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First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win. -- Gandhi

...but hopefully France and Canada and other second-world nations will follow suit.

France and Canada are second-world nations ? The second world nations were the communist countries back in the days of the chilly-war...

As for everyone doing they're part for terrorism, the US' long history of support tyrannical dictatorships and also supporting the world's worst terrorist, Pol Pot, makes a me little hesitant to jump on any US foriegn policy bandwagon....

Frontline had a good documentary on SUV rollovers a while back.

It described how there were forty times more deaths from rollover accidents where the (Firestone) tires didn't fail than when they did but the media didn't tend to report this.

It also describes one of the original SUVs, the Ford Bronco II. Shortly after it came out in 1983 Ford was being sued because it tended to roll over. Ford's engineers recommended that they make the Bronco II two inches wider but hey refused to do this because it would have delayed the production date. It was not until the the 2002 model of the Ford Explorer came out that they did this. Ironically, it wasn't for safetly reasons but to give more room on the interior.

I bet browsers did run really well on your 1992 workstations, since the first graphical browser wasn't released until late 1993.
Have you tried running lynx, or for that matter Mosaic 1.0 on your Zaurus? It might run a little snappier..

How 'bout if everyone who got a phone also plugged in a base station at their house?

Or, as Bob Cringeley suggested, your car.
Your cell phone carrier could say: your service will cost $X a month, or it will cost $X-Y a month if you get a relay installed in your car or home.

"What Ever Happened to Fair Use?! ...HOOOooYAH!!" - Duff Man

I find it interesting that /.ers see Microsoft as an evil corporation (for obvious reasons) and Wal-Mart as a champion of the people because they are selling Lindows boxes, even though Wal-Mart shamelessly exploits Maquiladora sweatshop labor, lies about it's products being made in the USA, and forces artists to censor their music, among other things.

At least the people Microsoft empoly get paid well.

I find it interesting that /.ers see Microsoft as an evil corporation (for obvious reasons) and Wal-Mart as a champion of the people because they are selling Lindows boxes, even though Wal-Mart shamelessly exploits Maquiladora sweatshop labor, lies about it's products being made in the USA, and forces artists to censor their music, among other things.

At least the people Microsoft empoly get paid well.

I've seen this suggestion before... But I want to state again that I think Cringely deserves his own Section... I look forward to reading his article every week. It is always topical and insightful (even funny at times)... Also, everyone should read about the tragic death of his son here. If you have children you know how scary SIDs is. If you have the time, please help with his cause.

Not only would this squash P2P, but it would allow media companies to enter into partnerships with your ISP to provide "unmetered" downloads of paid-for content from edge servers within your ISP's network. I have to believe that there's enough business there, long-term, that the media companies would be happy to subsidize usage in the form of commissions.

There's more about this concept in a recent article from Cringely.

Cringely says 802.11b is in trouble, and no one seems to care.

* Good CEOs are very scarce.
* Good CEOs build companies and produce profits.

Therefore, good CEOs are worth a lot of money.

There's two problems with this:

1. Even poor CEOs are paid extremely well.

As seen in the article Edward E. Whitacre has led SBC for the past 12 years, his results? Below average growth. Now he may have done good things for other companies in the past, but he's simply been mediocere for SBC, yet doesn't receive a mediocere CEO salary.

When the board actually does wise up and fire a CEO, the exCEO receive multimillion dollar severence packages. And what did they do to earn this? Balance sheets with wonderful red accents.

2. When a company does well, those in the company should be rewarded. From top to bottom. But this isn't what happens. In 1999 CEO salaries increased 37%, while the average worker's salary increased a measly 2.7%.

Between 1990 and 2000 CEO pay has increased 571%. By comparison, the US's GDP over the same time period only increased 3.7% anually, or 37%. Since average corporate performance couldn't possibly outstrip the GDP growth by 15 times, something is wrong. Think of it this way. If the minimum wage increased along at the same rate as CEO salaries, a janitor would be making $25.50 an hour, instead of a measly $5.15.

