The article doesn't mention Cato's stand; is this some kind of astroturfing?
I think that the poster was referring to Cato with respect to California's energy "deregulation."
For that matter, Cato and deregulation are more than a little wierd. Their stance is that there ought to be nothing constraining corporations...
I'd be highly surprised if you could point me at a Cato paper in which they said that... I seriously doubt that anybody, for example, thinks that a corporation should be able to assassinate its competition.
Don't be silly. The system should be based on an OS that is proven hard-core stable and real-time, like QNX, Microware OS-9/9k, etc.
While I really wish more people thought like you (especially a few years back:), "proven" has gained a stronger meaning than the original one of "tested". Is there any commercial OS that has various nice properties such as correctness, fairness of scheduling, and the like proven?
Someone needs to write a book titled....
on
The Saga of Katie.com
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· Score: 1, Funny
penguin.com--that would be a good title for a book about business uses of Linux, wouldn't it?
Voice recognition isn't perfect, doesn't work in noisy environments, and has inherent privacy problems.
Admittedly, there's probably not much need for typing classes, or rather, there are programs to teach typing, so that the instructor can concentrate mostly on things other than the mechanics--though you'll always want a sentient instructor who can watch you type and keep you from learning bad habits, just as you need one when learning to use the 88-key flavor of keyboard.
I've never tried Debian, but if they come up with an installation setup easier than Gentoo's, they will definitely have something. I'd only installed the more hand-holding distros (RH/Fedora and Mandrake) before trying Gentoo, but using their installation guide and starting with a Stage Two install I waltzed right through it. I look forward to seeing the new Debian release.
OK. In this book, the US is a nation of dunces--but somehow all the infrastructure to keep the Feed, the high-tech GM food functions. The people who run that clearly can't be the mindless, attention-span-of-a gnat zombies that the author posits the general public has become...and they can all be counted on, or coerced to, not object to the hell that life has turned into.
For that matter, somehow this country of imbeciles can afford to buy the latest gewgaws. How? What can they trade for money? Organs? Blood plasma? Drool? (Doubtful, given the genetic technology implied.)
I don't think the author has thought things through; probably didn't figure he or she had to--after all, he's pushing all the fashionable buttons for the Rage Against the Machine set.
Re:The future sucks, it always does
on
Feed
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· Score: 4, Insightful
Agreed--SF writers aren't Luddites. Remember the words of Lloyd Biggle, Jr. (if you don't know who he is, you have some good reading ahead of you): given a bunch of people in a sewer, mainstream literature will write at great, delighted length about the people who stay there; SF writers will write about the people trying to get out.
Daniel Grotta-Kurska's biography Tolkien: Architect of Middle Earth. A fascinating and sympathetic biography, that closes with the perfect anecdote.
Lin Carter's book on LOTR, whose title I don't remember, but which delves into the mythology from which Tolkien drew. I own a copy of the paperback of this, and have a small hope that it will be worth something someday because of a typo on the back cover: said cover lists the chapter titles, and one, "The Trilogy: Satire or Allegory?" is misprinted as "The Trilogy: Satire or Allergy?" Perhaps this is an early example of spellchecking at work.
I wouldn't think it would make much sense to just replace some books. If you still have to buy bookcases anyway, what's the point?
I want comparable color and spatial resolution and display size to print, and a display large enough that if I'm reading about the pre-Raphaelites, I don't have to scroll around to see more than the Lady of Shalott's nose or see a postage-stamp size image. (Even if I'm reading about a programming language, I want to be able to see a whole function at once.)
As others have mentioned, I want to be able to annotate my books. I want to be able to lend ebooks just as I can lend dead tree books. And there'd better not be an expiration date on ebooks if they want my money.
I can flip back and forth between pages in a dead tree book. I can find a place to first order approximation by knowing about how far into the book I should open it, and if it's a place I refer to a lot, it will fall open to it.
I guess I can do without being able to press flowers in an ebook, but there need to be replacements for the other book functions.
I wish someone would take this design a step farther. That is, since they are supplying the motherboard, power supply, and case there is a perfect opportunity to tie the components that get hot to the case.
