@Home is really jerking your chain. Their user agreement is so bogus:
The benefits and privileges available from the AT&T@Home, and the Internet in general, must be balanced with duties and responsibilities so that other customers can also have a productive experience.
Translation: we're so cheap that we're going to cram as many customers as possible onto a single T1 line, limiting your privilages and your productive experience. Due to the ignorance of the general population, their productive experience is more simplistic and therefore will not come into conflict with our blocking of port 80. Granted, we understand that quite a significant portion of the internet is made up of servers like yours, but our bottom line beats your small desires to contribute to the growing of the world wide web.
Under the terms of the AT&T Broadband Subscriber Agreement customers are not to restrict, inhibit or otherwise interfere with the ability of any other person to use or enjoy the AT&T Equipment or the Service.
Translation: you cannot interfere with other subscribers' use or enjoyment of the internet. We can interfere all we want.
I'm sorry, but it's very plain and simple. @Home subscribers did not purchase a "pay per consumption" plan. They paid a flat rate for service, no matter how much or little they planned to use it. If I subscribe to the daily newspaper, the newspaper company has no right to revoke the Tuesday edition from my house just because they found out that I don't have time Tuesdays to read it. I paid for it, so they are required to give it to me, no matter if I read it or not. Sure, they could come up with some bogus excuse, like "The wasting of paper on an edition of the paper which is not read by the customer is interfering with the paper supply being utilized for the enjoyment of the newspaper by other subscribers." I could then take them to court and let the judge have a good laugh over how stupid the case is.
Unless they specifically say in their user agreement that you will be limited to a certain time, bandwidth, or other limitation of their service, for them to limit your access to the web without proper notice and change to the user agreement is a direct denial of service.
I wouldn't say teenagers, but instead game developers who are now obsessed with style rather than popularity.
A lot of the games that made the list made it because it was the style the developers liked (DOOM's #1 for one reason -- it was the anchor for game developing all the way into the 3D market today). But I would rate the greatest games as those that were the most popular, not the ones with the most fantastic storyline or the most fantastic graphics.
Deus Ex? Theif? Why are those there? Only because of the games style, not popularity. That's what I don't like about this list. The top 50 (at least the top 10) should have been about the games' popularity among players.
DOOM should have been in the top 10, but not necessairly #1. I'm glad they put Civilization at #3, because that game deserves it. But there were two games that I thought belonged there, because of their popularity rather than style:
1) Super Mario 3. It was the rave at the school, on the block, and even in the movie The Wizzard. Why the hell didn't it make it into the top 50? It should have been in at least the top 10.
2) Pac Man. Someone was smoking something sweet to keep this absolute classic from the list. The fact of the matter is that you can still find this arcade game in some arcades standing next to these dollar-crunching graphic-munching games, and people still play it.
Other notes: I'm glad to see they at least included Tetris, because it's right up there with PacMan in terms of still-played-classics. I was also disappointed not to find a single sports game up there on the list...they're just as big and popular a genre as RPG, Action, or Adventure.
If every DSL line provider had their way, unless you were paying a very pretty penny, they'd want to drop you in a PPPoE modem pool, give you a dynamic IP, and limit your line to as little as possible.
The same thing is happening now with DSL that began to happen with modem dialup to the internet about six years ago. We began with a static IP address then, and we were always getting the best performance we could out of our 28.8 modem, because few people were connecting to the web. Suddenly when the influx of people started coming in (about a year and a half later), we were dropped into a modem pool and were often getting less-than-optimal transfer rates.
Same thing's happening with DSL now. Our provider, Qwest, advertised 640K rates on their lines for about six months now on their most basic line access. Now, they've dropped the basic line back to 256K, even though their still delivering 640K to those who bought that line (though I don't know for how long...the service agreement said that they reserve the right to drop bandwidth at any time). All their other lines (with a static IP and guaranteed speeds) are getting about a %12 raise in price come August 7th.
Now that broadband is starting to gain speed (finally), the DSL providers are finding that their profit margins are falling because they've promised too much to too many. Since there's nothing better offered for that kind of money at the moment (gosh darn it, where's satellite service when you need it most), they can get away with it, and they will.
Man, sometimes I just can't figure out which side of the ship/. is leaning to, espically on this article.
We begin with the contributor's hasty remarks that I got a the usual M$ "Oh no, they're being anti-competitive again!"
But, being as how there's the initial M$ bias that one needs to get over, I decided to read the article to find out what really was going on, so I ran into this:
The authors of BlackIce and ZoneAlarm assured us that versions will be updated to take account of the major networking changes in WinXP.
Hmm, so there's really no cause for alarm, because this is just a security issue with firewalls. If you want the firewall to be secure, you're going to have to update it for the new OS so that it is secure. So, what's the worry? In fact,
Microsoft alerted software authors and device drivers writers to the changes earlier this year that, and this Word document describes what's necessary.
Oh, so the word file wasn't one of those "M$ showing the world it's power in how to block whoever it wants from it's OS," but instead a "Hey guys, here's how to fix your software so that your clients don't shove hatemail down your throat when your software doesn't work right with the new OS." So, I decided to go back to/. to tell everyone that this was an early jump at the anti-trust gun, when I read the rest of the/. article and found this nice disclaimer:
Note: according to this article, the change does not prevent Black Ice or other programs from running per se -- but it does require them to use updated versions tailored for XP.
Oh, really? I never would have seen that one coming had I been some "M$ is the Antichrist"/. reader wanting to cry to the world about the evil Mr. Gates through the public forum aka/. Darn...15 minutes of investigating torn apart by this disclaimer that would have never needed to be had/. edited out the line detailing about BlackIce and ZoneDefender in the first place! They could have instead mentioned the second half of the article in the headline (about it's uncanny resemblance to the fight with Win3.1 and DR-DOS) in the headline instead, making the concern seem more realistic, but no.
My laugh for the day from this article... Software needs to carry the XP compliant logo to run.
Sure...and my computer needs to have the "Intel Inside" sticker to operate as well.
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...of being unable to see this double standard by CBS?
First off, I have to say to Katz that this is a good article. Really...I've been losing hope for a while, but I thought that the ideas here actually came together.
Second, it seems like Knox here has gotten lost in the Katz-bashing to realize the truth of this. It's pathetic now that they're portraying violence on Big Brother strictly for ratings and $$$. It's a show whose ratings have dropped dearly from the very beginning, but during the show where the incident occured, ratings spiked.
Why? Well, who was the first to report about the incident BEFORE it was aired on Big Brother? CBS.
It's completely unnerving that CBS aired violence for ratings, when they bomblasted the video game market for causing violence. And I assure you, kids who know these are adults IN REAL LIFE who are doing this kind of violence are going to be far more influenced that this is normal than if they were to see it in a computer game.
Granted, it doesn't surprise any of us, because we've been imagining it for years. But just because we've imagined it doesn't mean that it's right for them to go ahead and do it.
But what I liked best about the article isn't so much about, "Oh my gosh, they're creating violent TV shows for ratings." What I liked was, "They're creating violent TV shows for ratings when they've complained over and over in the past about how violence in the media leads to violence in real life."
It's a double standard. They say media violence is influential on children, but then sell it to make money anyway. We've already collected billions of dollars from big tobacco because they've been doing the same thing for the past hundred years. It's a dangerous game that they shouldn't be playing.
...it would have stopped me from creating another bogus account on the NYTimes website.
My gosh, thanks to the wonderful news reported on/., I've made up about 20 or so bogus accounts now for NYT. bogusid, bogusaccount, fakeid (3-5, 7...fakeid, fakeid1, fakeid2, and fakeid6 were already taken), idforsale, blowmandown Course, it has kept the NYT system busy sending all that SPAM to all those fake email addresses... just keeping the sysadmins from taking too much time reading the paper and not doing what they should!
Course, my humble apologies to fake@id.com if you actually have this email address.
Something that has been scaring me lately is the Red Bull vodka drink. It's becoming quite popular, especially with the "Hang at the bar before I get to my 10-page paper that's due tomorrow" drink. The major problem with the drink is the caffeine-alcohol mix.
Alcohol -- depressant. Caffeine -- stimulant. Course, I've seen people who've had JD- or Baccardi-Cokes and have been fine, but there's more in Red Bull than just Caffeine that's an energy-booster. I've seen how people get after they've had two or three of them...they get really hyper and sweat a lot, but they lose their stamina real fast (they'll move like crazy on the dance floor but have to sit out after only one song). I'd actually be curious to see an actual study on this combination, because I think it's just a recepie for disaster.
