Doesn't it crack you up the way that people on/. address the interviewees by their first names, like they're buds with that person? I mean, they don't even post under real names, but they seem to think they're on a first name basis!
It is my opinion that Clinton is a sleazebag, that we deserve a much better leader, and that he should be brought up on criminal charges for perjury. However, that does not invalidate Jon's point. The thing is, you don't need to "whip out the Chief Executive in front of an employee" to have your privacy invaded. All you need is for someone to claim that you did. You're right in that Clinton may not be the best example...Clarence Thomas would probably be a better one. But the point is that we're sacrificing some very important rights (privacy) for others (not to be sexually harassed), and that is very scary indeed.
Dude! You had a Pearl Jam CD stolen from you in grade 10? Me too! Wha are the chances...? Also got my Stone Temple Pilots CD stolen. Stupid me, left them in the Drama hallway at school. Were gone when I got back. Never thought about replacing them w/ MP3s, though. That's a good idea.
PGP is okay, but I'm moderately certain the NSA can crack it fairly quickly. Don't know about the FBI.
Really? Care to say how? Do you mean a backdoor in the program (the source is available) or a problem with the encryption algorithms? Are you a mathematician? Do you think the NSA has managed to prove that factoring isn't NP (which would be quite an accomplishment, esp. for a government organization)? Or, maybe, you mean that they've managed to prove that problems in NP can be solved more quickly (which would be the greatest mathematical achievement in decades). Truth is, if factoring cannot be solved in less than polynomial time, no organization, no matter how many mathematicians they employ, is going to be able to crack PGP fairly quickly.
You're right about the social engineering part, though.
Dude, once I had a prof whose phone rang in class. And then, he took the call. But it gets weirder. He's wearing a microphone, right? So we can hear his end of the conversation just fine. And it went something like this:
"Is my refrigerator running? I'm not sure. Why would I need to catch it? No, I don't know what part of my body my 'trombone' is located in. Which toe would I need a towtruck for? What?"
And then he hangs up and says "I'm not sure what that was about." True story! All I can figure is that he was trying to make class more interesting (it was a really boring numerical methods class...and this is a really boring professor). Still, it wierded me out. Woke me up, though.
I can very well understand (do I really?) the effect of relativity, but it doesn't rule out some sort of absolut timing.
Ummm...that's exactly what it does. Scientists have had to rethink this in light of QM related discoveries, but the whole point of special relativity is that there isn't any sort of absolute frame of reference. Hence the name...
I would hope that readers of Heinlein know better than to swallow all the views of an author, just because his novels and stories are entertaining.
Many of the posts in this thread seem to assume that the reason for human existence is the continuation of the species...that is the question that needs to be answered, and until it is (beyond a shadow of a doubt), we need to tread very carefully. Katz may have used a little too much hyperbole, but his main point is right on. We shouldn't mess with nature too much until we know exactly why we are doing so. I love technology, but technology for technologies sake when lives are at stake is another matter.
I'm puzzled by the very notion that buying on the internet should somehow circumvent existing tax laws. Your owns state has sales and use taxes to pay for the services provided in your area.
Yes, your state does. Most likely, your city does, too. However, those taxes are often justified by claiming that the money goes towards making the city better for storeowners. (Such as using the money to renovate the downtown area to attract customers). Such improvments have little benefit for businesses using the Internet for sales. In this case, I don't thing applying the sales tax is justified.
I agree with you on the consumption tax, though, with the caveat that it should not be used in the same way "sin" taxes are used.
I hear you, man. For example, I wouldn't be caught dead wearing an Abercrombie and Fitch shirt, but I like the fact that they are so popular -- It makes it easy to see who the fuckwits are.
It depends on your company's position. In most markets, yes, you don't want to give your competitors an advantage. However, in companies that already dominate the market you are less focused on defeating your competition and more focused on expanding the market. Here's a really contrived example:
You sell 100 million shoes/year. Your competitors sell 2 million shoes/year. You open your code, giving your competitors an advantage, but making everyone more efficient and allowing the industry to expand the market. Now, you sell 150 million shoes/year, and your competitors sell 4 million shoes/year. Your competitors now have a higher market share, but you're still making more money. And that's what it's all about, isn't it?
I keep hearing people talking about Napster as a way to find music that you would "never be played on the radio." That would be great, but my experience was quite different.
