They should upgrade the membranes in the MREs so they can use urine properly for long-term use. That would make it a lot easier for our men and women in uniform to go to war self-contained.
A simple statement to each member of Congress from a coaltion of the group of companies who oppose this saying "We would not presume to attempt to influence your vote, but if you vote for this, your most viable opponent will get $1M in new campaign funding from us and we will be making attack ads accusing you personally of trying to drive technology companies out of America will be appearing in every major TV market in your state/district. Have a nice day." would probably stop the bill cold and make any member of Congress think three times about the political career downside to accepting *AA company payoffs.
$665M (Congress + the Senate) for the top 40 high-tech companies combined is petty cash... but it is far more than the Hollywood content cartel can possibly scrape together out of profits.
High-tech industry has allowed itself to be pushed around by Hollywood for far too long.
Isn't there anybody with balls at MS, IBM, Google, et. al. willing to stand up to Hollywood?
This is like asking "does this herd of elephants have the courage required to stand up to a pair of fucking yap dogs?"
Given the answer to that, if you want to do innovative technology, better start shopping for a country that has not allowed its political leadership to have been cheaply bought off by the *AA companies.
Marybeth Peters, of the US Copyright Office testified recently before the Senate Judiciary committee in support of the INDUCE Act, which has been discussed here before. In summary, she thinks its not strong enough. Among other things, she proposed scrapping the Betamax decision, which makes it legal to timeshift TV shows with a VCR. Analysis here."
I think she should be on the record industry payroll, not ours.
If our technology companies can't be bothered to spend the money on politicians required to cover their own asses with respect to the ability to design consumer products in America without getting them approved by Hollywood, I'm not quite sure why we should do anything about this.
High-tech industry seem to get what it wants on H1B/L1, R&D tax credits, unrestricted outsourcing. They've learned their lesson about paying off Congress. How do you think DOJ was persuaded to back off MS after they were declared guilty?
Why did DMCA pass? Our technology industry just doesn't care. Why aren't technology industries trying to stop this?
The only recent example of a united tech industry not getting what they want was the P2P bill, and IMHO, the only reason why they didn't get it stopped was that they didn't care enough to play hardball.
People forget that the net gross revenue of the Hollywood cartel combined would be considered a roundoff error with respect to what the high-tech sector of the economy pulls in. Why do high-tech industries let themselves be the dog in the "wag the dog" scenario? Presumably, they're still hypnotized by visions of infinite future profits driven by complete customer access to all Hollywood's content (unlikely) over universal broadband (even more unlikely) with the happy customers happy to pay whatever is asked for pay-per-view/listen for content they are no longer allowed to own.
Why hasn't the high-tech user community organized a mass action PAC along the lines of the NRA/AARP model to get what we want?
None of us who actually has the money to start one gives a fuck. Losing on this sort of thing is just another excuse to "save money" by offshore R&D using the excuse "Sorry, but we can't employ Americans in America to do R&D, you know how much paperwork Hollywood requires to get our products approved."
The people who've benefited from the efforts and purchases of our community are not interested in giving back, they just want to strip-mine what they can of value from us before going on to other labor/consumer markets.
There's no useful political leadership in this area, i.e. nobody willing to buy politicians to protect our freedom to create technology, and the odds that any will develop are slim to none.
There aren't even people we can vote for to get this sort of thing stopped. This measure has bi-partisan support, just like the DMCA had.
The only solutions to this problem at this point are individual ones. If you want to innovate and you live in America, find a nation more friendly to innovation. That's what I'm trying to figure out how to afford to do.
In a few years, the really cool consumer products aren't going to be coming from America anymore, and there's a good chance that they either won't be sold here or will only be available via black market.
"Citizens always get the kind of local government they deserve."
E.E."Doc" Smith
Making the happy assumption that Somerville has kept records of his previous contacts with Odeon, that DMCA takedown notice means that Odeon has just exposed itself to an ADA class action lawsuit from any handicapped customer who feels inconvenienced by Odeon's non-compliant website.
The basis is that Odeon not only refuses to comply with the ADA, but refuses to allow anyone to assist it in complying absent the in-house competence to build a ADA compliant site itself.
The intelligent thing for Odeon to do would be to request an invoice from Somersville for the hours he spent building the website and make an offer for the domain, and run the website themselves, with Somersville as a consultant.
Hopefully, Somersville can find a good lawyer to push this, since Odeon has chosen the DMCA as a tool to get stupid with and deserve to get their clocks cleaned.
The question all of us who build commercial websites should ask is... are we building compliant sites, and if not, how can we fix this before our customers and clients get sued.
The good news for us is. . . more billable hours for ADA compliance.
Always-On is the continuation of one of the dot.com boom VC cheerleader rags... whose market was by and large, the people who created the hype and the people who bought most into the hype.
Basically, it's a place for people who still think that venture capital is relevant to creating new and important technology and investing in the 12th or 15th startup in a given niche capable of supporting a company or two still matters.
It's reasonable to hang out there if you are working for a VC... or someone trying to start a company that's looking for VC money that matches the latest buzzwords the VC herd is listening to. Or to put it differently, Always-on is designed for suits and suit-wannabes.
