I live in Portland, Oregon, home of LeGuin. I'm working on NW Raleigh St, just a few blocks from her house on NW Thurman. I've seen LeGuin speak, been to book-signings at Powell's, and seen her guest-lecture at PSU.
She's brilliant, and her contribution to science fiction is immeasurable. I'm a man, and I don't want to bash male SF writers unduely, but until LeGuin started writing much SF was pretty dull.
LeGuin herself has said that for years she wrote SF as a man, because she had no idea how a woman would or could write it. Her main characters were male, they did manly things (conquered, explored, solved problems). After she wrote The Dispossessed she realized she was doing a disservice to herself, and to the world, and started to consciously write as she would - not as she thought others wanted her to. Her success is proof that many people agreed with her.
If you want to read more LeGuin, read two essays. A Non-Euclidean View of California as a Cold Place to Be is beautiful social criticism, and interesting for other reasons: about half-way through she consulted the I Ching, casting the yarrows asking it to describe for her "a yin utopia." "Yang" being bright, masculine; "yin" being dark, feminine. A "yang utopia" would be, for instance, the highly-mechanized, clean, bright future cities of much of the male-dominated SF of the early century. A "yin utopia" would be, well, read the essay:). It's in her collection of essays, Dancing at the Edge of the World.
Also, her introduction to The Norton Book of Science Fiction is a deep and thoughtful introduction to SF. The book is one of the best SF collections ever, and worth it for that essay alone.
(She's also written a beautiful poetic translation of the Tao Te Ching.)
On another note, for those who don't know, Philip K Dick also used the I Ching extensively when writing The Man in the High Castle. He said he threw the yarrow thousands of times, consulting the book at every plot point and decision. Circularly, the book's characters use it, too.
Don't think that software sellers haven't seen this coming. Here's a quote from the riling (lifted from the article):
"... the purchaser commonly obtains a single copy of the software, with documentation, for a single price, which the purchaser pays at the time of the transaction, and which constitutes the entire payment for the 'license.'
The license runs for an indefinite term without provisions for renewal. In light of these indicia, many courts and commentators conclude that a 'shrinkwrap license' transaction is a sale of goods rather than a license." (emphasis mine)
The judge has given a roadmap for getting around his ruling: subscriptions. In his judgement a subscription would clearly be a license, not a sale, thus no "first sale" doctrine would apply. Not coincidentally, many large software sellers are moving to a subscription model. This ruling will only serve to accelerate that process. By the time it gets appealed to the Supremes, it won't matter.
WASHINGTON, Nov. 15 -- The Bush administration, reversing a course set two decades ago, has decided that the world's remaining stocks of smallpox should be retained until scientists develop new vaccines and treatments for the disease, a process that could take years if not decades.
Reading between the lines, it sounds like bullshit. They appear to be keeping these stocks as some sort of sick deterrent because North Korea is rumored to have some, as well. Brilliant.
Don't forget, of course, one of the best science fiction (historical fiction, really) novels in recent years: The Difference Engine by William Gibson and Bruce Sterling. For those not in the know, these guys were the two (accidental) founders of cyberpunk. Gibson is one of the most influential science fiction writers since Ursula LeGuin.
Anyway, it's a fabulous book. To really understand it, you should first read a history like the The Difference Engine reviewed here, or you'll be a little lost.
Yowza, I don't think I want to live in your world. Here's a clue, pal: not everyone in jail is guilty. Quite often, in fact, people are jailed only briefly and then released. Sometimes people are tried and (*gasp*) not convicted, which according to our system means that they weren't guilty in the first place.
Are you trolling, or do you really mean to suggest that every single person suspected of a crime should have all their rights stripped before they're convicted of a thing? That all citizens should, in effect, be judged guilty until proven innocent?
Re:I'd have a hard time taking this book seriously
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God's Debris
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· Score: 5, Insightful
Satire is wasted on some people.
Satire??Dilbert is one of the sorriest attempts at satire ever. What's Dilbert's basic message? "Bosses are stupid, but we all have to do what they say anyway, unless we can trick them by being lazy or fucking up."
Folks, wake up and smell the capitalism. Real satire inspires you to action, it twists in your mind until its meaning is communicated, it disturbs and outrages. Real satire has teeth, it draws blood. If you want satire read Jonathan Swift:
My hate, whose lash just Heaven had long decreed,
Shall on a day make sin and folly bleed.