Ouch. That would be a lawsuit waiting to happen. I can see the headlines now: "Little old lady holds SFF computer between her legs while trying to get the Live CD out of the case..."
First - notice the POV - complain - right away it's a negative relationship. Pointing out improvements is a way to get OSS better - and a valuable contribution as if someone wrote code - because it makes a tool more useful.
In a market, it's not a negative relationship (aside from a few who do nothing but complain), because the people writing the code benefit from listening to complaints. Respond to user feedback and you are rewarded with money from repeat and new business. How can one generate equivalent motivation for OSS?
Actually, in the robot stories, it's the Spacers who go in for major life extension technology; Earth doesn't. Also, when in "Liar!" Calvin uses makeup, the results are disastrous--surely any woman who is attractive in her youth would have better skills in that regard.
Tolkien didn't rubber stamp the LOTR trilogy either, but that doesn't reflect whether or not the movies themselves were able to stand on their own.
Well, perhaps, but... suppose the LOTR movies had Gandalf in a Superfly suit and disco dwarves? Or they'd found a script about sex and industrial espionage in the jewelry industry, changed a few characters' names to match those of Tolkien characters, titled it LOTR and said it was "suggested by the works of J.R.R. Tolkien"--heck, they're both about rings, right?
The robotic Muhammad was kind of funny, and actually more along the lines of breakdown I would expect in something so advanced as they are supposed to be, but I am pretty sure I would be offended by it if I were a Muslim.
Robot Muhammed? I presume you're referring to "Reason." The reasoning process the robot goes through struck me as very Thomistic; if Asimov was making fun of anything, I think it was of Christian apologetics.
Re:Check out the Ebert review... (minor *SPOILER*)
on
I, Robot Hits the Theaters
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· Score: 2, Insightful
Ebert's heart is in the right place, but he appears to heavily misunderstand something. Concerning the Three Laws, Ebert writes:
Every schoolchild knows the laws were set down by the good doctor Isaac Asimov, after a conversation he had on Dec. 23, 1940, with John W. Campbell, the legendary editor of Astounding Science Fiction. It is peculiar that no one in the film knows that, especially since the film is "based on the book by Isaac Asimov." Would it have killed the filmmakers to credit Asimov?
Of course, not every schoolchild knows that, sad to say, but...Ebert seems to be confusing reality with story. In the fictional world of Asimov's stories, Asimov didn't come up with the laws--some researcher at USR&MM did. Is he bothered that there's not a bit at the end of Moby Dick where Ishmael credits Herman Melville for helping him write his memoirs? I don't think so...
That said--this is what would have been a mediocre to fair SF detective story, originally titled Hardwired, that Hollywood vermin decided to hastily retrofit with Asimovisms. In the process they turn Susan Calvin, an old maid who doesn't suffer fools gladly, into eye candy; they turn the highly Luddite Earth population of Asimov's stories into happy robot users; they turn Asimov's robots, that fry their brains when they even contemplate injuring a human, into things that throw people around the room and jump on cars to try to cause a wreck. Had they not done so, I might have gone to see Hardwired. Since they did... no way in hell will I do anything that would support the people responsible.
MINOR SPOILER:
It's mentioned on IMDB that the hero's antipathy towards robots is caused by a long-ago decision by a robot to rescue him from drowning rather than a little girl. An Asimovian robot would either have assured itself that the girl could rescue herself, or would sit on the shore catatonic because no matter what action it took someone would die. (I presume that this falls under a scenario listed in the article on problems with the Three Laws.) This is the sort of thing that makes me wonder whether the people involved bothered to actually read any Asimov.
For the next 20 years, John dedicated his career to representing families and children hurt by the indifference and negligence of others. Standing up against the powerful insurance industry and their armies of lawyers, John helped these families... (from John Kerry's web site)
Ah...helping by taking doctors to the cleaners based on junk science claims, and topping off presentations to the jury by trance channeling the unborn. (See this New York Times article for details.) One wonders how such people live with themselves.
Slashdot Mirror
The article doesn't mention Cato's stand; is this some kind of astroturfing?
I think that the poster was referring to Cato with respect to California's energy "deregulation."
