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Geeks In Space Hiatus 31

Geeks in space is on an indefinite hiatus while we sort out the (ahem) issues surrounding continuing production while we are located in 3 cities and 2 time zones. Since Hemos's wedding and move to boston, and Nate's move to california to continue work on Everything 2, that leaves CowboyNeal and I all by ourselves. When we figure out a good way to continue the show, we will. If you have solutions, let us know. Perhaps now is the time to start streaming and switch to a live broadcast with an IRC simulcast. But we're still thinkin'
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Geeks In Space Hiatus

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  • Oh no.... The Krull have asimilated the above posters thought processes...
    He thinks spelling is the most importent thing in the world...

    Ok side rant.
    Spelling isn't the most importent thing in the world. It's the lisp/accent of the Internet. I know it makes me hard to understand but it hardly matters. I'm clear enough as it is.
    Not everyone can turn out perfict spelling first try and frankly Slashdot isn't importent enough for me to go proffreading posts...

    In my opinion.. people who focuse on craftsmenship polish the corners and put varnish on it all. But they don't dot the 'i's or cross the 't's.

    Spelling is importent but not to the exlusion of all else... and this is Slashdot... not the great american novel
  • Why doesn't somebody go solo ? You could bring in "guest stars" or something via the net.

    That was the way it was! And we liked it!!
    -"Grumpy Old Man"
  • by banky ( 9941 ) <gregg@neur[ ]shing.com ['oba' in gap]> on Tuesday August 22, 2000 @05:59AM (#837457) Homepage Journal
    Get a phone bank, have people call in. Then, for the first 20 minutes of the show, people can call in and say "First Call!" and hang up. This is fabulously interesting and exciting if you're in the 'First Post' crowd, and a guaranteed ratings grabber.

    But seriously, although I'm sure that the delicate interplay of personalities was brought about by having everyone there, physically, can't you all just call in and record that way?
  • by rlkoppenhaver ( 101366 ) on Tuesday August 22, 2000 @07:12AM (#837458) Homepage

    You need to do the same thing that the TV studios have been doing for years when a popular program runs it's course...

    Spinoff Shows! Perhaps one about Nate's new job as a talk-radio psychologist [everything2.com], or one in which Hemos joins the army and annoys the heck out of Sargeant Carter [everything2.com].

    Taco and CoyboyNeal can of course, begin production on GIS: TNG [everything2.com]

  • But seriously, although I'm sure that the delicate interplay of personalities was brought about by having everyone there, physically, can't you all just call in and record that way?

    First of all, having them call in and record is going to sound terrible - phones just don't sound that nice! However, it should still be possible for them to somehow contact each other to record an episode. Since this is, of course, Geeks in Space (Linux Geeks, to be specific), an Internet solution somehow involving Linux is, of course, preferred.

    So that's why I'd suggest that they look for GPLed software that allows high quality audio to be streamed over the web so they can colaborate together for the show. It's gotta be something hi-tech, something as old as phones just isn't gonna cut it for GiS. If there isn't anything currently available to allow realtime audio streaming over the web, licenced under the GPL, and designed for Linux, then someone needs to get to work! :)

    Either that, or they should invest in some video conferencing equipment - damn the cost, they sure look cool. (Plus it's fun to play with the cameras remotely... zoom-in, zoom-out - start it roaming randomly...)

    What ever they do, it needs to be hi-tech, and it needs to be geeky. After all, it wouldn't be Geeks in Space if they were using something old-fassioned like the telephone. Those things should be obsolete soon! Streaming audio over the Internet, all the way!

    While they do that, they could fix the color schemes for the Geeks in Space section so that visited and non-visited links are maybe different colors - damn, this black-on-white scheme looks ugly.

  • Come on, there's got to be a way to do it! I'm suffering from GIS withdrawal, and if you don't put out a new episode, no matter how lame, I think I might have to be committed.

    Well, not really, but you could just have a tele-conference. I KNOW you can afford it.
  • Icecast is open source. From the looking at the website (www.icecast.org), it works on Linux, and is GPL'ed. What more do you need?
  • here's an article from Negativland's site. It's a bit low-tech but might do the job. http://www.negativland.com/teletext2.html#teletour
  • It might be expensive to get all the equipment (but you guys are supposed to be rich now...or something) but I think a shortwave broadcast could be really cool. Of course, you could also do an MP3 broadcast as well for those of us without SW radios or those who couldn't pick it up. At least for myself, though, radio would be nice as I'm on dialup and streaming doesn't work...even the 28.8 broadcasts don't work too well over a 56k modem. Whatever happens, I hope you continue to keep old broadcasts around for those of us who don't have a broadband connection but would still like to listen to the show at our leisure.

