I still have major misgivings about the safety of storing so much energy in flywheels. Look around you and imagine if all the parked cars you see actually contained more kinetic energy that they would have while motoring down the freeway. Now imagine what happens when two of these flywheel enhanced cars collide -- it wouldn't matter if one of the two were parked or moving.
Paired flywheels might balance out the precessional forces under normal conditions. (Though slopes of up to %26 occur in my city, and slopes in excess of %15 are very, very common.) But paired flywheels would actually have more failure modes to account for.
It seems to me that any flywheel in a vehicle would have to be engineered to safely return to a zero energy state under any and all conditions. I cannot imagine how that could be done.
Face it. MP3 music dissemination is helping the music industry and will continue to do so as the media matures. Attempting to create some market imbalance / consumer action will be swimming against the tide.
The industry has been experiencing strong growth during the time of the rise of MP3 -- and its not a big stretch to say that MP3 has spurred some of that growth. Listening to Naptster's CEO in a Solon interview, cooperation between Napster and RIAA is expected, possible, and ultimately the best route to solving the impasse. Futile attempts to engineer some backlash against RIAA are both hopeless and counter productive.
This reminds me of an essay by John Walker called "Unicard" which is found on his Index Librorum Liberorum site. The story was written way back in '94 and does a remarkable job of predicting a confluence of technologies that is manifesting a "corporatists" threat to our privacy.
From the story:
"ABSTRACT
Threats to privacy are often seen as efforts launched by governments or large corporations, using their power to circumscribe individuals' rights. Yet often individuals voluntarily surrender their privacy for promises of security or, more frequently, pure convenience. Based on technologies already available or certain to appear within the next few years, this paper explores how much convenience could be gained, and how much privacy lost as these technologies enter the mainstream."
Walker seems to excuse corporations for their impact on society -- or rather, the story is more about the way individuals can be seduced into relinquishing their privacy (and individualism) by corporations. He correct puts the onus on us, individuals, to raise awareness of the problems and to safeguard our privacy. Yet, Katz has a valid point about the lack of retraints and accountability for global corporations.
You are correct. Hands-free units were no more safe than normal hands-on units. The danger arises from the distraction of the call. Phone conversation is worse than person to person conversations in the car because the lack of visual context (gesture, expressions, etc.) requires greater attention to the aural cues. On the phone you actually have to concentrate more attention on hearing at the expense of seeing. Within the car listening is supplemented by seeing, even if its limited to peripheral vision. And I imagine you'd find that drivers have to talk more on the phone than they do in a driver to passenger converstion. (Actually the study avoided making any conclusions about the nature of the increased risk, but I'm less restrained in my opinions!)
This second theory relates in an interesting way to something raised later on here in a post by Ektanoor:
"
The most spectacular [example of a washout] I have seen was a weird erosion that suggested that water acted there as a fountain falling on rock. And made a hole 1 kilometer wide"
If the erosion is caused by lava during a geologically active period, you would expect to see volcanic fountains, which might explain Ekantor's observation.
About a year ago a San Mateo firm AtMotion proposed ad-subsidised cell service for any phone. Their pitch was based on being able to locate exactly where you were and send you voice ads (or mail, or WAP,...) for businesses you might be near. So you're walking by Macy's when you get the call, "now on sale..." <gag, gasp,...> So far as I know, they didn't go too far with that before they changed course. Now they're part of phone.com and focused on other things. I hope.
I'm sure you have full editorial freedom, and we have full freedom to post. All good. And as long as the core of articulate, authentic voices of geekdom are active here the site will remain worthwhile. But I do see this change in the ownership hierarchy as a potentially bad thing for/. readers. Not because of any overt or implicit threat of censorship, but because it plays to a base, mob mentality here.
At its worst,/. is a tawdry Church of Open Source Truth, and posters are genuflecting parishioners. Unfortunately, this is the very core value of/. to Andover and now VA. They value/. because it is a thriving locus of the open source community. Underwriting/. gives VA legitimacy it couldn't possibly buy or build on its own. Sure, VA is perfectly willing to give you free reign -- knowing that you are an avid Open Source True Believer. There is absolutely no reason for them to question your motives or tactics. You' re values are perfectly aligned. The rest follows naturally.
Why is this bad? This place is supposed to be for geeks, not for religious converts. Geeks are not fixated on demographics or fashion or subjectivity,... or any of the things that lead VA to value SlashDot. Geeks are all about rationality, science,.. and hopefully about open minded inquisitiveness. Some of us feel like the Open Source mob is subverting geek values, and that your succession of corporate owners is indicative of this subversion.
Your humility and deference to the free/. community underscores my fears. As a non-linux professional geek, I would hope you don't give a rat's ass what the community does or says. I would hope that you remain dedicated to uncovering and discussing interesting developments affecting all geek engineers and scientists. Instead I see a tide of Open Source hordes overrunning the forum while you feed them a steady stream of linux fodder for them to fawn over.
If you'd be so kind, please humor the rest of us with occasional non-linux bones to chew on. I still like it here. Except for the Holy Wars crap.
I would settle for making the Jscript on/off switch more accessible. I toggle it on and off frequently -- but it is way more difficult than it ought to be. Espcieally with IE.
Has anyone rolled an app/applet that makes it easier to toggle Jscript?
[I'd also love to have another utility to clear my Win Documents menu.]
This is why I spend so much time on/. Well said, and thank you for saying it.
I only wish more contributors were informed, eloquent, primary sources like Senshi
[rant on] And I wish all the other knee-jerk, ranting, clue-free, me-too posters would read this post and remember it next time they get the urge to post. The ebbing S/N problem hereabouts is helped by moderators. But it would be helped even more by deliberation and self-moderation on the part of posters. [rant off]
He clealy choses not to participate in the forum and clearly a whole lot of folks have questions they want him to ask. So why not use the community based interview system to interview the pundit geeks love to hate?
GWRX, which had been surging from ~4 to ~18 over the past three months, went absolutely nuts yesterday -- something like +30! +300% in one day!! Apparently the pin stripes think there is some value in WAP, and that this action won't hurt WAP. Besides, why would GWRX be so foolish as to harm WAP with excessive licensing?
