Since you asked: the distinction between the old Slashdot as a hobby versus Slashdot as a business is this: As a hobby for rob and crew it was a very cool experiment. A never-ending storyboard as a medium for us to discuss the issues. Relevance didn't matter as/. was not a force in the online world. The idea of/. going pro should constitute a small change in the approach as it is no longer a hobby the word professional comes to mind. If you are getting paid for the project why shouldn't you find yourself in someway accountable or at least responsible enough to it to do your best? There is absolutely nothing wrong with them getting paid for it. There is absolutely nothing wrong with their methods in the sense that by and large stories come from reader submissions. The small edge that professionalism should bring to the table are simple: and occasional spell check, verification of linkage and consistent participation.It's not some rule or ethic or commandment that makes this so. If things are inaccurate then why not strive to make it better? I am not out to crit the/. crew for their valiant efforts. They do a great job for the most part and suggestions and feedback only help but make it better in the big picture. I personally believe that/. has become one of the driving forces of internet information. They have succeeded in creating an online community model that now spans almost 100 sites running the engine they were kind enough to open source. Slashdot has been in magazines, TV and mentioned all over the internet. That translates to a certain amount of power and influence in the real world. If/. were to run a story that plunges a companies stock into the toilet because of the amount and demographic of/. readership and then the story turns out to be a farce there would be someone getting sued. That's just an example.Inaccuracy does all of us an injustice and makes us look like/.=national inquirer instead of what it really is: a relentless search for truth. You can say what you want and flame me all day long. The old Slashdot was famous for that very relentlessness and now that it's gone pro why slack and settle for mediocrity? I note that you posted at 1:21 PM on a work day. Your point is what? You posted at 3:33 PM on the very same work day. My work day starts when it starts, ends when it ends, and typically runs anywhere from 10-14 hours. A benefit of that is that I have the opportunity to enjoy free time whenever and however I like. The work gets done, clients are happy. Where I come into the/. world is the same as you and everyone else who posts and participates: we constitute the readership that without there would be no Slashdot. Yes Slashdot is free. So is cnn.com, msnbc.com, bbc.com, wired.com, etc. etc. Slashdot being a professional entity puts them in that league of players like it or not and they do wield some power now. "just kooky, quirky, idosyncratic Slashdot. And I, for one, hope that never changes." but you see, it already has.
But the biggest thing that Taco/Hemos could do to improve the site is: Get involved. You two used to spend a lot of "quality time" with the site--posting comments, responding to questions, etc. Right on the money. I really miss the days when you would see Taco and Malda posting in the discussions. They had an effect on the direction of the discussions and considering thier youth some real insight. Hopefully thier lack of participation as of late will change. If not it really could be the death of/.
I gotta say this: Once you cross the threshold of being a business versus a site that you run for fun you should feel obligated to be as accurate as possible. Yes,/. is bleeding edge when it comes to news stories. In that case you will always need to do follow up and corrections. I read/. because the fact is most of the time its pretty close to on the mark for the stories and topics of the day. Sometimes 3-4 days ahead of the real news media sites and this is exciting. What the/. team should be doing now as a professional site is taking a little more time to verify the accuracy of stories they post (seti addon boards anyone?). Slashdot is an influential site these days. It has appeared on the news, magaziness, ejournals etc. and that does translate to a cosiderable amount of power that needs to be wielded with not just integrity but some sort of ethic in order for it to maintain its presence.In the old days the pursuit of truth was relentless in the discussions on/. and malda and taco didn't need to worry about it so much. The times have changed and with as many people coming to/. for news we deserve to have it be accurate(or as close to as possible).
Sad that Mircorp coudn't make this happen. The premise of being the first commercial space hotel could have been very good for Russia. Thier economy could use the boost and so could the Russion people. They really need something to foster a sense of nationalism as it appears thier esteem is at an all time low and we have not heard any good news out of there in a long time. It looks like the Russians figured out what the US hasn't been able to: throwing lots of money at problems doesn't make them go away. Maybe now with their focus back on ISS we will enjoy the benefit of their extensive knowledge in extented duration spaceflight. I feel for them. The road to capitalism is a long and hard one from a communist state. It will take many lessons like this before they really get back on thier feet. I just wish that they wouldn't deorbit Mir. As expensive as it is to get things into orbit we should find some solution where we can recycle the massive amount of materials instead of dropping them back down to us. I'd rather entertain the idea of pushing Mir into a higher orbit until we can get a program going to take advantage of the raw materials that could be salvaged. NASA had an article not to long ago where they were discussing the idea of assembling satelites in space to save on the weight that over construction for launch adds to them. Combine that idea with some sort of recycler project and there wouldn't be any more deorbits required.
If IIRC it wasn't a resevior that the Russians made it was a natural gas storage facility. One of the very first issues of Discover Magazine had an article on this back in 81 I think complete with a picture of an engineer standing inside of one. I believe that the article also pointed out that the US had done the same back in the late 60's or early 70's. The nuke made for an ideal underground excavator: the cavern created would have walls several feet thick of rock that was made molten for a few seconds and therefore could be airtight (a huge glass bowl so to speak). What I wonder is why noone has done this on the moon yet. After venting the space it would make an ideal sealed container for colonization projects. If we had done this during some of the Apollo missions (or at least during that era) the caverns created would have had 30+ years to vent already. I know there would be some issues regarding the radioactivity afterwards but I believe that the use of a Hydrogen bomb (vs regular A bomb) would considerable bring down the level of radiation afterwards. This could be done with asteroids as well using small devices. Some scifi author had a few stories about this but I can't remember who. This could be a useful way of bringing down the quantity of nukes that had been stockpiled during the cold war but that is totally a subject for debate in and of itself.
