I understand your viewpoint, and and my point was that the frivolous uses like changing hair color are the dangerous ones. Serious research into something like diabetes should, of course, go ahead if the people are willing to take the proper precautions. You don't take a solution that works once and start applying it wholesale. Persons with serious illnesses should have the right to recieve a treatment if it is available.
Half-arsed research into something that is not "life-threatening" and thus treated less carefully will cost more lives than the delay in getting out the diabetes cure that comes from increased detailed inspection of these advances.
This may have been discussed thoroughly before this point, but what are the odds the EFF might be able to get the search engine companies involved?
If it enters common law that you cannot link to a site containing "illegal" material without being sued to death, it is only about two lawsuits away from them being under a constant barrage of lawsuits. I think having a well known name like Yahoo on our side increases our chances of coming out of this intact. Whatever you might think about the search engine companies, they should care about this. They might not be willing to touch this case for fear of bad publicity, but it would certainly make some more people stop to think instead of assuming that the MPAA must be right because we've heard of them.
Progress costs. I can't realy think of any scientific advance, especially in medicine, that didn't involve multiple deaths and mistakes.
Yep. But if people are actively thinking about the costs in advance, the costs are smaller. Out of sheer desire to be annoying, I will point out the Y2K bug. It is not exactly the sort of thing we are talking about, but it makes a good metaphor. The costs were apparent because people were looking for them, and they were paid in a different fashion by having thousands of programmers work long hours rather than a catastrophic event. Had people not had the dangers inherent with it brought up, we might have truly had the catastrophe so many people feared.
Hopefully in the future we'll have computers powerful enough to simulate what a certain drug will do if it is ever combined with other drugs and things like that, but for right now we've got to live with risks or we'll end up standing still...
I don't really mean to indicate that we shouldn't have advances because we cannot fully understand their repercussions. That would indeed be standing still. I would like to suggest that people focus on what repercussions they would like to avoid, and focus more on those. That makes it less likely that those problems will occur. I was reacting to the unbridled enthusiasm and speculation of the first responses I read. I like enthusiasm, but not one person had written any comment indicating that they had thought of the potential dangers, so I did.
The guy who invented refrigeration died doing it, would you rather he have lived and we never got it?
No. I would have preferred that he took longer to get it and didn't die. I really mean to advise caution, not cessation.
What will it end up costing? If we live in an unethical , immoral society which prizes other goals than human dignity and freedom, well then, probably those two latter will go by the board when a technology that can affect them that also happens to be profitable turns up. Change the system, don't kill the science!
I don't really object to the science at all, I just worry about the side effects. The unfortunate factor is that a very large percentage of any society values dignity and freedom, but there is a smaller percentage that ignores it. Usually, these are people who have never been in any danger of losing either, and do not place much value on them as a result.
My intent is to provoke thought about the potential dangers that come with scientific advances, rather than to try to prevent the coming of those advances. Usually, the good brought by advances such as these can be amazing, but if people only focus on the good and do not actively guard against the bad, you get quite a bit of the bad, too.
and really think about them for a second. The initial responses to this level of technology are usually pretty frivolous. Changing skin and hair color? Unfortunately, these are the same responses that will eventually have a good chance of coming to pass.
I cringe every time I hear about an advance like this, because I stop to think: "OK, how can this be misused." Genetic engineering is a touchy ground with me, because the potential good for humanity does not necessarily outweigh the potential harm. For every gene we create with imperfect knowledge, we permanently affect some portion of the species we are working on. This is why serious geneticists insist on attaching terminators to sterilize genetically engineered crops. We have no good idea of what they would do to the natural species in our ecosystem.
Playing with our genes can be even worse. People will buy things they really don't want if it is sold well, and we are treading down the path towards that being our very genes.
"The salesman said not to worry, I will only start poisoning myself if this and this and this happens. In that situation it will be good." But how thoroughly was this tested and how good is the understanding we have of the systems involved. "Ooops. We are issuing a recall on that gene because we found out seven years later that this other thing can turn it on and the person dies. Sorry."
Unfortunately, this is not as far-fetched a scenario as we might wish it was. The on and off switch for genes is wonderful progress, but what will it end up costing?
But haven't Dell and IBM announced a very tight partnership, especially in the notebook division. While we know Transmeta didn't say much about OEMs IBM's name came up more than once. It would seem that Dell would sell the Crusoe processor almost defacto, through their cobranded IBM products.
This partnership has not really included processors, thus far. Dell uses IBM hard drives, pretty much the best in the quality department. Dell uses IBM Global Services to do all of their support stuff, and shares technology, etc. Processors isn't part of the deal yet, as far as I know. However, the vast majority of IBM employees didn't know we were involved in Transmeta to any great degree before yesterday. (Yes, I work for IBM.)
That is why the article stated that an aware IT professional could cut the Red Hat time in half. They pretty much stated the same thing in fewer words.