There are very real economic issues to be considered. I suggest you read up about how The Market actually works. For starters try United for a Fair Economy.

Control of information is a big cause for concern. This pbs.org page goes into one famous example of a media (newspaper) big-shot, William Herst. The best paragraph is the following: Douglas Fairbanks, Jr., remembers his father asking Hearst why he preferred concentrating on newspapers, with their limited, regional appeal, rather than spending more energy on motion pictures and their worldwide audience. Fairbanks recalls Hearst's reply: "I thought of it, but I decided against it. Because you can crush a man with journalism, and you can't with motion pictures." All you need is one person in power with a vendetta, and people who were interested in lower costs will change priorities.

Just as wiredog said: Take a bunch of strands and wrap them together.

Some of the earliest suspension bridge cables were made from twisted grass. In the early nineteenth century, suspension bridges used iron chains for cables. Today, the cables are made of thousands of individual steel wires bound tightly together. Steel, which is very strong under tension, is an ideal material for cables; a single steel wire, only 0.1 inch thick, can support over half a ton without breaking.

Here is a picture of the cables before binding.

Angiogenesis is old news.

There was an "I, Cringely" article about this last year. Nonetheless, it's still pretty damn cool.

this would be the link: http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/pulpit20010823. html

Somebody deserves attribution for that.

Try John Watson or Pavlov...

All this guy did was re-write the story of Watson's experiment, adding a little bit of fruity comments from the "Director".

Life causes death

what goes up must come down

Open source software enables cacking security

Locks are for honesty people

What we make, we can break

etc..

It's not about this thing or that thing being bad, it's about people and how they use things to be bad.

Maybe automobiles and trucks should be added to the list of terrorist tools that should be ban, along with anything that can be use to make a bomb.

In fact, why don't we just make up a list of all things that can be used to kill.....Guess that would include water....

But it's really about people, what they do, and most important WHY?

Like what is terrorist reason to do bad things?

Or Like why was a trillion dollar bet allowed to happen? Hmmmm, isn't Indonesia like 80% or better muslin?

And Why is military spending not being used to address and remove reasons to be a terrorist or do bad things? Certainly it cost us all alot more backing up wrongful world financial manipulations with guns, then it would in being more productive with such military labeled finances.

So yeah, on the list of things that can be used for terrorist act, we really do have to add the world militaries, as common sence will tell anyone that the majority of people living on this planet don't want war but only to live a happy and healthy life.

It's just the few creating wars and bad things, spending huges amount of money that can be far better spent.

Check out Cringely's column. The second half talks about Mesh Networks, who seem to have this idea in mind.

An EFFICIENT workplace would be an employee strapped to a gurney with One of these in each eye, and food and waste going through tubes.

Or would it just be an efficient way to lose employees to competitors, kind of like your idea?

Wouldn't this be a better question for IBM's marketing department, or business/technology strategist types?

I agree. I work in a very large IT services multi-national that has business issues / problems similar to IBMs. My company supports (amongst other things) CERT, DOD (US/CN/UK/FR/AU), build military h/w & s/w, right thru to ERP (finance and HR) systems.

They'll repeat the company lines, with a few extra names, but they don't have any better pipe to the PHB's heads than we do.

Aww man, you beat me to the punch. The other point of contention is his hypothesis is entirely wild. "lets say that a exact Earth analogs occur around one out of a billion stars". Bah, pick "one billion" just because it seems like a big number? Haha. It could just as well be orders of magnitudes off in either direction. One out of a million, then there could be 100 million Earths. One out of a trillion, then best-case, we're the only one.

That's kind of the whole point of the Drake Equation, to give a better sense of just how far off those estimates are. And, best-case versus worst-case assumptions plugged into the Drake equation are still many orders of magnitude appart. Which means: we just don't know. And the article gives a little more pessimism to those estimates by asserting that R ("The number of suitable stars that form in our galaxy per year") could be much, much lower than most people think.

The highest balloon flights attempted...

