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On my 20th birthday I happened to meet my grade 3-5 teacher in a restaurant over lunch and he remarked how I had survived the social experiment that was my 'gifted class'. It wasn't until I managed to find and keep a girlfriend that I found out I was an arrogant ass-hole (why she's with me I'll never know). Since learning about social skills from my gf, I've discovered that the praise culture that develops in gifted classrooms leads to egomania among the students. Gifted students learn faster/better, but that doesn't make them special. They have other failings that average students may not have. I still have ego problems (I'll do just about anything for praise, and I have real problems internalizing criticism) but I'm better than I was. I don't know how any of what I've said answers your original question, but I guess I'm trying to say that teaching and raising 'gifted' kids is definitely not a solved problem.

I think humbleness is sorely lacking amongst people with talent. When you match humbleness with talent, you get people like Linus Torvalds. Check out this article at Wired. It was linked from the front page of Slashdot a while back but I'm too lazy to look for the link. The first sentence of the article is "Linus Torvalds wants me to believe he's too boring for this story." I kinda doubt someone like ESR would ever be the subject of an article that started out that way. Arrogance is a real problem amongst the geek culture, and I think it's arrogance that stands between many geeks and a thriving social life. I work as a co-op student at a local software company, and I'm fortunate to work with a few bright people--all graduates of computer programmes at a fairly prestigious university. The social lives of my co-workers are just about inversly proportional to their level of arrogance.

Perhaps it is the socially-skilled people who curtail their arrogance, and not the humble people who garner lots of friends--I can't determine causation from correlation--but it's obvious to me that the two attributes go hand in hand, and I think it's telling that my circle of friends has a rather narrow radius whereas my ego sometimes gets stuck on the doorframe.

Ian

I was talking about the general public walking down the street blocking out the rest of the world because they wanted to be in their "cocoon".

Or it can turn into a new social phenomenon!

lot of people use it to go to work, for commuting. I found that they use the same music on a regular basis. They will often play the same half-dozen tunes for three months, and each part of the journey has its own tune... It gives them control of the journey, the timing of the journey and the space they are moving through.

Dr. Michael Bull was written up in Wired magazine, too, and Slashdot carried that story last month. Here it is.

Wired ran an article on this guy a couple of weeks ago. So, if you wondering why this sounds familiar, now you know.

here
That radio was distributed in war zones and refugee camps.

By the way that's a great article on subject, i.e. personally powered devices :)

1. Nuclear energy is not as unsafe as GreenPeace claims.

The iPod mini drive is reportedly NOT working in digital cameras, something to do with formatting..

Wired News has more on this whole thing about the MuVo2..

Guess I'll have to use this damn iPod mini for listening to music, instead of.. um.. tolkien ring??

Ellen Batzel says the case changed her life.
"This was a small, North Carolina mountain town -- I talked to the (district attorney) and he said 'Get a dog, get a gun, get a security system or better yet get out of town.' I sold my house and moved. I've been hurt in my professional reputation and in my private life.
"I know what free speech is, and I support it, but this is about invasion of privacy and my civil liberty. Every time I meet someone now, I have to say, 'Hi, I'm not Himmler's granddaughter."

Ellen Batzel says the case changed her life.
"This was a small, North Carolina mountain town -- I talked to the (district attorney) and he said 'Get a dog, get a gun, get a security system or better yet get out of town.' I sold my house and moved. I've been hurt in my professional reputation and in my private life.
"I know what free speech is, and I support it, but this is about invasion of privacy and my civil liberty. Every time I meet someone now, I have to say, 'Hi, I'm not Himmler's granddaughter."

Wired has a story about how HP, as part of a larger drive to figure out how ideas ideas 'infect' large groups of people, is scientifically proving what most people already know: bloggers steal their ideas from other bloggers !!!

Check it out !

And another thing:

Wired has up a story about HP, as part of a larger drive to figure out how ideas ideas 'infect' large groups of people, scientifically proving what most people already knew: bloggers steal their ideas from other bloggers.

And another thing:

Wired has up a story about HP, as part of a larger drive to figure out how ideas ideas 'infect' large groups of people, scientifically proving what most people already knew: bloggers steal their ideas from other bloggers.

I just read a story this morning that kind of says there are a lot of people that still need to learn that lesson.

You might want to read up on your history yourself. Jobs took over the mac project when he was kicked out of the lisa project, and Raskin quit over what Jobs did to it.

The problem with Jobs is that he always wanted perfection, and perfection is too expensive. The lisa, the mac, next, all suffered from overdesign and the resulting price tag.

Because the law isn't always the best yardstick of right and wrong. Currently, the laws that govern this kind of behavior are the result of some of the most intense lobbying ever. They're overblown.

