I can see that. Like Hamlet, Billy is consumed by his need for the throne. He snags the GUI from Apple. (Not to mix metaphors, but somebody else had a not so happy tale involving apples and witches.) He kills and guts the more rightful contenders to the throne. All the while the ghost of IBM is haunting him:)
Now I am alone. O what a rogue and peasant slave am I! Is it not monstrous that this player here, But in a fiction, in a dream of passion, Could force his soul so to his own conceit
Considering how little seriousness the public gives the population problem, I think it's really not very responsible for the UN to go saying that. Joe Sixpack will here that and go "Oh, ya mean I should have kids?" (insert goofy look here).
6 billion people is a lot of people. I can't even imagine what 9 billion will be like. Grr...
Now, I fully agree. "The Net", "Hackers", even "Enemy of the State" portray computers and technology in an unrealistic light that would have the audience believing those who gain understanding over said technology gain "God rights."
But, truthfully, if anyone made a movie of what it's like to be a "real" cracker, who'd go? It'd be two or three hours of a bunch of people sitting in front of a computer screen typing and sucking down dew/jolt/tea/battery acid to stay awake. Not terribly exciting cinema.
Which is why in "Hackers", the insides of computers look like times square at night, in "The Net", all the computers are a weird, totally wrong mix of Macs and Unix machines, and in "Enemy of the State", a computer can "estimate" the shape of a bag on the other side of the bag from a camera's point of view.
Now, granted, there was a decent portrayal about technology's abilities, and people's attitudes towards it in the movie "Office Space", but it's not quite the same thing.
Mr. Katz, you've written some great articles before, but wow. I think you said it all right there. Mr Katz said that his earlier articles have been spread, yes? Let's do it some more! Everybody who's willing, I say take this article of Katz's and email it to EVERYONE YOU KNOW. Go on Websites of newspapers and email the article to editors. Email this article to your Senators and House Reps. Send this article to The President, The Vice President. Send it to CNN, MSNBC, The New York Times.
The point is, spread it around! We've seen the slashdot effect with servers, yes? Well, the only person to experiance a Slashdot effect with email has been Mr. Katz, which hardly seems fair. Get the word out! If enough people have the truth shoved in their faces, they have to listen to reason. And let's all do it before it's too late for our little version of reality. I like being a geek. At this point in my life, I don't think I could start over.
I know this isn't going to get a rating higher than a one, but, as a gamer, I have to say it.
Did anyone else at the end think he sounded like a troll from Shadowrun?
"By demonizing Gates and exploiting the natural human fondness for the underdog, da yoot in da Linux mob are wasting a lot of time that could be better spent making nice with da dragon."
Hi. As dark paladin said, I apologize in advance. I'm an American, my veiws are skewed, etc..bear with me. I'm probably one of the youngest/. readers out there. I'm eighteen, and a freshman in college. (don't ask)
Therefore, this incident strikes more than a little bit close to home. I was in high school less than a year ago, and I can vouch for what dstar was saying about the division between geeks, goths, and other interesting folks, and what I've generally called throughout the years "norms". I mean, right there you can tell how bad our nations schools have gotten. I went to a catholic high school for christsake, and the "us" and "them" mentality was quite strong even there.
But I digress. Essentially, it was just me and a few of my friends who shared geeky or gothy inclinations, and banded together for discussion, merrymaking, etc. Perfectly innocent. When we had to refer to ourselves as a group, we usually called ourselves "The Table", simply because while at school our orbiting point was a table in the lunchroom area where we always sat at.
(Amusingly enough, my high school ascribed to a caste system of seating arrangement, where the seniors sat closest to the food, the freshman the farthest. The Table was front row, closest table to the lunch line, and there were quite a few lower classpersons in our group. Just one of the reasons we were so well loved.)