And get your comparisons a little more in line. Yea, ectasy has gotten a real heavy focus these past couple years, but it's not just because of ectasy. It's because everyone's been an idiot and have been mixing it with alcohol, cocaine, marijuana, speed, and who knows what else. When you mix them like that, that's when "you start seeing angels."
You ask any critic out there in Hollywood who has not played any of the latter FF games (FF 7 or 8) about this movie and they will all tell you the same thing: the storyline was too confusing.
It's not Katz's fault that he didn't get the storyline. That's just the way Final Fantasy storylines are. Unless you know what to expect in the first place, you're going to be so lost with the storyline that you won't be able to enjoy any other parts of the movie.
For FF, I thought the storyline was good (not great...it paralleled FF7 too much). I could go on and on about how good/bad/great/awful the CG was (although I will say brownie points to detailing the wallet in the Captain's jeans). What I want to emphasize from Katz's critique is how "emotionally-dubbed" this movie is. The perfect example: Steve Buscemi. I love this guy, and his awesome ability to portray sarcasm with satire so well (like his roles in Con Air and Armegeddon). He had some good lines in FF as well, but your reaction to them was delayed. You didn't see the little quirk he does so well with his eyebrows, or how his face looks so serious while his eyes show that he's joking. You just can't do that with computer animation. His emotions seemed to be "dubbed in" by the animation. He did great like he always does with the lines, but the face of his character just didn't show it. I don't know why, but it makes you feel as if the speech and emotion don't blend.
The same with Aki Ross. You just don't feel the actors emotions. It's not because they're not spoken well...they're spoken very well (although Baldwin doesn't do the greatest with the captain...I think the Baldwin's usually rely on looks rather than speech for acting). But the face only shows a "cookie cutter" emotion. Even if they bend the eyebrows a little bit, or change the tint on the skin just a little, my mind just doesn't feel for what they're supposed to be feeling. That's what made this movie disappointing for me.
The most real character to me was Dr. Cid. And speaking of which, could someone please tell me why there is a Cid IN EVERY SINGLE FF from FF2 on?
In brief: the storyline (for a FF) was good, the CG was great, but the emotion was not there in the graphics, which made it not there in the movie.
I don't care that the karma police are gone and that my post is probably going to go unheard by most of you, but I need to get this off my back.
I KNOW that the Earth is warming up. Every single stupid report I have seen circulating around in newspapers, magazines, scientific journals, and online articles have said it is warming up. But I don't care. Why?
Because you are all ROOKIES when it comes to weather. That's right. I'm NOT a weatherman. I have not studied bullshit when it comes to weather outside the little quips that our local weatherman gives at 6:13pm every night when the news is on. But I do know this: The Earth has been around for thousands/millions/billions of years, and weatherman have been able to accurately measure the last 100 years.
THAT'S why I don't listen to people complain about global warming. This planet has been here for far too long for you to step in in the last 100 years and say to the world that because the weather in the last 10 years has grown proposterously (aka 1.7 F or whatever the number is), that this is cause for the apocolypse.
You have NO idea what "normal weather" is supposed to be. You only know what has happened in the past 100 years. Well guess what? The industrial age began over 200 years ago. We've been pouring industrial smoke in the air for a long time. We've been screwing up this world long before that. But we managed to live through 6000+ years of weather.
So don't cram down my throat that what's been going on in the past 10 years is cause for worry. You have no idea what's gone on in the past 6000, and until you do, don't use your life to stand as the prime example of the human race.
Our planet has seen everything...ice ages, heat waves...I've lost track of how much the temperature of this planet has fluxuated, and I'm not worried about it now. Imagine the worry the people here in North America must have went through back about 8000 years ago when the pollar ice caps were receeding: "This just in: half of North America's land is covered by icy glaciers, but they are receeding at an alarming rate. According to estimates, at this rate, by the year 2000 BC, glaciers will cover only 1/50th of North America! PANIC!!!"
If anyone has ever been to Lake Louise in Canada, there's a nearby glacier (I forget the name) where the path you walk on to go see it has signs saying where the location of the glacier was in 1880, 1900, 1950, 1955, etc. In 1880, the glacier reached all the way to the parking lot of the visitors center, while today it's nearly 2/3rds of a mile away. So how come they didn't start to worry about this problem in 1880 or 1900? Because our planet has been on a constant warming trend for the past 1000 years.
Really, ask any scientist. The problem with analizing the weather is that everyone thinks that you can "accurately" measure the average temperature of the Earth by doing just that. The problem is that the weather has such incredible fluxuations that your findings in a span of 10 years are going to differ from the last span of 10 years, and yet when you put those two periods together, you could conclude even more.
I mean, for my state during the 1990's, during the winter we saw record amounts of snow and temperatures that were way below average, during the time where global warming was "warming up" as a hot topic. Before then, we had a series of very mild winters. Back in the 1880's and 1890's, we saw some very heavy winters. Our weather has varried so much that it just continues on and on. Heck, in 1997 when we were having one of the worst winters ever, Anchorage, Alaska was having a very mild one. You could say that the world has always been warming up ever since the ice age a million years ago or however long ago it was.
What I wish is that people would stop worrying about all the smoke that's dubiously contributing to global warming and instead worry about all the smoke that's contributing to air polution.
Why are people so unwilling to pay for online content?
1) Because they can. That's the primary reason. Why are we going to go to Big_Company.com's website to pay for, say, some software that they have when I could search the warez site and download it for free? It's available. There's nothing in the way to stop you. Everyone knows morals/ethics don't stop you. We won't stop for $500 in downloading Micro$$$'s Office Suite from a warez site, and we won't quit even when dealing with the full version of Doom which you could probably buy on eBay now for less than $5, but you instead download from an abandonware site. We all do it because we can.
2) Because there's no one out there to stop us. Look at it like road rage: whether you're driving in your viechle or at the helm of your computer, you feel independent and in control. It's a power trip. You got something that boosts your power and your ego a hundred-fold. You don't see anyone enforcing anything, so you do something a little bit daring and a little bit illegal. If the cat's away, the mice will play.
3) Because we feel that THEY are cheating US. We all think that, right? You know, how dare THEY to spread commercialism across the web, something created for geeks by geeks for "educational" purposes (feel free do define educational however you wish). I mean, with pop-up ads, cookies, doubleclick, SPAM, banners, web bugs, and all these other anti-privacy invaders stealing our private data and selling it for millions of dollars, it should be our right to fight back at them finally for all these years of stealing our privacy! Besides, considering that we have to shell out a ton of money for broadband service, which is stolen by all the corporate adds and data that hogs our broadband lines, we should have everything handed to us on a silver platter!
I'm sorry, but I'm surprised that/. still runs stories like these. Whether it's the college student running a server in his dorm room, hogging bandwidth from the college OC-3 line to distribute copywrited porn, or the 13 year-old kid who used Back Orifice to get into a computer in AT&T corporate headquarters to delete his long distance bill every month, we all try our hardest to get as much as possible for as little as possible. I mean, we all know that because we have that little thing called the first amendment, it is our right, under the foundation of this country that we can be the "robin hoods" of this land of the internet, robbing from the rich (aka them) and giving to the poor (aka us). Information is free speech, right? So I guess that means that it should be "free."
...but you make a good point about these chips in paper currency. I really don't know if they'd be able to handle the stress-tests.
One place I've seen these chips used was when I traveled to Greece this spring. Their phonebooths require you to use a card for payment, rather than actual coinage. The card cointains a chip like this, and it's actually VERY convenient...I don't recall seeing or hearing of any "battery" in the card, so I don't know if the technology needs one (someone step in and help out if you wish). Of course, the card is the size and strength of a credit card.
I had fun with one of those once and put it through a couple of tests of my own. I actually jumped on it and let a car's tire roll over it, and it held up fine. But it's virtually impossible to bend the chip and still have it function (of course, I used most of the minutes on the card, and was down to only 1, so there wasn't much to lose). After bending the card in the middle where the chip was, the reader on the payphone thought the card was invalid.
Along those lines, I also had a chance to visit Italy, where they have a thin metallic (I believe aluminum) strip imbedded into each piece of currency. Although it's virtually impossible to counterfit, it also greatly decreases the life of the bill. After being wrinkled enough times, it starts to tear along the line where the metallic strip is. Paper currency uses an incredibly durable type of paper, being as how it goes through a ton of wear and tear. I can just imagine bills falling apart where this chip would be implanted.
If these guys had any sense at all...
on
Eco-Terrorism
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· Score: 2
...in thinking about the environment, they wouldn't have done such a thing. But no, these guys were extremists, who didn't care about what they were doing as long as they made a point. This obvious shortage of brain use then failed to think about:
1) The balasts in the starter engine containing mercury. If it came in contact with the right chemicals (which is possible in the burning of an automobile), it would produce harmful toxins which will polute the environment and kill off some air-borne animals. Even if it didn't burn, loose mercury is always good for killing off those unwanted living organisims, like dumb customers.
