Look, compadre, I think we're closer together on this than you sound. N.B. - I wasn't calling us individual hogs in the sense of me-first, I said we are an "automobile-me-first society" - because, exactly as you point out, the mass transit where you live is badly run, runs infrequently enough to be inconvenient, and is a time-waster - all of which point to mass-move-slow-or-not-at-all as opposed to mass transit. IOW, others put lipstick on the pig and taught us to call it mass transit, but that doesn't make it so.
As I said in another post in this thread, I don't know if it's political will or what, but I simply hate this situation. Yeah, it's Utopian - but I'm in favor of mass transit - the real kind - the kind that predominates the Tokyo metro area (that I've experienced several weeks a year, every year for more than a decade). As others have pointed out, that system isn't perfect either, but it's not all people pushing and sardine cannery - not by a long shot.
Others in this thread decry the very large cost for the system I advocate and further point out that Japan - especially Tokyo - is far more populous than our cities. To which I argue: What? We're going to be less populous in 20 years? We're late in starting to build these systems already, much less argue about whether we should or shouldn't build it - my opinion.
Today's story is a huge plot twist in our continuing patent-troll soap opera:
The tiling mobile browser is the illegitimate love child of EMG and JMBM. It just now got a copy of its birth certificate but its conception is sure to be disputed.
(A few years ago, JMBM ran off with Dr. Michelson, to really get back at Michelson's former lover, Medtronics - but Michelson reconciled with Medtronics over the billion+ kongbucks from his collusion with JMBM. JMBM, feeling jilted but richer, found true love in the arms of EMG. Sources: see TFA and http://articles.latimes.com/2005/apr/23/business/fi-doctor23)
EMG, with its tawdry mini-skirt at the top of its thighs and panties at half-mast, revealed itself as transexual - and needed someplace to stick it. (Here's the plot twist...) Jealous that no one takes a real estate firm seriously as a technology solutions developer, EMG raged and is attempting rape of a technology solutions developer whose name was derived from a piece of real estate.
Next episode - thank your lucky stars that the tech firm wasn't from Southern California and didn't call themselves.... ORANGE!
(Guest appearance by Bender as EMG, all other roles played by Calculon.)
But I don't think you can accuse Californians of ignoring mass transit.
I'm neither a California hater nor basher. I'm attacking the American pathological behavior of non-holistic urban planning and urban problem-solving. Maybe it's our culture, maybe it's our tax codes, maybe it's our politics. Whatever it is, it sucks, doesn't work and I hate it.
CA is very cool at leading the nation in many things. It also has the tax base to accomplish what you point out.
Now - please take the lead in holistic solutions to these tough problems, and I'll be eternally grateful - as will my children and grandchildren....
Atlanta, Tokyo, NY, London, etc. work because they are spoke and hub. The bay area is a scattered mix-match of suburban and urban with jobs sites everywhere.
Maybe I'm missing something, but the Tokyo I know is better described by your second sentence than spoke and hub....
Look - I hear you. I have a hybrid, will one day have an electric.
I'll simply insist that - it seems to me - that I've heard for years why light rail is a bad idea because of the great time and cost to build it.
To make it most topical to most/. discussions - how is this not like the current crop complaining about Vista when they argued against Linux back at Win95, Win2k....?
I don't think that all CA traffic is simply a case of shorter trips. I've driven to Oakland - the hard way, cross town. I've driven from one side of Silicon Valley to the other. Those are healthy distances, made worse by gridlock. Electric vehicles may help - but light rail, not just a bit more BART - would help WAY more, imo.
Bought 'em up, tore 'em up - so we could buy more cars and tires and gas.
I dislike the counter-arguments in the Wikipedia article that the move to buses were more efficient - the light rails were already in place, so a working system was dismantled in favor of a competing one.
Some towns just have stations that are shacks by the track -- no people at the gate, just ticket machines and a platform. They trust you to drop your ticket stubs in the box before you leave.