Well...it wasn't long before it was recognized by the student body at large that we were a group of "different" people. A number of us had made the intellectual leap to wear all black (it goes with everything, you know), and I guess since some of us were geeks they decided we liked Star Wars (an accurate guess, but still...) so we became, much to our annoyance..."The Dark Siders". The inter-clique hatred sort of built up from there. One of the knuckle dragging foot ball players got expelled from school after a friend of mine got fed up with being refered to as a "Faggot" "Gay-Boy" "Nance" etc, and went to the administration to complain. I myself evidently was accused of causing a member of said football team to break his leg by casting a spell on him. (I never knew I had it in me. idiots)
In addition to the outright hatred towards "us" the rest of the school felt evidently the school's linguistic habits were falling onto hard times as well. The use of profane language had evidently sprung into an epidemic of huge proportion. (Now, it seems to me that high school students have always had filthy mouths, but then, I'm not an administrator of a catholic high school, so what do I know?) So we were subjected to a degrading and demoralizing speech from the administration, in which the Disciplinarian figure in the administration (an ex-cop) *listed* all the words he didn't want heard, including some really quite nasty abbreviations of phrases that evidently were used. This stupidity was compounded by him then feeling it neccessary to "stick up for us", and admonish the rest of the school for "picking on us". This from the man who repeatedly had, throughout my years at the school, shown himself to have a very closed mind, and actually requested a number of times that we act more "normal".
So...to give a point to this ramble: Our schools have become idealogical hotbets where the majority learns to hate and fear that which it does not understand. And as they always say, the lessons they learn there will stay with them the rest of their lives. And people wonder why management can't understand engineers or IS flacks.
What do we do about this? Unfortunately, I haven't a clue. I regretfully agree with Dark Paladin's suggestions. (i.e. Parental involvement, Gun Control, Death Penalty) Regretfully because I find it incredibly saddening to think that we have to resort to laws specifically aimed at minors regarding unthinkable crimes so that some measure of peace can be found. Not only that, but I'm a big fan of this freedom thing, and each law takes just a little bit of squirming room away.
Obviously, if the sysadmins at this company find Linux having more "up front workload", then they'll be hiring people who like Linux's "less mature infrastructure". Which is, in the end, a good thing, yes?
"America takes care of it's own" -Bill Clinton, 03-31-99
Kinda makes ya nervous, huh? At least, it does me. I don't know about you, but if I was a half-assed military leader currently going about cleansing my country of the unwanted, I'd be a mite nervous about the president of the US saying that in a public speech, especially since I'd just nabbed three of his citizens. Perhaps now we'll see some troop action. I hate to say it, but the threat of losing three servicemen might be the impetus for ground troop movements. They certainly can't afford to just hang out much longer. Even with Gates' 1.5 million dollar contribution to the Red Cross and CARE, those refugees in Macedonia (now 634,000 strong) aren't going to be able to hang around a lot longer. From CNN's reports, the situation is bad and getting worse. Food supplies low, almost no shelter, and the people just keep on coming. (for perspective: 634,000 people is larger than the entire population of Alaska.) Methinks we need those ground troops, and fast. Further, with the big M now engaged in Hitler-style identity destruction, the longer that those Albanians have to hang out in Macedonia, the less likely it is that they'll have lives to go back to. Citizenship, jobs, license plates, all available forms of ID are being stripped of the civvies as they're forced from Kosovo. Without decisive action soon, most of those refugees may be non-persons by the time they get "home".
Don't avoid it. Lots of us went to see it, and had to physically restrain ourselves from throwing things at the screen. Sharp things, with pointy ends.
Sci Fi movies lately have been terrible. Absolutely godawful. The Semi-Sci-Fi Enemy of the State was one of the notable "coulda been but wasn't" sci fi movies of late.
Thus, to be sitting half an hour into Matrix, have them reveal what the Matrix is to us, and to have a little light bulb go on in the back of my head that says "Damn! I wasn't expecting that!" was pure delight.
Between the Matrix, and the Phantom Menace (which, for the sake of argument, I'm going to pray to whatever gods exist in the place a long time ago and far, far away that it's as good as the original holy trilogy) perhaps we're now coming out of a long drought of palatable sci-fi/geek movies.
