The second point, however, I think deserves more explanation. Much like
the people complaining about the colors, these individuals are being to literal.
Clarke did not expect a HAL to come online in 1997. 2001 is not about technology.
It's about how man interacts with his own creation. It's about the effects
technology has on man - and the effects man has on technology. It is not a
statement, but a question. Clarke does not say that we can fly to Jupiter.
Rather, he asks what would happen if we were to. Would we even want to?
That story was written 200 years ago, by Mary Wollestead Shelley (Frankenstein).
Probably, all routers on the Internet would be required to block port 80 traffic.
A friend of mine studied to get his HAM license. Just before passing his exam, one of his mentors pulled him aside, and quietly told him: "Now, that you'll be licensed, you have to realize that in case of war, they gonna come out and lock you away, and confiscate all your gear".
... that the RIAA and the MPAA like to hold over your heads
is, "If we don't get this protection, we won't create anything new because
we won't have any incentive to."
Perrrrfect! No more crapola on the shitbox; no more, shitty,
insipid culture for the masses!
Waay to go!
Hey, wait! Without insipid culture to put the masses to sleep, they
might actuall start to (gasp!) **THINK** for themselves!!!
Uh-oh!!!
A friend of mine got his PhD in nuclear physics. To do so, he toiled quite a few years writing his own software on SGI boxen.
When he heard from a common friend, who works at a major flight simulator maker, that they needed guys that know the SGI platform very well, he applied (of course).
As you can guess, the fuckenly-clueless-as-usual HR department replied "you're overqualified". Never mind he had 5 years experience programming high-speed graphics on SGI.
But he was fortunate that in the meanwhile, the manager of the department who needed him got to know him personnaly, and was ultimately able to persuade a senior V.P. to overturn the HR department, so he finally got the job.
Of course, you can expect the HR assholes to try to can him at the first occasion, though.
IRC is all fine and well, but is very often (rightfully) blocked by croporate firewalls. Besides, IRC is not exactly a serious medium to conduct business instant communications, especially when the servers are heavily DoSed...
The idea is to yield the convenience of ICQ without a central chat server, simply by using the most widespread protocols.
The downside to this is that suddenly it becomes Oh so easy
for SPAMmers to throw messages to email that, not only clogs your mail-box,
but also gets thrown up on your screan (ala an instant message).
Not at all. The e-mails to say where you are only go to your buddies' mailboxes,
and the instant messages go through the NTALK protocol.
The next course of action is to surplant it with a single
standard that everybody can agree on. A standard to be run by the ISPs in much the same way that E-mail
is run. A standard which is opened, and indisputable (yeah, right), and
which no one body can control. A standard which uses an address convention that is universal to
the net, in much the same way email@domain.com is universal.
How about piggybacking on an existing system? Say, SMTP/POP?
Let's imagine a chat PTP app that runs BESIDES SMTP/POP. Let's say it
uses the NTALK protocol to keep things clean.
The problem with dynamic IP is to keep track of your buddies' IP addresses.
No sweat:
You connect. The chat app E-MAILS all your buddies a short message: "Yo!
I'm online at 247.308.133.32 @ 12:33+06".
It also LOOKS regularly at your inbox for exactly such messages from your
buddies telling you their IP addresses.
Now, the chat app updates your buddies list with their "new" (improved?)
IP addresses.
It also checks each of those addresses to see who is STILL online
since they sent their last "yo!" message, and updates the list accordingly.
Wanna chat? Just double-click on your buddy's name in the "online" list,
and voilà, pops opens a window of PTP chat/file exchange/whatever
with your buddy. CUCKOO!!!
There, it's simple, clean, **STANDARD**, and, most importantly,
**ISN'T CENTRALIZED**, so it can't be tapped into nor shut-down.
Unions typically exist to prevent non-members working.
That makes them half protection racket, half cartel. In effect,
they're enforcing a non-compete which you didn't sign.
Unions typically exist to make sure no worker is screwed thoroughly
by management. In effect, they make sure you'll never be affected
by a non-compete since you are very difficult to fire.
The reasons why unions prohibit non-members from working somewhere
is to make sure that EVERYONE is PROTECTED by the
union.