If you look at what they were comparing, the numbers they found were pretty much in line with what one would expect. The Linux systems are always going to be fixed fairly quickly, because there is a distributed network working on the problems as they crop up. This is the whole point behind open source software.
Microsoft does amazingly well when you stop to consider what the have to work with. Their code is probably very complex due to the requirements of backwards compatibility and interaction along unusal connections between types of software. They only have a comparatively small number of programmers to be working on it at a given time, and they get the hot seat as soon as there is a problem. Everyone in the business world simultaneously expects perfection and low quality from MS, so that they can bitch about something all the time. When you consider the strains they have to deal with, they are doing very well.
I work for IBM and Sun is one of our big competitors, so I can't really say anything without risking excessive personal bias. However, I suspect that people are less inclined to roast Sun for every security breach, as there are fewer personal users than either of the two other systems.
I couldn't give a precise reason, but it does seem sad that this find might end up in some personal museum. I suppose it would be nice if everybody could see the T Rex, but I think it is unlikely that a serious gallery, museum, or city government is going to chance bidding enough to win a web auction. It will either end up going to a fake bid, or to a millionaire who wants a killer parlor ornament.
There would just be something cool about having one of these bought by a city government, handed over to a sculptor who has done some good wildlife studies before. Before you know it, Presto!, the T Rex is put up in front of city hall in a real-life hunting pose, trying to eat the mayor's parking spot. It would look really great!
Disclaimer: It has been close to eight years since I glanced at Chilhood's End, and I read the original version.
I would have to say that this book was definately a product of the fifties. Many aspects of the book played upon the fears and oddities of American culture in that era. There was the beginnings of many movements that have gained more momentum or died out referenced in the book. For instance, the very beginning of the book included a scene wherein viewers of a bullfight felt the wounds inflicted upon a bull. This references animal rights movements that were becoming more mainstream in this time period. There are a lot of other political references in this book.
One thing I would like to say, is that I don't think it is a good idea to try to move this book into the future with a new opening chapter. It is better viewed as a piece of science fiction in the time period for which it was written. The concepts built into it reflect a great deal on cold war mentalities, and the social structures of the time. In particular, it shows that our beliefs, irrational fears, and "The bad guys" are very much products of our society and media. There is nothing like the demonic appearance of the overlords and the strong Communist impression given of the Overmind to show that Clarke was trying to show people that good and bad are very relative. I am not sure if Clarke was a Communist, or was just trying to tick off that psychopath McCarthy.
When you try to take this book out of the fifties, it quickly ceases to make as much sense. The book was designed to shock people in a time of prosperity and mild close-mindedness into thinking a bit more about their predjudices and beliefs.
Maybe Gates is positioning himself so that if the DOJ breaks up MS, he can jump ship to the most profitable baby-MS, leaving Ballmer holding the bag with a less viable one?
While that is a possibility, I don't think it matters whether Bill is Chairman and CEO, or just Chairman. He'd still get first choice. There is no way that any serious individual thinks he will come out of the DOJ trial crippled in any truly signifigant way. Bill is a very clever fellow and he would end up in the best remaining position no matter what. He could always BUY a smaller compay and start over, if he wanted.
The tongue in cheek answer is that someone gave him a perfectly functioning version of Windows 2000 that will run any software it is supposed to. He has only weeks to break it and make sure that 1) no competing products work and 2) it looks like it is their fault.
Finally we have something more realistic: Gates is a celebrity. He knows that he is one and has a lot of stuff that he has to do as a CEO. He either wants to give the impression, or actually does want to get back into the trenches to some degree and work with the developers. If you acutally talk to some Microsoft developers, many of them will tell you about how he goes through their offices every so often and talks to them, sometimes motivating more than anything else they can think of and sometimes just chewing them out. (I interviewed with MS folks at Redmond before, just for fun.) Bill has to be under an incredible amount of stress from the trial, too. He may want to give up the reins a bit, but doesn't trust anyone else absolutely, so he remains chairman. As Chief Developer, he can pick any project as his pet and work with it, or step back and look at all of them. He has pretty much said: this CEO thing is too defined for me, so I am making up a title, retaining the real power of veto, and doing what I want.
I think that the incompatibility of the two companies on some level has to do with some of this falling valuation. They do not have the same operations approaches AT ALL.
Time-Warner is not always associated with quality in everything they do (many shows on the WB), but Quality is definately one of their product differentiators. People expect CNN to have a fairly objective, high quality set of programming. Time Magazine isn't as well respected as National Geographic, but you are hard pressed to find an older or more widely accepted and known news magazine. Warner Bros pictures have a fairly high standard of quality and is the only longterm mindshare competitor with Disney. Warner Cable is simply what I think of when someone mentions cable. It's brand is associated with Quality, plain and simple.
