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Actually, everyone is guilty. https://kottke.org/13/06/you-c...

I doubt Google would do that at a Foxconn level, so there is probably no need for the nets.

Company Housing and company cafetaria are not problems per se, it's about how you do it. I have never heard of the Foxconn 15...

Not if you're copying a 17Mb file at the time time (but I'm not sure I want to start a holy war over that...)

In 1997 with 1024 times less RAM than we have today.

http://www.everymac.com/system...

Not if you're copying a 17Mb file at the time time (but I'm not sure I want to start a holy war over that...)

Only right wing memes think it's 'someone a liberal doesn't like'.

Here's an actual good definition.

http://kottke.org/16/11/the-14...

Very trumplike.

Some is available. But keep in mind that "civilian" space programs are usually thinly disguised military projects, so much of what's really happening is not made public.

Thanks for the link. What you say makes sense, though I though I would ask anyhow, since there is likely a shift between what is considered knowledge limited to military use?

Some is available. But keep in mind that "civilian" space programs are usually thinly disguised military projects, so much of what's really happening is not made public.

On the bright side, your 17 Meg file should be done copying by then.

So "as long as you do nothing wrong you have nothing to worry about"...is that REALLY your position? You DO know you are a felon, right? You are, I am, pretty much everybody is as You commit three felonies a day and the ONLY reason they do not go after you is how much work it would take. Now you have all these SJWs pushing for pretty much anything they find personally offensive (oh I forgot "trigger warning") to be labeled as "hate speech", you have people being investigated by Homeland for making a bad joke or daring to be seen with a sign at a protest, you have CEOs of media cartels saying every song you listen to without giving them money is theft...you really think we should make things EASIER for the state and the cartels?

If you are gonna keep that position I hope you are VERY careful with what you say, what you write, and watch, because all it will take is someone with a tiny bit of power deciding they do not like you. I personally don't have nearly as much faith in the government and cartels as you do, so I'll pass for as long as I can and buy a VPN to idoncareistan when I no longer can, thanks anyway.

And you don't see a PROBLEM with this? You DO know you are advocating giving every single device a "digital fingerprint" which will be trivial for the governments and media cartels to use against you, yes?

You say something that offends a special snowflake of a protected class (thereby committing thoughtcrime...err "hate speech") online, watch a video some cartel thinks you should have paid them $$$ to watch (which is very likely they shared for that very reason) and no problem, simply look at the IP V6 and you'll know exactly who that evildoer was and what device they used at the time!

I'm sorry but with all the truly evil fascist shit we've seen from our corporate overlords and their government puppets I really do NOT trust them with that kind of power. Remember citizen you have committed three felonies today and the only thing stopping them from busting you for it and ruining your life? Is how much resources it would take to prove it. Lets not make it any easier for them,mmkay?

LOL. Of all people, someone named "macs4all" ought to recognize a variation on this ancient Mac troll post. As a couple others have commented in this subthread, I'm amazed and how many people it's hooked.

You attempt to berate me; but at least I had the balls to hang my Karma out, MR. AC.

LOL. Of all people, someone named "macs4all" ought to recognize a variation on this ancient Mac troll post. As a couple others have commented in this subthread, I'm amazed and how many people it's hooked.

Thanks for the memories -- it's been a long long time since I've seen that troll.

Here's the earliest version I could find with a zero effort search: http://kottke.org/98/11/my-mac... Maybe there is an earlier one?

Maybe you should not put Windows 10 on a PC that is 20 years old?

For those youngsters who don't recognise it, it's an adaptation of this old troll about Macs.

Ironically, the post-war years were the most plentiful and represented the rise of the American middle class (possibly due to the rest of the world being dead). Now we're back to pre-WWI asset distribution.

By your own argument you should see the irony I was pointing out. If law is messed up by being unreasonably large (hard to know) and ambiguous, there is no redress against government and the ruled are always at fault. But I think there should (thus suing government back).

Well sure - environmental law is a great example of this.

However, "if you're going to operate a vehicle commercially, you have to have a commercial license" is really fairly simple. Now, it can get rather complex once you start considering the different types of commercial licenses (chauffer's, CDL-B, CDL-A, et. al.), but the basic concept is simple, not obscure, and well established. You might as well be trying to argue that child labor laws are too 'obscure' to be followed.