I still drop in there from time to time, more out of perverse curiosity than anything else.
I'm not sure if Powell is there because he thinks the way to get to the high-tech community is through a VC-oriented publication or he's there because he's simply out of touch. If he wants to run into real high-tech types instead of suits who might have had it once upon a time... he'd be here, say, by contacting slashdot and asking about doing an interview.
What annoys me is that if I'd had the energy to react immediately when I found out about this from the always-on mailing list, I didn't go after him (plenty of issues... broadcast flag, concentration of ownership... the Janet Jackson tit idiocy... the fact that the FCC still takes broadband over power line seriously) while I still could have gotten in one of the first posts...
I've had 2 occasions to have to attempt to recover completely from tape using prosumer tape drives, a 400 meg QIC and later, a Sony Superstation.
Basically, I got 95% of my data back and had to reinstall the OS to get the computer running the first time. I then wound up going home and getting my old computer back. I was going to Holland and figured just taking the tapes and the tape drive would work well enough. It didn't.
The second time, most of the tape volume didn't show in the restore, and after frantic e-mail to customer service, I got an e-mail saying that there was a known issue with the recovery software, they no longer supported it, and the best I could do would be to go to the vendor they'd gotten the the software package from and download the demo. I think I only lost 3-4% of my data.
I try not to make the same mistake 3x in a row. My next computer upgrade included a mobile rack and a hard drive, my day-to-day stuff I mirror. For long-term/archival stuff, I do a zip-compressed DVD backup set once a month or so.
I actually have a couple of 8mm tape drives, either of which are big enough for this workstation. Never even bothered to plug them in.
Certainly, lots of commercial shops use tape. That doesn't mean you should or they should.
Though I'd be willing to take a look at the Ecris packet writing tecnology or the LTO standard stuff.
Anybody know of a cheap automated DVD-R? I mean... put in a pile of blank DVD-Rs, get a pile of burned DVD-Rs out?
--- Do not follow where the path may lead. Go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.--
This isn't all that useful to those of us who are not slugs and snails. If you're in either category, trying to pick up on booth babes is probably a mistake for you.
Put the second drive on a mobile rack and unplug it when you aren't actually backing something up.
Pulling it out completely and putting it in another room is a good idea, of course, but IMHO, simply unplugging it will preclude the worst likely hazards, which are, of course, the power supply going apeshit, followed by your inadvertently erasing your HD. Plus, you won't forget where you put it if you leave it in the rack, but unplugged. Finally, you are much more likely to back it up at the scheduled time if you don't have to get up and get it, just plug it in and turn the key.
Of course, this precludes automatic backup, but I have a reminder program set to remind me to start backup 3x a week.
Supplement this with a DVD-R (well, tape if you like to live dangerously) backup set every month and send it somewhere far away you're comfortable about leaving all your data with.
This is, of course, an individual workstation solution, not an enterprise solution.:-)
I think ultimately, what we think of now as networks will change to content bundles streamed over Internet channels, instead of Fox News showing programs in a linear time sequence, they'll simply throw the content on the site as it appears and send e-mails to people who have indicated an interest in specific programming saying "come and get it", or they'll send daily new program listings (availabilty of old content will be taken for granted) with lots of clickable URLs which might be broken down far enough to make it possible to tell the station which order to push content from them direct to your set-top box.
What people will choose to see when they are not looking for specific content will be branded content bundles on a basis of experience / trust / reputation, i.e. people who like Fox will be more inclined to give a new show from Fox a chance than literate people would.
what comes out can be processed in conventional oil refineries.
You can look at them for yourself at the University of New Hampshire site here This is largely based on research successfully completed at DOE in the mid 1990s and shelved because cheap oil looked like forever back then.
Other than that, remember $250/ton shipping to LEO? Follow the links from the slashdot article, to JP Aerospace and to evaluations by experts. From what I saw at the JP Aerospace site, the only reason why it's going to take 7 years for them to get to orbit is lack of funding. They're getting DOD experimental contracts for high-altitude transportation, but even with this, they're bootstrapping. The NASA space power satellite system was planned on a basis of $400/kg shipping cost. $250/ton is a lot cheaper than $400/kg.
The only thing keeping these technologies from becoming a viable alternative in the very near term is bad habit on the part of what passes for our business and governmental leadership. They're obsessed with the idea that the only way to get oil is the traditional methods. Even if the cost estimates for biomass oil and the SPS are off by a factor of 10, they look awfully good next to the projected $16T (yes, that's $16,000 billion) dollar cost of "business as usual"... based on an unproven and unlikely assumption that "enough" oil is there to be found. (see below)
Hint: The Bush Administration defunded the Space Power Satellite project.
Concrete steps to get this running? For the oil side, how about government loans, tax credits, and temporary price supports in case the oil cartel gets desperate enough to try to put the new energy replacements out of business by dropping their oil prices to cost of production? A promise to the rest of the world that the algae oil biomass production technology will be freely exported as soon as it is ready to go? These are the first things that occur to me.
