Slashdot Mirror

So if this parasite had an effect on the minds of humans, you could almost say that we were puppets and they puppet-masters. With this, and the fact that Slashdotters seem to be increasingly turning to libertarianism, the future looks oddly Heinlein-esque.

This exact point is covered in the extremely excellent "Everything Bad Is Good For You" which I'm sure Slashdot has reviewed...let's see. Yep.

It's an excellent book and well worth the time and money. Covers a huge range of topics from watching TV to playing Grand Theft Auto, and it does so in a well informed and enlightening way.

"I call dibs on using Toxoplasma as a name for my rock band."

Some Germans beat you to it by about 20 years. http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/stores/artist /glance/-/208492/103-3548000-0475029

The Spychips book http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1595550208/sr=8-1 /qid=1139498540/ref=pd_bbs_1/104-5929623-2290305?_ encoding=UTF8/ references a patent application for a deep organ implant complete with an electric cattle prod device and a microphone. The inventor talks about using them on "corporate campuses."

Resume:

Other information: Team player, mindless suck up, pre-chipped (VeriChip and deep organ)

Sounds like Deja Vu...

First, read Hard Drive: Bill Gates and the Making of the Microsoft Empire
(or for a quick peek, see http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0887306292/qid=11 39719304/sr=2-1/ref=pd_bbs_b_2_1/002-5567178-79712 61?s=books&v=glance&n=283155)

Now, fast forward to today...

In the early 2000's, Microsoft's Anti-Spyware lost out to Norton Anti-Virus in the marketplace. According to one Microsoft programmer, a few of the key people working on MS Anti-Spyware had a saying at the time that "Anti-Spyware isn't done until Norton won't run." They managed to code a few hidden bugs into MS Anti-Spyware that identified Norton as Spyware. Users would then remove parts of Norton unknowningly, causing Norton to breakdown when their PC was restarted. "There were as few as three or four people who knew this was being done," the employee said. He felt the highly competitive Gates was the ringleader.

When in fact the Soviet Union was defeated with precisely the opposite approach.

No, the Soviet Union was defeated just by waiting for its massive internal corruption to catch up with it. Their poor industrial techniques meant that they simply had nothing good to offer the consumer markets of other countries, and therefore couldn't sit back and get rich in an export economy. Satter's Age of Delirium is a good look at how it was a dysfunctionality internal situation that brought the country down, not external pressure from the West.

You make it seem as if the USSR was trying to export quality materials and the US refused to import in the name of democracy, but the US really just didn't have much to do with it.

Why is an exotic solution involving anti-gravity even necessary, when there's the Bussard ramjet? While certain versions of this concept are infeasible, there's plenty of room for technical improvement. The ramjet has been a mainstay of science fiction for decades such as in Larry Niven's Known Space universe, precisely because it seems the solution closest to actual development.

Some here have mentioned Jabber encryption standards, which seem very interesting, but how old are they? Is there any mention of them in O'Reilly's Programming Jabber , or should I wait for a second edition?

For a much more in depth look at this check out Howard Bloom's "The Lucifer Principle". It is an amazing new insight on how evolution really works, as competition between groups (superorganisms). He analyzes in depth the mechanisms that make drive this process. One of the main mechanisms is the pecking order, and the affect of an organism's (including a human) status in the pecking order on its biology is significant and surprising. I thought this book was amazing, revolutionary, and jam-packed with new ideas that ring true, supported by research from all corners of science.

I like internet radio. You need broadband to keep the stream smooth. Try it on Kanotix linux, that comes with streamripper, and you can collect some songs off the "broadcasts" and play them anytime you want. You never know ahead of time what will be played, but just listen a while, and then sort the songs out that are recorded by streamripper.
Very entertaining. I suppose they don't want you to rip songs off their streams, but you can do that with Kanotix.
I guess my all time favorite is I'm a disco dancer.
First heard that one on internet radio, now I'm hooked.