AOL is NOT associated with Quality. It is good enough and fast enough and cheap. Their operating strategy is Cost and Quantity. Keep prices low and pump out the garbage like there is no tomorrow. This is a perfectly valid approach to business, and there are many companies who use this approach that I do not mind at all. (AOL spams me, so I don't like them.)
When you put these two strategies together, it does not mix well. Either Time-Warner starts shovelling garbage at extreme rates and loses all of its "value", or AOL tries to shape up and loses the only things that were keeping it on top. The few people I know who own Time Warner stock are either dropping it, or waiting to see if the deal goes through before they drop it. When you mix these two companies together, you'll find out that they won't. The smarter analysts on Wall Street have probably thought this out much better and more thoroughly than I have, but they are probably being cautious at best.
There is a definate stereotype on the net that geeks and software professionals, like engineers, are overwhelmingly male. Just look at reactions to Miranda in User Friendly.
Unfortunately, My experience is that it is true. Whether this gender segregation is based on a great conspiracy or whatever, I think it tends to occur because of the way Western cultures tend to work. I can only really speak for American culture, though.
If you look at the statistics on a recent/. article about characteristics of programmers, you will note that they score an I and a T on the Myers-Briggs almost all the time. If you expand to all enginners, you will find the same trend, but not as pronounced. The problem is that on about 20% of the population is an introvert (I), and only 20% of women are in the thinking (T) category, while closer to 80% of men are. 20% of 20% is about 4% of all women are likely to be interested in these fields. (Yes, I know statistics don't work like that, but I am simplifying.) In contrast, 80% of 20% would be 16% of all men. This would make men 4 times as likely to enter these fields if these numbers were fairly accurate.
What all that gibberish meant, was that only a Very small subset of women have the personality traits that are typical in these lines of work. Add to that the fact that many families and communities have strongly discouraged women from scientific and engineering fields in the past, and of course you have a gender imbalance in the originators of this medium. This leads to a mild chain effect that makes the female presence on the web seem smaller. Our American culture also pushes down sexist ideas from mainstream view for either sex, but there are a lot more men who are long time veterans of the net than women, for the reasons detailed above. You'll notice that the very sexist issues that come up on the net are usually porn related. Porn is almost entirely directed at men, straight or homosexual.
The end result of all of this is that it is easy for feminists and Femi-Nazis to feel that women are discriminated against. The only areas of the net where gender counts at all are usually targeted at men. This is simply because there have been more men in the past. It is changing, but change always takes some time, especially when it is to a community, even one that changes as quickly as the net.
I didn't provide a way for you to do this when I first posted, but then I remembered something you should really be aware of. Project Vote-Smart has a search tool to allow you to search a candidates public statements for their stance on a particular issue. Search the Presidential Candidates' Public Statements!
What I want instead is a clear and concise understanding of the candidate's philosophy.
And here we have the kicker that cuts to the heart of American politics. Right now they are organized like a really bad religion. You have to have faith in the candidate based on prior experience that is usually so distorted by the media on both sides that you can't make sense of it.
The only answer I can give, is to look at the outlying points. Find out what a candidate says at three or more conventions, where the mood of the crowds is almost exactly the opposite of at least one of the other crowds, and see what themes stay the same. Those are the things you can count on the candidate to stay pretty firm on. The ones that get reworded a lot are the things that are complete prevailing wind BS. Once you find out where the hard points are on the candidates, you have to look for patterns and hope the prevailing wind isn't blowing too hard in the direction you don't want. My advice is to go for someone that is not very PC, because the layers of BS are thinner. However, your political views are likely to be very different from mine, so you have to make your own choices.
almost every geek I know in realspace is a ragin' Ted-Kennedy type liberal. However, most of the geeks I've met on the net seem to lean from right-wing to libertarian....
That probably has to do with the area in which you live. Some places are very liberal, and some are very conservative. I spent my teen years in Cincinnati, Ohio. Liberals are pretty quiet with their views there for fear of being tarred and feathered. My fiance is from Cleveland, Ohio. Conservatives have to be pretty quiet about their views there for the same reason. Needless to say, I am exaggerating a bit, but less than I wish I was.
the questions are practically a parody of unbiased sampling.
As a confirmed moderate who came away from that sounding like the champion of Libertarianism, I'll agree with you there. The questions of the one I saw made you come out Libertarian if you had either a brain or an opinion, but it was oddly not necessary to have both. I respect the ideal of Libertarianism, but I don't completely agree with it.
My own experience is that geeks are paradoxically a pretty even mix of right-wing libertarian types and left-wing liberals, with perhaps a leaning toward the latter
Pretty much mine too. Geeks are very protective of their freedom to think for themselves, but a great deal of them prefer to have a pretty big chunk of organized something for making impacts on the rest of society. I like to think that most geeks fall in the pretty moderate categories, because they are too smart to not see the dangers of any extreme state.
Special interests are so powerful because people/corporations with money fill their coffers. You want change and/or representation in this system? Money talks.
