional, extra credit assignments.
...it made me giggle with joy to see the guy mention he won against people using Adobe products. I teach Adobe products to impressionable college students, and when they sign up to take my class and purchase their own copy of Photoshop or Illustrator, boy do they think they have ARRIVED in cool-town. Many of my new students think that once they *understand* how to use Photoshop better than most, they are now a graphic designer, creative person, illustrator, web designer, etc.
So I started doing an extra credit assignment where I tell them they are not allowed to use Adobe products, and they have to design a postcard. They use any package they want; most use GIMP or Inkscape because they're free. Without fail, they come back and say, "hey, I can't do anything with this. It's not Adobe. It sucks." So I point out to them that their Adobe software skills make them think they're pretty good at design. But what happened to their awesome design skills when they started using another software package? Does the software really suck, or do they just hate it because of its non-Adobeness? I show them nicely-done work by other GIMP or Inkscape users. Blank looks. Lesson ensues.
Relying on a specific software package is fine. *Depending* on it is risky. And *not being able* to design using anything else because of some marketing-infused mental block just means you're spoiled and/or ignorant. Bravo for the true creativity displayed in the article.
I was on there for like five minutes when I landed on Chairman Mao's old GeoCities page. Man, how time flies! If you haven't seen it before there's a cool animated.gif of "Mao's Corner" being written in Mao-style calligraphy. The last update indicated that his urine output was down to 290cc a day. We'll miss ya, big guy. Drink more fluids on the other side.
Someone should take the available profile info and turn it into a simulation. I would like to see how Participant #2, the vegan who used to suffer from Lyme disease, would fare in a fight against #3, the frequent traveler who suffers from "severe, short-term (24 hours) diarrhea," and is near-sighted with contacts.
Also, I'd like to know, what if we had a breakdancing contest, RIGHT now. Who would come out on top? How would Participant #10, who had a "hip growth" removed at birth, do the Windmill? Etc. Inquiring minds want to know.
Ah, I was wondering what sort of creature, now that lions are more or less protected, was going to be used to dismember Christians for spectacle. Now we know. I'll give it about 40-60 years. Another 10-25 on top of that for free-thinking intellectuals in general. Welcome to the new cosmocracy, sponsored by the freaking Discovery Channel.
I sent my Amiga 500 into orbit in 2001 using a homemade trebuchet (granted, quite a large one) and a very high mountain. It broadcasts the Pinball Dreams high score list every two hours on the hour. The problem is, the last time I went up to do some improvements (long story) I had forgotten a few vital 68000 assembler directives, so I was unable to make the transition from antiquated late-80s desktop computer to cutting-edge ASAT weapon. Too bad, now the 10kT warhead I attached to it is probably just sitting there, twiddling its sub-critical materials.
My sister was a die-hard Oprah fan and I thought she would be so for her entire life. Lately though, she's become entirely disappointed with Oprah's use of her "new" image to sell stuff. She won't watch the show anymore. No real news here for many of us, but it's really, *really* sad to me to see yet another person use their reinvented-celebrity status just to keep raking in cash.
To me, it's always been the same story: "Here, come watch my show so you can feel good about nice things *I'm* doing with my life, when what you really care about is 1) what gift people find under their chairs and 2) that you don't have to expend any energy to get that warm, fuzzy feeling." Sigh.
>Do you think we will ever see a corporation declare war on another corporation?
Most people will tell you this has already happened. Most of it has been done by proxy so far, i.e. friends in the government. But I think you're asking for the meaty stuff?
With today's security situation the way it is, I'm guessing it won't be long before security contractors like BlackWater notice that CEOs enjoy fighter jets and begin to offer complementary patrol services. Only for the richest. Formation flyovers above corp HQ three times a day tell you that your husband is safe working in the new MegaCorp Building building gas canisters to be used against fringe groups, and the Baptists for Free America extremists won't ever sneak another Beechcraft loaded with FAE through our 49th floor lobby.
Slashdot Mirror
Ah, so we're not the army of drones you thought we were?
Your candidate won the election, remember? So now that you got your way, you don't think others should be complaining about the president they didn't vote for? Get real.
As a martial artist, I now only do dynamic stretches before practice or sparring. I stopped doing *static* stretches before I spar or work out because it made me slower. My stretching coach told me the same - do the splits and stuff afterward, and do range of motion stuff (like doing light stretch kicks until you build up to your maximum range) beforehand. This is also very important in Judo, where any leg stretches you do beforehand may make your footwork slower and hence make it easier to be thrown. Dynamic stretches also have the advantage of not slowing down your heart rate before your big event.
I like MOCP (Music On Console Player). I recently had to do music for a local skit night-type thing and I found it fast, unobtrusive, and hilariously scary to everybody who walked by. Number of kids who touched my laptop with that thing taking up the screen? Zero. :-)
Is Banshee available for OS X? There's one player I'd still want to use if I ever bought a Mac. It feels just simple enough to be usable, but is also very powerful and unbloated.
However, Songbird and Amarok are both pretty fantastic.
