Maybe someone has already said this, but if Homeland Security is now doing the checking of the passenger lists doesn't this give the Homeland Security officers not only complete access, but complete control over airport security systems?
The only way to do this "gently" at all is to give Homeland Security complete access to airline records (which is illegal no matter how you slice it). A more realistic method and seemingly part of this plan, is to either have armed Homeland Security officers in every airport checking the passengers, or to have the Homeland Security officer be effectively "in charge" of the security guys at the airport doing the checking.
How is this essentially different from having a Gestapo officer in every train station in Europe during WWII?
There is an absolutely huge difference between a private company doing due diligence to protect it's passengers, and having government officials essentially in control of every major transport point in the country. This is tantamount to having armed men in every airport that only answer to the executive branch of the federal government. Men with all the powers of police officers and yet absolutely none of the constitutional constraints. Has the US gone completely insane?
What happens when later on down the road, the Homeland Security guy at the airport (who is now effectively the head security officer), gets an order from the White House to simply "lock down the airport" so that the coup d'etat can proceed? Does anyone think all those rent-a-cops are going to buck Homeland Security?
I guess I might have put a few noses out of joint with that "buzzword" comment, but I am not really as bitter as I may seem. Gibson does indeed write very well and Neuromancer will always be a classic up there with the other greats.
It's just that there are a lot of us older guys out there that grew up on science fiction and are a bit miffed/disturbed/whatever at how it's all (mostly) turned to fantasy crap at the same time as it has wildly increased in popularity. Science fiction is supposed to be *about* the future, not just a story with the trappings of the future.
I wasn't trying to denigrate anything that wasn't "pure" or hard science fiction, some of this stuff is hugely entertaining. My point was simply to differentiate between fantasy and "true science fiction" as genres.
I guess I wasn't clear. I have nothing against Groklaw and PJ and I think they totally reported responsibly, I just disagree with your assessment of the content and your interpretation of what (you think) Groklaw's interpretation of this is.
It seems to me to be overly conspiratorial the way people (and I think you too, if I understand you correctly), are immediately blending all this stuff together into a story about FSJ being some kind of astroturf blogger for Microsoft.
I have a lot of experience with conspiracy theories and how rumours and stories spread throughout societies. It just seemed very familiar to me the way less than a few hours after his identity was revealed, people were already weaving conspiracies out of multiple, not necessarily related tidbits of information. This is classic rumour-mongering behaviour.
I *do* read Groklaw and respect what they write, I *don't* read FSJ much because I don't find it funny or informative and from what I can sense of the personality behind the writing, I don't really like the guy. At the same time that doesn't mean that I am going to convict the guy for being a Microsoft shill on what amounts to a single co-incidence and a rumour.
In that case, it could be said that hard science fiction has become almost impossible. Conjectures about future technologies are as hard as (William Gibson) says, and any given writer is going to have to face the likelihood that their conjectures get shown as flawed very quickly. No offense but this sounds like nonsense to me.
Science fiction is no more impossible by these standards than it ever was. If you read sci-fi from the 50's and 60's they got some of it right and huge amounts of it completely wrong. I would venture to guess that science fiction today will have about the same ratio of accuracy some 50 or 60 years hence.
Also, despite his fame and fortune, William Gibson is one of the last person to be talking about predicting the future. Anyone really familiar with science fiction and Gibson's novels can tell you that other than a few buzzwords and the general tone of his one and only original novel, nothing Gibson has written about has actually come true. The metaphorical "cyberspace" (there's the buzz-word [smirk]), in his first novel if not really anything like what actually became cyberspace except in very general, symbolic outlines. And all of his further novels are just regurgitations of the same stuff.
"Real" science fiction, (the original science fiction), is about science and the future in a concrete sense and it's based in social and historical themes. The idea is to base a story in a "real" or possible future society. The "other" kind of sci-fi, the stuff that has been popular since about 1980 or so and has become mainstream in our culture, has nothing to do with the future or with science. Despite the trappings of ray-guns and spaceships for instance, Star Wars is essentially a medieval drama about empire and heroic rebellion. Same goes for the vast majority of TV sci-fi.
These are not science fiction stories, they are War stories (now called "action" movies), romantic dramas, and sitcoms that just happen to take place in some cheesy spaceship. Gibson actually wrote some real science fiction with that first book, but it's been severely overplayed and overexposed.
He has been trading on it's success ever since IMO.
I like and respect Groklaw and so on, but I don't think they actually said what you think they did, and the "evidence" is pretty scant.
FSJ used the term "People Ready" once in a blog and Bill Gates mentioned FSJ in a recent interview so... of course the whole thing is a conspiracy on Microsoft's part and Bill Gates was in on it?
I don't see how that necessarily follows.
The way I read the Groklaw article, they are merely reporting on the guy that's throwing this theory out there. I don't see Groklaw themselves as seriously proposing that FSJ is some kind of Microsoft plot.
I always found it puzzling that the brightest minds seem to feel there's a fair percentage chance we'll find sign of extraterrestrial intelligence from radio waves. It is amazing how such a large group of otherwise intelligent people can convince themselves of this isn't it? Unless the nearby parts of the galaxy are virtually teeming with civilisations at about the same level of advancement as us, it's unlikely that anything would ever be found this way. The awful truth is, that even the most brilliant of minds is a slave to expectation and hope and usually comes with a large serving of bias on the side.
There is one clear, possible answer to the Fermi paradox that is rarely discussed. Probably because it requires us to think differently about the whole problem. This is that it is really only our point of view that causes us to "expect" the visitors and that the whole thing could best be seen as a colossal failure of the imagination on our part.