2) The oil, rubber tires, and gasoline. All of those produce harmful toxins when they burn, as well as produce carbon monoxide. Perhaps they should have warn shirts as well saying "How 'bout a nice breath of CO? It's to die for!"
3) The freon. Freon doesn't burn well, but easily escapes a burning viechle and floats up into the atmosphere to knock around some ozone molecules that keep this planet alive.
...not to mention the greenhouse gases released from the fire, even more toxins released in the burning of any other of the fluids (transmission, brake, power anything...it's all poisonous), and the pile of junk left over after the barbeque that has to be hauled to the scrap heap.
Brilliant, guys. Protest a polutant-causing viechle by poluting yourself. Bravo.
Uh, I think you rushed to quickly to jump on big brother and not bother to notice that these satellites are infared, not photo.
These things wouldn't be able to notice the lot locations, only the houses (since your house is climate controlled, and would show up only as a yellow dot in a red background if it was a hot day outside). It would have no idea how well your home or roof are built. It would not happen to notice whether or not you were standing outside naked waving your full monty (now a legit word... thank you, Oxford) to your neighbor.
...of course, you'd probably still go to jail, if your neighbor got too offended.
Personally, although there are big brother issues, I hope everyone realizes that there are already satellites orbiting in space that take pictures of the Earth already (you know, the ones that can pick off your license plates, and the ones that can tell that you're speeding even though they're 31 miles away). We were too busy crying for better satelite TV and cell phone availability to figure out what was going on in abusing this technology.
Although, I'm glad that these things were put to good use in this case. Being from a farming state and knowing the current farm economy (or lack thereof), I'm glad to see them stopping farm insurance claim fraud, because it's incredably easy to file for...all you gotta do is spend an hour filling out the right papers, plus an hour calling your state representative demanding justice if the claim was rejected the first time. Rarely will you get a visit from any big insurance guys unless you claim some proposterous amount of land that was damaged.
Now tell me, since when could a commercial company use proprietary code from another commercial company and build on it?
When that commercial company has the gold, for he who has the gold makes the rules. In Microsoft's case, competition is easy to get rid of if you buy them out. Only problem is that GPL'd work cannot be bought out.
Case in Point: This is one competition Bill can't control, so he'll whine about not being able to build upon it, because as a commerical company, he technically can't.
He's too afraid that if his company starts programming GPL'd work, "Microsoft Trade Secrets" might be given up...besides, anything that the coders write for Microsoft are owned by Microsoft. If a Microsoft programmer GPL'd his/her work, that would be a HUGE lawsuit waiting to happen.
...so basically, I gather that when my brain's fried and I really want to watch a movie that has no plot at all, but instead a basic shoot-em-up with the main character being a Barbie doll, this would be the movie to see, huh?
I'll give Angelina Jolie credit for doing a reasonable british accent, but lets be honest, she was hired because she's a flavor of the month. WHich makes it even more sad that the real point of this movie (Lara's T&A) is padded. And padded so much that when packed into her traditionally tight t-shirt, she looks so much like a toy that I just wanted to scream.
Well, I mean, come on! Do you really expect that Hollywood could fine someone who could
1) Fit Laura Croft's body
2) Know how to operate a 9mm gun
3) Act
...and on top of it all, have a good British accent?
I think you have a better chance of finding a movie company that is in favor of DeCSS.
My college is now in the experimental transition from C++ to Java. Personally, from what I've seen as a consultant at the college, all it does is make programmers sloppier code writers.
The problem I've seen with rookie C++ writers is that they fail to grasp what's going on inside with the CPU and the memory processing the program.
My fav beginners language: assembly. People who learn assembly learn about what jumps and loops do, how registers, memory, and IO ports are used, and how to be clean at using memory.
Our final program was one that used the clocks T0 and T2 to program the speaker to play line of music read from a file. Sure, you can do the same with C, but rather than using libraries, everyone got to see how things got moved in and out of the IO registers, as well as how to use them to manipulate PC hardware.
As a bonus, we then got a chance to toast our Interupt tables at the end of the semester. Sometimes, trashing a machine is the best way to figure out how it works!
Assembly gives everyone the chance to not only work with hardware directly, but also how to make your code more efficient on CPU cycles and on memory block management (because you have to manage it directly, rather than leaving that up to the compiler).
...because this stupid feature is disabled by default*. In Microsoft-land this means that 99.99% of users will never enable or even be aware of it - ala the "Don't spam everyone I know with e-mail virii" check box in Outlook.
Heheheh...I'm surprised you haven't realized yet what Microsoft means by "default." They're not going to spend millions of dollars in time and development just to have something "disabled by default."
What that means is this: you install Windows XP, and near the end, you get this dialog box: "Microsoft has furthered its internet innovation in pushing the limits of technology by bringing to you a new technology known as Smart Tags! With this option enabled, you will have the power to further your web-browsing experiences by being provided with new links on existing websites, expanding your browsing capabilities within the new Microsoft Internet Explorer 6.0! Push OK to enable this feature."
And as you said, for the 99.99% of users who aren't "aware" of any possible web options, they're going to absent-mindedly click OK, thinking that it's some required part of the internet.
We won't, of course, mention the travesty of a platform that is.NET... not without laughing...
And why is it a travesty? Because you say it is? I hope you realize that while you're laughing at it, Microsoft is laying out billions of dollars to say otherwise. And who are the masses going to listen to, hmm? Will they listen to some joe out in cyberspace, or are they going to listen to $$$?
Are you familiar with the song "Sixteen Candles"? The song was basically a flop (barely broke the top 100 on the Billboard chart if I remember right) until some guy named Dick Clark played the song on some show called American Bandstand. And he played it again, and again, and again. Suddenly, the song was a hit. Why did Dick Clark play the song over and over? Well, the newspapers soon found out that he was being paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to do so, aka payola. Money speaks, and millions of teenage fans listened.
Now I'll be frank. Right now I'm using the Windows 98 platform to type this message to you. My machine has Micrsoft Works (which I often use for word processing), and my DSL ISP will [unfortunatley] soon become MSN (although I'm still using Netscape). I enjoy using Microsoft Works, and there isn't an easier-to-use and highly-supported OS out there right now than the Windows lineup.
Why do I have all these products? Because this is what the economy has shoved in front of my face. Sure, I can bash it all I want...call it a travesty, say that Win9x is a piece of crap, rip Internet Explorer apart...but it's no use. It is what the world uses, so it is what I must use. Why is it what the world uses?
It's the golden rule: He who has the gold makes the rules.
Personally, I thought this was one of Katz's better articles. There wasn't as much biased onslaught against MS, but instead he laid out a huge list of facts which basically gave out Microsoft's position. His last couple paragraphs (rather than his entire article) showed where he stood.
But I thought this summed it up real nicely: "People who need the Net and the Web in their personal lives or workplaces will do business with Microsoft, or they won't do business."
Truthfully, Microsoft is being innovative. I can't deny that. They're pushing technology (and my swap file) beyond its limits, always trying to see what it can do. But they're pushing it their way...the way they want it to go, so that they can maintain the power. They claim that they'll make the internet greater than it was before. The problem with this is that the internet was born WITHOUT MICROSOFT. The internet became what it was in 1996 WITHOUT MICROSOFT. What we worship in the internet was not created by Microsoft.
Look at where the internet is going now.
Netscape --> Internet Explorer
E-Mail (Eudora, PINE, Pegasus, etc.) --> Outlook
Movies (Quicktime, RealPlayer, etc.) --> Microsoft Media Player
Streaming Audio (RealPlayer) --> Micrssoft Media Player
Java -->.NET / XML
Shockwave -->.NET / XML
Chat (AIM, ICQ, mIRC, etc.) --> MSN Instant Messenger
Sure, one could argue that I'm being too paranoid, but when billions of dollars coming from one company alone are being used to push a product, people are going to listen. On the left side, each company worked on their own branch of the internet. Microsoft's working on them all. Why? When people listen (or rather are blindly following the pied piper), the $$$ has the power.
I know that Katz-bashing appears to be the mainstream, simply because he's got an opinion. My advice for Slashdot readers: Don't bash him because he's opinionated. Opinions are like assholes: everyone's got one, and everyone thinks everyone elses stinks.
Here's the problem: everyone keeps bashing (in some way or another) Microsoft, but when Katz tries to absorb everyones' opinion into one article, they bash him for it, since it appears to overly-dramatic, to biased, or whatever (even though many of us all write that way ourselves). My advice for Katz: rather than trying to follow and reflect what people are saying in their postings, write what you truly believe. That way, people will fight with what you have to say (which leads to better conversation) than bash the way you write.