My short answer is, taking your assumptions, we are hosed. Not all of us, just the hundreds of millions of poor people who live near the equator or sea level.

The long answer is, we are already conducting one global climate experiment with very difficult to predict outcomes (and worse, we don't have a control with which to address the background variability problem). Conducting two or more global climate experiments, such as seeding parts of the ocean with iron, painting a lot of land white, sending barges to the North Atlantic to keep the ocean conveyer belt going, may have really interesting and unexpected results.

I recommend Why Things Bite Back : Technology and the Revenge of Unintended Consequences by Edward Tenner. Not a deeply insightful book; more of a catalog of how some of our perfect solutions have proved imperfect due to unexpected dynamics.

Why didn't you just link to your Amazon.com review of this book? Then at least others would have the benefit of seeing multiple reviews to put yours in context.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0596007833/102-89 89233-4538533?v=glance&n=283155

Is this XBox offering just a downloadable version of the older game for Game Boy?

Often when the subject of man-made global warming inevitably dooming civilization comes up, a good rebuttal are the references in Michael Crichton's State of Fear . It's a much more complicated affair than many believe.

Man, slashdotters can be so fucking annoying sometimes...

1. Another defunct one: Turtle Beach Audiotron
2. Yet Another: KiSS DP-500
3. This one's actually for sale on Amazon: Roku Soundbridge M1000
4. Also for sale: Slim Devices Squeezebox
5. On the high ($2000) end, Denon AVR-4036 Receiver has streaming (among many other things.)
6. And the winner of our "strangest item": sermonaudio.com internet radio. Though I suspect you'd have to hack it to get it to play anything other than their content :)
7. Oh, I guess you don't have to hack it, you can just buy the un-sermonized version as Penguin Radio.
8. D-Link has a DVD player with internet streaming radio called DSM-320RD Medialounge. It's even wireless. There's also a HD version, the DSM-520.
9. Even Philips has a series called Boombox.

I'm sorry my initial example was poor. I just grabbed the first link and didn't look at it much. Nonetheless, there are umpteen fucking examples of streaming internet radio devices. Many of them are available on the shelf, even at places like Circuit Shitty. And I've seen several at Fry's, come to think of it.

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Save yourself $0.99 by buying the book here: Time Management for System Administrators. And if you use the "secret" A9.com Instant Reward discount, you can save an extra 1.57%! That's a total savings of $1.25, or 7.24%!

Has someone here read Real Ultimate Power: The Official Ninja Book by Robert Hamburger?

Also how do you listen to it on the move - I can't listen to it in the car or on my portable device.

Cellular internet is getting faster. Soon we should be able to listen to 128kbps streams while on the move. T-Mobile offers unlimited GPRS for $19.99/mo as do other providers; that's fast enough for a crap-quality stream :)

Then there's the problem whereby you can't go to your local comet (or other electronics store) and buy a radio for the office that has an ethernet port on the back

Sure you can, if you know where to shop. I haven't seen these in a meatspace store yet but I bet some of them carry them. And you can always order one. This is far from the only brand/model.

It discusses more than just business plans, but I highly, highly recommend you read The Art of the Start: Battle-Hardened Guide for Anyone Starting Anything by Guy Kawasaki. ISBN# 1591840562, it's on Amazon for $17.79 (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1591840562/). Guy Kawasaki (http://www.guykawasaki.com/) has written several business books with a tech-focus, and was one of the first 'evangelists' at Apple for the Macintosh.

I'm right in the middle of (trying to, at least) following his advice with my own startup, and my girlfriend actually has a fairly successful online store and eBay business that after reading this book, I realized she started up much in the same way he recommends, and she's done well so far.

One interesting concept he pushes heavily in the book is bootstrapping - using your own resources to get the business up and running and generating some type of revenue, and then using that revenue to purchase the things you really need to generate the big revenue, etc. This model works really well for some types of online storefronts - it really all depends on how expensive your inventory is and how many different types/components/colors/sizes you have to stock, as well as how much inventory you need to keep on hand.