Examples? In order of their release: Disney's Inspector Gadget, Cronenburg's eXistenZ, Burton's Sleepy Hollow, and Disney's Fantasia 2000. Let's hope we've seen the last of Wing "Gosh I don't think I once saw anything resembling a worthwhile plot" Commander type movies.
Alright, so now we can get pizza from a vending machine. I don't know about the rest of the/. community, but I already eat too much pizza as it is, and I still have to wait about half an hour, whether I'm cooking a frozen one, or ordering from Pizza Slut or Gumby's. Isn't this just yet another extension of our instant gratification culture? "I want it NOW, especially if it's bad for me." And I just have to believe that any pizza you get from a vending machine is going to be bad for you. Cook in 1.5 minutes after waiting how long for someone to come along and free the pizza from the thing? I will admit the idea is cool, however. When I can get a chicken parmigian and a nice glass of wine from a vending machine, then I'll be happy.
I'm sure so did hundreds of other people on this list, but I thought I'd mention it. They had a demo of Call to Power at GenCon this past summer. I talked to one of the bizreps while I played before the doors opened on Saturday morning (I'm part of a gaming company). He was making cracks about how every time somebody comes up and calls the things CivIII, they have to go "No, NO! It's Civilization: Call to Power. You want to get us sued?" For those of you who were fans of CivII...well...I can't do Homer's "Donut Drool" noise very well, but....oooooooo....
Granted, CNN is not slashdot, but it's not "USA Today" or the "New York Times", either. And the mutual tracking system was on NPR (which I do trust) and a couple other news organizations as well.
Hey guys and gals? Grab a clue. The year 2000 is going to come into our lives with much fanfare, lots of partying, maybe some riots, but there will be no nuclear attacks, no worldwide breakdowns of society, no massive death. (As to the nuclear attacks, I again point people to this CNN article. We're safe, as far as the big messy booms go.) How do I know all this? I don't. Granted. All these things could happen. Why do I think they won't? Simply, "the world" is too complex for everything to come crashing down because of a stupid computer bug. Hardware's been replaced, and people don't remember. Isolated systems die, and don't take very much with them. Again, granted, I'm thinking about the US. Other countries may not have it so good, which could in turn shake up our economy more than it will be. ?More than it will be? Someone above said something about "I'm going to take all my money out of the banks because I don't trust them." That kind of idiocy is why our economy may be shaky. (remember "Sneakers"?) In short, keep aware, keep your ears open, don't jump to conclusions, and don't worry too much. The world will still suck just as much a year from now, and a programming bug isn't going to have a whole lot to do with that.
I find it simply fascinating that this is even being considered. I don't give the guvmint a lot of credit in a lot of things, but one of the things left over from Reaganomics that isn't killing kids in the streets is a relatively efficient tracking system for nukes. Two in additions: 1) Not only that, but there's been talk of a joint Russian-American tracking system for nukes on the fateful eve. 2) Saddam is many things, but I don't peg him as suicidal. Little Cold War lesson for ya: Know why there wasn't nuclear war? No benefit. One launches, and the other four Nuke Powers launch, the world's over, we ALL die. If Saddam launches, even if he launches at us, he'll still die, cuz England tends to like us nowadays. (nice of them to get over that whole colony revolt thing) Not only that, but unless I'm mistaken, I doubt he could launch a loogie hard enough nowadays to hurt us.
Soo.....what, next we're going to have "Real Geeks" on MTV? I certainly never asked for this gig, and I certainly don't feel very hoity toity about being a geek, but I reeeally don't want to have to deal with today's teenyboppers being tomarrows programmers because MTV or Vogue or Style tells them to. Help us all if this turn of events blows up in our faces.
