An ad campaign. Only one ad for TV (run multiple times) and a print campaign.
Both would use images from "1984", with subtext saying things like "The Government wants to tap your phone line without a warrent", "The Government wants to control your speech on the Internet", etc etc. It should then briefly tell people how to 'fight' it, by either writing their representatives, or even better, vote the ones that voted these bills in out.
The problem is with laws and regulations like this is that 99% of the general public either doesn't know about it or doesn't care. Only until their rights are completely gone will they wish they paid attention. And unfortunately, the media seems to be avoiding these issues, as well as the fact that with 2000 being an election year in the US, none of the candidates have even mentioned the Internet or privacy or freedom of speech issues. Without knowledges, the 99% will continue to live happily as their rights are abolished.
However, if we push an ad campaign *NOW*, gettings ads out during the Nov-Dec-Jan months, and make enough of an issue about it, it might force the candidates to bring it up themselves, and that itself might help us (those that care about our rights) to vote wisely. It would also make the press take notice, *HOPEFULLY*.
Now, unfortunately, none of the major players for fighting these types of regulars have the money. But I'd being willing to send in a small donation to help produce and push the ads into the mainstream. As I'm sure a lot of others do to.
I agree here -- there's many possible problems that can occur from this movie.
First, I doubt that with OSC's involvement, the movie will succum to the summer-blockbuster problems (with tons of special effects and no character development). He'll do his darnest to keep the book true to the movie.
However, Ender's Game suffers from the problem that to be done properly, it's got to be done with special effects (the war room *HAS* to be in the movie, and that ABSOLUTELY requires the anti-grav special effects), but it's also got to be cerebrial; Ender's suffering in the Battle School has to be felt, as well as setting up for the big mindfsck at the end. These two attitudes in Hollywood don't mix well, IMO. The Matrix has been the closest to mixing the two but the character development in that was a bit weak. (Keanu? HHAHAHAHAHAH:-). I would also argue about Contact being a decent mix, although the characters are a bit cardboard-ish there as well, from Sagan's original text. The question is, will OSC and gang be able to convince the marketers to keep their hands off the final product, and actually put out a quality SF movie that doesn't need the SFX to get ravings.
While you might not be able to access the powerful features of the board, you can always use nVidia's TNT reference drivers (WinXX only, sorry) to use the card.
He's got a point. Although I'd REALLY argue those numbers.
Take the average Windoze user with Office installed. User is typing a 50 page report, and Windoze crashes. Drat.
Restart the computer.. even on good size HDs, the scandisk program will take about 5 minutes to get through.
Open Word. Assuming no options have been changed from the default settings, there should be a version that is no more than 10 minutes old sitting on the computer. Load up and make changes. 20 minutes max to get back to the point where it was before.
Agreed, there are people and programs that don't save often, but that's their own fault. When you work with ANY computer system, you should know this as a hard and fast rule.
I also wonder about his 1 crash/day/person. My winbox at home has yet to crash from the OS in the last month. (I've had to do restarts because Half-Life didn't work right but...). I'm in charge of 2 windows boxes at work that have been running for about a month without a need to restart. I think that a properly tuned/setup Winbox is rather unfallible to crashes... not that the stability of Linux isn't tons better than this, but it's a lot more than Moody makes out.
I know this is a hoax, but it can be easy enough to show that email can never replace snail mail (If anything, email is replacing the telephone, and we already see how the industry is fighting that).
Bills - How the heck would this work? The bill is my receipt for services rendered, and without the paper copy, I have no prove that they provided me services, and thus, I can ignore paying it:-). Yes, we're getting close to e-bill payments, but until every American is wired, snail mail will still exist.
Cards - I'm not necessarily prompting the greeting card industry, but the online greeting card sites will never replace the cards you send out on holidays and for the all important Mother's Day. (They may suppliment these cards, but think of the heck you'd pay if you only sent an electronic card...
Magazines - Magazines will never be ousted by online versions until you can drag the computer into the bathroom or the bus to work. A substancial bulk of snail mail is for this.
Soliciatations - Nobody likes spam, but surprising, snail mail marketing works more than email marketing. Take a look at how far Publishier's Clearinghouse got before they were basically punched in the stomach. Besides, I'd much rather get a soliciation in the snail mail box, as that can be tosses with no cost to me, as opposed to email spam that may cost me online connection time.