His satire had a goal, a purpose. He wrote to tear down empires, to destroy human stupidity.
Scott Adams has an entirely different goal: to become rich as Croesus by exploiting human stupidity and pandering to it. Pathetic.
I know where it'll end up: just like Reason in Snow Crash. Boxes will be nuclear powered and you'll have to have the heat exchanger immersed in water the whole time or it'll melt down.
In all seriousness, I do think this is the way things'll go. Remember all those air-cooled Volkswagen buses? Remember how people bolted radiators onto the side of them so they wouldn't explode in hot climates? Air-cooling will only carry you so far, especially with dinky little fans. For serious cooling you need serious metal-to-metal heat exchange.
Mod me down for the salty language if you want, but damnit, he really is. This is a bald-faced lie, straight from the article:
"I made this offer not because the government can't afford to pay for the software, but because I shut up the critics who were saying, 'Gee, Larry Ellison wants to build a national database because he wants to sell more databases,' which is pretty cynical and bizarre. What's in it for me is the same thing that's in it for you: a safer America." emphasis mine
Bullshit, bullshit, bullshit. What's in it for him is a death-grip on the identities of the entire country. What's in it for him is becoming as important as a public utility, but having all the benefits of a for-profit corporation. What's in it for him is that this is the only way he'll ever get richer and more important than Bill Gates, and he's got a woody the size of Florida.
Frank Herbert said (and I agree), "It's not true that power corrupts. The truth is that power attracts the corruptible, and absolute power the absolutely corruptible."
Forget the 21" monitor, it's either underkill or overkill, depending on how you look at it. IMHO you've got two best choices:
The Sony GDM-FW900, a 24" (22.5" viewable) screen that'll do 1920 x 1200 @ 85Hz, and 2304 x 1440 max. You won't believe how beautiful it is 'til you see it. Sony says retail is $1,999, but I've seen it for much less. The Viewsonic P225f is also very nice, 22", much cheaper.
My favorite solution, 2 19" screens on a Matrox DualHead card. Right now I'm using 2 Viewsonic P95fs. Perfectly flat, max 1920 x 1440. Overall I think I like Iiyamas better, but these are nice.
Having 2 screens, if you've never worked that way, is wonderful. One screen for preview, one for tools has saved much wear and tear on my fingers switching consoles, windows, and desktops. Plus two good 19" screens are about the same price as a 22": $1,000. Lots of money, yes, but the screen is one part that you can't incrementally upgrade. Plus you can always buy one now and save up for the next:)
You might want to check out the SmartBoard by Data Desk. It's a nicely laid-out split keyboard with low-force mechanical keys. It's a little loud, but boy does it feel beautiful. The layout might look odd to begin with, but I found it very easy to adapt and I'm a fucking fast typist. Plus it's only $70, which in these days of cheap Microsoft Natural knock-offs and $300 UberErgo boards is a pretty good deal.
If all you want from school is to graduate immediately into a high-paying job in your field of choice, then yes, screw all those other courses, and forget being "well-rounded." But consider this: most people do not spend their entire lives in the same field of work.
What were you doing when you were 5? Can you imagine doing that now, or 20 years from now? If you think you won't have the same perspective then ("But... I was such a child at 5... it'll be different when I'm 45") you're wrong.
The primary purpose of a good education is to give you tools to continue educating yourself. Quick example: every war movie ever made has the "touch-as-nails ass-kicking Sergeant who knows everything" and the "greenhorn Lieutenant who gets in the way." These are stereotypes obviously, but instructive. What's the difference between these two? It's experience vs. education.
I got a degree in English literature and philosophy and what am I doing for a living? Programming and database design. My education (and my parents) taught me how to teach myself, how to think and learn and enjoy it.
My education gave me a set of tools to apply to any problem, kind of like lock picks, or being a locksmith. No, they don't fit any lock exactly, but with a little screwing around I can get most locks open. Compared with having a specific key which smoothly and perfectly opens a given lock but is useless for anything else. The downside is that "screwing around" period, but I think my life's much more interesting for it.
Finally, to this point: "Is this really what companies want of today's graduates?" A resounding "yes." When you interview for a job you'll be up against any number of people with better academic credentials. The trick is, neither of you will know nearly enough to really do your job, and you'll both need extensive training before you're productive and can repay the company's investment in you. You have to know your shit, but that's only the baseline - if you didn't have that you wouldn't have made the interview. The interview's to discover if you can learn and adapt and think, and that's the most valuable thing you can learn in school.
