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The Freehacker's Union

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Re: The Freehacker's Union

#21

Post by demallien »

Edinburger wrote: post #13
mobileshub wrote: post #2

http://www.infibeam.com/Books/ - Book lovers from India now have the option to open Infibeam.com to view, select and buy books online of their choice with free shipping available in India.

Hi PG, I don't know whether you're watching but this seems like a good example where it would be useful to grey out the URLs in downvoted posts as well as the message.

Whilst at the same time making URLs in downvoted posts plain text rather than a tag. Accidently clicking on a greyed out link because you couldn't see that there was a link there is just plain annoying.

Re: The Freehacker's Union

#22

Post by [deleted] »

demallien wrote: post #21
Edinburger wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hi PG, I don't know whether you're watching but this seems like a good example where it would be useful to grey out the URLs in downvoted posts as well as the message.

Whilst at the same time making URLs in downvoted posts plain text rather than a tag. Accidently clicking on a greyed out link because you couldn't see that there was a link there is just plain annoying.

[deleted]

Re: The Freehacker's Union

#23

Post by ZitchDog »

Edinburger wrote: post #13
mobileshub wrote: post #2

http://www.infibeam.com/Books/ - Book lovers from India now have the option to open Infibeam.com to view, select and buy books online of their choice with free shipping available in India.

Hi PG, I don't know whether you're watching but this seems like a good example where it would be useful to grey out the URLs in downvoted posts as well as the message.

They should also be nofollowed or the link will still help the spammer's pagerank. Any links in a comment having score http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2005/01/preventing-comment-sp...

edit: nevermind, demallien's solution is superior, in that it prevents accidental clickage.

Re: The Freehacker's Union

#24

Post by bryanwoods »

I went to two meetings here in NYC. Met some great people and had a great time seeing what other hackers were up to. I keep assuming all the layoffs combined with the onset of winter were to blame for things kind of petering out. It was a particularly weird time to keep momentum going for anything, but it'd be nice to get together again. I'm glad some links to similar groups have been posted, I hope to check them out.

Re: The Freehacker's Union

#25

Post by nihilocrat »

"I’m finding that every geek gathering is full of asshole MBAs, groupies, and their wannabes."

Someone please explain to me how MBAs show up at geek meetups of any description. I would think stuff would be way too oriented away from money for them to show up. Maybe I'm just crassly stereotyping too much.

Re: The Freehacker's Union

#26

Post by nihilocrat »

barrkel wrote: post #15

It started out sort of vague (I joined the mailing list quite early), but as it acquired definition, it seemed to be ending up excessively concentrated in a "Zed"-like niche, i.e. the combination of scripting hacks and music / theatre-like performances. So I drifted away and terminated subscription, and I guess many others did the same (and have had that impression confirmed from a couple of private emails).

I think that will happen with any broadly-defined "geek" social group.

The nerd club at my college was hugely slanted towards roleplaying and anime, so I felt sort of like an outsider caring mainly for computers and video games. An electronics nerd would have zero fun, but then again, it was a liberal arts college, so what do you expect?

Re: The Freehacker's Union

#27

Post by unalone »

nihilocrat wrote: post #25

"I’m finding that every geek gathering is full of asshole MBAs, groupies, and their wannabes." Someone please explain to me how MBAs show up at geek meetups of any description. I would think stuff would be way too oriented away from money for them to show up. Maybe I'm just crassly stereotyping too much.

There are different sorts of MBAs. My mother's was focused on computers and tech, and though she's since moved out of that field, at the time she was quite the geek.

Having an MBA doesn't make you a bad person. It's just that MBAs more than many other degrees will attract a high proportion of the "make money and intimidate people" crowd. That's not exclusive. I know computer scientists who are equally clueless about what they do, but who think this degree will make them rich.

Re: The Freehacker's Union

#28

Post by markessien »

gamache wrote: post #18
markessien wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's like being a C programmer, and someone asks you - "How do you declare a variable". You could try to explain, but it's not very interesting to answer such basic questions. If you don't even know where to buy electronic parts, you're not even at newbie level yet. You have not even started.

"Where do you get your parts?" is a lot more like "What editor do you use?" than "How do you declare a variable?". It's cool as hell to find a parts shop you never knew existed, or to find a useful component that Radio Shack sells, or to find a website which sells a drop-in solution for what you need.

Not in the context that Zed is asking in. He's asking because he has no idea what is in the devices, not because he wants to find a new store.

Re: The Freehacker's Union

#30

Post by latrokles »

simplegeek wrote: post #12

One related question. I came across this book from the article "Making things talk" and I kind of like it (from what I can tell by reading excerpts at books.google.com). Can I enjoy this book and make cool programs like the one in book if I don't have a background in Electronics? Just curious.

Yes you can, the book will cover all the electronics stuff you will need to build the projects it presents. I find it to be a nice intro to physical computing stuff.

Tom Igoe, the author, co-wrote "Physical Computing" with Dan O'Sullivan, which is a book used in NYU's ITP for teaching artists and other non-engineers about electronics, microcontroller programming, mechanical devices, etc. So that should give you an idea of the expectations the book has from the reader, if you haven't done any electronics you will still enjoy it and, better yet, learn quite a bit from it.

I also suggest you check out his site http://tigoe.net/pcomp/ as it contains tutorials, syllabi from his classes at NYU's ITP, and other resources.

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