The paradox is based on a some very culturally biased assumptions, the most important ones being things like the assumed infinite expansion of scientific knowledge, and the familiar processes of colonial expansion, domination and empire. Almost universally, we fail to comprehend that these assumptions might not always be true or that other life in the Universe may not share them. We all seem to ascribe to the same hazy, Star Trek fed delusion that the future contains some kind of galactic federation and that our children's children will be trading Spican flame-gems for Tribbles at the local bar.
If a group of people emerged on another planet in the galaxy a million years ago, then yes, they probably *could* have conquered the whole place by now and run it like some kind of galactic federation. That doesn't mean that they necessarily would have done so. Perhaps a part of being an "advanced race" is understanding that "spreading your seed amongst the stars" is a pointless and ultimately futile endeavor.
There are several much more practical reasons why galaxy-wide civilisations would never work, but this psychological one has always been my favorite. You just can't assume that all those people out there are going to think like us, or even that we will think that way when we finally get the capability to move off this rock.
Although it's often presented as an argument *against* the possibility of extra-terrestrial life, Fermi did not use it that way. The point of the paradox, was merely to point out that something is wrong with our assumptions and that we really don't know what that is. My suspicion is that the answer is to be found in our own foolish framing of the question and our inability to imagine unfamiliar scenarios.
Okay, I'm picking out the most personally offensive "Coward" post to respond to here...:-)
Only a twelve year old would seriously think that saying someone is a "fanboy" is an effective retort to an informed argument that person is making.
I am not "hurt" by the fanboi language. The very idea is a sop to those who would use the term in that it positions the person so "hurt" as a bit of a fop themselves, (or gay, or female), all of which are the standard juvenile kind of associations that people who use the term are fond of making with Apple users. I do find that aside from joke posts and a few critiques like mine, no one with a serious argument will ever use the term.
Since if we remove the "fanboy" postings, there would also be no need to reference them or make light of them, the removal of *any* post on the entire forum with the word "fanboy" or fanboi" in it would be a no-brainer in terms of improving the quality of the arguments.
Personally I am against censorship unless someone is actually being hurt however and this is not the case here. Other than that fact, I can see no downside at all to applying such a filter. I did make the suggestion half in jest, as lazy arguers will always need their excuses. So if it were banned, I suppose that a completely different term would be in use the next day.
Isn't it interesting that Slashdot threads that have anything to do with the adventures and histrionics of David Maynor instantly become peppered with a large number of idiotic, unsupported comments railing against Apple and "Apple FanBoiz," made by a variety of Slashdot accounts that rarely show up commenting on anything else?
Here is a hint: A pretend army of supporters is still a pretend army.
Isn't it fascinating to watch as shitty comments (like we see above), vacillate back and forth between "+5 Insightful" and "Flamebait" as the pretend army fights the good fight against Apple "FanBoiz" everywhere?
Why can't we just install a filter that gets rid of any post that uses "fanboy" or fanboi" or the like? No one making a serious point or with any kind of intellectual integrity uses it except as a joke.
This makes sense, but I still have to assume that there is some kind of classic "dumb move" being made on my part as this explanation does not completely cover what I have experienced. My experience (for the last few days), is a complete lack of stories of *any* kind except for Science Daily RSS, and then only when I am on that one purple "notch" of the scale.
I will have to do some actual, repeatable experimentation to back myself up and find out what the heck I am doing wrong. Possibly the fact that it's now "live" will give me a different result, or possibly I am just not waiting long enough for stories to show up.
While the comment above is indeed flamebait (for the bad attitude), I find that the Firehose does indeed suck, at least for me.
This is not a flame, but a reasoned comment made after testing the thing out many multiples of times. I try using the thing almost every day and while it worked okay at first, it started not working at all for me about a week or two ago.
The problem is that when the slider is set to the first step in the "purple" range, I get nothing but a huge list of stories spammed from Science Daily. This is their RSS feed of course, but surprisingly, I get no other stories at all. I do not get other RSS feeds, no matter how low I dial the setting (towards the black), and if I raise the setting out of the purple even to the very next "step," all stories disappear completely. I can continue "stepping" up towards the orange, red, etc. and no stories appear at all, all the way to the left. This has been the case for about a week and a half now and I stopped even trying to use it about 5 days ago, although I still check back in once in a while to see if it's working again.
Obviously I am doing something wrong here, but it's not clear to me what it is. Even though I can find literelly no stories in the firehose sometimes, when I go back to the main screen, there are new stories that have been approved while I was in the firehose. I have even left the firehose open for an hour or two once to see if it was a time-based issue and perhaps the stories were just less frequent than I imagined, but no dice.
I kind of hope that I am the only one that can't make this thing work as it would be a really unfair proposition if this experience was widespread, but here is one intelligent, reasonably capable person, who is really trying, and really interested in making the firehose work, but who hasn't got the firehose to work at all for quite a while now.
I agree, (and not just because we have the same first name). The many, many, comments here focusing on the fact that Works is bloated and doesn't even use Office file formats are really missing the obvious.
This will be a, uh... *new* version of Works won't it? So they can use their *new* OOOPS-XML file format right? And if they are going to integrate it with online stuff, that's pretty much a big re-write of the application right? None of these assumptions based on previous versions of Works are really valid then are they?
IMO, this seems like an obvious test-run for a new web-enabled productivity suite that will directly compete with Google Apps and whatever Apple comes up with in this category. Either as a test for the same things being eventually applied to MS Office, or as an eventual *substitute* for MS Office (everyone knows a complete re-write is needed at some point), this is a very smart move for the evil empire.
They get to test out their own version of the latest thing in productivity applications and they get to (probably) re-write the codebase from the ground up. If it fails miserably, they can say "it's only Works, so what?" whereas if it becomes increasingly popular and useful, it's "their new vision."
I also find the large number of comments along the lines of "Who would use adware?" to be a bit naive.