Email and Snail Mail are two different worlds; there's some overlap, but the two services work simulataneously as opposed to competitively.
Software licensing today to sites are already like this. Generally, pay a yearly fee for X users of a program at any time. So this might work industrially... but it's nothing new.
Ballmer however proposed this for home use. Let's look at the average software that will be installed on a home computer:
WinXX MS Office MS IE MS Outlook Express Netscape HomeSite Shareware Apps Games
Which of the parties involved is going to profit most from this deal? The idea of software rentals is basically trying to squeeze as much $$$ from the home market as it can, as the software itself is generally a fixed purchase.. buy once, that's it.
Unfortunately, this will catch on by other software companies because, yes, it is a way to continue to get revenue for a piece of software already bought.
The Free Software Movement is poised to undermine the large corporations if this move does go though within the next few years, of course. Consider the number of people that are buying those close-to-free PCs with the requirement to buy 3yrs of ISP service. The rebates at most $400, but in the end, you'll be paying $720 for the service. Why do people like this? They only have to pay once for everyone, and it never crosses their mind again. If Free Software can offer home users one less bill they have to pay, that's a big bonus for it.
...it take forever to get anything done. Remember, this case came about because of Win98. It's expected that by the time the appeals are done with, we'll know the fate of MS in 2001. That's *3* years, and in the computing industry, 3 years is several generations of product development, and by then, the whole point of this case "browser integration" might be well accepted (as it is, there's no prove yet that the browserOS combo is viable for users... the next trick will be IM, as previously taked about here), and any punishment on MS will be null and void.
Someone else mentioned education and advocacy as a way to fight the juggernaut. The problem is, MS has about as much money to send in those same areas as nearly all competitors combined. Why does MS continue to publish ads about Win98 and Office and NT and whatnot? They've already got 90% of the desktop, and most likely can't pull the 10% their way; Instead, they advertize to KEEP theiy monopoly, mindwashing the users that MS products are superior, and as long as they can put the money where their mouth is, things like Linux and MacOS and other programs can only dent the MS shell, and certainly not breach it.
The US needs a court that would be strictly for handling monopoly cases like this, only because the speed of business is several times faster than the speed of the judical system. A system where you have a month to prepare your case, and a week of court time, maximum, and that's it. If an appeal is to be made, it should go to the Suprieme Court, with no other layers in between. I know that it sounds strict, but the fact is that many businesses already wiggle their way under the law, so why not make them more accountable and with more haste?
If this happend with MS and DOJ, we'd already have a Supreme Court decision (whether a decision of the case, or not hearing the case at all and letting the lower court judgement stand), and that's it.
The movie itself is an Italian-French coproduction. Still, be warned.
Second, there's an extra showing of the episode at 9 pm EDT on SciFi tonight. It will also be on at 11pm, and then next Saturday at 11am EDT. After this, MST3K will only be shown on Saturdays at that time slot (LOUSY!)
What really needs to be done is....
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We need to find a body of people, including free speech advocates, ACLU-like lawyers, and companies that would have vested interest in such, and prepare a report that YOU CANNOT REGULATE THE INTERNET. The lawmakers need to know that, number 1, the internet is NOT the US's property. This report should be presented orally to the House and Congress, as well as sent in written form to all lawmakers, at ALL levels of government.
No, we're not trying to lie pockets, but we have to make them informed. Then, if a bill like the above is introduced, we can elect someone to whap the person over the head with a hammer.
Re:"Laws" and "Bills" are NOT the same thing!
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In Slashdot Terms:
A 'Bill' is equivalent to a submitted story.
A 'Law' is equivalent to a posted story.
Basically, a bill is the introduction of any legislation into either Senate or the House. The bill, once introduced, is sent to both the Senate and House, and each sends it to a committee to 'adjust' the details. (Sometimes there are changes due to party issues or other things....), then the bill goes back to both houses. If a majority in both houses, but there are changes in the bill, then both committees work to adjust the bill, then it's revoted on (the same version now) in both houses. If still a majority from both, it's sent to the Pres' desk, and if he signs it, AT THAT POINT, it becomes Law. (I probably have a detail wrong somewhere, but the gist is there:-)
The best result which could cause a dust plume would have been if the impact hit a buried chunk of ice, suddently converting the remaining energy into an underground steam explosion.