Re:Not exactly a White Knight
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Brian West Update
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· Score: 3, Insightful
Quoth you:
The things listed in that last paragraph would be consistent with a simple, innocent test to see if the passwords/access worked.
Then at very least he's guilty of extreme stupidity. But that's not the case - his sworn testimony is that he planned to redistribute the code he downloaded and profit from it. That's what makes this a crime.
Not exactly a White Knight
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Brian West Update
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· Score: 5, Informative
From the article, near the bottom:
"This case generated a very substantial amount of e-mailed correspondence to our office and across the world," [United States Attorney Sheldon J.] Sperling said. "The wide range of opinion was instructive. In this case, the defendant rewrote the files he downloaded, planned to distribute his rewrite, added another page to the website, modified the password file, and misled sympathizers and others as to both the character and scope of what he had done."
This is exactly the kind of cracking that needs to be prosecuted. This jerk wanted to have his cake and eat it too: look like a hero for publicizing the security hole, then profit from stealing another's work. It doesn't even sound like he was very smart about it.
Some people posted in the original article saying basically the same thing, but were ignored or flamed. Others were obviously lied to. People wrote letters, donated to the EFF, etc.
It's nice to see such noble acts, but please folks, take cases like this with a grain of salt until the truth comes out, eh? We geeks already have enough of a reputation for being reactionary.
I've got a KinesisContoured 'board at work now, but I'm going to return it.
First, the good: Learning the new key positions wasn't very difficult. They're pretty natural, and the hand position is very nice. Less stress than a standard 'board. The keys themselves are mechanical, not membrane, and low-pressure. Very nice feel, very positive contact, although not much of a click. There's an audible click that you can toggle.
On the bad side, the 'board is almost useless except for typing characters. The control (shift, alt, etc) keys are in difficult positions. A design goal of the 'board, they tell me, was to make key combos like 'CTRL-SHIFT-S' easier to hit with two hands. This may be better for your hands, but at high speed it's very very hard to coordinate two hands to nail a combo like this (and I play guitar, so I know a little about coordinating hand movements).
There's no numeric keypad, but there is another 'layer' that can be toggled with a function key or foot switch. Kind of a pain. The 'board's programmable, if you spring $50 for the extra chip (with that and the footswitch, you're easily over $300), and this helps a little, but not enough.
Bottom line for me: the keys feel beautiful and typing characters is very easy, but the 'board's nearly useless for anything else. It's hard to hit function keys and key combos, hard to use with one hand while keeping a hand on the mouse - in other words, nearly half of what I do. Too bad.
BUT if you do nothing but type all day, buy this board and never let it out of your sight. Your life will improve dramatically. If I could afford to have 2 'boards, this would be one of them.
Several iterations later: "US Nukes Italy: 'We did it for the children,' says righteous Bush, sipping a Margarita on day 1194 of his 'Permanent Vacation.'"
This issue will cause a war at some point in the future, I bet. For the old science fiction fans amongst us, check out Frank Herbert's Destination Void. Guaranteed to hurt your brain. Here's a very simple summary that doesn't give away much:
X years in the future, human cloning is commonplace. Perhaps inevitably, clones are treated as far less than human, simply disposable lumps of flesh. A "Void Ship" (thus the name) is shot out into interstellar space with a crew of clones, and their task is to create artificial life (not intelligence - life), using the ship itself as the raw material. They use clones because the people on moon base are
very afraid of creating life they can't control - they want the data, but not the actuality. With a crew of clones, they can blow up the ship before any artificial life is realized, but hopefully after they have a little more data. And it doesn't matter, because the crew are only clones. There are many layers of irony, and tragedy, here.
If you read much Herbert, you may see the very beginnings of the "Butlerian Jihad" in this story. Remember all the "Mentats" in the Dune books? Human computers? They existed because of the one prohibition that came out of the Butlerian Jihad: "Thou shalt not make a machine in the image of a man's mind." They discovered, almost too late, that relying on machines to do your work turns you into a slave.
Read more Herbert - he was one of the most important minds in fiction all last century.