I bow to your experience - the smallest station I was at still had the magnetic ticket reader at the gate. And you're right - I brought a lot of this criticism on myself by saying Japan instead of Tokyo. I erred.
I still say that while I was focusing on the Bay Area, in a broader sense, you've made my point - if the city is too small for a good rail infrastructure, buses will also do. I live in a moderately populous area that has neither decent rail nor bus service - but they think that they do.
I won't stick my head in the sand and say that's wrong - I believe NYC proves that out. I would suggest that more rails might solve some of that packing, however.
The worst I had it was in Yokohama. I hung on to the top strap and the crowd surge had me horizontal at one point - I kid you not.
I'd risk it. I'm so sick of the automobile-me-first society we have, I'd fucking risk it. OK - that's just me.
I cannot stress enough that if one looks at Japan on a map and sees for oneself how fucking small the Japanese island is, and how close together its population centers are...
I was discussing the Bay Area. You will note that it's size is comparable to the Tokyo area and has a lower population. I am not referring to the cross-country lines of Honshu island, I'm referring to the KEIO and JR lines.
What I propose most certainly DOES fucking scale - very, very well. So, yes - by all means - let's use the right tool for the job and implement proven solutions from similar circumstances.
I like private transport - a lot. I just think that it has its place, and that place is no where near 100%. From my time in Japan, I'd say it's less than 10%.
Because people do like going to the same places quite often - the music/bar district ('bout every town I've been in has had one), the university, the business district, the industrial areas, the shopping malls, the grocery stores. And with enough mass transit outlets, you can even get to Aunt Tillie's house pretty easily.
I rode the Metro in the DC area - and freaking hated it. It was like riding with all of the grey people of Trantor - everyone's personal space invaded because of the cattle-car approach to it all.
Mass transit doesn't have to be that way.
We might not like each other at first face-to-face. I'd rather ignore you sitting or standing next to you on a train than have you driving next to me in murderous traffic. (The you in that sentence is strictly rhetorical.)
I've lived and worked in the Bay Area. Pollution from cars is a problem. Cars are a problem.
Electric cars are not the answer. (I don't even want to imagine sitting in deadlocked traffic, heater or AC on, tunes playing, battery draining...)
Mass transit is the answer - not just BART - REAL mass transit. I cannot stress enough that if one travels to Japan and sees for oneself how fucking cool and efficient the Japanese mass rail system is - billion dollar proposals like this would die at conception.
Mass transit first - electric cars (if they're still needed, really) second.
Fuck me, America - can we try fixing problems instead of fixing symptoms - just once?!?!
For each potential anomaly locally detected, NEWS publishes its information to distributed storage. NEWS then corroborates the potential anomaly by reading anomaly reports from the same distributed store. If a sufficient number of reports indicate the same problem at the same time, the anomaly is considered confirmed and an "alarm" is raised for the user/operator.
Doesn't "publishing info to a distributed store" mean phoning home? Doesn't that include routing info - from sites you might not want to have published as associated with your torrent activities??
I do not think the biggest issue that this raises has Thing One to do with which torrent client you're using. I think it has more to do with Your Rights Online.
That said, Microsoft did the same thing with Windows Media Player, Internet Explorer, and Windows Search. Firefox enabled it by default.
I can't say about FF, but unlike MS, Safari's phone-home feature is easily turned off - btw, it was enabled by default.
Many of us have software firewalls to block these kind of accesses
The dedicated firewalls I've put up (Linux and OpenBSD) basically allowed traffic back upon request - and would allow this traffic out and back. It's been a while since I've done that (re: I'm curious, not baiting) - how do you prevent this using a firewall?
Barring some government regulation to put an end to this, which honestly won't happen...
...because no one government can control software that's distributed world wide.
I'm racking my brane for an appropriate Noam Chomsky quote - he must have one - that would basically explain that the government - any government - is the last place we'd want to look for the solution you suggest.
If there were some sort of control on the backplane (net infrastructure before end-user) for phishing, malware, spyware, virus vectors and so forth - then none of the products or companies you mention would have to go to these extreme lengths.
