What would you do with that diploma that you are not doing or can not do right now?
Frankly, I'd have to say do the higher paying job, especially if the salary for it is in the six figure range. Work it for a few years and see how it works out. Bank the money, so you have it to fall back on if you decide to switch back to a programming job, or start something on your own. Don't do anything silly like buying an expensive car or house that lands you with expensive payments; then you'll actually need that high paying job, and lose your ability to walk away. Three years at that new job gets you the same financial rewards that eight years at your current job will bring. That is worth taking a risk for, especially if the job isn't that bad. Even if you only work it for a year, you're financially more than two years ahead of where you would have been.
You can always walk out with a big green parachute, and find yourself work later with that kind of resume. It's been my experience that most intelligent people prefer experience to a fresh degree. Apprenticeship is still the best way to learn any trade.
If you stay on good terms with your current employer, they may take you back if you decide you want to return. Our company has hired back plenty of old talent that left on good terms when they came around looking for work, because they are a known asset, more reliable than a fresh hire. This really depends on your company's management; not all of them are this open minded. If they show loyalty to employees, they'd probably go for it.
Problem is, it becomes something of an arms race. Just because you refrain, is no guarantee someone else will hold back. It's the opposite really; if the technology has some value, it'll be researched whereever it is possible to do so. Therefore, we're screwed... any technology that has potential benefits will be explored and realized by whoever can afford to do it, regardless of policy. The technology will simply move to the places where its continued development is not an issue.
This puts us in the unenviable position of trying to make sure the technologies that could cause the most harm are developed primarily in countries we can trust not to use them unwisely (mostly by fostering an environment that gives benefits to that technology's development that cannot be found elsewhere). It also requires us to not drag our feet on any ethical issues that arise with technology, because the technology will not wait for us to become comfortable with it before being used.
Nanotech, in particular, has some very lethal potential failure models that could result in world-altering problems (Ecophagy.) The kinds of problems that this failed nanotech could create can only be effectively combatted by equally advanced nanotech, so again we need the technology itself to properly guard against its own use.
Usually, the argument of "should we" when applied to technology ends up being an ineffective sidebar that has no relevance on its development. We will. We can't stop ourselves. Sometimes the "should we" has beneficial consequences, however. For example, the USA has about a hundred less pressurized/boiling water fission reactors because of it, and this is good, because the modern designs for integral and accelerator driven models are far cleaner and safer than those models; almost to the point of making fusion power irrelevant for the near future. If we build nuclear today, it will be better than if we had done it in the 70's. This is a direct result of the "should we" triggered by three mile island.
We need an alternative media distribution system.
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Can TiVo be Saved?
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· Score: 1
I won't pretend I know very much about the dirty world of television and hollywood, and I am probably talking out of my ass here, but hear me out anyway. I might say something that gets you thinking. Particularly if you work for TiVo, please give this a once over and a few clock cycles of thought. You've probably already had these ideas, and if so, I'd love to hear why you haven't implemented them yet.
To start with, people have become sick of television. Simply sick of it. I don't mean there are no good shows, because there are plenty (although, IMO, the signal to noise ratio only gets worse). I mean sick of it in the sense that they are tired of being locked into rigid time schedules and watching advertisements. They use time shifting, and buy DVDs (or rent netfilx) to avoid the advertising. I guaran-fing-tee you that if someone, somewhere, has the balls to provide a pay-for television-on-demand service that has no advertisements, they'll steal back a lot of the people who have left television behind, and probably a good portion of the people watching it now. That's the grand scheme, the ten year plan. How do we do this?
The best thing about the PVRs is their time-shifting capability. Trouble is, cable companies can provide that just as easily, and without the cost inclusion of a subscription model like TiVo uses. It's not that the subscription model is a bad idea or is unfair; it's merely that people see it as an extra cost that they can easily get rid of by switching to a cable-company product bundle. Time shifting is simply not enough.
For the subscription model to work, a further service has got to be added to the bundle. If someone can find a way to provide everything the cable companies provide (movies on demand via netflix, time shifting, scheduled recording, basically what we are used to now), as well as some new services the cable company can't match, they become viable again.
So what can we put in a box like a TiVo that we know a corporation like Time-Warner is incapable of supplying? Freedom, of course. The paradigm that gave birth to the free software movement is a strictly human phenomenon; it has nothing to do with software fundamentally. Read Eric Raymond's collection of essays (and the excellent ones he links to) on the topic for further insight into this little known human phenomenon. It will work anywhere that copying content and distributing it can reach tolerable cost levels and maintain legality.
First, we need to make the TiVo capable of supporting its own distribution network. This means lots of disk space (say, 500GB a box, shouldn't be unviable given today's drive technology, and it'd be nice to be able to mod it with upgrades, some will want to do that to help broadcast). It also means a backend capable of moving data across the internet between many TiVos. Bittorrent would probably be a good place to start. Ideally one should be able to connect to the network, see what's available, request it, and have it arrive within a day. There is no reason TiVo could not provide backend server support for this and set it up in a centralized manner, controlling what gets released into this alternative distribution system. As long as they retain approval for what is on the network, they can ensure that no copyrighted material enters it. This is very important.
So, TiVo now provides you with everything the cable TV can provide, and there's now a "Search the TiVo Network" feature with a bittorrent backend and a pipe to TiVo's central servers. What do we do with this? Where do we get the media to put on it?
There is an ocean of content out there that has no home. How many shows are rejected for every one that is accepted? How many guys in basements could pull off a Saturday Night Live sketch, or Wayne's World? One creative guy could easily duplicate Mr. Roger's Neighborhood. Take a look at the idea behind the Cable Science Network sometime. There's plenty of universities that would allow taping of their lectures, to be uploaded into an alternative
I don't think that filesharing will make them irrelevant on its own. It certainly makes it harder for them to push crap, though. What will kill them is their loss of control over two key areas: distribution and production.
Right now, they control the "major" distribution channels for music, in the form of radio and television. Internet distribution will shortly eclipse these and eventually replace them. Filesharing is doing this now.
What amuses me is that they don't see the final, fatal blow coming and are spending all of their time and money on this fool's war over filesharing. The fatal blow will come when a simple home computer is capable of performing near the levels of today's typical $250,000 recording studio. PCs have been encroaching on this for some time now, and the latest technologies in this area are showing real promise. They'll reach a "good enough" point, almost certainly within the next ten years, and after that anyone can build a studio if they can afford a $1500 PC.
Once these two events take place, production and distribution can exist completely (and legally) outside of their control. That's the point at which they become irrelevant. The same will happen for movies, though it'll certainly take longer for a computer to outperform a movie studio. There's several orders of magnitude more work involved, but then again there's a lot of talented people out there who would love to make it happen. It's just a question of time.
The best part is that these media conglomerates have kindly provided us with all of the tools necessary to annihilate them in court when they attempt to interfere with any legally protected media that is outside their production-distribution chain. The DMCA and similar draconian laws work both ways, and only benefit the big money if they are the ones holding the rights... and that is no longer a guaranteed position for them.
Coupled with the concept of a publically-oriented license such as the GPL, it becomes possible to effectively create a public-domain pool of culture that is immune by law to corporate influence and interference. The more it grows, the more its growth rate accellerates, feeding on itself and defying the tragedy of commons as only the digital world of zero-cost copies can. Once this pool of culture reaches a critical mass, it becomes dominant, and eventually reaches the same level of pervasiveness enjoyed by a monopoly. The tyrrany of the open, instead of the closed.
I figure that's the endpoint of your 10-year timeline, more or less.
We're a long way off from building "God" just yet, but we'll get there eventually, and yes, we will all be there to resurrect your ass and get you acclimated to "heaven" along with every other sentient living in this wretched immutable spacetime bubble (and brother, you'll need it, because one look at the way the other 99.9x10^99% of the cosmos works will crack your sanity like an egg hitting sidewalk without proper preparation and intelligence amplification). Damn religious types have no appreciation for the sheer amount of work required to master this universe... "God" is one busy motherfucker, and you're ass is drafted make no mistake. Given the choice, however, I'd rather live long enough to see it happen, because it's going to be one hell of a ride, and you won't be able to go back and experience it for yourself if you die early and miss it. One time opportunity, take it if you can.