...converting the moon's atmosphere into a viable human-breathable one within MOMENTS of impact? Oh, wait, that's only if Arnold was there:-)
Us: Hey, they want to ban all encryption. E-Commerce: Fine by us. Us: That means SSL is dead, and passwords and credit cards will be sent in the plaintext. Consumers: We won't shop the net anymore! E-Commerce: Eeep! Hey, Feds, here's a big bag of money! Gov't: Um, we suddenly have no problem with encryption. Us: Yay! (Heck, special interests work for most groups, why not here?)
Seriously, to ban any encryption on the net is nearly impossible. And again, are criminals (the ones they are fighting against) going to care if encryption software is legal or not?
I remember me and my friend being vastly disappointed by Johnny Mnemonic. "I want room service" was a TERRIBLE LINE!
However, it's hard to believe that bit of tripe *WAS* from William Gibson's hand (And I am talking about the screenplay, not the original work... here's the IMDB entry for JM.
I think at the time of the production of the movie, there was talk of a Neuromancer movie, but no definite word, so I have a feeling that Gibson tried to encorporate a few of the elements that existed in the other Neuromancer books into this (as well as his more recent series which the name slips, but the bridge is a definitely pointer to that). It obviously didn't work very well.
My only concern is that Neuromancer is good at two levels: the idea of cyberspace and what the real world is like because of it, and the writing style such that you can read it twice and get two different impressions of what's going on. It's not that Gibson is vague, but his language is used so well that the reader's emotions will read into the story. Sometimes when I read it, Case is the good guy, sometimes he's an innocent being dragged along by Wintermute, and sometime's he's the villian, cracking into 3Jane's private life. There is no way in heck that the movie can convey that; instead, we *ARE* going to know what finally happens, FOR SURE, and the mystism of the book will be wrecked. He might be able to keep some ideas arguable (For example, this was done with the woman scientist on the plane in the final scene of 12 Monkeys; how exactly was she in "insurance"?) but I believe that after seeing this movie, I will never be able to read Case as any of the 3 situations above.
The senator that wants to introduce this is aiming to use it to curb illegal immigration. Based on his comments, I doubt that he was aware of privacy concerns at the time.
Also be aware that everyone's favorite organization, the ACLU, is already all over this, warning of its privacy violations for trying to something as 'bad' as illegal immigration.
Re:AMD K6 400 and MB only 150 bucks
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Except that the average person is not going to be able to put this together into their own system. I myself could probably could, but I'd bet about 95% of the computer users out there would go out to get some dip for their new computer chip...
Side Note: FPS Games and computer power
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While reading through the comments already made, and see ppl brag on their 400+ MHZ machines with Voodoo3, and cable modems and etc, I'm wondering if the current trend in minimum requirements in game computers is surpassing what the average game buyer will be able to afford or willing to upgrade readily.
Quake 3 is not over this curve; I've got a 200MHZ machine with 64 megs RAM and a TNT card with 16megs video ram and a 56k modem; sure, I'm not getting 2 ms pings (more like 200-300) and frame rates are in the 20s, not 100s, but *IT IS STILL QUITE PLAYABLE*. The same goes with games like Half-Life and Unreal.
However, as game designers continue to want to add more features, I'm concerned that they are going to forget that they actually have to make a sale to a consumer, and are hurting themselves in the end. While Unreal, for example, is playable on my system above, and given that only recently has the support for TNT cards been added, it's still well known that the game plays several magnitudes better with one of their suggested configurations: a Voodoo2 board with a 300MHZ PII processor and 128Megs of ram. Unreal came out just more than a year ago, and yet, I doubt that this configuraion can be claimed as average by consumers.
Maybe the increasing requirements for hardware are why games like Q2 (nicely playable on a low end pentium machine) are more popular for netplay than these new breads.
And what also gets me is that these game programs are getting more out of control of than more useful programs: the OS, office applications, and such. I would not be surprised to see some game in months to come to require more from the hardware than what Win2000 will require.... which really hasn't been the case until now.
Maybe because my involvement with the true technical part of computer businesses are rather weak, but *why* does everyone have to locate in SV?
First, it's understandable that existing businesses aren't going to be moving anytime soon.
It's also understandable that most employees will want to be near a major cities for their cultural/ entertainment needs.
And then there's the factor of being close to other similar business in order to do business with them.