I'm imagining the number of designers and programmers, the number of modules, the number of source lines of code, the number of defects, the number of defect reports, the number of defect fixes, the number of products - all working against evil - all at the desktop level. Then, I'm imagining the amount of network bandwidth and cpu bandwidth taken to undertake this protection - all at the desktop level - and multiplying that by the number of desktops.
And I'm not liking the numbers I imagine - not one little bit. It adds up to a lot of waste - yes, waste.
Thinking about Mozilla, FF, MS, Apple, et al and government regulation is not even wrong. Why are we not pressuring our governments to legislate serious jail time for those responsible for all of this waste?
I'm familiar in advance with how difficult tracking some of the craftier bastards is - very familiar. But I'm also questioning if some serious consequence and fear of same might prevent this desktop-level waste...
There's no contradiction in what I'd said earlier about this concept and there being no world-wide government - let the consequences to trade be clear enough and it's financial impact known to the US, UK, EU, Jpn and so forth - and watch how quickly those in "uncontrolled" countries get - shall we call it - alignment. (And in that, I'm hoping for some clear resolution to piracy and thuggery on the high seas, as well.)
1. Government develops the concept of patents to protect the little, lone creator from amoral, robber industries - because even in groups, the creators have no defense against amoral industries. Government protection against business.
2. Developments soar - we're beyond the end-of-day-almost-off-air programming of the 60s that warned one day technology would double every year - technology doubles faster than we can measure.
3. Characters arise to be lionized and demonized in the tech age. They are given primary credit - in the mass mind (including on/.) - for their companies' successes and failures. Creation still in the hands of individuals, despite mass mindset.
4. Charlatans seize upon the opportunity, start trolling patents like crazy. It gets out of hand.
5. A business develops the patent-license-protection-clearinghouse to protect the large, rich businesses from the amoral, robber trolls' abuse of the law - because even in groups, corporations have no protection against the amoral trolls. Business protection against government.
If I invoke the name of Calculon does it help illustrate the point? It's a multi-year-long plot, very boring, very circular, and I'm calling it: Days of Our Patents.
I don't know about you guys, but I signed up decades ago to be a part of this thing called tech - not to become a forced extra in some asinine soap opera - which I fear we are all going to become part of, like it or not, know it or not.
Be like the majority of us and dislike Mac because using it is like throwing a hotdog down a hallway.
OK, I get that buried in the metaphor using food as bad sex, there's supposed to be the connection that extends the metaphor to the Mac as equivalent to bad sex.
Basically, you're being unclear as to whether you're the hotdog or the hallway - given that the hallway is always the implied negative, that'd make you the hotdog.
So, I have to agree with you - if the hallway is too big, stick to something your own size.
"My takeaway from Walt's article is that we have failed to communicate Vista's value," Russell said in an e-mail reply sent just 20 minutes after Warrier fired off his.
Where Russell is Richard Russell, a Microsoft development manager.
Not, gee whiz, the guy is telling us something, let's improve the product, here's our chance. Not, great - negative feedback is better than positive because it gives us a chance to know how to improve.
Nope. It's just let's communicate the value better - from a development manager.
This is what's wrong in every corporation that puts out a fucked up product, from my experience. I hate it.
Slashdot Mirror
Look, compadre, I think we're closer together on this than you sound. N.B. - I wasn't calling us individual hogs in the sense of me-first, I said we are an "automobile-me-first society" - because, exactly as you point out, the mass transit where you live is badly run, runs infrequently enough to be inconvenient, and is a time-waster - all of which point to mass-move-slow-or-not-at-all as opposed to mass transit. IOW, others put lipstick on the pig and taught us to call it mass transit, but that doesn't make it so.
As I said in another post in this thread, I don't know if it's political will or what, but I simply hate this situation. Yeah, it's Utopian - but I'm in favor of mass transit - the real kind - the kind that predominates the Tokyo metro area (that I've experienced several weeks a year, every year for more than a decade). As others have pointed out, that system isn't perfect either, but it's not all people pushing and sardine cannery - not by a long shot.