The best part is, after that there's no more need for this religion bullshit. That is definitely a world worth living for.
See you at the Far Edge Party. I'll bring the beer.
I think you're both asking rhetorical questions. Look at history. The answer to "Can we?" has always been "Yes, and someday it'll be as easy as breathing." The answer to "Should we?" has always been, "Irrelevant. Someone, somewhere, will do it anyway." Since someone is going to do it anyway, the safest course is to make sure the people you can trust do it first, and properly, before the ones outside society can do it (race for the A-Bomb, for example). They don't address what is really important, and we already know the answers.
"How do we do this?" is the real question. It's the only question that matters in the long run. The how of the technology is what leads to the split and the arguments. Proponents see only the good implementations of the how, and opponents see only the bad. If we are wise, the endless discussion between the two sides will reveal a method that maximizes the good while minimizing the bad. Only when the how has been fully explored is it safe to proceed. We get in trouble when we rush ahead without knowing what we are getting into. If anything will ever wipe out humanity, it'll be our wielding of technology we have not fully come to understand and respect.
So the question is, "How do we live with Immortality?"
Good question. We'd best get to work. It seems to me that in the long run, boredom will be the chief problem.
An amusing aside... if it comes down to choice, those who do not choose immortality will find themselves in a rapidly dwindling (dying) minority. The pool of the immortals doesn't get recycled. The choice argument is by its very nature stacked completely in favor of immortality.
Pshaw. We have the option of not playing those silly games. This isn't politics. Nobody is running for office. This is more akin to a gnat buzzing near one's ear while one is out on a good fishing trip.
I'm glad Suprnova.org has been shut down. I wish the *AA all the luck in the world shutting down all the remaining sites and trackers they can find. They are doing more for the progress of P2P than anyone. Do you know why?
They are creating an itch. People want to share. People will share, laws or no laws, as they always have. This constant itch will eventually turn into a better filesharing protocol, one that is harder to find, harder to penetrate, and better at its job. Every time they score a "victory" all they do is force the networks to evolve into something even harder to enforce laws against or monitor. It will continue until they run out of money, or a network forms that is immune to such petty interference. Then their choice is to turn the Internet off, or live with it.
They haven't got the money to sue one tenth of one percent of the infringers. Their gestapo tactics have no effect whatsoever, never have, and never will. They cannot fight human nature. Let them make their laws and lobby their politicians. We'll do what we always do... write code. They will spend the rest of time chasing our tails and trying to catch up with us.
Sooner or later it is they who will adapt or go out of business, not us. We're not in business, we have no revenue stream to choke. We do this sort of thing because it is fun and because we want to. They can easily provide us a better service for a fee than what we get for free, yet they choose not to. Eventually they'll have to capitulate and compete on our terms, regardless of what laws are in place.
Give me an online archive of all digital media, and I'll happily pay a subscription fee. (One catch, no DRM, period.) Until then, I'll enjoy the free archive of digital media and put up with the occasional blips caused by this amusing technology arms race.
Relax. I'm sure while the *AA are blowing fire and brimstone, some clever business people are taking a good long look at this and figuring out how to model a decentralized, set-top media network out of the chaos for Time Warner or Tivo or some other media conglomerate. It's not a stretch to put a 500GB drive in every cable box, put all your corporate media on the network, and make it an on-demand service. It's not even expensive.
The only reason it's taking them so long to do it is that they can't accept the death (or drastic reduction) in advertising that this will cause them. They'll get over the future shock eventually. Frankly I'd say they are a bit overdue for it already... those people in suits think and act at a truly glacial pace. Perhaps they should work at making the advertising properly targeted so it is easier for people to tolerate. That's not hard, or expensive, either. Especially when the data stored on their own set top device tells you what they like.
I would also point out the danger of the web of IP-restrictive laws the USA and its like-minded global neighbors are entangling themselves in. This draconian web of control chokes progress, putting any country bound by it at a very severe disadvantage to countries that are not. I think eventually when these laws begin hurting and holding back the ones who lobbied so hard for them, the situation will reverse itself. It'll take years, but then again it is law, and law is usually a decade or two behind the times.
I was hoping the EU would be smart enough to avoid slitting its own wrists by adopting the USA's IP laws, but this is looking less and less likely.
There's no easy solution (hey, if there was, they wouldn't need to pay you.) Generally you'll do just fine if you follow a few simple guidelines.
1. Make damn sure you fully understand your own needs. A mistake here is going to get you serious butthurt in the long run. On the other hand, if you really understand what you need, the products that match kinda jump out at you. A lot of folks run off half cocked chasing new toys, then find themselves working like dogs to implement a whizz-bang solution that simply doesn't fit the puzzle. That's not the way to go.
2. Identify potential solutions. First, talk to your trusted vendors. If you have good ones, they can give you a quite thorough grounding in the subject. Make use of google, dig up user testimonials, case studies, news articles. Talk to your other IT friends. I get a hell of a lot of recommendations through them. Post an Ask Slashdot. Check research analysts. Build yourself a list, preferably longer than five.
3. Everyone has free evaluations. If they don't, call them on the phone, and they'll send you one. If not, pirate it to evaluate it. It is lunacy to use a product you yourself have not yet fully tested in your environment. Build yourself a lab of a couple computers, and test the hell out of your potential solution. Let the tech-savvy users in your organization (your go-to guys in any given department) test the user end. Continue until you find the product that meets your needs. This is also a good time to break things really spectacularly and then call up the vendor's support lines and find out what their support staff is made of. If you get someone who is reading a script (especially with an Indian accent), hang up and switch to another product immediately.
4. Make sure the product will take care of you in the future. Everyone skips this step. Make damn sure the company isn't going to vanish overnight, make sure they provide quality support, investigate your options for warranty extensions and maintenance contracts. Verify that they plan to continue support for all of your needs in the future. Take a look at their future product roadmap.
5. When you actually implement your solution... document it. Even if it's a badly typed word document that sketchily outlines what you did. It takes very little time, and will make life easier for you (and everyone else) in the long run.
Understand that the USA isn't strictly a free market economy. There's entirely too much governmental meddling going on, some of it good, most of it bad. There are a hell of a lot of ways to abuse the system and get away with it, and few people know better ways to do it than fat cat PHBs who have been practicing it for decades.
The people hailing free market are right, it does work. It's just that the reality of the world's economy isn't strictly free market, so while the idea is a good one, the implementations leave a lot to be desired.
Their best bet in this case is a class action lawsuit (which they will easily win, because the kinds of abuse they are taking cannot be legally invalidated away by signing any number of waivers) and a tech labor union to prevent this sort of thing from happening in the future.
The amount of sheer power an IT labor union would wield is terrifying to think about. Anyone who has worked in system administration and programming can testify to exactly how fragile computers and networks are, and how quickly they crumble without constant management. Take away that management for even a day and the company is taking a real risk that a single problem can sink them. Take it away for a week or two, and the network is gone. Oops. Good luck hiring replacements... any network of sufficient complexity requires a significant lead time to acclimate a newcomer, regardless of how good the documentation is (and docs are typically incomplete).
Yeah, a tech union would be a heavyweight. Now if someone can just figure out how to make it work where people shift jobs, careers, and states every few years... that's a tough decentralization problem.
Re:I've never understood the obsession with Halo
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Halo 2 Reviews
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· Score: 2, Interesting
I'm sure those reasons are a part of it, but they aren't the biggest factors in its success. The reason Halo was so successful is simply that it is a damn good game. Far better than Quake, IMO.