Slashdot Mirror
I can see that. Like Hamlet, Billy is consumed by his need for the throne. He snags the GUI from Apple. (Not to mix metaphors, but somebody else had a not so happy tale involving apples and witches.) He kills and guts the more rightful contenders to the throne. All the while the ghost of IBM is haunting him :)
Now I am alone.
O what a rogue and peasant slave am I!
Is it not monstrous that this player here,
But in a fiction, in a dream of passion,
Could force his soul so to his own conceit
Considering how little seriousness the public gives the population problem, I think it's really not very responsible for the UN to go saying that. Joe Sixpack will here that and go "Oh, ya mean I should have kids?" (insert goofy look here).
6 billion people is a lot of people. I can't even imagine what 9 billion will be like.
Grr...
Now, I fully agree. "The Net", "Hackers", even "Enemy of the State" portray computers and technology in an unrealistic light that would have the audience believing those who gain understanding over said technology gain "God rights."
But, truthfully, if anyone made a movie of what it's like to be a "real" cracker, who'd go? It'd be two or three hours of a bunch of people sitting in front of a computer screen typing and sucking down dew/jolt/tea/battery acid to stay awake. Not terribly exciting cinema.
Which is why in "Hackers", the insides of computers look like times square at night, in "The Net", all the computers are a weird, totally wrong mix of Macs and Unix machines, and in "Enemy of the State", a computer can "estimate" the shape of a bag on the other side of the bag from a camera's point of view.
Now, granted, there was a decent portrayal about technology's abilities, and people's attitudes towards it in the movie "Office Space", but it's not quite the same thing.
Now if only scientists would prove that caffiene increases sex appeal and promotes longevity...
Mr Katz said that his earlier articles have been spread, yes? Let's do it some more! Everybody who's willing, I say take this article of Katz's and email it to EVERYONE YOU KNOW.
Go on Websites of newspapers and email the article to editors. Email this article to your Senators and House Reps.
Send this article to The President, The Vice President.
Send it to CNN, MSNBC, The New York Times.
The point is, spread it around! We've seen the slashdot effect with servers, yes? Well, the only person to experiance a Slashdot effect with email has been Mr. Katz, which hardly seems fair. Get the word out! If enough people have the truth shoved in their faces, they have to listen to reason.
And let's all do it before it's too late for our little version of reality. I like being a geek. At this point in my life, I don't think I could start over.
I know this isn't going to get a rating higher than a one, but, as a gamer, I have to say it.
Did anyone else at the end think he sounded like a troll from Shadowrun?
"By demonizing Gates and exploiting the natural
human fondness for the underdog, da yoot in da
Linux mob are wasting a lot of time that could be
better spent making nice with da dragon."
Hi. As dark paladin said, I apologize in advance. I'm an American, my veiws are skewed, etc..bear with me. I'm probably one of the youngest /. readers out there. I'm eighteen, and a freshman in college. (don't ask)
Therefore, this incident strikes more than a little bit close to home. I was in high school less than a year ago, and I can vouch for what dstar was saying about the division between geeks, goths, and other interesting folks, and what I've generally called throughout the years "norms".
I mean, right there you can tell how bad our nations schools have gotten. I went to a catholic high school for christsake, and the "us" and "them" mentality was quite strong even there.
But I digress. Essentially, it was just me and a few of my friends who shared geeky or gothy inclinations, and banded together for discussion, merrymaking, etc. Perfectly innocent. When we had to refer to ourselves as a group, we usually called ourselves "The Table", simply because while at school our orbiting point was a table in the lunchroom area where we always sat at.
(Amusingly enough, my high school ascribed to a caste system of seating arrangement, where the seniors sat closest to the food, the freshman the farthest. The Table was front row, closest table to the lunch line, and there were quite a few lower classpersons in our group. Just one of the reasons we were so well loved.)
Well...it wasn't long before it was recognized by the student body at large that we were a group of "different" people. A number of us had made the intellectual leap to wear all black (it goes with everything, you know), and I guess since some of us were geeks they decided we liked Star Wars (an accurate guess, but still...) so we became, much to our annoyance..."The Dark Siders".
