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Domain: poliglut.com
Stories and comments across the archive that link to poliglut.com.
Comments · 59
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Better watch out
This is from the same state where a Texas man , his best freind.
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Re:Opting out of federal mandates
Oh, and we covered this topic a long time ago at Poliglut.
Not that -
Special interests have a place I guess
I think it's great that you want to be more active. God knows that was my goal when I put together poliglut a couple years ago.
I started out with more of a tech angle, but decided that the problem with the country was a more general lack of education. The people who would seek out your site regarding DMCA and it's ilk are probably going to find out what's going on anyway. So you will be putting out a lot of effort for not so much return.
I would instead encourage you to find a way to put the word out about the importance of those issues in a mainstream web site. This effort is less likely to be wasted as there is an almost total vacuum outside of a few in the tech community concerning tech issues. (which makes sense of course or the legislation wouldn't be written in the first place).
And, of course, you are welcome to write stuff, or republish stuff at poliglut. -
Can't work
A news based web site cannot work.
Well, I guess I may be a little bitter.
I actually think that your idea is a good one and hope it works out. There is, of course, a world of difference between a print platform going to the web with all the built in advertising you can give yourself to the target audience and what I was trying to do on poliglut.
Don't underestimate the number of people you need visiting in order to have a weblog work well. Poliglut had something like a 1:200 poster to reader ratio. That looks to be about the same at -
Re:Campain reform, not Campain finance reform...
I assert that it is not campain finance reform, but campain reform that we need.
I agree completely. Money is not the problem. The process is the problem.
Consider first why candidates need the huge amounts of money to be elected. They in effect need to run two entirely different campains - once for the primary, and once for the election.
There's another reason that (senatorial) candidates need huge amounts of money. Primaries serve a necessary function, and it requires cash to perform it. I have no problem with that.
- Allow anybody registered to vote to vote in any primary.
- Require a binding "none of the above" entry on all elections.
I disagree. First, primaries are an internal function for the parties to determine who that party's candidate will be. It should not be regulated, as it is a private function of a private organization. It's entirely fair for a party to limit participation to its own members, IMO. Second, a "none of the above" option just runs up costs as it necessitates another election. What we need to do is make sure the first election works right, in a fair way, that gives us a winner the majority actually desire. Hint: that's not the plurality vote system.
- The third party candidates wouldn't run in the first race. Instead, they would encourage the voters to vote NOTA in the first race and knock the big boys out.
- The big parties would no longer be able to take this "This is our guy, take it or leave it" attitude. Thus, they would tend to field more moderate candidates.
- Because of 1 and 2, more people would feel their vote mattered, and we would get more turnout.
Now this is completely backwards. Why should there be only two choices? First, if five guys think they're each the best person to be president, let them all run, and give each a fair shot! Arbitrarily limiting the field to two is foolish. A fair voting system would give the third party guy a fair chance of election in the first round, instead of wasting time with a second round. Second, there's nothing wrong with a party deciding "this is our guy". If you're going to subscribe to a party because you believe its ideals, that party should pick the person who best represents those ideals to be its candidate. If you don't agree with the ideals, form your own party. The problem you pointed out (in the 2000 election) earlier was caused precisely because both of the candidates were "moderates". The electorate saw no real distinction between the two, and that's why it came down almost to a coin toss. Third, this is the same reason nobody gets out to vote. Why bother? Both the guys are moderates, and there's no distinction, so it doesn't matter.
The only way to revise the system to change voting so that the results accurately reflect voter preferences. Presently there is a false dichotomy, since your one vote can only reflect your preference between "Candidate A" over "anybody else". Since this type of voting encourages a two-way race, we focus only on the two "leading" candidates.
Voters want real choice. Since 1960, presidential election turnout has been on a steady decline - with one exception: 1992. What happened in 1992? Perot. Like him or not, he was a strong, visible, third-party candidate who made people believe they had a choice. Even though his views garnered 20% of the nation's support, we saw absolutely zero change. Why? Because the system is stacked against change.
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Re:And, we have no one to blame but ourselves.
Couldn't have said it better myself. In fact, I've been saying this alot lately.
- just say NO to publicly-funded campaigns
- plausible alternative to finance reform (thread), with further elaboration
- another plausible alternative for limiting government
Of course, the best way to limit government is to de-fund it. Without a ridiculously inflated budget, gov't couldn't afford to trample our lives. Why won't the IRS and DoJ answer a few simple questions?
Only two "major" parties advocate Constitutionally-limited government: the CP and LP. I hope you're voting for them.