  • Someone else to look up suitable technology for me.

    Wait - cool! Icecast [icecast.org], huh? Maybe they can look into it... sounds like it would be perfect for GiS...

    (Either that, or my &^(%ing SB Live! Platinum card to work under Linux... Yes, I've installed the Emu10k module, no it doesn't work right (yet).)

  • by ViceClown ( 39698 ) on Tuesday August 22, 2000 @08:36AM (#837465) Homepage Journal
    If you've ever heard the Kevin & Bean show in LA, they sound like they are in the same studio when in fact one is on a remote island near Seattle. Seriously it sounds that good! The technology is there for everyone to work together. I don't know if this is a prohibitively expensive solution or not but it's certainly something to look into. You guys have great chemistry, though, and it would be a shame if you called it quits!!! Can't Dibona through something together for you guys?? I hope it all works out :-)
  • by Felinoid ( 16872 ) on Tuesday August 22, 2000 @06:31PM (#837466) Homepage Journal
    Well I guess I better unload all my conspericy theries...

    Slashdot is out to take over the earth using Debian Gnu/Linux. There is a back door hidden in the Trasmedia chips and AMD chips and VA hardware that will alow CmdrTaco to transmit subliminal messages....
    Geeks In Space is a test run of this idea.. Thow GiS dosn't accually use the back door sence you volentarly download the MP3 and lissen to them instead of having it flashed on your screen.
    This is why Linux gets such poor graphics preformence. No Linux itself has no graphic defect but the hardware is triggered by Linux.
    It won't work with Windows becouse any interfearence causes the system to crash.. this is why the BSoD... the screen is blue becouse that is where the subliminal message WOULD have been if the operating system hadn't crashed...
    There is work in progress to make this work on BSD and Solarus as well...
    Sun however refused to join in this conspericy as they are allready attempting to take over the world.

    The Windows defect is due to the fact that Bill Gates recognised the branwashing and is attempting to stop it becouse it interfears with his own efforts to take over the world.

    IBM is working with Linux knowing the efforts of Bill Gates will be discovered and in part allready has been uncovered. The Slashdot/VA/Transmeta/Linus/Debian consepricy has yet to be uncovered...

    The Krull is a ruse... They are still busy inslaving The Torvela... They attack the Slashdot/VA/etc conspericy as target practace only...

    Ok enough with that one....
    Next

    CmdrTaco is a Torvelian... He is part of the Krull resitence force.. A rebelion out to free the Cosmose from the tirany of the Krull...

    RMS, ESR, even Linus are all a part of the rebelion and of vareous races...
    Linus is from a race that evolved from flightless artic birds...

    The Torvelian keep monkey like creatures as pets and often train them to do complex tasks like review Slashdot submitions...

    ID is created by the trainning devision of the rebelion...The first person shooters are trainning us to be able to handle high powered wepons and shoot strange creates...

    John Carmak is a Volak.. The Volak are a race of intelectual warlords... They often win battles with small things like sprikling aliminum dust around a secter of space before a battle... this dust messes with krull wepons and ship systems... and shorts out krull shields... The Krull have learned of this trick and have addepted accordingly.. so have the Volak.... Now they use Sand....

    PS. Yes the Volak want the Krull to know... every time they discover this the Krull waist resorces refitting ships... while the Volak are allready prepaired....

    IBM was founded by the Krull... in the late 1980s however the Krull needed to sell IBM to afford to refit ships (The Volak again) the rebelion bought IBM in the late 1990s and now use it to premote Linux etc...

    VA, Andover etc were founded by the rebelion...

    Bill Gates is human and mearly a pon of the Krull however Bill Gates outsmarted the Krull and have sence addapted the Krull plan for his own gains. He is therefor a threat to both the Krull empire and the rebelion... But no one knows exactly how to deal with him as he has Krull defence technology built into his home... no wepons so he modifyed the class 47 shilds... The normal class 47 allowed Krull wepons to shot out but lacking any such wepons the MS Shield has no shuch openning preventing any wepons fire eather way... This shield is impenitrable... unless Bill Gates house BSoDs....

