Let's just think about this in terms of the legal system not being so far removed from what actual people say to one another. (A difficult notion, I know.) Let's pretend we're a primitive people with no courts and we resolve things via public dispute.
Mr. Rambus stands up on a soapbox and shouts something about Mr. Infineon. It is an accusation, a claim that Mr. Infineon has committed some grave offense. The common rabble is worried, and asks for evidence. They are dedicating their time and money to listen to Mr. Rambus shout, time and money they could be using to be productive themselves. But they take Mr. Rambus seriously, so they let him shout and ask for evidence.
Mr. Rambus is unable to come up with any evidence. Everyone involved reaches the conclusion that Mr. Rambus is full of it, and they go home. Now -- Mr. Rambus has lost face in front of a lot of people, but it is not difficult to imagine that if he had another legitimate complaint, people might listen to him. But if he started shouting a second time, demanding the time and attention of all the people involved, and still had nothing to go on -- well, eventually people would ignore him.
Now imagine that, instead of just shouting a second time, he shouted 56 more times. People had to drop what they were doing and dedicate time and energy to listen him go on and on about claims that, eventually, were found to be baseless. He would be thrown out of the community for wasting so much of everyone's time.
While we don't all congregate every time someone shouts something bad about someone else in real life, it's not that far from the truth. Every claim someone makes against someone else requires taxpayer dollars for our court system to review it. The judge's time is taken away from other things. And in this case, the case didn't even proceed -- Rambus and his shouting were thrown out of court. The societal equivalent to being told 'you, sir, are full of it. Get out of here and never return.' Once upon a time, this would be humbling. You would spend a lot of time making up to the community the resources you'd forced them to spend. You'd apologize to the parties involved. But Mr. Rambus is too proud to do that. He relies on his capitalist system without any kind of the temperence necessary to make capitalist work for someone else besides the capitalist. He is going to spend more time and more money, even after he was told by his peers (does anyone out there actually AGREE with Rambus?) and the law that he's wasting everyone's time.
O, how I long for the days when such people would be put in stocks in the public square....
When I read the case in L.A., I see two children both whom made rash choices in judgement further exaserbated by irresponsible rash judgement on the part of school officals. I disagree that snitching is inherently bad - that it corrupts "democracy" as some have stated - The realtiy is Society is becoming fragmented enough that we as individuals need to serve as an extension of the police and report potential danger accordingly. The danger of this policy is evident in this L.A. case - Those who police the information need to use due diligence in exploring the potential danger and innocence of the situation. Getting Sued as is happening to the School board now, is an excellent example of checks and balances.
So I'm not a patent expert, or even a patent afficianado. Simple question, though.
These are patents on 'the method for,' not on the thing itself; ergo if I patent a method for baking a pie, I can sue if someone else steals my method for baking the pie, but I can't sue them for baking a similar pie using their own methods -- after all, other search engines don't produce the same results as Altavista. They may be indexing, but they're not indexing the same way Altavista does, right?
I was a PC Technician for Best Buy for about 2 1/2 years, back when I was about 16. I worked summers and December as a seasonal employee, but actually ended up running the department because five out of the five full time managers they brought in to be my 'supervisor' were fired, and that long before the true measure of their ineptitude became apparent to anyone but their co-workers. BR>My last summer there, I went to punch in my first day back and got a strange error code. "Your file is probably just screwed up," said the manager. So I simply kept manual track of my time and submitted my paperwork at the end of every single shift for two months.
Only, when payday came around, I didn't get paid. I complained at the beginning of July, and they called the big head HR place and informed me that I had been terminated back in January due to a corporate directive that Best Buy could not hold over more than 4 seasonal employees from Christmas, and I had not been one of those four. Not only had I not been notified, but I had been working for 6 weeks before we even found out.
Fortunately, I got along well with everyone there and they promised to straighten it out; it was, they said, a violation of the policy for me to be working there, but they would not go back on their word that they gave me and so they kept me on until the end of that Summer. I hadn't been paid because payroll wouldn't issue a paycheck to a terminated employee. So they said to just submit my hours manually (As I had been doing) and I'd get paid. Another pay period went by, and still no paycheck. Turns out that they'd lost all of my paperwork and had no idea how many hours to pay me for. Put in that position, they said to me 'Well, tell us how many hours you worked.'
This would've been a good opportunity for justice, but I did my best at beind honest and it turned out okay. If a bit embarassing for them.