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Re:And, we have no one to blame but ourselves.
Couldn't have said it better myself. In fact, I've been saying this alot lately.
- just say NO to publicly-funded campaigns
- plausible alternative to finance reform (thread), with further elaboration
- another plausible alternative for limiting government
Of course, the best way to limit government is to de-fund it. Without a ridiculously inflated budget, gov't couldn't afford to trample our lives. Why won't the IRS and DoJ answer a few simple questions?
Only two "major" parties advocate Constitutionally-limited government: the CP and LP. I hope you're voting for them.
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Re:And, we have no one to blame but ourselves.
Couldn't have said it better myself. In fact, I've been saying this alot lately.
- just say NO to publicly-funded campaigns
- plausible alternative to finance reform (thread), with further elaboration
- another plausible alternative for limiting government
Of course, the best way to limit government is to de-fund it. Without a ridiculously inflated budget, gov't couldn't afford to trample our lives. Why won't the IRS and DoJ answer a few simple questions?
Only two "major" parties advocate Constitutionally-limited government: the CP and LP. I hope you're voting for them.
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Also on the BBC via poliglut
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Re:space imaging nyc image 09/12/2001The "cloud" seen in the radar image is not a result of the smoke/dust cloud. This is the standard interference pattern seen nearby any weather radar in a large city.
Don't believe me? Check out current radar of Detroit or Denver or Albequerque.
(credit)
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And don't forget Poliglut
Poliglut we've got a running diary with links of the whole day.
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It isn't Pearl Harbor
As I said here
"""
You know what, this Pearl Harbor ][ stuff is bull. This is Hiroshima ][, both in terms of bombing innocents and the death toll. The scary part, Dubyas ill conceived Star Wars sequal wouldn't have made a bit of difference in this case. *That's* why the military has all their brass out there talking about Pearl Harbor. Don't let them distract you, this is Hiroshima ][ and it shows what a waste of $60B Star Wars ][ is. Pass it on.
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More info
Continual updates on poliglut. And we're still operating without lag.
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Re:CNN Slowly Coming Back
We're covering this on Poliglut at this
link. Photos and links being updated every few minutes. -
Re:Soon to have a colon cam?yeah i knew. it's kind of hard to miss with the dude posting ascii art these days.
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Poliglut -
Soon to have a colon cam?I thought that's what goats.ex was?
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Poliglut -
Jerks?Finding security holes is exactly why open source security works better than security through osbcurity for crying out loud! You should be thanking those guys instead of using your site as a soap box to bully them into thinking like a Taco.
And re-read Steven Levy's book Hackers while you're at it.
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Poliglut -
Sounds like the setup for a jokeSomething Stephen Wright like:
I put yttrium barium copper oxide and perovskite oxide in a room and let them fight it out.
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Poliglut -
Hacker missing!
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Re:This doesn't mean...And who the fuck can fill up a terabyte in an appreciable amount of time?
I can.
Of course I work for a major high energy physicis lab, so YMMV...
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Poliglut -
Re:Recouping costsIf I am reading between the lines correctly, here, and you are suggesting that you save yourself money by not reporting these new boxes as income, isn't this tax evasion ?
I would never suggest anyone evade taxes in a public forum.
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Poliglut -
Recouping costsIf you gain only a few pieces of good information from the book, you'll probably recoup the $20 price of the book in short order.
If you are even thinking about $20 then going the contracting route probably won't work out.
I'm not saying that the key to successful business is throwing money away, but just that if you remain focused on $20 then that's all your likely to see.
Specifically, taxes, incorporating, contract law and such should not be done on the basis of a book, even a good one. Spend a couple thousand a year on a good accountant/lawyer (and if you can find a lawyer who is a CPA like mine, then I highly recommend keeping all your business with him).
The other single salient suggestion I have is do as much as you can on barter. If you need a couple boxen for your new lab and your client is a PC shop that needs some wiring hung and a T1 installed then why bother with the cash and associated accounting.
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Poliglut -
Re:Oh, How Rich!I guess it goes to show that FUD comes from both directions.
It sure does. Of course, I'm not about to take your opinion seriously since you cannot, apparently, be trusted to not dick with your own salary if given the chance to do so.
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Poliglut -
Out of the dark agesYes, Japan will only truly be an enlightened nation when they can have Accenture (that's what it's called this week I think) to do a $1.5M job and end up, three years later, with a $5M program that does 40% of what the original spec called for.
I bet they can hardly wait!
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Poliglut -
Re:Now what?I think your sig was supposed to say,
The words of the prophets were written by the slashdot trolls.
