Not just excitement, but a room full of people avoiding cognitive dissonance. If I stood in line for a hours dressed like a storm trooper you can bet I'd be on my feet when it was over too. I'd even say things to my friends like, "yeah Jar-Jar was annoying but overall I really thought he added to the story because blah blah blah.".
That's true but I think what he was saying was more along the lines of:
Sci-fi is at its best when it asks questions regarding certain aspects of life or satirizes certain aspects of living. Sci-fi is at its worst when someone takes Rambo and slaps a wrist communicator on him (not that I don't like Rambo). But take Armageddon: was that sci-fi? Probably. Good sci-fi, though?
I'm not sure I agree with your call for egalitarianism though. There's plenty of good and terrible music out there. Say what you will about scenesters, at least they're still going to shows.
I mean, I've known honest-to-god hipsters and to be sure, they're a strange and ridiculous breed. But they can't breathe the air once you leave a couple of specific blocks in Brooklyn. So I think what a lot of people call hipsters are just the people who still care enough about music to go out and buy it. People vaguely criticize "indie cred" because it's mild enough to be blue collar without being full-on anti-intellectual. Like how calling someone a "liberal" makes you seem manly. I can't even think of any bands that have sold over 100 records and still deserve that association.
I agree with you, but I think we need to add another definition to the spectrum. Specifically, there is a great deal of sci-fi that is what I'd call hardcore sci-fi, and what a sci-fi nerd would absolutely approve of, but which is also complete pulp.
For instance (and I'm sure I'll get some downmods for even taking the guy's name in vain), even though I have read and greatly enjoyed a lot of Asimov, I do not consider him to be a writer on the level of men like Fitzgerald or Steinbeck. Much of the sci-fi genre is, as you say, just pop sci-fi, but there's a lot a lot of the "real" stuff can be pretty hackish when you get down to it.
FWIW I find guys like Vonnegut and PKD to be the ideal: they're not just "sci-fi writers" but plain old writers who happen to fit nicely within the genre. I like things like ST:TOS and The Twilight Zone for the same reasons. Even if there weren't robots and aliens, it'd still be thoughtful.
I don't think that they've forgotten it, it's just in their best interests to maintain the appearance of a distinction for as long as possible, because that distinction is part of the leaky dam separating traditional media from podcasters.
It's somewhat poetic: we look at a newspaper and see what's happening in the present. Content providers look what's happening to newspapers and they see their future.
IMO the real issue is that people are, in increasing numbers, hooking up devices to their TVs that show not only traditional TV broadcasting but internet programming like Revision3 as well.
Boxee turns podcasting into broadcasting. It's slick and doesn't require a keyboard to operate. And it has a ton of buzz these days. The networks can't stop you from getting your entertainment elsewhere on your computer, but by (mistakenly) treating the TV as a separate device they have something they can cling to.
I don't mean to ignore the fact that a lot of the value in boxee is that it shows Hulu content, or the fact that Hulu is only popular because it represents major network content. Clearly there is still value in being a Fox or an NBC. But these guys have gotta be scared now that what used to be called "convergence" turned out to actually be "the computer has taken over every role, and it gives people access to a network where anyone can publish anything".
I don't disagree with you, but it's just crazy that these networks persist in believing there's a difference, when
(a) your average TV and computer monitor come out of the same factory and are made from the same parts (b) what used to be cable companies are are now multicast networks pushing MPEG (c) AppleTVs and XBoxes meet any genuine requirement for "computer" that you could come up with
Of course, people do believe weirder things.
Little off-topic: the real problem with Boxee is that it shows Hulu stuff right alongside internet TV like Revision3. Not only does it have a larger library than "on demand" cable, but some of that library does not come from the old guard. Some of the flames that boxee's creator gets on his blog demonstrate pretty well how much the cable networks are afraid of this. They're not broadcasters; the only difference between them and internet video is that they have deals with the cable companies. Every year those deals hold less and less value.
It's very possible that I was mistaken and that SSO for Spark simply doesn't work with Active Directory. But I had done a bunch of reading and I was under the impression that not only was it possible but that a lot of people had it set up that way.
Do you mean that the client software doesn't use a password at all? That's what I was trying to accomplish. And it seemed like it can be done but after a few days I stopped trying.