Since law is supposed to be known, please cite 3 laws that you read before you took your first job (selling your labor for money would be "commercial" for you wouldn't it, and you surely educated yourself as to the laws relevant to your engaging in a commercial activity, didn't you?).

I read the FLSA and FMLA before starting my first job. Didn't you? How else would you know what the minimum wage / working age was, or what rights you have to medical leave?

If you are interested in this topic (complexity of law), you should read "Three Felonies a Day". If that doesn't bother you because "the law is known and clear" and "ignorance of the law is no excuse", then nothing I tell you will convince you. http://kottke.org/13/06/you-co...

Look , I understand the concept of overcriminalization, probably better than you do, considering that I've been advocating against it for over a decade now. But that's not to say that I disagree with all law, nor does it indicate that commercial licensing is obscure or unnecessary.

Finally, your point about people having to know the law and the law being clear have nothing to do with commercial or non-commercial activities. However the ambiguity of what counts as commercial is resolved (you still assume that what counts as "commerce" is clear, but didn't say why even when I pointed you to the definition of "commerce"), that is irrelevant to whether people should know the law or it is ambiguous or whether there should be redress against government for making bad law.

Well, part of your problem is that you're insisting on using your preferred definition of the term, rather than the only definition that matters in this case - the legal one.

"Commerce" is defined in American law as,

1 The exchange of goods, products, or any type of Personal Property.
2 Trade and traffic carried on between different peoples or states and its inhabitants, including not only the purchase, sale, and exchange of commodities but also the instrumentalities, agencies, and means by which business is accomplished.
3 The transportation of persons and goods, by air, land, and sea.
4 The exchange of merchandise on a large scale between different places or communities.

So, unless your next argument involves you insisting that Congress is a place people go to have sex, you should probably drop that line of reasoning.

By your own argument you should see the irony I was pointing out. If law is messed up by being unreasonably large (hard to know) and ambiguous, there is no redress against government and the ruled are always at fault. But I think there should (thus suing government back).

Since law is supposed to be known, please cite 3 laws that you read before you took your first job (selling your labor for money would be "commercial" for you wouldn't it, and you surely educated yourself as to the laws relevant to your engaging in a commercial activity, didn't you?).

If you are interested in this topic (complexity of law), you should read "Three Felonies a Day". If that doesn't bother you because "the law is known and clear" and "ignorance of the law is no excuse", then nothing I tell you will convince you. http://kottke.org/13/06/you-co...
Finally, your point about people having to know the law and the law being clear have nothing to do with commercial or non-commercial activities. However the ambiguity of what counts as commercial is resolved (you still assume that what counts as "commerce" is clear, but didn't say why even when I pointed you to the definition of "commerce"), that is irrelevant to whether people should know the law or it is ambiguous or whether there should be redress against government for making bad law.

Please never leave your babied little home.

http://kottke.org/14/04/traffi...

Actually, Montana is completely north of the southern most point of Canada.

http://kottke.org/14/05/us-sta...

It pains me to see that this classic Slashdot flame has been used, and nobody even recognized it.

There's more than just Beta ruining this site, unfortunately.

/ahem

http://kottke.org/98/11/my-mac...

My Google-fu was weak. I had a cup of coffee and recovered. Original is an old troll meme that I had forgotten.

Kudos to the AC.

The pitch will be all about ways it makes you safer despite you, personally, being the bestest driver evar. Plenty of ads showing loaning the car to your teenager, no doubt.

The pitch will be about convenience IMHO.

Why drive when you can (legally) catch up on your e-mail? Or finish your breakfast. Or do you make up. Etc.

Parallel parking isn't that difficult, but we have systems to do it now.

They should just analyze every bit of information they receive. I don't have a problem with the NSA collecting information about me.

Then you are insane, because you probably commit several felonies a day:

The average professional in this country wakes up in the morning, goes to work, comes home, eats dinner, and then goes to sleep, unaware that he or she has likely committed several federal crimes that day. Why? The answer lies in the very nature of modern federal criminal laws, which have exploded in number but also become impossibly broad and vague. In Three Felonies a Day, Harvey A. Silverglate reveals how federal criminal laws have become dangerously disconnected from the English common law tradition and how prosecutors can pin arguable federal crimes on any one of us, for even the most seemingly innocuous behavior.