1961 -- Current Official Altitude Record Set: Commander Malcolm Ross and Lieutenant Commander Victor A. Prather of the U.S. Navy ascend to 113,739.9 feet (just over 20 miles) in 'Lee Lewis Memorial,' a polyethylene balloon.

1958 -- Project Manhigh, Major Simons takes his balloon to an altitude of 101,516 feet.

I wish this guy good luck. I'll be impressed if he launches, more impressed if he returns in one piece, but let him orbit the Earth a few times before calling him an astronaut. Hmmm... I know Mr. Chuck Yeager wouldn't be too happy with that comment.

Cringely builds his argument for a widespread, car-based wireless network on the premise that the storage required by cars frequently disconnected from a network is an insurmountable problem, given the inability of Hard Disks Drives to survive in the hostile environment of a car. He believes that this problem will not be resolved by HDDs designed to better cope with that environment because the HDD companies can only afford to invest in research that will pay off within a year whereas the car companies plan four years ahead.

IMHO, it's a bit short-sighted to focus exclusively on HDDs; Flash memory makers are currently making great strides in producing chips that, in capacity, compete with miniture HDDs. Their primary financial motivation for this is the perceived huge market for personal MP3 players. I read one article a few months back that predicted a real head-to-head battle between Flash memory and IBM's tiny HDDs.

If we're going to be seeing Flash memory with several GBs capacity, I don't see why they shouldn't be used within cars.

Also, I don't see why the 4 year planning cycle for a new car should be such a problem; that time covers the design process for the car as a whole, no telematics system would be so intrusive as to require being part of that process from Day One. Indeed, it should be something that can be integrated within existing designs.

I'm wary of questioning Cringely's ideas because he does seem to have good sources on this but the direction he's taken that info doesn't seem to have been thought through properly.

Also, it's hard to accept his technical credibility when the software he uses for his site's forum is so damn tacky.

"...Watermark detectors would be required in all devices that perform analog to digital conversions..."

Mary and Her Lamb Want Back Royalty Too, You Thief!

Do you have a source for the majority argument? PBS claim 18% of their budget comes from the government.

I, Cringely had this to say about UWB.

I think this is one of those things that is kind of sneaking up on a lot of people and is going to hit all at once, providing we can keep it from getting squished before it gets a chance.

I, Cringely had this to say about UWB.

I think this is one of those things that is kind of sneaking up on a lot of people and is going to hit all at once, providing we can keep it from getting squished before it gets a chance.

Does that mean that we need to evolve even bigger heads with visible veins for cooling to go beyond our current capacities? I'm thinking about Uncle Scrotor from This Island Earth, as seen in the MST3K movie, of course.

No. The veins will probably not be too visible; otherwise, a blow to the head would be more likely to draw blood. The influence of maternal instincts will demand cute babies. I predict that by the year 802701, humanity will have evolved into at least a race that looks like Precious Moments people. (I'm not entirely sure whether, as H. G. Wells predicted, there will exist another parallel lemur-like race that lives underground and eats the PM people.)

Mu-tant upgrades for all! Leaves only the fresh scent of pine!

Or, after too much mutation and crossing over, pine and human genes come together and create a little wooden boy.

I've heard good things about the film, and hopefully it will get to a screen near me. I would also highly recommend, if your interested in documentaries about the real story, Nova's excellent "Breaking the Code."

Its really amazing some of the details that people never hear about breaking the Enigma code. One quick fact/story that I remember (obviously paraphrased and correct me if I make any errors, its been a bit since I last saw it): One of the first versions of the Enigma code that the British were able to crack, was the Luftwaffe code. How? To set up the machine to decode the enigma code, you needed to base the rotors off a three letter unencrypted sequence and another three letters that were encrypted. Unfortunately for the Germans, the operators got lazy all too often. If the first three letters were HIL, any guess what the next three encrypted were? Yup, TER, spelling out "Hitler." Other operators would use their names or their girlfriend's. It wasn't that the code was flawed, it took the German operators, inadvertently of course, to help the British break their own enigma.