I was in college by then, and they still had a policy that they couldn't re-hire me seasonally, so I left after that.
Places like Best Buy need college-educated employees; they could've kept a loyal employee, but instead they went their usual route of hiring a new batch every few months, after the last batch is fired or quits.
Just because we're not in Massachusetts doesn't mean we don't count! Really! Hey...hey! Is anyone listening?
Cornell has a somewhat lengthy policy that equates to 'You can use Napster for illegal stuff. If you do, they might sue you. We don't think it's a good idea to do illegal stuff. Otherwise, enjoy!' They are more concerned about saturating their uber-network than anything else; practically enough, the network administrators say it is their responsibility to make sure the network is okay, and your responsibility to make sure you're obeying the law.
"Cornell routinely monitors network usage patterns. Interfering with the ability of others to use network services violates university policy and can result in termination of access to university network services."
Nowhere in the university policy do they indicate that they have any intention of actually policing what you do with the network. They have busted a few people for running huge MP3 servers, but if those kids choose to break the law and do it in such a manner as to have huge neon signs pointing to their flagrant abuse of an academic network, they have it coming...
I'm recalling some of this from an Astronomy class I took over a year ago, so I don't remember a lot of the details on how this works. But if I remember correctly, it's not a case of needing 6000+ telescopes to 'equal' Arecibo. Using something called Radio Interferometry, you can have two medium-size telescopes a kilometer apart, and have them function as one big one (for an accurate, detailed description of how Interferometry works, check out this site.Examples of existing telescope arrays using this technology are the LBA and the VLBA, which I think stands for 'Long baseline Array' and 'Very long Baseline array,' where they stretch out over several miles--I think the VLBA is in New Mexico. I may have either the acronyms or the meanings messed up, but I think that's the gist of it.
It does take some of us a little longer to achieve true uber-geek status, you know; not all of us are born into a Slashdot queue. I would hate for someone to get the wrong idea about Slashdot by seeing such an informative piece (as yours was) ended by a 'You are too dumb to be here' remark. If it is truly so below you to respond, then don't. You obviously know what you're talking about, but the arrogance that comes across in your statement astounds those of us who aren't quite as smart into not wanting to ever ask anything on Slashdot, because God Forbid it should be beneath you.
I find all of this talk about whose fault all of this is rather disgusting. Obviously, some engineer made a minor alteration before launch and simply forgot to reboot windows to allow the change to take effect. See what happens when you don't take MS seriously? Tsk, tsk.
Read the 'Judge Jackson is wrong' bit to the right of this story. Robert Levy, who apparently seems to have significant credentials, says all manner of interesting things. The most striking:
"Third," says the judge, "Microsoft's customers lack a commercially viable alternative to Windows." Yet, virtually no new application software using client-specific code is being written.
Isn't nearly -all- application software client specific? Isn't this why companies like Loki can exist, to rewrite existing software for other OSes? Isn't almost every commercial piece of software in any retail store for Windows? (Obviously there is a lot of professional stuff for other OSes, but look at 'mainstream software'). Another:
Mr. Reynolds estimates that Microsoft's share of all 1999 desktop shipments will be 70 percent. If that constitutes a monopoly, he notes, then the Justice Department better investigate Quicken and America Online, which have long enjoyed market shares exceeding 70 percent.
He's comparing an operating system to an application? An OS which dictates how most other software must be written being compared to applications that have competitors, are not forced upon their consumers unwittingly, and don't affect anything but their specific purpose (i.e. you don't have to write software for AOL, you write it for windows). Also, how does AOL have a seventy percent market share? They have what, 17 million subscribers? 19 million? Where some of those subscribers are folks like me, who have an AOL account but don't ever use it, because we have other ISP accounts or use a school network. If 17 million is 70% of the whole Internet, slap me silly and call me Susan.
I don't know who Robert Levy is, but he needs to be smack'd with a clue-by-four.
While I think this discussion definitely has a place on Slashdot, the most important thing to remember about anything having to do with relationships is that everyone is different, even if they do exactly the same things for a living. There are similarities between the kinds of things 'geeks' look for; that is, we might be more sensitive than 'jocks' and such, but there are exceptions to every crowd.
That said -- with the disclaimer that I am not any kind of expert on the subject -- I'll relate my personal experience in a very brief form.