1) Far better than average story. Seriously... none of iD's titles has ever had anything approaching a story. Doom 3 was their best effort in this direction. The last FPS I can remember that had a truly involving story was Half-Life, and we all know how well history has judged that game. Halo 2 actually tops Half-Life in my book, and until I played Halo 2, Half-Life was my golden standard (well, Half-Life and Marathon). Story is important to a lot of gamers. Halo has a badass story, cool characters, and good execution in their storytelling. Halo 2 has a far superior story to the original. I'm hoping Half-Life 2 has a better story than Halo 2, but it will by no means be easy to top. I think Valve has the chops to do it, though. Either way we all win.
2) Good gameplay. While gameplay may not win you any awards, bad gameplay will kill you dead. Halo's greatest failing was the repetitive nature of the levels, but it wasn't enough of a failing to kill the game. Controls were good, weapons were fun and fairly well balanced, multiplayer was exceptional. Single player was challenging and entertaining. Halo 2 is more of the same, without the repetition, and with better balance. The level design in Halo 2 tops any other FPS I have played, and I don't give that out lightly. They have a level of interactivity and epic scope that I've never seen before. I was so busy oogling the surroundings on several occasions that it got me killed. I get the impression it was designed that way... it happened too often to be coincidence.
3) Kickass soundtrack. Halo has one of the best I've ever heard in a FPS. Again, a kickass soundtrack won't make your game succeed (see Fable, for example), but it'll definitely cost you if the music sucks. Halo 2 is mainly a retread of Halo's music, with enough differences to keep it from sound too familiar. They added a touch of metal to it.
4) ATMOSPHERE. I cannot stress this one enough. The most important aspect of any video game is its ability to immerse the player. Doom 3 had phenomenal atmosphere, but no story. Doom 3 was all premise. Halo has plenty of both, as did the original Half-Life. Half-Life is still my all time winner in this category... it is pure atmosphere from start to finish. The original Unreal had decent atmosphere (especially in the first few levels and at the end), but crappy story.
Halo was also one of the first to do vehicle combat well, and I think that played a large part in its novelty. The vehicle combat in Halo 2 is phenomenal.
You've got to score well in all categories to have a kickass game. Halo scores well by most gamer's estimations, and that's why it did well. The PC port was late and crappy, and the levels were repetitive (especially compared to a normal PC FPS), and these are its only real failings. Halo 2 does not have these failings... in fact the level design is now undoubtedly one of its chief strengths, so it will likely do far better than the original Halo. It'll be a win for folks who just couldn't get in to the original.
By the way, on Legendary difficulty, Halo 2 is HARD as HELL. I could thump the original on Legendary without deaths... in Halo 2 I can't even get off the first damn level yet playing solo (although playing co-op a friend and I managed to beat it on Legendary after about 30 hours invested... this time, if one dies, you both respawn at the checkpoint, so no more cheating). My hat is off to any player who can finish this solo on Legendary. If you can do it, you're tournament material.
For those who's eyes glass over while reading the explanations in that wiki link, you may find this intuitive explanation of Bayes Theorem (complete with Java applets) a bit easier to wrap your mind around. As for why folks think it's important... it's the basis for the Scientific Method. It's also a candidate for one of the fundamental principles of AI: the ability to draw conclusions intelligently. Be careful, reading about this could suck up half of your day. Of course, if you wanted to be productive, you probably wouldn't be reading Slashdot in the first place.
Re:Except Animals are more likely to be right.
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Good Bad Attitude
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· Score: 1
This is true. It's rather unlikely, however, that so many others would see the same pattern if that were the case.
Re:Except Animals are more likely to be right.
on
Good Bad Attitude
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· Score: 1
If you can detect a pattern, then *it exists* and that is all there is to it.
What you are asking is, "Does this pattern I see have any real meaning, and what does it arise from?" For example, take the classic example of Pinky Floyd's "Dark Side of the Moon" played as the soundtrack of The Wizard of Oz (called "Dark Side of the Rainbow"). There are a hell of a lot of synchronicities between the music and the film, enough so that it has developed its own cult following. Plenty of people make the case that it is simply coincidence (and it probably is) and that there is no real pattern there... what they actually mean is that there is no meaning in the pattern. Others think there are simply too many coincidences, and the pattern is there because the music was written intentionally to go along with the movie. They are saying the pattern has meaning; because it was written to fit the film.
Which is it? Who knows. It simply illustrates my point... if there was no pattern there at all, we would have nothing to talk about and the mystery surrounding the film would not exist.
In the case of our government, that paradigm says, "We can detect a pattern of events eroding our liberty." Everyone can see it. We're all talking about it. Arguing over if there is really a pattern there is a moot point. There *is* a pattern to it. That's why we're talking about it at all.
We're arguing about if this pattern is intentional or unintentional. Is it because those in power wish to push us into a totalitarian regime? Or is it because of a myriad of unfathomable circumstances related to our present human condition, resulting in a combination of ignorance, greed, inaction, inattentiveness, and unconcern that creates a force strong enough to cause these erosions?
I can't answer that question. I can, however, see the futility of bothering to answer it at all. Does it really *matter* if there is any meaning or intent behind the erosion of liberty in America?
No. All that matters is that the erosion is taking place. We should be focusing on stopping the erosion, and reversing it to the greatest extent possible. It does not matter why the erosion is taking place because the end result will be the exact same facist, totalitarian chaos that has consumed all the other governments in history. If we find ourselves living in that world, no one will care why it happened... only that it did happpen.
In the past, we have escaped dealing with this problem by moving west... into new lands where a new nation built on the proper ideals could escape the problem. The pioneers moved on and left the old world to crumble under the weight of its own foolishness, and simply set themselves up a new empire. Now, the last of the new empires is facing the same challenge that once drove the pioneers who created it away from the old.
There is no new world to run to this time. We have got to solve this problem here and now. We don't have the luxury of ignoring it this time. Frankly, I think the fact that people can see it coming is heartening. At least it won't catch everyone completely blind.
I bought the original Archos model 6000 with the 6GB disk. It ran without problems for about a year, and then the charging port and power ports both died. No big deal, the batteries charge more efficiently in an external unit anyway, and swapping them out takes about five seconds, so I can live with that. I only ran it on AC in my car, but given the battery life I can live without that as well. About a year and a half after purchase, the USB port starts getting flaky, throwing data errors any time I use it.
Again, no big deal really. It takes five minutes to reduce it to a bare hard disk and plug it in directly with IDE, and I don't change music mixes that often, though I do miss the ability to drop files on it and use it as a cheap, portable USB drive. Two years in, the hard disk takes a dive (never dropped once, only runs in my car). Easy to replace it with a 60GB laptop hard disk I had laying around. While I'm at it, I upgrade to the Rockbox firmware because it kicks the shit out of the original. Just last month (what, 3 years since purhcase now? I lost track) I noticed my charge wasn't holding as long as it used to. Popped in four 2300ma batteries to replace the stock 1500ma(?) batteries and it's now running for 20 hours solid on a single charge.
The lesson to take home here is that the Archos does well because it uses a relatively open hardware architecture. I am still using it precisely because I could replace the hard disk, firmware, and batteries. I will never touch any portable device that uses proprietary, unreplaceable batteries (hence why I hate the iPod and most Palm devices). In retrospect, given Archos's shitty 90-day warranty, I think it would have been better to buy it from Best Buy and get a 3-year warranty slapped onto it on the cheap. That at least is good to cover hard disk failures.
I'll be using this one until it literally burns out, however long that takes. It's a damn good chunk of hardware, despite a few manufacturing problems (as others have noted). If I were to buy another MP3/Video player device, I would be looking at Archos as my first pick, at least as long as the hardware remains that easy to hack and replace. I don't think I would ever drop $800 on a portable video/audio device, though. Maybe when it is $400 in a few years I'll think about it.
Guess they were in too much of a hurry to post more bad press for Microsoft. Not that I'm entirely against bad press for Microsoft, but the bias around here lately has been getting mighty noticeable. It used to be subtle. (hah!)