In the game we would tweak the space plan but we never would mod the actual design based upon gameplay/gameflow. It probably never occurred to us to use q2 as a tool at the time because we were mostly interested in the game versus the immersion level of the space. The lan (at the time) had just been upgraded to 100 vs 10base and since we all had dialup in our homes the gameplay experience was incredible by comparison to homeplay. Hence, not too long after I became a broadband whore and tried cable, isdn and finally dsl. Life is *much* more fun on a bigger pipe.
One of the architectural firms I worked had a lot of fun with this. We would make a model of the space plan of a given building in Qoole and setup lan games on saturdays or after hours when q2 came out. Part of the fun would be namimg the players as the clients who the project was being built for. You could frag the boss and the project managers for the realtor etc. Much deathmatch fun was had this way though we never did anything serious about it as far as a visualization tool. There was something funny about the whole unit scale in q2 though. The units don't convert right like 1,1,1 didn't equal 1'x1'x1' I think it worked out to something like 1.1x1.1x.83 I don't remember as it was a few years ago already (surely someone elso out there can post the right units). We didn't fancy up the textures or make the levels 100% accurate. We were just in it for the frags on a lan where DM would be with 4-6 players on nice highend CAD systems (21" monitors, 32meg GL cards, tons of memory etc..)The article didn't mention the incredible team building effect this has on the design teams though. In an office the little bit of competition added to the tons of fun made for a much tighter construction documentation team. This comes in quite handy when you have condoc's of 100 or so sheets and a need to assemble them quickly.
On a similar note: when a telemarketer calls and asks you to help them in a survey ask them 'hey what's in it for me?' you would be surprised at the results. A lot of them actually are supposed to pay you for your time and effort. They don't usually admit this until you bug them for it. If they say they can't pay you hang up. If they say I am authorized to pay x amount haggle. I have gotten 10 and 25 checks in the mail from them, in fact I got one for $10 today.
well... I didn't want to even go here but the mans choice is horribly ignored by the virtue of us not being able to be pregnant. I totally agree with your point. I know of one girl who was out to have a baby and make sure that she would not be completely financially responsible for it. Clearly this is entrapment but to my horror she almost succeded twice. (note: it wasn't me she tried to entrap for those of you who know me in the real world) Luckily for the two guys she tried to snare this way she miscarried. Neither of the guys wanted the child and one of them swore he had used a condom.My point in my post though was that 3 Justices will be appointed by the next president. The fact that today we can make a choice doesn't mean that after the justices are appointed we will have the same freedom.
This is typical of the poor reasoning skills of the "pro-choice" movement. If I have an apartment for rent and I want to start storing my own stuff in there, can I kill the inhabitants because "it isn't anybody else's right to force me to rent"? No, because that's irrelevant.
I don't want to get into the process of insulting ones reasoning skills. However, your logic is flawed. If you have 'an apartment for rent' you make a decision on what to do with it. A) you rent it out and reap the rewards of the income or B) you store your stuff there. The decision being made before hand as to which you action you will take. Killing your tenants to store your stuff is not an option (although at times it doesn't sound like a bad idea:P ) and you have to either wait until the lease expires or you find some legal grounds for eviction. A womb is not an apartment and its tenant (your implication) does not have the rights a real tenant would have by contract. My whole point is this: Your beliefs should not be able to prevent someone else who thinks otherwise from doing what they envision as thier own righteous legal actions in a free society. You have your point of view to which there is merit. This does not negate my right to have a different view. I already stated my personal view on late term abortion: no it should not happen unless there is a serious medical need for it. Other people feel different and think that late term abortion is ok. More power to them. I applaud them and you for sharing your views and hope that more people will develop at the very least an informed opinion. There are too many people who don't even have an opinion to begin with. What an absolute tragedy. Maybe that in and of itself is a case for abortion right there... I digress. When its all said and done I think that abortion should be legal and free. I am tired of my tax dollars funding welfare, prisons, public housing, food, and social security for society's unwanted and unintentional additional populous. If you want to have children fine. If you don't want to have them that is fine to. Make a choice and move along that path. When you pull the lever on election day remember the real, long lasting implications of your decision and the people that will be empowered by it. If you want to end up in a society where abortion is illegal then go ahead and vote for Bush and be happy when that happens. I'd rather not see that as the outcome because the mentaility of the RTL crowd is that what they believe I should believe and that is not right. In fact, it is very disrespectful to the tenets of freedom. This will only continue to foster intollerance of opposing views and lead to censorship on levels far beyond the scope of what the RTL agenda would have you think they are about.de cadir - to make a choice and eliminate or cut off all other scenarios.