I work at a large University where, throughout the 90's, most people used Eudora because it was the standard. When Eudora began their ad based versions (how many years ago now?), I assumed everyone would drop it, but instead almost no one did. Almost without exception our secretaries and administrators don't seem to care about the advertisements. We are currently trying to get people to stop using Eudora, (mostly because it's a non-standard POS that causes us much support grief), and it's very difficult to get them to give it up even though there are free alternatives that are more reliable, easier to use, and have no ads. A lot of folks like to use what they like to use, and ads aren't going to make much of a difference IMO.
If true, this would be the only good argument against red-light cameras I have heard of. However, it does not sound even remotely true to me, regardless of a judge having said it.
To base the refusal to catch lawbreakers on the idea that the law itself is part of a conspiracy perpetrated by the local municipal authorities in order to break the law by overriding the traffic authority in order to bilk citizens out of money is a bit "out there" IMO. You can see how silly it looks just writing it down.
It's guaranteed that all those municipal politicians are indeed drooling at the thought of the mountain of cash that red-light cameras would bring in, but this conspiracy idea makes no sense. At least initially, red-light cameras would bring in so much money to the local governments that there would be no need to cheat.
The biggest problem, and the biggest reason red-light cameras are never implemented IMO, is that so many people break this particular law that it would be very hard indeed to get anyone to agree that they *should* pay. The municipal government that attempts it first is probably looking at a full-scale taxpayer revolt.
Agreed. The license plate is expressly designed for this purpose. There is absolutely no violation of privacy here.
Being in the minority of non-drivers, I am always mystified at the level of outrage some car drivers show over attempts to stop their essentially illegal actions. If you are driving a stolen car, why is that somehow okay as long as you don't get caught? Why, if you are committing a crime, is it "outrageous" that there is now a larger chance of being caught at it?
This is really the same argument as posed by the "red-light camera." These things have been suggested in my area many, many, times and yet so far, the public outcry always stops the implementation. If you are speeding, or going through a red-light why shouldn't you get caught? Sure it's a cash grab for the cops, but it's also a known fact that many deaths and injuries each year and many of the traffic snarls and slowdowns (not to mention accidents) that currently ruin your driving day, can be completely eliminated by simply putting up cameras and enforcing the traffic light rules already on the books. No one seems interested however.
Could it be that because *most* people drive a car, and because *most* people (nowadays) break that particular law about a hundred times a day, they might actually have an bias against the enforcement of these kinds of laws?
There is nothing noble here in opposing these kinds of procedures, nothing remotely moral to hang your hat on. Opposition to these kinds of technologically based applications of the law is both childish and groundless. If there is a problem with the laws then change the laws, if there is a problem because the cops just got a bit better at catching you, stop whining and figure out a technological countermeasure of your own if you can't bother to simply obey the law.
This is hardly an insightful comment and should be modded down if only for the bad attitude and swear words. In fact it seems like whomever posted this did not even read the blog in question.
The blogger makes several excellent points about how foolish the whole situation was, how the application of the law was inconsistent relative both to similar situations in the US as well as international standards, and proffered two different, "do-able," legal solutions that were promptly ignored by the "officers" in question.
The US immigration/Visa regulations are well-known around the world to be something out of the dark ages. Simply saying "well that's the law" is not informative or illuminating in any way.
I am replying because you seem generally interested in this, but I am at a bit of a loss what to say. To me saying that South Park has a (generally) right-wing point of view is just stating the obvious. All you have to do is watch anything those guys have put out. Discerning and decoding meaning in media productions, books, movies, etc. is an exercise in communication theory and not easy to describe in black and white terms, but.. come on! You have to be joking thinking that these guys are "unbiased." Just because the average joe may not detect a bias in a particular show, doesn't mean that it isn't there.
It's arguable that all social and political commentary (humorous or otherwise), has a bias and no one would expect South Park to be an exception. The question is only what kind of bias or how prevalent the bias is in the show. I'm arguing it's right-wing and prevalent in almost every scene and conversation.
Probably the easiest way to test for bias (other than studying some communication theory), is to simply watch a bunch of South Parks in a row, (or better yet a single movie like "Team America"), and write down the nasty comments they make about this person or that group etc. You will quickly see that while they do in fact make jokes about both left and right-wing types, by far the most, as well as the nastiest comments is directed at the left wing types like Jane Fonda, (or pretty much any intellectuals, actors, environmentalists, scientists, or anyone supporting any politically "left" or environmental causes). The indicators of someone's belief system is in their words and their actions. These guys betray themselves at every turn and in every show.
The article you yourself point to, brands them as "Republicans" by their own words (one is even a card carrying member), even though they also state that they are "Libertarians." You might be interested to know however, that a Libertarian is (originally), what the Wiki definition refers to as a "Consequential Libertarian." American Libertarians are more usually "Rights Libertarians" (definitely the only kind of Libertarian these guys could even dream of justifying themselves as), but a "Rights Libertarian" is really much closer to what the rest of the world calls an anarchist.
"Real" Libertarianism (the original kind), is about morals, tolerance, ethical behaviour and above all self-responsibility. Does that sound like these guys world view to you? How many South Parks are there where the message is ethical behaviour and responsibility? Those are like alien concepts to these guys.
The caveat to all this is that I am not an American, so you can safely discount everything I have said if that is your bent. You have to understand that to many of us not blessed with American blood however, almost everyone in the states is "right-wing." For example, the United States' most extreme "left-wing, practically a commie, never win in a million years Presidential candidate" (Kucinich) is pretty much a "middle of the road" candidate to a Canadian or a European, at most he is "centre-left." Even a guy like Barack Obama is a probably a bit too far to the right for many non-Americans being as he is pro-life, in favour of the Patriot Act and the Homeland Security system, he is against same sex marriage, he is in favour of fencing out those pesky Mexicans and he has yet to come out against the practice of torture.