When I was a kid, there was no objection in me having a drink. The
result: I get sick, and I never think of drinking again (or, at least,
until muuuuch later).
When I was a kid, there was no objection in me having a puff.
The result: I found that so disgusting that I never had a puff ever after
(even when I was working for a tobacco company that gave me two cartons
of the stuff a week, for free). What also didn't help was being cooped-up
in the back of the VolksWagen, not being able to open the window, having
headaches breathing the cigarette smoke coming from the front. And heaven
forbid I would touch the green stuff (coming from behind my grandfather's
barn) my folks were merrily puffing on.
When I was a kid, there was no objection in me l00king @ pr0n
(hell, my folks brought me to a Linda Lovelace movie when I was
12). The result, I don't find pr0n worthy of wasting neurons on.
But when I was a kid, I had very strict instructions from my mother
never to take the subway. The result: I am a totally freaking-out
subway freak.
blockquote> Someone (YES, A SINGLE PERSON) called the Attorney General's
office to complain about Soldier of Fortune.
Often someone (YES, A SINGLE PERSON) can have disproportionate influence.
A SINGLE reporter once asked the Québec minister responsible
for sports "how about the coroner's reports on SCUBA diving fatalities?"
(Québec had seen what seemed - to the media - a quite alarming
rate of SCUBA diving fatalities - never mind that more people died
while fishing than while diving in the same period of time). Caught
off-guard, the minister sheepishly answered "we're working on it".
Last year, the result came out. A quite waaay off-the target diver
licensing scheme which penalizes the individual diver rather than the
real culprit: the diving industry (it's just like if car dealers
were not only giving driving lessons, but also hand-out the drivers
licenses. Do you think that many people would flunk their driving
test???)...
As a last point, there are MANY times when I simply can't
find where the headlight switch is in a strange car without some serious
searching. Talk about bad UI! It's dark, how am I supposed to find the
thing?
In the olden steam locomotive days, there was a small turbogenerator
that provided electricity to light the headlights, number board, class
lights, inspection lights and cab lights.
Whenever someone climbed aboard an engine at night and needed some light,
he only had to reach up and find by touch a cross-shaped valve handle (others
valves handles are round) on the turret (that's an auxiliary steam feed
from the boiler to power accessories) which fed steam to the turbogenerator,
and voilà, he had light without much hassle...
Perhaps automotive designers oughta be forced to learn running a steam
locomotive before being allowed to work...
In the Apollo days the number of bugs in the Lunar
Module software could be counted on one hand and the astronauts knew what
they were and the work arounds.
Yeah, and they had a major one show up during the landing, that the
astronauts didn't know the workaround to. Too many interrupts or something
like that...
That wasn't exactly a bug, it was first misinterpreted (due to a inadequate
user-interface) during training as an FIRE-IN-HOLE ABORT NECESSARY error
condition, but after the proper debriefing, it was properly handled during
the actual moon landing.
After more than 30 years of restless research, Carl Hodges,
an atmospheric physicist from the University of Arizona, [...] The world's supply of saltwater is virtually unlimited,/blockqu
So what if [...] and there is a Frenchnet and an entirely
separate Internet?
For more than 20 years, there has been such a thing; a "separate" (well,
it was there FIRST) Joe Q. PUBLIC usable Frenchnet, which was squarely
aimed to the public, and the terminals were given free of charge by the
State, to boot: the MINITEL.
Why is it that every problem requires an incredibly complicated
technical solution to overcome? It seems to me that problems that arise
through legal silliness can often be solved the same way.
It need not. A simple bit of redesign oughta do the job:
Scrap countryless TLD. No more.COMs, no more.ORGs, whatever.
FORCE everybody to register under their country TLD.
Patch NAMEd so it returns AT LEAST the Fully-Qualified-Hostname
of the closest router
Slashdot Mirror
That story was written 200 years ago, by Mary Wollestead Shelley (Frankenstein).
--
A friend of mine studied to get his HAM license. Just before passing his exam, one of his mentors pulled him aside, and quietly told him: "Now, that you'll be licensed, you have to realize that in case of war, they gonna come out and lock you away, and confiscate all your gear".