The other Linux music-related app I've seen Mac users drool over very recently is LMMS. This is basically a Fruityloops clone that is mainly used by Windows and Linux people so far. It should run on a Mac but there's no Mac maintainer, just a bunch of source code sitting around. Pretty amazing piece of software with a fast dev cycle and awesome features.
...to make trial runs at size and weight metrics. I loved reading that part. It makes you wonder...who is doing the equivalent right now? I'll bet somebody over at the DoD is estimating how many nanobots they can cram inside a nostril or something, using a funnel and a salt shaker perhaps.
Also, if it really was the 40th year, I'd say it was a pretty fantastic year for laptops, with netbooks and the Macbook Air and all those new ideas coming into popularity.
Does this assume that the thief has your login password, or does your machine login automatically? I assume the latter, since you don't mind if people break into your house. :-)
;-))
(Although, it sounds like you'd prefer to be broken into by some Boy Scouts, considering your rather curious expectation of benevolence on their part
XFCE is nice. I installed Puppy on my in-laws' computer after Windows XP became horribly slow. They found the default menu a little hard to navigate, and were confused by the huge number of desktop icons. So I installed XFCE (packages are available), cleaned off the desktop, and made some icons representing their favorite websites, video streams, etc. I put those icons in the dock and they used it with no problems.
In my mind, the major weakness of Puppy is that the startup sequence barfs out so much text...they felt like they had to ask me to watch over their shoulder while they started the computer, in case any warnings came up. Once past that though, everything worked great.
They gave us Kerry and we made lemonade.
>I decided to revitilize my grandparent's old Celeron 500 w/ 128MB of RAM with Xubuntu.
Ouch. I have a machine with those exact specs here, and there's no way on earth I would try Xubuntu on it. In my experience, Xubuntu is faster and lighter than the "normal" Ubuntu desktop, but it's not really a "legacy PC" distro to me. My normal choice for legacy PCs has been Puppy Linux, and it has *never,* *ever* let me down in that capacity. It's always fast, does a wonderful job supporting dialup modems, old video cards, and has "wizards" included that help you do common setup tasks.
It works well on modern machines, too; When I couldn't get Renoise working without JACK on my Ubuntu laptop due to high CPU use, I booted into Puppy and it ran fine.
In my experience, Xubuntu gets mentioned here a lot by people who have just heard of it, and not tried it.
With that said, the web is a different place now, with high demands. An afternoon's worth of footwork should net you a *much* better used machine for grandma and grandpa, for free or $10. Try Craigslist, local mailing lists, doctor's offices, etc.
"Burma Shave"
...because when an independent game developer bans you from his forum, not only does he shut down your account, but he writes you into the game as a boss character. >:-)
This is the same rhetoric that always gets brought up in these /. discussions. As if an instructor would just cart in Open Source software one day and tell students they are forbidden to use some in-demand commercial package. Yeah, that sounds like a love of freedom to me.~
Does this type of presuppositional thinking usually help you communicate? It's failing here because you seem to be asking a question I've already answered.
My more advanced students want to know what I do at work, since I teach part-time as a hobby. They want to know how I can keep running my own business in a creative way, and in a dead-end, isolated town. They want to be high-tech so badly that they'll follow me around the school, asking for private lessons, portfolio reviews, or whatever. They've already responded well to the concept of Open Source, mainly because they see pros in advanced fields using it alongside proprietary stuff more and more. And they would *love* to be able to spend money on nice hardware like a Wacom tablet rather than paying for locked up software. Anyway, I seem to sympathize with my students much better than you would even attempt to, so there's no use explaining beyond that. The bottom line is, your straw man ran away; deal with it.
"You seem to be setting up a straw man. Can I help you with that?" -Clippy (because no, I never said what you suggest I did)
Most of my students have no context in which to understand the difference between the two. But since you asked, I will be teaching GIMP soon, as the art faculty in my college have demonstrated an interest in helping students grasp the Open Source aesthetic. Also, you may have noticed that I *do* teach GIMP currently, as an optional item.
I'm not sure where you heard that. The school has already shown interest in paying me more to develop a curriculum for more advanced students which would heavily involve Open Source software. We also like the idea of establishing a one-of-a-kind creative lab by spending more money on capable hardware installations than on software. You may have seen this happen at schools like MIT. But still, I come to /. to hear the old arguments against Open Source stuff, so...well played, my literal-nicked friend.
Actually, I've identified the one-tool-only scenario as a stumblingblock for *my* students. So an extra tool thrown in there does seem to help. Other instructors may see things differently.
I don't see where I disagreed with that. But that's at a very high level, and perhaps some of these students will get tired of supporting Adobe, switch to GIMP, or find themselves in some similar situation. I was a design student once and that's how I turned out.
As I said in another reply to a similar comment, the assignment helps me create situations in which I'm able to teach tenets of graphic design to my students. It works well at that, so I'll keep using it. You can do whatever the heck you want.
Thanks, sorry if I misunderstood you.
Not really, but your comment may indicate that you're a bad reader. I was referring to my "new" students, the ones that come in on the first day with lots of presuppositions.