For the space side, direct government funding, and or payload guarantees (e.g. the government will guarantee payment for X-million pounds per year of payload to any vendor(s) who can prove the ability to get it to LEO for, say, under $10/pound?) would be a good start. Or start contracting for lots and lots of solar cells and designate JP Aerospace as the prime contractor to get them to orbit.
The alternative: The International Energy Agency wants $16 TRILLION DOLLARS to be spent on new oil exploration and development and facilities to "prevent" energy crisis. This makes the happy assumption that there's enough oil to solve the problem. A few minutes spent googling on "peak oil" will convince you that there isn't.
The $16T does NOT include the military costs of dealing with the Middle East.
Personally, I'd rather see $16T spent on something useful.
Re:What made you think that EFax was PS compatible
on
eFax Hell?
·
· Score: 1
Perhaps.PS on the list of supported file types had something to do with his opinion?
They probably shouldn't be expensed until after the company either goes public or hits a market cap threshold. At that point, there is generally some remote clue as to the actual value of the stock, as opposed to what the initial investors, founders, and new employees are praying that it's going to be.
For a mature company, say MS to issue big gobs of stock to employees without expensing them and keeping the no longer unknown value off the books is a trifle ridiculous. At this point, this is just another form of compensation and as such should show up on the books as an expense.
A.Lizard
I'm going to post the article and comment it, Strategy Analytics doesn't really understand the limitations / benefits of current technology and where it's going.
Technology that adds intelligence to computers poses a far more serious threat to jobs than low-wage countries, a research firm said Friday.
This threatens "warm-body" jobs, the thinking/judgement jobs that require people at the current and forthcoming stages of tech are the ones at risk for offshoring.
The first wave of job-killing technology occurred in manufacturing in the 1990s, when computer-driven robotics introduced across industries from automaking to steel made it possible to produce more product with fewer people, Strategy Analytics said in a recent analysis of emerging technologies.
In the second wave, workers in customer service, help desk, directory assistance, and other support activities in businesses will be replaced by computers that have enough intelligence to handle repetitive tasks that occur during human interaction.
[That's already going on, and it isn't working all that well. Even directory assistance occasionally requires human judgement sometimes. Customer support often requires more than the ability to walk a customer through a fault tree. The weakest point of this kind of is the 5-10% of the tasks that require that somebody think of an answer or go to a different database that isn't connected to the system or call somebody who's outside it. Basically, exception processing is the hard part, and people who design these systems generally don't get this. If you can build a system that handles things without humans 95% of the time and call a better trained/paid human for the parts that require thinking outside the automated system's box, it's "good enough".]
In the manufacturing sector in the 90s, companies sold $100 billion worth of software and hardware for robotics, said Harvey Cohen, president of Strategy Analytics. While the technology increased productivity and added to companies' bottom lines, it also eliminated 10 million jobs worldwide.
[since nobody noticed, I assume that this mainly cut into job growth]
In the new millennium, as the use of intelligent computers increase, jobs will vanish, with several million expected to disappear over the next five to seven years, Cohen said. While less labor to do more work is great for business, there will be an impact on society as people find decent paying jobs harder to find.
No, it's the minimum wage warm-body jobs which are at primary risk from this kind of automation. Decent paying has nothing to do about it unless you consider Walmart a good-paying job.
Technology "will take the job growth out of the industries that the government has said are good places to develop employment," Cohen said. "So we've raised the question, have they thought this problem through properly?"
NO, and they aren't going to until something like the fast-food industry goes automated all at once. I'm surprised that this hasn't already happened, the problem was basically solved back in the late 1980s. The problems with respect to automating the tasks low-level health care workers are being worked on in Japan. The problems are mostly much harder than he believes and will take longer than he expects to have a substantial impact on the low-paying jobs.
While technology isn't replacing large numbers of people in non-manufacturing industries today, it's expected to in time, with the initial impact showing up as slower job growth and stagnant wages.
[I'm expecting negative job growth *and some wage increases along with increased skill levels*, especially in the newly automated areas. One guy might be able to supervise 20 janitorial robots, but he'd better know more than how to use a mop and bucket if his employers actually want all 20 working at the same ti
A cheaper alternative not only to rocket boosters, but to the obsolete Space Elevator concept is under development. For more about blimps to space, go to this slashdot article and follow the links.
Remember the art deco artist's conceptions done in the 1930s of skycars we'd all be driving in 2000? Shove the Space Elevator into those pictures and let's start actually putting stuff into space instead.
Unlike the space elevator, the blimp doesn't require solving some rather fundamental materials problems involving taking a lab process and scaling up fibers a few inches long into linear structures thousands of miles long, or building a giant ribbon which in and of itself is a safety hazard (YOU want to be aroud one that breaks? Or on your way up/down?), the blimp-to-space project is simply a logical extension of technologies we already know.
The NASA 20TW configuration orginally discussed would probably be a lot cheaper to build using the new space transportation methods even including building the transportation than the original would have been. At $250/ton, we can simply buy the solar cells, build modular structures to put them in, and assemble them around L5.