What I probably should do is grab the accounts from AD but then just save the password in the client.
I do remember being able to get it that far. In my particular case auto-login was more important than using the same accounts, because my users aren't too savvy and I wanted to make it painless for them to IM each other. In spite of all this they still barely use it:D
Yeah, I wanted to have the client get the authentication from Windows (XP + AD on 2003) and then auto-login. It seemed like everything was happening correctly...from what I remember I had to generate matching kerberos keys on the Openfire server and the KDC and a special user account on the domain controller.
There's tons of logs from java, the server, and the client, and you can actually watch the packets as they go. But the problem was that everything looked good according to all of the forum threads. Getting official support and rebuilding the DC weren't options so I just used separate accounts with the same names. We don't have enough users that it's even an issue, though obviously doing it the right way would have been nice.
Oh, plenty of people believe it. Most of them don't end up on Slashdot, one hopes. More than once I have had to correct someone saying something like some_recent_year_picked_at_random was "the coldest on record".
Luckily that's an easy one to deal with, you just show someone the averages (with one hand, as you scratch your head and wonder at how people can just make things up completely with the other). It's also luckily I don't know any congressmen, since they seem to be a little denser than your average citizen.
I don't know about plain LDAP but I had serious trouble getting OpenFire to work with Active Directory. It integrated fine on the server side but single sign-on for the clients never worked. It seemed like it works great for 95% of people but for certain setups it's just impossible to get right. It's highly dependent upon your DNS setup, although I can't think of anywhere our DNS would be different from the norm. I also got in a little trouble because my users aren't all in cn=users but based on testing I don't think that was where the issue was.
I tried for a long time to get SSO working and eventually I had to just roll it out with separate user accounts. I suppose I could have paid for support but if I was going to do that I would have just bought one of the Windows-based enterprise IM packages that's out there.
Other than that it's been great. I was using Psi for a client but I can't seem to get it to alert people consistently. I (and the users) want something that will pop up the message and take focus no matter what. But Psi seems to be erratic in this regard.
It's really bothering me. This guy hadn't posted in two years, then he pops in and tells me I'm wrong about something, but not what I was wrong about or why I was wrong.
I dunno, I thought rebar rusts? And pyramids have a larger foundation than skyscrapers?
He got the attention that he wanted, and it's not like he'll ever have to answer to anyone in person for being a prick on the internet. We should be congratulating him for being such a rad dude.
If anything, he's a master of irony, since shoving animated ads in people's face is exactly the sort of thing people justify by saying, hey, it's not like there's a LAW against it buddy, I'm perfectly valid here.
Not when you consider that all of us have dealt with someone's death and would like to at least *pretend* that we don't like to see it happen.
Nobody suggested sending flowers, someone simply pointed out that it was crude.
Life isn't as harsh as a C compiler. Sometimes you're supposed to do or not do things because it's acceptable or responsible. Even if there isn't a gun to your head or a syntax error waiting in the wings. I love getting my tech news here but it's exasperating that so few people realize this. That or they hold different standards of behavior for the internet and when dealing with people face-to-face and is that disconnect which I find "interesting".
Good thing it's only an off-topic post on a tech forum.
I'm genuinely interested in hearing where I'm wrong, since I'd rather not repeat the mistake. So if anyone cares to make a legitimate criticism, I will read and absorb it.
There's been some talk about this earthquake in a lot of places and I have seen more than one seismologist say that radon gas emissions are not a great predictor of activity (that is, it's possible to have an earthquake without increased radon gas, and vice versa).
Of course, *all* this so-called "science" stuff is basically tea leaves. We need to get back to praying to Ra like we're meant to do. Or one of the gods with lightning powers, those are pretty fun.
Slashdot Mirror
Not just excitement, but a room full of people avoiding cognitive dissonance. If I stood in line for a hours dressed like a storm trooper you can bet I'd be on my feet when it was over too. I'd even say things to my friends like, "yeah Jar-Jar was annoying but overall I really thought he added to the story because blah blah blah.".
