Which *NIX is best for you?

[TIML]

I just Googlized 'geek' and 'nerd'

Nerd:
http://home.comcast.net/~brons/NerdCorner/nerd.html
the word "nerd" first appeared in 1950 in Dr. Seuss's If I Ran the Zoo*:

Geek:
http://www.geek.com/features/name/
Seems Mr. Alexander Barclay back in England wrote the following in 1570:
"He is a foole, a sotte, and a geke also Which choseth ... the worst [way] and most of ieoperdie [jeopardy]".

Check out the UberCool picture of the nerd there:
http://www.geek.com/features/name/


I guess I must be those to look them up!!!!


.T.I.M

 

[vic user]

Thanks!

Terry is really good at internet searches too.

Actually, I can remember reading about internet librarians, a few years ago, where people were hired to do internet searches and compile info. Sounds like a cool job.

Chris

 

[Terry Yager]

Did people start using 'nik' with 'beat', after Sputnik was launched?

I was just looking at the link you posted Terry, and I see no reference to 'beatnik' just the 'beat movement' etc..

But the timing of the two are in the fifties, so does not seem to be a coincidence to me.

I was just curious if 'beatnik' would have ever been used if Sputnik had never launched.

Chris

IIRC, the term "beatnik" was usually used derogatorily by "straights". The beat folk never refered to themselves that way. (I think it's more a spinoff of the word "nutnik", but it could be vice-versa).

--T

 

[Terry Yager]

Thanks!

Terry is really good at internet searches too.

Actually, I can remember reading about internet librarians, a few years ago, where people were hired to do internet searches and compile info. Sounds like a cool job.

Chris

Actually, it used to be a very highly paid (although short-lived) profession, back when the Internet was young (and before). Yahoo hadn't been invented, the web was brand new, and most on-line services were subscriber-only (before AOL, before Prodigy, there was Genie, Dow Jones, The Source, and of course CompuServe). There were no convenient search tools, so you had be pretty savvy to know how to do on-line research. You had to know which databases were most likely to contain the info you sought, and know how to find and retreive that info while racking up the smallest possible bill for on-line time (which could get pretty costly pretty quick when they charged by the minute). Someone who needed information would gladly pay someone else to do the research for them, and probably save money in the long run, as opposed to trying to find the information themselves.

--T

 

[Terry Yager]

Cool, I had no idea, as well as the hippy thing.

I wonder where 'geek' and 'nerd' came from as well?

Chris

We (me and my friends) never used to call ourselves hippies either. We always preferred the term freak. Hippie was considered a very uncool word, if not downright insulting.

--T

 

[TIML]

Absolutely!

Nobody admitted to being a hippie! (Unless they obviously weren't)!!!

The Diggers had the 'death of the hippie event'!

So you're one of the Fabulous Furry Freak Bros? How's the Cat?!!!




From 1Freek2another!


.T.I.M

 

[Terry Yager]

Re: Beatnix!

Re: Beatnix!

That Beat Generation site is very very cool. I think I found it las year when I was researching Kerouac and others. (You MUST read 'On The Road')

I read On the Road With Jack Kerouac when I was still a pre-teen (several times as I recall). It was like the Bible to me, and travel was my religion. I first left home at the tender age of twelve. Had to go on the road... Hitch-hiked to Texas, stayed there about three months, then went back "home", but somehow, it was never the same after that. Travel was in my veins. I spent ten years on the road, as a hobo, then another ten as a carney before finally settling down long enough to raise a couple of kids.

Enough to make you 'Howl'!!!


.T.I.M

Yes, Ive read Alan Ginsberg, too.

--T

 

[Terry Yager]

Absolutely!

Nobody admitted to being a hippie! (Unless they obviously weren't)!!!

The Diggers had the 'death of the hippie event'!

So you're one of the Fabulous Furry Freak Bros? How's the Cat?!!!




From 1Freek2another!


.T.I.M

Just call me Freewheelin' Frank! (Dope will get'cha thru...etc.)

--T

 

[Terry Yager]

I just Googlized 'geek' and 'nerd'

Nerd:
http://home.comcast.net/~brons/NerdCorner/nerd.html
the word "nerd" first appeared in 1950 in Dr. Seuss's If I Ran the Zoo*:

Yes, I'd read that before about Dr. Seuss.

Geek:
http://www.geek.com/features/name/
Seems Mr. Alexander Barclay back in England wrote the following in 1570:
"He is a foole, a sotte, and a geke also Which choseth ... the worst [way] and most of ieoperdie [jeopardy]".

I didn't know that geek went back that far. I really thought it originated in carny slang back in the '20s.

I guess I must be those to look them up!!!!


.T.I.M

Can you be a geek and a freek, or are they mutually exclusive?

--T

 

[Terry Yager]

Re: Beatnix!

Re: Beatnix!

It was like the Bible to me, and travel was my religion.

Well, that's not quite accurate...actually, my religion was Zen, (wasn't it everybody's) and Alan Watts was chief among my spiritual advisors.

http://www.alanwatts.com/

--T

 

[TIML]

Frx.

Frx.

I guess we're just Geek Freex!

Did you know Linux was originally going to be called 'Freax'?