Parenthetically, Herbert followed this 20 years later with a trilogy: The Jesus Incident, The Lazarus Effect, and The Ascension Factor. It's really some of his best work, aside from the Dune books. Sadly, he died before he finished the last one, and his co-author for the series (Bill Ransom) finished it. Bill Ransom's a decent poet, but a lousy novelist, and The Ascension Factor was pretty weak. The first two are great though, and spend more time with the clone issue.
Or bury your head in the sand. "Hey, it's not my problem... yet." Don't miss the core issues here: (1) shoddy software design, and (2) asshole marketers.
There are any number of really good reasons to run both JavaScript and IE. As a web developer I love JavaScript. If I validate a form with JavaScript I save the user time since they don't have to wait for the server to validate and respond (the server its own validation, of course, so I don't save any CPU cycles). This is a win for both of us: the user gets a faster response and I get a happier user.
For people running Windows (nearly everyone, last I checked), IE is the fastest, most stable, and most feature-rich browser available. Yes, it's chock-full of security holes. That's by design. Microsoft is pretty explicit in trading usability for security, and it shows. [Some of] Their products are very user-friendly.
To avoid getting modded down as a troll, I'll say that Microsoft sucks and only lusers use IE. Lusers like my mom, of course, who has trouble enough on the web without me updating Mozilla to milestone "slightly faster than a melting glacier" every other week on her P200. I use Mozilla, and it kicks IE's ass for my use, and on my computer.
My point? The problems here are (a) lack of security focus by Microsoft. There should be no setting, anywhere, that allows changes to local software without explicit user consent. They have fucked this up royally, time and time again, and I don't think it's ever going to change. Plus, if they have their way, the concept of "local software" will go away entirely.
The other problem ((b), if you're keeping track) is human capacity for evil. Some PHB had a brilliant idea: "Ok, we need to change every directory name on the computer to 'Porn-R-Us.com'. You can do that, right?". Some low-life programmer said, "Sure, there's an ACtiveX control for it."
It all comes down to human decisions. Somewhere along the line a human being decided to fuck another human being to make a buck. The only way to stop this is to remove the buck. This is often done with a lawsuit, or other legal action. So I say yes, sue these bastards 'til they can't walk straight.
A friend of mine runs a Cold Fusion/NT website, and has IIS installed on his home box for development. I called him last week to alert him to this thing, and it was the final straw. He dragged an old P133 out of the closet and installed Mandrake, Apache and PHP on it. Now he's migrating his site away from Cold Fusion.
There are a few points of interest here:
First, as we've all been saying, Microsoft's security flaws are hitting them where it hurts - market share.
Second, this guy had *never* used Linux before (although he'd seen me use it, and we've talked about it for a long time). In less than 3 days he started from scratch and got a running development machine. This is evidence of a huge step forward for Linux usability.
Third, Allaire/Macromedia just lost a customer. Microsoft is not a safe bet in many applications, and tying yourself to them will hurt in the long run.
"The Internet is an important cultural phenomenon, but that doesn't excuse its failure to comply with basic economic laws," said Thomas Nolle, a [dumbshit].
I wonder if he understands what he's saying? For purposes of this discussion, there are two types of laws: prescriptive and descriptive.
Prescriptive laws are, for instance, speed limits. They don't attempt to describe the world but to govern it. These are human social constructs and subject to rapid change. They have a goal (e.g. prohibit bad behaviour), and can be adjusted depending on how well they serve that goal. If you disobey one of these laws you're likely to be punished by your peers.
Descriptive laws are, for instance, gravity. They attempt to understand and explain the world we see. They are not human constructs (unless you're a solipsist), and are not subject to human modification. They serve no goals (unless you're a deist), and do not change. There is no opportunity to disobey these laws.
So what is this guy saying? What types of laws is he talking about? If he means that the Internet is not obeying the descriptive laws of the science economics, then he's fucked: if a verified experiment conflicts with what you think is a law, then the law goes (hint: scientific method). That would mean that the Internet is an exception to economic law. Ergo, economic law is full of holes. Oops. Not much of a descriptive law, eh?
If he means that the Internet won't obey the prescribed laws of the human construct of economics, he's equally fucked: if economic laws work so well, why are we in a recession? If they work so damn well, why was the Internet a surprise to most people? Why was the dot-com hype and crash a surprise?