This is precisly why I will only support candidates who are seriously running on the campaign finance reform bandwagon. (It can be VERY loosely likened to the open source movement. Come up with a new paradigm that gets rid of a lot of the crap that floats to the top of the old paradigm.) In the Politician-via-Bribes system, it makes sense that so many are corrupt. Remove the biggest source of bribes, and you get in a mix or more honest politicians and more intelligent crooks. Both are better than many of the current lot.
It seems anymore that if you are to get successfully elected you almost have to be corrupt.
Err... While this is certainly more true than I might wish, if you don't vote, you say as loudly as possible: Screw me over every way you can! I am adamantly exercising my right to have no control over my life and be a whiny victim complaining about my rights! This isn't what you are probably trying to say, but it is what you do say. If you don't like the candidate, then give your snub vote to a third party candidate or a write in. Particularly in the case of the write-in, you are saying to the Board of Elections or the Electoral College that you would prefer this unknown person to any of the idiots running. Hell, write in yourself. You won't win, but you are one more statistical point showing that the "winner" was not loved by all except apathetic victims. Those statistical results do get seen and recorded. When it gets to the point that more people are throwing away their votes than voting for the winner, you might be surprised at the results.
It seems to me that I read an interview with Lucas a while back in which he stated that he wouldn't do any DVD until all 6 movies were released. At that point he wanted to put out the ultimate Star Wars DVD collection...
I read the same interview as I was paging through some archives about two weeks ago. What he said was actually more complicated and should make any serious fan happy in the long run.
Lucas said that he would not release any of the six films that are finished or in the works until he finished making Episode Three. The reason for this is that he will only put them on DVD if the proper time is taken and it can really be an amazing product. He intends to package "making of" for each movie with the DVD of that movie and just about every extra and special bit of info available. He intends the DVDs to be THE format for the movies, but he doesn't have time to do them right now. He explained to the reporter that doing the DVDs properly will be almost as much work as making a movie. He balanced it out and decided that fans would be happier if the DVDs were delayed than if Episodes 2 and 3 were delayed a couple of years...
This is a paraphrase of what he said, because I could not find the exact link again after 5 minutes of looking. The interview should be on any serious Star Wars info center in their archives for sometime between July and November. (I reviewed a lot of articles...)
The closed source issue goes beyond NDAs. The clearing houses require that the software be certified to work with their systems in order for it to connect. They loose control of that certification if they allow anyone to release open source credit card software. Don't blame Red Hat or Hell's Kitchen, blame the clearing houses and merchant banks.
Basically, that is my understanding as well. However, blame doesn't really come into it as much as one might think. There is not an easy way for these banks, etc. to change things from the current system without dropping a few billion dollars in the U. S. alone. Unless someone wants to remodularize their entire software systems that track billions of transactions on a really good day. The change to open source, or any other change, is a financial mountain to hurdle.
In short, keep in mind that the cost for them to repay the full value of all the stolen money and wrongful charges in a year is likely to be miniscule in comparison to the cost of replacing CCVS. As much as we might grumble about it, the banks will do what saves them money in the short run until the need to change it becomes sufficiently great. This is the way business works. A less than ideal product that is in place is better than paying two years income to replace it.
All I have to say is thank you for providing the link to the Candidate Selector. I found out about some candidates I didn't even know were running. I try to ignore as much public media as possible, as I can't stand the BS and sensationalism, and slashdot doesn't cover political campaigns much.
My top four (in case you care for some reason) were: John S. McCain -- Republican Albert (Al) Gore Jr. -- Democrat John Hagelin -- Natural Law Party Ralph Nader -- Green Party
I now have their websites and have been doing introductory research on all of them. I guess it is odd that I got four different parties between scores of 57 and 62 though...
One last suggestion. We might want to contact SelectSmart.com and tell them to add an internet freedom category... Unfortunately, I cannot think of how they would phrase it.
You're reading the message out of context, and you're confusing "rights" with "freedoms" (or at least that's what it appears you [are] doing.) "I have a right to determine what is wrong." No one gives you a "right" to this. You're *free* to determine (for yourself) what's right and what's wrong.
Ah! So that is the nature of your distinction! I don't place that much symantic difference between rights and freedoms, so I misinterpreted your statements. I gather that you regard rights to be granted by an entity such as a government, whereas I regard them as stated in the Declaration of Independance: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness."
Free Advice #7: You have to be very patient with "morons" and explain thoroughly what you are talking about, or they start calling you names and miss the point of everything you just told them. I try to follow my own advice, but sometimes I fail.
In light of your symantic scrutiny, I amend my comments about rights to freedoms for you. People are *free* to reverse-engineer DVD for Linux if they want. People are *VERY FREE* to determine for themselves the differences between right and wrong.
But if you decide killing people is not wrong -- and you go ahead and kill someone because, well, you're an adult and you exercised your freedom to kill someone, well, you're gonna face the consequences, period.