Still rythmically ok, but more true to the spirit of the original lyrics I think.
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Poliglut -
Some links...
Situationist
Adbusters
CorpWatch
AllYourBrand
etc.:
Independent Media Center
Metropolitic.net
You May Be An Anarchist And Not Even Know It (I too thought the "anarchy movement" was a load of crap from bored aggressive adolescents (they really spoil it for everybody don't they?) until reading this and realizing there really is a legitimate coherent philosophy behind it)
Mother Jones
In These Times
Poliglut
Protest.net (yes, sometimes there are actually legitimate reasons to protest)
PigDog journal
Unabomer Manifesto (he may have been labeled a wacko, but read it - he's not stupid and he does sorta have a point.)
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Re:*sigh*Yup. I hear you. Unfortunately there aren't any PB scale non-tape solutions yet.
We're investigating disk farms though! That would be cool!
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Poliglut -
Buildings in a single bound
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Re:*sigh*your bad tape forgets redunancy.
Nope, my bad tape assumes that sometime a tape and it's redundent copy will go bad. It happens. A lot.
The problem is that tape basically sucks. In the 80's I can't tell you how many hours I spent re-running jobs at NCR because the needed tape and it's backup were trashed. Today I work at a major lab and we're building a PB scale tape farm. Our problem is that we can't find anything sufficiently reliable. Between the falability of the media itself and the firmware in the drives and awful lot can go wrong!
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Poliglut -
Re:*sigh*Come on, you know that's a logical fallacy. There's no need or reason to assume that this is the start of anything else without further evidence.
But there is futher evidence, isn't there? I mean isn't every YRO story on slashdot about something being stretched and twisted beyond reasonable comprehension by folks who either don't understand technology or are trying to limit rights in order to suit their misguided needs?
Sounds like they're getting what they want so why would they need anything else?
Sorry. I didn't realize you were joking until I read this line again.
Yes, clearly they won't stop with this any more than they stopped at any of the previous points.
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Poliglut -
Re:*sigh*Come on people, this information already exists in server logs across the world! It's not like they are proposing something that is novel
What they are proposing is novel (and significant) in that they are *requiring* that logging be turned on (which on many servers, for many reasons, it is not) *and* that the company spend it's time and money ensuring that the logs persist for seven years. Presumably one gets heavily fined if a backup tape goes bad!
Ok, the backup tape might be a frear mongering, but I can imagine that if a tape goes bad and the gummint finds a memo outlining to backup processes that talks about the cost of media, the half-life of the media selected *and* then chooses to go the cheap route rather than ensure that they comply with the law that a fine for a bad tape is certainly going to happen.
Slippery slope baby, slippery slope.
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Poliglut -
At least we'll know soonYeah, it's vapor ware, but the article claims "Nokia will introduce the product in Sweden in late summer and in the UK and Germany later in the year. A US launch is planned for late this year or early 2002."
So it sounds like it's in the late stages of development at least...
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Poliglut -
Re:Natural coolinggenerate some electricity, not nearly enough, but enough solar panels around will help the situation a lot.
The one thing Bush got right was that the problem right now is that there is more demand than supply. He says that means we must explore more and relax environmental standards so we can build up our production capabilities. You say conservation is the way to go.
I say, you're both wrong.
We need to do both of what you guys say, but neither will solve the problem.
The problem was demand exceeding supply. That situation did not come about because we didn't have enought conservation, nor becuase of environmental concerns. The problem came about because energy was so cheap in the early 90's that there was no money in building power plants. There are many now under way (see this story on Poliglut for a graph of the last twenty years), but the reason demand exceeded supply was because there was no money in building new plants for a while and that even now that there is, it takes a while to build them.
P.S. None of this should be taken as an argument against conservation, just that it's a fools paradise to believe it would have helped CA this time.
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Poliglut -
Re:Natural coolinggenerate some electricity, not nearly enough, but enough solar panels around will help the situation a lot.
The one thing Bush got right was that the problem right now is that there is more demand than supply. He says that means we must explore more and relax environmental standards so we can build up our production capabilities. You say conservation is the way to go.
I say, you're both wrong.
We need to do both of what you guys say, but neither will solve the problem.
The problem was demand exceeding supply. That situation did not come about because we didn't have enought conservation, nor becuase of environmental concerns. The problem came about because energy was so cheap in the early 90's that there was no money in building power plants. There are many now under way (see this story on Poliglut for a graph of the last twenty years), but the reason demand exceeded supply was because there was no money in building new plants for a while and that even now that there is, it takes a while to build them.