WAP has been simmering for some time now and it is poised to take off now that tere are enough WAP devised in service and on the market to merit significant WAP/WML site development. Even if hand held wireless devices get more and more capable, WAP deals with both bandwidth and latency problems that are characteristic of wireless. It will prove valuable.
And over time most flamers learn to curb their behaviour. Thankfully. Unfortunately, it won't be happening here.
Most of us that hang out in on-line communities are part of some communities that are partly or mostly real world too. Like casual aliases and BBS's at work. Or real world community lists... And the risks of hostility and tendencies towards flames are initially just as great in those communities as they are in the pure virtual worlds.
But the consequences of being an ass are much greater in the real world communities.
So I tend to play more in those communities that are tied in with the rest of my like, places where the contact is not merely through on-line, written words. Its more satisfying, more relevant to me. These are ultimately safer and more satisfying communities.
I've been spending a lot of time here recently in large part because I'm in the midst of changing and reinvigorating my programming career. There is a lot to learn here, and a lot of insights to be gained from many stellar peers.
So I put up with the angry, uncivil testosterone cases and the Church of Open Source knaves. I have the ego and temperment to get beyond these malignancies. I'm not one who is 'at risk' from flames and aggression. Besides, the gems here have doubtlessly helped me as I crawl out from under my professional rock and dive into today's geek labor market. Thanks all!
But I don't see any effective ways to really curb the deleterious flaming here. Too much youth. Too much testosterone. Too much religious evangelism. And not enough person to person, direct interaction to educate the fools. Hopefully that education will happen via other communities over time. But this, as an unbridled, open forum with no real world, tangible presence in our lives, will likely remain too hostile for a whole lot of folks -- much to the detriment of/. Tant pis. This place has so much to offer.
I've done a lot of work to support my product on various usenet, lists, and CIS forums over the past decade. It goes without saying that I've gained a whole lot of experience with flamers. I find Katz' comments and the discussion he's provoked to be more prescient and thoughtful than most other attempts to discuss the phenomena.
One point I haven't seen made yet is that email, newsgroups, and other on-line venues are a very different sort of communication compared to face to face verbal communication on the one hand and reviewed, edited written publications on the other hand. Online writing is conversational in tone and content, without the nuanced cues and feedback found in direct human interactions, and without the editorial filtering. This removes a whole lot of restraints and conventions that help keep us civil.
The other factor is that its harder to type than it is to talk. (doh) I'm a very fast typist, but its still hard for my fingers to keep up with my thoughts. So I find myself using overly emphatic or exaggerated prose and grammar to try and get my points across. The net effect is that written conversations tend to suffer from over saturated emotional content -- flamage.
The barrenness of online speech and the difficulty of transcribing conversational speach to written word make flaming an easy way out. It takes time and effort to master the skills and self-discipline needed to communicate effectively in this media. Unfortunately this means that in open forums such as this, we have to endure boorish flamers. And the regrettable fact that discussions happen in an extremely short time frame makes it harder to take the time to hone your words or to reflect on them before posting.
In my product support work I did not have the option of ignoring the flamers. But engaging the flamers with civil, on-topic, constructive, and informative replies I typically caught them off-guard -- often leading to public apologies and retractions. In cases where the flaming persisted, or was beyond my tolerance threshold, replying directly to the flamer was often more effective than public retorts. So my advice would be:
Ignore completely content free ranting and let moderators bury it
Confront and challenge on-topic flamers with civility wherever possible
Confront flamers off-line when you feel you've been harmed
Take your time. Write less and reflect on it longer before posting
Another very potent presentation of the contrarian viewpoint is found over at The Atlantic Monthy in an article from the Jully 97 issue, "The Computer Delusion" by Todd Oppenhiemer.
I volunteer time in my kids K-5 school and have helped develop and use the school's computer network -- so I am no Luddite or anti-tecnologist myself. But I do believe that both Stohl and Oppenhiemer are right on the money when they talk about how computers in schools are oversold and that good schools will continue to require good teachers -- indefinitely.
Some in this audience may have benefited greatly from computers in school, but I would bet that even those individuals would not have succeeded in their educations without direct, face to face, interactions with caring educators in a school building. These are very bacis human needs that cannot be fulfilled by any computing machinery or software -- especially in early education.
While I'm glad you posted an informed response to jd, and I'm willing to bet jd is severly clue impaired, I think you're off base suggesting he be moderated down. "Overrated" maybe correct (jd is a hyperactive/. poster (karma whore?)), but "Flamebait" does not fit. In many cases, and this is one, it would be useful for readers to see idiot posts that garner intelligent, insightful replies. Maybe we need yet another moderation category like "Provocative +1" for cases like this? For now I'd rather have seen jd's ranting markes as "Interesting" even if it was baseless.
Since so many posters have clearly not read the article, I quote:
"[Herman] said an advisory drafted by departmental officials was informal and was not intended to be taken as a statement of policy for the entire business community. [...]
Herman said, however, that the controversy has raised important questions about what protections Americans who work at home can expect from the government. She said she will convene a conference of business and labor leaders and set up an interagency task force to conduct a wide-ranging study of the issue."
The rest of her comments are posted on the OSHA site here.
So yes, this will be revisited -- with ample media attention no doubt. No, its not a disaster -- any more than the idea that employers may have some responsibilities for home office conditions is a disaster. It is the start of a broad discussion of a previously unexplored issue that is very relevant to those of us that telecom mute.
I couldn't find the contorversial letter in a quick scan of the Labor Department and OSHA sites. I suppose its been removed. Does anyone have a URL for it? I would have expected to find it here but its a gonner.
The clock and smoke detector units would be lousy for home security. Video evidence is almost worthless after the fact, but clearly visible video surveillance equipment is arguably a good deterent.
And be ver wary of stories of abusive child care providers. There was a rash of such witch hunts about a decade ago that were based on highly dubious evidence. Its disturbing to see that these insidious cases have left residue of fear and distrust about child care. For a pretty strong view of this issue, read Alexander Cockburn.