Before my girlfriend had enough money to buy a large inventory, she carefully purchased 2-5 of each item she thought she could sell well, up to whatever limit she had on how much money she could spend, and sold those. With the profits she made on those items, she started purchasing dozen-packs of the items that were selling well, and after those kept selling and generated even more revenue, she started using that money to branch out into new products. She's managed to start everything on her personal credit card, and after a pretty rough first year, she even manages to pay the credit card off each month and still have a good bit of money left over.

It's almost embarassing, actually, since the business I'm starting has yet to make a dime.

Obviously, if you have other resources such as a line of credit or bank-loan of some form that will charge lower interest than your credit cards, use that, but never underestimate how much you can do on your own, without needing investors. And once you do need investors, think angel investors, not VC's.

If you still think you'll need more capital than you can fund from personal resources or angels, think about bringing on a partner, someone you know who may be able to contribute some additional resources. Especially if it's someone who is a non-techie or has a more business-oriented background. I'm not talking about hiring an MBA, but it's important to balance your skills, strengths and weaknesses with someone else's, so that when you do hit a situation you don't know how to handle or need assistance with, that partner has a better chance of being able to see it from a different angle and help the business succeed.

Finally, about the business plan - Business Plan Pro is a pretty nice software package (Amazon.com sells it for $16 off the normal price, at $83.99 - http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/B000 9PF1QO/) that includes quite a few sample plans and other resources and guides for writing a business plan. You can write it on your own, using your favorite text editor, using the websites of SCORE and other organizations as a guide, but I found Business Plan Pro's help with the financials was worth the price of the software. Even though a majority of the numbers in the financials of a business plan are just best-guesses and often completely wild, random guesses, potential investors put a lot of weight into the numbers they see, they want to see that you know how to put together these tables and that they have some sort of reassuring numbers to look at.

And revise it. Plan to revise your business plan often. Write

It discusses more than just business plans, but I highly, highly recommend you read The Art of the Start: Battle-Hardened Guide for Anyone Starting Anything by Guy Kawasaki. ISBN# 1591840562, it's on Amazon for $17.79 (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1591840562/). Guy Kawasaki (http://www.guykawasaki.com/) has written several business books with a tech-focus, and was one of the first 'evangelists' at Apple for the Macintosh.

I'm right in the middle of (trying to, at least) following his advice with my own startup, and my girlfriend actually has a fairly successful online store and eBay business that after reading this book, I realized she started up much in the same way he recommends, and she's done well so far.

One interesting concept he pushes heavily in the book is bootstrapping - using your own resources to get the business up and running and generating some type of revenue, and then using that revenue to purchase the things you really need to generate the big revenue, etc. This model works really well for some types of online storefronts - it really all depends on how expensive your inventory is and how many different types/components/colors/sizes you have to stock, as well as how much inventory you need to keep on hand.

Before my girlfriend had enough money to buy a large inventory, she carefully purchased 2-5 of each item she thought she could sell well, up to whatever limit she had on how much money she could spend, and sold those. With the profits she made on those items, she started purchasing dozen-packs of the items that were selling well, and after those kept selling and generated even more revenue, she started using that money to branch out into new products. She's managed to start everything on her personal credit card, and after a pretty rough first year, she even manages to pay the credit card off each month and still have a good bit of money left over.

It's almost embarassing, actually, since the business I'm starting has yet to make a dime.

Obviously, if you have other resources such as a line of credit or bank-loan of some form that will charge lower interest than your credit cards, use that, but never underestimate how much you can do on your own, without needing investors. And once you do need investors, think angel investors, not VC's.

If you still think you'll need more capital than you can fund from personal resources or angels, think about bringing on a partner, someone you know who may be able to contribute some additional resources. Especially if it's someone who is a non-techie or has a more business-oriented background. I'm not talking about hiring an MBA, but it's important to balance your skills, strengths and weaknesses with someone else's, so that when you do hit a situation you don't know how to handle or need assistance with, that partner has a better chance of being able to see it from a different angle and help the business succeed.