P.S. None of this should be taken as an argument against conservation, just that it's a fools paradise to believe it would have helped CA this time.
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Poliglut -
Re:Summers are hot thereAlaskan summers are nice and warm with mean temp of 75 degrees.
Huh? Anchorage (one of the warmer parts of Alaska), for example, only averages above 65 for nine days in the heat of July, after that it's all downhill.
On the North Slope things are much colder. That same July peak only has them at 46.
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Poliglut -
Re:Natural coolingWho marked this insightful? Maybe funny, but really!
a. Don't build them in hot climates.
This is the only legit part of the post. Of course, if the cost of energy is less than the cost of labor (remember that a lot of the labor is in hot climates!) then hot climates still make a lost of sense. Labor is your largest cost after all.
b. If you do build them in hot climates you should have to build a large solar panel array on the top of the facility.
That's great as a throw away comment. That solar array isn't going to give you nearly the power you need, nor produce it efficiently. Remember, it's the cost per megawatt that counts and solar isn't cost competative yet even if you could run a data center on only solar.
c. When it's cold outside, open the windows. Nothing is dumber than having the air conditioning on in the winter! If dust bothers you, suck in outside air and filter it.
Think climate control, not air conditioning. The moisture is important too. Opening windows (except in a desert and you already said we can't build there) will corrode all your systems. In the colder days you talk about the air conditioners are very efficient in terms of heat transfer and act mostly as humidity control.
d. In hot climates build them underground. Once you get a few feet down the earth's crust is actually pretty cool. Extend large heat sinks into the surrounding terrain to use the earth's natural cooling.
Once again you have a decent idea for homes, but it doesn't scale to the energy requirements of a data center.
e. the source of the problem is the heat generated by equipment, why not design coller equipment instead? This is possible, there just is a lack of motivation to do it
They have. One P4 throwing off 50 watts, but running 200 web servers is a lot more efficient thatn 200 486's.
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Poliglut -
Sign me up for a gig!But only if I can admin remotely.
I guess the current job, er, climate makes this the best time in the last decade to float such a scheme though.
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Poliglut -
Re:Creationists...Sediment on the moons surface from space dust acum's at a known rate. If the universe was all these billions of years old then the estimates were that we should have landed in FIFTY FOUR FEET of the stuff when Apollo 11 touched down.
From the FAQ
"""
There is a recent creationist technical paper on this topic which admits that the depth of dust on the moon is concordant with the mainstream age and history of the solar system (Snelling and Rush 1993). Their abstract concludes with:
"It thus appears that the amount of meteoritic dust and meteorite debris in the lunar regolith and surface dust layer, even taking into account the postulated early intense bombardment, does not contradict the evolutionists' multi-billion year timescale (while not proving it). Unfortunately, attempted counter-responses by creationists have so far failed because of spurious arguments or faulty calculations. Thus, until new evidence is forthcoming, creationists should not continue to use the dust on the moon as evidence against an old age for the moon and the solar system."
Even though the creationists themselves have refuted this argument, (and refutations from the mainstream community have been around for at least a decade longer than that), the "moon dust" argument continues to be propagated in their "popular" literature, and continues to appear in talk.origins on a regular basis:
"""
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Poliglut -
Cost them money today
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Re:Acceleration?My friend, the 'surrounding cellular chemistry' is made up of 2 things. The direct product of the genetic material and the environment.
Well, the genetic material itself is a product of the genetic material, but that doesn't make it simple to understand.
Maybe a scientist will step in here, but it's my understanding the the soup around the genes plays a huge role in how the genes work. This is, again if my non-scientist memory serves me today, why stem cell research is interesting. The soup around the cell hasn't yet told the DNA which genes to use. You have in every cell the needed genes to make any cell, yet a skin cell is different from a liver cell. This is because of the soup allowing certain parts of the sequence to work and masking others. That seems like an important to understand piece to understand, but we are a long way from even understanding the sequence, much less the context.
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Re:Acceleration?But wouldn't you agree that the acceleration of research is greatly increasing? It seems as if the pace of innovation has sped up dramatically.
Ok, I understand the tools to make tools arguement and the pace of change and all that. But in some ways that makes my point even more appropriate. Despite that effect we still have no strong AI and are still looking at estimates of (at least) yet another decade before we do. You would be correct if you detect in my tone a bit of skeptisism on this yet latest estimate.
Genetics are at least as complicated as the brain and we have essentially no experience with them. That approximation may offend some scientists in the field, and I don't mean for that, but look at were we are. What are there, a couple tests for genetic diseases, a kind of corn that keeps leaking into the mainstream supply and an identity test that couldn't convict OJ?