Yes, kids are way too prone to marketing pitches. And the WB's, Nick's, and Disneys of the world are mind-bogglingly adept at reaching kids. But banning ads aimed at kids is way off the mark. We parents have a job to do, not some regulators.
First, teach the kids to distinguish between ads and entertainment. I noticed that my nieces and nephews had no idea what an ad was versus the show they were watching. Now with my own kids I find it takes some training to help them to distinguish one from another. Further education about commercialism and materialism will go on forever, I suspect.
Second, don't buckle under the pressure to buy them every stupid thing they're sold. My kids get a pittance for an allowance and they can blow that on whatever they want -- usually Pokémon cards. But almost all of their stuff is bought by us parents. We're in control. It can be hard to endure their incessant and ill-mannerred demands -- especially if you're known to cave in. But we're getting better at it.
The bottom line is that I have to monitor and limit the hours of TV, video, and movie viewing. And whatever crap my kids choose to watch -- I must watch it too. If its crap, I let 'em know it by heckling and vocally abusing the rubbish. Its boring and boorish, but its my job.
In labour markets in general, more labour regulation causes higher unemployment.
This is bare-naked ideological bullshit. The minimum wage rubbish is not backed up by recent history, or any other history for that matter. Spare us the laissez faire pedantry. This is about a simple, logical interpretation of existing labor law. We "knowledge workers" may not be comfortable under the same umbrella as factory workers but it is useful to observe that employers' responsibilities extend euqally to white, pink, or blue collar grunts.
By increasing the regulations on telecommuting workers, the government is inadvertantly making it HARDER for people to telecommute.
There/are/ hidden costs associated with home offices. OSHA coming along and pointing out the obvious -- that employers are responsible for the working conditions of their employees regardless of where the office is located -- is nothing more than common sense. If the incremental costs of home offices are so great that it ends up reducing or limiting access to home offices -- so be it. Its more likely that the effect of OSHA's actions -- and the dialog here -- will be to improve working conditions for telecommuters by expanding the dialog between employers and employees. At the end of the day, telecommuting will still make sense for a whole lot of folks for all the reasons we telecommuters love it.
As a long time telecommuter, this makes perfect sense to me. There are a lot of hidden costs and repercussions of telecommuting thtat are typically unexpolored and undisclosed by either the employer or the telecommuting employee. Like insurance costs, or minimum workstation requireents,... the costs of maintaining the home office.
I love telecommuting and a flex schedule. It improves the quality of my work life immensely. But the fact is that is it in both the employer's and employee's best interests that both parties agree on what constitutes an acceptible home office, and who is responsible for any and all of the costs associated with establishing, maintaining, and running a home office. As long as a telecommuter is considered an employee and not an independent contractor, it makes sense that any OSHA regulations pertaining to the workplace would apply to home offices.
Now, wether or not OSHA regulations are reasonable at all is an entirely different question. I'm sure my home office would not measure up in a few ways (like the overloaded circuits in my basement), but I wouldn't really mind discussing and negotiating these problems with my boss - even if I had to eat the expenses. In the meantime I'll probably continue to procrastinate and just live with conditions as they are.
And here is the same message as originally formatted
> ---------- Forwarded message ---------- > Date: Wed, 1 Dec 1999 11:00:00 -0800 (PST) > From: > Subject: What Tear Gas Smells Like > > I've decided to write up some stuff about my experiences yesterday during > the protests, because the media has completely dropped the ball (this is > why it's a bad idea to have all the major news networks controlled by > large corporations). If you feel comfortable doing it, please forward > this information on to anyone and everyone, so that the word can get out > that what happened yesterday was not what the major networks say it was. > > How I Learned What Tear Gas Smells Like: The Events of November 30th from > Another Perspective, by Beth Stevens > > Yesterday, I arrived at the National Lawyers Guild nerve center at around > 8:30. The NLG is one of the groups that sent out volunteer legal > observers to the WTO protests. LO's are not lawyers necessarily, they're > just people who were watching to ensure that there were objective > witnesses should anything go wrong. The nerve center was set up to take > phone calls from observers about arrests and other incidents, and to help > coordiate the placement of observers with the different protests going on. > The nerve center is located in a building on 4th Avenue and Union Street. > > We knew Tuesday was going to be a busy day, because the largest scheduled > march was going to be starting at 12:30, and because it was the opening > day of the official WTO sessions. We expected a large number of arrests, > because the city had set up a special system for processing large numbers > of arrestees, but we didn't expect there to be many violent confrontations > between the police and the protestors, since the vast majority of the > groups espoused a nonviolent viewpoint. > > Around 9:15, we began to receive phone calls from our LO's telling us that > police in riot gear were arriving at the protests around the Sheraton > Hotel, bringing with them tear gas, peppery spray and armored personal > carriers (or APC's, which the police and the media would later > euphamistically call "peacekeepers"). It wasn't until around 9:45 that we > began to get frantic phone calls from our LO's saying the police were > throwing tear gas canisters at the crowd and then spraying them with > pepper spray. At least one of our LO's told us that they heard no warning > from the police before the gassing began. > > After the first use of tear gas, the police seemed to believe that it was > appropriate to use tear gas on all protestors, whether they were peaceful > or not. The building we were in was locked down around 10:00 because of > the chaos outside, meaning we needed to vouch for any of our observers who > needed to go in our out. We received reports all morning from LO's asking > for more observers to be sent to their locations because they were being > sprayed with pepper spray and tear gas. One of our observers came in > carrying a rubber bullet he had picked up off the street after the police > shot rubber bullets at him and the protestors he was observing. > > It was about this time that we began talking to one of the local > newspapers, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. We were on the phone with one > of their editors when the observer came in with the rubber bullet, and the > editor told us that the Seattle Police were denying using rubber bullets. > We told her that we had one in our office. The bullet was about 3/4 of an > inch across and made of hard rubber that felt like plastic; I held it in > my hand and felt it. It also had white scrape marks on it, from bouncing > off the street. Later in the day, LO's brought in more rubber bullets, > some of them much smaller. The smaller ones, they reported, were used in > shotgun-type shells and sprayed out at the crowd more than the larger > ones. > > Around 11:45, a few of us went across the hall from the office were in to > another office because we heard the police were amassing a strike force in > the intersection just below us. We were on the 9th floor and had an > unobstructed view of the intersection. We could also see down 4th Avenue > about a block, and up Union about