/me don's asbestos suit...assuming your not just another troll lets go ahead and dabate this for a minute:Ignorance and the right 'question'. How dare you say it not about a womans choice? How many women are raped and impregnated every year? Should a rape victim have to live with the spawn of the horrificly violent act that propogates a child and forces the woman to endure the vision of the act every day, knowing that a child is born of the violence that came upon her? Is it not her right to decide what happens to her body and what she will endure in that situation? I know women who were raped. I know two who because of their familial religious beliefs had the children and now are complete basket cases. I know that the healing process for them is much harder than the girls I have known who were lucky enough to either not been impregnated or had the ability to abort.The issue of a childs right to life may be the core but there are many factors that elevate the need to have prochoice justices on the bench. I dare say late term abortion is wrong unless there is a medical need for the mother to abandon the pregnancy versus the casual 'I change my mind(like the wind blows)' crowd. I have my opinion there but I don't believe that my opinion should bear witness against someone elses belief, which is my whole beef with the antiabortion crowd. If you say 'hey thats wrong!' well fine but thats where it should stop rather than the extremes that the antiabortion zealots have gone to. To quote Voltaire "I may not like what you have to say but I will defend with my life your right to say it!" If you believe it to be wrong then walk your talk and never place yourself in that situation (pray to your God that your sister, daughter, mother or friends don't have fate befall rape upon them) where an abortion would be a need. Just don't expect me to have to live by your creed as my views are different and you have to respect that. I say No. None of us have the right to life unless the our parents decide it so, furthermore I don't think its anybody elses right to force someone to bear a child and bring them into this world just because they believe it to be wrong to do otherwise. To take it a step further and venture off topic: its the same crowd that is not pro choice that would have cancer patients and the like suffer until they die in lieu of doctor assisted suicide or humane euthanasia. We are already at a point where our population is growing at a rate exceeding the worlds resources and as a species we will suffer these consequenses. Personally, my core belief is that the basic tenet of freedom is inherently the right to be left alone by your neighbor and your government provided that what you do is not affecting other people. The RTL crowd has completely forgotten or decided to ignore this. They can't even see the hypocrisy of thier actions when they kill doctors who preform abortions or bomb thier clinics.
I would vote for Nader if the situation wasn't what it is. There will be 3 Supreme Court Justice seats on the line in this election. Whom you elect is going to have a much further reaching impact than what would appear on the surface. If we as a country don't like who gets elected then 4 years from now the next election will roll in and the incumbent will be unseated. You say:
You can't risk making a statement? You can't risk not to!. The lesser of two evils is still evil. Break the cycle! Stop the madness! Other slogans!
But I have to say that making a statement may not be the most intelligent expenditure of your vote. Risking the outcome of this election and the ability of the winner to seat as many as 3 Justices is dangerous. Look at it this way: Bush is way out there. He is not pro choice. Right there I won't vote for him as adding 3 Justices to the supreme court that share his view will reverse Roe v. Wade. The appointment of a Justice is a life long kind of deal. They either step down or die but they will be powerful for much longer than the president that empowers them. Think about it. Do some real research on the impact of the outcome on issues that aren't in the mainstream media and then decide if your statement is worth taking away a womans freedom of choice and control over her body.
Well gonz, your right. Voting for who you think best suits you is key. A note to readers: Don't let propaganda sway you. Mom and Dad may have a different view than you and when you step in the booth its your turn to express that view. I think that who I vote for is amongst the most intensly personal things I do. It is noone's business who that vote is for and once I step in the booth the power is in my hands.- Gov. Jesse VenturaI think that the apathy level of our voting populous is a sad statement. There are lots of people registered and it is a right given to US citizens that they take for granted. Many men and women have died to grant us the privelege and millions worldwide would kill for the ability to do it. It's the same sadness I feel when I hear people complain about being a Juror, if only for a day. In peacetime, this is an infintesimally small price to pay for the freedom we enjoy. Yes, its a right and a privelege, but one should consider it as a personal civic duty to exercise all of your rights to the fullest. Ironically, those to lazy to vote still wont see the light in the big picture: if you don't vote for whom you believe is the person that best represents YOU and your views you really have no right to complain because after all you really have done nothing about it in the first place. They will still bitch, they will say it is because so and so is in office and yet thier pathetic assess will not get up and VOTE. btw...Gonz stop by #nothing and say hi - Sandor
Your link takes you to an article that is dated Nov. 11. More than likely its last year though the copyright date on the page clearly says 1998. A quick read through the article points out some things that should have clued you in to the dated info contained herein...mostly m00t.
Re:Serious security concerns
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I know. There are plusses... my basic tenet of 'it's not paranoia if your right' impulsively propels me forward... Having been harassed once or twice by the police your point hits a homer. I think that with the current trend in law enforcement to fit partol cars with cameras is a damn good thing - cameras do put the burden of proof to the test. Juries love video as its sees and hears for them and greatly clarifies cases while also putting Police under the microscope. I know it would have really helped me had that technology been available many years ago. Facing the wrong side of the law for no reason - be it racial profiling or age / sexually biased selective enforcement - and then coming to thre realization that the judge or jury will never belive a 'criminal' over a Policeman's account sucks and hopefully cameras will help in that scenario.
Serious security concerns
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Geez. A wristwatch camera. I'm almost speechless. I would be if pinhole cameras hadn't already been made in watchsize versions in the 60's with real film for espionage and fun. I saw a how to article on this in a do it yourself mag when I was a kid.This camera poses some real security issues though:1. Casinos will be lloking for thier clients wearing them as photos in gaming establishments are taboo. I could foresee teaming this up with a HUD of some sorts and this would lead to a real problem of people cheating in games like poker (standard player/helper scenario but now no signals to be communicated to the player by the helper as the image of the cards is now in the players HUD). 2. Court rooms will also be a problem. Photos of jurors make them awfully easy to identify and then tamper/extort. 3. Cabaret clubs will also have thier security looking out for these devices (taking a pic of that stripper is a no no as a cabaret is a private club NOT a public place). 4. The world of kidnappers and pedophiles is notorious for photographic surveys of thier targets. This will only make it much easier for them to do so. 5. Imagine going to a nightclub with your friends and they dance up on the podiums... viola... the next day your lady friends are all pictured on an up-skirt site. The list potentially goes on ad nauseum... I can't really see any redeeming quality for the development of a device like this as the uses for it will be for the most part subversive/intrusive. The potential for abuse here is very high. I don't want to take all the fun out of it as the technology is cool in and of itself but this type of thing will help all of us put big brother on our wrists in various flavors.
These days it just doesn't pay to make a machine that looks cool. If it does look good Apple will probably sue you for it - hence the reason nobody makes lappys in translucent color combos with hip and catchy names.
