The really bothersome thing about this particular piece is that a competent journalist could've written a very informative, if biased, fact-based indictment of Christian Cheerleaders.
A competent humorist could have written a very funny and engaging opinion-based indictment of same.
That Jon Katz prominently applauds an article which is neither makes me wonder what his own values actually are.
Sorry, I forgot to take into account the radically simplistic viewpoint.
Congratulations! You've won your argument by making broad overgeneralizations! Have a nice day!
Neat!
Your objection to "christian cheerleading" is just as well-supported as the opinions of the adolescent jerk who wrote the article.
Care to offer some explanation for your argument?
God, that "cheerleaders" piece was awful. As reporting, it was incompetent and uninformative. As ranting, it was slow and anticlimactic.
If this is the sort of feeble attempt at interesting writing that Jon Katz is urging us not to miss, then I think I'm beginnig to understand why he's so hated around here.
Why would we have to do that?
Oh, I get it. The idea is that this information will be segregated from the Internet, preventing free access to it from anywhere in the world, right?
And China, with its larger population, would be able to educate and train a larger number of "valuable idea-having" people. Those ideas would become China's primary resource, and they would restrict access to those ideas, in order to generate revenue.
I guess that makes sense.
I'd like to see how China manages to breed more innovative, profitable minds than other countries do. Quantity alone doesn't equal dominance.
Where is it written that communism can handle change better than capitalism? Wouldn't all those five year plans have worked out a little better for the USSR, if that was the case?
And how do you reconcile the idea that information will flow freely (as in beer) in the future with the idea that information will be sold as a key resource in the future?
China has more producers of information, billions in fact, as does India which means more scientists, more technologies...
You're kidding, right? Having a huge information-producing population is only useful if they're actually producing lots of unique information. Having billions of citizens who are segregated from the Internet, deprived of their rights by their government, and all taught to think the same way, probably doesn't equal anything near the valuable information output of, say, Switzerland... hey, wasn't Tim Berners-Lee from Switzerland?
Besides, just because one futurist plays the "Hot Or Not" game with "information" and "resources", that doesn't mean it's true. It didn't work for Wired, why should it work for Kaku?
Little does the future Los Angeles know that I have already deployed my own Giant Water Scorpion to attack them in their sleep, millenia hence. Crawl, my pretty! Crawl!
Assume you have X amount of energy (either as fuel or "pure" energy). Now, burn off some of that energy to sustain the life of Keanu Reeves. Whatever energy Keanu doesn't need to survive can be used to power the gel-tank machinery. After that, if there's any energy left over, use it to power your brain. No doubt your first thought will be, "why the fuck didn't I just use all of that original X energy to power my brain?"
The scary thing is that there is a game you can find in many arcades now that simulates flying a passenger liner. You can fail the scenario for such terrible mistakes as "drifting from the flight path", "turning too tightly", and "climbing too fast". It's by far the most boring sim I've ever seen, and yet there always seems to be someone in the chair, trying desperately to stay inside the little HUD-boxes.
Re:Lame - as in, the original poster of this whine
on
Kernel 2.5.3 Released
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· Score: 2
You know, I fired off my original post to parody the kind of whining that so often occurs when the news isn't about Linux. After hitting the submit button however, I realized that such whining was already in full effect for this news item. I despaired of having any success at all with my little joke. And, juding from the response I've received so far, I was right to despair. At least I can draw some consolation from my small success as a troll. HTH. HAND.
Goddammit! Why do the editors keep posting inane stories about some questionable hobbyists' OS? News for Nerds? Maybe. Stuff that matters? Certainly not! More news about habitable planets, junkyard wars, and stem cell research, please!
Convenience != laziness, I think... movies take up less space on your hard drive than they do on a shelf (what with individual packaging, easements for the shelf-unit, &c.)--and don't forget that a hard drive full of movies can be stored anywhere; a shelf has to occupy valuable wall space, include enough clearance to get to the movies in question, and be conveniently near the viewing device.
Cataloging, indexing, and searching your copious movie collection is a lot less painful if you can eliminate the whole shelf thing as well. Jukebox issue aside, I'm sure you could come up with a similar list of reasons why having 1.5 weeks of music on your HD is vastly superior to having it on a shelf.
Finally, a memo to the humor-impaired lobe of your brain: the I/O comment was a joke. See, I meant to highlight the absurdities of... oh, never mind. You didn't get the Matrix, you obviously wouldn't get this. But hey, at least you have a week and a half of random music you like to take your mind of it!
Slashdot Mirror
Yeah, but imagine a Beowulf cluster of these!
The really bothersome thing about this particular piece is that a competent journalist could've written a very informative, if biased, fact-based indictment of Christian Cheerleaders.
A competent humorist could have written a very funny and engaging opinion-based indictment of same.