I believe in checks and balances in the system. Having a single unilateral entity that answers to nobody is not how the system is supposed to work. Currently the RIAA/MPAA are sidestepping due process with the help of a senator, Fritz Hollings. Do a little research on him. Search Google for his nickname, "The Senator from Disney", so named because of his being bankrolled by the entertainment industry. Here's an example of the kind of nonsense this guy is trying to make into law.

As an example of the way things work now, let's say you share a music file. The RIAA logs on to the network and finds "this IP is sharing this file". They then bully your ISP into divulging their records, and then threaten to sue you for millions, and "allow" you to settle for thousands.

The FBI currently doesn't have that much leeway in pursuing criminals. Think about that. Now consider that they're still lobbying. What's next? They've already asserted that if the music went to your account, you are responsible. Even if it wasn't you. They've busted grandparents who's grandkids downloaded music. What if your machine gets a virus and sets itself up as a file swapping node?

Another problem with the RIAA, is that they fail to meet their established purpose. They are supposed to facilitate music and protect musicians, but instead do the exact opposite. They're essentially an extortion racket, and have been since long before the first MP3 was burned.

If you'd like to know about what a nest of criminals the RIAA are, read this article by Steve Albini. It's a must-read about how the music industry works. They're a protection racket.

And with the exception of Metallica (who, as everyone knows were replaced by pod people replicants late in '97), how many musicians can you name that are in favor of the RIAA's legal thrashings about? If the RIAA is helping people, wouldn't those people stand up and say thank you? The silence is deafening.

Do a little research. Here's a good example, an interview with Mark Mothersbaugh of Devo fame. It's a good read, especially where music executives fly him to Jamaica, get him higher than a kite and try to get him to sign legal documents.

Make no mistake, the RIAA are scum. And the fact that their lobbying has given them powers that compare well with the NSA should make you worry. It does me - and I don't share music. It gives me the creeps when criminals get that kind of power.

Weaselmancer

I wonder if you could hack this device so that it includes a Hitachi mini-hard drive? That would be sorta cool. You could get one cheap by taking it out of a Creative Muvo, like in this wired article.

This is now the standard historical rewrite of the Microsoft Anti-trust trial one finds on Slashdot, and quite frankly it's largely bullshit. I'm not in the least a supporter of Bush, but it is bothersome to see the story of the case repeatedly spun as an overly simplistic conspiracy theory.

A couple points:
1) You neglected to mention that the appeals court knocked out several of the verdicts, and basically told the lower courts that they weren't going to let a breakup happen.

2) Clinton DOJ was begging to settle the case as well, from the very beginning. However Microsoft absolutely refused. The original judge held the case several times and the single fact that made him so angry is that Microsoft repeatedly left a very good deal on the table.

Check out this story from Wired for some real reporting, rather than conspiracies.

> IBM still has a policy of never smearing a competitor as far as I am aware... ;)

lol, you make them sound so fluffy

IBM's founder spent time in prison for his string arm dealings in the cash register business (smashing up stuff, dumping, threatening).

He was awarded Nazi Germany's highest honour for a foriegner for leasing Holleriths and programmers to the Third Riech (they didn't run 10million+ slave workers with pencil & paper).

The story is an interesting read. Especially with regard to personal data & the unseen hand.

I wonder what a happened in this lawsuit.

Sorry to disagree with you, but SCO might never beat 3D Realms and their "Duke Nukem whenever". They even managed to get the Wired's first "Vaporware Lifetime Achievement Award", see here.

At least, SCO hasn't reached the stage where they simply set their release dates to "When it's done" :-)

Look, I'ma War President [smirk]. Since 9/11, we realized we can't sit around waiting for things to happen. We need to act now. Al Queda operatives are trying to destroy America. Saddam was a dangerous evil dictator. By hurting big business, the terrorists will win. Democrats want to let the terrorists win, tax corporations and put "Queer Eye" reruns on C-Span. These are things we know.

Now, I don't know about you, but that last election? Where people say I didn't win [lip curl], even though the U.S. Supreme Court had run out the clock to make sure I did [grin]? Well, I felt bad when I heard those poor old, octogenarian Jews in Palm Beach County get all confused over the Butterfly ballots.

Now, with those electric voting machines? We can just flip a switch and turn those confused votes into the proper votes. We don't have time to wait around for the machines to be modified to keep paper records. At least not until after the re-election [smirk].

I have been assured by all the electric voting systems companies, all great supporters of the Republican Party, that their machines are in perfect working order and don't need audits or a paper trail to mess things up. Don't let the terrorists win!

It's been 3 1/2 years since napster was shut down -- with a 4-year college, that means that anyone who used the old napster will be graduating out in about 2 1/2 months. This doesn't leave a lot of time for the new napster to get traction on the coattails of the old, especially when iTunes has been out since before the beginning of the school year.