Finally, about the business plan - Business Plan Pro is a pretty nice software package (Amazon.com sells it for $16 off the normal price, at $83.99 - http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/B000 9PF1QO/) that includes quite a few sample plans and other resources and guides for writing a business plan. You can write it on your own, using your favorite text editor, using the websites of SCORE and other organizations as a guide, but I found Business Plan Pro's help with the financials was worth the price of the software. Even though a majority of the numbers in the financials of a business plan are just best-guesses and often completely wild, random guesses, potential investors put a lot of weight into the numbers they see, they want to see that you know how to put together these tables and that they have some sort of reassuring numbers to look at.

And revise it. Plan to revise your business plan often. Write

Gwynner Dyer makes an intersting observation that it isn't Islam, per se, that is extremist, it is Arab Islam. The problem is likely the rut that Arab nations are in socially, economically, and politically, and have been in for centuries. This rut has arguably been held in place by the autocrats sponsored by Western nations as part of the after effects of colonialism and WW2. A group of extremists believe that this rut is due to losign favour with Allah, and the only way to make up for it is to go back to the traditional ways... Instead of looking emperically at the more likely culprit, this century anyway, of Arab leaders turning towards socialism/state control over free markets and capitalism.

The most populated Muslim countries are in the South Pacific (e.g. Indonesia, the Phillippines, etc.) -- certainly Muslims across the world are outraged by these cartoons, but the most extreme calls aren't coming from those areas, from what I can tell. It arguably is the Arab extremists that are trying to formet their rage into a broader religious struggle across nations.

Many concepts about designing databases that don't reveal all people's data to the database administrator are discussed in the book Translucent Databases

The Definitive Business Plan ( Richard Stutely )

That link has its "previous-history" tracking information ripped-out, BTW

The amazon.com "registry" link of this post has other books of similar excellence listed, as well as why I'm recommending 'em ( no address is attached to it, so no-one can buy 'em for me via the thing, it's posted there for everyone's information ),
but the book you NEED is Richard Stutely's.
I'd also recommend "Thinking Visually" and "The Power of the 2x2 Matrix", but immediate-need means I'm posting this now, not after working-over additions for hours. Cheerses, eh?

Read The Art of the Start by Guy Kawasaki. It's a really good book about starting up a company from writing a business plan to recruiting to raising capital. I just read it because I'm in the process of starting up my own company. It's a great guide and a good read.

I recently started a business and a partnership. I googled for business plans and you can get samples for the SBA (Small Business Administration - US) probably au as well.

However after the rubber hit the road the document meant very little. That may not be the case for you since you will be looking for funding but until you have done it - it is difficult to know what you are doing.

I would suggest before you take on money and perhaps before you start your business that you read "The Partnership Charter".
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0738208981/102-97 56474-8088941?v=glance&n=283155

It raises some good questions whether your partner is your brother (my case) or a vc company (your case).

Good Luck

If you want to read a vision of hope sometime take a look at Bartle's Designing Virtual Worlds. He provides deep insight into why people get so obsessed with role playing games - what they get out of it, and why they keep coming back. If you buy into his theories the designer of a role playing game is more a therapist than an entertainer. Of course, most people who play "role playing games" these days don't actually do any role playing as such. They just run around and kill stuff. So there ya go.

Connie Willis's novel Bellwether, which is about the science of fads, deals with this phenomenon in depth.

The title comes from a middle english word used describing a practice in sheep farming. Sheep tend to follow each other. But farmers would sometimes use a castrated ram with a bell around his neck to lead the rest of the flock. The ram would tend to move first, but in a very subtle, nearly undetectable way.

At the center of any cloud of popularity must be a seed of initial impulse - the bellwether.