In short, he's full of shit. He wants economics to be a science so he can be its High Priest ("Only I can interpret the laws of the great God economics."). But he wants it to be a set of regulations that he can impose on things he doesn't understand. Typical late 20th century capitalism, eh?
My dad (RIP) was in the Navy Reserve in WWII; he flew a torpedo bomber off aircraft carriers. He was in flight training in Corpus Cristi, TX, in 1942. What they encouraged pilots to do was put a saucer full of hot (hot by Navy standards, that is, which makes McDonald's look pretty tepid) coffee on their laps.
One reason, of course, was that if you dozed off at all and the plane left straight-and-level you were guaranteed to be completely alert when you woke up, seconds later.
Another reason is that much of the military equipment churned out for the war wasn't of the highest possible quality. The US won WWII with our massive industrial base, and in the heat of things some corners were cut. So yeah, during night flying pilots could use their instruments to tell them they were going up, down, or sideways -- but the coffee never lied.
That's splitting hairs, and you know it. The political fallout from giving 6 months notice and giving 0 months notice would be identical.
Here's a news flash: agreements between heavily-armed parties are a Good Thing. Breaking those agreements is a Bad Thing. In this case, everybody loses.
We have no proof that the test actually worked. The U.S. military is not known for being open and honest about its failures (e.g. Gulf War "smart bombs"). All the reports I've seen said that two missiles were launched, then there was a bright flash of light. No collision was taped or witnessed. Granted, this would require some pretty gnarly cover-up and/or conspiracy, but it's food for thought.
GW Bush has said that he'll go ahead funding these tests whether or not they work. William S Burroughs once said, "In government, if something doesn't work, that's the best reason to keep on doing it."
The whole thing reminds me of a Bloom County cartoon from the Reagan Star Wars era. Opus the penguin submitted a grant application to the government to stitch $100 bills together by hand and deploy them in space as a missile shield. The grant was accepted, of course, and they started mailing him boxes of $100 bills. (I don't remember what he actually did with the cash - donated it to PETA, knowing Opus). Same idea, though. This whole fucking mess is just one monstrous pork-barrel: it can't work, it won't work, it'll never be finished, and the only end-product will be another house in the hills for some military contractor.
There are generally two types of countries with nuclear capability: civilized and uncivilized, or if you will, amenable to rational negotiation and not emanable. What the U.S. is doing here is pissing off and scaring literally every country in the world, and has tossed us squarely into the "not amenable to rational negotiation" pile; we're keeping company with Iraq on this issue. "They're our bombs and we'll do whatever the hell we want, treaties be damned." Christ that scares me.
Musical innovation, I think, can come from two sources: study or passion. It's best when it comes from both, but for truly great music, passion is more important. Hendrix didn't study - he couldn't even read music for most of his life - but few have matched his passion.
Beethoven, on the other hand, studied and had passion, and it shows. His work is several orders of magnitude above Hendrix. Truth is, though, that truly studied music isn't often heard today. People go to school to study music, and they learn the school's rote. In Beethoven's time, musicians were often educated like craftsmen - as apprentices to an acknowledged great.
angsty teenage idiots
So, you've never been a teenager? You've never felt angst? Or all teenagers who feel angst are idiots?
Cynicism may make you feel clever for a minute, but it's a lousy way to run your life. I hope you mature some before you decide to breed; it's unlikely that your teenage kids will avoid being "angsty idiots."
Slashdot Mirror
I live in Portland, Oregon, home of LeGuin. I'm working on NW Raleigh St, just a few blocks from her house on NW Thurman. I've seen LeGuin speak, been to book-signings at Powell's, and seen her guest-lecture at PSU.
:). It's in her collection of essays, Dancing at the Edge of the World .
.)
She's brilliant, and her contribution to science fiction is immeasurable. I'm a man, and I don't want to bash male SF writers unduely, but until LeGuin started writing much SF was pretty dull.
LeGuin herself has said that for years she wrote SF as a man, because she had no idea how a woman would or could write it. Her main characters were male, they did manly things (conquered, explored, solved problems). After she wrote The Dispossessed she realized she was doing a disservice to herself, and to the world, and started to consciously write as she would - not as she thought others wanted her to. Her success is proof that many people agreed with her.