Others in this thread decry the very large cost for the system I advocate and further point out that Japan - especially Tokyo - is far more populous than our cities. To which I argue: What? We're going to be less populous in 20 years? We're late in starting to build these systems already, much less argue about whether we should or shouldn't build it - my opinion.
Today's story is a huge plot twist in our continuing patent-troll soap opera:
The tiling mobile browser is the illegitimate love child of EMG and JMBM. It just now got a copy of its birth certificate but its conception is sure to be disputed.
(A few years ago, JMBM ran off with Dr. Michelson, to really get back at Michelson's former lover, Medtronics - but Michelson reconciled with Medtronics over the billion+ kongbucks from his collusion with JMBM. JMBM, feeling jilted but richer, found true love in the arms of EMG. Sources: see TFA and http://articles.latimes.com/2005/apr/23/business/fi-doctor23)
EMG, with its tawdry mini-skirt at the top of its thighs and panties at half-mast, revealed itself as transexual - and needed someplace to stick it. (Here's the plot twist...) Jealous that no one takes a real estate firm seriously as a technology solutions developer, EMG raged and is attempting rape of a technology solutions developer whose name was derived from a piece of real estate.
Next episode - thank your lucky stars that the tech firm wasn't from Southern California and didn't call themselves.... ORANGE!
(Guest appearance by Bender as EMG, all other roles played by Calculon.)
I think that perhaps while CA is attacking the problem on many fronts, it's not holistic. I admit I could be wrong.
Growth exceeds planning capability, political plans dictate urban plans, short-term economics are often ahead of long-term necessities.
Perhaps I ask for Utopia to expect otherwise, but Step One is to have a Goal.
But I don't think you can accuse Californians of ignoring mass transit.
I'm neither a California hater nor basher. I'm attacking the American pathological behavior of non-holistic urban planning and urban problem-solving. Maybe it's our culture, maybe it's our tax codes, maybe it's our politics. Whatever it is, it sucks, doesn't work and I hate it.
CA is very cool at leading the nation in many things. It also has the tax base to accomplish what you point out.
Now - please take the lead in holistic solutions to these tough problems, and I'll be eternally grateful - as will my children and grandchildren....
Excellent points - although I'll have to struggle with the semantics of public vs. mass transit....
Right fucking on!
Yep. Cool and efficient, with people packers and all. Helps to have a girl in front of you that likes you, btw.
Atlanta, Tokyo, NY, London, etc. work because they are spoke and hub. The bay area is a scattered mix-match of suburban and urban with jobs sites everywhere.
Maybe I'm missing something, but the Tokyo I know is better described by your second sentence than spoke and hub....
Look - I hear you. I have a hybrid, will one day have an electric.
I'll simply insist that - it seems to me - that I've heard for years why light rail is a bad idea because of the great time and cost to build it.
To make it most topical to most /. discussions - how is this not like the current crop complaining about Vista when they argued against Linux back at Win95, Win2k....?
I don't think that all CA traffic is simply a case of shorter trips. I've driven to Oakland - the hard way, cross town. I've driven from one side of Silicon Valley to the other. Those are healthy distances, made worse by gridlock. Electric vehicles may help - but light rail, not just a bit more BART - would help WAY more, imo.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Motors_streetcar_conspiracy
Bought 'em up, tore 'em up - so we could buy more cars and tires and gas.
I dislike the counter-arguments in the Wikipedia article that the move to buses were more efficient - the light rails were already in place, so a working system was dismantled in favor of a competing one.
Some towns just have stations that are shacks by the track -- no people at the gate, just ticket machines and a platform. They trust you to drop your ticket stubs in the box before you leave.
I bow to your experience - the smallest station I was at still had the magnetic ticket reader at the gate. And you're right - I brought a lot of this criticism on myself by saying Japan instead of Tokyo. I erred.