The most important thing any geek (anyone at all, in fact) has to ask themselves is 'What do I want in a woamn?' Some people look for mates with similar lifestyles to their own, i.e. one geek finding another online and getting married. That's cool. Sometimes it works. You have a whole lot in common, which is a good thing.
Personally, though, I look for people who aren't the same as me, people who will jar me out of the little bubble I live in (and especially go to school in) and give me a new perspective on things -- soemone who will force me to do something I wouldn't have done on my own.
A bit of background: I am, at least from 9-5, a geek. I'm a network technician and all of the jobs I've had and still have involve me working with computers nearly all of the time. I'm also a musician and an actor, and so I have a life outside of my 'work' -- something I highly reccommend to anyone who works in an industry as engulfing as IT. My SO is not involved with computers at all, doesn't really like them, and has little interest in the specifics of what I do. She's also drop-dead sexy, far beyond the sort that I ever thought I could win over.
The best advice I can give to a Slashdotter (or anyone else) looking for a mate is: Don't actively seek out a mate. Or at least, if you do, don't make it look that way. If you're not trying, you're being yourself; you're not stressed out over what someone else's impression of you is, and you're not worried about what they think of you. Even if you are concerned about these things, the trick is to 'act natural' -- don't have any expectations. Don't say 'I want that one to come home with me tonight'... instead, just go talk to that one. Subtlety is the key.
Be flexible. Most fulltime IT people (which, thankfully, I am not) have extraordinarily hectic schedules. Make sure your priorities are in order. An understanding mate should be able to accept that you'll have emergencies periodically, but if you find yourself spending every weekend and holiday at the office at her expense, no matter how justified your employer might be in asking you to go, your relationship will suffer. One of the biggest problems among adult relationships is that a lot of adults simply don't have (or make) time for them.
So in summary: -- Expand your horizons. If you spend 24/7 doing IT stuff, try to find a hobby or something that you're interested in, something you're passionate about (unless you really get dramatic over routers and hubs). People like that. Not just women. -- Don't be an asshole. If you're the kind of person who pushes five scrillion buttons to get the first post in on Slashdot all the time, you're spending too much time on Slashdot, and you need to go outside and see if prolonged exposure to the sun doesn't melt your epidermis. Also, if you're the kind of person who posts exclusively 'Jon Katz is a moron,' 'Aquitaine is a Moron,' 'I hated this article,' or 'Fuck off,' then you're got other issues to deal with. -- Be thoughtful/spontaneous. Have limits, though. Some women get easily freaked out by things that they are 'traditionally' supposed to like. I know one girl who hates roses because they make her feel obligated. And yet the best thing she says any guy did for her was to give her one blue-and-red rose. Makes no sense. Women are like that. Female != Logic gate. -- Have confidence. You're probably smarter than at least a good portion of the competition, but the trick is: don't compete. You care, but die before you'd ever admit it before the finish line. This makes for good stories later, too -- 'Remember that time I totally ignored you at Joe's? Yeah, well, I was/so/ drooling all over the carpet...'
This is precisely what I'm referring to. Do you honestly believe that he is some weak-minded idiot who exists just to force other people to read his verbage? If he were truly just 'seeking attention' he certainly could find a more receptive (but less intellectual) forum than Slashdot, since most of his articles win him nothing more than verbal assaults and reprimands. Coming from Academia, I can find quite easily a lot of pseudo-intellectual discussion that is purely a waste of time, so perhaps I just find Katz's stuff a not all that bad relatively speaking. Nevertheless, if you are offended, then you are disturbed; Katz is doing his job. It's a shame you don't have anything else to offer any of his several points besides 'this sucks.'
Greetings, As an avid reader of Slashdot, I think I can safely cite a thread like this as the primary reason I'm generally afraid to post anything. The often militant responses to this (and other Katz articles) illustrate very clearly one of Katz's primary points--the failure of the American sense of 'freedom' to say what you wish, to stir up discussion without fear of being shot down, well, within just about two hours, there are about two hundred comments, nearly all of which are inflamatory remarks against Katz, or immediate rejection of Singer's theories.