    Ok enough of that...

    Next conspericy...

    Someone is putting something in our water. There are no Krull.. no evil overlords or anything...
    To make matters worse.. what they put in our water isn't making us delusional but PREVENTING us from going delusional... Humans as a race are natrally insain and need Tetracell white to keep us sain...

    Some aliens are dumpping this into our water so we'll stay sain...

    Now for the catch...
    Caffine counter acts...... and beer increases the madness.. the side effect of the drug is it also reduces our intelect... You can see the dumbing down effect in some people....

    The subspecies Geek are becomming more and more immunine to the drug every day...
    It seems the dumbing down is more pronounced than the insaity...

    Bill Gates hasn't had any tetracell in his life...
    Nither has Linus... CmdrTaco... and I am compleatly immune to it....

    Also air is the narcotic causing the madness...

    A few more quicky conspericys

    We are all batterys.......
    The real number of the beast is 3137

    CmdrTaco, Myself, Bill Gates, etc etc. Bush, Al Gore and Dominos pizza are all part of a conspericy to prevent you from realising you are your own worst enemy and no one is accually out to get you exlcuding yourself so you don't have to accept the fact that in the end you alone are responsable for all your pains and all your successes.... We can't let you know that....
  • how about something as simple as a recorded confrence call.. low fidelity, but better than nothing!
  • Exactly.. the show (as it is distributed at least) really hasn't been that hifi anyway...

    We REALLY want our almost weekly GIS shows to continue!! :)


    Or if you all have decent Internet connections I think there must be some higher quality voice conference solution available that you can use...


    --
  • I myself have two sound cards so I can run SpeakFreely most of the time... and not have it interfear with my Quake time.. or my Mp3s or anyting else I use my main sound card for..

    BTW use PCI soundcards... mixing PCI and ISA is a pain and ISA cards don't like each other...

    Or use some of Robs old servers....

    Then connect them so they stream into the PC recording the MP3 and a secound box for live streaming...

    Music can be mixed ahead of time and streammed in live....

    Live streaming or not allow call-ins vea speak freely...

    One more....

    With this you can have more of the slashdot editors on regularly....
    Give Emmit a radio modem (Thats what I use and I'm doing SpeakFreely in the background...) and a lap top and let him do interviews etc....

    If Slashdot ever dose get a regular reporter type person he could do his reports vea live streaming audio and then write up a text report for Slashdot posting.....

    Matrix Cam... no not a webcam into a vertal reality.... but a webcam on Tacos cat...
    Becouse "The cat is so cute"

    Or just turn it into the Krull invasion report and have the "away" mebers of the cast doing reports "in the field".... as Hemos works his way to the Krull homeworld to blow up the Krull moon....
  • *grin*

    --
  • First of all, having them call in and record is going to sound terrible - phones just don't sound that nice! However, it should still be possible for them to somehow contact each other to record an episode. Since this is, of course, Geeks in Space

    Actaully it's not that bad. Try listening to the older 2600's Off the Hook Episodes. Bernie S is practically a co-host and he's usually on the phone the whole time. While it's rather fitting, cause it's a hacking/phreaking/political show, but it's still actually not that bad.

    Howver, I think it'd still be great to hear Cowboy and Taco doing the show and maybe adding a call in section or what not. It'd probably be a pain in the ass with all the trolls who'd want to call in, but picture actually hearing some of the more intelligent Slashdot readers talking about the subjects... It'd definately be interesting. I'd love to hear how taco would reply to many of the topics... of course a lot of asshoels would probably ruin the idea tho.

    Oh welpers.

  • how about creating a virtual cowboy neal (back him up with those phat beats) all he has to say is "fart" and then laugh a lot. Or you could do a Good morning Vietnam thing ala Richard Nixon, where Hemos records a few random coments and everyone else fills in the blank spots.

    "So.. Hemos, hows your penis this morning.. "

    "I'm going to Dysney land.."

    that sort of thing.
  • This is bad! bad bad bad! Please, i beg of you, we need Geeks in Space. The show had(has) the possibility of being a long-running staple of geek existance, plus it's fun to listen to. I am in favor of icecast streams to a central studio where Nate (or anyone else for that mater!) can mix 'em together. However you do it, please do something. Record a partial GiS episode or something, but we NEED our geeks!