The question is, "Who on earth would want a pile of plutonium in their back yard?"
How bout we take all our plutonium and dump it right in Saddam's backyard in Iraq, right when Saddam's there holding a barbeque or something? That way, we get rid of the plutonium that we don't need, and Saddam gets all the plutonium he wants! Course, he may not survive and be able to use it, but it's a win-win situation!
But if a "memorial" is what they want, I'd say just dump it all on the White House lawn and put a sign there saying, "We be fucked." I'd say it's a fitting tribute to all the money we spent on developing the stuff during the Cold War.
It seems to me that privacy is only desired by those who have something to hide. Furthermore, everyone pretends to be squeeky clean, which means that we have unrealistic expectations of others.
Close, but no cigar. You are half-right, that many want privacy to hide who they really are or what they might have done, but there's the other half: people want privacy so that others don't assume they have something to hide, and what it might be.
Classic example: how much should your insurance company know about you. We've argued it to the death, and everyone already has their opinions on it, but say they knew that your were genetically predisposed to heart failure. Would you like it if they assumed that you would have heart failure and that your premiums would cost $200 more per month than the Joe Smoe next door? It isn't something to hide, because it hasn't happened yet -- there is no guarantee that it will happen.
Better example: Just by looking at your e-mail address, I see that it belongs to americanwicca.com. Perhaps I should assume that you are a wiccan, and/or practice it on a regular basis. Perhaps you like to practice witchcraft...cast spells on people you don't like...sacrifice goats in your basement...do that voodoo that you do. What if you happen to send me a resume for a job offering and I see your e-mail address on it and jump to these conclusions? Yes, I know that Wiccan and Witchcraft and Voodoo are entirely separate practices, but who says that everyone does? Your personal knowledge of who you are does not stop the prejudice of others.
In the future, privacy will not exist. This will create a more sane society - politicians will not be expected to be perfect, we will have more realistic expectations. We will be able to check up on our prospective spouses, find out everything about them before even meeting. It will be a wonderful way of meeting new people and finding love.
BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! Realistic expectations? Listen, ever since George Washington took office, people have been trying to follow his standard for serving their country. Check out prospective spouses? Who is going to want to marry you if you already know who they are, what they like to do, what they've done in the past, and who they've slept with (the fun in dating is finding that stuff out...well, except for who they've slept with)! That's not the way you find love! (would you like it if I assumed that you don't date much since you made that statement, or would you rather keep that private, hmm?)
I have noticed, seem to think that privacy is some sort of fundamental right, when in fact it is socially constructed...The only rights we can have are truly fundamental - the right to life, for example.
This is completely twisted. You're saying that the right to privacy is socially constructed (which you're right), but say that the right to life is fundamental. I'm afraid that both of those "rights" are socially defined. There was no right to life in periods of war, dictatorships, anarchies.
You presume we have a right to life because it is defined in our society. And it is, through the Declaration of Independence. But so is the right to privacy, in the 14th amendment (and Roe vs. Wade).
The problem with the right to privacy is that it has never been solidly defined. President Bush may support Roe vs. Wade in defending a woman's right to privacy, but he stands up for businesses in their continuing "economic progress," even though it's business that's really hacking away at privacy issues. Everyone sees this right in their own sense, but because everyone looks at it differently, there's no way that we are going to be able to defend it unless we know what territory to defend.
This might be a secluded idea of my own, and I have no idea if it would fly, but in programming my own stuff, I always use greek letters to describe its progress. We half-use it already, with alpha and beta versions, but all I do is say alpha10 or beta20, describing its stage and its build in that stage.
Only difference is I extend it further, giving the title "gamma" to a completed work (a gamma2 or gamma5 would be like v1.2 or v1.5), and a "delta" would be a completed work with a significant amount of bugs fixed.
Course, this is just a "home-brew" version system of mine. Who knows how well it would fly in the business world.
Dan Goldin has the worst sense of priorities if he thinks 20 years is an acceptable time frame for a manned (and/or womanned) Mars mission.
What's wrong with it? I think it's an admirable goal. NASA's technically there already in terms of technology...they did plenty of research and development in the 70's, figuring out how to launch humans with the power of a nuclear rocket to Mars. There is only one problem: round trip is 1 year, 3 months time.
What NASA has to do is figure out how to extend the physical and mental stress environments in order to accompany humans through space for that long period of time. Easiest (conceptual) solution: create some means of artificial gravity (I said a conceptual solution, not realistical). Well, either that, or make a faster rocket...
They could do it in ten years...heck, I'm sure they could "do" it in five years, but for reasons of PR and government funding, they need the other 15 for research, development, and PR work.
For anyone who has any interest whatsoever in engineering, I highly suggest the book Cat's Paws and Catapults. It details the physics involved in much of these "engineering enigmas."
...Anyway, a counterweight would be useless because of the gravitational force, but then you have to realize that it would be absolutely impossible to use a counterweight in the first place. Even if you could make a cable out of carbon nanotubes, by attaching a cable from the Earth to a space station in the sky, you suddenly render the entire space station to the gravitational pull on the rope.
Just like flying a kite...when you make a kite, you don't use steel cable, because there's no way the wind force on the kite can support the weight of the steel cable. Because there is a gravitational pull on the cable, anything attached to the cable is going to be pulled with it.
Now, let's say you take a different approach: turn the "tube" from the Earth to the space station into a vacuum tube. That way you could set up some mag-lev propulsion system to go back and forth between points A and B. But then you run into two more major problems.
1) Spacial disturbances. There is turbulence in space...solar winds, debris orbiting the Earth, the gravitational pull of the sun with different pulls on Earth and its "attached space station," and plenty others, which would put an incredible amount of sheer and stress on anything running between the Earth and the Station that it would break. That would not be a fun ride for whoever's going between point A and point B (either you'll be jetisoned out into the outer atmospheres of Earth and enjoy burning up on your way back in, or you'll enjoy being propelled down to the Earth from three or more miles up).
2) You'd cause the space station to fall back to Earth. The ISS revolves around the Earth once every ninty minutes. Why? Because that velocity maintains their orbit. A balance of inertia and free-fall causes the ISS to "orbit" Earth. By slowing down its speed, you slow down inertia, therefore destroying the balance, causing the ISS to "free-fall" back down to Earth, aka give everyone down below a multi-billion dollar fireworks show.
Heck, with all the money they're spending on this program, I would think that they stand a better chance investing in learning how to beam people between point A and point B rather than trying to build some carnival ride into space.
I have a feeling we'll all be in for a real treat once 1.0 hits the net.
Alright, alright. I have been looking forward for Mozilla 1.0 for a long time, wanting to get rid of Netscape Crashigator 4.x and finally have a weapon to shoot at MS Internet Integrator from my desktop.
Too bad I've been waiting too long.
Listen, I'm big into bashing IE, because I hate internet integration, hate the MS behemoth, and want some competition, just like most others here on the board (yes, we all love Linux, but the majority of us STILL use Windows on AT LEAST one desktop). But Mozilla is REALLY PUSHING its time frame here. Before any flame throwers come around telling me that I'm not patient enough, just try and think about it for a second...
...Slashdot just ran an article a couple articles back about a satire of a company who kept telling investors that it has a kick-ass piece of software that will take the market by storm. Only problem was that they were never able to produce their product. What happened to the company? It kicked the bucket.
Now, granted, Mozilla has kept showing us its improvements, its great abilities, its scarce use of resources, its stablility, etc. But for crying out loud,
PRODUCE THE PRODUCT!!!
Although I'm sure the final product is going to be great,
1) These three years of waiting have caused Microsoft to nearly win out 85% of the browsing market by now.
2) The latency has caused AOL to release "Netscape 6.0" with a beta version of Mozilla and Gecko which is a piece of crap and unstable with all the bogus utilities included in it. Yes, it means nothing to the geek community, but to the real world community (aka business and consumer), it makes Netscape (the name most are familiar with) look like a has-been, while Mozilla (the name no one is familiar with) is not known by anyone.
3) Since this is "open-source" software, that means that there will be no promotion on the product whatsoever, meaning Microsoft will still have the competitive edge by far.
Argue what you want, but the fact of the matter is that the team has taken way too much time striving for perfection. Even though this is open-source, its superiority alone will not take the web (heck, if the superior product always won, we would have never used 3.5" floppy disk drives and Rambus would never have survived this long). Time is an enemy, no matter what kind of software it is. This product needs to get out there now. It needed to get out there two years before now.