But, as the ad from an IBM commercial above indicates, why not start these startup companies in other tech-savvy areas of the country - Dallas, Houston, Boston, etc.? The internet make nearly all business-related concerns negliable - You can video conference, share code and documents, and a whole bunch of stuff, and rather cheaply too.
IMO, I cannot find pity for the situation save for those 'poor' workers. I was in SF about 2 years ago for a few days, and even then, saw was the Valley's cost of living is. It's a situation that seems to have been let build to this point by the 'high culturites' of SF and those that provide the services of living.
One of the things this essay doesn't mention or cover is that, save for about 1 or 2 articles a week (~2%) most of the stories that/. carries are pointers to other stories on other more traditional web news sources. Thus, instead of being original material, the material is borrowed. (Mind you, I'm sure I'm not the only one to think that this way works well with/. - it's a sorta-idoit filter, prevents me from seeing a lot of the crap that, say, news.com posts about 'Yet Another NT Usage!' that I could care less about.). Thus, trying to compare slashdot to news.com, or cnn.com, or usatoday.com, is like comparing apples to oranges. A better comparison is to yahoo.com or other portal sites that summarize news from other places for you, but that don't necessarily offer commentary about it. (Heck you could also add Reader's Digest to this area; few of the articles in RD are original in terms of the RD publishers, most are personal stories sent in by readers and articles borrowed from other magazines). Additionally, slashdot can be compared on the same groups to a place like aint-it-cool-news.com which does offer user commentary, but the pics of the articles are generally limited to the whims of the site maintainers, and not to, as pointed out, the voluntary load of newshounds.
I don't think the slashdot model is perfect yet (I *DO* strongly agree that there could be more discussion topics/news articles that are accepted, then use a priority-type system to those, so that the sumbission process is more open and reflects a larger cross section of the slashdot readership instead of just 2 or 3 people, but that's Rob's decision to run it this way). But in getting away from standard media into new ways of delievering news, slashdot has lead the pack.
Coming from academia myself, while it's not competition-driven, you do NOT want to fully publish your results until you have complete proof-of-concept; especially in lucritive areas like this, there are dozens of other labs (US and int'l) watching for advances like this, and they might be able to beat you to the punch if you leak too many details. In this case, this could cost the group a patent, a grant, or other rewards for coming up with the first proof-of-concept.
That's why articles like this, or the one about teleportation being possible from about 6 months ago, or many other of the science articles being posted to/., are sketchy in details, as the group is strongly protecting their potental assets.
I submitted this bit a while ago when it was announced, but... Apparently, because of the recent youth violence problems, WB will *not* be releasing the Matrix for VHS sales; You'll be able to rent it on VHS (or buy a rental copy at only $100 a pop), and you'll be able to buy it on DVD. However, the WB's thinking is that teens will have less access to a DVD player than a VHS player, and thus, this strategy will reduce the number of times teenagers can watch the movie. This move is expected to cost WB $50 million in spectulated VHS sales.
Slashdot Mirror
Both would use images from "1984", with subtext saying things like "The Government wants to tap your phone line without a warrent", "The Government wants to control your speech on the Internet", etc etc. It should then briefly tell people how to 'fight' it, by either writing their representatives, or even better, vote the ones that voted these bills in out.
The problem is with laws and regulations like this is that 99% of the general public either doesn't know about it or doesn't care. Only until their rights are completely gone will they wish they paid attention. And unfortunately, the media seems to be avoiding these issues, as well as the fact that with 2000 being an election year in the US, none of the candidates have even mentioned the Internet or privacy or freedom of speech issues. Without knowledges, the 99% will continue to live happily as their rights are abolished.
However, if we push an ad campaign *NOW*, gettings ads out during the Nov-Dec-Jan months, and make enough of an issue about it, it might force the candidates to bring it up themselves, and that itself might help us (those that care about our rights) to vote wisely. It would also make the press take notice, *HOPEFULLY*.
Now, unfortunately, none of the major players for fighting these types of regulars have the money. But I'd being willing to send in a small donation to help produce and push the ads into the mainstream. As I'm sure a lot of others do to.
John Cleese as the replacement for Q in the :-)
next and any further Bond films. The case is
reopened
First, I doubt that with OSC's involvement, the movie will succum to the summer-blockbuster problems (with tons of special effects and no character development). He'll do his darnest to keep the book true to the movie.