two blocks. The police had union > blocked off between 4th and 6th; there was an APC parked in the > intersection of 6th and Union, and there were mounted police at 5th and > Union. In addition, there was a line of police (all the police I saw all > day were in riot gear, including gas masks, helmets, bullet-proof vests, > face guards, and sometimes shields) standing at the intersection of 4th > and Union blocking protestors from moving up Union toward the Sheraton. > There were about 200 protestors in the intersection, playing drums and > chanting something we couldn't understand. A few of the protestors > brought dumpsters over to the intersection and knocked them over, creating > a partial baracade in the street. > > Around 11:50, we saw more police heading towards the intersection, > marching. It was clear to us that they were the reinforcements, and that > the police had decided to clear the intersection. The protestors must > have realized this too, because about a third of them decided to sit down. > There was nothing thrown at the police, nor did any of the protestors try > to come up to the police and confront them. The only act which the police > could have seen as threatening was the semi-baracade, and only a handful > of the protestors had built it. > > At noon, a police officer came out and said something to the crowd through > a megaphone. Later, an observer who was on the street at that point told > me that the officer had said the protestors were violating state law, and > had 2 minutes to leave the area, and then would be subject to arrest. > About fifteen to thirty seconds after the police made their announcement, > we saw tear gas canisters flying at the crowd. Then the line of police > began to advance, walking around the overturned dumpsters and spraying the > still-seated protestors with pepper spray. The protestors began to flee. > Some of the protestors threw tear gas canisters back at the police, but > since the police were wearing gas masks, they simply ignored the > canisters. Once all the protestors had run away, the police set up lines > on both sides of the intersection, leaving Union Street entirely empty of > protestors from 6th avenue through 3rd. > > The afternoon brought more of the same: the police threw tear gas at any > protestors who were beligerant, were breaking windows or damaging > property, or were in a location where the police didn't want them. Very > few people were arrested, despite the elaborate system of processing > arrestees that the city had developed; in the morning, we only heard about > 3 arrests, and by about 5:00, we had only heard of 19 total arrests. > > The scheduled AFL-CIO march had to change its route, because the police > had blocked off the streets. Any protestors who didn't want to comply > with the change in route were pepper sprayed or tear gassed. By then, it > was clear to us that the city had literally descended into complete chaos. > > The NLG attorneys drafted a letter to the mayor, which was also sent to > the city council and any news organization we could think of, demanding > that the tear gassing of peaceful protestors be stopped. The letter was > faxed out at about 2:30. It received some attention from the press; a few > news agencies called us to follow up on it, but the mayor obviously > ignored the letter entirely. > > About 4:30, we heard that the mayor was probably going to impose a curfew > on downtown. When the curfew was announced, we realized that we couldn't > keep the nerve center open that evening as we had planned. Instead, we > started to close up and go home. The phone wasn't ringing anymore, since > most of the protestors had been chased out of town both by the curfew and > by the tear gas, pepper spray and rubber bullets. > > An NLG attorney and I left the building at about 5:10. Since the buses > weren't running because of the street closures, the attorney had offered > to give me a ride home if we could get to his car, which was parked at the > north end of downtown near the Paramount Theater, where the opening > sessions were to have taken place. Since we couldn't cross Union Street > (which was to the north of us), we walked down 4th one block to University > Street, then over to 3rd Avenue. On the corner of 3rd Avenue and > University is an entrance to the bus tunnel which runs underneath > downtown. We asked the police officers stationed there if the tunnel was > open. They told us that buses were running through the tunnel, but that > only certain stops were open, and the stop nearest the car was closed. So > taking the bus wouldn't help us. > > Next, we walked about two blocks up Third before we came to an > intersection where there were police. We could see that further up 3rd, > there was tear gas. We asked one of the police who wasn't wearing a gas > mask which street we could go up to get to the north end of downtown. He > told us to take 2nd Avenue, so we walked over to 2nd, but there was a > large tear gas cloud visible up the street. So we headed over for 1st > Avenue. > > We managed to go about a half a block up 1st before we started to smell > tear gas. We tried to walk a little further, hoping the gas would > dissipate, but it only got stronger. We turned around and headed back to > the street we'd been on before, and followed it towards the waterfront, > which is two blocks west of 1st Avenue. We knew that the breeze off the > ocean would help dissipate any tear gas, and we figured that there > wouldn't be any protestors on the waterfront, since it's somewhat > seperated from the rest of downtown by staircases and cliffs. As we > headed towards the waterfront, we took some lost out-of-town protestors > with us, most of them very young and clearly shaken by their experience. > > The attorney with me decided to head back into downtown to try to get to > his car, and I decided to keep walking up the waterfront to try to get to > a bus. I ended up having to walk halfway around the city to find a bus > headed towards my house. I got home around 7:00. > > It was clear to me from my experiences yesterday that the rioting that > ensued last night didn't have to happen. Tear gas didn't need to be used > on peaceful protestors who posed no threat to the police or to WTO > delegates. The police chose to gas and spray protestors instead of > arresting them and removing them from the scene. The protests would have > been much easier to manage had the police followed normal procedures and > arrested protestors. Instead, they ended spending most of the day chasing > the same people around downtown with tear gas, peppery spray and rubber > bullets. The people who rioted all last night could have been arrested in > the morning and held away from downtown, and much of the property damage > and, more important, the injuries would have been prevented. > > I urge all of you to follow the coverage of these events by the Seattle > Independent Media Center. Their website is www.indymedia.org and their > reports are far more accurate than the ones the major networks are > producing. The CNN reporters don't even know where the bus tunnel goes, > let alone what actually went on in the crowds yesterday. There were no > major networks covering the clearing of 4th and Union that I witnessed, > but there were independent media cameras there. And the independent media > aren't owned by large corporations which have a vested interest in the > WTO. > > Remember, this could happen in your city too. All it takes is for a few > police officers to feel scared, and an entire city can become a war zone. > Be careful out there! > > ===== > > ************************************************** ********** > "I say let's put on some tunes > Sing a long and do little all day > Go down to the riverside take off our shoes > And wash these sins away..." Indigo Girls > ************************************************** **********
Huh? Are you suggesting that this distributed DOS 'protest' will cause some sort of net traffic jam that will have some second order effect on your web use? 'Duh, I doubt it' sez me. So far it appears the WTO servers are keeping up with the load.