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@Home is really jerking your chain. Their user agreement is so bogus:
The benefits and privileges available from the AT&T@Home, and the Internet in general, must be balanced with duties and responsibilities so that other customers can also have a productive experience.
Translation: we're so cheap that we're going to cram as many customers as possible onto a single T1 line, limiting your privilages and your productive experience. Due to the ignorance of the general population, their productive experience is more simplistic and therefore will not come into conflict with our blocking of port 80. Granted, we understand that quite a significant portion of the internet is made up of servers like yours, but our bottom line beats your small desires to contribute to the growing of the world wide web.
Under the terms of the AT&T Broadband Subscriber Agreement customers are not to restrict, inhibit or otherwise interfere with the ability of any other person to use or enjoy the AT&T Equipment or the Service.
Translation: you cannot interfere with other subscribers' use or enjoyment of the internet. We can interfere all we want.
I'm sorry, but it's very plain and simple. @Home subscribers did not purchase a "pay per consumption" plan. They paid a flat rate for service, no matter how much or little they planned to use it. If I subscribe to the daily newspaper, the newspaper company has no right to revoke the Tuesday edition from my house just because they found out that I don't have time Tuesdays to read it. I paid for it, so they are required to give it to me, no matter if I read it or not. Sure, they could come up with some bogus excuse, like "The wasting of paper on an edition of the paper which is not read by the customer is interfering with the paper supply being utilized for the enjoyment of the newspaper by other subscribers." I could then take them to court and let the judge have a good laugh over how stupid the case is.
Unless they specifically say in their user agreement that you will be limited to a certain time, bandwidth, or other limitation of their service, for them to limit your access to the web without proper notice and change to the user agreement is a direct denial of service.
I wouldn't say teenagers, but instead game developers who are now obsessed with style rather than popularity.
A lot of the games that made the list made it because it was the style the developers liked (DOOM's #1 for one reason -- it was the anchor for game developing all the way into the 3D market today). But I would rate the greatest games as those that were the most popular, not the ones with the most fantastic storyline or the most fantastic graphics.
Deus Ex? Theif? Why are those there? Only because of the games style, not popularity. That's what I don't like about this list. The top 50 (at least the top 10) should have been about the games' popularity among players.
DOOM should have been in the top 10, but not necessairly #1. I'm glad they put Civilization at #3, because that game deserves it. But there were two games that I thought belonged there, because of their popularity rather than style:
1) Super Mario 3. It was the rave at the school, on the block, and even in the movie The Wizzard. Why the hell didn't it make it into the top 50? It should have been in at least the top 10.
2) Pac Man. Someone was smoking something sweet to keep this absolute classic from the list. The fact of the matter is that you can still find this arcade game in some arcades standing next to these dollar-crunching graphic-munching games, and people still play it.
Other notes: I'm glad to see they at least included Tetris, because it's right up there with PacMan in terms of still-played-classics. I was also disappointed not to find a single sports game up there on the list...they're just as big and popular a genre as RPG, Action, or Adventure.
If every DSL line provider had their way, unless you were paying a very pretty penny, they'd want to drop you in a PPPoE modem pool, give you a dynamic IP, and limit your line to as little as possible.
The same thing is happening now with DSL that began to happen with modem dialup to the internet about six years ago. We began with a static IP address then, and we were always getting the best performance we could out of our 28.8 modem, because few people were connecting to the web. Suddenly when the influx of people started coming in (about a year and a half later), we were dropped into a modem pool and were often getting less-than-optimal transfer rates.
Same thing's happening with DSL now. Our provider, Qwest, advertised 640K rates on their lines for about six months now on their most basic line access. Now, they've dropped the basic line back to 256K, even though their still delivering 640K to those who bought that line (though I don't know for how long...the service agreement said that they reserve the right to drop bandwidth at any time). All their other lines (with a static IP and guaranteed speeds) are getting about a %12 raise in price come August 7th.
Now that broadband is starting to gain speed (finally), the DSL providers are finding that their profit margins are falling because they've promised too much to too many. Since there's nothing better offered for that kind of money at the moment (gosh darn it, where's satellite service when you need it most), they can get away with it, and they will.
Man, sometimes I just can't figure out which side of the ship /. is leaning to, espically on this article.
/. to tell everyone that this was an early jump at the anti-trust gun, when I read the rest of the /. article and found this nice disclaimer:
/. reader wanting to cry to the world about the evil Mr. Gates through the public forum aka /. Darn...15 minutes of investigating torn apart by this disclaimer that would have never needed to be had /. edited out the line detailing about BlackIce and ZoneDefender in the first place! They could have instead mentioned the second half of the article in the headline (about it's uncanny resemblance to the fight with Win3.1 and DR-DOS) in the headline instead, making the concern seem more realistic, but no.
We begin with the contributor's hasty remarks that I got a the usual M$ "Oh no, they're being anti-competitive again!"
But, being as how there's the initial M$ bias that one needs to get over, I decided to read the article to find out what really was going on, so I ran into this:
The authors of BlackIce and ZoneAlarm assured us that versions will be updated to take account of the major networking changes in WinXP.
Hmm, so there's really no cause for alarm, because this is just a security issue with firewalls. If you want the firewall to be secure, you're going to have to update it for the new OS so that it is secure. So, what's the worry? In fact,
Microsoft alerted software authors and device drivers writers to the changes earlier this year that, and this Word document describes what's necessary.
Oh, so the word file wasn't one of those "M$ showing the world it's power in how to block whoever it wants from it's OS," but instead a "Hey guys, here's how to fix your software so that your clients don't shove hatemail down your throat when your software doesn't work right with the new OS." So, I decided to go back to
Note: according to this article, the change does not prevent Black Ice or other programs from running per se -- but it does require them to use updated versions tailored for XP.
Oh, really? I never would have seen that one coming had I been some "M$ is the Antichrist"
My laugh for the day from this article... Software needs to carry the XP compliant logo to run.
Sure...and my computer needs to have the "Intel Inside" sticker to operate as well.
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...of being unable to see this double standard by CBS?
First off, I have to say to Katz that this is a good article. Really...I've been losing hope for a while, but I thought that the ideas here actually came together.
Second, it seems like Knox here has gotten lost in the Katz-bashing to realize the truth of this. It's pathetic now that they're portraying violence on Big Brother strictly for ratings and $$$. It's a show whose ratings have dropped dearly from the very beginning, but during the show where the incident occured, ratings spiked.
Why? Well, who was the first to report about the incident BEFORE it was aired on Big Brother? CBS.
It's completely unnerving that CBS aired violence for ratings, when they bomblasted the video game market for causing violence. And I assure you, kids who know these are adults IN REAL LIFE who are doing this kind of violence are going to be far more influenced that this is normal than if they were to see it in a computer game.
Granted, it doesn't surprise any of us, because we've been imagining it for years. But just because we've imagined it doesn't mean that it's right for them to go ahead and do it.
But what I liked best about the article isn't so much about, "Oh my gosh, they're creating violent TV shows for ratings." What I liked was, "They're creating violent TV shows for ratings when they've complained over and over in the past about how violence in the media leads to violence in real life."
It's a double standard. They say media violence is influential on children, but then sell it to make money anyway. We've already collected billions of dollars from big tobacco because they've been doing the same thing for the past hundred years. It's a dangerous game that they shouldn't be playing.
...it would have stopped me from creating another bogus account on the NYTimes website. My gosh, thanks to the wonderful news reported on /., I've made up about 20 or so bogus accounts now for NYT. bogusid, bogusaccount, fakeid (3-5, 7...fakeid, fakeid1, fakeid2, and fakeid6 were already taken), idforsale, blowmandown Course, it has kept the NYT system busy sending all that SPAM to all those fake email addresses... just keeping the sysadmins from taking too much time reading the paper and not doing what they should!
Course, my humble apologies to fake@id.com if you actually have this email address.
Something that has been scaring me lately is the Red Bull vodka drink. It's becoming quite popular, especially with the "Hang at the bar before I get to my 10-page paper that's due tomorrow" drink. The major problem with the drink is the caffeine-alcohol mix.
Alcohol -- depressant. Caffeine -- stimulant. Course, I've seen people who've had JD- or Baccardi-Cokes and have been fine, but there's more in Red Bull than just Caffeine that's an energy-booster. I've seen how people get after they've had two or three of them...they get really hyper and sweat a lot, but they lose their stamina real fast (they'll move like crazy on the dance floor but have to sit out after only one song). I'd actually be curious to see an actual study on this combination, because I think it's just a recepie for disaster.
And get your comparisons a little more in line. Yea, ectasy has gotten a real heavy focus these past couple years, but it's not just because of ectasy. It's because everyone's been an idiot and have been mixing it with alcohol, cocaine, marijuana, speed, and who knows what else. When you mix them like that, that's when "you start seeing angels."
