Slashdot Mirror

From the linked Wikipedia article: "The term may include blogs and wikis."

Allow me to introduce you to my friend Venn Diagram.

-Grey

They were simplifying by just saying "blogs"

Right, and by simplifying they strip the word of meaning. That's what I have an issue with.

-Grey

For example, Web 2.0 technologies such as blogs and AJAX are starting to show their potential behind corporate firewalls, analysts said.

Ugh. If you are going to use a buzz word, at least try to use in the right way. I keep a blog and there is nothing 2.0 (collaborative) about it.

-Grey

In related news Microsoft has fired 60,994 employees leaving 6 people working at the company...

So you're saying they didn't fire enough people.

-Grey

Every hour spent in their virtual life is an hour wasted of their real life.

So what are you doing wasting your life on slashdot then, Mr. High and Mighty?

-Grey

Trapped by what? The mindless and meaningless jobs that they hold down working for a multinational corporation.

Perhaps then we should focuse more energy on making work less mindless and meaningless. Most of the people I talk to in the business world reveal they are seriously depressed, if pressed hard enough, because they know their work is meaningless.

-Grey

"People are willing to do tedious, complex tasks within games," notes Nick Yee, a Stanford University graduate student in communications who has extensively studied online games. "What if we could tap into that brainpower?" In other words, your next cubicle could well be inside a virtual world.

The matrix has you.

-Grey

Didn't you get the memo? 1984 = terrorism too now.

-Grey

Do what you love. Be the best.

I'm going to be the best bland platitude espouser I can be.

-Grey

Whatever it is you REALLY enjoy, there is a way to make money at it

This has to be one of the most deceitful things that we tell children in America. How many people do you know who REALLY enjoy what they do?

-Grey

It always happens when you need it the most: the battery of your cellphone just died. But now, researchers of the University of Rochester have developed a wireless chip that needs ten times less power than current designs.

Now I'll just recharge my phone ten times less often and it will still die when I need it most.

-Grey

The proposals have been sent to Congress and include new laws that will require ISPs to report child pornography and bolster penalties for those companies that fail to do so.

Here's my concern with this kind of rule. Suppose someone is online viewing whatever vanilla porn they like and a malicious pop-up ad under false pretenses redirects them to something like really-horrible-k1ddi3-pr0n.xxx. They didn't want to go there, but now their ISP sends their information to the government. What happens to that person now?

-Grey

Reminds me of the old Churchill quote: A fanatic is one who can't change his mind and won't change the subject.

-Grey

In recent years, ICANN has approved ".eu" for the European Union, ".jobs" for human-resources sites, ".travel" for the travel industry, ".mobi" targeting mobile services and ".cat" for the Catalan language, bringing the number of domains to 264. The organization also is in negotiations to create ".xxx" for porn sites, ".asia" for the Asia-Pacific community and ".post" for postal services.

Is is just me, or is the TLD names space getting more and more schizophrenic? What must it have been like when they were deciding the name?

"OK, we'll have .com, .net, .org and .gov. That should cover it"

"What about the travel industry? Don't they need one of their own?"

"Well, I'm not sure..."

"And job hunting websites! They need one too."

"OK, OK. I'll and .jobs and .travel"

"Don't forget about Asia!"

"Oh shit yeah, can't leave out 1/4 of the world now can we? Ok, .com, .net, .org, .gov, .jobs, .travel and .asia. Good work men, I think we've covered everything now."

-Grey

Todd Masonis, a co-founder of contact management service Plaxo Inc., is familiar with the hassles of keeping track of everyone. His parents have had the same house and phone number for some 30 years, and "for a long time that was how they are identified," Masonis said.

Really? Your parents are called Mr and Mrs 945 Chestnut Street? How odd.

-Grey

while individuals would be able to register firstnamelastname.tel.

Wow! I wish I could do that now!

-Wellington Grey

Maybe it should just be "Don't do the crime"? Solves all these problems.

Crime according to who? Your 'solution' only works if you never travel to another country.

-Grey

Dr Palanker reckons the system will give people 20/80 vision - normal is 20/20, you need 20/40 for a driving licence and 20/400 is the legal definition of blindness - allowing people to read large fonts and recognise faces.

And as soon as the technology gets to 20/19 or less, I'll get one if I need it or not. Bring on the cyborgization!

-Grey

So google is just like krispy kreme, it looks great to have all those 'o's laid out before me, but I can never get past the third one.

-Grey

God, I love the circular nature of the net. Notice that the WSJ article links to a wikipedia article that uses the WSF article as its source : )

-Grey

From the article: Why is this happening? Several reasons. One is the prevalence of hacking tools online that can be found simply by using the Google search engine.

So does that mean if I do all my web searches on my windows 98 machine using internet explorer but I use MSN search, not google, I'll be OK?

-Grey

Any theories on how is this going to affect global warming?

As you should know from the holy book we should work hard to increase the number of pirates so his holy spaghettiness will turn down the temperature.

-Grey

From the article: HP's Region-Coded, Expiring Printer Cartridges: Hewlett-Packard, one of the world's leading printer manufacturers, has embedded software in its printers and accompanying toner cartridges to enforce "region coding" restrictions that prevent cartridges purchased in one region from operating with printers purchased in another. This "feature" presumably is intended to support regional market segmentation and price discrimination.

The software embedded in HP printer cartridges also apparently causes them to "expire" after a set amount of time, forcing consumers to purchase new ink, even if the cartridge has not run dry.

Now that's damn evil. After I moved to England, I discovered the that my DVDs no longer worked. But I never knew that this was now in printers as well. How long before some jackass decides to regin-encode my whole laptop?