    Oh, and a wandering reporter is a great idea, I'd sign up for THAT job!

    P.S. Does anyone else wanna hear Kurt on audio?
  • Put rashboy on that would be cool, Taco Neil and Kurt. The show must go on.
  • without GIS, how am I going to know what sort of flame to send kurt@thepope.org this week?

    How about this? http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=flamekurtatthe popedotorg [slashdot.org]

    I think that it's a great idea to get kurt on the show. How come he hasn't done it before?

    hmm, [conspiracy theory] I know! Kurt is really cmdr tacos split personality. The one he uses when he needs to use any MS products!! No wonder he wanted all those alcohol recipies!

  • Since Hemos's wedding and move to boston, and Nate's move to california to continue work on Everything 2, that leaves CowboyNeal and I all by ourselves.

    Who cares? We all know that the rest of you guys are dragging Pater down anyway. I want a show where he goes from town to town and appraises the 1337-ness of people's computers. "Most people would give this computer a high 1337 l3v3l because of the Matrix theme and the fact that all 17 windows are terminal emulators, however you'll notice that this luser is running KDE. 1@m3r."
    I suppose Rob could tag along if he had to, maybe afterward he could do his own live-action anime-style reenactment of the exchange, "Vi! Eyiiiiiiiiiii!"

  • Or have it an invite only session.
    Since we dont know really when they record the shows. Just contact some people who have some really intelligent posts, and invite them to join the show. I know it can lead to elitism, and I know i'll probably never get on the show that way, but i'd rather listen to people i can learn from.

    But the shows are great anyway.
    A Voice over IP solutions shouldnt be that hard, even get VA or whoever owns them now to spring for dsl/t1 type internet connections in their houses.
  • Have you checked out ALSA [alsa-project.org]? They also have an emu10k driver, though I don't know how well it works (I have an sb128).

    Bill - aka taniwha
    --

  • Just record each of your individual parts, and have someone spend hours piecing them together into something interesting. Think Negativland would do GiS on a freelance basis?

    Seriously, you might want to try one of those internet telephony solutions out there.

  • Just have each of you record himself having a conference call with the others. Then get the recordings to Nate, and make him mix them together.

    Computer recording's better than analog tape for the purpose, because there aren't so many synch problems.

    There. That's my idea.
  • As was mentioned elsewhere, there's icecast [icecast.org]. There's also Speak Freely [fourmilab.ch]. Or there's always the possibility of knocking something up yourselves.

    I suspect that with the availability of mp3 mixers, icecast, etc, a nice solution for the communications problem should be achievable. Timing, on the other hand, is another matter, but then that's what clocks are for :)

    Bill - aka taniwha
    --

  • While you're suffering from GiS withdrawal, take a listen/read of MBRL [analog2digital.net]. They say they're going to post Iron Chef [foodtv.com] episodes soon, to keep it alive now that it's cancelled in Japan. Damn I love that fsckin' show.
  • You all have broadband, right? Why not just pick a time, and use one of the streaming audio protocols to chat, and capture the stream. It wouldn't be any worse than the other GIS's ;^].
  • I don't recall the name, but there's a radio show in town that is based on the exploits of these sisters. The two principal hosts actually live here, in Portland, and the remaining sisters live elsewhere and come on as necessary, but they're never in the same studio.

    Perhaps what's necessary is figuring out a way to do Internet broadcast and listening. It won't ever be the same, but ...

    Suggestion number two: Maybe you could use people like Nate as occasional guests, and then simply take somebody else that still lives in the region as a host? You know, turn him into a GiS Correspondant Emeritus or something?

    But, as everyone else has said, the show must go on! We're in WITHDRAWAL here, dying from lack of having our precious Geeks in Space!
  • yew, surr, awr verry convencing! Eye emm shure thatt yor conspereceeeieie well beee a bag sack cess!

    Awl yew half two wattch owt fore iz dem krollz dat encist dat yore spyllong iz rong!

    Sea, day iz awlreddie enfectid width thee ensanuhtee vieruss, may king tham ownlee THEENK dat dey iz rite!

    Butt rilly, we iz dee ownlee peapull hoo nose betturr... fite thuh few churr! Trusst know won!

    --
    while ( !universe->perfect() ) {
    hack (reality);

Understanding is always the understanding of a smaller problem in relation to a bigger problem. -- P.D. Ouspensky

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