You ask any critic out there in Hollywood who has not played any of the latter FF games (FF 7 or 8) about this movie and they will all tell you the same thing: the storyline was too confusing.
It's not Katz's fault that he didn't get the storyline. That's just the way Final Fantasy storylines are. Unless you know what to expect in the first place, you're going to be so lost with the storyline that you won't be able to enjoy any other parts of the movie.
For FF, I thought the storyline was good (not great...it paralleled FF7 too much). I could go on and on about how good/bad/great/awful the CG was (although I will say brownie points to detailing the wallet in the Captain's jeans). What I want to emphasize from Katz's critique is how "emotionally-dubbed" this movie is. The perfect example: Steve Buscemi. I love this guy, and his awesome ability to portray sarcasm with satire so well (like his roles in Con Air and Armegeddon). He had some good lines in FF as well, but your reaction to them was delayed. You didn't see the little quirk he does so well with his eyebrows, or how his face looks so serious while his eyes show that he's joking. You just can't do that with computer animation. His emotions seemed to be "dubbed in" by the animation. He did great like he always does with the lines, but the face of his character just didn't show it. I don't know why, but it makes you feel as if the speech and emotion don't blend.
The same with Aki Ross. You just don't feel the actors emotions. It's not because they're not spoken well...they're spoken very well (although Baldwin doesn't do the greatest with the captain...I think the Baldwin's usually rely on looks rather than speech for acting). But the face only shows a "cookie cutter" emotion. Even if they bend the eyebrows a little bit, or change the tint on the skin just a little, my mind just doesn't feel for what they're supposed to be feeling. That's what made this movie disappointing for me.
The most real character to me was Dr. Cid. And speaking of which, could someone please tell me why there is a Cid IN EVERY SINGLE FF from FF2 on?
In brief: the storyline (for a FF) was good, the CG was great, but the emotion was not there in the graphics, which made it not there in the movie.
I don't care that the karma police are gone and that my post is probably going to go unheard by most of you, but I need to get this off my back.
I KNOW that the Earth is warming up. Every single stupid report I have seen circulating around in newspapers, magazines, scientific journals, and online articles have said it is warming up. But I don't care. Why?
Because you are all ROOKIES when it comes to weather. That's right. I'm NOT a weatherman. I have not studied bullshit when it comes to weather outside the little quips that our local weatherman gives at 6:13pm every night when the news is on. But I do know this: The Earth has been around for thousands/millions/billions of years, and weatherman have been able to accurately measure the last 100 years.
THAT'S why I don't listen to people complain about global warming. This planet has been here for far too long for you to step in in the last 100 years and say to the world that because the weather in the last 10 years has grown proposterously (aka 1.7 F or whatever the number is), that this is cause for the apocolypse.
You have NO idea what "normal weather" is supposed to be. You only know what has happened in the past 100 years. Well guess what? The industrial age began over 200 years ago. We've been pouring industrial smoke in the air for a long time. We've been screwing up this world long before that. But we managed to live through 6000+ years of weather.
So don't cram down my throat that what's been going on in the past 10 years is cause for worry. You have no idea what's gone on in the past 6000, and until you do, don't use your life to stand as the prime example of the human race.
Our planet has seen everything...ice ages, heat waves...I've lost track of how much the temperature of this planet has fluxuated, and I'm not worried about it now. Imagine the worry the people here in North America must have went through back about 8000 years ago when the pollar ice caps were receeding: "This just in: half of North America's land is covered by icy glaciers, but they are receeding at an alarming rate. According to estimates, at this rate, by the year 2000 BC, glaciers will cover only 1/50th of North America! PANIC!!!"
If anyone has ever been to Lake Louise in Canada, there's a nearby glacier (I forget the name) where the path you walk on to go see it has signs saying where the location of the glacier was in 1880, 1900, 1950, 1955, etc. In 1880, the glacier reached all the way to the parking lot of the visitors center, while today it's nearly 2/3rds of a mile away. So how come they didn't start to worry about this problem in 1880 or 1900? Because our planet has been on a constant warming trend for the past 1000 years.
Really, ask any scientist. The problem with analizing the weather is that everyone thinks that you can "accurately" measure the average temperature of the Earth by doing just that. The problem is that the weather has such incredible fluxuations that your findings in a span of 10 years are going to differ from the last span of 10 years, and yet when you put those two periods together, you could conclude even more.
I mean, for my state during the 1990's, during the winter we saw record amounts of snow and temperatures that were way below average, during the time where global warming was "warming up" as a hot topic. Before then, we had a series of very mild winters. Back in the 1880's and 1890's, we saw some very heavy winters. Our weather has varried so much that it just continues on and on. Heck, in 1997 when we were having one of the worst winters ever, Anchorage, Alaska was having a very mild one. You could say that the world has always been warming up ever since the ice age a million years ago or however long ago it was.
What I wish is that people would stop worrying about all the smoke that's dubiously contributing to global warming and instead worry about all the smoke that's contributing to air polution.
Must we go over this again?
/. still runs stories like these. Whether it's the college student running a server in his dorm room, hogging bandwidth from the college OC-3 line to distribute copywrited porn, or the 13 year-old kid who used Back Orifice to get into a computer in AT&T corporate headquarters to delete his long distance bill every month, we all try our hardest to get as much as possible for as little as possible. I mean, we all know that because we have that little thing called the first amendment, it is our right, under the foundation of this country that we can be the "robin hoods" of this land of the internet, robbing from the rich (aka them) and giving to the poor (aka us). Information is free speech, right? So I guess that means that it should be "free."
Why are people so unwilling to pay for online content?
1) Because they can. That's the primary reason. Why are we going to go to Big_Company.com's website to pay for, say, some software that they have when I could search the warez site and download it for free? It's available. There's nothing in the way to stop you. Everyone knows morals/ethics don't stop you. We won't stop for $500 in downloading Micro$$$'s Office Suite from a warez site, and we won't quit even when dealing with the full version of Doom which you could probably buy on eBay now for less than $5, but you instead download from an abandonware site. We all do it because we can.
2) Because there's no one out there to stop us. Look at it like road rage: whether you're driving in your viechle or at the helm of your computer, you feel independent and in control. It's a power trip. You got something that boosts your power and your ego a hundred-fold. You don't see anyone enforcing anything, so you do something a little bit daring and a little bit illegal. If the cat's away, the mice will play.
3) Because we feel that THEY are cheating US. We all think that, right? You know, how dare THEY to spread commercialism across the web, something created for geeks by geeks for "educational" purposes (feel free do define educational however you wish). I mean, with pop-up ads, cookies, doubleclick, SPAM, banners, web bugs, and all these other anti-privacy invaders stealing our private data and selling it for millions of dollars, it should be our right to fight back at them finally for all these years of stealing our privacy! Besides, considering that we have to shell out a ton of money for broadband service, which is stolen by all the corporate adds and data that hogs our broadband lines, we should have everything handed to us on a silver platter!
I'm sorry, but I'm surprised that
...but you make a good point about these chips in paper currency. I really don't know if they'd be able to handle the stress-tests.
One place I've seen these chips used was when I traveled to Greece this spring. Their phonebooths require you to use a card for payment, rather than actual coinage. The card cointains a chip like this, and it's actually VERY convenient...I don't recall seeing or hearing of any "battery" in the card, so I don't know if the technology needs one (someone step in and help out if you wish). Of course, the card is the size and strength of a credit card.
I had fun with one of those once and put it through a couple of tests of my own. I actually jumped on it and let a car's tire roll over it, and it held up fine. But it's virtually impossible to bend the chip and still have it function (of course, I used most of the minutes on the card, and was down to only 1, so there wasn't much to lose). After bending the card in the middle where the chip was, the reader on the payphone thought the card was invalid.
Along those lines, I also had a chance to visit Italy, where they have a thin metallic (I believe aluminum) strip imbedded into each piece of currency. Although it's virtually impossible to counterfit, it also greatly decreases the life of the bill. After being wrinkled enough times, it starts to tear along the line where the metallic strip is. Paper currency uses an incredibly durable type of paper, being as how it goes through a ton of wear and tear. I can just imagine bills falling apart where this chip would be implanted.
...in thinking about the environment, they wouldn't have done such a thing. But no, these guys were extremists, who didn't care about what they were doing as long as they made a point. This obvious shortage of brain use then failed to think about:
1) The balasts in the starter engine containing mercury. If it came in contact with the right chemicals (which is possible in the burning of an automobile), it would produce harmful toxins which will polute the environment and kill off some air-borne animals. Even if it didn't burn, loose mercury is always good for killing off those unwanted living organisims, like dumb customers.