We're a lot closer to solving the problems involved with the blimp technology discussed here not too long ago. More cost effective, far closer to reality, a lot safer (YOU want to be around that 10,000 mile ribbon if it snaps?), doesn't require that we figure out how to solve a shitload of CNT-related manufacturing problems involved in building the physical elevator structure, and we know how to build blimps.
The Space Elevator was a great dream.
Let it die and let's start putting real stuff into space for $250/ton (LEO).
What I found somewhat funny was this quote (from NetSec's chief technology officer)
Let's face it. Installing Opera / Netscape / Mozilla isn't exactly rocket science, even on Linux for a newbie. (of course, if one is on Linux, there's no problem, though I recommend NOT volunteering to beta-test IE for Linux should MS ever make one)
If NetSec's CTO isn't up to the job of installing a new browser on his box, that company is in even more trouble than the average Net user.
Anybody see any sites implementing this exploit at a "proof of concept" level?
If I want to see your sort of crap, I'll log onto Ann Coulter's site, that way I can at least get some visual stimulation. Since I don't eat shit, I can hardly use her for food for thought, can I? Any more than I can use your post for food for thought.
Yes, I do support the troops.
SUPPORTING THE TROOPS MEANS NOT PUTTING THEM IN HARM'S WAY WITHOUT A DAMN GOOD REASON.
Reasons?
Bush said "WMD". Nobody found any. How long have US troops been in Iraq? When did they stop bothering to look for WMD?
Bush told us that Saddam was behind 9/11. Practically all the hijackers were from SAUDI ARABIA. Where is al-Queda funded? Very largely, out of Saudi Arabia.
So what's left? Getting rid of an evil man? America supports lots of evil men in power all over the world, sometimes for good reasons. So why aren't we invading them instead of supporting them?
Bush has cut various kind of pay and military allowances to our troops. You don't care, do you?
You're probably too young to remember the old joke about "Wouldn't it be great if our schools got funded and they had to hold bake sales to build an aircraft carrier?"
A reasonable person would think that a person who supported our troops would NOT want to see them put into unnecessary danger, would be equipped adequately, and would want to see them get decent food to eat.
YOU ARE NOT THAT PERSON.
You can support our troops or You can support Bush.
You can NOT do both at the same time.
You've picked a side, and we KNOW who's side you're on. Why don't you go play with your buddies at a well known Bush campaign contributor, Microsoft instead of spreading your tired old propaganda bullshit here?
That transhumanist paper is cool, but the numbers they're working with are obsolete.
$250/ton launch costs to low earth orbit sort of change things a bit. Even the Space Elevator no longer makes sense competing with something like this, and the problems with blimp-to-orbit projects are a hell of a lot easier to solve than the problems of getting carbon nanotube technology ready to build ribbons long enough and strong enough to carry freight by the ton to orbit.
They make projects like solar power satellite networks look feasible. BTW, NASA's numbers that pointed toward feasibility were based on hypothetical $400/kg launch costs. The numbers look a lot better at $250/ton.
Given the risk-averse nature of modern corporations, this still would be a hard sell.
Perhaps government loan guarantees, liability caps like the ones given to nuclear power producers, and guarantees of X-million pounds of payload contracts to companies who prove the ability to deliver to orbit at $X or $XX dollars / pound would make it a lot easier to get private capital on board.
More of that sort of thing is discussed on my technology page, check the sig.
Somebody grabbed this quote from me as a sig file:
For a corporation or governmental organization to mandate the use of
[MS Outlook Express] is the cybernetic equivalent of going to a crowded corner on Castro Street in San Francisco, greasing up one's asshole while
standing on the sidewalk, grabbing one's ankles, and yelling "FUCK ME!
FUCK ME!" And then whining about getting raped when one finds oneself
pulling a train.-- A. Lizard
Since that same class of mistake is being repeated, it seemed appropriate to dig out that quote.
Ordering that critical systems on a warship be run on NT or any derivative operating system is the exact military equivalent to greasing up, bending over. . . in a social context.
I'm glad I'm not going to be on one of those "stealth ships" when the hammer comes down and EVIL TERRORIST HACKERS get blamed when the ship . . . I don't know what it'll do either, but I'm pretty sure it won't be what the captain asked for. And chances are, terrorists will have nothing to do with it, it'll be an e-mail attachment that got automatically opened by somebody's copy of Outhouse Express that'll take the ship down. There are still questions about what role MS operating systems played in a recent multi-state blackout in the USA. Or the missile cruiser Long Beach, which by odd coincidence, was running NT for long enough to get out to sea. Before a systems crash forced it to be towed to port.
If I were Swedish, I'd be demanding that my Member of Parliament start an investigation as to just WTF their Navy was thinking in its decision to make their warships into soft targets and find out who needs to be fired and who merely ought to be demoted. Before one of those ultra-expensive stealth warships finds itself pulling a train.
While the experience of dying for nothing is hardly unique in military history, dying to increase the profits of MS Corporation really isn't worth it.
Disclaimer: IANAL. Linus Torvalds should consult legal counsel with respect to his available legal recourses against Ken Brown personally and the organization he runs.