Attempting to bring the WTO site(s) to its knees is pretty damn close to the effect of a sit-in. That 'place' becomes inaccessible and unable to carry on normal functions. The critical difference to my eye is that surfers who happen upon the scene are unable to tell why the site is inaccessible. (Besides millions of page views will be served successfully in any case.) The surfing public will only be aware of the protest if it gains media air time, or if the WTO decides to explain service problems.
Another propaganda difference is that coordinating the protest will be even more difficult than is the case with a physical sit-in. At least with a sit-in protesters can be addressed directly and the general demeanor of the protesters can be observed and coached. And if the protesters are faced with police action, they can see it and act accordingly. In this case police action is exceedingly unlikely (against the electro-hippies at least) but if it were to occur the protest leaders might not be aware of it and they'd have a hard time reliably sharing the news with the protesters.
At least the danger of this protest devolving into violence is almost nil. Unlike the other protests on the streets of Seattle.
ADA may suck for lots of valid reasons... And this lawsuit may or may not be premature, given AOL's expressed interest in addressing the problem... And the market for sight impaired web services may not be sufficient to protect the interests of the blind (the reason behind ADA)... BUT
Commercial sites will take an increased interest in pure text and alternate browser site usage in the coming years because of the vast market for hand-held web devices that require streamlined, text based UI. WAP (or similar, TBD) awareness will be a significant concern for any clueful web business.
Groups advocating the interests of the disabled would do well to align themselves with WAP or other similar initiatives. In this case the disabled community can have an extremely effective market impact by way of alliances with other extremely powerful groups -- like Telcos. Why go down a regulatory, litigious path when there are much stronger cards to play?
Since I was ignorant of LGPL I did a bit of research -- something other flamebaitee's obviously neglected to do. LGPL is clearly a better choice for the type of component repository under discussion. From FSF's GNU Lesser General Public License page:
"This license, the Lesser General Public License, applies to some specially designated software packages--typically libraries--of the Free Software Foundation and other authors who decide to use it.[...]
For example, on rare occasions, there may be a special need to encourage the widest possible use of a certain library, so that it becomes a de-facto standard. To achieve this, non-free programs must be allowed to use the library. A more frequent case is that a free library does the same job as widely used non-free libraries. In this case, there is little to gain by limiting the free library to free software only, so we use the Lesser General Public License."
To me it is obvious that LGPL is better suited for a repository that aims to create defacto standard bomponentry -- for the exact reasons that led FSF to coin the LGPL.
Slashdot Mirror
Paired flywheels might balance out the precessional forces under normal conditions. (Though slopes of up to %26 occur in my city, and slopes in excess of %15 are very, very common.) But paired flywheels would actually have more failure modes to account for.
It seems to me that any flywheel in a vehicle would have to be engineered to safely return to a zero energy state under any and all conditions. I cannot imagine how that could be done.
The industry has been experiencing strong growth during the time of the rise of MP3 -- and its not a big stretch to say that MP3 has spurred some of that growth. Listening to Naptster's CEO in a Solon interview, cooperation between Napster and RIAA is expected, possible, and ultimately the best route to solving the impasse. Futile attempts to engineer some backlash against RIAA are both hopeless and counter productive.
From the story:
Walker seems to excuse corporations for their impact on society -- or rather, the story is more about the way individuals can be seduced into relinquishing their privacy (and individualism) by corporations. He correct puts the onus on us, individuals, to raise awareness of the problems and to safeguard our privacy. Yet, Katz has a valid point about the lack of retraints and accountability for global corporations.You are correct. Hands-free units were no more safe than normal hands-on units. The danger arises from the distraction of the call. Phone conversation is worse than person to person conversations in the car because the lack of visual context (gesture, expressions, etc.) requires greater attention to the aural cues. On the phone you actually have to concentrate more attention on hearing at the expense of seeing. Within the car listening is supplemented by seeing, even if its limited to peripheral vision. And I imagine you'd find that drivers have to talk more on the phone than they do in a driver to passenger converstion. (Actually the study avoided making any conclusions about the nature of the increased risk, but I'm less restrained in my opinions!)
About a year ago a San Mateo firm AtMotion proposed ad-subsidised cell service for any phone. Their pitch was based on being able to locate exactly where you were and send you voice ads (or mail, or WAP,...) for businesses you might be near. So you're walking by Macy's when you get the call, "now on sale..."
<gag, gasp,...>
So far as I know, they didn't go too far with that before they changed course. Now they're part of phone.com and focused on other things. I hope.
At its worst, /. is a tawdry Church of Open Source Truth, and posters are genuflecting parishioners. Unfortunately, this is the very core value of /. to Andover and now VA. They value /. because it is a thriving locus of the open source community. Underwriting /. gives VA legitimacy it couldn't possibly buy or build on its own. Sure, VA is perfectly willing to give you free reign -- knowing that you are an avid Open Source True Believer. There is absolutely no reason for them to question your motives or tactics. You' re values are perfectly aligned. The rest follows naturally.
Why is this bad? This place is supposed to be for geeks, not for religious converts. Geeks are not fixated on demographics or fashion or subjectivity,... or any of the things that lead VA to value SlashDot. Geeks are all about rationality, science,.. and hopefully about open minded inquisitiveness. Some of us feel like the Open Source mob is subverting geek values, and that your succession of corporate owners is indicative of this subversion.
Your humility and deference to the free /. community underscores my fears. As a non-linux professional geek, I would hope you don't give a rat's ass what the community does or says. I would hope that you remain dedicated to uncovering and discussing interesting developments affecting all geek engineers and scientists. Instead I see a tide of Open Source hordes overrunning the forum while you feed them a steady stream of linux fodder for them to fawn over.
If you'd be so kind, please humor the rest of us with occasional non-linux bones to chew on. I still like it here. Except for the Holy Wars crap.