However, Ender's Game suffers from the problem that to be done properly, it's got to be done with special effects (the war room *HAS* to be in the movie, and that ABSOLUTELY requires the anti-grav special effects), but it's also got to be cerebrial; Ender's suffering in the Battle School has to be felt, as well as setting up for the big mindfsck at the end. These two attitudes in Hollywood don't mix well, IMO. The Matrix has been the closest to mixing the two but the character development in that was a bit weak. (Keanu? HHAHAHAHAHAH :-). I would also argue about Contact being a decent mix, although the characters are a bit cardboard-ish there as well, from Sagan's original text. The question is, will OSC and gang be able to convince the marketers to keep their hands off the final product, and actually put out a quality SF movie that doesn't need the SFX to get ravings.
Or, from another failed book-gone-movie:
"I WANT ROOM SERVICE!"
While you might not be able to access the powerful
features of the board, you can always use
nVidia's TNT reference drivers (WinXX only, sorry)
to use the card.
Take the average Windoze user with Office installed. User is typing a 50 page report, and Windoze crashes. Drat.
Restart the computer.. even on good size HDs, the scandisk program will take about 5 minutes to get through.
Open Word. Assuming no options have been changed from the default settings, there should be a version that is no more than 10 minutes old sitting on the computer. Load up and make changes. 20 minutes max to get back to the point where it was before.
Agreed, there are people and programs that don't save often, but that's their own fault. When you work with ANY computer system, you should know this as a hard and fast rule.
I also wonder about his 1 crash/day/person. My winbox at home has yet to crash from the OS in the last month. (I've had to do restarts because Half-Life didn't work right but...). I'm in charge of 2 windows boxes at work that have been running for about a month without a need to restart. I think that a properly tuned/setup Winbox is rather unfallible to crashes... not that the stability of Linux isn't tons better than this, but it's a lot more than Moody makes out.
Hopefully they can keep:
"Keyboard Error. Press F1 to continue"
to show that email can never replace snail mail
(If anything, email is replacing the telephone,
and we already see how the industry is fighting
that).
Bills - How the heck would this work? The bill is my receipt for services
rendered, and without the paper copy, I have
no prove that they provided me services, and
thus, I can ignore paying it
we're getting close to e-bill payments, but
until every American is wired, snail mail will
still exist.
Cards - I'm not necessarily
prompting the greeting card industry, but
the online greeting card sites will never replace
the cards you send out on holidays and for
the all important Mother's Day. (They may
suppliment these cards, but think of the heck you'd pay if you only sent an electronic card...
Magazines - Magazines will
never be ousted by online versions until you can
drag the computer into the bathroom or the
bus to work. A substancial bulk of snail mail
is for this.
Soliciatations - Nobody likes
spam, but surprising, snail mail marketing works
more than email marketing. Take a look at
how far Publishier's Clearinghouse got before
they were basically punched in the stomach.
Besides, I'd much rather get a soliciation in
the snail mail box, as that can be tosses with
no cost to me, as opposed to email spam that
may cost me online connection time.
Email and Snail Mail are two different worlds;
there's some overlap, but the two services work
simulataneously as opposed to competitively.
like this. Generally, pay a yearly fee for
X users of a program at any time. So this
might work industrially... but it's nothing new.
Ballmer however proposed this for home use.
Let's look at the average software that will
be installed on a home computer:
WinXX
MS Office
MS IE
MS Outlook Express
Netscape
HomeSite
Shareware Apps
Games
Which of the parties involved is going to profit
most from this deal? The idea of software
rentals is basically trying to squeeze as much
$$$ from the home market as it can, as the
software itself is generally a fixed purchase..
buy once, that's it.
Unfortunately, this will catch on by other software companies because, yes, it is a way
to continue to get revenue for a piece of software
already bought.
The Free Software Movement is poised to undermine
the large corporations if this move does go though within the next few years, of course.
Consider the number of people that are buying
those close-to-free PCs with the requirement
to buy 3yrs of ISP service. The rebates at most
$400, but in the end, you'll be paying $720 for
the service. Why do people like this? They
only have to pay once for everyone, and it never
crosses their mind again. If Free Software
can offer home users one less bill they have
to pay, that's a big bonus for it.
Add Opera to the list (It might have bugs, but
their goal is standard-complience, and not
diverisity from that).
Anyone else read that as "Kibobyte"? We really ;-)
want a computer term that closely related to
Kibo??