Its in many ways analogous to the great majority of system problems now, open ports, unpatched software, etc. Any system can be nearly perfect, until you add a human to run it. ;-)

Well, according to this article, reverse engineering IBM's BIOS had far to do with considering code 'a grey area.' Compaq had to pick virgin programmers that had no knowledge of IBM's code. I remember watching a documentary about this (can anyone remember the title) on, now that I mention it, PBS!

I think the report is fascinating - I just watched a NOVA episode the other day about the Mayans and how difficult it was to understand their culture and language from just 1,000 years ago.

I dunno about you guys, but "This is not a place of honor" would just make me want to keep digging if *I* was an archaeologist.

I think the report is fascinating - I just watched a NOVA episode the other day about the Mayans and how difficult it was to understand their culture and language from just 1,000 years ago.

I dunno about you guys, but "This is not a place of honor" would just make me want to keep digging if *I* was an archaeologist.

Now if you are these guys, you just fix it up and fly it home.

The second part of this Cringely column details the "Microsoft security fix", which includes 'embracing and extending' TCP/IP with a propriatary stack.


Read the article here: http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/pulpit20010802. html


--geethree

First of all - please read the Modern Hippocratic oath to get a feel of the sheer gravity that the oath actually represents. Then imagine the programmers oath

"Wherever I can, I will code many hidden easter eggs without the project managers consent or knowledge to provide the end users something to do. Also, I shall endeaver to ingest large quantities of mountain dew."

I mean, I can think of a few professions above programmers I want to take an oath (How about the short order cook that spit in your food last week huh?)

Second of all - How can you even compare the concept of upholding the ability to save and improve physically the life of an indivdual without corruption to a programmer? How is coding spam similar to endangering a life for unethical pursuits?

Third of all - WHO CARES? Oaths are meaningless in a captalistic society such as ours. Want proof? Lets take a quick tour down career avenue and look at the professions that take oaths - Lawyers (hmm, they seem to be a respectable bunch), Elected Officials (don't get me started), Judiciaries (Not too bad in his arena) and Public Safety officals (Rodney King, Malice Green, etc. etc.) Not to open a can of worms but the ORIGINAL Hippocratic Oath actually had a section condeming a doctor to perform an abortion so theoretically doctors that perform abortion break their oaths (I agree to the modern version expressed above and my political viewpoints on abortion are hopefully not reflected!)

To compare the importance of upholding the importance of ethics in the medical profession to a coder writing spam, spyware or other such "annoyances" is ABSURD.

over it?

Perhaps with all those companies they ran out
of business?

Money is an abstraction, an agreed upon media of value exchange that can be distorted.

To have a more fundamental POV there has to be value generation of which the abstract media is associated with.

So has MS really produced such real value as the abstract media ... uh errr, as the abstraction of the abstract media of money (numbers on paper) suggest?

In other words, had MS not run out of business (using proven illegal anti-trust tactics) where and how would that 40 billion be going thru the economy?

For an example consider the Trillion Dollar Bet and how it drained the south Asian Market and contributed to the so called terrorist motive/excuse.

Here is the first column.

Here is the follow-up that he promised not ot do.

Editors, get your priorities straight. We expect more from you. Stories about someone going to the hospital don't count.

Is this REALLY off-topic? Read the links prior to modding.

Here is the first column.

Here is the follow-up that he promised not ot do.

Editors, get your priorities straight. We expect more from you. Stories about someone going to the hospital don't count.

Is this REALLY off-topic? Read the links prior to modding.

From PBS Frontline:

The California case in point began with a chemical -- MTBE -- that was added to gasoline to help the state clean up its air. But MTBE was found to cause cancer in laboratory animals. And in 1995, it began to show up in drinking water.

...

Chapter 11 is only one provision in the 555-page North American Free Trade Agreement -- negotiated to promote business among the US, Canada and Mexico. It was supposedly written to protect investors if foreign governments tried to seize their property.

But corporations have stretched NAFTA's Chapter 11 to undermine environmental decisions -- the decisions of local communities -- even the verdict of an American jury. The cases brought so far total almost four billion dollars.