Katz made an issue that a discussion about Euthanasia could only take place in the relative 'underground' of a place like Slashdot, but it seems apparent that not even Slashdot is ready for it. Katz, despite being attacked for 'ranting leftist idealogy' and promoting 'thought control,' quite clearly said that he wasn't sure about the issue. Jon Katz is not advocating killing children. He's merely using Singer as an example -- and a good one -- of how our culture tends to find any excuse it can (Katz's need of an editor, in one comment, or several past articles that are entirely unrelated to his present point) to utterly destroy any notion that is foreign to our accepted standards of what is ethical. Ideally, I tend to think of the 'geek' avant garde as being less reactionary and more directly critical and thoughtful of any notion, be it Katz's, Singer's, or CmdrTaco's, but there is an unnerving tendancy to blow the author out of the water because (in prior episodes) he actually used Microsoft Word to write it.
Maybe we should actually consider the points Katz is trying to get at, rather than attacking the pencil he's using to elucidate them? Or go another step and forget about attacking the person holding the pencil; Katz is trying to do what writers do best, which is to ask questions of his audience. Faulkner, Hemmingway, Fitzgerald, and any other great writer didn't come out and deliver earth-shattering epiphanes that made people go 'Whoa!' They pointed out something about their readers that profoundly disturbed them.
So be disturbed, and consider the questions that Katz (via Singer) asks; perhaps we'd see more than one or two posts above a '3' that way.
First: Your usage of the term 'illuminate' I hope was meant to be analogous, since radio signals are (duh) not in the optical wavelength and don't illuminate anything except people listening for it, such as SETI.
Also First: There are billions upon billions of frequencies at which they could send even a strong signal. It is very easy (even for us) to send a concentrated, focused beam pretty much anywhere in space, but if the guys we're sending it to don't know where to listen, they won't ever hear it. If you want to send a powerful, broadband signal, that increases the amount of power required by orders of magnitude.
Second: Granted any technological civilization will find means of 'containing' their electromagnetic leakage, but remember how photons travel in space. If we broadcast for 100 years signals powerful enough to travel, say, 100 light years (such as military & navigational radio signals are) then it will be 100 years from when you started broadcasting them before the people at the edge of that radius detect it -- ergo making the effective 'detection' time 200 years.
Also, it's not so much a question of us detecting electromagnetic leaks as it is simply detecting anything at all. There are plenty of natural radio signals out there that are worth our study; research is being done with Radio galaxies, which are pretty neat. Even if we don't find little green men, we'll find something.
Yeah -- he came a few weeks ago to the Astro 299 class. Terzian and some others came to watch, it was quite fun. I don't think it was an open lecture though.
From what I understand, he stops by periodically (since he taught here for a gazillion years) but his schedule with SETI keeps him busy.
The part of the spectrum they are analyzing (the part the Arecibo telescope tends to focus on) is generally about 1.4 GHz (and ranges, according to Project Phoenix, between 1-3 GHz). This is the notorious '21 cm line' -- the wavelength at which certain hydrogen particles emit photons when their electrons change energy states... that's the layman's explanation anyway, but suffice it to say that this part of the spectrum is about as much of the 'universal language' as we have been able to figure out.
Anybody bright enough to build something powerful enough to transmit/receive signals in space will know about the 21cm line.
Actually, Seti @ Home is very much affiliated with the SETI project. I attended a lecture given by Frank Drake (President of SETI) when he was here @ Cornell a few weeks ago and he devoted a good chunk of his closing remarks to the Seti @ Home project. Obviously it has access to the radio data gathered by the Project Phoenix team, and if you check out the Seti Insitute's home page, you will see several references.
So essentially, it is not 'some guy' -- it isn't a big cohesive government project (if it were,/. would be doubly critical and skeptical of it) but rather a team of researchers, engineers, and Plain Old Folks who have the technical know-how to put together something like this. The idea is a lot of hype, yes, but so is the whole idea of SETI. The field of Astronomy is one of constant disappointment and extremely infrequent tangible discovery, but just the prospect of that discovery has kept the field (and projects like SETI, which is privately funded with a budget of $4 million a year, travelling between the Arecibo telescope in Puerto Rico ala Golden eye from Australia with a second, verification telescope in Manchester) alive for centuries.
No respectable astronomer with the ambition and drive to succeed, even when confronted by the 'astronomical' improbability of doing so is ever 'just some guy.' I regret that I don't have the physics knowledge to be one of them myself.