This whole discussion is off-topic anyway and I made it further so by talking about politicians, but the idea that "South Park" is somehow not a right-wing show just because they give the tiniest of digs in the ribs to a republican or two now and then is ludicrous. The original SNL made fun of a few Liberal politicians also, but that didn't stop them being basically a basically "progressive" show that was aimed squarely at the establishment and not at Liberals and environmentalists like South Park.
Just be happy that you got me modded as flamebait now, even though it was the stupid posting of all those ads to the "humourous" web site and the gaming of the thread to mod them up that was really the problem in the first place. So by merely being upset at an irresponsible poster I am now branded as such myself. Neat.
The unfairness of that bothers me a bit, but I view it as information gathering on what kind of a place Slashdot is. I've only been posting here a couple of months and already I have come up against this kind of juvenile attitude several times. It seems that it's about 50% closer to Digg now (relative to the last time I perused the site in the 90's), which is good to know.
If one knows one is in a bad neighborhood, one doesn't get quite so upset when the wino jumps on the hood of one's car and begins raving. It's just part of the background I see now. I shall try not to get upset the next time it happens which I am sure will be quite soon.
Also, good job making this entirely about South Park when in fact it's about posting off-topic links to rude porno hate sites and then gaming the list to mod them up.:-)
What's the deal with three comments on one thread pointing to this juvenile spam-fest web-site and they are all modded up +3 or +5??? It's pretty clear that at least two of them are the same person, and really... how many people already out of high-school could there really be that find this funny?
Is there some slashdot rule I am just finding out about how everyone here is twelve and likes to say "cock" a lot? Are we going to be assailed with right-wing propaganda and poo-poo jokes a la South Park on a daily basis now?
If this kind of overt spamming/gaming of the thread can happen on slashdot, what's the point of even trying to moderate at all?
Is there anyone reading this thread that actually knows something about power outages? The information about colos from those that use them and have visited this one is great, but am I alone in thinking the power outage itself was kinda weird (and perhaps even suspicious)?
I can't remember ever being in a power outage where the power went off for a few minutes, came back on, and continued going on and off for three hours. A typical power outage is a component failure that leads to a single outage or to an overload that then leads to an outage. Sometimes successive areas fall like dominoes as the overload travels around the grid, but isn't it unusual for power to go on and off like this?
I for one would appreciate it if anyone with actual knowledge of these things would post. I know this is more of a blue collar specialty than a tech one, but someone must know the answer. Seems to me that if the power was indeed going "on and off" for three hours that this is a very good reason why the colo might have failed. It's simply too unusual an occurrence to plan for.
... (iPhone) is a little different from traditional devices. (It) has a classic desktop OS stripped down into a cellphone, whereas mainstream other devices (Palm, Windows CE, and Symbian) were designed more as cellphone systems... and scaled up. No offense, but this analysis seems quite backwards to me.
The main differentiating feature of the iPhone software is that it is a brand new GUI designed specifically for a portable communicator. It is specifically and closely tailored to the physical attributes of the device and the applications it contains, and merges the software functionality with the physical functionality into a seamless whole. It's very success is tied to this integration and the fact that it does *not* simulate a desktop environment.
The main differentiating feature of WinCE/Windows Mobile (and it's most touted feature on release), is that it *was* built as a clone of the Windows Desktop complete with start button and task bar. It failures as a mobile OS are directly proportionate to the degree in which it tries to emulate a Windows desktop. It even forces users to manipulate the tiny screen of the mobile in the same way as they would a desktop, (albeit a very small one), by necessitating the use of a tiny "pick" (stylus) to emulate the mouse on the reduced scale of the mobile desktop.
Can someone explain to me why this post is a "troll"???
It's on-topic, explanatory and insightful as far as I can see. There is no bashing of anyone, no outrageous claims, and no incitement to riot (or even spit).
Has slashdot become Digg now, where people just randomly go through posts calling everything they don't agree with a troll?
Looks to me like this is an announcement of a schedule, and not an announcement of a product.
There are no project goals here, and no definitive statements on what it will include or exclude, except the 32/64 bit statement (which seems to be more of a knee-jerk reaction than a firm plan). The subscription method of distribution (which recently was portrayed as "the future"), is mentioned as being possible, but not necessarily included in the plan?
IMO this is all about calming market fears about release schedules. This is about the marketing department asking the software engineers about what two or three "safe bet" features they can announce for the future version of Windows when the engineers probably don't even have pencil sketches on napkins at this point.
Let's focus on the fact that there are only two black-hat hackers for Mac that have (claimed) to have received death threats for their troubles. David Maynor and the "creator" of the rapeOSX worm. Since death threats are fairly juvenile (and often only exist in the paranoid minds of those that receive them), who does this worm creator remind you of?
IMO, the "voice" behind the worm threat sounds exactly the same as that behind the infamous WiFi exploit/hoax to me. The same juvenile phrasing, the same outrageous claims, poor logic and blindness to the facts. The same sense of humor and the same death-threats.
There is also a psychological truism about hoaxes that's often the cause of their downfall. The hoaxer usually finds it almost irresistible not to associate their name or their identity with the hoax in some way, even if it's obscure or disguised in some way.
What is the very last statement from the "creator" of rapeosx before he signed off for good? "I am not David Maynor."
Add to this, the fact that this slashdot thread is unusually full of "humorous" one-line anti-Apple jokes made by innumerable slash-dotters that never seem to post on other threads and are primarily new accounts, and I think you have a picture of an egomaniac stirring his own pot and trying to grab at yet another 15 minutes of fame.
