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Quickies

Super Quick Quickies 39

Posted by CmdrTaco from the stuff-to-read dept.
Quick quickies this evening. First, ^BR wrote in to tell us that the August DaemonNews is out. Jeff Knox noted the Oscar MP3 Player, which looks much less pricey than other stereo type MP3 components. Next, CowboyNeal has completed another round of Slashboxes for you to peruse. The updated list now includes The Listology, HotHardware, linuxdev.net, BeBits, TheBeSite, exoScience, Linux Newbie, Technocrat, MacWEEK, and Halflife.org. If you are having account problems, or have a suggested new Slashbox, contact Neal. Finally, some minor bug fixes: The date links in the Older Stuff boxes were flaking out (time zone bugs). Also, replies on extended discussion pages were being lost. My plan has several more bugs on the TODO list. Please check it before contacting me.
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Super Quick Quickies More

Super Quick Quickies

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  • I'm Up 24 hours. Make me an editor. hehe

    But seriously, there should be a "pending articles" section but ut should be available only to readers who fit certain requirements, and they could vote for pending stories, so that the people will get the news that they want!
  • Okay, I am a newbie, here. What exactly is a slashbox and where do I find them?

    TIA,
    Tim
  • Nice.. I love the design. There is already a comment here about the OSCAR being ugly.. I think it's beautiful. Simple, rectangular. It is the essence of practicality. Hardware does not have to be stylized to look beautiful. A lot of new hardware (imac-copiers) tries to go the organic route.. really twisting the design. While those are nice, my favour resides with the austere, artificial, industrial look. Forget beige boxes.. give me the raw metal. Forget little grooves to put stylized power-on and reset buttons in. Just stick a big old switch on the rectangular box, and a couple-of off the shelf leds for HDD activity and power.

    -Laxative
  • Agreed. Or at least make it an optional preference. What is the point of it?
  • Sorry for being an ignorant tool, but what the fsck are slashboxes?
  • Ditto on 1,2, and maybe 4.
    As far as bonus and penalty points for length, ahouldn't posters be rewarded for being brief and penalized for going on at length?

  • That's it. Hi-End rules. I agree that artworks like Harman Kardon, NAD or Cairn are great. Especially I like the 'mountain' series from Cairn.... Damn heap of cash, man :)
    Compared to them all those thingies from Daewoo and Samsung look like 5 yr old boy's toys. Or like Windoze :)
    However, MP3 itself lacks of quality and it seems to be even weaker than Audio CD. There's a Hi-End magazine I like very much, Stereo And Video. I have a Russian version issue that covers differences amoung contemporary DAC/ADC and compression formats. If anyone interested- drop a note and I'll try to translate it for you.

    Sorry if off-topic
  • I don't think the problem with the Oscar is the simplicity.. Most of the time, simplicity is good. The Oscar, however, seems to be an unpolished & unfinished work. I would say it's a work of art, if it was made by a student for personal purposes. But selling it, making it commercial, involves an end product more refined. (usually -- we all know there are plenty of exceptions.)


    just a thought.


    ..................................@ @
  • I like this as well. You could built an entire thread system like this. I once tried building a threaded message board and quit when I got confused. There's probably better ways of doing this but this idea here is one of the simplest I've seen. To answer your question:

    If we have a comment 1.1, the replies to it would be 1.1.1, 1.1.2, 1.1.3
    Replies to the reply (1.1.2 as an example) would be 1.1.2.1, 1.1.2.2, 1.1.2.3, etc.

    Neato!

  • Yahoo Finance ( http://finance.yahoo.com/m3?u [yahoo.com]) provides exchange rates for tons of currencies.

    The currency in question was the German (Deutsch (sp?)) Mark.


    ..................................@ @
  • In terms of design, i like Nad Electronics' ( www.nadelectronics.com [nadelectronics.com]) designs. I have fallen in love with their L40. [nadelectronics.com] If they only had that running MP3s...


    ..................................@ @
  • That's pretty much right, but there's one more important point.

    As the owner of a copyrighted recording you are allowed to make copies for personal use. I'm not sure if the law states one copy or if multiple copies are allowed, but you can not presuppose that the MP3's stored in this device would be redundant, and therefore, it is not possible, from a legal standpoint, to classify this as a device designed for piracy of music.

    This all falls under the definition of "fair useage"

    Fair Usage also allows you to go to any library and photocopy or otherwise make facimily of any materials found therein for personal study. My father, as an english professor, regularly has his universities library photocopy entire rare books for him to take home or use at his office. These copies are perfectly legal, but often make people who don't know better cry foul.

    The legal definitions of fair usage make it impossible to outlaw most devices used for piracy of copyrighted materials. This makes a lot of people very angry, but most countries are supposedly free, and there's nothing you can do about it without removing essential freedoms from the populace.

    This aside, I ask you to produce a statement from any recording artist complaining about lost profits due to amateur piracy. Just one. I don't think you'll find one.

  • Go to your preferences page and down near the bottom there is:

    Long Comment Bonus (Assign +1 to lengthy comments):
    [A text box with a number in it]

    There is no explanation of the number, but I think (after playing with it for a bit) it is the length in chars a comment must be before it gets the +1. Jack it up to a really high number and noone seems to get the length bonus.

    This leads me to believe that the boost in score is not 'real'. It just is a filter that is applied every time you view a page of comments.
  • Woo-hoo, more slashboxes! Just what I need, an excuse to spend more time at /. then I already do =P
  • Jeff Knox noted the Oscar MP3 Player, which looks much less pricey than other stereo type MP3 components.