IMHO, Linus should sue Ken Brown for libel as soon as the book is published. Ken is calling Linus a liar with respect to Linus's writing of the original Linux kernel, which is arguably an attempt to damage Mr. Torvalds' public reputation and career. Every source Ken has named has publically contradicted Ken's version of what he said, which should make demonstrating the falsity of Brown's allegations a slam dunk.
Perhaps IBM's legal staff would be willing to handle the lawsuit against ADTI on a pro bono basis. This is arguably just as much a threat to their Open Source-based products and development as the SCO lawsuit, and IMHO, for the same reason.
It may well be that in the course of a lawsuit, any parties that might have paid ADTI to prepare this book and the press releases could be forced to disclose their interests, which would speak to the question of malicious intent and motivations for Brown to engage in what appears to be reckless falsehood directed against the Open Source community in general and Linus Torvalds in particular.
Even if the book is not published, the press releases may well adequate grounds for legal action.
I don't have a horse in this race. Speaking as a neutral, his arguments about ogg being too big to run out of solid-state cache made perfect sense to me.
The specs for the microcontroller chips discussed in the article are available at the vendor sites for download.
So unless you're just another ignorant Apple fanboy, refute the guy's arguments. Or write a new version of ogg that can be made to work with the iPod.
They're the people who can't consistently keep their website on the air. I doubt that there is anyone on their payroll that subscribes to BugTraq or Full Disclosure.
Ironic, since they started out as a technical standards organization.
Slashdot Mirror
They should upgrade the membranes in the MREs so they can use urine properly for long-term use. That would make it a lot easier for our men and women in uniform to go to war self-contained.
$665M (Congress + the Senate) for the top 40 high-tech companies combined is petty cash... but it is far more than the Hollywood content cartel can possibly scrape together out of profits.
High-tech industry has allowed itself to be pushed around by Hollywood for far too long.
Isn't there anybody with balls at MS, IBM, Google, et. al. willing to stand up to Hollywood?
This is like asking "does this herd of elephants have the courage required to stand up to a pair of fucking yap dogs?"
Given the answer to that, if you want to do innovative technology, better start shopping for a country that has not allowed its political leadership to have been cheaply bought off by the *AA companies.
I think she should be on the record industry payroll, not ours.
High-tech industry seem to get what it wants on H1B/L1, R&D tax credits, unrestricted outsourcing. They've learned their lesson about paying off Congress. How do you think DOJ was persuaded to back off MS after they were declared guilty?
Why did DMCA pass? Our technology industry just doesn't care. Why aren't technology industries trying to stop this?
The only recent example of a united tech industry not getting what they want was the P2P bill, and IMHO, the only reason why they didn't get it stopped was that they didn't care enough to play hardball.
People forget that the net gross revenue of the Hollywood cartel combined would be considered a roundoff error with respect to what the high-tech sector of the economy pulls in. Why do high-tech industries let themselves be the dog in the "wag the dog" scenario? Presumably, they're still hypnotized by visions of infinite future profits driven by complete customer access to all Hollywood's content (unlikely) over universal broadband (even more unlikely) with the happy customers happy to pay whatever is asked for pay-per-view/listen for content they are no longer allowed to own.
Why hasn't the high-tech user community organized a mass action PAC along the lines of the NRA/AARP model to get what we want?
None of us who actually has the money to start one gives a fuck. Losing on this sort of thing is just another excuse to "save money" by offshore R&D using the excuse "Sorry, but we can't employ Americans in America to do R&D, you know how much paperwork Hollywood requires to get our products approved."
The people who've benefited from the efforts and purchases of our community are not interested in giving back, they just want to strip-mine what they can of value from us before going on to other labor/consumer markets.
There's no useful political leadership in this area, i.e. nobody willing to buy politicians to protect our freedom to create technology, and the odds that any will develop are slim to none.
There aren't even people we can vote for to get this sort of thing stopped. This measure has bi-partisan support, just like the DMCA had.
The only solutions to this problem at this point are individual ones. If you want to innovate and you live in America, find a nation more friendly to innovation. That's what I'm trying to figure out how to afford to do.
In a few years, the really cool consumer products aren't going to be coming from America anymore, and there's a good chance that they either won't be sold here or will only be available via black market.
"Citizens always get the kind of local government they deserve."
E.E."Doc" Smith
Making the happy assumption that Somerville has kept records of his previous contacts with Odeon, that DMCA takedown notice means that Odeon has just exposed itself to an ADA class action lawsuit from any handicapped customer who feels inconvenienced by Odeon's non-compliant website.
The basis is that Odeon not only refuses to comply with the ADA, but refuses to allow anyone to assist it in complying absent the in-house competence to build a ADA compliant site itself.
The intelligent thing for Odeon to do would be to request an invoice from Somersville for the hours he spent building the website and make an offer for the domain, and run the website themselves, with Somersville as a consultant.
Hopefully, Somersville can find a good lawyer to push this, since Odeon has chosen the DMCA as a tool to get stupid with and deserve to get their clocks cleaned.
The question all of us who build commercial websites should ask is... are we building compliant sites, and if not, how can we fix this before our customers and clients get sued.
The good news for us is. . . more billable hours for ADA compliance.
Whoever "they" are.