Gee... who is it that fits this profile of a juvenile, paranoid, dishonest, black-hat hacker with a certain amount of skill, but not very smart, hates Apple with an unreasoning passion, has a history of outrageous claims that turn out to be untrue, and often tries to manipulate the media and online communities to their ends?
Slashdot Mirror
Maybe someone has already said this, but if Homeland Security is now doing the checking of the passenger lists doesn't this give the Homeland Security officers not only complete access, but complete control over airport security systems?
The only way to do this "gently" at all is to give Homeland Security complete access to airline records (which is illegal no matter how you slice it). A more realistic method and seemingly part of this plan, is to either have armed Homeland Security officers in every airport checking the passengers, or to have the Homeland Security officer be effectively "in charge" of the security guys at the airport doing the checking.
How is this essentially different from having a Gestapo officer in every train station in Europe during WWII?
There is an absolutely huge difference between a private company doing due diligence to protect it's passengers, and having government officials essentially in control of every major transport point in the country. This is tantamount to having armed men in every airport that only answer to the executive branch of the federal government. Men with all the powers of police officers and yet absolutely none of the constitutional constraints. Has the US gone completely insane?
What happens when later on down the road, the Homeland Security guy at the airport (who is now effectively the head security officer), gets an order from the White House to simply "lock down the airport" so that the coup d'etat can proceed? Does anyone think all those rent-a-cops are going to buck Homeland Security?
I guess I might have put a few noses out of joint with that "buzzword" comment, but I am not really as bitter as I may seem. Gibson does indeed write very well and Neuromancer will always be a classic up there with the other greats.
It's just that there are a lot of us older guys out there that grew up on science fiction and are a bit miffed/disturbed/whatever at how it's all (mostly) turned to fantasy crap at the same time as it has wildly increased in popularity. Science fiction is supposed to be *about* the future, not just a story with the trappings of the future.
I wasn't trying to denigrate anything that wasn't "pure" or hard science fiction, some of this stuff is hugely entertaining. My point was simply to differentiate between fantasy and "true science fiction" as genres.
I guess I wasn't clear. I have nothing against Groklaw and PJ and I think they totally reported responsibly, I just disagree with your assessment of the content and your interpretation of what (you think) Groklaw's interpretation of this is.
It seems to me to be overly conspiratorial the way people (and I think you too, if I understand you correctly), are immediately blending all this stuff together into a story about FSJ being some kind of astroturf blogger for Microsoft.
I have a lot of experience with conspiracy theories and how rumours and stories spread throughout societies. It just seemed very familiar to me the way less than a few hours after his identity was revealed, people were already weaving conspiracies out of multiple, not necessarily related tidbits of information. This is classic rumour-mongering behaviour.
I *do* read Groklaw and respect what they write, I *don't* read FSJ much because I don't find it funny or informative and from what I can sense of the personality behind the writing, I don't really like the guy. At the same time that doesn't mean that I am going to convict the guy for being a Microsoft shill on what amounts to a single co-incidence and a rumour.
Science fiction is no more impossible by these standards than it ever was. If you read sci-fi from the 50's and 60's they got some of it right and huge amounts of it completely wrong. I would venture to guess that science fiction today will have about the same ratio of accuracy some 50 or 60 years hence.
Also, despite his fame and fortune, William Gibson is one of the last person to be talking about predicting the future. Anyone really familiar with science fiction and Gibson's novels can tell you that other than a few buzzwords and the general tone of his one and only original novel, nothing Gibson has written about has actually come true. The metaphorical "cyberspace" (there's the buzz-word [smirk]), in his first novel if not really anything like what actually became cyberspace except in very general, symbolic outlines. And all of his further novels are just regurgitations of the same stuff.
"Real" science fiction, (the original science fiction), is about science and the future in a concrete sense and it's based in social and historical themes. The idea is to base a story in a "real" or possible future society. The "other" kind of sci-fi, the stuff that has been popular since about 1980 or so and has become mainstream in our culture, has nothing to do with the future or with science. Despite the trappings of ray-guns and spaceships for instance, Star Wars is essentially a medieval drama about empire and heroic rebellion. Same goes for the vast majority of TV sci-fi.
These are not science fiction stories, they are War stories (now called "action" movies), romantic dramas, and sitcoms that just happen to take place in some cheesy spaceship. Gibson actually wrote some real science fiction with that first book, but it's been severely overplayed and overexposed.
He has been trading on it's success ever since IMO.
I like and respect Groklaw and so on, but I don't think they actually said what you think they did, and the "evidence" is pretty scant.
...
FSJ used the term "People Ready" once in a blog and Bill Gates mentioned FSJ in a recent interview so
of course the whole thing is a conspiracy on Microsoft's part and Bill Gates was in on it?
I don't see how that necessarily follows.
The way I read the Groklaw article, they are merely reporting on the guy that's throwing this theory out there. I don't see Groklaw themselves as seriously proposing that FSJ is some kind of Microsoft plot.
There is one clear, possible answer to the Fermi paradox that is rarely discussed. Probably because it requires us to think differently about the whole problem. This is that it is really only our point of view that causes us to "expect" the visitors and that the whole thing could best be seen as a colossal failure of the imagination on our part.
The paradox is based on a some very culturally biased assumptions, the most important ones being things like the assumed infinite expansion of scientific knowledge, and the familiar processes of colonial expansion, domination and empire. Almost universally, we fail to comprehend that these assumptions might not always be true or that other life in the Universe may not share them. We all seem to ascribe to the same hazy, Star Trek fed delusion that the future contains some kind of galactic federation and that our children's children will be trading Spican flame-gems for Tribbles at the local bar.
If a group of people emerged on another planet in the galaxy a million years ago, then yes, they probably *could* have conquered the whole place by now and run it like some kind of galactic federation. That doesn't mean that they necessarily would have done so. Perhaps a part of being an "advanced race" is understanding that "spreading your seed amongst the stars" is a pointless and ultimately futile endeavor.