Oh yes, I'm in agreement on that one. The best case scenario is one where this year, some third party (green and libertarian appear to be the frontrunners) manages to get its 5%, and then finally get recognized as an official political party, allowing them to attend debates, partake in campaign funding, run advertisements, and the hundreds of other political behaviours they are restricted from doing until after they gain a 5% share. Then during the next election, they easily cut through the bullshit (truth has a way of doing that) and get their candidate elected president. That's best case.
Most likely, we're going to be stuck with another twelve to twenty four years of democratic and republican nonsense before enough younger voters get politically motivated to make a 5% dent in the system.
I think, finally, though, that people are beginning to realize alternatives are available, and not ridiculous. That alone is progress. I for one don't like the idea of burning washington to the ground in my 60's, and it would be nice if America could be the first nation to pull off a major governmental change within the rules of its own governmental framework (without bloody revolution).
Then you VOTE THEM THE FUCK OUT. This entire problem occurs because the voters in this country fall into two categories: Those who are foolish enough to think there is a difference between Republicans and Democrats, and 2) those who honestly think that there is no way to vote in a third party (or fourth, or fifth, or twelfth, but let's not go as far as France.)
The biggest lie the media has ever gotten the american public to swallow is simply this:
Any vote for a third party is a vote for $NAME_of_REP_OR_DEM_PEOPLE_HATE.
Pure BULLSHIT. This lie serves one simple purpose: keep the two party corporate system in power. And people are stupid enough to believe this. Apparently nobody has ever taken the time to read up on how the voting system in this country actually works. They are content to mumble crap about the Electorial College and how futile it is to vote third party when in fact it is anything BUT futile. Just get them 5%, people. You get a third party a 5% share of the vote one time, and they can take care of themselves from that point on.
If you don't like the current candidates, vote for one of the candidates from the other 50 political parties in this country. Any 3rd party that gets in is going to have one agenda: CAMPAIGN REFORM. It's the only way for them to guarantee themselves a second term. Once those problems are fixed, this one party as two parties system is out the fucking door, and that's the best thing anyone could hope for in this country. It will put choice back into politics, and the rest will attend to itself.
If you won't vote, you are part of the problem. You live in this country, you CANNOT disclaim responsibility for political problems by refusing to exercise the only means you have by which to solve them. If everyone sitting around not voting got off their asses and voted 3rd party, they would OVERRULE all of the people voting R/D just by sheer numbers.
If you continue voting for the same two parties that keep running this country into the ground every single year, you are part of the problem. Republicans and Democrats care about one thing and one thing only: corporate payday. They are in the BUSINESS of selling laws to corporations with deep pockets. The only way to escape from this problem is to put more parties into the system to make it more resistant to corruption.
There is no mysterious savior that is going to appear and fix all of america's political problems. If the voters never wise up and take action, the erosion of freedoms at the expense of corporate interests is going to continue unabated, and someday the common people are going to be forced to take up arms and bring the government down the old fashioned way. If it goes far enough and the americans don't do anything about it, rest assured that someday the USA's foreign policy will tick off someone with the power to come in here and do it for us. You're fooling yourself if you think humanity has evolved to the point where another world war is not possible.
You are not an impartial observer. The mere fact that you draw breath on this planet obligates you. Try doing something that is becoming complete unamerican in modern times: take some responsibility and do something about the problems.
I'd definitely support this. I doubt lawyers would mind, because they are getting paid either way, and they only care about their paycheck, which is the primary reason they'll be happy to drag something out in court for years, and do appeal after appeal.
Another change I wouldn't mind seeing is this bullshit between "civil" and "federal" suits. We need laws that prohibit a case from being brought as both types, particularly when a defendant wins one and is then promptly sued again as the other. It's insanity. The outcome of a civil/federal suit should carry over in the event of a new federal/civil suit being filed along the same lines.
You don't even need to buy Microsoft services for a lot of that, as the open source equivalents will readily run on Windows in most cases, and plug directly into the windows system using its own authentication. This lets you have single sign-on from Microsoft without paying for all of the premium packages. You simply pay for the Active Directory (a couple of servers) and the desktop operating system. The rest can be done freely taking only a small hit in quality that most users won't notice or care about. Samba is unfortunately not suitable for the backend yet because it only supports signon... which is only one of about fifty good features of a windows server that are included in the price.
The real problem with linux is the backend. Linux is missing (or has poorer implementations of) a lot of enterprise-level software that is taken completely for granted in the Microsoft world. Poorer here means that overall, Linux becomes more of a headache to manage than Microsoft, for a wide variety of reasons, but I assure you that lack of understanding of both platforms is not among them.
This is one area where Novell can kick Microsoft right in the junk. Novell has a lot of the enterprise level management software that linux is sorely lacking. What's more, Novell's enterprise architecture has had years (decades!) of wildly stable and successful deployment, it has well understood standards, and there is a large technical user base that understands how to support it. Hooking the myriad linux services into a Novell backend would be easy... not trivial, but certainly no major headache. Not moreso than hooking other open source apps into windows, anyway, and that's the target.
I really hope Novell doesn't go the greedy proprietary route here. If they convert and open-source their entire enterprise management suite, Microsoft is in for butthurt like they have never had before, because one of their biggest advantages will be eliminated instantly. There are many of us who would be only too willing to convert to linux to avoid Microsoft (mainly due to their horrific license agreements and prices), but only that kind of enterprise management on linux can make Microsoft into the lesser of two headaches. Contrary to popular opinion, Microsoft's problems are easy (nearly effortless, in fact) to mitigate if one has a proper understanding of the software and how to manage it.
Once that is done, desktop use will skyrocket, and so will desktop development. Linux is going to own the corporate desktop long before it makes any real dent in the home user market. People will use it at work and then decide they like it, and the IT department can give them a free copy to take home. It'll sound almost too good to be true.
I can second this, as I just put together the exact same thing recently for backups where I work. We wanted to go with Serial ATA, but we needed the machines before it became widely available, so we had to go with standard IDE. This worked out fine; we simply purchased Cremax ICYDock cages for them to get hotswap functionality (which I have already used once due to a failure with no problems). $139 for a 5-in-3 IDE hotswap bay with alarms and active cooling is a good deal in my book. I liked it so much, I did my own mini-array at home with 4 250GB drives, a 4-port 3Ware card, and an ICYdock bay. So far it's working great.
Honestly, if this is the only thing they have worth posting, we need to send them some links. If everyone sends them five, that'll be enough to keep them busy until St. Swithen's day. I get shit more entertaining than this in my inbox from viagra spammers.
Ted is television. Last time I checked, he and his chronies were getting their asses soundly kicked around the globe by Internet media. I don't see that changing, and I don't see television as it stands having a hope in hell of competing with it in the long run. What Ted says is really rather irrelevant if you no longer care about Television. I won't be sad to see it go. Clear the rest of that shit off the cable and sattelite lines to make room for more internet traffic.
If Ted wants to turn around and buck the system in the hopes of saving Television, great, more power to him, but it's a battle I don't really care about anymore. Broadcasting will switch to the internet eventually, and then the entire concept of channels and stations becomes meaningless, because there's no finite limit on them, and anyone can create anything they choose. Good luck enforcing any kind of regulation in a global broadcast environment. That'll go the way of piracy; 40+ years of fighting it and they haven't made a dent. Laughable.
The cost of starting and running a broadcast-style information channel (be it audio, video, 24 hour programming, or whatever) is the cost of creating the content and running a cheap website. P2P apps like BitTorrent will easily take care of your bandwidth bills. If you've created the content there's no licensing fee to pay, so big media can't touch you. In fact, the very same laws they have been using for decades to maintain a stranglehold on media rigths will now be reversed, and used to destroy them. Fantastic, isn't it, how things work out sometimes? We enjoy their protection, or they destroy their own laws. Lose-lose for big media, win-win for every internet citizen.
The tools are there, and the infrastructure is there. Big media is just worried someone might start using it and put them out of their misery. It's about time people took their culture back from corporations, and this is exactly how it's going to be done.
Keep fighting the good fight for freedom of speech and the rest will attend to itself.