Precisely. I never said that actions were without consequences.
Number one, you don't have a "right" to determine whether something is wrong.
That is a very frightening belief, my friend. If I don't have the right to determine whether something is wrong, who does? Do you hold that power? Does some sleepy official in a courtroom somewhere who does not really care about the piece of paper he/she is reviewing? Is it an international forum of philosphers? Is this solely in the hands of a divine entity whom I apparently cannot understand? I don't know, so I believe I have the right to find out. Explain to me why I don't, please.
Number two, your comparison between "Nazi" Germany and DVDs is not only stupid, it's in incredibly bad taste.
That is your opinion, and I respect it. However, my opinion is that it is a bad idea for legal bodies to set precedents along these lines. Denying me the ability to find out about this DeCSS tool infringes on the right I believe I have. The fascist government of Germany prevented the vast majority of its citizens from determining the truth of what was going on with its treatment of people who were Jewish. I believe that treatment was wrong and I would have liked to be able to investigate it, had I been a German citizen at that time. This is an extreme example of what could happen if the "right" I illustrated was taken away.
No one has the "right" to watch DVDs on Linux.
According to the U.S. law I am familiar with, they do, if they can reverse engineer it. I wouldn't call it a fundamental right of being human, though.
... this world would be a better place if (a) people would keep their mouths shut and listen and (b) people would find a way not to be stupid.
True enough. Let me add two more for the record: (c) People would not leap to conclusions based on a small amount of information and (d) people would grasp that "moderation" concept.
As the.sig says, feel free to ignore my opinions if you don't like them.
Slashdot Mirror
Half-arsed research into something that is not "life-threatening" and thus treated less carefully will cost more lives than the delay in getting out the diabetes cure that comes from increased detailed inspection of these advances.
B. Elgin
If it enters common law that you cannot link to a site containing "illegal" material without being sued to death, it is only about two lawsuits away from them being under a constant barrage of lawsuits. I think having a well known name like Yahoo on our side increases our chances of coming out of this intact. Whatever you might think about the search engine companies, they should care about this. They might not be willing to touch this case for fear of bad publicity, but it would certainly make some more people stop to think instead of assuming that the MPAA must be right because we've heard of them.
B. Elgin
Yep. But if people are actively thinking about the costs in advance, the costs are smaller. Out of sheer desire to be annoying, I will point out the Y2K bug. It is not exactly the sort of thing we are talking about, but it makes a good metaphor. The costs were apparent because people were looking for them, and they were paid in a different fashion by having thousands of programmers work long hours rather than a catastrophic event. Had people not had the dangers inherent with it brought up, we might have truly had the catastrophe so many people feared.
Hopefully in the future we'll have computers powerful enough to simulate what a certain drug will do if it is ever combined with other drugs and things like that, but for right now we've got to live with risks or we'll end up standing still...
I don't really mean to indicate that we shouldn't have advances because we cannot fully understand their repercussions. That would indeed be standing still. I would like to suggest that people focus on what repercussions they would like to avoid, and focus more on those. That makes it less likely that those problems will occur. I was reacting to the unbridled enthusiasm and speculation of the first responses I read. I like enthusiasm, but not one person had written any comment indicating that they had thought of the potential dangers, so I did.
The guy who invented refrigeration died doing it, would you rather he have lived and we never got it?
No. I would have preferred that he took longer to get it and didn't die. I really mean to advise caution, not cessation.
B. Elgin
I don't really object to the science at all, I just worry about the side effects. The unfortunate factor is that a very large percentage of any society values dignity and freedom, but there is a smaller percentage that ignores it. Usually, these are people who have never been in any danger of losing either, and do not place much value on them as a result.
My intent is to provoke thought about the potential dangers that come with scientific advances, rather than to try to prevent the coming of those advances. Usually, the good brought by advances such as these can be amazing, but if people only focus on the good and do not actively guard against the bad, you get quite a bit of the bad, too.
B. Elgin
I cringe every time I hear about an advance like this, because I stop to think: "OK, how can this be misused." Genetic engineering is a touchy ground with me, because the potential good for humanity does not necessarily outweigh the potential harm. For every gene we create with imperfect knowledge, we permanently affect some portion of the species we are working on. This is why serious geneticists insist on attaching terminators to sterilize genetically engineered crops. We have no good idea of what they would do to the natural species in our ecosystem.
Playing with our genes can be even worse. People will buy things they really don't want if it is sold well, and we are treading down the path towards that being our very genes.
"The salesman said not to worry, I will only start poisoning myself if this and this and this happens. In that situation it will be good." But how thoroughly was this tested and how good is the understanding we have of the systems involved. "Ooops. We are issuing a recall on that gene because we found out seven years later that this other thing can turn it on and the person dies. Sorry."
Unfortunately, this is not as far-fetched a scenario as we might wish it was. The on and off switch for genes is wonderful progress, but what will it end up costing?