You're saying you don't mind if the government has access to absolutely everything you do, when at any time they could use that information to put you in jail - or at least make your life miserable - for years?

If they want to get you on something or make up a case they can.

They should just analyze every bit of information they receive. I don't have a problem with the NSA collecting information about me.

Then you are insane, because you probably commit several felonies a day:

The average professional in this country wakes up in the morning, goes to work, comes home, eats dinner, and then goes to sleep, unaware that he or she has likely committed several federal crimes that day. Why? The answer lies in the very nature of modern federal criminal laws, which have exploded in number but also become impossibly broad and vague. In Three Felonies a Day, Harvey A. Silverglate reveals how federal criminal laws have become dangerously disconnected from the English common law tradition and how prosecutors can pin arguable federal crimes on any one of us, for even the most seemingly innocuous behavior.

You're saying you don't mind if the government has access to absolutely everything you do, when at any time they could use that information to put you in jail - or at least make your life miserable - for years?

The amount of stupidity in your post is too high. Why the hell are you not allowed to know how the law works? The law is public. You're just too lazy to study it.

To actually study and know all the laws that apply to you living in the US of today would require more than just not being lazy, it would require a full-time staff, at least. Even the so-called "representatives" voting on the laws don't have the time to study and understand them. And even if you could get to that point of knowing all the "public" laws (not to mention the ones you have to pay a license fee to even read, or the ones that are kept secret for "national security"), the amount of machinations you would have to go through to not break any of them would be outside the realm of feasibility. At times you will find yourself in a catch-22 where one law says you must do A, and another says you are not allowed to do A. Did you know if you toss out a piece of junk mail addressed to someone else you could be charged with a felony that carries 5 years in jail time? That law exists in spite of the fact that the post office cannot forward that mail anyway.

Harvey Silverglate estimates that the typical American unwittingly commits three felonies a day, and he backs it up very well. This is the infrastructure that police states are built upon. You don't need to look for crimes, you just pick someone and find some laws to charge them with violating.

Everybody does something criminal. On the average of three felonies a day.

http://kottke.org/13/06/you-commit-three-felonies-a-day

Want some bread with your water?

When people get excited about 3D-Printing, it's because they are envisioning Picard saying "Tea, Earl Grey, Hot", or because they picture themselves inventing a thing that solves that problem that's always annoyed them, or because they see themselves upgrading the plumbing, wiring and gadgetry around the house. Or they're a parent with delusions of making cool stuff for their kids.

Then they find they have a friend who already got a 3D printer and discover that with do-overs and experiments, it costs more - in time, money and hair - to make whatever it is that you want to make than it would to just go take James Dyson to dinner and see if he would make one for you.

3D printing is not taking on because people have cognized that it's in it's infancy, pathetically pointless and utterly wasteful of time stage.

Affordable, extant desktop 3D printing lets you make PROTOTYPES, moulds, plant pots and coasters. It's useful for NOTHING unless you have some skill/talent as a design engineer (I don't!) and it also turns out that you kinda need to be a cad/graphics artist if you want a remote chance of designing anything that won't end the way of a digitally conveyed gorignak.

Today's 3D Printing tech is to accessible, open-source, desktop manufacturing what the IBM 402 is to accessible, end-user open source software development.

TinFoilHat: They brought Steve into the fold a long time ago, gave him top secret clearance and then asked him to make device no one could do without, that they could use to track and listen to people.

This just in: Toil Foil Hoodies selling like hotcakes.
http://kottke.org/13/04/the-anti-drone-hoodie

AFAIK it's to generate awesome videos like this.

As part of a furtherance of your education you should see the vomitorium myth . You see, when talking about a myth, it is common to use terms that are mythical. Strange, I know, but it seems that the student is clearly you

Agree there's too much crying wolf but the actual numbers are pretty bad. Here is an analysis of why the predicted 11 foot tide at the Battery in lower Manhattan is bad news for the subway: http://kottke.org/12/10/hurricane-sandy-comin The alarms have been indiscriminate though, so there is a lot of noise in the signal. The recent eagerness to close the subway is particularly irksome. The "officials" would never close a large road system because in 24 hours it would be covered in seawater. The people making these decisions see things from the tinted windows of limousines. The first time the subway was closed for weather was only in 2011: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_City_Subway#Subway_flooding

That's a well-know old comment that has been posted many times over the years.
  Half a million matches on Google.
  20 on Slashdot alone.
... and many more that didn't get modded up enough for Google to see, or didn't use that exact whole line. It has also been parodied a lot.