For that matter, Cato and deregulation are more than a little wierd. Their stance is that there ought to be nothing constraining corporations...
I'd be highly surprised if you could point me at a Cato paper in which they said that... I seriously doubt that anybody, for example, thinks that a corporation should be able to assassinate its competition.
This is just begging for a Ren and Stimpy parody...
"Oh, my beautiful GNOME taskbar!"
"Will he press the reset button? Can he resist the bright, candy-colored reset button?"
"NO, I CAN'T!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"
Don't be silly. The system should be based on an OS that is proven hard-core stable and real-time, like QNX, Microware OS-9/9k, etc.
:), "proven" has gained a stronger meaning than the original one of "tested". Is there any commercial OS that has various nice properties such as correctness, fairness of scheduling, and the like proven?
While I really wish more people thought like you (especially a few years back
penguin.com--that would be a good title for a book about business uses of Linux, wouldn't it?
Voice recognition isn't perfect, doesn't work in noisy environments, and has inherent privacy problems.
Admittedly, there's probably not much need for typing classes, or rather, there are programs to teach typing, so that the instructor can concentrate mostly on things other than the mechanics--though you'll always want a sentient instructor who can watch you type and keep you from learning bad habits, just as you need one when learning to use the 88-key flavor of keyboard.
I've never tried Debian, but if they come up with an installation setup easier than Gentoo's, they will definitely have something. I'd only installed the more hand-holding distros (RH/Fedora and Mandrake) before trying Gentoo, but using their installation guide and starting with a Stage Two install I waltzed right through it. I look forward to seeing the new Debian release.
OK. In this book, the US is a nation of dunces--but somehow all the infrastructure to keep the Feed, the high-tech GM food functions. The people who run that clearly can't be the mindless, attention-span-of-a gnat zombies that the author posits the general public has become...and they can all be counted on, or coerced to, not object to the hell that life has turned into.
For that matter, somehow this country of imbeciles can afford to buy the latest gewgaws. How? What can they trade for money? Organs? Blood plasma? Drool? (Doubtful, given the genetic technology implied.)
I don't think the author has thought things through; probably didn't figure he or she had to--after all, he's pushing all the fashionable buttons for the Rage Against the Machine set.
Agreed--SF writers aren't Luddites. Remember the words of Lloyd Biggle, Jr. (if you don't know who he is, you have some good reading ahead of you): given a bunch of people in a sewer, mainstream literature will write at great, delighted length about the people who stay there; SF writers will write about the people trying to get out.
In SciFi is there any other kind [of future America than dystopian]?
Yes, though dystopias and Ludditism have been very fashionable since WWII.
I can recommend two that I've read:
Daniel Grotta-Kurska's biography Tolkien: Architect of Middle Earth. A fascinating and sympathetic biography, that closes with the perfect anecdote.
Lin Carter's book on LOTR, whose title I don't remember, but which delves into the mythology from which Tolkien drew. I own a copy of the paperback of this, and have a small hope that it will be worth something someday because of a typo on the back cover: said cover lists the chapter titles, and one, "The Trilogy: Satire or Allegory?" is misprinted as "The Trilogy: Satire or Allergy?" Perhaps this is an early example of spellchecking at work.
I wouldn't think it would make much sense to just replace some books. If you still have to buy bookcases anyway, what's the point?
I want comparable color and spatial resolution and display size to print, and a display large enough that if I'm reading about the pre-Raphaelites, I don't have to scroll around to see more than the Lady of Shalott's nose or see a postage-stamp size image. (Even if I'm reading about a programming language, I want to be able to see a whole function at once.)
As others have mentioned, I want to be able to annotate my books. I want to be able to lend ebooks just as I can lend dead tree books. And there'd better not be an expiration date on ebooks if they want my money.
I can flip back and forth between pages in a dead tree book. I can find a place to first order approximation by knowing about how far into the book I should open it, and if it's a place I refer to a lot, it will fall open to it.
I guess I can do without being able to press flowers in an ebook, but there need to be replacements for the other book functions.
I wish someone would take this design a step farther. That is, since they are supplying the motherboard, power supply, and case there is a perfect opportunity to tie the components that get hot to the case.
