tromey: If I am the maintainer, I will make 23.2 the last version supporting DOS.
which is already overdue.
I think they should do it in 22.

bpalmer: good catch, thank you

have him try now.

score

emacs should have something like debian has for usage statistics

bpalmer: thanks

drewr: thanks dude :) my heart sank when I didn't auto join and saw the +b, haha
bpalmer: Yes, thank you!

just compiling emacs with ./configure --with-x-toolkit=gtk is all I needed :)

once a proper packaging system is in place, some of the junk packages should be recycled.

mwilliams_: sure thing. Sorry for the inconvenience.

any idea whether gs.el is functional?

bpalmer: No worries

that way the maintainers could know who's using what, when and where (if the user agreed first, that is)

cluck: that could be built into the packaging system whatever that is.

mwilliams_: ams dude, ya can't take a hint man, no one here digs ya, ya know...
;)

all the new features should be on for a period of time for testing.
sadly most new additions in 23.2 are half-baked. I am tired of reporting bugs.

leo2007: no need to mess with packaging

cluck: can the system debian used usable by emacs just like the bug tracker.
In future I need to give each bug that I found a score from 0-10 and only report those that have 10.

leo2007: i don't think pop con would be all that useful, in any case even if it were i'm betting an elisp snippet could do much better with less code and in a platform independent way

cluck: how debian collect stats? could you give me a link?

bpalmer: put a ban on *!ams@* and ams!*@*
bpalmer: that'll narrow it down so mwilliams won't get banned.

I probably should have put popularity into elpa

leo2007: popcon is pretty much a cronjob that mails stuff about your install to a specific debian related address, that data is churned and statistics are provided regularly

tromey: just remember that popular people's votes should count more.

maybe the server keeps logs

tromey: that's what next versions are for
tromey: but do it EXPLICITLY (ie, it will only send info _if_ the user agrees to it)
nothing is more irritating than spyware

let's be vigilant about dossiers being compiled about our .el addictions

I was thinking more like, (anonymously) aggregating download info from the server logs

anonymity is surprisingly hard to guarantee.

platform, distro, binary or hand compiled, gui or cli, what's on and off, all easy to gather in a few lines, all useful data

""The Quantum Thief" is the best first SF novel I've read in many years."

sounds familiar.

that was stross
but it's not out yet!

e1f: ever read anything by Neal Stephenson?

How can it be Stross' first novel, he's published plenty?

snowcrash and cryptonomicon
that was a stross quote

e1f: come on, spoil it, who took the strings?
e1f: you know you want to, really hard! :)

cluck: the thief did it.

the novel hasn't been released yet

oh and btw TITANIC SUNK!

e1f: ah! you gave it away

there, i spoiled it
:D

Dude, I haven't seen the movie yet, thanks a lot

Speaking of Stephenson and movies, I guess The Diamond Age got lost somewhere.

stephenson's awesome.
i've read diamond age and snowcrash and i'm reading Anathem right now.

I'm contemplating reading Anathem on vacation in a few weeks.

hmm
it's very rich in philosophy and other hard science fields
but very rewarding

cryptonomicon and the baroque cycle books are pretty good too

the book comes with its own glossary - just to give you a heads-up.

madpickle: cool

turbofail: they're on The List :D

The first book of the Baroque Cycle is tough to get through

cryptonomicon?

Quicksilver

srsly

The Diamond Age was a tough read for me.

yeah i couldn't get through that, much as i wanted to

i enjoyed its theme and overall storyline, but I felt that it took a while to get into and that it advanced fairly slowly.

_true names_ was enjoyable

Quicksilver is so detail-oriented in terms of the time, but then I felt like I could understand it better in the subsequent books. So, I guess it was worth it.

snow crash was awesome. i absolutely loved that book.
great pacing; and vivid, interesting characters and story.

jlindsay: have you seen "snakes on a plain"?

jlf: loved that one

pretty prophetic, true names

Yes, there were snakes on the plane. The title is very good I must say.

neuromancer is unbeatable though

The Cyberiad by Stanislaw Lem was another great read.

holy crap TN was written in '81?!

:)

(Action) waits for the nurses to wheel him into the day room

you can keep coming back to neuromancer over and over again and enjoy new aspects of it every time
until it's half-memorized

technomancy: true dat

technomancy: aye. there are a couple of books i feel that way about: hitchhiker's is also one of them

Can you segfault Java?

One that doesn't get much mention, but was also prophetic is The Shockwave Rider.

JordiGH: you can NullPointerException it. is that good enough? :)

That book deals with computer viruses & worms and was written in '75.

mstr: No, man, I want UB.
Friend says he's managed to crash the JVM.

JordiGH: sure, I've done it
couple times with jruby, couple with clojure

technomancy: and then you watch stuff like Johnny Mnemonic and get scarred for life :)

technomancy: How do you debug that?
Quis debuges ipso debugators?

JordiGH: you don't. it's not reproducible.

I mean, how do you debug the jvm?

you mail your stacktrace to the openjdk team
*core dump

what's with hollywood and their habit of ruining good plots? :|

what'd they do to johnny mnemonic?