As noted on Ars Technica, there is a meaty aritle about EE over on PCWorld: "The Sony Emotion Engine: We're Talking Gigaflops " More informative than CNN.
Has anyone rolled an app/applet that makes it easier to toggle Jscript?
[I'd also love to have another utility to clear my Win Documents menu.]
Well said, and thank you for saying it.
I only wish more contributors were informed, eloquent, primary sources like Senshi
[rant on]
And I wish all the other knee-jerk, ranting, clue-free, me-too posters would read this post and remember it next time they get the urge to post. The ebbing S/N problem hereabouts is helped by moderators. But it would be helped even more by deliberation and self-moderation on the part of posters.
[rant off]
He clealy choses not to participate in the forum and clearly a whole lot of folks have questions they want him to ask. So why not use the community based interview system to interview the pundit geeks love to hate?
WAP has been simmering for some time now and it is poised to take off now that tere are enough WAP devised in service and on the market to merit significant WAP/WML site development. Even if hand held wireless devices get more and more capable, WAP deals with both bandwidth and latency problems that are characteristic of wireless. It will prove valuable.
Most of us that hang out in on-line communities are part of some communities that are partly or mostly real world too. Like casual aliases and BBS's at work. Or real world community lists... And the risks of hostility and tendencies towards flames are initially just as great in those communities as they are in the pure virtual worlds.
But the consequences of being an ass are much greater in the real world communities.
So I tend to play more in those communities that are tied in with the rest of my like, places where the contact is not merely through on-line, written words. Its more satisfying, more relevant to me. These are ultimately safer and more satisfying communities.
I've been spending a lot of time here recently in large part because I'm in the midst of changing and reinvigorating my programming career. There is a lot to learn here, and a lot of insights to be gained from many stellar peers.
So I put up with the angry, uncivil testosterone cases and the Church of Open Source knaves. I have the ego and temperment to get beyond these malignancies. I'm not one who is 'at risk' from flames and aggression. Besides, the gems here have doubtlessly helped me as I crawl out from under my professional rock and dive into today's geek labor market. Thanks all!
But I don't see any effective ways to really curb the deleterious flaming here. Too much youth. Too much testosterone. Too much religious evangelism. And not enough person to person, direct interaction to educate the fools. Hopefully that education will happen via other communities over time. But this, as an unbridled, open forum with no real world, tangible presence in our lives, will likely remain too hostile for a whole lot of folks -- much to the detriment of /. Tant pis. This place has so much to offer.
One point I haven't seen made yet is that email, newsgroups, and other on-line venues are a very different sort of communication compared to face to face verbal communication on the one hand and reviewed, edited written publications on the other hand. Online writing is conversational in tone and content, without the nuanced cues and feedback found in direct human interactions, and without the editorial filtering. This removes a whole lot of restraints and conventions that help keep us civil.
The other factor is that its harder to type than it is to talk. (doh) I'm a very fast typist, but its still hard for my fingers to keep up with my thoughts. So I find myself using overly emphatic or exaggerated prose and grammar to try and get my points across. The net effect is that written conversations tend to suffer from over saturated emotional content -- flamage.
The barrenness of online speech and the difficulty of transcribing conversational speach to written word make flaming an easy way out. It takes time and effort to master the skills and self-discipline needed to communicate effectively in this media. Unfortunately this means that in open forums such as this, we have to endure boorish flamers. And the regrettable fact that discussions happen in an extremely short time frame makes it harder to take the time to hone your words or to reflect on them before posting.
In my product support work I did not have the option of ignoring the flamers. But engaging the flamers with civil, on-topic, constructive, and informative replies I typically caught them off-guard -- often leading to public apologies and retractions. In cases where the flaming persisted, or was beyond my tolerance threshold, replying directly to the flamer was often more effective than public retorts. So my advice would be:
I volunteer time in my kids K-5 school and have helped develop and use the school's computer network -- so I am no Luddite or anti-tecnologist myself. But I do believe that both Stohl and Oppenhiemer are right on the money when they talk about how computers in schools are oversold and that good schools will continue to require good teachers -- indefinitely.
Some in this audience may have benefited greatly from computers in school, but I would bet that even those individuals would not have succeeded in their educations without direct, face to face, interactions with caring educators in a school building. These are very bacis human needs that cannot be fulfilled by any computing machinery or software -- especially in early education.
While I'm glad you posted an informed response to jd, and I'm willing to bet jd is severly clue impaired, I think you're off base suggesting he be moderated down. "Overrated" maybe correct (jd is a hyperactive /. poster (karma whore?)), but "Flamebait" does not fit. In many cases, and this is one, it would be useful for readers to see idiot posts that garner intelligent, insightful replies. Maybe we need yet another moderation category like "Provocative +1" for cases like this? For now I'd rather have seen jd's ranting markes as "Interesting" even if it was baseless.
So yes, this will be revisited -- with ample media attention no doubt. No, its not a disaster -- any more than the idea that employers may have some responsibilities for home office conditions is a disaster. It is the start of a broad discussion of a previously unexplored issue that is very relevant to those of us that telecom mute.
I couldn't find the contorversial letter in a quick scan of the Labor Department and OSHA sites. I suppose its been removed. Does anyone have a URL for it? I would have expected to find it here but its a gonner.
And be ver wary of stories of abusive child care providers. There was a rash of such witch hunts about a decade ago that were based on highly dubious evidence. Its disturbing to see that these insidious cases have left residue of fear and distrust about child care. For a pretty strong view of this issue, read Alexander Cockburn.
First, teach the kids to distinguish between ads and entertainment. I noticed that my nieces and nephews had no idea what an ad was versus the show they were watching. Now with my own kids I find it takes some training to help them to distinguish one from another. Further education about commercialism and materialism will go on forever, I suspect.
Second, don't buckle under the pressure to buy them every stupid thing they're sold. My kids get a pittance for an allowance and they can blow that on whatever they want -- usually Pokémon cards. But almost all of their stuff is bought by us parents. We're in control. It can be hard to endure their incessant and ill-mannerred demands -- especially if you're known to cave in. But we're getting better at it.