I still say that while I was focusing on the Bay Area, in a broader sense, you've made my point - if the city is too small for a good rail infrastructure, buses will also do. I live in a moderately populous area that has neither decent rail nor bus service - but they think that they do.
I won't stick my head in the sand and say that's wrong - I believe NYC proves that out. I would suggest that more rails might solve some of that packing, however.
The worst I had it was in Yokohama. I hung on to the top strap and the crowd surge had me horizontal at one point - I kid you not.
I'd risk it. I'm so sick of the automobile-me-first society we have, I'd fucking risk it. OK - that's just me.
I cannot stress enough that if one looks at Japan on a map and sees for oneself how fucking small the Japanese island is, and how close together its population centers are...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greater_Tokyo_Area
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Francisco_Bay_Area
I was discussing the Bay Area. You will note that it's size is comparable to the Tokyo area and has a lower population. I am not referring to the cross-country lines of Honshu island, I'm referring to the KEIO and JR lines.
What I propose most certainly DOES fucking scale - very, very well. So, yes - by all means - let's use the right tool for the job and implement proven solutions from similar circumstances.
People like private transport.
Because they don't know any other way?
I like private transport - a lot. I just think that it has its place, and that place is no where near 100%. From my time in Japan, I'd say it's less than 10%.
Because people do like going to the same places quite often - the music/bar district ('bout every town I've been in has had one), the university, the business district, the industrial areas, the shopping malls, the grocery stores. And with enough mass transit outlets, you can even get to Aunt Tillie's house pretty easily.
I rode the Metro in the DC area - and freaking hated it. It was like riding with all of the grey people of Trantor - everyone's personal space invaded because of the cattle-car approach to it all.
Mass transit doesn't have to be that way.
We might not like each other at first face-to-face. I'd rather ignore you sitting or standing next to you on a train than have you driving next to me in murderous traffic. (The you in that sentence is strictly rhetorical.)
I've lived and worked in the Bay Area. Pollution from cars is a problem. Cars are a problem.
Electric cars are not the answer. (I don't even want to imagine sitting in deadlocked traffic, heater or AC on, tunes playing, battery draining...)
Mass transit is the answer - not just BART - REAL mass transit. I cannot stress enough that if one travels to Japan and sees for oneself how fucking cool and efficient the Japanese mass rail system is - billion dollar proposals like this would die at conception.
Mass transit first - electric cars (if they're still needed, really) second.
Fuck me, America - can we try fixing problems instead of fixing symptoms - just once?!?!
From the NEWS link in TFA:
For each potential anomaly locally detected, NEWS publishes its information to distributed storage. NEWS then corroborates the potential anomaly by reading anomaly reports from the same distributed store. If a sufficient number of reports indicate the same problem at the same time, the anomaly is considered confirmed and an "alarm" is raised for the user/operator.
Now - is it just me, or aren't a whole lot of people going ape over Safari (and others) phoning home information?? http://apple.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/11/25/1813241
Doesn't "publishing info to a distributed store" mean phoning home? Doesn't that include routing info - from sites you might not want to have published as associated with your torrent activities??
I do not think the biggest issue that this raises has Thing One to do with which torrent client you're using. I think it has more to do with Your Rights Online.
Why not put this on your bookmark bar and be done with it? http://slashdot.org/my/comments
That said, Microsoft did the same thing with Windows Media Player, Internet Explorer, and Windows Search. Firefox enabled it by default.
I can't say about FF, but unlike MS, Safari's phone-home feature is easily turned off - btw, it was enabled by default.
Many of us have software firewalls to block these kind of accesses
The dedicated firewalls I've put up (Linux and OpenBSD) basically allowed traffic back upon request - and would allow this traffic out and back. It's been a while since I've done that (re: I'm curious, not baiting) - how do you prevent this using a firewall?
Barring some government regulation to put an end to this, which honestly won't happen...
...because no one government can control software that's distributed world wide.
I'm racking my brane for an appropriate Noam Chomsky quote - he must have one - that would basically explain that the government - any government - is the last place we'd want to look for the solution you suggest.