Check out http://www.seti.org. As has already been stated, SETI is not a part of NASA; the actual 'search for extraterrestrial life' run by SETI is called Project Phoenix, named aptly because it 'rose out of the ashes' of its predecessor, the NASA HRMS (High-Resolution Microwave Survey) when a mid-western Senator demanded that HRMS be cut from NASA's budget (ironically, HRMS was only.1% of NASA's budget anyway)... but the upshot of all that is that the SETI program, and esp. the Seti @ Home program is run by a bunch of guys with a lot of (time/money/knowledge) on their hands who have no interest in duping the general public. I had the good fortune of meeting their president, Frank Drake (of the Drake equation, former Cornell professor, now UC Santa something or the other) and he's a brilliant older fellow who is as embittered against the US Government as anyone on Slashdot.
Slashdot Mirror
Let's just think about this in terms of the legal system not being so far removed from what actual people say to one another. (A difficult notion, I know.) Let's pretend we're a primitive people with no courts and we resolve things via public dispute.
Mr. Rambus stands up on a soapbox and shouts something about Mr. Infineon. It is an accusation, a claim that Mr. Infineon has committed some grave offense. The common rabble is worried, and asks for evidence. They are dedicating their time and money to listen to Mr. Rambus shout, time and money they could be using to be productive themselves. But they take Mr. Rambus seriously, so they let him shout and ask for evidence.
Mr. Rambus is unable to come up with any evidence. Everyone involved reaches the conclusion that Mr. Rambus is full of it, and they go home. Now -- Mr. Rambus has lost face in front of a lot of people, but it is not difficult to imagine that if he had another legitimate complaint, people might listen to him. But if he started shouting a second time, demanding the time and attention of all the people involved, and still had nothing to go on -- well, eventually people would ignore him.
Now imagine that, instead of just shouting a second time, he shouted 56 more times. People had to drop what they were doing and dedicate time and energy to listen him go on and on about claims that, eventually, were found to be baseless. He would be thrown out of the community for wasting so much of everyone's time.
While we don't all congregate every time someone shouts something bad about someone else in real life, it's not that far from the truth. Every claim someone makes against someone else requires taxpayer dollars for our court system to review it. The judge's time is taken away from other things. And in this case, the case didn't even proceed -- Rambus and his shouting were thrown out of court. The societal equivalent to being told 'you, sir, are full of it. Get out of here and never return.' Once upon a time, this would be humbling. You would spend a lot of time making up to the community the resources you'd forced them to spend. You'd apologize to the parties involved. But Mr. Rambus is too proud to do that. He relies on his capitalist system without any kind of the temperence necessary to make capitalist work for someone else besides the capitalist. He is going to spend more time and more money, even after he was told by his peers (does anyone out there actually AGREE with Rambus?) and the law that he's wasting everyone's time.
O, how I long for the days when such people would be put in stocks in the public square....
When I read the case in L.A., I see two children both whom made rash choices in judgement further exaserbated by irresponsible rash judgement on the part of school officals. I disagree that snitching is inherently bad - that it corrupts "democracy" as some have stated - The realtiy is Society is becoming fragmented enough that we as individuals need to serve as an extension of the police and report potential danger accordingly. The danger of this policy is evident in this L.A. case - Those who police the information need to use due diligence in exploring the potential danger and innocence of the situation. Getting Sued as is happening to the School board now, is an excellent example of checks and balances.
So I'm not a patent expert, or even a patent afficianado. Simple question, though.
These are patents on 'the method for,' not on the thing itself; ergo if I patent a method for baking a pie, I can sue if someone else steals my method for baking the pie, but I can't sue them for baking a similar pie using their own methods -- after all, other search engines don't produce the same results as Altavista. They may be indexing, but they're not indexing the same way Altavista does, right?
Aq
I was a PC Technician for Best Buy for about 2 1/2 years, back when I was about 16. I worked summers and December as a seasonal employee, but actually ended up running the department because five out of the five full time managers they brought in to be my 'supervisor' were fired, and that long before the true measure of their ineptitude became apparent to anyone but their co-workers.
BR>My last summer there, I went to punch in my first day back and got a strange error code. "Your file is probably just screwed up," said the manager. So I simply kept manual track of my time and submitted my paperwork at the end of every single shift for two months.
Only, when payday came around, I didn't get paid. I complained at the beginning of July, and they called the big head HR place and informed me that I had been terminated back in January due to a corporate directive that Best Buy could not hold over more than 4 seasonal employees from Christmas, and I had not been one of those four. Not only had I not been notified, but I had been working for 6 weeks before we even found out.