Basically, it's a place for people who still think that venture capital is relevant to creating new and important technology and investing in the 12th or 15th startup in a given niche capable of supporting a company or two still matters.
It's reasonable to hang out there if you are working for a VC... or someone trying to start a company that's looking for VC money that matches the latest buzzwords the VC herd is listening to. Or to put it differently, Always-on is designed for suits and suit-wannabes.
I still drop in there from time to time, more out of perverse curiosity than anything else.
I'm not sure if Powell is there because he thinks the way to get to the high-tech community is through a VC-oriented publication or he's there because he's simply out of touch. If he wants to run into real high-tech types instead of suits who might have had it once upon a time... he'd be here, say, by contacting slashdot and asking about doing an interview.
What annoys me is that if I'd had the energy to react immediately when I found out about this from the always-on mailing list, I didn't go after him (plenty of issues... broadcast flag, concentration of ownership... the Janet Jackson tit idiocy... the fact that the FCC still takes broadband over power line seriously) while I still could have gotten in one of the first posts...
Basically, I got 95% of my data back and had to reinstall the OS to get the computer running the first time. I then wound up going home and getting my old computer back. I was going to Holland and figured just taking the tapes and the tape drive would work well enough. It didn't.
The second time, most of the tape volume didn't show in the restore, and after frantic e-mail to customer service, I got an e-mail saying that there was a known issue with the recovery software, they no longer supported it, and the best I could do would be to go to the vendor they'd gotten the the software package from and download the demo. I think I only lost 3-4% of my data.
I try not to make the same mistake 3x in a row. My next computer upgrade included a mobile rack and a hard drive, my day-to-day stuff I mirror. For long-term/archival stuff, I do a zip-compressed DVD backup set once a month or so.
I actually have a couple of 8mm tape drives, either of which are big enough for this workstation. Never even bothered to plug them in.
Certainly, lots of commercial shops use tape. That doesn't mean you should or they should.
Though I'd be willing to take a look at the Ecris packet writing tecnology or the LTO standard stuff.
Anybody know of a cheap automated DVD-R? I mean... put in a pile of blank DVD-Rs, get a pile of burned DVD-Rs out?
This isn't all that useful to those of us who are not slugs and snails. If you're in either category, trying to pick up on booth babes is probably a mistake for you.
Pulling it out completely and putting it in another room is a good idea, of course, but IMHO, simply unplugging it will preclude the worst likely hazards, which are, of course, the power supply going apeshit, followed by your inadvertently erasing your HD. Plus, you won't forget where you put it if you leave it in the rack, but unplugged. Finally, you are much more likely to back it up at the scheduled time if you don't have to get up and get it, just plug it in and turn the key.
Of course, this precludes automatic backup, but I have a reminder program set to remind me to start backup 3x a week.
Supplement this with a DVD-R (well, tape if you like to live dangerously) backup set every month and send it somewhere far away you're comfortable about leaving all your data with.
This is, of course, an individual workstation solution, not an enterprise solution. :-)
What people will choose to see when they are not looking for specific content will be branded content bundles on a basis of experience / trust / reputation, i.e. people who like Fox will be more inclined to give a new show from Fox a chance than literate people would.
- $169 billion to build the algae farms
- $33B/year operating costs
what comes out can be processed in conventional oil refineries.You can look at them for yourself at the University of New Hampshire site here This is largely based on research successfully completed at DOE in the mid 1990s and shelved because cheap oil looked like forever back then.
Other than that, remember $250/ton shipping to LEO? Follow the links from the slashdot article, to JP Aerospace and to evaluations by experts. From what I saw at the JP Aerospace site, the only reason why it's going to take 7 years for them to get to orbit is lack of funding. They're getting DOD experimental contracts for high-altitude transportation, but even with this, they're bootstrapping. The NASA space power satellite system was planned on a basis of $400/kg shipping cost. $250/ton is a lot cheaper than $400/kg.
The only thing keeping these technologies from becoming a viable alternative in the very near term is bad habit on the part of what passes for our business and governmental leadership. They're obsessed with the idea that the only way to get oil is the traditional methods. Even if the cost estimates for biomass oil and the SPS are off by a factor of 10, they look awfully good next to the projected $16T (yes, that's $16,000 billion) dollar cost of "business as usual"... based on an unproven and unlikely assumption that "enough" oil is there to be found. (see below)
Hint: The Bush Administration defunded the Space Power Satellite project.
Concrete steps to get this running? For the oil side, how about government loans, tax credits, and temporary price supports in case the oil cartel gets desperate enough to try to put the new energy replacements out of business by dropping their oil prices to cost of production? A promise to the rest of the world that the algae oil biomass production technology will be freely exported as soon as it is ready to go? These are the first things that occur to me.
For the space side, direct government funding, and or payload guarantees (e.g. the government will guarantee payment for X-million pounds per year of payload to any vendor(s) who can prove the ability to get it to LEO for, say, under $10/pound?) would be a good start. Or start contracting for lots and lots of solar cells and designate JP Aerospace as the prime contractor to get them to orbit.