If you want to read more LeGuin, read two essays. A Non-Euclidean View of California as a Cold Place to Be is beautiful social criticism, and interesting for other reasons: about half-way through she consulted the I Ching, casting the yarrows asking it to describe for her "a yin utopia." "Yang" being bright, masculine; "yin" being dark, feminine. A "yang utopia" would be, for instance, the highly-mechanized, clean, bright future cities of much of the male-dominated SF of the early century. A "yin utopia" would be, well, read the essay
Also, her introduction to The Norton Book of Science Fiction is a deep and thoughtful introduction to SF. The book is one of the best SF collections ever, and worth it for that essay alone.
(She's also written a beautiful poetic translation of the Tao Te Ching
On another note, for those who don't know, Philip K Dick also used the I Ching extensively when writing The Man in the High Castle. He said he threw the yarrow thousands of times, consulting the book at every plot point and decision. Circularly, the book's characters use it, too.
First paragraph: Reading between the lines, it sounds like bullshit. They appear to be keeping these stocks as some sort of sick deterrent because North Korea is rumored to have some, as well. Brilliant.
Don't forget, of course, one of the best science fiction (historical fiction, really) novels in recent years: The Difference Engine by William Gibson and Bruce Sterling. For those not in the know, these guys were the two (accidental) founders of cyberpunk. Gibson is one of the most influential science fiction writers since Ursula LeGuin.
Anyway, it's a fabulous book. To really understand it, you should first read a history like the The Difference Engine reviewed here, or you'll be a little lost.
Yowza, I don't think I want to live in your world. Here's a clue, pal: not everyone in jail is guilty. Quite often, in fact, people are jailed only briefly and then released. Sometimes people are tried and (*gasp*) not convicted, which according to our system means that they weren't guilty in the first place.
Are you trolling, or do you really mean to suggest that every single person suspected of a crime should have all their rights stripped before they're convicted of a thing? That all citizens should, in effect, be judged guilty until proven innocent?
Satire?? Dilbert is one of the sorriest attempts at satire ever. What's Dilbert's basic message? "Bosses are stupid, but we all have to do what they say anyway, unless we can trick them by being lazy or fucking up."
Folks, wake up and smell the capitalism. Real satire inspires you to action, it twists in your mind until its meaning is communicated, it disturbs and outrages. Real satire has teeth, it draws blood. If you want satire read Jonathan Swift: His satire had a goal, a purpose. He wrote to tear down empires, to destroy human stupidity.
Scott Adams has an entirely different goal: to become rich as Croesus by exploiting human stupidity and pandering to it. Pathetic.
I know where it'll end up: just like Reason in Snow Crash. Boxes will be nuclear powered and you'll have to have the heat exchanger immersed in water the whole time or it'll melt down.
In all seriousness, I do think this is the way things'll go. Remember all those air-cooled Volkswagen buses? Remember how people bolted radiators onto the side of them so they wouldn't explode in hot climates? Air-cooling will only carry you so far, especially with dinky little fans. For serious cooling you need serious metal-to-metal heat exchange.
Bullshit, bullshit, bullshit. What's in it for him is a death-grip on the identities of the entire country. What's in it for him is becoming as important as a public utility, but having all the benefits of a for-profit corporation. What's in it for him is that this is the only way he'll ever get richer and more important than Bill Gates, and he's got a woody the size of Florida.
Frank Herbert said (and I agree), "It's not true that power corrupts. The truth is that power attracts the corruptible, and absolute power the absolutely corruptible."
Having 2 screens, if you've never worked that way, is wonderful. One screen for preview, one for tools has saved much wear and tear on my fingers switching consoles, windows, and desktops. Plus two good 19" screens are about the same price as a 22": $1,000. Lots of money, yes, but the screen is one part that you can't incrementally upgrade. Plus you can always buy one now and save up for the next
You might want to check out the SmartBoard by Data Desk. It's a nicely laid-out split keyboard with low-force mechanical keys. It's a little loud, but boy does it feel beautiful. The layout might look odd to begin with, but I found it very easy to adapt and I'm a fucking fast typist. Plus it's only $70, which in these days of cheap Microsoft Natural knock-offs and $300 UberErgo boards is a pretty good deal.
If all you want from school is to graduate immediately into a high-paying job in your field of choice, then yes, screw all those other courses, and forget being "well-rounded." But consider this: most people do not spend their entire lives in the same field of work.
... I was such a child at 5 ... it'll be different when I'm 45") you're wrong.