B. Elgin
This partnership has not really included processors, thus far. Dell uses IBM hard drives, pretty much the best in the quality department. Dell uses IBM Global Services to do all of their support stuff, and shares technology, etc. Processors isn't part of the deal yet, as far as I know. However, the vast majority of IBM employees didn't know we were involved in Transmeta to any great degree before yesterday. (Yes, I work for IBM.)
B. Elgin
That is why the article stated that an aware IT professional could cut the Red Hat time in half. They pretty much stated the same thing in fewer words.
B. Elgin
Microsoft does amazingly well when you stop to consider what the have to work with. Their code is probably very complex due to the requirements of backwards compatibility and interaction along unusal connections between types of software. They only have a comparatively small number of programmers to be working on it at a given time, and they get the hot seat as soon as there is a problem. Everyone in the business world simultaneously expects perfection and low quality from MS, so that they can bitch about something all the time. When you consider the strains they have to deal with, they are doing very well.
I work for IBM and Sun is one of our big competitors, so I can't really say anything without risking excessive personal bias. However, I suspect that people are less inclined to roast Sun for every security breach, as there are fewer personal users than either of the two other systems.
B. Elgin
There would just be something cool about having one of these bought by a city government, handed over to a sculptor who has done some good wildlife studies before. Before you know it, Presto!, the T Rex is put up in front of city hall in a real-life hunting pose, trying to eat the mayor's parking spot. It would look really great!
B. Elgin
I would have to say that this book was definately a product of the fifties. Many aspects of the book played upon the fears and oddities of American culture in that era. There was the beginnings of many movements that have gained more momentum or died out referenced in the book. For instance, the very beginning of the book included a scene wherein viewers of a bullfight felt the wounds inflicted upon a bull. This references animal rights movements that were becoming more mainstream in this time period. There are a lot of other political references in this book.
One thing I would like to say, is that I don't think it is a good idea to try to move this book into the future with a new opening chapter. It is better viewed as a piece of science fiction in the time period for which it was written. The concepts built into it reflect a great deal on cold war mentalities, and the social structures of the time. In particular, it shows that our beliefs, irrational fears, and "The bad guys" are very much products of our society and media. There is nothing like the demonic appearance of the overlords and the strong Communist impression given of the Overmind to show that Clarke was trying to show people that good and bad are very relative. I am not sure if Clarke was a Communist, or was just trying to tick off that psychopath McCarthy.
When you try to take this book out of the fifties, it quickly ceases to make as much sense. The book was designed to shock people in a time of prosperity and mild close-mindedness into thinking a bit more about their predjudices and beliefs.
B. Elgin
How about we go for a Zerg this time?
B. Elgin
While that is a possibility, I don't think it matters whether Bill is Chairman and CEO, or just Chairman. He'd still get first choice. There is no way that any serious individual thinks he will come out of the DOJ trial crippled in any truly signifigant way. Bill is a very clever fellow and he would end up in the best remaining position no matter what. He could always BUY a smaller compay and start over, if he wanted.
The tongue in cheek answer is that someone gave him a perfectly functioning version of Windows 2000 that will run any software it is supposed to. He has only weeks to break it and make sure that 1) no competing products work and 2) it looks like it is their fault.
Finally we have something more realistic: Gates is a celebrity. He knows that he is one and has a lot of stuff that he has to do as a CEO. He either wants to give the impression, or actually does want to get back into the trenches to some degree and work with the developers. If you acutally talk to some Microsoft developers, many of them will tell you about how he goes through their offices every so often and talks to them, sometimes motivating more than anything else they can think of and sometimes just chewing them out. (I interviewed with MS folks at Redmond before, just for fun.) Bill has to be under an incredible amount of stress from the trial, too. He may want to give up the reins a bit, but doesn't trust anyone else absolutely, so he remains chairman. As Chief Developer, he can pick any project as his pet and work with it, or step back and look at all of them. He has pretty much said: this CEO thing is too defined for me, so I am making up a title, retaining the real power of veto, and doing what I want.
B. Elgin
Time-Warner is not always associated with quality in everything they do (many shows on the WB), but Quality is definately one of their product differentiators. People expect CNN to have a fairly objective, high quality set of programming. Time Magazine isn't as well respected as National Geographic, but you are hard pressed to find an older or more widely accepted and known news magazine. Warner Bros pictures have a fairly high standard of quality and is the only longterm mindshare competitor with Disney. Warner Cable is simply what I think of when someone mentions cable. It's brand is associated with Quality, plain and simple.
AOL is NOT associated with Quality. It is good enough and fast enough and cheap. Their operating strategy is Cost and Quantity. Keep prices low and pump out the garbage like there is no tomorrow. This is a perfectly valid approach to business, and there are many companies who use this approach that I do not mind at all. (AOL spams me, so I don't like them.)