You know, lately it occurs to me
What a Long Strange Trip its been.

Of course, now I have

A touch of grey.


.T.I.M

 

[carlsson]

Actually, it used to be a very highly paid (although short-lived) profession, back when the Internet was young (and before).

There are qualified search services today too, but they are typically located in countries combining high educated labour with low wages, i.e. Sri Lanka where I know a such company is operating. It works like this:

The contractor asks a question and determines how many hours of work he wants to pay for. The workers start searching the Internet and gather all information they can find. Then they compare sources, reliability, add less searchable sources and write a report on the subject which the contractor gets.

A question can be something as simple as "who are our opponents in this market share in this country" or more complex ones like "which companies have a slogan including this word" or "how does the future look like for this product". Almost all the contractors supposedly are companies or maybe organisations, as individuals seldom would like to pay for several hours of someone elses work.

The responsible parties think it is a win-win-win situation; the contractor gets a reliable report for moderate money, the workers get better paid compared to what other jobs in the country would yield (but less than they could ask in another country) and the company of course gets their profit.

Oh well, this has very little to do with Unix.

 

[Terry Yager]

Re: Frx.

Re: Frx.

I guess we're just Geek Freex!

Did you know Linux was originally going to be called 'Freax'?

No, I've never "hurd" that one before.

You know, lately it occurs to me
What a Long Strange Trip its been.

That used to be my anthem...musta put at least 10000 miles on that song alone.

Of course, now I have

A touch of grey.


.T.I.M

Heh! Don't we all? Well, I've said my peice, now I'll get out...

--T

 

[kjs3]

Geek (nee Geke)

Geek (nee Geke)

FWIW..."geek" had an original connotation along the lines of "circus freak".

 

[kjs3]

Linux Misconceptions

Linux Misconceptions

There is no "official" Linux distribution. There is a more-or-less "official" Linux kernel, and it lives at http://www.kernel.org.

Linux isn't a microkernel; quite the opposite. Linus hates microkernel architectures (see http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/opensources/book/appa.html, for example).

Linux doesn't use Debians kernel any more than it uses Debians GCC or Debians X Windows. It's the other way around.

OS-9 is Unix only in the sense that it has a Posix compatability layer and some Unixy things can be made to run on it; it's really nothing like Unix under the hood. But then, technically, you can say the same thing about Linux.

 

[Terry Yager]

Re: Linux Misconceptions

Re: Linux Misconceptions

OS-9 is Unix only in the sense that it has a Posix compatability layer and some Unixy things can be made to run on it; it's really nothing like Unix under the hood. But then, technically, you can say the same thing about Linux.

Mostly, I'm impressed that they were able to get a true multi-tasking, multi-user OS to run on 8-bit hardware, with as little as 32K of memory (Level 1, IIRC). Of course, I'm not familiar with the most recent versions, like the 68K or PowerPC versions. They may be even more unix-like than the 6809 version was. OS-9 is *nix-y enough that when I did move on to (unix/xenix/linux) the transition was easy--virtually no learning curve at all.

--T

 

[DoctorPepper]

I run Debian because I think its a high-quality Linux distro. I started with Red Hat (5.1 to be exact) several years ago, and played around with it, SuSE, Mandrake and Slackware (which I still love, BTW), then settled on Debian.

I like the fact that Debian is truly open, not "owned" by some commercial entity that could go belly-up at any time and leave me without updates. I'm also a big fan of Debian's apt-get and the repository.

I run stable on my servers and testing (Sarge right now) on my workstation. I find Debian to be very stable and powerful.

Howard

 

[DoctorPepper]

Sorry, I meant to add that I also run Tim Mann's excellent TRS-80 emulator, Xtrs, on my Debian Linux workstation. It saves wear and tear on my Trash 80's

 

[carlsson]

Nice, someone else than me who uses the preservation argument to use emulators for the dull work and save the real thing for the glory moments.

 

[Unknown_K]

CP/M User Posted: Sat Mar 20, 2004 1:17 pm

> Computers don't retain their value, unless you can think of a way to sell an Ol' machine to a few pennies.

I think they DO retain their value, just not necessarily their price!

That laptop earlier, is it made by a company thats gone all out for Linux now?

Linux early adopters: Try the new ones like Xandros, Lindows, or even Fedora Core (1or2), they now support SO much more hardware and are SO much easier to install (Debian and Gentoo not included in the easy bit).

I think you'll be very pleasantly surprised! And a good use for (moderately) old hardware!

.T.I.M

www.diggers.org for some fun!

The problem with older computers is that they realy only run the OS and software of their vintage well. While you can get newer software to run on older equipment the results are not exactly what you want to have.

If you want to run CP/M, DOS, Amiga, Atari, or early Windows programs you will find the older machines are a much better value then trying to run an emulater on more current and much more expensive hardware (and varying results).

While Linux is constantly changing with each new release (more bloat , easier installs, and looking more like Windows in each release) you have to ask why you want to run Linux to begin with. With the exception of office clones the software categories have not expanded much from the redhat 5 days, people buy an OS to support their software of choice not the other way around. There are no killer Linux apps out period (outside of webservers) for the average PC user.