I don't see where I argue against that in my post. Also, "pales" is one of those words that doesn't exactly help anyone understand your point. More than needing to hear specific reasons, I'd want to know why you would feel the need to list them, considering the fact that you own both.
Are you saying that you can do that? Because for many who can't, this is actually a powerful lesson to learn. Many aspiring designers learn this lesson too late; I know a few who use adobe software not because "it works and I can express myself with it" but because "it makes me look professional in conversation." In fact, I am considering dropping a subcontractor for this reason. He can use the software, but he makes excuses for his lack of design training.
It's not a test, it's an extra-credit assignment that is optional. The assignment exposes their response when given a new tool to use. This is valuable because it answers this question: Do they discard the new tool because they've only learned craftmanship with one tool, or do they attempt to use it and seek help where required?
If a student views himself as a craftsman who uses one tool, he needs to know that he is selling himself short, that is all. Half of the student's grade in these classes is based in the application of design principles independent of any specific specific software package. So for an extra credit assignment, that's more than appropriate.
Also, If I were teaching a keyboarding class, I'd have no problem exposing my students to Dvorak or Das Keyboard in similar optional, extra credit assignments.
...it made me giggle with joy to see the guy mention he won against people using Adobe products. I teach Adobe products to impressionable college students, and when they sign up to take my class and purchase their own copy of Photoshop or Illustrator, boy do they think they have ARRIVED in cool-town. Many of my new students think that once they *understand* how to use Photoshop better than most, they are now a graphic designer, creative person, illustrator, web designer, etc.
So I started doing an extra credit assignment where I tell them they are not allowed to use Adobe products, and they have to design a postcard. They use any package they want; most use GIMP or Inkscape because they're free. Without fail, they come back and say, "hey, I can't do anything with this. It's not Adobe. It sucks." So I point out to them that their Adobe software skills make them think they're pretty good at design. But what happened to their awesome design skills when they started using another software package? Does the software really suck, or do they just hate it because of its non-Adobeness? I show them nicely-done work by other GIMP or Inkscape users. Blank looks. Lesson ensues.
Relying on a specific software package is fine. *Depending* on it is risky. And *not being able* to design using anything else because of some marketing-infused mental block just means you're spoiled and/or ignorant. Bravo for the true creativity displayed in the article.
It's the title the linked blogger chose for his blog post on this subject. Geez.
I was on there for like five minutes when I landed on Chairman Mao's old GeoCities page. Man, how time flies! If you haven't seen it before there's a cool animated .gif of "Mao's Corner" being written in Mao-style calligraphy. The last update indicated that his urine output was down to 290cc a day. We'll miss ya, big guy. Drink more fluids on the other side.
Someone should take the available profile info and turn it into a simulation. I would like to see how Participant #2, the vegan who used to suffer from Lyme disease, would fare in a fight against #3, the frequent traveler who suffers from "severe, short-term (24 hours) diarrhea," and is near-sighted with contacts.
Also, I'd like to know, what if we had a breakdancing contest, RIGHT now. Who would come out on top? How would Participant #10, who had a "hip growth" removed at birth, do the Windmill? Etc. Inquiring minds want to know.
Ah, I was wondering what sort of creature, now that lions are more or less protected, was going to be used to dismember Christians for spectacle. Now we know. I'll give it about 40-60 years. Another 10-25 on top of that for free-thinking intellectuals in general. Welcome to the new cosmocracy, sponsored by the freaking Discovery Channel.
I sent my Amiga 500 into orbit in 2001 using a homemade trebuchet (granted, quite a large one) and a very high mountain. It broadcasts the Pinball Dreams high score list every two hours on the hour. The problem is, the last time I went up to do some improvements (long story) I had forgotten a few vital 68000 assembler directives, so I was unable to make the transition from antiquated late-80s desktop computer to cutting-edge ASAT weapon. Too bad, now the 10kT warhead I attached to it is probably just sitting there, twiddling its sub-critical materials.
My sister was a die-hard Oprah fan and I thought she would be so for her entire life. Lately though, she's become entirely disappointed with Oprah's use of her "new" image to sell stuff. She won't watch the show anymore. No real news here for many of us, but it's really, *really* sad to me to see yet another person use their reinvented-celebrity status just to keep raking in cash.
To me, it's always been the same story: "Here, come watch my show so you can feel good about nice things *I'm* doing with my life, when what you really care about is 1) what gift people find under their chairs and 2) that you don't have to expend any energy to get that warm, fuzzy feeling." Sigh.
>Do you think we will ever see a corporation declare war on another corporation?
Most people will tell you this has already happened. Most of it has been done by proxy so far, i.e. friends in the government. But I think you're asking for the meaty stuff?
With today's security situation the way it is, I'm guessing it won't be long before security contractors like BlackWater notice that CEOs enjoy fighter jets and begin to offer complementary patrol services. Only for the richest. Formation flyovers above corp HQ three times a day tell you that your husband is safe working in the new MegaCorp Building building gas canisters to be used against fringe groups, and the Baptists for Free America extremists won't ever sneak another Beechcraft loaded with FAE through our 49th floor lobby.
Alas, Babylon