I'm reading a book you'd probably like: Laura Penney's "Your Call Is Important To Us: The Truth About Bullshit" She does a good number on all the various bullshitters out there, and makes an important distinction between "lying" and "bullshit" -- liars choose their lies. Clinton lied about Lewinsky, for example. But bullshit is more pervasive, and chronic bullshitters see no difference between telling people the truth or lying as long as they get their message out. Every White House press secretary for the past 20 years has been a bullshitter, for example. (Although Ari Fleischer wasn't very good at it. I think he wanted to simply be a liar only when absolutely necessary, but the job requires a flawless bullshitter.)

The other thing I'd point out is that "monopolies" and "cartels" are really just the corporate face of unionization. We've outlawed them locally, but they still exist in the real world. And they're just as subject to market pressures as any individual producer. OPEC is a great example. They could choose to sell oil at $500 a barrel if they wanted, but then their customer base would collapse and they'd have nobody to sell to at all. So they're still tied to supply and demand.

And OPEC is subject to infighting as well: Saudi Arabia frequently 'overproduces' to sell to the U.S., which is really just another way of undercutting the other members. If OPEC was taken over by Iran and they said "hey, let's collapse western civilization and stop selling oil to the infidels" the other members of OPEC would bail. They're as addicted to our money as we are to their oil.

Orson Scott Card's "Pastwatch: The Redemption of Christopher Columbus" - Great book, deals with this same type of plot.

I hate to prove you completely wrong but... wait, I don't have proving you completely wrong, it's kinda entertaining in an "I'm better than you" kind of way.

Here are 2 links to amazon.com. both for the movie "War of the Worlds" (the most resent version). On VHS the movie costs $28.49, on DVD the movie costs $19.99. Now, those are both mark down prices, and both "retail" (like anyone pays this value) for $29.99.

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/B000 BCDV6M/ref=pd_sxp_grid_i_0_0/104-0805114-4803903?_ encoding=UTF8&v=glance
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00005JNTI/ref=pd _sxp_grid_i_1_2/104-0805114-4803903?_encoding=UTF8 &v=glance&n=130

-Rick

I hate to prove you completely wrong but... wait, I don't have proving you completely wrong, it's kinda entertaining in an "I'm better than you" kind of way.

Here are 2 links to amazon.com. both for the movie "War of the Worlds" (the most resent version). On VHS the movie costs $28.49, on DVD the movie costs $19.99. Now, those are both mark down prices, and both "retail" (like anyone pays this value) for $29.99.

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/B000 BCDV6M/ref=pd_sxp_grid_i_0_0/104-0805114-4803903?_ encoding=UTF8&v=glance
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00005JNTI/ref=pd _sxp_grid_i_1_2/104-0805114-4803903?_encoding=UTF8 &v=glance&n=130

-Rick

A Terminator DVD is available for $9.99.

And for the same price, you can get Terminator 2 at (Amazon.com).
And oh BTW, that version already has an HD version .

Red DVDRs with DiVX, MP4 or (ech!) WMV in HD, played using DVD players available from JVC, Iodata, Buffalo, Zensonic, etc. are the way to go!

Xesdeeni

More than "some" doubt, actually....

"Fooled Again" Mark Crispin Miller

And the average consumer wouldn't have much use for my car. It weighs less than a ton, barely holds two people (forget about luggage), and it cost $50K, despite the fact that it was built by the British, who are notoriously bad at building road-worthy vehicles. Sure, it does an amazing job of sticking to the road and gets me to 60 in about 4.5 seconds, but is that really important to the average consumer?

Minus the sarcasm, I agree with what you say: yes, it is time to rebel against big relegion. It has always been time to rebel against big religion. The best way to do this is by acknowledging that for any (big) religion it's much more important for this religion to promote itself than it is to promote religious values such as being friendly to your neigbour. What makes successful big religions so big and successful is that they value spreading the religion above all other values.

On the subject of why authoritarianism is always a bad idea, I highly recommend the book The Guru Papers: Masks of Authoritarian Power by Joel Kramer and Diane Alstad.

I agree with you. I'd like to add that in no way I wanted to imply that I do like Christianity. I dislike authoritarianism in all its many forms.