That Jon Katz prominently applauds an article which is neither makes me wonder what his own values actually are.
Sorry, I forgot to take into account the radically simplistic viewpoint. Congratulations! You've won your argument by making broad overgeneralizations! Have a nice day!
Neat! Your objection to "christian cheerleading" is just as well-supported as the opinions of the adolescent jerk who wrote the article. Care to offer some explanation for your argument?
God, that "cheerleaders" piece was awful. As reporting, it was incompetent and uninformative. As ranting, it was slow and anticlimactic. If this is the sort of feeble attempt at interesting writing that Jon Katz is urging us not to miss, then I think I'm beginnig to understand why he's so hated around here.
Why would we have to do that? Oh, I get it. The idea is that this information will be segregated from the Internet, preventing free access to it from anywhere in the world, right? And China, with its larger population, would be able to educate and train a larger number of "valuable idea-having" people. Those ideas would become China's primary resource, and they would restrict access to those ideas, in order to generate revenue. I guess that makes sense. I'd like to see how China manages to breed more innovative, profitable minds than other countries do. Quantity alone doesn't equal dominance.
Thanks for the correction. In light of this additional information, I'd like to stand by my point.
Where is it written that communism can handle change better than capitalism? Wouldn't all those five year plans have worked out a little better for the USSR, if that was the case?
And how do you reconcile the idea that information will flow freely (as in beer) in the future with the idea that information will be sold as a key resource in the future?
You're kidding, right? Having a huge information-producing population is only useful if they're actually producing lots of unique information. Having billions of citizens who are segregated from the Internet, deprived of their rights by their government, and all taught to think the same way, probably doesn't equal anything near the valuable information output of, say, Switzerland... hey, wasn't Tim Berners-Lee from Switzerland?
Besides, just because one futurist plays the "Hot Or Not" game with "information" and "resources", that doesn't mean it's true. It didn't work for Wired, why should it work for Kaku?
Which, of course, begs the question: If we don't grant the rights we recognize, then who does?
And who would grant these rights to electronic life-forms? Us? Or would the ELF's right to live be held as a self-evident truth?
And anyway, what criteria would a tool of my devising have to fulfill, before I agreed that it was entitled to an existence beyond my use for it?
You're new here, aren't you? The thing you're talking about is called Metamoderation.
Little does the future Los Angeles know that I have already deployed my own Giant Water Scorpion to attack them in their sleep, millenia hence. Crawl, my pretty! Crawl!
That's funny, I thought the The Electric Company used television waves for data...
Come on. We all know the Voight-Kampf test is incredibly accurate.
Certainly. Almost as useful as the attack jets, attack helicopters, and bombers currently doing the job.
Assume you have X amount of energy (either as fuel or "pure" energy). Now, burn off some of that energy to sustain the life of Keanu Reeves. Whatever energy Keanu doesn't need to survive can be used to power the gel-tank machinery. After that, if there's any energy left over, use it to power your brain. No doubt your first thought will be, "why the fuck didn't I just use all of that original X energy to power my brain?"
Indeed it does. Me, I'm quite satisfied with a cabinet full of movies and a PS2... Now all I need is a Lego Disc Robot.
The scary thing is that there is a game you can find in many arcades now that simulates flying a passenger liner. You can fail the scenario for such terrible mistakes as "drifting from the flight path", "turning too tightly", and "climbing too fast". It's by far the most boring sim I've ever seen, and yet there always seems to be someone in the chair, trying desperately to stay inside the little HUD-boxes.
You know, I fired off my original post to parody the kind of whining that so often occurs when the news isn't about Linux. After hitting the submit button however, I realized that such whining was already in full effect for this news item. I despaired of having any success at all with my little joke. And, juding from the response I've received so far, I was right to despair. At least I can draw some consolation from my small success as a troll. HTH. HAND.
Goddammit! Why do the editors keep posting inane stories about some questionable hobbyists' OS? News for Nerds? Maybe. Stuff that matters? Certainly not! More news about habitable planets, junkyard wars, and stem cell research, please!
Cataloging, indexing, and searching your copious movie collection is a lot less painful if you can eliminate the whole shelf thing as well. Jukebox issue aside, I'm sure you could come up with a similar list of reasons why having 1.5 weeks of music on your HD is vastly superior to having it on a shelf.
Finally, a memo to the humor-impaired lobe of your brain: the I/O comment was a joke. See, I meant to highlight the absurdities of... oh, never mind. You didn't get the Matrix, you obviously wouldn't get this. But hey, at least you have a week and a half of random music you like to take your mind of it!
Yeah, but I/O is painfully slow...
You're new here, aren't you?
So what you're saying is that it's more secure than the vast majority of physical credit card transactions! Who would sign up for that?
Yeah, but imagine a Beowulf cluster of these(!)