Fortunately, I got along well with everyone there and they promised to straighten it out; it was, they said, a violation of the policy for me to be working there, but they would not go back on their word that they gave me and so they kept me on until the end of that Summer. I hadn't been paid because payroll wouldn't issue a paycheck to a terminated employee. So they said to just submit my hours manually (As I had been doing) and I'd get paid. Another pay period went by, and still no paycheck. Turns out that they'd lost all of my paperwork and had no idea how many hours to pay me for. Put in that position, they said to me 'Well, tell us how many hours you worked.'
This would've been a good opportunity for justice, but I did my best at beind honest and it turned out okay. If a bit embarassing for them.
I was in college by then, and they still had a policy that they couldn't re-hire me seasonally, so I left after that.
Places like Best Buy need college-educated employees; they could've kept a loyal employee, but instead they went their usual route of hiring a new batch every few months, after the last batch is fired or quits.
Just because we're not in Massachusetts doesn't mean we don't count! Really! Hey...hey! Is anyone listening?
Cornell has a somewhat lengthy policy that equates to 'You can use Napster for illegal stuff. If you do, they might sue you. We don't think it's a good idea to do illegal stuff. Otherwise, enjoy!' They are more concerned about saturating their uber-network than anything else; practically enough, the network administrators say it is their responsibility to make sure the network is okay, and your responsibility to make sure you're obeying the law.
From Cornell's IT Policy on Napster:
"Cornell routinely monitors network usage patterns. Interfering with the ability of others to use network services violates university policy and can result in termination of access to university network services."
Nowhere in the university policy do they indicate that they have any intention of actually policing what you do with the network. They have busted a few people for running huge MP3 servers, but if those kids choose to break the law and do it in such a manner as to have huge neon signs pointing to their flagrant abuse of an academic network, they have it coming...
I'm recalling some of this from an Astronomy class I took over a year ago, so I don't remember a lot of the details on how this works. But if I remember correctly, it's not a case of needing 6000+ telescopes to 'equal' Arecibo. Using something called Radio Interferometry, you can have two medium-size telescopes a kilometer apart, and have them function as one big one (for an accurate, detailed description of how Interferometry works, check out this site.Examples of existing telescope arrays using this technology are the LBA and the VLBA, which I think stands for 'Long baseline Array' and 'Very long Baseline array,' where they stretch out over several miles--I think the VLBA is in New Mexico. I may have either the acronyms or the meanings messed up, but I think that's the gist of it.
It does take some of us a little longer to achieve true uber-geek status, you know; not all of us are born into a Slashdot queue. I would hate for someone to get the wrong idea about Slashdot by seeing such an informative piece (as yours was) ended by a 'You are too dumb to be here' remark. If it is truly so below you to respond, then don't. You obviously know what you're talking about, but the arrogance that comes across in your statement astounds those of us who aren't quite as smart into not wanting to ever ask anything on Slashdot, because God Forbid it should be beneath you.
-Aq
I find all of this talk about whose fault all of this is rather disgusting. Obviously, some engineer made a minor alteration before launch and simply forgot to reboot windows to allow the change to take effect. See what happens when you don't take MS seriously? Tsk, tsk.
"Third," says the judge, "Microsoft's customers lack a commercially viable alternative to Windows." Yet, virtually no new application software using client-specific code is being written.
Isn't nearly -all- application software client specific? Isn't this why companies like Loki can exist, to rewrite existing software for other OSes? Isn't almost every commercial piece of software in any retail store for Windows? (Obviously there is a lot of professional stuff for other OSes, but look at 'mainstream software'). Another:
Mr. Reynolds estimates that Microsoft's share of all 1999 desktop shipments will be 70 percent. If that constitutes a monopoly, he notes, then the Justice Department better investigate Quicken and America Online, which have long enjoyed market shares exceeding 70 percent.
He's comparing an operating system to an application? An OS which dictates how most other software must be written being compared to applications that have competitors, are not forced upon their consumers unwittingly, and don't affect anything but their specific purpose (i.e. you don't have to write software for AOL, you write it for windows). Also, how does AOL have a seventy percent market share? They have what, 17 million subscribers? 19 million? Where some of those subscribers are folks like me, who have an AOL account but don't ever use it, because we have other ISP accounts or use a school network. If 17 million is 70% of the whole Internet, slap me silly and call me Susan.
I don't know who Robert Levy is, but he needs to be smack'd with a clue-by-four.