There are several much more practical reasons why galaxy-wide civilisations would never work, but this psychological one has always been my favorite. You just can't assume that all those people out there are going to think like us, or even that we will think that way when we finally get the capability to move off this rock.
Although it's often presented as an argument *against* the possibility of extra-terrestrial life, Fermi did not use it that way. The point of the paradox, was merely to point out that something is wrong with our assumptions and that we really don't know what that is. My suspicion is that the answer is to be found in our own foolish framing of the question and our inability to imagine unfamiliar scenarios.
He's probably already on this thread, calling everyone "fanboiz," and that is about as much as he has ever contributed IMO.
Okay, I'm picking out the most personally offensive "Coward" post to respond to here ... :-)
Only a twelve year old would seriously think that saying someone is a "fanboy" is an effective retort to an informed argument that person is making.
I am not "hurt" by the fanboi language. The very idea is a sop to those who would use the term in that it positions the person so "hurt" as a bit of a fop themselves, (or gay, or female), all of which are the standard juvenile kind of associations that people who use the term are fond of making with Apple users. I do find that aside from joke posts and a few critiques like mine, no one with a serious argument will ever use the term.
Since if we remove the "fanboy" postings, there would also be no need to reference them or make light of them, the removal of *any* post on the entire forum with the word "fanboy" or fanboi" in it would be a no-brainer in terms of improving the quality of the arguments.
Personally I am against censorship unless someone is actually being hurt however and this is not the case here. Other than that fact, I can see no downside at all to applying such a filter. I did make the suggestion half in jest, as lazy arguers will always need their excuses. So if it were banned, I suppose that a completely different term would be in use the next day.
Isn't it interesting that Slashdot threads that have anything to do with the adventures and histrionics of David Maynor instantly become peppered with a large number of idiotic, unsupported comments railing against Apple and "Apple FanBoiz," made by a variety of Slashdot accounts that rarely show up commenting on anything else?
Here is a hint: A pretend army of supporters is still a pretend army.
Isn't it fascinating to watch as shitty comments (like we see above), vacillate back and forth between "+5 Insightful" and "Flamebait" as the pretend army fights the good fight against Apple "FanBoiz" everywhere?
Why can't we just install a filter that gets rid of any post that uses "fanboy" or fanboi" or the like? No one making a serious point or with any kind of intellectual integrity uses it except as a joke.
This makes sense, but I still have to assume that there is some kind of classic "dumb move" being made on my part as this explanation does not completely cover what I have experienced. My experience (for the last few days), is a complete lack of stories of *any* kind except for Science Daily RSS, and then only when I am on that one purple "notch" of the scale.
I will have to do some actual, repeatable experimentation to back myself up and find out what the heck I am doing wrong. Possibly the fact that it's now "live" will give me a different result, or possibly I am just not waiting long enough for stories to show up.
While the comment above is indeed flamebait (for the bad attitude), I find that the Firehose does indeed suck, at least for me.
This is not a flame, but a reasoned comment made after testing the thing out many multiples of times. I try using the thing almost every day and while it worked okay at first, it started not working at all for me about a week or two ago.
The problem is that when the slider is set to the first step in the "purple" range, I get nothing but a huge list of stories spammed from Science Daily. This is their RSS feed of course, but surprisingly, I get no other stories at all. I do not get other RSS feeds, no matter how low I dial the setting (towards the black), and if I raise the setting out of the purple even to the very next "step," all stories disappear completely. I can continue "stepping" up towards the orange, red, etc. and no stories appear at all, all the way to the left. This has been the case for about a week and a half now and I stopped even trying to use it about 5 days ago, although I still check back in once in a while to see if it's working again.
Obviously I am doing something wrong here, but it's not clear to me what it is. Even though I can find literelly no stories in the firehose sometimes, when I go back to the main screen, there are new stories that have been approved while I was in the firehose. I have even left the firehose open for an hour or two once to see if it was a time-based issue and perhaps the stories were just less frequent than I imagined, but no dice.
I kind of hope that I am the only one that can't make this thing work as it would be a really unfair proposition if this experience was widespread, but here is one intelligent, reasonably capable person, who is really trying, and really interested in making the firehose work, but who hasn't got the firehose to work at all for quite a while now.
I agree, (and not just because we have the same first name). The many, many, comments here focusing on the fact that Works is bloated and doesn't even use Office file formats are really missing the obvious.
This will be a, uh... *new* version of Works won't it? So they can use their *new* OOOPS-XML file format right? And if they are going to integrate it with online stuff, that's pretty much a big re-write of the application right? None of these assumptions based on previous versions of Works are really valid then are they?
IMO, this seems like an obvious test-run for a new web-enabled productivity suite that will directly compete with Google Apps and whatever Apple comes up with in this category. Either as a test for the same things being eventually applied to MS Office, or as an eventual *substitute* for MS Office (everyone knows a complete re-write is needed at some point), this is a very smart move for the evil empire.
They get to test out their own version of the latest thing in productivity applications and they get to (probably) re-write the codebase from the ground up. If it fails miserably, they can say "it's only Works, so what?" whereas if it becomes increasingly popular and useful, it's "their new vision."
I also find the large number of comments along the lines of "Who would use adware?" to be a bit naive.
I work at a large University where, throughout the 90's, most people used Eudora because it was the standard. When Eudora began their ad based versions (how many years ago now?), I assumed everyone would drop it, but instead almost no one did. Almost without exception our secretaries and administrators don't seem to care about the advertisements. We are currently trying to get people to stop using Eudora, (mostly because it's a non-standard POS that causes us much support grief), and it's very difficult to get them to give it up even though there are free alternatives that are more reliable, easier to use, and have no ads. A lot of folks like to use what they like to use, and ads aren't going to make much of a difference IMO.