It's expected that by the time the appeals
are done with, we'll know the fate of MS in
2001. That's *3* years, and in the computing
industry, 3 years is several generations
of product development, and by then, the
whole point of this case "browser integration"
might be well accepted (as it is, there's no
prove yet that the browserOS combo is
viable for users.
IM, as previously taked about here), and
any punishment on MS will be null and void.
Someone else mentioned education and advocacy as
a way to fight the juggernaut. The problem
is, MS has about as much money to send in
those same areas as nearly all competitors
combined. Why does MS continue to publish ads
about Win98 and Office and NT and whatnot?
They've already got 90% of the desktop, and
most likely can't pull the 10% their way;
Instead, they advertize to KEEP theiy monopoly,
mindwashing the users that MS products are superior, and as long as they can put the
money where their mouth is, things like Linux
and MacOS and other programs can only dent the
MS shell, and certainly not breach it.
The US needs a court that would be strictly for
handling monopoly cases like this, only because
the speed of business is several times faster
than the speed of the judical system. A system
where you have a month to prepare your case,
and a week of court time, maximum, and that's it.
If an appeal is to be made, it should go to the Suprieme Court, with no other layers in between.
I know that it sounds strict, but the fact is that
many businesses already wiggle their way under
the law, so why not make them more accountable
and with more haste?
If this happend with MS and DOJ, we'd already have a Supreme Court decision (whether a decision
of the case, or not hearing the case at all and
letting the lower court judgement stand), and
that's it.
Second, there's an extra showing of the episode
at 9 pm EDT on SciFi tonight. It will also
be on at 11pm, and then next Saturday at
11am EDT. After this, MST3K will only be shown on Saturdays
at that time slot (LOUSY!)
free speech advocates, ACLU-like lawyers,
and companies that would have vested interest in
such, and prepare a report that YOU CANNOT
REGULATE THE INTERNET. The lawmakers
need to know that, number 1, the internet is NOT
the US's property. This report should be
presented orally to the House and Congress,
as well as sent in written form to all lawmakers,
at ALL levels of government.
No, we're not trying to lie pockets, but we have
to make them informed. Then, if a bill like the
above is introduced, we can elect someone to
whap the person over the head with a hammer.
A 'Bill' is equivalent to a submitted story.
A 'Law' is equivalent to a posted story.
Basically, a bill is the introduction of any
legislation into either Senate or the House.
The bill, once introduced, is sent to both
the Senate and House, and each sends it to
a committee to 'adjust' the details. (Sometimes
there are changes due to party issues or
other things....), then the bill goes back to
both houses. If a majority
in both houses, but there are changes in the bill,
then both committees work to adjust the bill,
then it's revoted on (the same version now)
in both houses. If still a majority from both,
it's sent to the Pres' desk, and if he signs
it, AT THAT POINT, it becomes Law.
(I probably have a detail wrong somewhere, but
the gist is there
The best result which could cause a dust plume would have been if the impact hit a buried chunk of ice, suddently converting the remaining energy into an underground steam explosion.
...converting the moon's atmosphere into a viable human-breathable one within MOMENTS of impact?
Oh, wait, that's only if Arnold was there
E-Commerce: Fine by us.
Us: That means SSL is dead, and passwords and credit cards will be sent in the plaintext.
Consumers: We won't shop the net anymore!
E-Commerce: Eeep! Hey, Feds, here's a big bag of money!
Gov't: Um, we suddenly have no problem with encryption.
Us: Yay!
(Heck, special interests work for most groups,
why not here?)
Seriously, to ban any encryption on the net is
nearly impossible. And again, are criminals
(the ones they are fighting against) going to care
if encryption software is legal or not?
service" was a TERRIBLE LINE!
However, it's hard to believe that bit of tripe
*WAS* from William Gibson's hand (And I am
talking about the screenplay, not the original
work... here's the IMDB entry for
JM.
I think at the time of the production of the movie,
there was talk of a Neuromancer movie, but no
definite word, so I have a feeling that Gibson
tried to encorporate a few of the elements that
existed in the other Neuromancer books into
this (as well as his more recent series which the name slips, but the bridge is a definitely pointer to that). It obviously didn't work very well.