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What would you do with that diploma that you are not doing or can not do right now?
Frankly, I'd have to say do the higher paying job, especially if the salary for it is in the six figure range. Work it for a few years and see how it works out. Bank the money, so you have it to fall back on if you decide to switch back to a programming job, or start something on your own. Don't do anything silly like buying an expensive car or house that lands you with expensive payments; then you'll actually need that high paying job, and lose your ability to walk away. Three years at that new job gets you the same financial rewards that eight years at your current job will bring. That is worth taking a risk for, especially if the job isn't that bad. Even if you only work it for a year, you're financially more than two years ahead of where you would have been.
You can always walk out with a big green parachute, and find yourself work later with that kind of resume. It's been my experience that most intelligent people prefer experience to a fresh degree. Apprenticeship is still the best way to learn any trade.
If you stay on good terms with your current employer, they may take you back if you decide you want to return. Our company has hired back plenty of old talent that left on good terms when they came around looking for work, because they are a known asset, more reliable than a fresh hire. This really depends on your company's management; not all of them are this open minded. If they show loyalty to employees, they'd probably go for it.
Problem is, it becomes something of an arms race. Just because you refrain, is no guarantee someone else will hold back. It's the opposite really; if the technology has some value, it'll be researched whereever it is possible to do so. Therefore, we're screwed... any technology that has potential benefits will be explored and realized by whoever can afford to do it, regardless of policy. The technology will simply move to the places where its continued development is not an issue.
This puts us in the unenviable position of trying to make sure the technologies that could cause the most harm are developed primarily in countries we can trust not to use them unwisely (mostly by fostering an environment that gives benefits to that technology's development that cannot be found elsewhere). It also requires us to not drag our feet on any ethical issues that arise with technology, because the technology will not wait for us to become comfortable with it before being used.
Nanotech, in particular, has some very lethal potential failure models that could result in world-altering problems (Ecophagy.) The kinds of problems that this failed nanotech could create can only be effectively combatted by equally advanced nanotech, so again we need the technology itself to properly guard against its own use.
Usually, the argument of "should we" when applied to technology ends up being an ineffective sidebar that has no relevance on its development. We will. We can't stop ourselves. Sometimes the "should we" has beneficial consequences, however. For example, the USA has about a hundred less pressurized/boiling water fission reactors because of it, and this is good, because the modern designs for integral and accelerator driven models are far cleaner and safer than those models; almost to the point of making fusion power irrelevant for the near future. If we build nuclear today, it will be better than if we had done it in the 70's. This is a direct result of the "should we" triggered by three mile island.
I won't pretend I know very much about the dirty world of television and hollywood, and I am probably talking out of my ass here, but hear me out anyway. I might say something that gets you thinking. Particularly if you work for TiVo, please give this a once over and a few clock cycles of thought. You've probably already had these ideas, and if so, I'd love to hear why you haven't implemented them yet.
To start with, people have become sick of television. Simply sick of it. I don't mean there are no good shows, because there are plenty (although, IMO, the signal to noise ratio only gets worse). I mean sick of it in the sense that they are tired of being locked into rigid time schedules and watching advertisements. They use time shifting, and buy DVDs (or rent netfilx) to avoid the advertising. I guaran-fing-tee you that if someone, somewhere, has the balls to provide a pay-for television-on-demand service that has no advertisements, they'll steal back a lot of the people who have left television behind, and probably a good portion of the people watching it now. That's the grand scheme, the ten year plan. How do we do this?
The best thing about the PVRs is their time-shifting capability. Trouble is, cable companies can provide that just as easily, and without the cost inclusion of a subscription model like TiVo uses. It's not that the subscription model is a bad idea or is unfair; it's merely that people see it as an extra cost that they can easily get rid of by switching to a cable-company product bundle. Time shifting is simply not enough.
For the subscription model to work, a further service has got to be added to the bundle. If someone can find a way to provide everything the cable companies provide (movies on demand via netflix, time shifting, scheduled recording, basically what we are used to now), as well as some new services the cable company can't match, they become viable again.
So what can we put in a box like a TiVo that we know a corporation like Time-Warner is incapable of supplying? Freedom, of course. The paradigm that gave birth to the free software movement is a strictly human phenomenon; it has nothing to do with software fundamentally. Read Eric Raymond's collection of essays (and the excellent ones he links to) on the topic for further insight into this little known human phenomenon. It will work anywhere that copying content and distributing it can reach tolerable cost levels and maintain legality.
First, we need to make the TiVo capable of supporting its own distribution network. This means lots of disk space (say, 500GB a box, shouldn't be unviable given today's drive technology, and it'd be nice to be able to mod it with upgrades, some will want to do that to help broadcast). It also means a backend capable of moving data across the internet between many TiVos. Bittorrent would probably be a good place to start. Ideally one should be able to connect to the network, see what's available, request it, and have it arrive within a day. There is no reason TiVo could not provide backend server support for this and set it up in a centralized manner, controlling what gets released into this alternative distribution system. As long as they retain approval for what is on the network, they can ensure that no copyrighted material enters it. This is very important.
So, TiVo now provides you with everything the cable TV can provide, and there's now a "Search the TiVo Network" feature with a bittorrent backend and a pipe to TiVo's central servers. What do we do with this? Where do we get the media to put on it?
There is an ocean of content out there that has no home. How many shows are rejected for every one that is accepted? How many guys in basements could pull off a Saturday Night Live sketch, or Wayne's World? One creative guy could easily duplicate Mr. Roger's Neighborhood. Take a look at the idea behind the Cable Science Network sometime. There's plenty of universities that would allow taping of their lectures, to be uploaded into an alternative
Pshaw. Five seconds of thought about the problem provides you with a proper 21st century definition of a soul.
If your brain is hardware, your soul is the software.
Next question.
I don't think that filesharing will make them irrelevant on its own. It certainly makes it harder for them to push crap, though. What will kill them is their loss of control over two key areas: distribution and production.
Right now, they control the "major" distribution channels for music, in the form of radio and television. Internet distribution will shortly eclipse these and eventually replace them. Filesharing is doing this now.
What amuses me is that they don't see the final, fatal blow coming and are spending all of their time and money on this fool's war over filesharing. The fatal blow will come when a simple home computer is capable of performing near the levels of today's typical $250,000 recording studio. PCs have been encroaching on this for some time now, and the latest technologies in this area are showing real promise. They'll reach a "good enough" point, almost certainly within the next ten years, and after that anyone can build a studio if they can afford a $1500 PC.
Once these two events take place, production and distribution can exist completely (and legally) outside of their control. That's the point at which they become irrelevant. The same will happen for movies, though it'll certainly take longer for a computer to outperform a movie studio. There's several orders of magnitude more work involved, but then again there's a lot of talented people out there who would love to make it happen. It's just a question of time.
The best part is that these media conglomerates have kindly provided us with all of the tools necessary to annihilate them in court when they attempt to interfere with any legally protected media that is outside their production-distribution chain. The DMCA and similar draconian laws work both ways, and only benefit the big money if they are the ones holding the rights... and that is no longer a guaranteed position for them.
Coupled with the concept of a publically-oriented license such as the GPL, it becomes possible to effectively create a public-domain pool of culture that is immune by law to corporate influence and interference. The more it grows, the more its growth rate accellerates, feeding on itself and defying the tragedy of commons as only the digital world of zero-cost copies can. Once this pool of culture reaches a critical mass, it becomes dominant, and eventually reaches the same level of pervasiveness enjoyed by a monopoly. The tyrrany of the open, instead of the closed.
I figure that's the endpoint of your 10-year timeline, more or less.