I have a Dell inspirion 7500 lappy whichi I bought in March/April of this year. For the most part it is a great machine and the PIII processor clocks at 500mhz when on battery power and 600 when plugged in. I can't tell any real performance difference between the two modes and the battery times feel the same as the inspirion 5000 that my wife has so I guess the speedstep thing is really pointless. The machine runs really hot and it is not something you would want to put on your lap per se. The screen is huge for a laptop but the drawback to this particular (the 7500) is that it is very heavy and when closed is about 2" thick. The plus is I have dragged this puppy all over and though it has had quite a beating in the 6 months I have had it is a real workhorse very capable as a desktop replacement.
and all this time I was thinking that the geek community was inherently biased towards porn. Porn being one of the few business models that actually makes money on the net and the earliest porno images I can remember where those nude ascii art calendars being ripped from mainframes on ledger colored, dot matrix, 24" wide continuous feed paper from hell. Heck, we (the geek community) probably started net porn due to us not getting any (or very little back in those wondefull acne filled days with huge printouts and keypunch cards of boobies)... ah the good ole days...
Your site no longer pays for bandwidth, just a fraction of sales, you could save significantly.
uh...did you read the articles? They are talking about charging for delivering customers. This will cost you just for having a customer browse your site.
CNN
...AT&T would also collect a fee from retailers each time a customer accesses their site through its network.
Yahoo
Under the possible plan, AT&T, the No. 1 U.S. telephone and cable-television company, would charge for each customer that accesses an Internet retail site using AT&T's high-speed communications network. It would receive an additional commission when customers buy something...
This will be the birth of corporate taxation of all of us. Hopefully some lawyer will be able to prove that this is taxation without representation or some other loophole but I just can't see this as being a good thing in any way. The home based online businesses will be the first to die off if this happens followed shortly thereafter by all of the struggling.com's and then probably the big ones. Why would you even want a retail website if you have to pay fees for people to browse. It is hard enough to market a site effectively and successfully without this type of hit to your marketing capitol.
I just don't get it. They want a piece of the pie coming and going. First for the customer to get to the retail site and then a commission for the sale. I hope that this is not a legal thing to do. If they get away with this new 'income engine' then we are going to have to come up with an alternate scheme of some sorts similar to the current plague of various long distance carriers and phone card telcos. Is there a way to force your data packets not to use thier networks? I can't imagine what fledgeling.com biz's are going to do in response to this. Effectively, this will be the end of many of them just by people browsing thier sites.
First off, I have been an incorporator since before my 21st birthday. Some of the companies I owned did well others did not. At present my wife and I own two corporations in the State of Florida so I am telling you this because I learned it the hard way... Corporate shareholders in S corps and C corps for the most part are covered by the corporate veil from liabilities but piercing that veil and coming after you personally is pretty easy. Any decent lawyer will find a way to say your actions were negligent in some manner and then poof they can come after you personally. I have been in that situation and lost a few times so take that serious. It works out kind of funny: if a corporate officer generates debt that would bankrupt your corp and then leaves, the remaining corporate officers/corporation are liable for the debt (this is very general and not true in every case but lets just say you and the remaining corporate officers were negligent in letting someone run you into the ground) hence the rise of the LLC Corporation as of late. The different types of corporations do give you some benefits (IANAL so don't treat this as Gospel):
S Corp's profit/loss is a line item deduction on your personal taxes (though you can't(maybe shouldn't) have outside shareholders). This is great if you are a small company and have only a few employees and are just getting started the election of going as an S corp works well in most small business situations (imho) but it is very easy for something to go wrong and then they can come after you personally. Additionally, an S corp is probably your best vehicle for a home business (important to note that I say business here not home office, there is a huge distinction here) as you can write off many of the expenses involved with running your business(fax/phone/part of the elctricity percentage of sf in rent) and home.C-Corp's are a better way to go if you are making a lots of money and have many employees but you risk double taxation in this scenario:the corporation pays taxes on profit and you pay taxes on your payroll and profit. The plus side - outside investors as shareholders is ok and if you intend to go public then you have no choice but to go this route.LLC's are the latest trend in incorporating as the liablilty of the individual shareholders is limited (you are protected from your partners running you into the ground. I have not been involved with an LLC so I can't say much more about it.As for the lack of financial responsibility you mentioned... most of the time you have no choice but to sign Personal Guarantees if your corporation is not a major league player or have not yet established a decent coporate credit history. Things you can't do business without like electric and phone all require a personal. You can't even think about getting into the yellow pages withhout a personal either and the yellow pages will come after you hard for thier money. If you could just bankrupt corporations without fear of the liability there would be tremendous fraud goin on (this has happenned and is exactly why the whole personal guarantee exists).
Sadly, the taxation issue is not fair to small business and hearing that MS doesn't have to pay is infuriating. The IRS makes the corporate tax filing so extremely cryptic and complicated that on average I have to pay accountants twice what I am laible for in taxes. In the real world this translates to paying triple in real dollars.
This machine was stolen. A widely publicized fact due to the massive attention the media placed on it. What doesn't make sense to me is this: If you are purchasing an Enigma machine (and this is mysteriously available right after one is stolen from Bletchley) you are not the 'average antique collector' in the first place and should have more wits about you than to make this type of 'mistake'. This type of collector is much smarter than the average bear and I am not buying into thier story, they would know the difference between the various models of the Enigma (2, 3 and 4 wheel). The fact that they are threatening to destroy this tangible piece of history also points to this party not being a real collector either. A real collector would not threaten to do this as true collectors view it as a privelge to be in posession of a part of history for the time that they have it.
