10/30   What's the difference between a violin and a fiddle?
        \_ They are physically the same.  The difference is
           in the way the instrument is played.
                \_ by the way I want to learn how to play a fiddle but the
                   music guy on Shattuck thinks that I should buy a better
                   (and more expensive) violin if I'm serious about it.
                   What do you guys think?
                        \_ Which music guy?  Someone gave me a fiddle
                           recently, and I've been considering actually
                           learning it too.  I went to Ifshin on University
                           and they gave me a list of teachers and their
                           styles.  -jones
                    \_ practice technique on a cheaper instrument and
                      upgrade later once you're sure you want to put $
                      into it and have some experience, i.e., know what
                      your prefs are wrt sound.  "Better" may mean
                      something different to you after you've played for a
                      little while.  If you're planning to perform, that
                      may change things too.  Bow quality matters too, of
                      course.  --goetz (violinist)
                \_ Well of course the guy that wants to sell you one
                   thinks you should get a better one.  You should
                   probably start toward the low end unless the low
                   end sounds so bad and is so much more difficult to
                   play (as is the case with guitars) that you might
                   give up more easily.  Also, you can always sell
                   whatever you buy.  If you buy a used one, depreciation
                   should be close to zero.
                   \_ How is a bad guitar more difficult to play?  I thought
                      only the sound differs.  --- yuen (non-guitarist)
        \_ What's the point of playing music instrument? It's not like you're
           going to be smarter, and you are definitely not going to make any
           money from it.
           \_ BECAUSE YOU CAN IMPRESS CHICKS!!! DUH!!!!!!
                \_ With your violin playing?  No.  Might as well recite your
                   own bad poetry.
           \_ Can I nominate this for Troll of the Week? (yeah, I know, it's
              Monday, but I find this one hard to beat). But anyway, to
              answer this: Why? Cuz it's FUN TO DO. i don't play the
              piano expecting to be Chopin or expecting any monetary
              compensation. It's relaxing. It's challenging. It's a hobby.
              \_ i think that trolls that stray from the main topics that piss
                 people off tend to be weak as trolls, even if they would
                 be more offensive outside the motd.  to most people,the above
                 might be a more provocative comment than something about
                 the relative merits of working on a computer in industry or
                 in a university, but here the latter will piss alot more
                 people off.  to troll well, you must know your audience. also,
                 a good troll seeks to piss off the kind of people who like to
                 flame, not random users who passivley read the motd.
                                                -thetroller
                 \_ You have no idea what you're talking about.
              \_ What's the point replying to this? It's not like you're
                 going to be smarter, and you are definitely not going to make
                 any money from it.
                      \_ High action (distance from string to fretboard),
                         poor craftsmanship -- bad frets, bridge, nut, etc.
                         The guitar can sound "wrong" and the beginner
                         may blame himself/herself and give up. -- jsjacob

10/31   running debian gnu/linux potato?  upgraded in the
        past few days?  upgrade screwed up your networking?
                                ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
          this is not terribly specific. elaborate? _/
        have you determined what in the world is the problem?
        yes?  email me.  summerm
        \_ The problem is that you are running Linux, not FreeBSD.
        \ I run slink, so I have no clue about potato problems. Try asking on
                #debian on <DEAD>irc.debian.org<DEAD> -akopps
        \_ Given that Linux is just as difficult, if not more so, than other
           *NIXen and the least stable of the lot, why are people using Linux
           instead of a real unix box?  What is the typical Linux user getting
           out of Linux that a more stable unix doesn't provide?  -baffled
           \_ For me, I know of no other that will get everything in my
              notebook working correctly for me.  I'd run FreeBSD if it worked
              with all my hardware. --ricky with a 486 desktop & a P120 notebook.
              \_anyone successfuly running freeBSD on a notebook,
                especially a Hitachi notebook?
                \_ it runs great on my Libretto. Even better than windoze! -ERic
              \_ Understandable if that's the only thing that runs your
                 hardware.
           \_ One reason could be that there are a lot more companies
              that offer commercial support for Linux.  As for myself,
              I use RedHat Linux and I like it a lot better than FreeBSD.
              First, I really like pre-compiled binaries.  Yeah, I can
              download the source and compile it myself, but its quicker
              and easier to install an RPM package.  Second it seems that
              the development and documentation efforts are much larger
              for Linux than for FreeBSD.  Finally, you can sometimes get
              decent non-open source software for Linux like StarOffice,
              WordPerfect and InsureLite (a memory leak finder).  Go Linux!
              What do you prefer about FreeBSD? -emin
                \_ The commercial support is a recent thing.  I can see the
                   ease that RPM's bring to life but isn't that sort of one
                   step away from sourceless, binary-only distributions, a la
                   the shrink wrap industry?  Documentation?  How so?  The
                   Linux How-to's are mostly out of date.  Gimme a solid man
                   page and an example config file any day.  I'm actually not
                   using FreeBSD.  There are other BSD's as well as Slowlaris
                   x86 and some other more off the beaten path stuff.  I didn't
                   write the "you're using Linux, not FreeBSD" comment at the
                   top.   -not a FreeBSD bigot
          \_ From a desktop user's point of view, What is the freaking
                difference between FreeBSD or Linux? Both work "well enough"
                for me. There is so much overlap between two systems that
                it really does not make a big difference. Use what works
                better for you..
          \_ I have heard this "linux is the least stable" thing a number
             of times, but nobody who says that ever seems to have anything
             but anecdotal evidence.  I think this is just bigotry
             of the same order as "My C=64 rulez Apple ][s suck!!!!! d00d"
                  -blojo
             \_ the async file system?
             \_ i don't know how bad linux proper sucks, but redhat is
                definitely shit compared to freebsd. i don't know about rh 6,
                but 5 was crap all the way through. -ali
                \_ What didn't you like about RedHat 5?  I admit there
                   were a lot of bugs with the distribution such as the
                   emacs documentation not being included.  However once
                   you got the patches or installed RedHat 5.2 everything
                   worked fine.
                   \_ Unclear on the concept!
             \_ There is nothing *but* anecdotal evidence.  There are no
                reliable statistics, so to say it's bigotry based on rulez vs.
                drulez is to ignore "the common wisdom" at your peril.  There
                is zero anecdotal evidence to the contrary and lots in favor
                of the concept that linux is less stable.  Why go with
                something that *might* be less stable for no apparent gain?
                Increased risk with zero gain seems pointless to me.  I'm not
                an anti-Linux bigot.  I'm just baffled and curious.  I'm
                suspecting this is a "my friends all use Linux, so I do too"
                kind of thing.   --baffled
                \_ well that might make sense, in that you can rely on such a
                   'network of friends' for linux support.  I know I'd trash
                   my windows machines if I didn't have some friends to help
                   me with them every time they decide to mess themselves up. `
                   Talk about unstable!  If you use Windows for anything more
                   important than playing games, you're a fool!  -ERic
                \_ You want anecdotal evidence that FreeBSD has problems?
                   When I was working at a startup we ran FreeBSD.  It worked
                   pretty well but we had some weird problems with our file
                   server crashing and various network daemons dying.  For
                   example, we once had our file server crash while I was
                   doing a large cvs commit.  That sucked.  I'm not saying
                   that FreeBSD is less stable, I'm just saying that stories
                   of problems with FreeBSD exist too.  In my experience,
                   both Linux and FreeBSD are stable enough that I can't
                   really tell the difference.  God help you if you run
                   Windows though. -emin