We had a similar level of cognitive understanding a couple hundred years ago. Certainly Turing understood at least that much more recently. Yet we still stumble.
Couple that with the fact that it isn't 'simply' genetics, but also the surrounding cellular chemistry that makes the genes work that needs to be studied.
There is an awful lot to understand and we don't even come close to having the capability to do so yet.
So, I'm just saying that it's easy to get hyped over this stuff, but be a little cautious about when you promise your deliverables. Ask Minsky why if you still don't believe me.
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Poliglut -
Modern day AII don't remember first hand, being only in my 30's, but I've certainly read about the early AI labs and how optimistic they were that we were just around the corner from strong AI being in the labs and then the world.
They were, obviously, wrong. Today we can't even do speech recognition with sufficient reliability to use it every day, much less get in a car, tell it were we want to go and then read the important news of the day (pre-selected by a Chevy Agent) on the drive.
So too will genetics be. We're at the beginning of an interesting period in research. But for the genetic possiblities to be realized will require something like the kind of AI imagined in the 60's to be available and well understood. There is just that much data available to process.
So, while I'm as excited as the next guy at the possibilities, I'll consider myself lucky indeed if I live to see them realized.
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Re:If you'll allow me to argue from authority...I don't care *why* management chose to go down a certain path. Even if it looks like to wrong choice to me sometimes, I trust them, because they know a lot more about that stuff than I do.
I'm not saying that you should not trust them. I'm saying that you will be better at *your* job if you understand them.
Nor am I saying, as you mention, that you shouldn't focus on the specs. Just that you shouldn't focus on them to the exclusion of other, admittedly less interesting, subjects.
How many times have things needed to be re-worked in projects that you have worked on because of miscommunication? In many cases that can be eliminated because you better understand the business perspective and can ask better questions. And, frankly, that seems a lot more likely than that we'll convince the business types to learn enough about what we do to give better instructions.
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Poliglut -
If you'll allow me to argue from authority...I've been a pro for better than a decade and an amateur for another decade before that. Let me tell you that the biggest problem in corporate development today isn't whether or not people understand J2EE, but whether they understand distributed idioms and business.
I can't tell you the number of times that I've had to help folks who had memorized the spec and read books like this, but didn't understand why the spec contained the features it does, nor why going distributed was the way to go (hint, $).
So, read this book. Learn everything it contains. But don't skip the more academic architectural tomes nor the business aisle the next time you're at Borders...
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Poliglut -
This is great newsI just hope they make them cheap enough that you can attach them to a stick and use them as a hoe. 'Cause I'm thinking that's what the rural poor could probably use more than a shirt pocket machine that will run Mathmatica...
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Re:The question they should have askedLooks like they've followed each other fairly closely in the last year, although AMD has pulled ahead in the last couple of months:
Yes, that would be the difference. The little underdog competitor, in shaky economic times, is exploiting the weaknesses in the overlord.
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Poliglut -
The question they should have askedWhy is it that Intel's stock price is so closely tracking the inverse Moore's law lately?
Thank god I own AMD...
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Poliglut -
Re:Just last nightYou could have a) gone to the store and bought a $15 modem and a month of MSN. you do have phone lines, do you not?
And why should I have to do that? Have I not a right to expect my software to not have stupid and onerous requirements? Have I not an obligation to tell people about such software? Without such feedback capitalism, which relies on an educated consumer, fails. As witnessed by the fact that QuickBooks has a monopoly.
b) read the damn box and understood that an internet connection is required and also understood that this might mean under certain circumstances there might be trouble.
The box did not specify this. Nor did experience lead me to think this would be the case. Previous versions operated fine without a net connection. There was no business reason to make me think that had changed.
Thanks for playing.
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Poliglut -
Re:Just last nightMy advice, show your displeasure with your feet, Quickbooks is not the only accounting software package.
I tried, but found out this morning that my accountant only deals with Quickbooks. He said he'd be happy to consider other things, but at some point the trouble becomes larger than the value of the statement I'm trying to make. And thus a monopoly is maintained.
Oh, and too the moron that marked my initial post offtopic. Next time read the note and sit on your hands. My beef was that I couldn't get support for the product. That actually seems quite on topic.
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Poliglut -
Re:Just last nightBusinesses bigger than yours operated for years
without personal computers. I'd seriously consider paper-based options, using the computer
only for recordkeeping.
Yes, they sure did. However, my accountant no longer accepts paper records. Hasn't for years. I understand why.
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Poliglut