2) The oil, rubber tires, and gasoline. All of those produce harmful toxins when they burn, as well as produce carbon monoxide. Perhaps they should have warn shirts as well saying "How 'bout a nice breath of CO? It's to die for!"
3) The freon. Freon doesn't burn well, but easily escapes a burning viechle and floats up into the atmosphere to knock around some ozone molecules that keep this planet alive.
...not to mention the greenhouse gases released from the fire, even more toxins released in the burning of any other of the fluids (transmission, brake, power anything...it's all poisonous), and the pile of junk left over after the barbeque that has to be hauled to the scrap heap.
Brilliant, guys. Protest a polutant-causing viechle by poluting yourself. Bravo.
Uh, I think you rushed to quickly to jump on big brother and not bother to notice that these satellites are infared, not photo.
These things wouldn't be able to notice the lot locations, only the houses (since your house is climate controlled, and would show up only as a yellow dot in a red background if it was a hot day outside). It would have no idea how well your home or roof are built. It would not happen to notice whether or not you were standing outside naked waving your full monty (now a legit word... thank you, Oxford) to your neighbor.
...of course, you'd probably still go to jail, if your neighbor got too offended.
Personally, although there are big brother issues, I hope everyone realizes that there are already satellites orbiting in space that take pictures of the Earth already (you know, the ones that can pick off your license plates, and the ones that can tell that you're speeding even though they're 31 miles away). We were too busy crying for better satelite TV and cell phone availability to figure out what was going on in abusing this technology.
Although, I'm glad that these things were put to good use in this case. Being from a farming state and knowing the current farm economy (or lack thereof), I'm glad to see them stopping farm insurance claim fraud, because it's incredably easy to file for...all you gotta do is spend an hour filling out the right papers, plus an hour calling your state representative demanding justice if the claim was rejected the first time. Rarely will you get a visit from any big insurance guys unless you claim some proposterous amount of land that was damaged.
Now tell me, since when could a commercial company use proprietary code from another commercial company and build on it?
When that commercial company has the gold, for he who has the gold makes the rules. In Microsoft's case, competition is easy to get rid of if you buy them out. Only problem is that GPL'd work cannot be bought out.
Case in Point: This is one competition Bill can't control, so he'll whine about not being able to build upon it, because as a commerical company, he technically can't.
He's too afraid that if his company starts programming GPL'd work, "Microsoft Trade Secrets" might be given up...besides, anything that the coders write for Microsoft are owned by Microsoft. If a Microsoft programmer GPL'd his/her work, that would be a HUGE lawsuit waiting to happen.
...so basically, I gather that when my brain's fried and I really want to watch a movie that has no plot at all, but instead a basic shoot-em-up with the main character being a Barbie doll, this would be the movie to see, huh?
I'll give Angelina Jolie credit for doing a reasonable british accent, but lets be honest, she was hired because she's a flavor of the month. WHich makes it even more sad that the real point of this movie (Lara's T&A) is padded. And padded so much that when packed into her traditionally tight t-shirt, she looks so much like a toy that I just wanted to scream.
Well, I mean, come on! Do you really expect that Hollywood could fine someone who could
1) Fit Laura Croft's body
2) Know how to operate a 9mm gun
3) Act
...and on top of it all, have a good British accent?
I think you have a better chance of finding a movie company that is in favor of DeCSS.
...of good programming.
My college is now in the experimental transition from C++ to Java. Personally, from what I've seen as a consultant at the college, all it does is make programmers sloppier code writers.
The problem I've seen with rookie C++ writers is that they fail to grasp what's going on inside with the CPU and the memory processing the program.
My fav beginners language: assembly. People who learn assembly learn about what jumps and loops do, how registers, memory, and IO ports are used, and how to be clean at using memory.
Our final program was one that used the clocks T0 and T2 to program the speaker to play line of music read from a file. Sure, you can do the same with C, but rather than using libraries, everyone got to see how things got moved in and out of the IO registers, as well as how to use them to manipulate PC hardware.
As a bonus, we then got a chance to toast our Interupt tables at the end of the semester. Sometimes, trashing a machine is the best way to figure out how it works!
Assembly gives everyone the chance to not only work with hardware directly, but also how to make your code more efficient on CPU cycles and on memory block management (because you have to manage it directly, rather than leaving that up to the compiler).
...because this stupid feature is disabled by default*. In Microsoft-land this means that 99.99% of users will never enable or even be aware of it - ala the "Don't spam everyone I know with e-mail virii" check box in Outlook.
Heheheh...I'm surprised you haven't realized yet what Microsoft means by "default." They're not going to spend millions of dollars in time and development just to have something "disabled by default."
What that means is this: you install Windows XP, and near the end, you get this dialog box: "Microsoft has furthered its internet innovation in pushing the limits of technology by bringing to you a new technology known as Smart Tags! With this option enabled, you will have the power to further your web-browsing experiences by being provided with new links on existing websites, expanding your browsing capabilities within the new Microsoft Internet Explorer 6.0! Push OK to enable this feature."
And as you said, for the 99.99% of users who aren't "aware" of any possible web options, they're going to absent-mindedly click OK, thinking that it's some required part of the internet.
...of course, it's still disabled "by default."
We won't, of course, mention the travesty of a platform that is .NET... not without laughing...
.NET / XML
.NET / XML
And why is it a travesty? Because you say it is? I hope you realize that while you're laughing at it, Microsoft is laying out billions of dollars to say otherwise. And who are the masses going to listen to, hmm? Will they listen to some joe out in cyberspace, or are they going to listen to $$$?
Are you familiar with the song "Sixteen Candles"? The song was basically a flop (barely broke the top 100 on the Billboard chart if I remember right) until some guy named Dick Clark played the song on some show called American Bandstand. And he played it again, and again, and again. Suddenly, the song was a hit. Why did Dick Clark play the song over and over? Well, the newspapers soon found out that he was being paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to do so, aka payola. Money speaks, and millions of teenage fans listened.
Now I'll be frank. Right now I'm using the Windows 98 platform to type this message to you. My machine has Micrsoft Works (which I often use for word processing), and my DSL ISP will [unfortunatley] soon become MSN (although I'm still using Netscape). I enjoy using Microsoft Works, and there isn't an easier-to-use and highly-supported OS out there right now than the Windows lineup.
Why do I have all these products? Because this is what the economy has shoved in front of my face. Sure, I can bash it all I want...call it a travesty, say that Win9x is a piece of crap, rip Internet Explorer apart...but it's no use. It is what the world uses, so it is what I must use. Why is it what the world uses?
It's the golden rule: He who has the gold makes the rules.
Personally, I thought this was one of Katz's better articles. There wasn't as much biased onslaught against MS, but instead he laid out a huge list of facts which basically gave out Microsoft's position. His last couple paragraphs (rather than his entire article) showed where he stood.
But I thought this summed it up real nicely: "People who need the Net and the Web in their personal lives or workplaces will do business with Microsoft, or they won't do business."
Truthfully, Microsoft is being innovative. I can't deny that. They're pushing technology (and my swap file) beyond its limits, always trying to see what it can do. But they're pushing it their way...the way they want it to go, so that they can maintain the power. They claim that they'll make the internet greater than it was before. The problem with this is that the internet was born WITHOUT MICROSOFT. The internet became what it was in 1996 WITHOUT MICROSOFT. What we worship in the internet was not created by Microsoft.
Look at where the internet is going now.
Netscape --> Internet Explorer
E-Mail (Eudora, PINE, Pegasus, etc.) --> Outlook
Movies (Quicktime, RealPlayer, etc.) --> Microsoft Media Player
Streaming Audio (RealPlayer) --> Micrssoft Media Player
Java -->
Shockwave -->
Chat (AIM, ICQ, mIRC, etc.) --> MSN Instant Messenger
Sure, one could argue that I'm being too paranoid, but when billions of dollars coming from one company alone are being used to push a product, people are going to listen. On the left side, each company worked on their own branch of the internet. Microsoft's working on them all. Why? When people listen (or rather are blindly following the pied piper), the $$$ has the power.
I know that Katz-bashing appears to be the mainstream, simply because he's got an opinion. My advice for Slashdot readers: Don't bash him because he's opinionated. Opinions are like assholes: everyone's got one, and everyone thinks everyone elses stinks.
Here's the problem: everyone keeps bashing (in some way or another) Microsoft, but when Katz tries to absorb everyones' opinion into one article, they bash him for it, since it appears to overly-dramatic, to biased, or whatever (even though many of us all write that way ourselves). My advice for Katz: rather than trying to follow and reflect what people are saying in their postings, write what you truly believe. That way, people will fight with what you have to say (which leads to better conversation) than bash the way you write.