The bottom line is that I have to monitor and limit the hours of TV, video, and movie viewing. And whatever crap my kids choose to watch -- I must watch it too. If its crap, I let 'em know it by heckling and vocally abusing the rubbish. Its boring and boorish, but its my job.
I love telecommuting and a flex schedule. It improves the quality of my work life immensely. But the fact is that is it in both the employer's and employee's best interests that both parties agree on what constitutes an acceptible home office, and who is responsible for any and all of the costs associated with establishing, maintaining, and running a home office. As long as a telecommuter is considered an employee and not an independent contractor, it makes sense that any OSHA regulations pertaining to the workplace would apply to home offices.
Now, wether or not OSHA regulations are reasonable at all is an entirely different question. I'm sure my home office would not measure up in a few ways (like the overloaded circuits in my basement), but I wouldn't really mind discussing and negotiating these problems with my boss - even if I had to eat the expenses. In the meantime I'll probably continue to procrastinate and just live with conditions as they are.
And here is the same message as originally formatted
* ********** * **********
> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
> Date: Wed, 1 Dec 1999 11:00:00 -0800 (PST)
> From:
> Subject: What Tear Gas Smells Like
>
> I've decided to write up some stuff about my experiences yesterday during
> the protests, because the media has completely dropped the ball (this is
> why it's a bad idea to have all the major news networks controlled by
> large corporations). If you feel comfortable doing it, please forward
> this information on to anyone and everyone, so that the word can get out
> that what happened yesterday was not what the major networks say it was.
>
> How I Learned What Tear Gas Smells Like: The Events of November 30th from
> Another Perspective, by Beth Stevens
>
> Yesterday, I arrived at the National Lawyers Guild nerve center at around
> 8:30. The NLG is one of the groups that sent out volunteer legal
> observers to the WTO protests. LO's are not lawyers necessarily, they're
> just people who were watching to ensure that there were objective
> witnesses should anything go wrong. The nerve center was set up to take
> phone calls from observers about arrests and other incidents, and to help
> coordiate the placement of observers with the different protests going on.
> The nerve center is located in a building on 4th Avenue and Union Street.
>
> We knew Tuesday was going to be a busy day, because the largest scheduled
> march was going to be starting at 12:30, and because it was the opening
> day of the official WTO sessions. We expected a large number of arrests,
> because the city had set up a special system for processing large numbers
> of arrestees, but we didn't expect there to be many violent confrontations
> between the police and the protestors, since the vast majority of the
> groups espoused a nonviolent viewpoint.
>
> Around 9:15, we began to receive phone calls from our LO's telling us that
> police in riot gear were arriving at the protests around the Sheraton
> Hotel, bringing with them tear gas, peppery spray and armored personal
> carriers (or APC's, which the police and the media would later
> euphamistically call "peacekeepers"). It wasn't until around 9:45 that we
> began to get frantic phone calls from our LO's saying the police were
> throwing tear gas canisters at the crowd and then spraying them with
> pepper spray. At least one of our LO's told us that they heard no warning
> from the police before the gassing began.
>
> After the first use of tear gas, the police seemed to believe that it was
> appropriate to use tear gas on all protestors, whether they were peaceful
> or not. The building we were in was locked down around 10:00 because of
> the chaos outside, meaning we needed to vouch for any of our observers who
> needed to go in our out. We received reports all morning from LO's asking
> for more observers to be sent to their locations because they were being
> sprayed with pepper spray and tear gas. One of our observers came in
> carrying a rubber bullet he had picked up off the street after the police
> shot rubber bullets at him and the protestors he was observing.
>
> It was about this time that we began talking to one of the local
> newspapers, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. We were on the phone with one
> of their editors when the observer came in with the rubber bullet, and the
> editor told us that the Seattle Police were denying using rubber bullets.
> We told her that we had one in our office. The bullet was about 3/4 of an
> inch across and made of hard rubber that felt like plastic; I held it in
> my hand and felt it. It also had white scrape marks on it, from bouncing
> off the street. Later in the day, LO's brought in more rubber bullets,
> some of them much smaller. The smaller ones, they reported, were used in
> shotgun-type shells and sprayed out at the crowd more than the larger
> ones.
>
> Around 11:45, a few of us went across the hall from the office were in to
> another office because we heard the police were amassing a strike force in
> the intersection just below us. We were on the 9th floor and had an
> unobstructed view of the intersection. We could also see down 4th Avenue
> about a block, and up Union about two blocks. The police had union
> blocked off between 4th and 6th; there was an APC parked in the
> intersection of 6th and Union, and there were mounted police at 5th and
> Union. In addition, there was a line of police (all the police I saw all
> day were in riot gear, including gas masks, helmets, bullet-proof vests,
> face guards, and sometimes shields) standing at the intersection of 4th
> and Union blocking protestors from moving up Union toward the Sheraton.
> There were about 200 protestors in the intersection, playing drums and
> chanting something we couldn't understand. A few of the protestors
> brought dumpsters over to the intersection and knocked them over, creating
> a partial baracade in the street.
>
> Around 11:50, we saw more police heading towards the intersection,
> marching. It was clear to us that they were the reinforcements, and that
> the police had decided to clear the intersection. The protestors must
> have realized this too, because about a third of them decided to sit down.
> There was nothing thrown at the police, nor did any of the protestors try
> to come up to the police and confront them. The only act which the police
> could have seen as threatening was the semi-baracade, and only a handful
> of the protestors had built it.
>
> At noon, a police officer came out and said something to the crowd through
> a megaphone. Later, an observer who was on the street at that point told
> me that the officer had said the protestors were violating state law, and
> had 2 minutes to leave the area, and then would be subject to arrest.
> About fifteen to thirty seconds after the police made their announcement,
> we saw tear gas canisters flying at the crowd. Then the line of police
> began to advance, walking around the overturned dumpsters and spraying the
> still-seated protestors with pepper spray. The protestors began to flee.
> Some of the protestors threw tear gas canisters back at the police, but
> since the police were wearing gas masks, they simply ignored the
> canisters. Once all the protestors had run away, the police set up lines
> on both sides of the intersection, leaving Union Street entirely empty of
> protestors from 6th avenue through 3rd.