In 1975, he bet Kip Thorne a subscription to Penthouse (the loser would get it mailed to his home) that a celestial mystery named Cygnus X-1 would turn out to be a black hole.

a sewage line

HACK THE SPEW!!!!

why the hell can't i use lots of capitals? what lamer thought up these lameness filters?

He think it's a good idea and reminds people it's a perfect example of a natural monopoly, except in this case, citizens own the infrastructure, not a private organization. Go local fiber runs!

For more information: Intresting news article

Sorry, Brazil's voting systems are made by Diebold.

And, according to Slashdot gruopthink, Diebold must be banned, and anyone who says otherwise is a troll.

Contrast that to the MIT AI and CS Lab, which does and has done outstanding work, in hard AI, theory, robotics, vision, and so on.

Still, the Media Lab just seems like the most fun place to work.

The "Patriot" Act was passed without some Congressmen and women even reading it. It was named that to intimidate members of Congress. Vote against this bill and you will be against patriotism!

The "Patriot" Act was supposed to protect us against people who want to destroy our entire society. Now its being used to harass citizens who do something stupid, and have no political motive. If they get away with this, you will see more and more extensions of government police power. History has shown that, even if they don't get away with it, they will try again.

More and more we are seeing examples of prosecutors who don't want sensible justice, but who just want other people to hurt, because of their own personal mental issues. Last week the Oprah Winfrey show provided another example: An 18-year-old man had sex with a 16-year-old woman at his school. (Big surprise, there.) Later she accused him of rape, and he was found NOT guilty. But he was put into prison for 10 years anyway. The prosecutor said that was entirely justified, and that he had no problems with the punishment.

The U.S. government is rapidly becoming more corrupt. Here are just a few examples:

Killing people and destroying their property:
N.Y. Times editorial
"... Americans paid Ahmad Chalabi to gull them into a war that is costing them a billion a week and a precious human cost."

Lying about scientific facts:
"The Bush administration has deliberately and systematically distorted scientific fact in the service of policy goals..."
N.Y. Times
The Guardian
Wired News
Union of Concerned Scientists

The present terrorism against the U.S. people is partly the result of the U.S. government's secret violence:
About a year ago, I hastily put together a short, incomplete history that shows what has happened: History surrounding the U.S. war with Iraq: Four short stories.

I have to admit. I didn't RTFA :) Details of the transition problems are presented better here
The best source is the heise.de and Computerwoche articles, but those are in German :)

The main problems are as follows:
- The project's timeline was too short. They specified two years to migrate 14,000 desktops. That's a challenge for a Windows->Windows transition, much less a Linux->Windows transition.
- They are hitting funding problems.
- Users need to be retrained for the new software.
- Contractors need to move their apps to the new platform.

Most of these are inherent to any transition, especially one of this magnitude.

This article gives a few more details: http://www.wired.com/news/infostructure/0,1377,622 36,00.html

I learned a lot back in the day from Webmonkey. Well, as long as they don't pull the plug on Cocktail.

No, we all know that PC games are better, especially better for online play. For many mant reasons which I will not go into and are also obvious to anyone who has played Xbox Live. There were several articles written by Wired Magazine about MS's real motivation for making the Xbox. And it was to get a new breed of online gamers hooked, and also to incorporate themselves into the living room by adding a DVD player to it. MS knows that the xbox live games and service is not as good as PC online games. But it does have fairly good graphics, full voice chat with headset, and friends list and many chat and game features that in my opinion are well worth 50 dollars a year to play all of their LIVE titles online as much as I want. It is also nice to sit on my couch sometimes and hold a controller, I am an old school gamer, so I dig it. But the games are not as nice and Gaming Clan friendly as PC games are, and MS knows it. They are trying to get people to but more computers, and that is what the Xbox has done. They aim it at the 15-17 year old kid who lives at home and cannot use mommy and daddy's computer for games, but can plug his xbox into their router or the cable modem when they are not using it, and can go to a retailer and pay 50 bucks and play some online games. These are the same gamers who will withyin a year or two will end up migrating over to PC games after a taste of the online environment. :)

And if you think that's kewl... just check out the NSA's plans for a Death Star.[article] Or perhaps we don't need Bush'd new quadrillion dollar budget for manned space flight to Mars after all. Maybe we can all get there with no fuel. And since it "can stop in mid-flight" we can all stop at the In-N-Out burger joint on the moon on the way.

The only thing necessary for Micro$oft to triumph is for a few good programmers to do nothing". North County Computers

That sentence makes no sense at all.

Makes it hard to gauge whether a decision maker is overly biased..

Not really as a biased decision will go against the precedent of previous cases the refreshing and updating only applies if there is something new and different about this case and the decision can be appealed and any bias will stand, current example being the Hutton report which stands out as possible the most bias decision ever made by and acting judge

A dangerous decision made by a dangerous man can easily seem local and isolated

Again this makes it more obvious (see Hutton report) that a bad decision has occurred and again no decision is totally final and is subject to peer review.