What were you doing when you were 5? Can you imagine doing that now, or 20 years from now? If you think you won't have the same perspective then ("But
The primary purpose of a good education is to give you tools to continue educating yourself. Quick example: every war movie ever made has the "touch-as-nails ass-kicking Sergeant who knows everything" and the "greenhorn Lieutenant who gets in the way." These are stereotypes obviously, but instructive. What's the difference between these two? It's experience vs. education.
I got a degree in English literature and philosophy and what am I doing for a living? Programming and database design. My education (and my parents) taught me how to teach myself, how to think and learn and enjoy it.
My education gave me a set of tools to apply to any problem, kind of like lock picks, or being a locksmith. No, they don't fit any lock exactly, but with a little screwing around I can get most locks open. Compared with having a specific key which smoothly and perfectly opens a given lock but is useless for anything else. The downside is that "screwing around" period, but I think my life's much more interesting for it.
Finally, to this point: "Is this really what companies want of today's graduates?" A resounding "yes." When you interview for a job you'll be up against any number of people with better academic credentials. The trick is, neither of you will know nearly enough to really do your job, and you'll both need extensive training before you're productive and can repay the company's investment in you. You have to know your shit, but that's only the baseline - if you didn't have that you wouldn't have made the interview. The interview's to discover if you can learn and adapt and think, and that's the most valuable thing you can learn in school.
Then at very least he's guilty of extreme stupidity. But that's not the case - his sworn testimony is that he planned to redistribute the code he downloaded and profit from it. That's what makes this a crime.
This is exactly the kind of cracking that needs to be prosecuted. This jerk wanted to have his cake and eat it too: look like a hero for publicizing the security hole, then profit from stealing another's work. It doesn't even sound like he was very smart about it.
Some people posted in the original article saying basically the same thing, but were ignored or flamed. Others were obviously lied to. People wrote letters, donated to the EFF, etc.
It's nice to see such noble acts, but please folks, take cases like this with a grain of salt until the truth comes out, eh? We geeks already have enough of a reputation for being reactionary.
I've got a Kinesis Contoured 'board at work now, but I'm going to return it.
First, the good: Learning the new key positions wasn't very difficult. They're pretty natural, and the hand position is very nice. Less stress than a standard 'board. The keys themselves are mechanical, not membrane, and low-pressure. Very nice feel, very positive contact, although not much of a click. There's an audible click that you can toggle.
On the bad side, the 'board is almost useless except for typing characters. The control (shift, alt, etc) keys are in difficult positions. A design goal of the 'board, they tell me, was to make key combos like 'CTRL-SHIFT-S' easier to hit with two hands. This may be better for your hands, but at high speed it's very very hard to coordinate two hands to nail a combo like this (and I play guitar, so I know a little about coordinating hand movements).
There's no numeric keypad, but there is another 'layer' that can be toggled with a function key or foot switch. Kind of a pain. The 'board's programmable, if you spring $50 for the extra chip (with that and the footswitch, you're easily over $300), and this helps a little, but not enough.
Bottom line for me: the keys feel beautiful and typing characters is very easy, but the 'board's nearly useless for anything else. It's hard to hit function keys and key combos, hard to use with one hand while keeping a hand on the mouse - in other words, nearly half of what I do. Too bad.
BUT if you do nothing but type all day, buy this board and never let it out of your sight. Your life will improve dramatically. If I could afford to have 2 'boards, this would be one of them.
The first headlines of the clone wars are already in the news: Italy announces plans to clone hundreds.
Several iterations later: "US Nukes Italy: 'We did it for the children,' says righteous Bush, sipping a Margarita on day 1194 of his 'Permanent Vacation.'"
Read more Herbert - he was one of the most important minds in fiction all last century.
Parenthetically, Herbert followed this 20 years later with a trilogy: The Jesus Incident, The Lazarus Effect, and The Ascension Factor. It's really some of his best work, aside from the Dune books. Sadly, he died before he finished the last one, and his co-author for the series (Bill Ransom) finished it. Bill Ransom's a decent poet, but a lousy novelist, and The Ascension Factor was pretty weak. The first two are great though, and spend more time with the clone issue.
There are any number of really good reasons to run both JavaScript and IE. As a web developer I love JavaScript. If I validate a form with JavaScript I save the user time since they don't have to wait for the server to validate and respond (the server its own validation, of course, so I don't save any CPU cycles). This is a win for both of us: the user gets a faster response and I get a happier user.