That's true but I think what he was saying was more along the lines of:
Sci-fi is at its best when it asks questions regarding certain aspects of life or satirizes certain aspects of living. Sci-fi is at its worst when someone takes Rambo and slaps a wrist communicator on him (not that I don't like Rambo). But take Armageddon: was that sci-fi? Probably. Good sci-fi, though?
I'm not sure I agree with your call for egalitarianism though. There's plenty of good and terrible music out there. Say what you will about scenesters, at least they're still going to shows.
I mean, I've known honest-to-god hipsters and to be sure, they're a strange and ridiculous breed. But they can't breathe the air once you leave a couple of specific blocks in Brooklyn. So I think what a lot of people call hipsters are just the people who still care enough about music to go out and buy it. People vaguely criticize "indie cred" because it's mild enough to be blue collar without being full-on anti-intellectual. Like how calling someone a "liberal" makes you seem manly. I can't even think of any bands that have sold over 100 records and still deserve that association.
+1, everything that needed to be said has just been said
I agree with you, but I think we need to add another definition to the spectrum. Specifically, there is a great deal of sci-fi that is what I'd call hardcore sci-fi, and what a sci-fi nerd would absolutely approve of, but which is also complete pulp.
For instance (and I'm sure I'll get some downmods for even taking the guy's name in vain), even though I have read and greatly enjoyed a lot of Asimov, I do not consider him to be a writer on the level of men like Fitzgerald or Steinbeck. Much of the sci-fi genre is, as you say, just pop sci-fi, but there's a lot a lot of the "real" stuff can be pretty hackish when you get down to it.
FWIW I find guys like Vonnegut and PKD to be the ideal: they're not just "sci-fi writers" but plain old writers who happen to fit nicely within the genre. I like things like ST:TOS and The Twilight Zone for the same reasons. Even if there weren't robots and aliens, it'd still be thoughtful.
I don't think that they've forgotten it, it's just in their best interests to maintain the appearance of a distinction for as long as possible, because that distinction is part of the leaky dam separating traditional media from podcasters.
It's somewhat poetic: we look at a newspaper and see what's happening in the present. Content providers look what's happening to newspapers and they see their future.
There's another way to prevent it, and that's to get the laws changed.
And the international span of the internet doesn't matter either (see ACTA).
IMO the real issue is that people are, in increasing numbers, hooking up devices to their TVs that show not only traditional TV broadcasting but internet programming like Revision3 as well.
Boxee turns podcasting into broadcasting. It's slick and doesn't require a keyboard to operate. And it has a ton of buzz these days. The networks can't stop you from getting your entertainment elsewhere on your computer, but by (mistakenly) treating the TV as a separate device they have something they can cling to.
I don't mean to ignore the fact that a lot of the value in boxee is that it shows Hulu content, or the fact that Hulu is only popular because it represents major network content. Clearly there is still value in being a Fox or an NBC. But these guys have gotta be scared now that what used to be called "convergence" turned out to actually be "the computer has taken over every role, and it gives people access to a network where anyone can publish anything".
I run boxee on my computer :)
I don't disagree with you, but it's just crazy that these networks persist in believing there's a difference, when
(a) your average TV and computer monitor come out of the same factory and are made from the same parts
(b) what used to be cable companies are are now multicast networks pushing MPEG
(c) AppleTVs and XBoxes meet any genuine requirement for "computer" that you could come up with
Of course, people do believe weirder things.
Little off-topic: the real problem with Boxee is that it shows Hulu stuff right alongside internet TV like Revision3. Not only does it have a larger library than "on demand" cable, but some of that library does not come from the old guard. Some of the flames that boxee's creator gets on his blog demonstrate pretty well how much the cable networks are afraid of this. They're not broadcasters; the only difference between them and internet video is that they have deals with the cable companies. Every year those deals hold less and less value.
This comment would have been perfect for the technical debt discussion higher up on the page.
It's very possible that I was mistaken and that SSO for Spark simply doesn't work with Active Directory. But I had done a bunch of reading and I was under the impression that not only was it possible but that a lot of people had it set up that way.
There are many threads like this one:
http://www.igniterealtime.org/community/thread/26839
Do you mean that the client software doesn't use a password at all? That's what I was trying to accomplish. And it seemed like it can be done but after a few days I stopped trying.