Ouch. That would be a lawsuit waiting to happen. I can see the headlines now: "Little old lady holds SFF computer between her legs while trying to get the Live CD out of the case..."
Seems like overkill to me, though the form factor is nice.
First - notice the POV - complain - right away it's a negative relationship. Pointing out improvements is a way to get OSS better - and a valuable contribution as if someone wrote code - because it makes a tool more useful.
In a market, it's not a negative relationship (aside from a few who do nothing but complain), because the people writing the code benefit from listening to complaints. Respond to user feedback and you are rewarded with money from repeat and new business. How can one generate equivalent motivation for OSS?
...for listening to Oak, Ash, & Thorn!
Hey, it makes sense. "Oops! I Did It Again" is the perfect song for the umpteenth BSOD.
Let's see; the things that stood out when I looked at it were:
.wmf files (e.g. Xine, MPlayer) or tell anyone how they can find them.
The Company Formerly Known as Lindows agrees not to contest any MS trademarks ever again.
TCFKaL agrees to no longer distributes programs that can display
Actually, in the robot stories, it's the Spacers who go in for major life extension technology; Earth doesn't. Also, when in "Liar!" Calvin uses makeup, the results are disastrous--surely any woman who is attractive in her youth would have better skills in that regard.
Tolkien didn't rubber stamp the LOTR trilogy either, but that doesn't reflect whether or not the movies themselves were able to stand on their own.
Well, perhaps, but... suppose the LOTR movies had Gandalf in a Superfly suit and disco dwarves? Or they'd found a script about sex and industrial espionage in the jewelry industry, changed a few characters' names to match those of Tolkien characters, titled it LOTR and said it was "suggested by the works of J.R.R. Tolkien"--heck, they're both about rings, right?
OK...where can we find the blazon for his coat of arms? (If there's any justice, it ought to suggest a BSOD.)
The robotic Muhammad was kind of funny, and actually more along the lines of breakdown I would expect in something so advanced as they are supposed to be, but I am pretty sure I would be offended by it if I were a Muslim.
Robot Muhammed? I presume you're referring to "Reason." The reasoning process the robot goes through struck me as very Thomistic; if Asimov was making fun of anything, I think it was of Christian apologetics.
Of course, not every schoolchild knows that, sad to say, but...Ebert seems to be confusing reality with story. In the fictional world of Asimov's stories, Asimov didn't come up with the laws--some researcher at USR&MM did. Is he bothered that there's not a bit at the end of Moby Dick where Ishmael credits Herman Melville for helping him write his memoirs? I don't think so...
That said--this is what would have been a mediocre to fair SF detective story, originally titled Hardwired, that Hollywood vermin decided to hastily retrofit with Asimovisms. In the process they turn Susan Calvin, an old maid who doesn't suffer fools gladly, into eye candy; they turn the highly Luddite Earth population of Asimov's stories into happy robot users; they turn Asimov's robots, that fry their brains when they even contemplate injuring a human, into things that throw people around the room and jump on cars to try to cause a wreck. Had they not done so, I might have gone to see Hardwired. Since they did... no way in hell will I do anything that would support the people responsible.
MINOR SPOILER:
It's mentioned on IMDB that the hero's antipathy towards robots is caused by a long-ago decision by a robot to rescue him from drowning rather than a little girl. An Asimovian robot would either have assured itself that the girl could rescue herself, or would sit on the shore catatonic because no matter what action it took someone would die. (I presume that this falls under a scenario listed in the article on problems with the Three Laws.) This is the sort of thing that makes me wonder whether the people involved bothered to actually read any Asimov.
"The Gray Lady is a beautiful clipper ship, but it's losing steam..."
--media consultant Vin Crosbie, from TFA
For the next 20 years, John dedicated his career to representing families and children hurt by the indifference and negligence of others. Standing up against the powerful insurance industry and their armies of lawyers, John helped these families... (from John Kerry's web site)
Ah...helping by taking doctors to the cleaners based on junk science claims, and topping off presentations to the jury by trance channeling the unborn. (See this New York Times article for details.) One wonders how such people live with themselves.
Check out Mr. Sowell's biography. I seriously doubt that he's responsible for the web site's design.