-Aqui
Hiya folks,
... instead, just go talk to that one. Subtlety is the key.
/so/ drooling all over the carpet...'
While I think this discussion definitely has a place on Slashdot, the most important thing to remember about anything having to do with relationships is that everyone is different, even if they do exactly the same things for a living. There are similarities between the kinds of things 'geeks' look for; that is, we might be more sensitive than 'jocks' and such, but there are exceptions to every crowd.
That said -- with the disclaimer that I am not any kind of expert on the subject -- I'll relate my personal experience in a very brief form.
The most important thing any geek (anyone at all, in fact) has to ask themselves is 'What do I want in a woamn?' Some people look for mates with similar lifestyles to their own, i.e. one geek finding another online and getting married. That's cool. Sometimes it works. You have a whole lot in common, which is a good thing.
Personally, though, I look for people who aren't the same as me, people who will jar me out of the little bubble I live in (and especially go to school in) and give me a new perspective on things -- soemone who will force me to do something I wouldn't have done on my own.
A bit of background: I am, at least from 9-5, a geek. I'm a network technician and all of the jobs I've had and still have involve me working with computers nearly all of the time. I'm also a musician and an actor, and so I have a life outside of my 'work' -- something I highly reccommend to anyone who works in an industry as engulfing as IT. My SO is not involved with computers at all, doesn't really like them, and has little interest in the specifics of what I do. She's also drop-dead sexy, far beyond the sort that I ever thought I could win over.
The best advice I can give to a Slashdotter (or anyone else) looking for a mate is: Don't actively seek out a mate. Or at least, if you do, don't make it look that way. If you're not trying, you're being yourself; you're not stressed out over what someone else's impression of you is, and you're not worried about what they think of you. Even if you are concerned about these things, the trick is to 'act natural' -- don't have any expectations. Don't say 'I want that one to come home with me tonight'
Be flexible. Most fulltime IT people (which, thankfully, I am not) have extraordinarily hectic schedules. Make sure your priorities are in order. An understanding mate should be able to accept that you'll have emergencies periodically, but if you find yourself spending every weekend and holiday at the office at her expense, no matter how justified your employer might be in asking you to go, your relationship will suffer. One of the biggest problems among adult relationships is that a lot of adults simply don't have (or make) time for them.
So in summary:
-- Expand your horizons. If you spend 24/7 doing IT stuff, try to find a hobby or something that you're interested in, something you're passionate about (unless you really get dramatic over routers and hubs). People like that. Not just women.
-- Don't be an asshole. If you're the kind of person who pushes five scrillion buttons to get the first post in on Slashdot all the time, you're spending too much time on Slashdot, and you need to go outside and see if prolonged exposure to the sun doesn't melt your epidermis. Also, if you're the kind of person who posts exclusively 'Jon Katz is a moron,' 'Aquitaine is a Moron,' 'I hated this article,' or 'Fuck off,' then you're got other issues to deal with.
-- Be thoughtful/spontaneous. Have limits, though. Some women get easily freaked out by things that they are 'traditionally' supposed to like. I know one girl who hates roses because they make her feel obligated. And yet the best thing she says any guy did for her was to give her one blue-and-red rose. Makes no sense. Women are like that. Female != Logic gate.
-- Have confidence. You're probably smarter than at least a good portion of the competition, but the trick is: don't compete. You care, but die before you'd ever admit it before the finish line. This makes for good stories later, too -- 'Remember that time I totally ignored you at Joe's? Yeah, well, I was
-Aqui
-Aqui
Katz made an issue that a discussion about Euthanasia could only take place in the relative 'underground' of a place like Slashdot, but it seems apparent that not even Slashdot is ready for it. Katz, despite being attacked for 'ranting leftist idealogy' and promoting 'thought control,' quite clearly said that he wasn't sure about the issue. Jon Katz is not advocating killing children. He's merely using Singer as an example -- and a good one -- of how our culture tends to find any excuse it can (Katz's need of an editor, in one comment, or several past articles that are entirely unrelated to his present point) to utterly destroy any notion that is foreign to our accepted standards of what is ethical. Ideally, I tend to think of the 'geek' avant garde as being less reactionary and more directly critical and thoughtful of any notion, be it Katz's, Singer's, or CmdrTaco's, but there is an unnerving tendancy to blow the author out of the water because (in prior episodes) he actually used Microsoft Word to write it.