What I probably should do is grab the accounts from AD but then just save the password in the client.
I do remember being able to get it that far. In my particular case auto-login was more important than using the same accounts, because my users aren't too savvy and I wanted to make it painless for them to IM each other. In spite of all this they still barely use it :D
Yeah, I wanted to have the client get the authentication from Windows (XP + AD on 2003) and then auto-login. It seemed like everything was happening correctly...from what I remember I had to generate matching kerberos keys on the Openfire server and the KDC and a special user account on the domain controller.
There's tons of logs from java, the server, and the client, and you can actually watch the packets as they go. But the problem was that everything looked good according to all of the forum threads. Getting official support and rebuilding the DC weren't options so I just used separate accounts with the same names. We don't have enough users that it's even an issue, though obviously doing it the right way would have been nice.
Oh, plenty of people believe it. Most of them don't end up on Slashdot, one hopes. More than once I have had to correct someone saying something like some_recent_year_picked_at_random was "the coldest on record".
Luckily that's an easy one to deal with, you just show someone the averages (with one hand, as you scratch your head and wonder at how people can just make things up completely with the other). It's also luckily I don't know any congressmen, since they seem to be a little denser than your average citizen.
Heh...if someone ever builds a submarine that you can drop containers onto like a barge I will poop my pants in awe :)
I don't know about plain LDAP but I had serious trouble getting OpenFire to work with Active Directory. It integrated fine on the server side but single sign-on for the clients never worked. It seemed like it works great for 95% of people but for certain setups it's just impossible to get right. It's highly dependent upon your DNS setup, although I can't think of anywhere our DNS would be different from the norm. I also got in a little trouble because my users aren't all in cn=users but based on testing I don't think that was where the issue was.
I tried for a long time to get SSO working and eventually I had to just roll it out with separate user accounts. I suppose I could have paid for support but if I was going to do that I would have just bought one of the Windows-based enterprise IM packages that's out there.
Other than that it's been great. I was using Psi for a client but I can't seem to get it to alert people consistently. I (and the users) want something that will pop up the message and take focus no matter what. But Psi seems to be erratic in this regard.
It's really bothering me. This guy hadn't posted in two years, then he pops in and tells me I'm wrong about something, but not what I was wrong about or why I was wrong.
I dunno, I thought rebar rusts? And pyramids have a larger foundation than skyscrapers?
St. Anselm, is that you?
That's like telling someone not to adopt because it just points out what a hypocrite they are for not adopting every kid that's ever needed it.
You don't have sympathy because you can stop death, you have sympathy because you can't.
Who's guilty? He's just "some random guy", right?
He got the attention that he wanted, and it's not like he'll ever have to answer to anyone in person for being a prick on the internet. We should be congratulating him for being such a rad dude.
If anything, he's a master of irony, since shoving animated ads in people's face is exactly the sort of thing people justify by saying, hey, it's not like there's a LAW against it buddy, I'm perfectly valid here.
Says the guy who's most likely posting AC to sugar-coat, of all things, his Slashdot comment history.
Not when you consider that all of us have dealt with someone's death and would like to at least *pretend* that we don't like to see it happen.
Nobody suggested sending flowers, someone simply pointed out that it was crude.
Life isn't as harsh as a C compiler. Sometimes you're supposed to do or not do things because it's acceptable or responsible. Even if there isn't a gun to your head or a syntax error waiting in the wings. I love getting my tech news here but it's exasperating that so few people realize this. That or they hold different standards of behavior for the internet and when dealing with people face-to-face and is that disconnect which I find "interesting".
Good thing it's only an off-topic post on a tech forum.
I'm genuinely interested in hearing where I'm wrong, since I'd rather not repeat the mistake. So if anyone cares to make a legitimate criticism, I will read and absorb it.
I apologize if I somehow insulted any architects.
There's been some talk about this earthquake in a lot of places and I have seen more than one seismologist say that radon gas emissions are not a great predictor of activity (that is, it's possible to have an earthquake without increased radon gas, and vice versa).
Of course, *all* this so-called "science" stuff is basically tea leaves. We need to get back to praying to Ra like we're meant to do. Or one of the gods with lightning powers, those are pretty fun.