-Grey

::Crosses fingers:: Common Washington DC!

-Grey

Now, if they had actually trained bats, then we're on to something.

They did in World War II.

-Grey

There is bound to be a post on some obscure forum by some guy named "Tank-H4xor" that gives direction on how to exploit a bug in the system by duct-taping a banana on the missile or a fluffy bunny something :)

Or you could just throw rocks at it until it runs out of projectiles. Nice and cost effective too, as the going rate for rocks is $0 and I imagine this system costs quite a bit more.

-Grey

Damn it! Well where the hell am I supposed to keep my money hidden now? Guess I'll have to move those accounts to Nauru.

-Grey

How do you get half a pixel? Wouldn't that be like trying to get half a bit?

-Grey

It was virtually impossible to provide negative feedback directly, even if it was done in a very polite way. The mere notion that something a person did was a mistake, or even more delicately, was done in a way that could be improved upon in a future iteration, was anathema.

You should try working in a school. It turns out that, on paper, every child is brilliant at everything they do.

-Grey

Once you become a suit, however, you can't say things like that to your fellow suits (at least not in public) because when Alice, Bob or Charlie gets fired, doesn't get a promotion, files a greivance, or feels their bonus is too small, your comments will be held against you.

So corporate speak is a symptom of the greater issue: not being able to fire someone because they are a lazy, selfish asshat.

-Grey

"Indoor environments are really tough," said Erik Steltz, a PhD candidate in electrical engineering at the University of California, Berkeley... For example, in order to zip around indoor obstacles -- walls, corners, bookcases, furniture, ceilings, etc. -- a flyer needs to see the objects and have the brain power to steer away.

Is there a different method used when outdoors? I've never been, so I don't know.

-Grey

But it could one day be shrunk to insect size and used for search and rescue.

Search and rescue my ass. This has spy toy written all over it, why can't we just say that?

-Grey

That's the NY Times for you. They (as part of the mainstream media) don't understand that other media players exist than the iPod.

I'm sure that the editors at the Times understand... they just can't trust the unwashed masses to understand.

-Grey

Why am I suddenly reminded of that episode of South Park where Christopher Reeve sucks the stem cells out of aborted fetuses to make himself stronger?

-Grey

From the article: Google Entertainment? Yeah, its DNA can do that...

Google Hardware? Genetic mission accomplished... The stem-cell question for prospective consumers is, Where would you prefer to buy this hardware...?

Guys like the author are the reason scientific terms get degraded and clouded in the mind of the public. £10 says this guy couldn't give a coherent description of DNA, stem cells OR why he thinks they apply to the business world.

-Grey

Google is on the verge of achieving the holy grail of branding--being all things to all markets.

The fastest and surest was to displease everyone is to try and please everyone.

-Grey

from the see-it's-a-clever-twist-of-one-letter dept.

Boot ==> Bunk is, I believe, three letters. That's OK Zonk, we'll review counting again tomorrow.

-Grey

I think he misses the fact that some people want to move to OS X but are held back by one must-have application. Boot camp is perfect for these people. My mom, for example, really wants to switch to apple after I let her use my ibook, but she has one program that she needs to occasionally use for work that holds her back. Now she can switch, no problems.

-Grey

I was in Boston once. I needed two AC adapters. I ran into this new Apple store. I went up to the counter, "I'd like two 65-watt AC adapters." I didn't say anything about who I was. And they bring them out. I say, "How much?" They say, "We are expensing it." I said, "Yeah, but how do I pay for it?" They said, "No, no, no -- we are allowed to give gifts to special people."

Man oh man, I'd love to know the criterion to get on that list.

-Grey

I notice that the article calls Venus `Earth's Evil Twin'. Does that mean we can expect the probe to detect a large goatee on the surface?

-Grey

Of course you're not a wittle doggie woggie, are you Kettler whettler? Now who wants a treat? Who wants a treat? Good boy!

-Grey

I wonder if they count people getting cut for reading slashdot instead of doing their job?

Oh... you mean slashdot isn't my job?

::looks around::

So just what am I supposed to do in front of this computer all day then?

-Grey

Slightly less doom seems like the perfect slogan for a reformed Microsoft.

-Grey

"Some businesses may in fact regret some of the job cuts they made in recent years, which, in retrospect, may have been too deep. Recent surveys suggest that employers are having an increasingly difficult time finding information technology workers."

So can I be expecting a late night, drunken I'm-so-sorry-I-broke-up-with-you-will-you-please-t ake-me-back phone call from my ex-manager?

-Grey

How does 'decrease in job cuts' equal 'higher demand for IT workers'? That's like saying I've gone from spending £10,000 more than I earn a month to spending only £5,000 more a month so obviously my savings are getting better.

-Grey

One word: Furries

-Grey

But analysts said Cingular is concerned that offering Wi-Fi calls inside a home could hurt its parent companies' landline businesses. Plus, there's the question of how to charge customers, who might expect free calls.

Yes, we mustn't let new technology get in the way of existing revenue streams.

-Grey

Maybe it's just me, but I would think that the preference would be for wifi first, THEN cellular. You'd burn less minutes that way.

You clearly haven't been living in a capitalist country for long if you think that companies give a damn about what the consumer wants.

-Grey

It's entirely possible that the media sources we trust to be accurate are actually riddled with errors.

::Clasps hand over mouth in mock shock and horror::

-Grey

Me: ...then I'm leaving you.

And 10,000 slashdotters rush in to fill the void.

-Grey