Of course. I was merely being a smartass. ;)
We're a long way off from building "God" just yet, but we'll get there eventually, and yes, we will all be there to resurrect your ass and get you acclimated to "heaven" along with every other sentient living in this wretched immutable spacetime bubble (and brother, you'll need it, because one look at the way the other 99.9x10^99% of the cosmos works will crack your sanity like an egg hitting sidewalk without proper preparation and intelligence amplification). Damn religious types have no appreciation for the sheer amount of work required to master this universe... "God" is one busy motherfucker, and you're ass is drafted make no mistake. Given the choice, however, I'd rather live long enough to see it happen, because it's going to be one hell of a ride, and you won't be able to go back and experience it for yourself if you die early and miss it. One time opportunity, take it if you can.
The best part is, after that there's no more need for this religion bullshit. That is definitely a world worth living for.
See you at the Far Edge Party. I'll bring the beer.
I think you're both asking rhetorical questions. Look at history. The answer to "Can we?" has always been "Yes, and someday it'll be as easy as breathing." The answer to "Should we?" has always been, "Irrelevant. Someone, somewhere, will do it anyway." Since someone is going to do it anyway, the safest course is to make sure the people you can trust do it first, and properly, before the ones outside society can do it (race for the A-Bomb, for example). They don't address what is really important, and we already know the answers.
"How do we do this?" is the real question. It's the only question that matters in the long run. The how of the technology is what leads to the split and the arguments. Proponents see only the good implementations of the how, and opponents see only the bad. If we are wise, the endless discussion between the two sides will reveal a method that maximizes the good while minimizing the bad. Only when the how has been fully explored is it safe to proceed. We get in trouble when we rush ahead without knowing what we are getting into. If anything will ever wipe out humanity, it'll be our wielding of technology we have not fully come to understand and respect.
So the question is, "How do we live with Immortality?"
Good question. We'd best get to work. It seems to me that in the long run, boredom will be the chief problem.
An amusing aside... if it comes down to choice, those who do not choose immortality will find themselves in a rapidly dwindling (dying) minority. The pool of the immortals doesn't get recycled. The choice argument is by its very nature stacked completely in favor of immortality.
Pshaw. We have the option of not playing those silly games. This isn't politics. Nobody is running for office. This is more akin to a gnat buzzing near one's ear while one is out on a good fishing trip.
I'm glad Suprnova.org has been shut down. I wish the *AA all the luck in the world shutting down all the remaining sites and trackers they can find. They are doing more for the progress of P2P than anyone. Do you know why?
They are creating an itch. People want to share. People will share, laws or no laws, as they always have. This constant itch will eventually turn into a better filesharing protocol, one that is harder to find, harder to penetrate, and better at its job. Every time they score a "victory" all they do is force the networks to evolve into something even harder to enforce laws against or monitor. It will continue until they run out of money, or a network forms that is immune to such petty interference. Then their choice is to turn the Internet off, or live with it.
They haven't got the money to sue one tenth of one percent of the infringers. Their gestapo tactics have no effect whatsoever, never have, and never will. They cannot fight human nature. Let them make their laws and lobby their politicians. We'll do what we always do... write code. They will spend the rest of time chasing our tails and trying to catch up with us.
Sooner or later it is they who will adapt or go out of business, not us. We're not in business, we have no revenue stream to choke. We do this sort of thing because it is fun and because we want to. They can easily provide us a better service for a fee than what we get for free, yet they choose not to. Eventually they'll have to capitulate and compete on our terms, regardless of what laws are in place.
Give me an online archive of all digital media, and I'll happily pay a subscription fee. (One catch, no DRM, period.) Until then, I'll enjoy the free archive of digital media and put up with the occasional blips caused by this amusing technology arms race.
Relax. I'm sure while the *AA are blowing fire and brimstone, some clever business people are taking a good long look at this and figuring out how to model a decentralized, set-top media network out of the chaos for Time Warner or Tivo or some other media conglomerate. It's not a stretch to put a 500GB drive in every cable box, put all your corporate media on the network, and make it an on-demand service. It's not even expensive.
The only reason it's taking them so long to do it is that they can't accept the death (or drastic reduction) in advertising that this will cause them. They'll get over the future shock eventually. Frankly I'd say they are a bit overdue for it already... those people in suits think and act at a truly glacial pace. Perhaps they should work at making the advertising properly targeted so it is easier for people to tolerate. That's not hard, or expensive, either. Especially when the data stored on their own set top device tells you what they like.
I would also point out the danger of the web of IP-restrictive laws the USA and its like-minded global neighbors are entangling themselves in. This draconian web of control chokes progress, putting any country bound by it at a very severe disadvantage to countries that are not. I think eventually when these laws begin hurting and holding back the ones who lobbied so hard for them, the situation will reverse itself. It'll take years, but then again it is law, and law is usually a decade or two behind the times.
I was hoping the EU would be smart enough to avoid slitting its own wrists by adopting the USA's IP laws, but this is looking less and less likely.
There's no easy solution (hey, if there was, they wouldn't need to pay you.) Generally you'll do just fine if you follow a few simple guidelines.
1. Make damn sure you fully understand your own needs. A mistake here is going to get you serious butthurt in the long run. On the other hand, if you really understand what you need, the products that match kinda jump out at you. A lot of folks run off half cocked chasing new toys, then find themselves working like dogs to implement a whizz-bang solution that simply doesn't fit the puzzle. That's not the way to go.
2. Identify potential solutions. First, talk to your trusted vendors. If you have good ones, they can give you a quite thorough grounding in the subject. Make use of google, dig up user testimonials, case studies, news articles. Talk to your other IT friends. I get a hell of a lot of recommendations through them. Post an Ask Slashdot. Check research analysts. Build yourself a list, preferably longer than five.
3. Everyone has free evaluations. If they don't, call them on the phone, and they'll send you one. If not, pirate it to evaluate it. It is lunacy to use a product you yourself have not yet fully tested in your environment. Build yourself a lab of a couple computers, and test the hell out of your potential solution. Let the tech-savvy users in your organization (your go-to guys in any given department) test the user end. Continue until you find the product that meets your needs. This is also a good time to break things really spectacularly and then call up the vendor's support lines and find out what their support staff is made of. If you get someone who is reading a script (especially with an Indian accent), hang up and switch to another product immediately.
4. Make sure the product will take care of you in the future. Everyone skips this step. Make damn sure the company isn't going to vanish overnight, make sure they provide quality support, investigate your options for warranty extensions and maintenance contracts. Verify that they plan to continue support for all of your needs in the future. Take a look at their future product roadmap.
5. When you actually implement your solution... document it. Even if it's a badly typed word document that sketchily outlines what you did. It takes very little time, and will make life easier for you (and everyone else) in the long run.
6. Profit!
Understand that the USA isn't strictly a free market economy. There's entirely too much governmental meddling going on, some of it good, most of it bad. There are a hell of a lot of ways to abuse the system and get away with it, and few people know better ways to do it than fat cat PHBs who have been practicing it for decades.
The people hailing free market are right, it does work. It's just that the reality of the world's economy isn't strictly free market, so while the idea is a good one, the implementations leave a lot to be desired.
Their best bet in this case is a class action lawsuit (which they will easily win, because the kinds of abuse they are taking cannot be legally invalidated away by signing any number of waivers) and a tech labor union to prevent this sort of thing from happening in the future.
The amount of sheer power an IT labor union would wield is terrifying to think about. Anyone who has worked in system administration and programming can testify to exactly how fragile computers and networks are, and how quickly they crumble without constant management. Take away that management for even a day and the company is taking a real risk that a single problem can sink them. Take it away for a week or two, and the network is gone. Oops. Good luck hiring replacements... any network of sufficient complexity requires a significant lead time to acclimate a newcomer, regardless of how good the documentation is (and docs are typically incomplete).
Yeah, a tech union would be a heavyweight. Now if someone can just figure out how to make it work where people shift jobs, careers, and states every few years... that's a tough decentralization problem.
I'm sure those reasons are a part of it, but they aren't the biggest factors in its success. The reason Halo was so successful is simply that it is a damn good game. Far better than Quake, IMO.
