Agreed. First thing I thought when I read this was that he needed to talk to Cory Doctorow.
However, Doctorow told me when I met him that he'd publicly debated another copyright zealot, Harlan Ellison, and it didn't go well at all. Although that may just have been because of Harlan being his usual Harlan self.
Iridium is very hard and very brittle; I think it'd be difficult to make it into a ring. Maybe it could be alloyed with gold?
At least it's not terribly expensive; about half the cost of gold.
When my spouse and I wanted geeky wedding bands, we ended up getting them from Isabel Jewelry, in Wyoming. Isabel Rucker makes beautiful hammered rings from several colors of 14K gold, as well as silver. The geek cred comes from her being the daughter of SF author Rudy Rucker, of whom we're fans.
Her rings are beautiful, functional, and not terribly expensive, and we're very happy with ours.
I'm enjoying it quite a bit. It's dense and complex, with lots of discussion of philosophical ideas from all of Western history. The world is also incredibly rich and detailed; it's one of the best jobs of worldbuilding I've seen in a long time.
It's not particularly accessible, though. There's a glossary and lots of idiosyncratic vocabulary, so it's slow going for the first hundred pages or so. Once you get used to it and you learn some of the history, it gets quite a bit easier.
I'm looking forward to seeing how it ends--particularly since everybody who's finished it says it's more satisfying than most of his endings.
Would you want millions of tons of metal buzzing around overhead, piloted by the same people who don't know how to drive on the freeway now? I didn't think so.
Besides, can you imagine the premiums on the liability insurance?
Never mind pilot's licenses. The only way we're ever going to have flying cars is if they're completely automated.
MS may have finally been hit, but it won't hurt them very much, because they already made ridiculous amounts of money from it. Since profit is the only thing corporations care about, the only way to deter bad corporate behavior is to make it unprofitable.
I have felt for some time that if somebody can be shown to have profited from a crime, then that person or company should be required to forfeit triple what they gained as a result, over and above any other fines and penalties. (I came up with this years ago, after a judge in my town was caught illegally cutting trees that blocked his view of the river. He was fined $20,000, but the value of his property went up $120,000. So he still came out ahead.)
For example: let's say a factory gets caught dumping toxic waste rather than processing it like they're supposed to. In addition to the fine for breaking the law, there should be a determination of what the dumping added to their bottom line, and then they should be forced to pay triple that amount.
Do this consistently, and lots of this kind of crap would disappear rather quickly. Application of the idea to MS will be left to the reader's imagination.
The warrantless wiretapping is unconstitutional under the Fourth Amendment, we already knew that. Neither Congress nor the White House can grant immunity for assisting with an unconstitutional act. They simply don't have the legal right to do so.
Of course, this White House has broken so many laws already, and Congress has been so unwilling to do its duty and call them on it, that this really doesn't surprise me anymore.
I have two, both acquired recently. I grew up with calculators (I'm 38), but I did have one as a kid. Never learned how to use it then.
A couple years ago I got curious and decided to learn about them. Got the same one I had before, then found the one company still making them and bought their top-of-the-line model. I do actually use them occasionally.
Slide rules are fun. They require some actual mathematical knowledge to use correctly. And you don't need seventeen digits of precision for most things. What better geek toy could you ask for?
Oh, wait... an abacus. I have one of those too. And I know how to use it.
I found a copy cheap in a used bookstore some years back, after looking for awhile. I like it. Nelson was trying to convince the freaks that computers were fun and nothing to be afraid of (at the time, they were looked at with suspicion by the counterculture as tools of the Establishment). He didn't quite succeed, but computers had a culture all their own that was already beginning to grow...
Personally, I think it's because so many nerds grow up socially isolated that they become cynical about society in general. Libertarianism tells them they don't have to give a damn about anyone around them, so naturally they find it attractive.
I tend to think that libertarianism is essentially a long-winded justification for complete, utter selfishness. But, then, I'm a socialist, so what do I know.
...the Republican-owned and -operated companies that make these things are doing their damnedest to convince states it shouldn't be done, using "security" and the urge to computerize everything under the sun as excuses.