The inter-clique hatred sort of built up from there. One of the knuckle dragging foot ball players got expelled from school after a friend of mine got fed up with being refered to as a "Faggot" "Gay-Boy" "Nance" etc, and went to the administration to complain. I myself evidently was accused of causing a member of said football team to break his leg by casting a spell on him. (I never knew I had it in me. idiots)
In addition to the outright hatred towards "us" the rest of the school felt evidently the school's linguistic habits were falling onto hard times as well. The use of profane language had evidently sprung into an epidemic of huge proportion. (Now, it seems to me that high school students have always had filthy mouths, but then, I'm not an administrator of a catholic high school, so what do I know?) So we were subjected to a degrading and demoralizing speech from the administration, in which the Disciplinarian figure in the administration (an ex-cop) *listed* all the words he didn't want heard, including some really quite nasty abbreviations of phrases that evidently were used. This stupidity was compounded by him then feeling it neccessary to "stick up for us", and admonish the rest of the school for "picking on us". This from the man who repeatedly had, throughout my years at the school, shown himself to have a very closed mind, and actually requested a number of times that we act more "normal".
So...to give a point to this ramble:
Our schools have become idealogical hotbets where the majority learns to hate and fear that which it does not understand. And as they always say, the lessons they learn there will stay with them the rest of their lives. And people wonder why management can't understand engineers or IS flacks.
What do we do about this? Unfortunately, I haven't a clue. I regretfully agree with Dark Paladin's suggestions. (i.e. Parental involvement, Gun Control, Death Penalty) Regretfully because I find it incredibly saddening to think that we have to resort to laws specifically aimed at minors regarding unthinkable crimes so that some measure of peace can be found. Not only that, but I'm a big fan of this freedom thing, and each law takes just a little bit of squirming room away.
Here's hoping this turns out okay...
Obviously, if the sysadmins at this company find Linux having more "up front workload", then they'll be hiring people who like Linux's "less mature infrastructure". Which is, in the end, a good thing, yes?
-Bill Clinton, 03-31-99
Kinda makes ya nervous, huh? At least, it does me. I don't know about you, but if I was a half-assed military leader currently going about cleansing my country of the unwanted, I'd be a mite nervous about the president of the US saying that in a public speech, especially since I'd just nabbed three of his citizens. Perhaps now we'll see some troop action. I hate to say it, but the threat of losing three servicemen might be the impetus for ground troop movements. They certainly can't afford to just hang out much longer. Even with Gates' 1.5 million dollar contribution to the Red Cross and CARE, those refugees in Macedonia (now 634,000 strong) aren't going to be able to hang around a lot longer. From CNN's reports, the situation is bad and getting worse. Food supplies low, almost no shelter, and the people just keep on coming. (for perspective: 634,000 people is larger than the entire population of Alaska.)
Methinks we need those ground troops, and fast.
Further, with the big M now engaged in Hitler-style identity destruction, the longer that those Albanians have to hang out in Macedonia, the less likely it is that they'll have lives to go back to. Citizenship, jobs, license plates, all available forms of ID are being stripped of the civvies as they're forced from Kosovo. Without decisive action soon, most of those refugees may be non-persons by the time they get "home".
Wing Commander...
Don't avoid it. Lots of us went to see it, and had to physically restrain ourselves from throwing things at the screen. Sharp things, with pointy ends.
Sci Fi movies lately have been terrible. Absolutely godawful. The Semi-Sci-Fi Enemy of the State was one of the notable "coulda been but wasn't" sci fi movies of late.
Thus, to be sitting half an hour into Matrix, have them reveal what the Matrix is to us, and to have a little light bulb go on in the back of my head that says "Damn! I wasn't expecting that!" was pure delight.
Between the Matrix, and the Phantom Menace (which, for the sake of argument, I'm going to pray to whatever gods exist in the place a long time ago and far, far away that it's as good as the original holy trilogy) perhaps we're now coming out of a long drought of palatable sci-fi/geek movies.