    Sorry to say it, but the Oscar MP3 Player "looks much less pricey" because it's just so plain. The front side has so much blank space, and MP3's can be manipulated in so many ways. You would think there would be at least as many buttons as on a conventional CD player. They could really use a design tweak or two.
  • With all the new features and options that have popped up over the last few months, maybe it's time for a Slashdot user's manual for newbies, or forgetful people like me.
  • According to the page it says it scans for .mp3 files so unless you plan on writing other software for it I don't see how it can pirate regular cds.. And does anybody know how much they really are... I saw the 700 something but it didn't look like it was US...
  • Usualy, I favor mp3 on any of the record companies.
    The reason is that mp3 is a technology that can be used in many ways which are legal.

    However, it seems to me as OSCAR streches that line.
    It is made specificly to copy other artists work.
    The reason is that it is devided into subdirectories as CDs.
    Normally non copyrighted material does not come in CDs, rather it comes as seperate mp3 files.
    This is because there is no need to sell it, thus usualy it is no contained in normal media.
    (but rather on mp3s, and unsorted tape cassettes).

    I think it is wrong to make such a device for the purpose of pirating copyrighter material,
    which is the clear purpose of this device.
    (that may be the purpose of RIO as well, but it's not "specificly designed for pirated music").

    A good example is CDRs.
    I agree many people put CDRs to use by burning warez and pirated things,
    but many other use it for good reasons (burning debian for friends :-))
    If some CDR creator will put special warez abilities in the CDR I'm sure people will be against it,
    though they use CDRs in their lives for non-warez purposes.



    ---
    The day Microsoft makes something that doesn't suck,

  • Um, er, how does it look not pricey? I didn't see any pricing info. The page just has a picture and a link to itself.

    (Speaking of pages with links to themselves, someone should make a page that links to all pages that don't link to themselves.)



    ---
    Have a sloppy night.
  • How about a "/. manual" slashbox. Default for newbie :) I really want a "/. should post this" free forum in the mainpage, which will limit to 100 posts. Therefore you won't grow too off topic.

    CY
  • 1. Choose your overload threshold.
    2. Ask Slashdot never remembers who I am so I have to log in everytime I look at it.
    3. More Asian and European editors - I want 24 hours of /.
    4. A place where readers/moderators can view pending submissions and vote on them
    5. Stick Roblimo in his limo and drive him off a cliff.
  • Post new version of slashdot code
  • I disagree... There is a very valid reason for the ability to pull MP3's out of directories from a CD. People (Myself included) tend to encode the audio CD's that they own into this very format. Personally, I have 14 CD's of MP3's that I encoded from music CD's I own. I keep the MP3 CD's in CD changers on servers, and play the music off of them through my computer. I would love to have an Oscar, and disagree with the statement that "It is made specificly to copy other artists work."

    Anyway, Just my rambling 2 cents worth.

  • I always fancy a slashdot editor name "Robzilla", anyone can top this?
  • Despite not having much experience with threaded message boards, I would like to make a suggestion for a /. comment numbering scheme as follows:

    1
    1.1
    1.2
    1.2.1
    1.2.1.1
    1.2.1.2
    1.2.1.2.1
    1.2.2
    2
    3
    3.1
    ...

    If it's implemented an option, then only those who elect to use this scheme would need to see the excessive numbers.

    I offer this suggestion after having several experiences in threaded mode where I find myself scrolling up the screen, trying to find the parent of a comment based on distance from the left margin. Perhaps I'm missing an existing /. feature?

    Comments? Flames?

  • Less expensive? (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Much less pricey? The OSCAR mp3 player is is listed to cost DM479 for the kit and DM789 for the assebled version. That's ~ $300 and $500, and the drive sells for $60. That doesn't seem that indexpensive to me, especially if the thing has to be shipped from Germany.

    On the plus side the power consumption looks small enough that the whole thing could probably be run in a car, or off bateries with little trouble.

    Pretty impressive for a couple of guys doing stuff in their spare time though.
  • Just in case it wasn't obvious, http://www.oscar-mp3.com/baycom.html has the ordering and pricing information for the Oscar. And, to make things REALLY easy, I'll even summarize: Fully Assembled Oscar = 789 DM ($430.44 as of 8/3/99) Kit Oscar = 479 DM ($261.32 as of 8/3/99)
  • DM stands for deutsch marks. According to this site [skynet.net.au], you get 1.7829 DM for every US dollar.

    1 / 1.7829 * 700 = $392.62
  • >Post new version of slashdot code

    Er... http://projects.is.asu.edu/m ailman/listinfo/slash-help [asu.edu] would be a good place to start if you want to even bring up Slash.
  • they seem like a university project or something...note the reference to classmates etc...also no source available..:(...BTW, a linux based ARM system could prolly do the same thing with a command line mp3 player...$500 or so is what it would probably cost ..except for the pain of building it..
  • looks like it could work. but what about when someone replies to a comment that someone else has already replied to (i.e., when they get into a thread, not at either end?) do you then assign them a number, using your system, by order of chronology (as "numerical" comment IDs are assigned now?)

    other than that, well, go for it
  • Only two real hyperlinks on this one.
    The world must be getting pretty boring.

    BTW, when someone gets their oscar, I'd like to have your observations on how well it works.

    Right now, I'm a little low on DMs, and a little fearful of do-it-yourself kits.

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