Dear Sirs, Here's the dump you requested. Warmest Regards,

turbofail: It was ok except THEY FUCKING TOOK OUT MOLLY MILLIONS.

cluck: They can't come up with any of their own, so they kill the good ones.

turbofail: Johnny isn't the protagonist of that story, Molly is, and they took her out.

ah
never saw the movie version
didn't even know there was one, actually

it is in the genre of "sci-fi movie where ice-t is the best actor"
see also tank girl

JordiGH: I really am not looking forward to hearing "It's such a matrix rip-off" when kids see a neuromancer movie.

turbofail: It's with Mr Whoa Face.
turbofail: It's actually not terrible, but no Molly Millions really ruined it.

yeah, i can see that

technomancy: Haha.

molly is definitely one of the best characters from "the sprawl"

turbofail: Yeah, they did capture most of the cyberpunk feel. They changed the plot slightly to add a subplot about a worldwide epidemic, but that's cool too.
The random floozie they got to replace Molly is not cool, though.
(Not that Molly wasn't a floozie, but she was an unrandom floozie with a purpose.)
Dammit, Gibson, make a good movie already. You still have time. :-(

cvandusen: you said dump huh huh huh

the fact that it's supposed to be made by the guy who did Cube is a good sign

tromey: tank girl was unusually faithful to the original afair
tromey: it's just the source material wasn't all that tbw

Tank Girl is about poopie and boobie jokes.
Sketch: Hey, I like Cube. First one, anyways.
They get too many lols in the later ones.

technomancy: well, since "neo" was "johnny mnemonic" i don't think that will happen, they'll just blame the bad on "molly 2.0"
if i make myself understood

wait is there a serious effort towards making a neuromancer movie?

turbofail: yeah, it's on and off every few years

JordiGH: me too, that's why i think it's a good thing

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1037220/

that's another hollywood M.O., ripping and mixing great stories to get crap outcomes
and because of that we just know it will happen

turbofail: http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/filmblog/2010/may/14/william-gibson-neuromancer-vincenzo-natali

I guess authors can't resist the $$$
or maybe they think they'll get lucky
and not have their book turned into a crappy movie

hm

aiui, no country was very faithful to mccarthy's novel .. so it does happen

well, blade runner was a pretty good movie, although it significantly altered the book's plot... so the outcome isn't always crap

What I don't get is, they know we like the story, so why do they change the story?
With Planet of the Apes, fine, there were production issues to take into consideration.

"we" are not the target audience

because they assume that people who haven't read it are too dumb to like the original story
they might even be right

My daughter actually preferred the original story of Cinderella. The step sisters mangling their feet to fit in the slipper was gross enough to win her over.

heh

turbofail: dumb people only care about the sex and the action scenes and those would be present in both the changed and the original plots

true
but dumb people also like to see the male character doing the action and saving the incompetent female
hence what apparently happened to johnny mnemonic

let's be a focus group!

i would say that if they think the original plot won't sell as well then they should just get a smaller budget
i'd like to see a small indie team have a go at neuromancer

'Ill create a GUI interface using Visual Basic&see if I can track an IP address.? Wtf, rewrite it.'

lol
if they're going to make up bullsh*t computer stuff they should at least go all out

but, usually when they do, it fails.

turbofail: that's a lie, when well done (or smartly done) female leads work very well

Sketch: that looks great. Any released films like that?

yay tomb raider!
(Action) ducks

lol
well anyway that was probably their rationale for taking molly out of johnny mnemonic
who knows what this guy will do with neuromancer

turbofail: I remember reading about it, I think it had to do with the Molly character being involved in a different film deal.

ah
lame

Typical.
There's a reason why Alan Moore says "Just hand me the check and don't tell me anything more about the film."
And doesn't see it, doesn't want to hear about it, pretty much pretends it doesn't exist.
If you're curious about why hollywood screws up movies, I recommend googling up the original story of whathappened to The Puppet Masters.
Also, watch _Bowfinger_ :-).
Did ya hear the one about the young hollywood actress who was so stupid, she slept with the writer to get ahead?

shouldn't the writer being the one getting head?
(Action) ducks
s/being/be/

And fwiw, my favorite Gibson novel is _Count Zero_, but I'm not sure that would make the best film.

They could make the whole trilogy

A friend is currently filming an unauthorized, zero-budget, indie film of _The Winter Market_.
In my garage :-).
Actually, he used my garage (which is ridiculously large - 60' x 20' with an 11' ceilnig) for a few scenes set in the artist character's studio.

hm

(Action) really needs to dig up a copy of Burning Chrome and reread The Winter Market.
For that matter, I should dig up all of my gibson books and reread them.

Given the hoopla made over the da vinci code, I'm surprised Foucault's Pendulum didn't get made into a movie.

Just reread Spook Country. Looking forard to Zero History.
Yeah, the da vinci code... my brother took a crack at it because so many people were pushing it.

(Action) just read Virtual Light for the first time and wasn't really impressed.

Basically it's what I call Twinklie Conspiracy Theory.