I think that this party is more than likely the ones who stole the machine. The ransom notes are (imho) obviously from the people who stole the damn thing. They couldn't find someone to purchase thier prize and in an act of desparation are trying to quadruple the reward for returning the machine to its rightful owners via extortion. Note to self: IF s/N ratio>=facts(old news +/. $authors)
Slashdot Mirror
Since you asked: the distinction between the old Slashdot as a hobby versus Slashdot as a business is this: As a hobby for rob and crew it was a very cool experiment. A never-ending storyboard as a medium for us to discuss the issues. Relevance didn't matter as /. was not a force in the online world. The idea of /. going pro should constitute a small change in the approach as it is no longer a hobby the word professional comes to mind. If you are getting paid for the project why shouldn't you find yourself in someway accountable or at least responsible enough to it to do your best? There is absolutely nothing wrong with them getting paid for it. There is absolutely nothing wrong with their methods in the sense that by and large stories come from reader submissions. The small edge that professionalism should bring to the table are simple: and occasional spell check, verification of linkage and consistent participation.It's not some rule or ethic or commandment that makes this so. If things are inaccurate then why not strive to make it better? I am not out to crit the /. crew for their valiant efforts. They do a great job for the most part and suggestions and feedback only help but make it better in the big picture. I personally believe that /. has become one of the driving forces of internet information. They have succeeded in creating an online community model that now spans almost 100 sites running the engine they were kind enough to open source. Slashdot has been in magazines, TV and mentioned all over the internet. That translates to a certain amount of power and influence in the real world. If /. were to run a story that plunges a companies stock into the toilet because of the amount and demographic of /. readership and then the story turns out to be a farce there would be someone getting sued. That's just an example.Inaccuracy does all of us an injustice and makes us look like /.=national inquirer instead of what it really is: a relentless search for truth. You can say what you want and flame me all day long. The old Slashdot was famous for that very relentlessness and now that it's gone pro why slack and settle for mediocrity? I note that you posted at 1:21 PM on a work day. Your point is what? You posted at 3:33 PM on the very same work day. My work day starts when it starts, ends when it ends, and typically runs anywhere from 10-14 hours. A benefit of that is that I have the opportunity to enjoy free time whenever and however I like. The work gets done, clients are happy. Where I come into the /. world is the same as you and everyone else who posts and participates: we constitute the readership that without there would be no Slashdot. Yes Slashdot is free. So is cnn.com, msnbc.com, bbc.com, wired.com, etc. etc. Slashdot being a professional entity puts them in that league of players like it or not and they do wield some power now. "just kooky, quirky, idosyncratic Slashdot. And I, for one, hope that never changes." but you see, it already has.
But the biggest thing that Taco/Hemos could do to improve the site is: Get involved. You two used to spend a lot of "quality time" with the site--posting comments, responding to questions, etc. Right on the money. I really miss the days when you would see Taco and Malda posting in the discussions. They had an effect on the direction of the discussions and considering thier youth some real insight. Hopefully thier lack of participation as of late will change. If not it really could be the death of /.
I gotta say this: Once you cross the threshold of being a business versus a site that you run for fun you should feel obligated to be as accurate as possible. Yes, /. is bleeding edge when it comes to news stories. In that case you will always need to do follow up and corrections. I read /. because the fact is most of the time its pretty close to on the mark for the stories and topics of the day. Sometimes 3-4 days ahead of the real news media sites and this is exciting. What the /. team should be doing now as a professional site is taking a little more time to verify the accuracy of stories they post (seti addon boards anyone?). Slashdot is an influential site these days. It has appeared on the news, magaziness, ejournals etc. and that does translate to a cosiderable amount of power that needs to be wielded with not just integrity but some sort of ethic in order for it to maintain its presence.In the old days the pursuit of truth was relentless in the discussions on /. and malda and taco didn't need to worry about it so much. The times have changed and with as many people coming to /. for news we deserve to have it be accurate(or as close to as possible).
Sad that Mircorp coudn't make this happen. The premise of being the first commercial space hotel could have been very good for Russia. Thier economy could use the boost and so could the Russion people. They really need something to foster a sense of nationalism as it appears thier esteem is at an all time low and we have not heard any good news out of there in a long time. It looks like the Russians figured out what the US hasn't been able to: throwing lots of money at problems doesn't make them go away. Maybe now with their focus back on ISS we will enjoy the benefit of their extensive knowledge in extented duration spaceflight. I feel for them. The road to capitalism is a long and hard one from a communist state. It will take many lessons like this before they really get back on thier feet. I just wish that they wouldn't deorbit Mir. As expensive as it is to get things into orbit we should find some solution where we can recycle the massive amount of materials instead of dropping them back down to us. I'd rather entertain the idea of pushing Mir into a higher orbit until we can get a program going to take advantage of the raw materials that could be salvaged. NASA had an article not to long ago where they were discussing the idea of assembling satelites in space to save on the weight that over construction for launch adds to them. Combine that idea with some sort of recycler project and there wouldn't be any more deorbits required.
If IIRC it wasn't a resevior that the Russians made it was a natural gas storage facility. One of the very first issues of Discover Magazine had an article on this back in 81 I think complete with a picture of an engineer standing inside of one. I believe that the article also pointed out that the US had done the same back in the late 60's or early 70's. The nuke made for an ideal underground excavator: the cavern created would have walls several feet thick of rock that was made molten for a few seconds and therefore could be airtight (a huge glass bowl so to speak). What I wonder is why noone has done this on the moon yet. After venting the space it would make an ideal sealed container for colonization projects. If we had done this during some of the Apollo missions (or at least during that era) the caverns created would have had 30+ years to vent already. I know there would be some issues regarding the radioactivity afterwards but I believe that the use of a Hydrogen bomb (vs regular A bomb) would considerable bring down the level of radiation afterwards. This could be done with asteroids as well using small devices. Some scifi author had a few stories about this but I can't remember who. This could be a useful way of bringing down the quantity of nukes that had been stockpiled during the cold war but that is totally a subject for debate in and of itself.