Maybe we should actually consider the points Katz is trying to get at, rather than attacking the pencil he's using to elucidate them? Or go another step and forget about attacking the person holding the pencil; Katz is trying to do what writers do best, which is to ask questions of his audience. Faulkner, Hemmingway, Fitzgerald, and any other great writer didn't come out and deliver earth-shattering epiphanes that made people go 'Whoa!' They pointed out something about their readers that profoundly disturbed them.
So be disturbed, and consider the questions that Katz (via Singer) asks; perhaps we'd see more than one or two posts above a '3' that way.
-Aqui
First: Your usage of the term 'illuminate' I hope was meant to be analogous, since radio signals are (duh) not in the optical wavelength and don't illuminate anything except people listening for it, such as SETI.
Also First: There are billions upon billions of frequencies at which they could send even a strong signal. It is very easy (even for us) to send a concentrated, focused beam pretty much anywhere in space, but if the guys we're sending it to don't know where to listen, they won't ever hear it. If you want to send a powerful, broadband signal, that increases the amount of power required by orders of magnitude.
Second: Granted any technological civilization will find means of 'containing' their electromagnetic leakage, but remember how photons travel in space. If we broadcast for 100 years signals powerful enough to travel, say, 100 light years (such as military & navigational radio signals are) then it will be 100 years from when you started broadcasting them before the people at the edge of that radius detect it -- ergo making the effective 'detection' time 200 years.
Also, it's not so much a question of us detecting electromagnetic leaks as it is simply detecting anything at all. There are plenty of natural radio signals out there that are worth our study; research is being done with Radio galaxies, which are pretty neat. Even if we don't find little green men, we'll find something.
-A
Yeah -- he came a few weeks ago to the Astro 299 class. Terzian and some others came to watch, it was quite fun. I don't think it was an open lecture though.
From what I understand, he stops by periodically (since he taught here for a gazillion years) but his schedule with SETI keeps him busy.
-A
The part of the spectrum they are analyzing (the part the Arecibo telescope tends to focus on) is generally about 1.4 GHz (and ranges, according to Project Phoenix, between 1-3 GHz). This is the notorious '21 cm line' -- the wavelength at which certain hydrogen particles emit photons when their electrons change energy states ... that's the layman's explanation anyway, but suffice it to say that this part of the spectrum is about as much of the 'universal language' as we have been able to figure out.
Anybody bright enough to build something powerful enough to transmit/receive signals in space will know about the 21cm line.
-A
Actually, Seti @ Home is very much affiliated with the SETI project. I attended a lecture given by Frank Drake (President of SETI) when he was here @ Cornell a few weeks ago and he devoted a good chunk of his closing remarks to the Seti @ Home project. Obviously it has access to the radio data gathered by the Project Phoenix team, and if you check out the Seti Insitute's home page, you will see several references.
/. would be doubly critical and skeptical of it) but rather a team of researchers, engineers, and Plain Old Folks who have the technical know-how to put together something like this. The idea is a lot of hype, yes, but so is the whole idea of SETI. The field of Astronomy is one of constant disappointment and extremely infrequent tangible discovery, but just the prospect of that discovery has kept the field (and projects like SETI, which is privately funded with a budget of $4 million a year, travelling between the Arecibo telescope in Puerto Rico ala Golden eye from Australia with a second, verification telescope in Manchester) alive for centuries.
So essentially, it is not 'some guy' -- it isn't a big cohesive government project (if it were,
No respectable astronomer with the ambition and drive to succeed, even when confronted by the 'astronomical' improbability of doing so is ever 'just some guy.' I regret that I don't have the physics knowledge to be one of them myself.
-A
Check out http://www.seti.org. As has already been stated, SETI is not a part of NASA; the actual 'search for extraterrestrial life' run by SETI is called Project Phoenix, named aptly because it 'rose out of the ashes' of its predecessor, the NASA HRMS (High-Resolution Microwave Survey) when a mid-western Senator demanded that HRMS be cut from NASA's budget (ironically, HRMS was only .1% of NASA's budget anyway) ... but the upshot of all that is that the SETI program, and esp. the Seti @ Home program is run by a bunch of guys with a lot of (time/money/knowledge) on their hands who have no interest in duping the general public. I had the good fortune of meeting their president, Frank Drake (of the Drake equation, former Cornell professor, now UC Santa something or the other) and he's a brilliant older fellow who is as embittered against the US Government as anyone on Slashdot.
-A