Re: [PLUG] Geek News Sources

["William H. Magill" <magill@mcgillsociety.org>]

On Saturday, September 27, 2003, at 11:42 AM, David Kaplowitz wrote:
> I'm pretty news hungry and get a lot from sites like Slashdot (They 
> have
> those cool BSD and gaming sections for updates), Wired and eWeek. I 
> also
> subscribe to a heap of mailinglist, browse newsgroups and read the
> occasional Sysadmin mag, Linux mag. It gets a bit overwhelming at times
> sifting through them all and I'm wondering if any other sites have been
> successful at putting a lot of such stuff in one place. I've been
> reading some about news aggregators, but haven't really stumbled onto
> any that are worth checking out consistently. I figured some of you 
> have
> your favorite spots for such news and would love to hear about where 
> you
> go to keep current on stuff that interests you technically.

Information overload is a real problem. It's easy to spend 2-3 
(minimum) hours a day "keeping current." (Or rather, trying to.)

While not particularly Linux related, I have found that Mac Surfer 
(www.macsurfer.com) is an excellent headline site. It gives 1 sentence 
headlines and then links to the particular articles. In addition to 
pure Mac/Apple stuff, it covers a wide range of "interesting" related 
industry stuff, including financial information.

Their companion site, TechNN (www.technn.com) tends to have a fair 
amount of "other than Mac" news, and a collection of "sector watch" 
summaries.

For Home Automation stuff, I prefer Bob Hetherington's "Home Toys." 
(www.hometoys.com). The site is an eMagazine as well as a solid 
collection of reference (including lots of how-tos) materials.

Other than that, I have a tendency to prefer email based lists and 
such. I probably belong to 20 or 30 mailing lists on specific topics 
from Tru64 and perl to MacOSX Server Admin and Alpha Linux. Thanks to 
procmail, they all sort themselves into their respective inboxes for 
perusal at "rational" times.

The real trick is to pick "a few" -- "a few" that you are particularly 
interested in; "a few" that deal with specific things you need 
day-to-day -- like software packages you use every; "a few" that are 
semi-general which contain "cool" information, like Slashdot, Macslash, 
PHAD or PLUG. Then you can throw in "a few" "recreational" sites/lists 
-- Home Automation, Computer Genealogy, Neighborhood happenings, 
whatever.

There are no good answers or "permanent" answers. "Good sites" come and 
go with the "interest" of their authors and or number of dollars 
expended by their "parents." Mac Central (www.maccentral.com) for 
example is provided by the publishers of Mac World Magazine; Forbes.com 
by Forbes magazine, etc.

Print magazines are ideal for those times when you "want to get away 
from it all" (like in the throne room or the bathtub where even laptops 
are "inconvenient." And while "stale" there is a surprisingly large 
amount of useful "survey" information to be found in any of the News 
Weeklies (I prefer US News and World Report) and Financial publications 
like Forbes or the Economist. None of these subscriptions tend to be 
cheap, however, especially if there is more to the content than "puff 
pieces" for their advertisers. Similarly, there is a lot of useful 
information and analysis (although usually even further out of date 
than in the magazines) in assorted "brokerage or analyst's reports."

It all depend on "what" you are looking for. Do you want specific, 
immediate-action information -- like say, the latest in security 
exploits? Or do you want "industry trends" and speculations -- like the 
fact that Dr. Who is returning to the BBC in 2005 
(http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/28/33084.html). Do you need to 
design and plan a new installation or simply maintain "ongoing 
operations?"

... and even then, you wind up "scanning" a lot to find those things 
you are really interested in; and even just scanning headlines of 
subjects takes time.

And of course, there is always the ACM if you are a Really Geekie Geek. 
The Association for Computing Machinery is the original "users group" 
for computing... seriously academic and theoretical even though it 
keeps trying to make itself "relevant" to day-to-day operations.

Being a generalist is hard work. Picking a "specialty" is easier. 
However, there is a problem with the concept of a "Unix System 
Administrator." It is far more that of a generalist than a specialist. 
... especially if you are even vaguely close to any kind of 
"management" position.

Now if there was some decent Learning, "Desktop Avatar" floating around 
things might be easier. Like a good Administrative Assistant, they 
would scan "the world" for you, and give you your own list of 
"headlines" gleaned from "everybody else's" headlines (maybe weighted 
like Google does by the number of places the particular headline or 
story is referenced). But, like the real Virtual Reality work going on, 
this is "Really Geekie Geek" stuff that tends to be still very 
primitive. Oh, well. At least now with 64 bit processing about to 
become widespread, this may finally change, but it is still a hard 
problem.

Oh yeah, I almost forgot... Keeping up with Gaming and Home Theater 
technology!

T.T.F.N.
William H. Magill
# Beige G3 - Rev A motherboard - 768 Meg
# Flat-panel iMac (2.1) 800MHz - Super Drive - 768 Meg
# PWS433a [Alpha 21164 Rev 7.2 (EV56)- 64 Meg]- Tru64 5.1a
magill@mcgillsociety.org
magill@acm.org
magill@mac.com

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