In the game we would tweak the space plan but we never would mod the actual design based upon gameplay/gameflow. It probably never occurred to us to use q2 as a tool at the time because we were mostly interested in the game versus the immersion level of the space. The lan (at the time) had just been upgraded to 100 vs 10base and since we all had dialup in our homes the gameplay experience was incredible by comparison to homeplay. Hence, not too long after I became a broadband whore and tried cable, isdn and finally dsl. Life is *much* more fun on a bigger pipe.
One of the architectural firms I worked had a lot of fun with this. We would make a model of the space plan of a given building in Qoole and setup lan games on saturdays or after hours when q2 came out. Part of the fun would be namimg the players as the clients who the project was being built for. You could frag the boss and the project managers for the realtor etc. Much deathmatch fun was had this way though we never did anything serious about it as far as a visualization tool. There was something funny about the whole unit scale in q2 though. The units don't convert right like 1,1,1 didn't equal 1'x1'x1' I think it worked out to something like 1.1x1.1x.83 I don't remember as it was a few years ago already (surely someone elso out there can post the right units). We didn't fancy up the textures or make the levels 100% accurate. We were just in it for the frags on a lan where DM would be with 4-6 players on nice highend CAD systems (21" monitors, 32meg GL cards, tons of memory etc..)The article didn't mention the incredible team building effect this has on the design teams though. In an office the little bit of competition added to the tons of fun made for a much tighter construction documentation team. This comes in quite handy when you have condoc's of 100 or so sheets and a need to assemble them quickly.
On a similar note: when a telemarketer calls and asks you to help them in a survey ask them 'hey what's in it for me?' you would be surprised at the results. A lot of them actually are supposed to pay you for your time and effort. They don't usually admit this until you bug them for it. If they say they can't pay you hang up. If they say I am authorized to pay x amount haggle. I have gotten 10 and 25 checks in the mail from them, in fact I got one for $10 today.
well... I didn't want to even go here but the mans choice is horribly ignored by the virtue of us not being able to be pregnant. I totally agree with your point. I know of one girl who was out to have a baby and make sure that she would not be completely financially responsible for it. Clearly this is entrapment but to my horror she almost succeded twice. (note: it wasn't me she tried to entrap for those of you who know me in the real world) Luckily for the two guys she tried to snare this way she miscarried. Neither of the guys wanted the child and one of them swore he had used a condom.My point in my post though was that 3 Justices will be appointed by the next president. The fact that today we can make a choice doesn't mean that after the justices are appointed we will have the same freedom.
This is typical of the poor reasoning skills of the "pro-choice" movement. If I have an apartment for rent and I want to start storing my own stuff in there, can I kill the inhabitants because "it isn't anybody else's right to force me to rent"? No, because that's irrelevant. I don't want to get into the process of insulting ones reasoning skills. However, your logic is flawed. If you have 'an apartment for rent' you make a decision on what to do with it. A) you rent it out and reap the rewards of the income or B) you store your stuff there. The decision being made before hand as to which you action you will take. Killing your tenants to store your stuff is not an option (although at times it doesn't sound like a bad idea :P ) and you have to either wait until the lease expires or you find some legal grounds for eviction. A womb is not an apartment and its tenant (your implication) does not have the rights a real tenant would have by contract. My whole point is this: Your beliefs should not be able to prevent someone else who thinks otherwise from doing what they envision as thier own righteous legal actions in a free society. You have your point of view to which there is merit. This does not negate my right to have a different view. I already stated my personal view on late term abortion: no it should not happen unless there is a serious medical need for it. Other people feel different and think that late term abortion is ok. More power to them. I applaud them and you for sharing your views and hope that more people will develop at the very least an informed opinion. There are too many people who don't even have an opinion to begin with. What an absolute tragedy. Maybe that in and of itself is a case for abortion right there... I digress. When its all said and done I think that abortion should be legal and free. I am tired of my tax dollars funding welfare, prisons, public housing, food, and social security for society's unwanted and unintentional additional populous. If you want to have children fine. If you don't want to have them that is fine to. Make a choice and move along that path. When you pull the lever on election day remember the real, long lasting implications of your decision and the people that will be empowered by it. If you want to end up in a society where abortion is illegal then go ahead and vote for Bush and be happy when that happens. I'd rather not see that as the outcome because the mentaility of the RTL crowd is that what they believe I should believe and that is not right. In fact, it is very disrespectful to the tenets of freedom. This will only continue to foster intollerance of opposing views and lead to censorship on levels far beyond the scope of what the RTL agenda would have you think they are about.de cadir - to make a choice and eliminate or cut off all other scenarios.