Under the terms of NAFTA, an environmental regulation is regarded as a "taking" and the state may have to pay a huge settlement to the manufacturer.

Actually, I do follow that sort of thing. Also, here's the correct PBS link

Check out the Frontline episode, the monster that ate hollywood.

It *is* all about the opening weekend gross these days, according to this story.

Have risk-averse MBAs killed Hollywood's magic? Studio executives, producers, filmmakers, and critics talk about how the movie business, and movies themselves, have changed.
John Pierson, the man behind many an indie, takes stock of what's "independent" today. Plus, interviews with Elvis Mitchell, Allison Anders, Kevin Smith, and Michael Douglas.
The Atlantic Monthly's Charles C. Mann on what Hollywood has learned from Napster. Plus, industry insiders discuss how digital technology and the Internet may transform filmmaking.
A closer look at the business of movies, including the story of how Steven Spielberg's "Jaws" gave birth to the summer blockbuster and changed Hollywood forever.

The premise is that all the studios and distributors are now controlled by a handful of mega corps who make and market movies based on a formula of risk management. They closely estimate and monitor the opening weekend gross, which is indeed used as the yardstick to extrapolate the total return on the movie including first-run, overseas dist, video sales, merchandise, tv and cable runs, etc.

Comparing to movies 5-10 years ago _is_ meaningless. Comparing to Harry Potter is very relevant.

That's very different from transmitting the signal over a "POTS line" or a phone call, though.

Look, I have strong feelings for men. What is it that you are saying that I should do with those feelings, repress them? Do you think that would magically make me like girls? I mean you say that I do have a choice, so are you saying that I should just choose to ignore the feelings?

When you said you can see why men would like men, can you be more specific? Who do you fantasize about sexually, men or women? I mean you may be right? If all guys have strong feeling towards men, then maybe I'm just like everybody else? I'm not someone else so I don't know. To me, women are neutral. I'm neither compelled, nor repelled by them sexually.

Sure, I didn't declare myself gay over night, I had to try and be straight first because that's what society tells you to do, just like society tells you not to steal. But I don't like women. I really wanted to be with men and my body let me know about it. This was not a choice in the sense that you eat french fries. It was a choice in the sense that I have to masturbate because it feels good and my body is telling me to type of sense. That's why I say it's not a choice. Attempts to convert homosexuals have been attempted for decades and they never worked. Whatever it is that makes someone homosexual, it's permanent.

Haven't you ever seen a lesbian that was extremely masculine or a homo that was really gay. Doesn't it seem possible to you that the sex of the individual is almost mixed in some cases?
Dr. John Money tried to change the sex of a boy to a girl. But it didn't work. It was a failure because gender is solidified at birth. You can read the transcript at the nova web site. It seems to me that someone like Richard Simmons is really gay. I'd like to see you convert him.

This is not an issue of you have your beliefs I have my beliefs. Only one of us can be right about some of the questions and their answers. You said the choice thing was an excuse, but I'm not making excuses. I like being this way and don't want to change. I also like masturbation. I'm not ashamed of what I do in the privacy of my own home.

One thing that I think you're doing is to try and take what you know about yourself and try to fit that into a working theory about all this stuff. But you can't do that, we're not the same. It would be like men developing a theory of females sexuality. The best way to find out someone's position is to ask them, not to guess. That's why I'm asking you, because I just don't get your logic here.

Look, I have strong feelings for men. What is it that you are saying that I should do with those feelings, repress them? Do you think that would magically make me like girls? I mean you say that I do have a choice, so are you saying that I should just choose to ignore the feelings?

When you said you can see why men would like men, can you be more specific? Who do you fantasize about sexually, men or women? I mean you may be right? If all guys have strong feeling towards men, then maybe I'm just like everybody else? I'm not someone else so I don't know. To me, women are neutral. I'm neither compelled, nor repelled by them sexually.