1) Far better than average story. Seriously... none of iD's titles has ever had anything approaching a story. Doom 3 was their best effort in this direction. The last FPS I can remember that had a truly involving story was Half-Life, and we all know how well history has judged that game. Halo 2 actually tops Half-Life in my book, and until I played Halo 2, Half-Life was my golden standard (well, Half-Life and Marathon). Story is important to a lot of gamers. Halo has a badass story, cool characters, and good execution in their storytelling. Halo 2 has a far superior story to the original. I'm hoping Half-Life 2 has a better story than Halo 2, but it will by no means be easy to top. I think Valve has the chops to do it, though. Either way we all win.
2) Good gameplay. While gameplay may not win you any awards, bad gameplay will kill you dead. Halo's greatest failing was the repetitive nature of the levels, but it wasn't enough of a failing to kill the game. Controls were good, weapons were fun and fairly well balanced, multiplayer was exceptional. Single player was challenging and entertaining. Halo 2 is more of the same, without the repetition, and with better balance. The level design in Halo 2 tops any other FPS I have played, and I don't give that out lightly. They have a level of interactivity and epic scope that I've never seen before. I was so busy oogling the surroundings on several occasions that it got me killed. I get the impression it was designed that way... it happened too often to be coincidence.
3) Kickass soundtrack. Halo has one of the best I've ever heard in a FPS. Again, a kickass soundtrack won't make your game succeed (see Fable, for example), but it'll definitely cost you if the music sucks. Halo 2 is mainly a retread of Halo's music, with enough differences to keep it from sound too familiar. They added a touch of metal to it.
4) ATMOSPHERE. I cannot stress this one enough. The most important aspect of any video game is its ability to immerse the player. Doom 3 had phenomenal atmosphere, but no story. Doom 3 was all premise. Halo has plenty of both, as did the original Half-Life. Half-Life is still my all time winner in this category... it is pure atmosphere from start to finish. The original Unreal had decent atmosphere (especially in the first few levels and at the end), but crappy story.
Halo was also one of the first to do vehicle combat well, and I think that played a large part in its novelty. The vehicle combat in Halo 2 is phenomenal.
You've got to score well in all categories to have a kickass game. Halo scores well by most gamer's estimations, and that's why it did well. The PC port was late and crappy, and the levels were repetitive (especially compared to a normal PC FPS), and these are its only real failings. Halo 2 does not have these failings... in fact the level design is now undoubtedly one of its chief strengths, so it will likely do far better than the original Halo. It'll be a win for folks who just couldn't get in to the original.
By the way, on Legendary difficulty, Halo 2 is HARD as HELL. I could thump the original on Legendary without deaths... in Halo 2 I can't even get off the first damn level yet playing solo (although playing co-op a friend and I managed to beat it on Legendary after about 30 hours invested... this time, if one dies, you both respawn at the checkpoint, so no more cheating). My hat is off to any player who can finish this solo on Legendary. If you can do it, you're tournament material.
I've always been intrigued by Bayes Theorem myself.
For those who's eyes glass over while reading the explanations in that wiki link, you may find this intuitive explanation of Bayes Theorem (complete with Java applets) a bit easier to wrap your mind around. As for why folks think it's important... it's the basis for the Scientific Method. It's also a candidate for one of the fundamental principles of AI: the ability to draw conclusions intelligently. Be careful, reading about this could suck up half of your day. Of course, if you wanted to be productive, you probably wouldn't be reading Slashdot in the first place.
This is true. It's rather unlikely, however, that so many others would see the same pattern if that were the case.
If you can detect a pattern, then *it exists* and that is all there is to it.
What you are asking is, "Does this pattern I see have any real meaning, and what does it arise from?" For example, take the classic example of Pinky Floyd's "Dark Side of the Moon" played as the soundtrack of The Wizard of Oz (called "Dark Side of the Rainbow"). There are a hell of a lot of synchronicities between the music and the film, enough so that it has developed its own cult following. Plenty of people make the case that it is simply coincidence (and it probably is) and that there is no real pattern there... what they actually mean is that there is no meaning in the pattern. Others think there are simply too many coincidences, and the pattern is there because the music was written intentionally to go along with the movie. They are saying the pattern has meaning; because it was written to fit the film.
Which is it? Who knows. It simply illustrates my point... if there was no pattern there at all, we would have nothing to talk about and the mystery surrounding the film would not exist.
In the case of our government, that paradigm says, "We can detect a pattern of events eroding our liberty." Everyone can see it. We're all talking about it. Arguing over if there is really a pattern there is a moot point. There *is* a pattern to it. That's why we're talking about it at all.
We're arguing about if this pattern is intentional or unintentional. Is it because those in power wish to push us into a totalitarian regime? Or is it because of a myriad of unfathomable circumstances related to our present human condition, resulting in a combination of ignorance, greed, inaction, inattentiveness, and unconcern that creates a force strong enough to cause these erosions?
I can't answer that question. I can, however, see the futility of bothering to answer it at all. Does it really *matter* if there is any meaning or intent behind the erosion of liberty in America?
No. All that matters is that the erosion is taking place. We should be focusing on stopping the erosion, and reversing it to the greatest extent possible. It does not matter why the erosion is taking place because the end result will be the exact same facist, totalitarian chaos that has consumed all the other governments in history. If we find ourselves living in that world, no one will care why it happened... only that it did happpen.
In the past, we have escaped dealing with this problem by moving west... into new lands where a new nation built on the proper ideals could escape the problem. The pioneers moved on and left the old world to crumble under the weight of its own foolishness, and simply set themselves up a new empire. Now, the last of the new empires is facing the same challenge that once drove the pioneers who created it away from the old.
There is no new world to run to this time. We have got to solve this problem here and now. We don't have the luxury of ignoring it this time. Frankly, I think the fact that people can see it coming is heartening. At least it won't catch everyone completely blind.
I'm of a mixed mindset about it.
I bought the original Archos model 6000 with the 6GB disk. It ran without problems for about a year, and then the charging port and power ports both died. No big deal, the batteries charge more efficiently in an external unit anyway, and swapping them out takes about five seconds, so I can live with that. I only ran it on AC in my car, but given the battery life I can live without that as well. About a year and a half after purchase, the USB port starts getting flaky, throwing data errors any time I use it.
Again, no big deal really. It takes five minutes to reduce it to a bare hard disk and plug it in directly with IDE, and I don't change music mixes that often, though I do miss the ability to drop files on it and use it as a cheap, portable USB drive. Two years in, the hard disk takes a dive (never dropped once, only runs in my car). Easy to replace it with a 60GB laptop hard disk I had laying around. While I'm at it, I upgrade to the Rockbox firmware because it kicks the shit out of the original. Just last month (what, 3 years since purhcase now? I lost track) I noticed my charge wasn't holding as long as it used to. Popped in four 2300ma batteries to replace the stock 1500ma(?) batteries and it's now running for 20 hours solid on a single charge.
The lesson to take home here is that the Archos does well because it uses a relatively open hardware architecture. I am still using it precisely because I could replace the hard disk, firmware, and batteries. I will never touch any portable device that uses proprietary, unreplaceable batteries (hence why I hate the iPod and most Palm devices). In retrospect, given Archos's shitty 90-day warranty, I think it would have been better to buy it from Best Buy and get a 3-year warranty slapped onto it on the cheap. That at least is good to cover hard disk failures.
I'll be using this one until it literally burns out, however long that takes. It's a damn good chunk of hardware, despite a few manufacturing problems (as others have noted). If I were to buy another MP3/Video player device, I would be looking at Archos as my first pick, at least as long as the hardware remains that easy to hack and replace. I don't think I would ever drop $800 on a portable video/audio device, though. Maybe when it is $400 in a few years I'll think about it.
Guess they were in too much of a hurry to post more bad press for Microsoft. Not that I'm entirely against bad press for Microsoft, but the bias around here lately has been getting mighty noticeable. It used to be subtle. (hah!)
