Comments on: Little Thought-Like Emanations http://whatever.scalzi.com/2006/09/28/little-thought-like-emanations/ I FORGET WHAT EIGHT WAS FOR Fri, 10 Feb 2012 00:44:06 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.com/ By: Jon H http://whatever.scalzi.com/2006/09/28/little-thought-like-emanations/#comment-88196 Sat, 30 Sep 2006 01:58:05 +0000 http://whatever.scalzi.com/2006/09/28/little-thought-like-emanations/#comment-88196 John,

Vermont has mountains, which are satellite-signal-opaque if they happen to be in the way.

]]> By: Ted Lemon http://whatever.scalzi.com/2006/09/28/little-thought-like-emanations/#comment-88195 Fri, 29 Sep 2006 18:51:38 +0000 http://whatever.scalzi.com/2006/09/28/little-thought-like-emanations/#comment-88195 Well, right now I’m using Flock, which is a browser based on Mozilla. It tracks RSS feeds, and tells me when there’s something new. An RSS feed is basically a way to say “there’s a new entry in my blog.” I don’t know what RSS stands for, but that’s basically what it does. It’s an imperfect technology, but it makes tracking blogs a lot easier.

]]> By: Nathan http://whatever.scalzi.com/2006/09/28/little-thought-like-emanations/#comment-88193 Fri, 29 Sep 2006 14:20:55 +0000 http://whatever.scalzi.com/2006/09/28/little-thought-like-emanations/#comment-88193 Ted

Thanks for the definitions. But, what’s an RSS Checker…..cause, I’m, like, ya’know…..a moron.

]]> By: Nathan http://whatever.scalzi.com/2006/09/28/little-thought-like-emanations/#comment-88194 Fri, 29 Sep 2006 14:20:55 +0000 http://whatever.scalzi.com/2006/09/28/little-thought-like-emanations/#comment-88194 Ted

Thanks for the definitions. But, what’s an RSS Checker…..cause, I’m, like, ya’know…..a moron.

]]> By: Brenta http://whatever.scalzi.com/2006/09/28/little-thought-like-emanations/#comment-88192 Fri, 29 Sep 2006 13:35:22 +0000 http://whatever.scalzi.com/2006/09/28/little-thought-like-emanations/#comment-88192 Ted,

Yeah, I guess I was being a touch snarky about the expense of DSL in rural areas and the subsidization issue. :-) (Sorry about that.) Our base rate here is $50 and goes up from there.

While not having personal connectivity is a real pain (and an educational detriment for the young’ins), I’m really most worried about the difficulty of attracting industry to rural areas. Businesses can’t use satellite internet because of the latency issues and limits. I’ve seen too many recent situations where industry has stated that they would have considered moving into this area, but because there was no high-speed infrastructure, they couldn’t commit to a site here.

Brenta

]]> By: Kevin Marks http://whatever.scalzi.com/2006/09/28/little-thought-like-emanations/#comment-88191 Fri, 29 Sep 2006 07:18:24 +0000 http://whatever.scalzi.com/2006/09/28/little-thought-like-emanations/#comment-88191 Ginny, same thing as with John’s, the subdirectory links are included in the top-level one. We count the links people actually use.
As for rural broadband, the real scandal is the Universal Service Fund, which all our phonebills include, allegedly to subsidise rural telephony. In practice is subsidises gold-plated rural subsidiaries of the Bells, and then is used by Congress to circumvent the first amendment in schools and libraries.
They should take the whole of the USF money and spend it on rural wifi.

]]> By: Ted Lemon http://whatever.scalzi.com/2006/09/28/little-thought-like-emanations/#comment-88190 Fri, 29 Sep 2006 06:54:03 +0000 http://whatever.scalzi.com/2006/09/28/little-thought-like-emanations/#comment-88190 OBTW, I don’t read _any_ of the blogs in your technorati top 25, and now that I’ve seen the one with the cute chick, I’m not going to read it again, because she’s like *so* shallow, you know? She is pretty, though. The fact that a lot of people link to you doesn’t mean that a lot of people read you. Whatever is in my RSS checker. I don’t think boingboing ever will be.

]]> By: Ted Lemon http://whatever.scalzi.com/2006/09/28/little-thought-like-emanations/#comment-88188 Fri, 29 Sep 2006 06:50:08 +0000 http://whatever.scalzi.com/2006/09/28/little-thought-like-emanations/#comment-88188 You’re living in the past, man. Streaming media is where it’s at. Get with the program. :’)

Seriously, a year ago nobody I knew knew anything about VoIP. Now most of them are on Skype, and in fact Skype is more useful than email for contacting them (what with spam filters and all). And these aren’t my geek friends – these are my Dharma friends, most of whom needed my help to set up the microphone the first time. But they asked me – I didn’t even suggest it to them.

Web browsing is mostly a mechanism for not getting done what you need to do (e.g., why am I typing this? To avoid doing real work), so I can’t really count that as more useful than Skype, which I actually do use to get useful work done.

Nathan: VoIP == Voice over IP. MMORPG == Massively Multiplayer Online Roleplaying Games (e.g., The Matrix Online). MUD == Multi-user dungeon – these are text-based, and latency really isn’t a big issue since the text crosses the gap in chunks, not a character at a time.

]]> By: Ted Lemon http://whatever.scalzi.com/2006/09/28/little-thought-like-emanations/#comment-88189 Fri, 29 Sep 2006 06:50:08 +0000 http://whatever.scalzi.com/2006/09/28/little-thought-like-emanations/#comment-88189 You’re living in the past, man. Streaming media is where it’s at. Get with the program. :’)

Seriously, a year ago nobody I knew knew anything about VoIP. Now most of them are on Skype, and in fact Skype is more useful than email for contacting them (what with spam filters and all). And these aren’t my geek friends – these are my Dharma friends, most of whom needed my help to set up the microphone the first time. But they asked me – I didn’t even suggest it to them.

Web browsing is mostly a mechanism for not getting done what you need to do (e.g., why am I typing this? To avoid doing real work), so I can’t really count that as more useful than Skype, which I actually do use to get useful work done.

Nathan: VoIP == Voice over IP. MMORPG == Massively Multiplayer Online Roleplaying Games (e.g., The Matrix Online). MUD == Multi-user dungeon – these are text-based, and latency really isn’t a big issue since the text crosses the gap in chunks, not a character at a time.

]]> By: Owlmirror http://whatever.scalzi.com/2006/09/28/little-thought-like-emanations/#comment-88187 Fri, 29 Sep 2006 06:03:53 +0000 http://whatever.scalzi.com/2006/09/28/little-thought-like-emanations/#comment-88187

Sneaky, Owlmirror. Don’t tell any of the spammers about that.

You might be able to riposte by changing the filter to strip out blank tags — but of course, I just thought of some counter-responses.

I also thought of a good and utterly valid reason to use the word in question:

Casino Royale, w00t.

James Bond doesn’t need any damn Viаgrа.

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