If true, this would be the only good argument against red-light cameras I have heard of. However, it does not sound even remotely true to me, regardless of a judge having said it.
To base the refusal to catch lawbreakers on the idea that the law itself is part of a conspiracy perpetrated by the local municipal authorities in order to break the law by overriding the traffic authority in order to bilk citizens out of money is a bit "out there" IMO. You can see how silly it looks just writing it down.
It's guaranteed that all those municipal politicians are indeed drooling at the thought of the mountain of cash that red-light cameras would bring in, but this conspiracy idea makes no sense. At least initially, red-light cameras would bring in so much money to the local governments that there would be no need to cheat.
The biggest problem, and the biggest reason red-light cameras are never implemented IMO, is that so many people break this particular law that it would be very hard indeed to get anyone to agree that they *should* pay. The municipal government that attempts it first is probably looking at a full-scale taxpayer revolt.
Agreed. The license plate is expressly designed for this purpose. There is absolutely no violation of privacy here.
Being in the minority of non-drivers, I am always mystified at the level of outrage some car drivers show over attempts to stop their essentially illegal actions. If you are driving a stolen car, why is that somehow okay as long as you don't get caught? Why, if you are committing a crime, is it "outrageous" that there is now a larger chance of being caught at it?
This is really the same argument as posed by the "red-light camera." These things have been suggested in my area many, many, times and yet so far, the public outcry always stops the implementation. If you are speeding, or going through a red-light why shouldn't you get caught? Sure it's a cash grab for the cops, but it's also a known fact that many deaths and injuries each year and many of the traffic snarls and slowdowns (not to mention accidents) that currently ruin your driving day, can be completely eliminated by simply putting up cameras and enforcing the traffic light rules already on the books. No one seems interested however.
Could it be that because *most* people drive a car, and because *most* people (nowadays) break that particular law about a hundred times a day, they might actually have an bias against the enforcement of these kinds of laws?
There is nothing noble here in opposing these kinds of procedures, nothing remotely moral to hang your hat on. Opposition to these kinds of technologically based applications of the law is both childish and groundless. If there is a problem with the laws then change the laws, if there is a problem because the cops just got a bit better at catching you, stop whining and figure out a technological countermeasure of your own if you can't bother to simply obey the law.
This is hardly an insightful comment and should be modded down if only for the bad attitude and swear words. In fact it seems like whomever posted this did not even read the blog in question.
The blogger makes several excellent points about how foolish the whole situation was, how the application of the law was inconsistent relative both to similar situations in the US as well as international standards, and proffered two different, "do-able," legal solutions that were promptly ignored by the "officers" in question.
The US immigration/Visa regulations are well-known around the world to be something out of the dark ages.
Simply saying "well that's the law" is not informative or illuminating in any way.
I am replying because you seem generally interested in this, but I am at a bit of a loss what to say. To me saying that South Park has a (generally) right-wing point of view is just stating the obvious. All you have to do is watch anything those guys have put out. Discerning and decoding meaning in media productions, books, movies, etc. is an exercise in communication theory and not easy to describe in black and white terms, but .. come on! You have to be joking thinking that these guys are "unbiased." Just because the average joe may not detect a bias in a particular show, doesn't mean that it isn't there.
It's arguable that all social and political commentary (humorous or otherwise), has a bias and no one would expect South Park to be an exception. The question is only what kind of bias or how prevalent the bias is in the show. I'm arguing it's right-wing and prevalent in almost every scene and conversation.
Probably the easiest way to test for bias (other than studying some communication theory), is to simply watch a bunch of South Parks in a row, (or better yet a single movie like "Team America"), and write down the nasty comments they make about this person or that group etc. You will quickly see that while they do in fact make jokes about both left and right-wing types, by far the most, as well as the nastiest comments is directed at the left wing types like Jane Fonda, (or pretty much any intellectuals, actors, environmentalists, scientists, or anyone supporting any politically "left" or environmental causes). The indicators of someone's belief system is in their words and their actions. These guys betray themselves at every turn and in every show.
The article you yourself point to, brands them as "Republicans" by their own words (one is even a card carrying member), even though they also state that they are "Libertarians." You might be interested to know however, that a Libertarian is (originally), what the Wiki definition refers to as a "Consequential Libertarian." American Libertarians are more usually "Rights Libertarians" (definitely the only kind of Libertarian these guys could even dream of justifying themselves as), but a "Rights Libertarian" is really much closer to what the rest of the world calls an anarchist.
"Real" Libertarianism (the original kind), is about morals, tolerance, ethical behaviour and above all self-responsibility. Does that sound like these guys world view to you? How many South Parks are there where the message is ethical behaviour and responsibility? Those are like alien concepts to these guys.
The caveat to all this is that I am not an American, so you can safely discount everything I have said if that is your bent. You have to understand that to many of us not blessed with American blood however, almost everyone in the states is "right-wing." For example, the United States' most extreme "left-wing, practically a commie, never win in a million years Presidential candidate" (Kucinich) is pretty much a "middle of the road" candidate to a Canadian or a European, at most he is "centre-left." Even a guy like Barack Obama is a probably a bit too far to the right for many non-Americans being as he is pro-life, in favour of the Patriot Act and the Homeland Security system, he is against same sex marriage, he is in favour of fencing out those pesky Mexicans and he has yet to come out against the practice of torture.
This whole discussion is off-topic anyway and I made it further so by talking about politicians, but the idea that "South Park" is somehow not a right-wing show just because they give the tiniest of digs in the ribs to a republican or two now and then is ludicrous. The original SNL made fun of a few Liberal politicians also, but that didn't stop them being basically a basically "progressive" show that was aimed squarely at the establishment and not at Liberals and environmentalists like South Park.