For people running Windows (nearly everyone, last I checked), IE is the fastest, most stable, and most feature-rich browser available. Yes, it's chock-full of security holes. That's by design. Microsoft is pretty explicit in trading usability for security, and it shows. [Some of] Their products are very user-friendly.
To avoid getting modded down as a troll, I'll say that Microsoft sucks and only lusers use IE. Lusers like my mom, of course, who has trouble enough on the web without me updating Mozilla to milestone "slightly faster than a melting glacier" every other week on her P200. I use Mozilla, and it kicks IE's ass for my use, and on my computer.
My point? The problems here are (a) lack of security focus by Microsoft. There should be no setting, anywhere, that allows changes to local software without explicit user consent. They have fucked this up royally, time and time again, and I don't think it's ever going to change. Plus, if they have their way, the concept of "local software" will go away entirely.
The other problem ((b), if you're keeping track) is human capacity for evil. Some PHB had a brilliant idea: "Ok, we need to change every directory name on the computer to 'Porn-R-Us.com'. You can do that, right?". Some low-life programmer said, "Sure, there's an ACtiveX control for it."
It all comes down to human decisions. Somewhere along the line a human being decided to fuck another human being to make a buck. The only way to stop this is to remove the buck. This is often done with a lawsuit, or other legal action. So I say yes, sue these bastards 'til they can't walk straight.
There are a few points of interest here:
"We all say so, so it must be true!"
Prescriptive laws are, for instance, speed limits. They don't attempt to describe the world but to govern it. These are human social constructs and subject to rapid change. They have a goal (e.g. prohibit bad behaviour), and can be adjusted depending on how well they serve that goal. If you disobey one of these laws you're likely to be punished by your peers.
Descriptive laws are, for instance, gravity. They attempt to understand and explain the world we see. They are not human constructs (unless you're a solipsist), and are not subject to human modification. They serve no goals (unless you're a deist), and do not change. There is no opportunity to disobey these laws.
So what is this guy saying? What types of laws is he talking about? If he means that the Internet is not obeying the descriptive laws of the science economics, then he's fucked: if a verified experiment conflicts with what you think is a law, then the law goes (hint: scientific method). That would mean that the Internet is an exception to economic law. Ergo, economic law is full of holes. Oops. Not much of a descriptive law, eh?
If he means that the Internet won't obey the prescribed laws of the human construct of economics, he's equally fucked: if economic laws work so well, why are we in a recession? If they work so damn well, why was the Internet a surprise to most people? Why was the dot-com hype and crash a surprise?
In short, he's full of shit. He wants economics to be a science so he can be its High Priest ("Only I can interpret the laws of the great God economics."). But he wants it to be a set of regulations that he can impose on things he doesn't understand. Typical late 20th century capitalism, eh?
"We all say so, so it must be true!"
One reason, of course, was that if you dozed off at all and the plane left straight-and-level you were guaranteed to be completely alert when you woke up, seconds later.
Another reason is that much of the military equipment churned out for the war wasn't of the highest possible quality. The US won WWII with our massive industrial base, and in the heat of things some corners were cut. So yeah, during night flying pilots could use their instruments to tell them they were going up, down, or sideways -- but the coffee never lied.
"We all say so, so it must be true!"
Here's a news flash: agreements between heavily-armed parties are a Good Thing. Breaking those agreements is a Bad Thing. In this case, everybody loses.
"We all say so, so it must be true!"
"We all say so, so it must be true!"
Thanks, man. I'd rather get replies like this than get butted farther up against that 50 cap any day :)
"We all say so, so it must be true!"
Beethoven, on the other hand, studied and had passion, and it shows. His work is several orders of magnitude above Hendrix. Truth is, though, that truly studied music isn't often heard today. People go to school to study music, and they learn the school's rote. In Beethoven's time, musicians were often educated like craftsmen - as apprentices to an acknowledged great.
angsty teenage idiots
So, you've never been a teenager? You've never felt angst? Or all teenagers who feel angst are idiots?
Cynicism may make you feel clever for a minute, but it's a lousy way to run your life. I hope you mature some before you decide to breed; it's unlikely that your teenage kids will avoid being "angsty idiots."
"We all say so, so it must be true!"