If there were some sort of control on the backplane (net infrastructure before end-user) for phishing, malware, spyware, virus vectors and so forth - then none of the products or companies you mention would have to go to these extreme lengths.
I'm imagining the number of designers and programmers, the number of modules, the number of source lines of code, the number of defects, the number of defect reports, the number of defect fixes, the number of products - all working against evil - all at the desktop level. Then, I'm imagining the amount of network bandwidth and cpu bandwidth taken to undertake this protection - all at the desktop level - and multiplying that by the number of desktops.
And I'm not liking the numbers I imagine - not one little bit. It adds up to a lot of waste - yes, waste.
Thinking about Mozilla, FF, MS, Apple, et al and government regulation is not even wrong. Why are we not pressuring our governments to legislate serious jail time for those responsible for all of this waste?
I'm familiar in advance with how difficult tracking some of the craftier bastards is - very familiar. But I'm also questioning if some serious consequence and fear of same might prevent this desktop-level waste...
There's no contradiction in what I'd said earlier about this concept and there being no world-wide government - let the consequences to trade be clear enough and it's financial impact known to the US, UK, EU, Jpn and so forth - and watch how quickly those in "uncontrolled" countries get - shall we call it - alignment. (And in that, I'm hoping for some clear resolution to piracy and thuggery on the high seas, as well.)
The gold robot on Futurama? Who is a famous soap star...
Exactly. Only a star of Calculon's range could possibly hope to act this all out.
Plot^H^H^H^H History:
1. Government develops the concept of patents to protect the little, lone creator from amoral, robber industries - because even in groups, the creators have no defense against amoral industries. Government protection against business.
2. Developments soar - we're beyond the end-of-day-almost-off-air programming of the 60s that warned one day technology would double every year - technology doubles faster than we can measure.
3. Characters arise to be lionized and demonized in the tech age. They are given primary credit - in the mass mind (including on /.) - for their companies' successes and failures. Creation still in the hands of individuals, despite mass mindset.
4. Charlatans seize upon the opportunity, start trolling patents like crazy. It gets out of hand.
5. A business develops the patent-license-protection-clearinghouse to protect the large, rich businesses from the amoral, robber trolls' abuse of the law - because even in groups, corporations have no protection against the amoral trolls. Business protection against government.
If I invoke the name of Calculon does it help illustrate the point? It's a multi-year-long plot, very boring, very circular, and I'm calling it: Days of Our Patents.
I don't know about you guys, but I signed up decades ago to be a part of this thing called tech - not to become a forced extra in some asinine soap opera - which I fear we are all going to become part of, like it or not, know it or not.
Be like the majority of us and dislike Mac because using it is like throwing a hotdog down a hallway.
OK, I get that buried in the metaphor using food as bad sex, there's supposed to be the connection that extends the metaphor to the Mac as equivalent to bad sex.
Basically, you're being unclear as to whether you're the hotdog or the hallway - given that the hallway is always the implied negative, that'd make you the hotdog.
So, I have to agree with you - if the hallway is too big, stick to something your own size.
The superficiality is getting to you, my friend.
Truer words were never spoken.
From TFA:
"My takeaway from Walt's article is that we have failed to communicate Vista's value," Russell said in an e-mail reply sent just 20 minutes after Warrier fired off his.
Where Russell is Richard Russell, a Microsoft development manager.
Not, gee whiz, the guy is telling us something, let's improve the product, here's our chance. Not, great - negative feedback is better than positive because it gives us a chance to know how to improve.
Nope. It's just let's communicate the value better - from a development manager.
This is what's wrong in every corporation that puts out a fucked up product, from my experience. I hate it.
I'm a Canadian, and proud to be one.
Canadian, proud - and anonymous. Got it!
(Seriously, you post was interesting, I have nothing against you or Canada - but... dude - seriously, ok?)
But, we are all going to have to get over seeing them as ugly or migratory-bird killers for this program to work.
As if carrying a coconut by the husk isn't hard enough already!
The name you seem to be looking for is John Sculley.