Just be happy that you got me modded as flamebait now, even though it was the stupid posting of all those ads to the "humourous" web site and the gaming of the thread to mod them up that was really the problem in the first place. So by merely being upset at an irresponsible poster I am now branded as such myself. Neat.
:-)
The unfairness of that bothers me a bit, but I view it as information gathering on what kind of a place Slashdot is. I've only been posting here a couple of months and already I have come up against this kind of juvenile attitude several times. It seems that it's about 50% closer to Digg now (relative to the last time I perused the site in the 90's), which is good to know.
If one knows one is in a bad neighborhood, one doesn't get quite so upset when the wino jumps on the hood of one's car and begins raving. It's just part of the background I see now. I shall try not to get upset the next time it happens which I am sure will be quite soon.
Also, good job making this entirely about South Park when in fact it's about posting off-topic links to rude porno hate sites and then gaming the list to mod them up.
This reply confirms every suspicion I have had about the kind of people who like right-wing South Park poo-poo jokes.
What's the deal with three comments on one thread pointing to this juvenile spam-fest web-site and they are all modded up +3 or +5??? It's pretty clear that at least two of them are the same person, and really... how many people already out of high-school could there really be that find this funny?
Is there some slashdot rule I am just finding out about how everyone here is twelve and likes to say "cock" a lot? Are we going to be assailed with right-wing propaganda and poo-poo jokes a la South Park on a daily basis now?
If this kind of overt spamming/gaming of the thread can happen on slashdot, what's the point of even trying to moderate at all?
Is there anyone reading this thread that actually knows something about power outages? The information about colos from those that use them and have visited this one is great, but am I alone in thinking the power outage itself was kinda weird (and perhaps even suspicious)?
I can't remember ever being in a power outage where the power went off for a few minutes, came back on, and continued going on and off for three hours. A typical power outage is a component failure that leads to a single outage or to an overload that then leads to an outage. Sometimes successive areas fall like dominoes as the overload travels around the grid, but isn't it unusual for power to go on and off like this?
I for one would appreciate it if anyone with actual knowledge of these things would post. I know this is more of a blue collar specialty than a tech one, but someone must know the answer. Seems to me that if the power was indeed going "on and off" for three hours that this is a very good reason why the colo might have failed. It's simply too unusual an occurrence to plan for.
... (iPhone) is a little different from traditional devices. (It) has a classic desktop OS stripped down into a cellphone, whereas mainstream other devices (Palm, Windows CE, and Symbian) were designed more as cellphone systemsThe main differentiating feature of the iPhone software is that it is a brand new GUI designed specifically for a portable communicator. It is specifically and closely tailored to the physical attributes of the device and the applications it contains, and merges the software functionality with the physical functionality into a seamless whole. It's very success is tied to this integration and the fact that it does *not* simulate a desktop environment.
The main differentiating feature of WinCE/Windows Mobile (and it's most touted feature on release), is that it *was* built as a clone of the Windows Desktop complete with start button and task bar. It failures as a mobile OS are directly proportionate to the degree in which it tries to emulate a Windows desktop. It even forces users to manipulate the tiny screen of the mobile in the same way as they would a desktop, (albeit a very small one), by necessitating the use of a tiny "pick" (stylus) to emulate the mouse on the reduced scale of the mobile desktop.
Can someone explain to me why this post is a "troll"???
It's on-topic, explanatory and insightful as far as I can see. There is no bashing of anyone, no outrageous claims, and no incitement to riot (or even spit).
Has slashdot become Digg now, where people just randomly go through posts calling everything they don't agree with a troll?
Looks to me like this is an announcement of a schedule, and not an announcement of a product.
There are no project goals here, and no definitive statements on what it will include or exclude, except the 32/64 bit statement (which seems to be more of a knee-jerk reaction than a firm plan). The subscription method of distribution (which recently was portrayed as "the future"), is mentioned as being possible, but not necessarily included in the plan?
IMO this is all about calming market fears about release schedules. This is about the marketing department asking the software engineers about what two or three "safe bet" features they can announce for the future version of Windows when the engineers probably don't even have pencil sketches on napkins at this point.
Thirded, (not a word I know). This article should be removed, it's junk.
Let's focus on the fact that there are only two black-hat hackers for Mac that have (claimed) to have received death threats for their troubles. David Maynor and the "creator" of the rapeOSX worm. Since death threats are fairly juvenile (and often only exist in the paranoid minds of those that receive them), who does this worm creator remind you of?
:-)
IMO, the "voice" behind the worm threat sounds exactly the same as that behind the infamous WiFi exploit/hoax to me. The same juvenile phrasing, the same outrageous claims, poor logic and blindness to the facts. The same sense of humor and the same death-threats.
There is also a psychological truism about hoaxes that's often the cause of their downfall. The hoaxer usually finds it almost irresistible not to associate their name or their identity with the hoax in some way, even if it's obscure or disguised in some way.
What is the very last statement from the "creator" of rapeosx before he signed off for good?
"I am not David Maynor."
Add to this, the fact that this slashdot thread is unusually full of "humorous" one-line anti-Apple jokes made by innumerable slash-dotters that never seem to post on other threads and are primarily new accounts, and I think you have a picture of an egomaniac stirring his own pot and trying to grab at yet another 15 minutes of fame.
Gee... who is it that fits this profile of a juvenile, paranoid, dishonest, black-hat hacker with a certain amount of skill, but not very smart, hates Apple with an unreasoning passion, has a history of outrageous claims that turn out to be untrue, and often tries to manipulate the media and online communities to their ends?
Hmmm....
That's a puzzler for sure.