The question is, "Who on earth would want a pile of plutonium in their back yard?"
How bout we take all our plutonium and dump it right in Saddam's backyard in Iraq, right when Saddam's there holding a barbeque or something? That way, we get rid of the plutonium that we don't need, and Saddam gets all the plutonium he wants! Course, he may not survive and be able to use it, but it's a win-win situation!
But if a "memorial" is what they want, I'd say just dump it all on the White House lawn and put a sign there saying, "We be fucked." I'd say it's a fitting tribute to all the money we spent on developing the stuff during the Cold War.
...is it always makes for good conversation.
Alright, so let's disect this pig.
It seems to me that privacy is only desired by those who have something to hide. Furthermore, everyone pretends to be squeeky clean, which means that we have unrealistic expectations of others.
Close, but no cigar. You are half-right, that many want privacy to hide who they really are or what they might have done, but there's the other half: people want privacy so that others don't assume they have something to hide, and what it might be.
Classic example: how much should your insurance company know about you. We've argued it to the death, and everyone already has their opinions on it, but say they knew that your were genetically predisposed to heart failure. Would you like it if they assumed that you would have heart failure and that your premiums would cost $200 more per month than the Joe Smoe next door? It isn't something to hide, because it hasn't happened yet -- there is no guarantee that it will happen.
Better example: Just by looking at your e-mail address, I see that it belongs to americanwicca.com. Perhaps I should assume that you are a wiccan, and/or practice it on a regular basis. Perhaps you like to practice witchcraft...cast spells on people you don't like...sacrifice goats in your basement...do that voodoo that you do. What if you happen to send me a resume for a job offering and I see your e-mail address on it and jump to these conclusions? Yes, I know that Wiccan and Witchcraft and Voodoo are entirely separate practices, but who says that everyone does? Your personal knowledge of who you are does not stop the prejudice of others.
In the future, privacy will not exist. This will create a more sane society - politicians will not be expected to be perfect, we will have more realistic expectations. We will be able to check up on our prospective spouses, find out everything about them before even meeting. It will be a wonderful way of meeting new people and finding love.
BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! Realistic expectations? Listen, ever since George Washington took office, people have been trying to follow his standard for serving their country. Check out prospective spouses? Who is going to want to marry you if you already know who they are, what they like to do, what they've done in the past, and who they've slept with (the fun in dating is finding that stuff out...well, except for who they've slept with)! That's not the way you find love! (would you like it if I assumed that you don't date much since you made that statement, or would you rather keep that private, hmm?)
I have noticed, seem to think that privacy is some sort of fundamental right, when in fact it is socially constructed...The only rights we can have are truly fundamental - the right to life, for example.
This is completely twisted. You're saying that the right to privacy is socially constructed (which you're right), but say that the right to life is fundamental. I'm afraid that both of those "rights" are socially defined. There was no right to life in periods of war, dictatorships, anarchies.
You presume we have a right to life because it is defined in our society. And it is, through the Declaration of Independence. But so is the right to privacy, in the 14th amendment (and Roe vs. Wade).
The problem with the right to privacy is that it has never been solidly defined. President Bush may support Roe vs. Wade in defending a woman's right to privacy, but he stands up for businesses in their continuing "economic progress," even though it's business that's really hacking away at privacy issues. Everyone sees this right in their own sense, but because everyone looks at it differently, there's no way that we are going to be able to defend it unless we know what territory to defend.
This might be a secluded idea of my own, and I have no idea if it would fly, but in programming my own stuff, I always use greek letters to describe its progress. We half-use it already, with alpha and beta versions, but all I do is say alpha10 or beta20, describing its stage and its build in that stage.
Only difference is I extend it further, giving the title "gamma" to a completed work (a gamma2 or gamma5 would be like v1.2 or v1.5), and a "delta" would be a completed work with a significant amount of bugs fixed.
Course, this is just a "home-brew" version system of mine. Who knows how well it would fly in the business world.
Dan Goldin has the worst sense of priorities if he thinks 20 years is an acceptable time frame for a manned (and/or womanned) Mars mission.
What's wrong with it? I think it's an admirable goal. NASA's technically there already in terms of technology...they did plenty of research and development in the 70's, figuring out how to launch humans with the power of a nuclear rocket to Mars. There is only one problem: round trip is 1 year, 3 months time.
What NASA has to do is figure out how to extend the physical and mental stress environments in order to accompany humans through space for that long period of time. Easiest (conceptual) solution: create some means of artificial gravity (I said a conceptual solution, not realistical). Well, either that, or make a faster rocket...
They could do it in ten years...heck, I'm sure they could "do" it in five years, but for reasons of PR and government funding, they need the other 15 for research, development, and PR work.
For anyone who has any interest whatsoever in engineering, I highly suggest the book Cat's Paws and Catapults. It details the physics involved in much of these "engineering enigmas."
...Anyway, a counterweight would be useless because of the gravitational force, but then you have to realize that it would be absolutely impossible to use a counterweight in the first place. Even if you could make a cable out of carbon nanotubes, by attaching a cable from the Earth to a space station in the sky, you suddenly render the entire space station to the gravitational pull on the rope.
Just like flying a kite...when you make a kite, you don't use steel cable, because there's no way the wind force on the kite can support the weight of the steel cable. Because there is a gravitational pull on the cable, anything attached to the cable is going to be pulled with it.
Now, let's say you take a different approach: turn the "tube" from the Earth to the space station into a vacuum tube. That way you could set up some mag-lev propulsion system to go back and forth between points A and B. But then you run into two more major problems.
1) Spacial disturbances. There is turbulence in space...solar winds, debris orbiting the Earth, the gravitational pull of the sun with different pulls on Earth and its "attached space station," and plenty others, which would put an incredible amount of sheer and stress on anything running between the Earth and the Station that it would break. That would not be a fun ride for whoever's going between point A and point B (either you'll be jetisoned out into the outer atmospheres of Earth and enjoy burning up on your way back in, or you'll enjoy being propelled down to the Earth from three or more miles up).
2) You'd cause the space station to fall back to Earth. The ISS revolves around the Earth once every ninty minutes. Why? Because that velocity maintains their orbit. A balance of inertia and free-fall causes the ISS to "orbit" Earth. By slowing down its speed, you slow down inertia, therefore destroying the balance, causing the ISS to "free-fall" back down to Earth, aka give everyone down below a multi-billion dollar fireworks show.
Heck, with all the money they're spending on this program, I would think that they stand a better chance investing in learning how to beam people between point A and point B rather than trying to build some carnival ride into space.
I have a feeling we'll all be in for a real treat once 1.0 hits the net.
Alright, alright. I have been looking forward for Mozilla 1.0 for a long time, wanting to get rid of Netscape Crashigator 4.x and finally have a weapon to shoot at MS Internet Integrator from my desktop.
Too bad I've been waiting too long.
Listen, I'm big into bashing IE, because I hate internet integration, hate the MS behemoth, and want some competition, just like most others here on the board (yes, we all love Linux, but the majority of us STILL use Windows on AT LEAST one desktop). But Mozilla is REALLY PUSHING its time frame here. Before any flame throwers come around telling me that I'm not patient enough, just try and think about it for a second...
...Slashdot just ran an article a couple articles back about a satire of a company who kept telling investors that it has a kick-ass piece of software that will take the market by storm. Only problem was that they were never able to produce their product. What happened to the company? It kicked the bucket.
Now, granted, Mozilla has kept showing us its improvements, its great abilities, its scarce use of resources, its stablility, etc. But for crying out loud,
PRODUCE THE PRODUCT!!!
Although I'm sure the final product is going to be great,
1) These three years of waiting have caused Microsoft to nearly win out 85% of the browsing market by now.
2) The latency has caused AOL to release "Netscape 6.0" with a beta version of Mozilla and Gecko which is a piece of crap and unstable with all the bogus utilities included in it. Yes, it means nothing to the geek community, but to the real world community (aka business and consumer), it makes Netscape (the name most are familiar with) look like a has-been, while Mozilla (the name no one is familiar with) is not known by anyone.
3) Since this is "open-source" software, that means that there will be no promotion on the product whatsoever, meaning Microsoft will still have the competitive edge by far.
Argue what you want, but the fact of the matter is that the team has taken way too much time striving for perfection. Even though this is open-source, its superiority alone will not take the web (heck, if the superior product always won, we would have never used 3.5" floppy disk drives and Rambus would never have survived this long). Time is an enemy, no matter what kind of software it is. This product needs to get out there now. It needed to get out there two years before now.