When you put these two strategies together, it does not mix well. Either Time-Warner starts shovelling garbage at extreme rates and loses all of its "value", or AOL tries to shape up and loses the only things that were keeping it on top. The few people I know who own Time Warner stock are either dropping it, or waiting to see if the deal goes through before they drop it. When you mix these two companies together, you'll find out that they won't. The smarter analysts on Wall Street have probably thought this out much better and more thoroughly than I have, but they are probably being cautious at best.
B. Elgin
Unfortunately, My experience is that it is true. Whether this gender segregation is based on a great conspiracy or whatever, I think it tends to occur because of the way Western cultures tend to work. I can only really speak for American culture, though.
If you look at the statistics on a recent /. article about characteristics of programmers, you will note that they score an I and a T on the Myers-Briggs almost all the time. If you expand to all enginners, you will find the same trend, but not as pronounced. The problem is that on about 20% of the population is an introvert (I), and only 20% of women are in the thinking (T) category, while closer to 80% of men are. 20% of 20% is about 4% of all women are likely to be interested in these fields. (Yes, I know statistics don't work like that, but I am simplifying.) In contrast, 80% of 20% would be 16% of all men. This would make men 4 times as likely to enter these fields if these numbers were fairly accurate.
What all that gibberish meant, was that only a Very small subset of women have the personality traits that are typical in these lines of work. Add to that the fact that many families and communities have strongly discouraged women from scientific and engineering fields in the past, and of course you have a gender imbalance in the originators of this medium. This leads to a mild chain effect that makes the female presence on the web seem smaller. Our American culture also pushes down sexist ideas from mainstream view for either sex, but there are a lot more men who are long time veterans of the net than women, for the reasons detailed above. You'll notice that the very sexist issues that come up on the net are usually porn related. Porn is almost entirely directed at men, straight or homosexual.
The end result of all of this is that it is easy for feminists and Femi-Nazis to feel that women are discriminated against. The only areas of the net where gender counts at all are usually targeted at men. This is simply because there have been more men in the past. It is changing, but change always takes some time, especially when it is to a community, even one that changes as quickly as the net.
B. Elgin
I didn't provide a way for you to do this when I first posted, but then I remembered something you should really be aware of. Project Vote-Smart has a search tool to allow you to search a candidates public statements for their stance on a particular issue.
Search the Presidential Candidates' Public Statements!
B. Elgin
And here we have the kicker that cuts to the heart of American politics. Right now they are organized like a really bad religion. You have to have faith in the candidate based on prior experience that is usually so distorted by the media on both sides that you can't make sense of it.
The only answer I can give, is to look at the outlying points. Find out what a candidate says at three or more conventions, where the mood of the crowds is almost exactly the opposite of at least one of the other crowds, and see what themes stay the same. Those are the things you can count on the candidate to stay pretty firm on. The ones that get reworded a lot are the things that are complete prevailing wind BS. Once you find out where the hard points are on the candidates, you have to look for patterns and hope the prevailing wind isn't blowing too hard in the direction you don't want. My advice is to go for someone that is not very PC, because the layers of BS are thinner. However, your political views are likely to be very different from mine, so you have to make your own choices.
B. Elgin
That probably has to do with the area in which you live. Some places are very liberal, and some are very conservative. I spent my teen years in Cincinnati, Ohio. Liberals are pretty quiet with their views there for fear of being tarred and feathered. My fiance is from Cleveland, Ohio. Conservatives have to be pretty quiet about their views there for the same reason. Needless to say, I am exaggerating a bit, but less than I wish I was.
B. Elgin
As a confirmed moderate who came away from that sounding like the champion of Libertarianism, I'll agree with you there. The questions of the one I saw made you come out Libertarian if you had either a brain or an opinion, but it was oddly not necessary to have both. I respect the ideal of Libertarianism, but I don't completely agree with it.
My own experience is that geeks are paradoxically a pretty even mix of right-wing libertarian types and left-wing liberals, with perhaps a leaning toward the latter
Pretty much mine too. Geeks are very protective of their freedom to think for themselves, but a great deal of them prefer to have a pretty big chunk of organized something for making impacts on the rest of society. I like to think that most geeks fall in the pretty moderate categories, because they are too smart to not see the dangers of any extreme state.
B. Elgin
This is precisly why I will only support candidates who are seriously running on the campaign finance reform bandwagon. (It can be VERY loosely likened to the open source movement. Come up with a new paradigm that gets rid of a lot of the crap that floats to the top of the old paradigm.) In the Politician-via-Bribes system, it makes sense that so many are corrupt. Remove the biggest source of bribes, and you get in a mix or more honest politicians and more intelligent crooks. Both are better than many of the current lot.
B. Elgin
Err... While this is certainly more true than I might wish, if you don't vote, you say as loudly as possible:
Screw me over every way you can! I am adamantly exercising my right to have no control over my life and be a whiny victim complaining about my rights!