Sure, I didn't declare myself gay over night, I had to try and be straight first because that's what society tells you to do, just like society tells you not to steal. But I don't like women. I really wanted to be with men and my body let me know about it. This was not a choice in the sense that you eat french fries. It was a choice in the sense that I have to masturbate because it feels good and my body is telling me to type of sense. That's why I say it's not a choice. Attempts to convert homosexuals have been attempted for decades and they never worked. Whatever it is that makes someone homosexual, it's permanent.

Haven't you ever seen a lesbian that was extremely masculine or a homo that was really gay. Doesn't it seem possible to you that the sex of the individual is almost mixed in some cases?
Dr. John Money tried to change the sex of a boy to a girl. But it didn't work. It was a failure because gender is solidified at birth. You can read the transcript at the nova web site. It seems to me that someone like Richard Simmons is really gay. I'd like to see you convert him.

This is not an issue of you have your beliefs I have my beliefs. Only one of us can be right about some of the questions and their answers. You said the choice thing was an excuse, but I'm not making excuses. I like being this way and don't want to change. I also like masturbation. I'm not ashamed of what I do in the privacy of my own home.

One thing that I think you're doing is to try and take what you know about yourself and try to fit that into a working theory about all this stuff. But you can't do that, we're not the same. It would be like men developing a theory of females sexuality. The best way to find out someone's position is to ask them, not to guess. That's why I'm asking you, because I just don't get your logic here.

My vote (without reading other comments) goes to Arthur Eddington's validation of Einstein's relativity by demonstrating that the sun's gravity bent the light from nearby stars. But how do you see stars when they're right next to the sun? Good lateral thinking, very ingenious...

Cringely covered this in an article /. covered a while back. Basically, once installed with the Windows software, he was able to move it over to a Linksys router with no problems.

According to these programmers, Microsoft wants to replace TCP/IP with a proprietary protocol -- a protocol owned by Microsoft -- that it will tout as being more secure. Actually, the new protocol would likely be TCP/IP with some of the reserved fields used as pointers to proprietary extensions, quite similar to Vines IP, if you remember that product from Banyan Systems. I'll call it TCP/MS.

How do you push for the acceptance of a new protocol? First, make the old one unworkable by placing millions of exploitable TCP/IP stacks out on the Net, ready-to-use by any teenage sociopath. When the Net slows or crashes, the blame would not be assigned to Microsoft. Then ship the new protocol with every new copy of Windows, and install it with every Windows Update over the Internet. Zero to 100 million copies could happen in less than a year, and that year could be prior to the new protocol even being announced. It could be shipping right now.

According to these programmers, Microsoft wants to replace TCP/IP with a proprietary protocol -- a protocol owned by Microsoft -- that it will tout as being more secure. Actually, the new protocol would likely be TCP/IP with some of the reserved fields used as pointers to proprietary extensions, quite similar to Vines IP, if you remember that product from Banyan Systems. I'll call it TCP/MS.

How do you push for the acceptance of a new protocol? First, make the old one unworkable by placing millions of exploitable TCP/IP stacks out on the Net, ready-to-use by any teenage sociopath. When the Net slows or crashes, the blame would not be assigned to Microsoft. Then ship the new protocol with every new copy of Windows, and install it with every Windows Update over the Internet. Zero to 100 million copies could happen in less than a year, and that year could be prior to the new protocol even being announced. It could be shipping right now.

ROBERT REILLY: Propaganda, of course, comes from the root "to propagate", and in that sense, it's not an onerous term. But in modern-day lingo, it is -- because it implies that someone is going to instead of giving you the straight news; slant it in such a way that distortion would gain you some temporary advantage. We're not after temporary advantage. We're after maintaining the credibility of our news so we maintain the trust of our audience.

TERENCE SMITH: That independence was challenged a few weeks ago when the Bush administration tried to kill this story, which contained interview excerpts with Taliban Leader Mullah Mohammed Omar. State Department Spokesman Richard Boucher.

RICHARD BOUCHER, State Department spokesman: Considering the fact that U.S. taxpayers paid for this, considering the fact this is the Voice of America, we don't think that the head of the Taliban belongs on this radio station.