My only concern is that Neuromancer is good at two
levels: the idea of cyberspace and what the real
world is like because of it, and the writing style
such that you can read it twice and get two different impressions of what's going on. It's
not that Gibson is vague, but his language is
used so well that the reader's emotions will
read into the story. Sometimes when I read it,
Case is the good guy, sometimes he's an
innocent being dragged along by Wintermute, and sometime's he's the villian, cracking into
3Jane's private life. There is no way in heck
that the movie can convey that; instead, we
*ARE* going to know what finally happens, FOR
SURE, and the mystism of the book will be wrecked.
He might be able to keep some ideas arguable
(For example, this was done with the woman scientist on the plane in the final scene of 12
Monkeys; how exactly was she in "insurance"?)
but I believe that after seeing this movie,
I will never be able to read Case as any of the
3 situations above.
The senator that wants to introduce this is aiming to use it to curb illegal immigration. Based on his comments, I doubt that he was aware of privacy concerns at the time.
Also be aware that everyone's favorite organization, the ACLU, is already all over this, warning of its privacy violations for trying to something as 'bad' as illegal immigration.
Except that the average person is not going to
be able to put this together into their own
system. I myself could probably could, but
I'd bet about 95% of the computer users out
there would go out to get some dip for their
new computer chip...
Quake 3 is not over this curve; I've got a 200MHZ machine with 64 megs RAM and a TNT card with 16megs video ram and a 56k modem; sure, I'm not getting 2 ms pings (more like 200-300) and frame rates are in the 20s, not 100s, but *IT IS STILL QUITE PLAYABLE*. The same goes with games like Half-Life and Unreal.
However, as game designers continue to want to add more features, I'm concerned that they are going to forget that they actually have to make a sale to a consumer, and are hurting themselves in the end. While Unreal, for example, is playable on my system above, and given that only recently has the support for TNT cards been added, it's still well known that the game plays several magnitudes better with one of their suggested configurations: a Voodoo2 board with a 300MHZ PII processor and 128Megs of ram. Unreal came out just more than a year ago, and yet, I doubt that this configuraion can be claimed as average by consumers.
Maybe the increasing requirements for hardware are why games like Q2 (nicely playable on a low end pentium machine) are more popular for netplay than these new breads.
And what also gets me is that these game programs are getting more out of control of than more useful programs: the OS, office applications, and such. I would not be surprised to see some game in months to come to require more from the hardware than what Win2000 will require.... which really hasn't been the case until now.
First, it's understandable that existing businesses aren't going to be moving anytime soon.
It's also understandable that most employees will want to be near a major cities for their cultural/ entertainment needs.
And then there's the factor of being close to other similar business in order to do business with them.
But, as the ad from an IBM commercial above indicates, why not start these startup companies in other tech-savvy areas of the country - Dallas, Houston, Boston, etc.? The internet make nearly all business-related concerns negliable - You can video conference, share code and documents, and a whole bunch of stuff, and rather cheaply too.
IMO, I cannot find pity for the situation save for those 'poor' workers. I was in SF about 2 years ago for a few days, and even then, saw was the Valley's cost of living is. It's a situation that seems to have been let build to this point by the 'high culturites' of SF and those that provide the services of living.
I don't think the slashdot model is perfect yet (I *DO* strongly agree that there could be more discussion topics/news articles that are accepted, then use a priority-type system to those, so that the sumbission process is more open and reflects a larger cross section of the slashdot readership instead of just 2 or 3 people, but that's Rob's decision to run it this way). But in getting away from standard media into new ways of delievering news, slashdot has lead the pack.
competition-driven, you do NOT want to fully
publish your results until you have complete
proof-of-concept; especially in lucritive areas
like this, there are dozens of other labs (US
and int'l) watching for advances like this,
and they might be able to beat you to the
punch if you leak too many details. In this
case, this could cost the group a patent, a
grant, or other rewards for coming up with the
first proof-of-concept.
That's why articles like this, or the one about
teleportation being possible from about 6 months ago, or many other of the science articles being
posted to
group is strongly protecting their potental
assets.
I submitted this bit a while ago when it was announced, but... Apparently, because of the
recent youth violence problems, WB will *not* be
releasing the Matrix for VHS sales; You'll be
able to rent it on VHS (or buy a rental copy
at only $100 a pop), and you'll be able to buy
it on DVD. However, the WB's thinking is that
teens will have less access to a DVD player than
a VHS player, and thus, this strategy will
reduce the number of times teenagers can watch
the movie. This move is expected to cost
WB $50 million in spectulated VHS sales.