He did not bother taking the exam.
--
--
--
--
--
--
--
Waay to go!
Hey, wait! Without insipid culture to put the masses to sleep, they might actuall start to (gasp!) **THINK** for themselves!!! Uh-oh!!!
--
--
--
A friend of mine got his PhD in nuclear physics. To do so, he toiled quite a few years writing his own software on SGI boxen.
When he heard from a common friend, who works at a major flight simulator maker, that they needed guys that know the SGI platform very well, he applied (of course).
As you can guess, the fuckenly-clueless-as-usual HR department replied "you're overqualified". Never mind he had 5 years experience programming high-speed graphics on SGI.
But he was fortunate that in the meanwhile, the manager of the department who needed him got to know him personnaly, and was ultimately able to persuade a senior V.P. to overturn the HR department, so he finally got the job.
Of course, you can expect the HR assholes to try to can him at the first occasion, though.
--
The idea is to yield the convenience of ICQ without a central chat server, simply by using the most widespread protocols.
--
--
How about piggybacking on an existing system? Say, SMTP/POP?
Let's imagine a chat PTP app that runs BESIDES SMTP/POP. Let's say it uses the NTALK protocol to keep things clean.
The problem with dynamic IP is to keep track of your buddies' IP addresses. No sweat:
You connect. The chat app E-MAILS all your buddies a short message: "Yo! I'm online at 247.308.133.32 @ 12:33+06".
It also LOOKS regularly at your inbox for exactly such messages from your buddies telling you their IP addresses.
Now, the chat app updates your buddies list with their "new" (improved?) IP addresses.
It also checks each of those addresses to see who is STILL online since they sent their last "yo!" message, and updates the list accordingly.
Wanna chat? Just double-click on your buddy's name in the "online" list, and voilà, pops opens a window of PTP chat/file exchange/whatever with your buddy. CUCKOO!!!
There, it's simple, clean, **STANDARD**, and, most importantly, **ISN'T CENTRALIZED**, so it can't be tapped into nor shut-down.
Freechat anyone?
--
Who will trust the trustees????
--
Unions typically exist to make sure no worker is screwed thoroughly by management. In effect, they make sure you'll never be affected by a non-compete since you are very difficult to fire.
The reasons why unions prohibit non-members from working somewhere is to make sure that EVERYONE is PROTECTED by the union.
--
When I was a kid, there was no objection in me having a puff. The result: I found that so disgusting that I never had a puff ever after (even when I was working for a tobacco company that gave me two cartons of the stuff a week, for free). What also didn't help was being cooped-up in the back of the VolksWagen, not being able to open the window, having headaches breathing the cigarette smoke coming from the front. And heaven forbid I would touch the green stuff (coming from behind my grandfather's barn) my folks were merrily puffing on.
When I was a kid, there was no objection in me l00king @ pr0n (hell, my folks brought me to a Linda Lovelace movie when I was 12). The result, I don't find pr0n worthy of wasting neurons on.
But when I was a kid, I had very strict instructions from my mother never to take the subway . The result: I am a totally freaking-out subway freak .
The moral? You figure it out.
--
Last year, the result came out. A quite waaay off-the target diver licensing scheme which penalizes the individual diver rather than the real culprit: the diving industry (it's just like if car dealers were not only giving driving lessons, but also hand-out the drivers licenses. Do you think that many people would flunk their driving test???)...
--
Whenever someone climbed aboard an engine at night and needed some light, he only had to reach up and find by touch a cross-shaped valve handle (others valves handles are round) on the turret (that's an auxiliary steam feed from the boiler to power accessories) which fed steam to the turbogenerator, and voilà, he had light without much hassle...
Perhaps automotive designers oughta be forced to learn running a steam locomotive before being allowed to work...
--
--
--
--
Scrap countryless TLD. No more .COMs, no more .ORGs, whatever.
FORCE everybody to register under their country TLD.
Patch NAMEd so it returns AT LEAST the Fully-Qualified-Hostname of the closest router
Extract country(/area) suffix(es).
Voilà!
--
Been there, done that.
--