The alternative: The International Energy Agency wants $16 TRILLION DOLLARS to be spent on new oil exploration and development and facilities to "prevent" energy crisis. This makes the happy assumption that there's enough oil to solve the problem. A few minutes spent googling on "peak oil" will convince you that there isn't.
The $16T does NOT include the military costs of dealing with the Middle East.
Personally, I'd rather see $16T spent on something useful.
Perhaps .PS on the list of supported file types had something to do with his opinion?
For a mature company, say MS to issue big gobs of stock to employees without expensing them and keeping the no longer unknown value off the books is a trifle ridiculous. At this point, this is just another form of compensation and as such should show up on the books as an expense. A.Lizard
original article link
Technology that adds intelligence to computers poses a far more serious threat to jobs than low-wage countries, a research firm said Friday.
This threatens "warm-body" jobs, the thinking/judgement jobs that require people at the current and forthcoming stages of tech are the ones at risk for offshoring.
The first wave of job-killing technology occurred in manufacturing in the 1990s, when computer-driven robotics introduced across industries from automaking to steel made it possible to produce more product with fewer people, Strategy Analytics said in a recent analysis of emerging technologies.
In the second wave, workers in customer service, help desk, directory assistance, and other support activities in businesses will be replaced by computers that have enough intelligence to handle repetitive tasks that occur during human interaction.
[That's already going on, and it isn't working all that well. Even directory assistance occasionally requires human judgement sometimes. Customer support often requires more than the ability to walk a customer through a fault tree. The weakest point of this kind of is the 5-10% of the tasks that require that somebody think of an answer or go to a different database that isn't connected to the system or call somebody who's outside it. Basically, exception processing is the hard part, and people who design these systems generally don't get this. If you can build a system that handles things without humans 95% of the time and call a better trained/paid human for the parts that require thinking outside the automated system's box, it's "good enough".]
In the manufacturing sector in the 90s, companies sold $100 billion worth of software and hardware for robotics, said Harvey Cohen, president of Strategy Analytics. While the technology increased productivity and added to companies' bottom lines, it also eliminated 10 million jobs worldwide.
[since nobody noticed, I assume that this mainly cut into job growth]
In the new millennium, as the use of intelligent computers increase, jobs will vanish, with several million expected to disappear over the next five to seven years, Cohen said. While less labor to do more work is great for business, there will be an impact on society as people find decent paying jobs harder to find.
No, it's the minimum wage warm-body jobs which are at primary risk from this kind of automation. Decent paying has nothing to do about it unless you consider Walmart a good-paying job.
Technology "will take the job growth out of the industries that the government has said are good places to develop employment," Cohen said. "So we've raised the question, have they thought this problem through properly?"
NO, and they aren't going to until something like the fast-food industry goes automated all at once. I'm surprised that this hasn't already happened, the problem was basically solved back in the late 1980s. The problems with respect to automating the tasks low-level health care workers are being worked on in Japan. The problems are mostly much harder than he believes and will take longer than he expects to have a substantial impact on the low-paying jobs.
While technology isn't replacing large numbers of people in non-manufacturing industries today, it's expected to in time, with the initial impact showing up as slower job growth and stagnant wages.
[I'm expecting negative job growth *and some wage increases along with increased skill levels*, especially in the newly automated areas. One guy might be able to supervise 20 janitorial robots, but he'd better know more than how to use a mop and bucket if his employers actually want all 20 working at the same ti
A cheaper alternative not only to rocket boosters, but to the obsolete Space Elevator concept is under development. For more about blimps to space, go to this slashdot article and follow the links.
Remember the art deco artist's conceptions done in the 1930s of skycars we'd all be driving in 2000? Shove the Space Elevator into those pictures and let's start actually putting stuff into space instead.
Unlike the space elevator, the blimp doesn't require solving some rather fundamental materials problems involving taking a lab process and scaling up fibers a few inches long into linear structures thousands of miles long, or building a giant ribbon which in and of itself is a safety hazard (YOU want to be aroud one that breaks? Or on your way up/down?), the blimp-to-space project is simply a logical extension of technologies we already know.
The NASA 20TW configuration orginally discussed would probably be a lot cheaper to build using the new space transportation methods even including building the transportation than the original would have been. At $250/ton, we can simply buy the solar cells, build modular structures to put them in, and assemble them around L5.
The Space Elevator was a great dream.
Let it die and let's start putting real stuff into space for $250/ton (LEO).
Let's face it. Installing Opera / Netscape / Mozilla isn't exactly rocket science, even on Linux for a newbie. (of course, if one is on Linux, there's no problem, though I recommend NOT volunteering to beta-test IE for Linux should MS ever make one)
If NetSec's CTO isn't up to the job of installing a new browser on his box, that company is in even more trouble than the average Net user.
Anybody see any sites implementing this exploit at a "proof of concept" level?
Yes, I do support the troops.
SUPPORTING THE TROOPS MEANS NOT PUTTING THEM IN HARM'S WAY WITHOUT A DAMN GOOD REASON.
Reasons?
So what's left? Getting rid of an evil man? America supports lots of evil men in power all over the world, sometimes for good reasons. So why aren't we invading them instead of supporting them?