/me don's asbestos suit...assuming your not just another troll lets go ahead and dabate this for a minute:Ignorance and the right 'question'. How dare you say it not about a womans choice? How many women are raped and impregnated every year? Should a rape victim have to live with the spawn of the horrificly violent act that propogates a child and forces the woman to endure the vision of the act every day, knowing that a child is born of the violence that came upon her? Is it not her right to decide what happens to her body and what she will endure in that situation? I know women who were raped. I know two who because of their familial religious beliefs had the children and now are complete basket cases. I know that the healing process for them is much harder than the girls I have known who were lucky enough to either not been impregnated or had the ability to abort.The issue of a childs right to life may be the core but there are many factors that elevate the need to have prochoice justices on the bench. I dare say late term abortion is wrong unless there is a medical need for the mother to abandon the pregnancy versus the casual 'I change my mind(like the wind blows)' crowd. I have my opinion there but I don't believe that my opinion should bear witness against someone elses belief, which is my whole beef with the antiabortion crowd. If you say 'hey thats wrong!' well fine but thats where it should stop rather than the extremes that the antiabortion zealots have gone to. To quote Voltaire "I may not like what you have to say but I will defend with my life your right to say it!" If you believe it to be wrong then walk your talk and never place yourself in that situation (pray to your God that your sister, daughter, mother or friends don't have fate befall rape upon them) where an abortion would be a need. Just don't expect me to have to live by your creed as my views are different and you have to respect that. I say No. None of us have the right to life unless the our parents decide it so, furthermore I don't think its anybody elses right to force someone to bear a child and bring them into this world just because they believe it to be wrong to do otherwise. To take it a step further and venture off topic: its the same crowd that is not pro choice that would have cancer patients and the like suffer until they die in lieu of doctor assisted suicide or humane euthanasia. We are already at a point where our population is growing at a rate exceeding the worlds resources and as a species we will suffer these consequenses. Personally, my core belief is that the basic tenet of freedom is inherently the right to be left alone by your neighbor and your government provided that what you do is not affecting other people. The RTL crowd has completely forgotten or decided to ignore this. They can't even see the hypocrisy of thier actions when they kill doctors who preform abortions or bomb thier clinics.
I would vote for Nader if the situation wasn't what it is. There will be 3 Supreme Court Justice seats on the line in this election. Whom you elect is going to have a much further reaching impact than what would appear on the surface. If we as a country don't like who gets elected then 4 years from now the next election will roll in and the incumbent will be unseated. You say: You can't risk making a statement? You can't risk not to!. The lesser of two evils is still evil. Break the cycle! Stop the madness! Other slogans! But I have to say that making a statement may not be the most intelligent expenditure of your vote. Risking the outcome of this election and the ability of the winner to seat as many as 3 Justices is dangerous. Look at it this way: Bush is way out there. He is not pro choice. Right there I won't vote for him as adding 3 Justices to the supreme court that share his view will reverse Roe v. Wade. The appointment of a Justice is a life long kind of deal. They either step down or die but they will be powerful for much longer than the president that empowers them. Think about it. Do some real research on the impact of the outcome on issues that aren't in the mainstream media and then decide if your statement is worth taking away a womans freedom of choice and control over her body.
Well gonz, your right. Voting for who you think best suits you is key. A note to readers: Don't let propaganda sway you. Mom and Dad may have a different view than you and when you step in the booth its your turn to express that view. I think that who I vote for is amongst the most intensly personal things I do. It is noone's business who that vote is for and once I step in the booth the power is in my hands.- Gov. Jesse VenturaI think that the apathy level of our voting populous is a sad statement. There are lots of people registered and it is a right given to US citizens that they take for granted. Many men and women have died to grant us the privelege and millions worldwide would kill for the ability to do it. It's the same sadness I feel when I hear people complain about being a Juror, if only for a day. In peacetime, this is an infintesimally small price to pay for the freedom we enjoy. Yes, its a right and a privelege, but one should consider it as a personal civic duty to exercise all of your rights to the fullest. Ironically, those to lazy to vote still wont see the light in the big picture: if you don't vote for whom you believe is the person that best represents YOU and your views you really have no right to complain because after all you really have done nothing about it in the first place. They will still bitch, they will say it is because so and so is in office and yet thier pathetic assess will not get up and VOTE. btw...Gonz stop by #nothing and say hi - Sandor
Your link takes you to an article that is dated Nov. 11. More than likely its last year though the copyright date on the page clearly says 1998. A quick read through the article points out some things that should have clued you in to the dated info contained herein...mostly m00t.
I know. There are plusses... my basic tenet of 'it's not paranoia if your right' impulsively propels me forward... Having been harassed once or twice by the police your point hits a homer. I think that with the current trend in law enforcement to fit partol cars with cameras is a damn good thing - cameras do put the burden of proof to the test. Juries love video as its sees and hears for them and greatly clarifies cases while also putting Police under the microscope. I know it would have really helped me had that technology been available many years ago. Facing the wrong side of the law for no reason - be it racial profiling or age / sexually biased selective enforcement - and then coming to thre realization that the judge or jury will never belive a 'criminal' over a Policeman's account sucks and hopefully cameras will help in that scenario.
Geez. A wristwatch camera. I'm almost speechless. I would be if pinhole cameras hadn't already been made in watchsize versions in the 60's with real film for espionage and fun. I saw a how to article on this in a do it yourself mag when I was a kid.This camera poses some real security issues though:1. Casinos will be lloking for thier clients wearing them as photos in gaming establishments are taboo. I could foresee teaming this up with a HUD of some sorts and this would lead to a real problem of people cheating in games like poker (standard player/helper scenario but now no signals to be communicated to the player by the helper as the image of the cards is now in the players HUD).
2. Court rooms will also be a problem. Photos of jurors make them awfully easy to identify and then tamper/extort.
3. Cabaret clubs will also have thier security looking out for these devices (taking a pic of that stripper is a no no as a cabaret is a private club NOT a public place).
4. The world of kidnappers and pedophiles is notorious for photographic surveys of thier targets. This will only make it much easier for them to do so.
5. Imagine going to a nightclub with your friends and they dance up on the podiums... viola... the next day your lady friends are all pictured on an up-skirt site. The list potentially goes on ad nauseum... I can't really see any redeeming quality for the development of a device like this as the uses for it will be for the most part subversive/intrusive. The potential for abuse here is very high. I don't want to take all the fun out of it as the technology is cool in and of itself but this type of thing will help all of us put big brother on our wrists in various flavors.