Don't worry -- I won't let the tinfoil hat mess up the microwave popcorn.

Perhaps you could use a little time in the Ministry of Love? They're very good at educating people to understand this kind of thing.

Artificial Intelligence: A Modern Approach
is a much better book. In fact when I was a CS undergrad it was the text for my 4th-year AI course.

However, the motivations, methods, and consequences of the environmental movement in the US as it is today are not compatible with Christian teaching, in my opinion. Environmentalists often lobby for tough restrictions not only on the US and other developed nations, but also to be placed on developing nations. The USA and its friends completely disregarded the environment during the industrial revolution, which resulted in a great mass of wealth and development. Now that we stand in a position of power, we will not allow other nations to do the same (i.e. burn unlimited coal and oil, stip-mine the earth bare, pollute the water, etc). Consequently, third world nations are stuck in a state of arrested development which has extremely negative effects (disease, malnutrition, crime) on the people of those nations. Read Eco-Imperialism if you would like to know more.

The bottom line is that Christians ought to protect the environment, but it should not come at the expense of harming other humans.

Just one more battle in the Republican War On Science

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If SETI makes contact anytime soon, I could see the Shuttle becoming a pop-culture phenomenon in alien societies. Of course, it would be popular in the same way that the Jamaican Bobsled Team and William Hung are. The shuttle and the ISS might be the least efficient fleet of spacecraft that will ever exist in this universe, which might be good in the long run as the aliens will take pity on us and hand over the Warp Engines so we can stop going in circles.

If we knew the shuttle would end up like this, I don't think we would have bothered. We've spent $145 billion on the shuttle for just over 1,000 days in orbit. This makes the math so depressingly simple even the president can do it in his head.

The lifetime cost of Voyager, Pathfinder, Spirit and Opportunity, Galileo, Cassini-Huygens, and the Hubble Space Telescope combined is about $10 billion, while the ISS alone has cost $35 billion so far. Why throw good money after bad, pull the plug already and rethink the strategy.

There's no point sending humans to the moon (or anywhere else for that matter) unless we plan to stay. There may be large deposits of Platinum-group metals (PGMs) on the moon, and PGMs will be a cornerstone of the hydrogen economy, since each fuel cell needs a few ounces. There isn't much on Earth, and mining/refining the quantity needed to run a full scale H2 economy might cancel out the environmental benefit of fuel cells.

Moonrush by Dennis Wingo is a great read on the subject - http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1894959108/103-98 70913-1427800?v=glance&n=283155

Our only saving grace is the work being done by small entrepreneurs like Burt Rutan. It looks like the X Prize actually did a good job of jump starting the space economy.

Why this product is better etc. etc. You can have the greatest medicine in the world, and if you don't market it you won't get it out there. If you don't get it out there, your 1 in 10 chance of success is wasted.

While I run the chance of being "OffTopic", get your PMP from the PMI. Study via Rita's Guide to passing the PMP ( http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1932735003/sr=1-1 /qid=1139376634/ref=pd_bbs_1/103-6860889-0376656?_ encoding=UTF8 ).

When you pass, the mere fact of having the cert will move you in that direction.

The PM career is extremely young in IT and thus better paying while more difficult than in other industries. (I have 15+ years experience in IT and Manufacturing and a PMP and MCSE.) I'm trying to implement some of the methodologies that I have picked up in manufacturing to apply in the software projects that I am on now. It helps but ironically (or not) it's the lack of understanding of PM worth by the development staff that makes the introduction of good PM tactics more difficult.

The management consultants call it "Change Management."

Get the PMP, its worth it and won't ruin you (too much).

Just my chain of thoughts on the matter:

1. The phrase "free lunch" is from Robert Heinlein's The Moon is a Harsh Mistress , a classic of libertarian fiction.
2. Libertarianism loves free markets.
3. Free markets allow one to choose one's provider of goods and services, giving the individual the power to reject firms which don't satisfy.
4. Verizon is doomed.