Why did we invade Iraq instead of the nation that indirectly employs Bush's father via the Carlyle Group? Ask the President. (note: Salon - ad viewing or subscription required)
Bush has cut various kind of pay and military allowances to our troops. You don't care, do you?
You're probably too young to remember the old joke about "Wouldn't it be great if our schools got funded and they had to hold bake sales to build an aircraft carrier?"
The joke isn't funny anymore. A middle school held a bake sale to help pay for BULLETPROOF VESTS FOR AMERICAN TROOPS Where's all that money we're spending on the military going? Ask Bush, or maybe Cheney's buddies over at Halliburton might have something to say about this.
I'm sure you aren't surprised by the fact that Halliburton served rotting meats and vegetables to our troops in Iraq. Of course, you really don't care, do you?
A reasonable person would think that a person who supported our troops would NOT want to see them put into unnecessary danger, would be equipped adequately, and would want to see them get decent food to eat.
YOU ARE NOT THAT PERSON.
You can support our troops or You can support Bush.
You can NOT do both at the same time.
You've picked a side, and we KNOW who's side you're on. Why don't you go play with your buddies at a well known Bush campaign contributor, Microsoft instead of spreading your tired old propaganda bullshit here?
$250/ton launch costs to low earth orbit sort of change things a bit. Even the Space Elevator no longer makes sense competing with something like this, and the problems with blimp-to-orbit projects are a hell of a lot easier to solve than the problems of getting carbon nanotube technology ready to build ribbons long enough and strong enough to carry freight by the ton to orbit.
They make projects like solar power satellite networks look feasible. BTW, NASA's numbers that pointed toward feasibility were based on hypothetical $400/kg launch costs. The numbers look a lot better at $250/ton.
Given the risk-averse nature of modern corporations, this still would be a hard sell.
Perhaps government loan guarantees, liability caps like the ones given to nuclear power producers, and guarantees of X-million pounds of payload contracts to companies who prove the ability to deliver to orbit at $X or $XX dollars / pound would make it a lot easier to get private capital on board.
More of that sort of thing is discussed on my technology page, check the sig.
For a corporation or governmental organization to mandate the use of [MS Outlook Express] is the cybernetic equivalent of going to a crowded corner on Castro Street in San Francisco, greasing up one's asshole while standing on the sidewalk, grabbing one's ankles, and yelling "FUCK ME! FUCK ME!" And then whining about getting raped when one finds oneself pulling a train.-- A. Lizard
Since that same class of mistake is being repeated, it seemed appropriate to dig out that quote.
Ordering that critical systems on a warship be run on NT or any derivative operating system is the exact military equivalent to greasing up, bending over. . . in a social context.
I'm glad I'm not going to be on one of those "stealth ships" when the hammer comes down and EVIL TERRORIST HACKERS get blamed when the ship . . . I don't know what it'll do either, but I'm pretty sure it won't be what the captain asked for. And chances are, terrorists will have nothing to do with it, it'll be an e-mail attachment that got automatically opened by somebody's copy of Outhouse Express that'll take the ship down. There are still questions about what role MS operating systems played in a recent multi-state blackout in the USA. Or the missile cruiser Long Beach, which by odd coincidence, was running NT for long enough to get out to sea. Before a systems crash forced it to be towed to port.
If I were Swedish, I'd be demanding that my Member of Parliament start an investigation as to just WTF their Navy was thinking in its decision to make their warships into soft targets and find out who needs to be fired and who merely ought to be demoted. Before one of those ultra-expensive stealth warships finds itself pulling a train.
While the experience of dying for nothing is hardly unique in military history, dying to increase the profits of MS Corporation really isn't worth it.
IMHO, Linus should sue Ken Brown for libel as soon as the book is published. Ken is calling Linus a liar with respect to Linus's writing of the original Linux kernel, which is arguably an attempt to damage Mr. Torvalds' public reputation and career. Every source Ken has named has publically contradicted Ken's version of what he said, which should make demonstrating the falsity of Brown's allegations a slam dunk.
Perhaps IBM's legal staff would be willing to handle the lawsuit against ADTI on a pro bono basis. This is arguably just as much a threat to their Open Source-based products and development as the SCO lawsuit, and IMHO, for the same reason.
It may well be that in the course of a lawsuit, any parties that might have paid ADTI to prepare this book and the press releases could be forced to disclose their interests, which would speak to the question of malicious intent and motivations for Brown to engage in what appears to be reckless falsehood directed against the Open Source community in general and Linus Torvalds in particular.
Even if the book is not published, the press releases may well adequate grounds for legal action.
The specs for the microcontroller chips discussed in the article are available at the vendor sites for download.
So unless you're just another ignorant Apple fanboy, refute the guy's arguments. Or write a new version of ogg that can be made to work with the iPod.
If you can do either. Otherwise, stop whining.
They're the people who can't consistently keep their website on the air. I doubt that there is anyone on their payroll that subscribes to BugTraq or Full Disclosure.
Ironic, since they started out as a technical standards organization.
It's evident that a "tard" category is needed for moderators to use to properly classify a post like this one.