Their true goals, of course, are (a) to increase their business, and (b) to help their favorite crooks get in office and stay there--where they can then send even more business their way. Lather, rinse, repeat.
When I was in grade school, I used to draw maps of the school all the time, just because I was bored. And I did it in class, and nobody cared. If I were doing it today, would I get arrested?
I mean, how the hell can they say that this constitutes a threat?
Very true. But back then the average home machine didn't have the power for 3D rendering. And, on top of that, we were all on dialup. Now, with broadband connections and decent video cards, there is a far better infrastructure in place.
Agreed. The one thing standing in the way of building a real-life Metaverse was the lack of a widely used, freely available standard for creating virtual worlds (like HTML & HTTP in the early nineties). Linden is now giving us exactly that.
Just watch. As soon as the source is released, SL will explode just like the Web did in '94.
>>>The OEMs who make generic MP3/WMA players are not likely to pick up a new chip to decode AAC files unless there is high demand for it, because it will noticably affect cost.
And EMI putting out their catalog in DRM-free AAC won't create that demand?
Let's see. They say (buried at the end) that "In conducting the poll, Princeton Survey Research Associates International interviewed 1,004 adults aged 18 and older." They don't say how the poll was conducted, but it was probably by phone. They don't say where these people were, though if they were spread evenly geographically, it's easy to miss the cities, which is where the majority of the population is (and where the majority of liberals are).
Also, they claim the poll "has a margin of error of plus or minus 4 percentage points for questions based on all registered voters and plus or minus 6 percentage points for results based on registered Republicans and Republican leaners." 4% is pretty big as it is, but if it's greater for Republicans, that implies that there's some sort of bias based on political affiliation. An intentionally skewed sample would account for this.
This poll is meaningless. But that won't stop Newsweek from trumpeting it all over the SCLM.
Slashdot Mirror
Agreed. First thing I thought when I read this was that he needed to talk to Cory Doctorow.
However, Doctorow told me when I met him that he'd publicly debated another copyright zealot, Harlan Ellison, and it didn't go well at all. Although that may just have been because of Harlan being his usual Harlan self.
b.
Iridium is very hard and very brittle; I think it'd be difficult to make it into a ring. Maybe it could be alloyed with gold?
At least it's not terribly expensive; about half the cost of gold.
When my spouse and I wanted geeky wedding bands, we ended up getting them from Isabel Jewelry, in Wyoming. Isabel Rucker makes beautiful hammered rings from several colors of 14K gold, as well as silver. The geek cred comes from her being the daughter of SF author Rudy Rucker, of whom we're fans.
Her rings are beautiful, functional, and not terribly expensive, and we're very happy with ours.
...that by some amazing coincidence, the lost votes will be all Democratic?
I challenge anyone to find a single "error" in a voting machine that resulted in a lost Republican vote. Funny how that happens.
I'm enjoying it quite a bit. It's dense and complex, with lots of discussion of philosophical ideas from all of Western history. The world is also incredibly rich and detailed; it's one of the best jobs of worldbuilding I've seen in a long time.
It's not particularly accessible, though. There's a glossary and lots of idiosyncratic vocabulary, so it's slow going for the first hundred pages or so. Once you get used to it and you learn some of the history, it gets quite a bit easier.
I'm looking forward to seeing how it ends--particularly since everybody who's finished it says it's more satisfying than most of his endings.
Would you want millions of tons of metal buzzing around overhead, piloted by the same people who don't know how to drive on the freeway now? I didn't think so.
Besides, can you imagine the premiums on the liability insurance?
Never mind pilot's licenses. The only way we're ever going to have flying cars is if they're completely automated.
MS may have finally been hit, but it won't hurt them very much, because they already made ridiculous amounts of money from it. Since profit is the only thing corporations care about, the only way to deter bad corporate behavior is to make it unprofitable.
I have felt for some time that if somebody can be shown to have profited from a crime, then that person or company should be required to forfeit triple what they gained as a result, over and above any other fines and penalties. (I came up with this years ago, after a judge in my town was caught illegally cutting trees that blocked his view of the river. He was fined $20,000, but the value of his property went up $120,000. So he still came out ahead.)