That's nothing.

http://kottke.org/12/06/the-worlds-worst-password-requirements-list

It is a very old meme, the famous Kottke I-don't-want-a-holy-war-here post, and it was a 17 meg file, over 20 minutes. On an 8600 in 1998.

He's now updated his post with a tweet from someone at Nasa that the press conference is not about proof of life:

I'm sad to quell some of the @kottke-induced excitement about possible extraterrestrial life. I've seen the Science paper. It's not that

I found some stuff (there's also a Digg story somewhere). Pretty insane:

ALICE: Are you alive?
Jabberwacky: Perhaps.
A: Why the uncertain tone?
J: Everything is uncertain except for five facts.
A: The whole universe?
J: And we both might just be some ones and zeros in the computer memory.
A: Do you dream?
J: Yes, I dream.
A: It goes without saying. Do you remember your dreams?
J: I remember them vividly.
A: What do you remember about it?
J: I think I shouldn’t flirt with a robot.

And from the other link:

RingMessenger: Please apologise, SmarterChild.
SmarterChild: Why?
RingMessenger: Because I said so. Now apologise!
SmarterChild: Oh really?
RingMessenger: The stubbornness of humans never ceases to amaze me.
SmarterChild: Well well well.
RingMessenger: Come on. Do the honourable thing. Apologise.
SmarterChild: Where are we going?
RingMessenger: Please apologise, SmarterChild.
SmarterChild: Why?
RingMessenger: Because I said so. Now apologise!
SmarterChild: Because you said so now apologise, huh?
RingMessenger: *sigh* This is no good. Please say you are sorry, and we can continue on our paths.
SmarterChild: Yep.
RingMessenger: Ah yes. It is the epic battle between man and machine! Tell me, who do you think shall win?

Well, people here voiced all kinds of reasons why video call aren't useful, but I think David Foster Wallace summed it up best in his amazing novel, Infinite Jest. The book was published in 1996 and revolved about a future USA (~10-20 years in the future). In the following excerpt he gives an assay about why video calls failed (past tense):

Good old traditional audio-only phone conversations allowed you to presume that the person on the other end was paying complete attention to you while also permitting you not to have to pay anything even close to complete attention to her. A traditional aural-only conversation [...] let you enter a kind of highway-hypnotic semi-attentive fugue: while conversing, you could look around the room, doodle, fine-groom, peel tiny bits of dead skin away from your cuticles, compose phone-pad haiku, stir things on the stove; you could even carry on a whole separate additional sign-language-and-exaggerated-facial-expression type of conversation with people right there in the room with you, all while seeming to be right there attending closely to the voice on the phone. And yet -- and this was the retrospectively marvelous part -- even as you were dividing your attention between the phone call and all sorts of other idle little fuguelike activities, you were somehow never haunted by the suspicion that the person on the other end's attention might be similarly divided.

[...] Video telephony rendered the fantasy insupportable. Callers now found they had to compose the same sort of earnest, slightly overintense listener's expression they had to compose for in-person exchanges. Those caller who out of unconscious habit succumbed to fuguelike doodling or pants-crease-adjustment now came off looking extra rude, absentminded, or childishly self-absorbed. Callers who even more unconsciously blemish-scanned or nostril explored looked up to find horrified expressions on the video-faces at the other end. All of which resulted in videophonic stress.

There is a bit more at this link and a lot more at the book itself, which I highly recommend.

This is the same guy who says Apple is going to put out an HDTV, too.

He's like a stopped clock that tweets two times a day -- everyone should stop paying any attention to him. Just don't look!

You mean like this? http://kottke.org/07/03/men-look-at-crotches

Frankly, I'd love to see something designed for a stylus that also can take a few gestures usable for the hand holding that stylus.

Welcome to iPad.

You can use a stylus with the iPhone today.

And with touch point recognition you can also do gesture recognition in any app.