Oh yes, I'm in agreement on that one. The best case scenario is one where this year, some third party (green and libertarian appear to be the frontrunners) manages to get its 5%, and then finally get recognized as an official political party, allowing them to attend debates, partake in campaign funding, run advertisements, and the hundreds of other political behaviours they are restricted from doing until after they gain a 5% share. Then during the next election, they easily cut through the bullshit (truth has a way of doing that) and get their candidate elected president. That's best case.
Most likely, we're going to be stuck with another twelve to twenty four years of democratic and republican nonsense before enough younger voters get politically motivated to make a 5% dent in the system.
I think, finally, though, that people are beginning to realize alternatives are available, and not ridiculous. That alone is progress. I for one don't like the idea of burning washington to the ground in my 60's, and it would be nice if America could be the first nation to pull off a major governmental change within the rules of its own governmental framework (without bloody revolution).
Then you VOTE THEM THE FUCK OUT. This entire problem occurs because the voters in this country fall into two categories: Those who are foolish enough to think there is a difference between Republicans and Democrats, and 2) those who honestly think that there is no way to vote in a third party (or fourth, or fifth, or twelfth, but let's not go as far as France.)
The biggest lie the media has ever gotten the american public to swallow is simply this:
Any vote for a third party is a vote for $NAME_of_REP_OR_DEM_PEOPLE_HATE.
Pure BULLSHIT. This lie serves one simple purpose: keep the two party corporate system in power. And people are stupid enough to believe this. Apparently nobody has ever taken the time to read up on how the voting system in this country actually works. They are content to mumble crap about the Electorial College and how futile it is to vote third party when in fact it is anything BUT futile. Just get them 5%, people. You get a third party a 5% share of the vote one time, and they can take care of themselves from that point on.
If you don't like the current candidates, vote for one of the candidates from the other 50 political parties in this country. Any 3rd party that gets in is going to have one agenda: CAMPAIGN REFORM. It's the only way for them to guarantee themselves a second term. Once those problems are fixed, this one party as two parties system is out the fucking door, and that's the best thing anyone could hope for in this country. It will put choice back into politics, and the rest will attend to itself.
If you won't vote, you are part of the problem. You live in this country, you CANNOT disclaim responsibility for political problems by refusing to exercise the only means you have by which to solve them. If everyone sitting around not voting got off their asses and voted 3rd party, they would OVERRULE all of the people voting R/D just by sheer numbers.
If you continue voting for the same two parties that keep running this country into the ground every single year, you are part of the problem. Republicans and Democrats care about one thing and one thing only: corporate payday. They are in the BUSINESS of selling laws to corporations with deep pockets. The only way to escape from this problem is to put more parties into the system to make it more resistant to corruption.
There is no mysterious savior that is going to appear and fix all of america's political problems. If the voters never wise up and take action, the erosion of freedoms at the expense of corporate interests is going to continue unabated, and someday the common people are going to be forced to take up arms and bring the government down the old fashioned way. If it goes far enough and the americans don't do anything about it, rest assured that someday the USA's foreign policy will tick off someone with the power to come in here and do it for us. You're fooling yourself if you think humanity has evolved to the point where another world war is not possible.
You are not an impartial observer. The mere fact that you draw breath on this planet obligates you. Try doing something that is becoming complete unamerican in modern times: take some responsibility and do something about the problems.
I'd definitely support this. I doubt lawyers would mind, because they are getting paid either way, and they only care about their paycheck, which is the primary reason they'll be happy to drag something out in court for years, and do appeal after appeal.
Another change I wouldn't mind seeing is this bullshit between "civil" and "federal" suits. We need laws that prohibit a case from being brought as both types, particularly when a defendant wins one and is then promptly sued again as the other. It's insanity. The outcome of a civil/federal suit should carry over in the event of a new federal/civil suit being filed along the same lines.
You don't even need to buy Microsoft services for a lot of that, as the open source equivalents will readily run on Windows in most cases, and plug directly into the windows system using its own authentication. This lets you have single sign-on from Microsoft without paying for all of the premium packages. You simply pay for the Active Directory (a couple of servers) and the desktop operating system. The rest can be done freely taking only a small hit in quality that most users won't notice or care about. Samba is unfortunately not suitable for the backend yet because it only supports signon... which is only one of about fifty good features of a windows server that are included in the price.
The real problem with linux is the backend. Linux is missing (or has poorer implementations of) a lot of enterprise-level software that is taken completely for granted in the Microsoft world. Poorer here means that overall, Linux becomes more of a headache to manage than Microsoft, for a wide variety of reasons, but I assure you that lack of understanding of both platforms is not among them.
This is one area where Novell can kick Microsoft right in the junk. Novell has a lot of the enterprise level management software that linux is sorely lacking. What's more, Novell's enterprise architecture has had years (decades!) of wildly stable and successful deployment, it has well understood standards, and there is a large technical user base that understands how to support it. Hooking the myriad linux services into a Novell backend would be easy... not trivial, but certainly no major headache. Not moreso than hooking other open source apps into windows, anyway, and that's the target.
I really hope Novell doesn't go the greedy proprietary route here. If they convert and open-source their entire enterprise management suite, Microsoft is in for butthurt like they have never had before, because one of their biggest advantages will be eliminated instantly. There are many of us who would be only too willing to convert to linux to avoid Microsoft (mainly due to their horrific license agreements and prices), but only that kind of enterprise management on linux can make Microsoft into the lesser of two headaches. Contrary to popular opinion, Microsoft's problems are easy (nearly effortless, in fact) to mitigate if one has a proper understanding of the software and how to manage it.
Once that is done, desktop use will skyrocket, and so will desktop development. Linux is going to own the corporate desktop long before it makes any real dent in the home user market. People will use it at work and then decide they like it, and the IT department can give them a free copy to take home. It'll sound almost too good to be true.
For another of example of a senseless argument, equate Murder with Copyright Infringement.
I can second this, as I just put together the exact same thing recently for backups where I work. We wanted to go with Serial ATA, but we needed the machines before it became widely available, so we had to go with standard IDE. This worked out fine; we simply purchased Cremax ICYDock cages for them to get hotswap functionality (which I have already used once due to a failure with no problems). $139 for a 5-in-3 IDE hotswap bay with alarms and active cooling is a good deal in my book. I liked it so much, I did my own mini-array at home with 4 250GB drives, a 4-port 3Ware card, and an ICYdock bay. So far it's working great.
Honestly, if this is the only thing they have worth posting, we need to send them some links. If everyone sends them five, that'll be enough to keep them busy until St. Swithen's day. I get shit more entertaining than this in my inbox from viagra spammers.
Ted is television. Last time I checked, he and his chronies were getting their asses soundly kicked around the globe by Internet media. I don't see that changing, and I don't see television as it stands having a hope in hell of competing with it in the long run. What Ted says is really rather irrelevant if you no longer care about Television. I won't be sad to see it go. Clear the rest of that shit off the cable and sattelite lines to make room for more internet traffic.
If Ted wants to turn around and buck the system in the hopes of saving Television, great, more power to him, but it's a battle I don't really care about anymore. Broadcasting will switch to the internet eventually, and then the entire concept of channels and stations becomes meaningless, because there's no finite limit on them, and anyone can create anything they choose. Good luck enforcing any kind of regulation in a global broadcast environment. That'll go the way of piracy; 40+ years of fighting it and they haven't made a dent. Laughable.
The cost of starting and running a broadcast-style information channel (be it audio, video, 24 hour programming, or whatever) is the cost of creating the content and running a cheap website. P2P apps like BitTorrent will easily take care of your bandwidth bills. If you've created the content there's no licensing fee to pay, so big media can't touch you. In fact, the very same laws they have been using for decades to maintain a stranglehold on media rigths will now be reversed, and used to destroy them. Fantastic, isn't it, how things work out sometimes? We enjoy their protection, or they destroy their own laws. Lose-lose for big media, win-win for every internet citizen.
The tools are there, and the infrastructure is there. Big media is just worried someone might start using it and put them out of their misery. It's about time people took their culture back from corporations, and this is exactly how it's going to be done.
Keep fighting the good fight for freedom of speech and the rest will attend to itself.