For example: let's say a factory gets caught dumping toxic waste rather than processing it like they're supposed to. In addition to the fine for breaking the law, there should be a determination of what the dumping added to their bottom line, and then they should be forced to pay triple that amount.
Do this consistently, and lots of this kind of crap would disappear rather quickly. Application of the idea to MS will be left to the reader's imagination.
The warrantless wiretapping is unconstitutional under the Fourth Amendment, we already knew that. Neither Congress nor the White House can grant immunity for assisting with an unconstitutional act. They simply don't have the legal right to do so.
Of course, this White House has broken so many laws already, and Congress has been so unwilling to do its duty and call them on it, that this really doesn't surprise me anymore.
I have two, both acquired recently. I grew up with calculators (I'm 38), but I did have one as a kid. Never learned how to use it then.
A couple years ago I got curious and decided to learn about them. Got the same one I had before, then found the one company still making them and bought their top-of-the-line model. I do actually use them occasionally.
Slide rules are fun. They require some actual mathematical knowledge to use correctly. And you don't need seventeen digits of precision for most things. What better geek toy could you ask for?
Oh, wait... an abacus. I have one of those too. And I know how to use it.
I found a copy cheap in a used bookstore some years back, after looking for awhile. I like it. Nelson was trying to convince the freaks that computers were fun and nothing to be afraid of (at the time, they were looked at with suspicion by the counterculture as tools of the Establishment). He didn't quite succeed, but computers had a culture all their own that was already beginning to grow...
That's particularly interesting, because Stross is a socialist.
Personally, I think it's because so many nerds grow up socially isolated that they become cynical about society in general. Libertarianism tells them they don't have to give a damn about anyone around them, so naturally they find it attractive.
I tend to think that libertarianism is essentially a long-winded justification for complete, utter selfishness. But, then, I'm a socialist, so what do I know.
...the Republican-owned and -operated companies that make these things are doing their damnedest to convince states it shouldn't be done, using "security" and the urge to computerize everything under the sun as excuses.
Their true goals, of course, are (a) to increase their business, and (b) to help their favorite crooks get in office and stay there--where they can then send even more business their way. Lather, rinse, repeat.
"could one day be the basis for 'computers with extraordinary capacities.'"
The important word here, of course, being "could".
I can't think of a better way to drive paying customers into the loving arms of FOSS and Creative Commons.
When I was in grade school, I used to draw maps of the school all the time, just because I was bored. And I did it in class, and nobody cared. If I were doing it today, would I get arrested?
I mean, how the hell can they say that this constitutes a threat?
Very true. But back then the average home machine didn't have the power for 3D rendering. And, on top of that, we were all on dialup. Now, with broadband connections and decent video cards, there is a far better infrastructure in place.
Agreed. The one thing standing in the way of building a real-life Metaverse was the lack of a widely used, freely available standard for creating virtual worlds (like HTML & HTTP in the early nineties). Linden is now giving us exactly that.
Just watch. As soon as the source is released, SL will explode just like the Web did in '94.
Used to play that obsessively on my best friend's A500. To this day, I haven't seen anything like it.
>>>The OEMs who make generic MP3/WMA players are not likely to pick up a new chip to decode AAC files unless there is high demand for it, because it will noticably affect cost.
And EMI putting out their catalog in DRM-free AAC won't create that demand?
Let's see. They say (buried at the end) that "In conducting the poll, Princeton Survey Research Associates International interviewed 1,004 adults aged 18 and older." They don't say how the poll was conducted, but it was probably by phone. They don't say where these people were, though if they were spread evenly geographically, it's easy to miss the cities, which is where the majority of the population is (and where the majority of liberals are).
Also, they claim the poll "has a margin of error of plus or minus 4 percentage points for questions based on all registered voters and plus or minus 6 percentage points for results based on registered Republicans and Republican leaners." 4% is pretty big as it is, but if it's greater for Republicans, that implies that there's some sort of bias based on political affiliation. An intentionally skewed sample would account for this.
This poll is meaningless. But that won't stop Newsweek from trumpeting it all over the SCLM.