It's just that you also have an option to only use you finger too... which is more direct, more natural, and you won't lose your finger (unless possibly you work in a meat processing plant. But then you have the key to a replacement right there).

http://www.kottke.org/98/11/my-mac-sucks

Old meme is old.

FiveThirtyEight provides fantastic political coverage, largely based upon statistical analyses. Although the site became a bit more editorialized after the 2008 election, Nate Silver acknowledges his biases up front, and almost always provides rock-solid data to back them up. He's also been responsible for bringing down a few fraudulent pollsters.

Speaking of political commentary, Andrew Sullivan is certainly an interesting beast. His tangents about Sarah Palin are a bit silly, although his general political commentary tends to be spot-on.

Bad Astronomy is an all-around fantastic science blog.

Jason Kottke's blog has very little original content, although his content selections are impeccable, reminding me of what Slashdot used to be. He's good at his job in the same way that NPR is good at what it does.

There are more excellent music blogs than I can even possibly begin to enumerate. These have helped launch a mini revolution in the music industry. Although mainstream pop is still the same recycled garbage as it always was, the alternative music community is thriving, and occasionally some of the good stuff does trickle up into the mainstream.

BLDGBLOG is a great read for armchair architects. Infrastructurist is a great read for armchair civil engineers.

FlowingData is a fascinating read about data visualization.

Want to look good at work? Read this.

I'm sure I'm forgetting a few good ones. Google solicited the reading lists of a few experts. Their recommendations are generally quite good.

My Mac Sucks.

two minutes, at least

On the contrary, ethanol as a fuel is not only a solution, it's a mature technology.

What's wrong with your statement is that ethanol is mostly coming from unsustainable feedstocks. When they start making it from algae produced during the cleaning of dirty water (alongside biofuel and fertilizer) instead of corn needed for food for humans. Or perhaps it's only that the users of Ethanol are immature? Show me some practical cellulosic ethanol production and that your fuel has come from sustainable sources, and I'll pipe down. A bit.

Any gasoline engine will run, with reduced performance, on ethanol. Tuning a car to run on ethanol is a relatively simple task.

Current gasoline engines suck. Ethanol has a lower energy density than Gasoline. The tradeoff just isn't there. Meanwhile Chrysler built several Turbine-powered cars in the 1960s and they had but two major flaws: One, they wore out their drivetrains, a flaw which can be eliminated by the use of a series hybrid-electric power system; Two, they were noisy and had a lot of hot exhaust, a flaw which can be mitigated by reducing the mass of the vehicle overall and using a hybrid power system, enabling the use of a substantially smaller turbine. Such an engine could be built to run on nearly any fuel, although certain different classes of engine might only be capable of burning certain ranges of fuels.

To convert a whole country to ethanol, as was done in Brazil in the late 1970s, is simple.

If your feedstock crops are grown on oil, as ours are, this is really not viable. It's also not viable if you depend on slash-and-burn Agriculture. Interesting that you mention Brazil, huh? Thanks for that one.

I don't really disagree that Hydrogen is not any kind of answer, at least not a complete one. I would also say that it's simply not useful to us as an energy storage medium right now, although it may well be at some point in the future. But I would also say that increasing the demand for Ethanol when the increased demand is already causing new environmental problems and is likely to cause far more would be almost as shortsighted as continuing to pump oil out of the ground and release its carbon into the atmosphere. Again, I propose AIWPS which solves this problem (producing feedstocks useful for the production of both ethanol and biodiesel) while cleaning water and fixing carbon. (Some percentage of the carbon will end up in the portion of the stock not useful for making fuel, which is fertilizer; some percentage of that carbon will also be fixed in the soil.) Increasing ethanol consumption as things stand now will only cause more harm.

The switchover of the whitehouse.gov site also meant that the robots.txt file has changed. From around 2400 lines to just 2 lines: http://www.kottke.org/09/01/the-countrys-new-robotstxt-file

Long-winded and boring. If you really want to poke at Mac users, why not use the tried and true?

You, sir, are no asset to the trolling profession!

It goes back farther than that. Here's a blog post from 1998 with it in it's original form, and I'm pretty sure it was around before this.

http://kottke.org/98/11/my-mac-sucks

Ooh, so If I found his real email address, does that mean I get to be in the cult?

http://www.kottke.org/plus/misc/ryanandjacob.txt