>
> The afternoon brought more of the same: the police threw tear gas at any
> protestors who were beligerant, were breaking windows or damaging
> property, or were in a location where the police didn't want them. Very
> few people were arrested, despite the elaborate system of processing
> arrestees that the city had developed; in the morning, we only heard about
> 3 arrests, and by about 5:00, we had only heard of 19 total arrests.
>
> The scheduled AFL-CIO march had to change its route, because the police
> had blocked off the streets. Any protestors who didn't want to comply
> with the change in route were pepper sprayed or tear gassed. By then, it
> was clear to us that the city had literally descended into complete chaos.
>
> The NLG attorneys drafted a letter to the mayor, which was also sent to
> the city council and any news organization we could think of, demanding
> that the tear gassing of peaceful protestors be stopped. The letter was
> faxed out at about 2:30. It received some attention from the press; a few
> news agencies called us to follow up on it, but the mayor obviously
> ignored the letter entirely.
>
> About 4:30, we heard that the mayor was probably going to impose a curfew
> on downtown. When the curfew was announced, we realized that we couldn't
> keep the nerve center open that evening as we had planned. Instead, we
> started to close up and go home. The phone wasn't ringing anymore, since
> most of the protestors had been chased out of town both by the curfew and
> by the tear gas, pepper spray and rubber bullets.
>
> An NLG attorney and I left the building at about 5:10. Since the buses
> weren't running because of the street closures, the attorney had offered
> to give me a ride home if we could get to his car, which was parked at the
> north end of downtown near the Paramount Theater, where the opening
> sessions were to have taken place. Since we couldn't cross Union Street
> (which was to the north of us), we walked down 4th one block to University
> Street, then over to 3rd Avenue. On the corner of 3rd Avenue and
> University is an entrance to the bus tunnel which runs underneath
> downtown. We asked the police officers stationed there if the tunnel was
> open. They told us that buses were running through the tunnel, but that
> only certain stops were open, and the stop nearest the car was closed. So
> taking the bus wouldn't help us.
>
> Next, we walked about two blocks up Third before we came to an
> intersection where there were police. We could see that further up 3rd,
> there was tear gas. We asked one of the police who wasn't wearing a gas
> mask which street we could go up to get to the north end of downtown. He
> told us to take 2nd Avenue, so we walked over to 2nd, but there was a
> large tear gas cloud visible up the street. So we headed over for 1st
> Avenue.
>
> We managed to go about a half a block up 1st before we started to smell
> tear gas. We tried to walk a little further, hoping the gas would
> dissipate, but it only got stronger. We turned around and headed back to
> the street we'd been on before, and followed it towards the waterfront,
> which is two blocks west of 1st Avenue. We knew that the breeze off the
> ocean would help dissipate any tear gas, and we figured that there
> wouldn't be any protestors on the waterfront, since it's somewhat
> seperated from the rest of downtown by staircases and cliffs. As we
> headed towards the waterfront, we took some lost out-of-town protestors
> with us, most of them very young and clearly shaken by their experience.
>
> The attorney with me decided to head back into downtown to try to get to
> his car, and I decided to keep walking up the waterfront to try to get to
> a bus. I ended up having to walk halfway around the city to find a bus
> headed towards my house. I got home around 7:00.
>
> It was clear to me from my experiences yesterday that the rioting that
> ensued last night didn't have to happen. Tear gas didn't need to be used
> on peaceful protestors who posed no threat to the police or to WTO
> delegates. The police chose to gas and spray protestors instead of
> arresting them and removing them from the scene. The protests would have
> been much easier to manage had the police followed normal procedures and
> arrested protestors. Instead, they ended spending most of the day chasing
> the same people around downtown with tear gas, peppery spray and rubber
> bullets. The people who rioted all last night could have been arrested in
> the morning and held away from downtown, and much of the property damage
> and, more important, the injuries would have been prevented.
>
> I urge all of you to follow the coverage of these events by the Seattle
> Independent Media Center. Their website is www.indymedia.org and their
> reports are far more accurate than the ones the major networks are
> producing. The CNN reporters don't even know where the bus tunnel goes,
> let alone what actually went on in the crowds yesterday. There were no
> major networks covering the clearing of 4th and Union that I witnessed,
> but there were independent media cameras there. And the independent media
> aren't owned by large corporations which have a vested interest in the
> WTO.
>
> Remember, this could happen in your city too. All it takes is for a few
> police officers to feel scared, and an entire city can become a war zone.
> Be careful out there!
>
> =====
>
> *************************************************
> "I say let's put on some tunes
> Sing a long and do little all day
> Go down to the riverside take off our shoes
> And wash these sins away..." Indigo Girls
> *************************************************
Attempting to bring the WTO site(s) to its knees is pretty damn close to the effect of a sit-in. That 'place' becomes inaccessible and unable to carry on normal functions. The critical difference to my eye is that surfers who happen upon the scene are unable to tell why the site is inaccessible. (Besides millions of page views will be served successfully in any case.) The surfing public will only be aware of the protest if it gains media air time, or if the WTO decides to explain service problems.
Another propaganda difference is that coordinating the protest will be even more difficult than is the case with a physical sit-in. At least with a sit-in protesters can be addressed directly and the general demeanor of the protesters can be observed and coached. And if the protesters are faced with police action, they can see it and act accordingly. In this case police action is exceedingly unlikely (against the electro-hippies at least) but if it were to occur the protest leaders might not be aware of it and they'd have a hard time reliably sharing the news with the protesters.
At least the danger of this protest devolving into violence is almost nil. Unlike the other protests on the streets of Seattle.
Commercial sites will take an increased interest in pure text and alternate browser site usage in the coming years because of the vast market for hand-held web devices that require streamlined, text based UI. WAP (or similar, TBD) awareness will be a significant concern for any clueful web business.
Groups advocating the interests of the disabled would do well to align themselves with WAP or other similar initiatives. In this case the disabled community can have an extremely effective market impact by way of alliances with other extremely powerful groups -- like Telcos. Why go down a regulatory, litigious path when there are much stronger cards to play?