This isn't what you are probably trying to say, but it is what you do say. If you don't like the candidate, then give your snub vote to a third party candidate or a write in. Particularly in the case of the write-in, you are saying to the Board of Elections or the Electoral College that you would prefer this unknown person to any of the idiots running. Hell, write in yourself. You won't win, but you are one more statistical point showing that the "winner" was not loved by all except apathetic victims. Those statistical results do get seen and recorded. When it gets to the point that more people are throwing away their votes than voting for the winner, you might be surprised at the results.
B. Elgin
I read the same interview as I was paging through some archives about two weeks ago. What he said was actually more complicated and should make any serious fan happy in the long run.
Lucas said that he would not release any of the six films that are finished or in the works until he finished making Episode Three. The reason for this is that he will only put them on DVD if the proper time is taken and it can really be an amazing product. He intends to package "making of" for each movie with the DVD of that movie and just about every extra and special bit of info available. He intends the DVDs to be THE format for the movies, but he doesn't have time to do them right now. He explained to the reporter that doing the DVDs properly will be almost as much work as making a movie. He balanced it out and decided that fans would be happier if the DVDs were delayed than if Episodes 2 and 3 were delayed a couple of years...
This is a paraphrase of what he said, because I could not find the exact link again after 5 minutes of looking. The interview should be on any serious Star Wars info center in their archives for sometime between July and November. (I reviewed a lot of articles...)
B. Elgin
Basically, that is my understanding as well. However, blame doesn't really come into it as much as one might think. There is not an easy way for these banks, etc. to change things from the current system without dropping a few billion dollars in the U. S. alone. Unless someone wants to remodularize their entire software systems that track billions of transactions on a really good day. The change to open source, or any other change, is a financial mountain to hurdle.
In short, keep in mind that the cost for them to repay the full value of all the stolen money and wrongful charges in a year is likely to be miniscule in comparison to the cost of replacing CCVS. As much as we might grumble about it, the banks will do what saves them money in the short run until the need to change it becomes sufficiently great. This is the way business works. A less than ideal product that is in place is better than paying two years income to replace it.
B. Elgin
My top four (in case you care for some reason) were:
John S. McCain -- Republican
Albert (Al) Gore Jr. -- Democrat
John Hagelin -- Natural Law Party
Ralph Nader -- Green Party
I now have their websites and have been doing introductory research on all of them. I guess it is odd that I got four different parties between scores of 57 and 62 though...
One last suggestion. We might want to contact SelectSmart.com and tell them to add an internet freedom category... Unfortunately, I cannot think of how they would phrase it.
B. Elgin
"I have a right to determine what is wrong."
No one gives you a "right" to this. You're *free* to determine (for yourself) what's right and what's wrong.
Ah! So that is the nature of your distinction! I don't place that much symantic difference between rights and freedoms, so I misinterpreted your statements. I gather that you regard rights to be granted by an entity such as a government, whereas I regard them as stated in the Declaration of Independance: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness."
Free Advice #7: You have to be very patient with "morons" and explain thoroughly what you are talking about, or they start calling you names and miss the point of everything you just told them. I try to follow my own advice, but sometimes I fail.
In light of your symantic scrutiny, I amend my comments about rights to freedoms for you. People are *free* to reverse-engineer DVD for Linux if they want. People are *VERY FREE* to determine for themselves the differences between right and wrong.
But if you decide killing people is not wrong -- and you go ahead and kill someone because, well, you're an adult and you exercised your freedom to kill someone, well, you're gonna face the consequences, period.
Precisely. I never said that actions were without consequences.
B. Elgin
That is a very frightening belief, my friend. If I don't have the right to determine whether something is wrong, who does? Do you hold that power? Does some sleepy official in a courtroom somewhere who does not really care about the piece of paper he/she is reviewing? Is it an international forum of philosphers? Is this solely in the hands of a divine entity whom I apparently cannot understand? I don't know, so I believe I have the right to find out. Explain to me why I don't, please.
Number two, your comparison between "Nazi" Germany and DVDs is not only stupid, it's in incredibly bad taste.
That is your opinion, and I respect it. However, my opinion is that it is a bad idea for legal bodies to set precedents along these lines. Denying me the ability to find out about this DeCSS tool infringes on the right I believe I have. The fascist government of Germany prevented the vast majority of its citizens from determining the truth of what was going on with its treatment of people who were Jewish. I believe that treatment was wrong and I would have liked to be able to investigate it, had I been a German citizen at that time. This is an extreme example of what could happen if the "right" I illustrated was taken away.
No one has the "right" to watch DVDs on Linux.
According to the U.S. law I am familiar with, they do, if they can reverse engineer it. I wouldn't call it a fundamental right of being human, though.
True enough. Let me add two more for the record: (c) People would not leap to conclusions based on a small amount of information and (d) people would grasp that "moderation" concept.
As the .sig says, feel free to ignore my opinions if you don't like them.
B. Elgin