Examples? In order of their release: Disney's Inspector Gadget, Cronenburg's eXistenZ, Burton's Sleepy Hollow, and Disney's Fantasia 2000. Let's hope we've seen the last of Wing "Gosh I don't think I once saw anything resembling a worthwhile plot" Commander type movies.
Alright, so now we can get pizza from a vending machine. I don't know about the rest of the /. community, but I already eat too much pizza as it is, and I still have to wait about half an hour, whether I'm cooking a frozen one, or ordering from Pizza Slut or Gumby's.
Isn't this just yet another extension of our instant gratification culture? "I want it NOW, especially if it's bad for me." And I just have to believe that any pizza you get from a vending machine is going to be bad for you. Cook in 1.5 minutes after waiting how long for someone to come along and free the pizza from the thing?
I will admit the idea is cool, however.
When I can get a chicken parmigian and a nice glass of wine from a vending machine, then I'll be happy.
I'm sure so did hundreds of other people on this list, but I thought I'd mention it. They had a demo of Call to Power at GenCon this past summer. I talked to one of the bizreps while I played before the doors opened on Saturday morning (I'm part of a gaming company). He was making cracks about how every time somebody comes up and calls the things CivIII, they have to go "No, NO! It's Civilization: Call to Power. You want to get us sued?" For those of you who were fans of CivII...well...I can't do Homer's "Donut Drool" noise very well, but....oooooooo....
Granted, CNN is not slashdot, but it's not "USA Today" or the "New York Times", either.
And the mutual tracking system was on NPR (which I do trust) and a couple other news organizations as well.
Hey guys and gals?
Grab a clue.
The year 2000 is going to come into our lives with much fanfare, lots of partying, maybe some riots, but there will be no nuclear attacks, no worldwide breakdowns of society, no massive death.
(As to the nuclear attacks, I again point people to this CNN article. We're safe, as far as the big messy booms go.)
How do I know all this? I don't. Granted. All these things could happen. Why do I think they won't?
Simply, "the world" is too complex for everything to come crashing down because of a stupid computer bug. Hardware's been replaced, and people don't remember. Isolated systems die, and don't take very much with them. Again, granted, I'm thinking about the US. Other countries may not have it so good, which could in turn shake up our economy more than it will be.
?More than it will be? Someone above said something about "I'm going to take all my money out of the banks because I don't trust them." That kind of idiocy is why our economy may be shaky. (remember "Sneakers"?)
In short, keep aware, keep your ears open, don't jump to conclusions, and don't worry too much.
The world will still suck just as much a year from now, and a programming bug isn't going to have a whole lot to do with that.
I say *again*, it is NOT going to happen. The stupidity of raising this kind of grief among the mis-informed is sadistic.
I find it simply fascinating that this is even being considered.
I don't give the guvmint a lot of credit in a lot of things, but one of the things left over from Reaganomics that isn't killing kids in the streets is a relatively efficient tracking system for nukes. Two in additions:
1) Not only that, but there's been talk of a joint Russian-American tracking system for nukes on the fateful eve.
2) Saddam is many things, but I don't peg him as suicidal. Little Cold War lesson for ya: Know why there wasn't nuclear war? No benefit. One launches, and the other four Nuke Powers launch, the world's over, we ALL die. If Saddam launches, even if he launches at us, he'll still die, cuz England tends to like us nowadays. (nice of them to get over that whole colony revolt thing)
Not only that, but unless I'm mistaken, I doubt he could launch a loogie hard enough nowadays to hurt us.
Gag.
What would they do to poor Charles Babbage?
Or Alan Turing?
Soo.....what, next we're going to have "Real Geeks" on MTV? I certainly never asked for this gig, and I certainly don't feel very hoity toity about being a geek, but I reeeally don't want to have to deal with today's teenyboppers being tomarrows programmers because MTV or Vogue or Style tells them to. Help us all if this turn of events blows up in our faces.