These days it just doesn't pay to make a machine that looks cool. If it does look good Apple will probably sue you for it - hence the reason nobody makes lappys in translucent color combos with hip and catchy names.
I have a Dell inspirion 7500 lappy whichi I bought in March/April of this year. For the most part it is a great machine and the PIII processor clocks at 500mhz when on battery power and 600 when plugged in. I can't tell any real performance difference between the two modes and the battery times feel the same as the inspirion 5000 that my wife has so I guess the speedstep thing is really pointless. The machine runs really hot and it is not something you would want to put on your lap per se. The screen is huge for a laptop but the drawback to this particular (the 7500) is that it is very heavy and when closed is about 2" thick. The plus is I have dragged this puppy all over and though it has had quite a beating in the 6 months I have had it is a real workhorse very capable as a desktop replacement.
anyone have a mirror for this?
and all this time I was thinking that the geek community was inherently biased towards porn. Porn being one of the few business models that actually makes money on the net and the earliest porno images I can remember where those nude ascii art calendars being ripped from mainframes on ledger colored, dot matrix, 24" wide continuous feed paper from hell. Heck, we (the geek community) probably started net porn due to us not getting any (or very little back in those wondefull acne filled days with huge printouts and keypunch cards of boobies)... ah the good ole days...
is the fact that geekporn.com made it to slashdot and not one person Open Sourced the password...
Yahoo
This will be the birth of corporate taxation of all of us. Hopefully some lawyer will be able to prove that this is taxation without representation or some other loophole but I just can't see this as being a good thing in any way. The home based online businesses will be the first to die off if this happens followed shortly thereafter by all of the struggling
I just don't get it. They want a piece of the pie coming and going. First for the customer to get to the retail site and then a commission for the sale. I hope that this is not a legal thing to do. If they get away with this new 'income engine' then we are going to have to come up with an alternate scheme of some sorts similar to the current plague of various long distance carriers and phone card telcos. Is there a way to force your data packets not to use thier networks? I can't imagine what fledgeling .com biz's are going to do in response to this. Effectively, this will be the end of many of them just by people browsing thier sites.
First off, I have been an incorporator since before my 21st birthday. Some of the companies I owned did well others did not. At present my wife and I own two corporations in the State of Florida so I am telling you this because I learned it the hard way... Corporate shareholders in S corps and C corps for the most part are covered by the corporate veil from liabilities but piercing that veil and coming after you personally is pretty easy. Any decent lawyer will find a way to say your actions were negligent in some manner and then poof they can come after you personally. I have been in that situation and lost a few times so take that serious. It works out kind of funny: if a corporate officer generates debt that would bankrupt your corp and then leaves, the remaining corporate officers/corporation are liable for the debt (this is very general and not true in every case but lets just say you and the remaining corporate officers were negligent in letting someone run you into the ground) hence the rise of the LLC Corporation as of late. The different types of corporations do give you some benefits (IANAL so don't treat this as Gospel): S Corp's profit/loss is a line item deduction on your personal taxes (though you can't(maybe shouldn't) have outside shareholders). This is great if you are a small company and have only a few employees and are just getting started the election of going as an S corp works well in most small business situations (imho) but it is very easy for something to go wrong and then they can come after you personally. Additionally, an S corp is probably your best vehicle for a home business (important to note that I say business here not home office, there is a huge distinction here) as you can write off many of the expenses involved with running your business(fax/phone/part of the elctricity percentage of sf in rent) and home.C-Corp's are a better way to go if you are making a lots of money and have many employees but you risk double taxation in this scenario:the corporation pays taxes on profit and you pay taxes on your payroll and profit. The plus side - outside investors as shareholders is ok and if you intend to go public then you have no choice but to go this route.LLC's are the latest trend in incorporating as the liablilty of the individual shareholders is limited (you are protected from your partners running you into the ground. I have not been involved with an LLC so I can't say much more about it.As for the lack of financial responsibility you mentioned... most of the time you have no choice but to sign Personal Guarantees if your corporation is not a major league player or have not yet established a decent coporate credit history. Things you can't do business without like electric and phone all require a personal. You can't even think about getting into the yellow pages withhout a personal either and the yellow pages will come after you hard for thier money. If you could just bankrupt corporations without fear of the liability there would be tremendous fraud goin on (this has happenned and is exactly why the whole personal guarantee exists). Sadly, the taxation issue is not fair to small business and hearing that MS doesn't have to pay is infuriating. The IRS makes the corporate tax filing so extremely cryptic and complicated that on average I have to pay accountants twice what I am laible for in taxes. In the real world this translates to paying triple in real dollars.
This machine was stolen. A widely publicized fact due to the massive attention the media placed on it. What doesn't make sense to me is this: If you are purchasing an Enigma machine (and this is mysteriously available right after one is stolen from Bletchley) you are not the 'average antique collector' in the first place and should have more wits about you than to make this type of 'mistake'. This type of collector is much smarter than the average bear and I am not buying into thier story, they would know the difference between the various models of the Enigma (2, 3 and 4 wheel). The fact that they are threatening to destroy this tangible piece of history also points to this party not being a real collector either. A real collector would not threaten to do this as true collectors view it as a privelge to be in posession of a part of history for the time that they have it. I think that this party is more than likely the ones who stole the machine. The ransom notes are (imho) obviously from the people who stole the damn thing. They couldn't find someone to purchase thier prize and in an act of desparation are trying to quadruple the reward for returning the machine to its rightful owners via extortion. /. $authors)
Note to self: IF s/N ratio>=facts(old news +