This makes a fearful society somewhat dangerous, because only a very fearful society would dig through all that code to find that old junk which was encoded when society was highly fearful as a standard

This helps the first sentence make sense but this does nothing to stop them trying to bring in new laws like TIA Governments change laws all the time to suit there bias.

The amount of time someone like Bush spend yapping about it to the public to try to convince people betrays his bias and it's a signal clear as daylight that people need to be worried.

Very true but there is little that can be done once he has got a law passed because "In the US laws are hardly ever refreshed and updated or for that matter thrown out." and then the judges are stuck with the bias something that is less likely to happen in the UK because "In Britain the law is constantly "updated and refreshed" because the judge can decide whether some section applies or not." so a judge is not stuck with government bias. Which is more middle of the road and which is more extreme a legally system that is hard to change even if the law is makes a complete mockery of justice (US) or a legal system that can change when the law makes a complete mockery of justice (UK)

Published in 1970, yet still insightful today:

Future Shock by Alvin Toffler.

-kgj

The real question is why you, who appear passionately interested in this topic, have not provided any links with relevant background information.

I'm mildly curious, but the merely curious are lazy. Certainly I'm not sufficiently interested to sift through all the press releases and mailing list posts to actually find more than the first couple of nuggets of digestible information.

If you already know something about the project, you are much better placed than I to do a little background research. Go for it!

Links:

Linex (their custom distro): http://www.linex.org/ (in Spanish); here's Google translation to English
Reprint of a Wash. Post article
a Wired article

Wired had a short article on by Bruce Sterling: Wired News: Extremadura Measures: Linux

I thought it was pretty obvious the "redesigns" were all intended as jokes. Nobody could possible take the first two seriously coming from a company with Google's track record, and the third looked like a parody of what it might look like post-IPO. It looked more like, after the first two pointed out how horrible Google *could* be (don't you all know sites that look just like those?), the third artist showed a more reasonable step backward that might happen if the design firms got their hands on it.

And then there's the Google Button... brilliant idea, if done right (and I have no idea where to start doing it right). In this case it's the cartoons that are the joke, not the concept.

I mean, come on. How can you read that last panel and take the rest of it seriously? It works too well as a punchline!

I looked at that picture and I imagined that, instead of bringing up a Google search, it summons a Goon squad to beat the crap out of that student.

Look at the crap these guys put together.

First off, the first guy's "idea" is nothing but a rip-off of this contest winning idea.

The others are nothing but blatant political posturing.

Scott

The redesigns aren't very impressive, but you've got to love this picture, though. :)
The article it's in is mediocre, but that's a gem.

The redesigns aren't very impressive, but you've got to love this picture, though. :)
The article it's in is mediocre, but that's a gem.

A profound quote from the Google vs. Gates article examining why Microsoft is so obsessed with Google as Longhorn draws nearer:

"Microsoft looks at Google and sees its own past, full of promise."

You need to convince the DRM developer that his scheme is unbreakable and that no further review will help. Then you convince all the media companies to make them standard. ...and then you break it (see DVD CSS) and you're able to use the CD/DVD you bought as you please.

RSA is, of course, trying to sell a product, but I prefer this solution, which pretty much eliminates the RFID specific privacy concerns. If the tag is disabled when it leaves the store, the privacy concerns aren't any different than with bar codes. Other stories on this feature here and here.

Note that companies can combine UPC data gathered from the check out with credit and customer-loyalty-card information to create detailed profiles of their customers, so this issue isn't specific to RFID tags, and need to be addressed seperately.

Wired did an article on this: Is RFID Technology Easy to Foil?

Sorry, quoting my post I once again forgot the link. It's The Electric Kool-Aid Bandwidth Test by Evan Ratliff, Wired, November 2001. Everyone who is interested in this story should read the whole article. I quoted only few short fragments.

The most important point about Broadband Over Power Lines is why anyone started to even think about building it. We have to ask that question before we start to talk about interference and other obvious details. Was it because most of potential Internet users don't have telephone lines? No. It was because we cannot have billion gigabits per second using copper, while according to Luke Stewart with power lines we somehow can.

Sorry, quoting my post I once again forgot the link. It's The Electric Kool-Aid Bandwidth Test by Evan Ratliff, Wired, November 2001. Everyone who is interested in this story should read the whole article. I quoted only few short fragments.

The most important point about Broadband Over Power Lines is why anyone started to even think about building it. We have to ask that question before we start to talk about interference and other obvious details. Was it because most of potential Internet users don't have telephone lines? No. It was because we cannot have billion gigabits per second using copper, while according to Luke Stewart with power lines we somehow can.