I downloaded Napster, and the first thing I did was check to see what I could find from bands I like. I was especially looking for bootlegs and b-sides. Searches for more well-known bands (The Smiths, Nick Cave, etc. types) turned up a couple albums. Searches for more obscure (but not exactly rare) bands (Slowdive, The Cranes, Love Spirals Downwards) turned up zilch. My question is this: where is all of this music that never gets played on the radio?
This was a couple months ago, so maybe things have changed, but I found Napster to be most useful to find songs that get overplayed on the radio.
Yeah, looks like he isn't even *pretending* to be a journalist, anymore. He's just like the trolls that post a link, saying it's something related to the story when it really is a link to pr0n.
Hey, watch me get marked down as a troll for this! Oh, wait, if I don't post as AC, I might get "Informative" instead.
Starship troopers een, too juvenile, replace with Stranger?
What a coincidence! You think Starship Troopers was juvenile, and that is the marketing term applied to it when it came out! Of course, that was the marketing term applied to nearly all SciFi at the time.
Just because it is classified as one of Heinlein's "juveniles," does not mean it us juvenile, as in a children's book.
However, Stranger in a Strange Land is a much better book, by nearly any measure.
Good point. However, would the people in the advertising industry then move to other industries, making them more productive, making the standard of living better for everyone?
I really don't know. This is where economics gets really tricky. It's like people who protest automation of physical labor because it puts people out of jobs. It seems like that automation would be good for society: Same number of products and services provided, with less effort by society to provide them. Ok, I'm way OT here, so I'll stop. Just curious is anyone who has a better understanding of economics would care to explain this.
Right on. This is totally inline with a theory that I have: The advertising industry is totally self-serving. Just think about it. What if we did not have the advertising industry (we would still have ads...just not companies devoted to producing them)? The only negative consequence I could see is that the Super Bowl would be less entertaining. That's it. On the plus side, products would be cheaper. The ads that did exists, while not being as entertaining, would probably be much more useful, as far as letting consumers know what products are available. The only reason businesses pay advertising agencies is because they have to in order to compete.
Slashdot Mirror
mice had balls!! Not like these pasny mice we see today.
Doesn't it crack you up the way that people on /. address the interviewees by their first names, like they're buds with that person? I mean, they don't even post under real names, but they seem to think they're on a first name basis!
burning karma, burning karma
is here.
It is my opinion that Clinton is a sleazebag, that we deserve a much better leader, and that he should be brought up on criminal charges for perjury. However, that does not invalidate Jon's point. The thing is, you don't need to "whip out the Chief Executive in front of an employee" to have your privacy invaded. All you need is for someone to claim that you did. You're right in that Clinton may not be the best example...Clarence Thomas would probably be a better one. But the point is that we're sacrificing some very important rights (privacy) for others (not to be sexually harassed), and that is very scary indeed.
That's ususally a good indication that you may not want to work there...
Of course, those in Chi-town already pay $$ to drive on I-90.
Illinois -- so popular, people pay to get in.
Why can't the geeks of the net keep anything underground anymore?
They keep plenty of things underground. You just haven't heard of them because they're...well...underground.
Dude! You had a Pearl Jam CD stolen from you in grade 10? Me too! Wha are the chances...? Also got my Stone Temple Pilots CD stolen. Stupid me, left them in the Drama hallway at school. Were gone when I got back. Never thought about replacing them w/ MP3s, though. That's a good idea.
PGP is okay, but I'm moderately certain the NSA can crack it fairly quickly. Don't know about the FBI.
Really? Care to say how? Do you mean a backdoor in the program (the source is available) or a problem with the encryption algorithms? Are you a mathematician? Do you think the NSA has managed to prove that factoring isn't NP (which would be quite an accomplishment, esp. for a government organization)? Or, maybe, you mean that they've managed to prove that problems in NP can be solved more quickly (which would be the greatest mathematical achievement in decades). Truth is, if factoring cannot be solved in less than polynomial time, no organization, no matter how many mathematicians they employ, is going to be able to crack PGP fairly quickly.
You're right about the social engineering part, though.
Dude, once I had a prof whose phone rang in class. And then, he took the call. But it gets weirder. He's wearing a microphone, right? So we can hear his end of the conversation just fine. And it went something like this:
"Is my refrigerator running? I'm not sure. Why would I need to catch it?
No, I don't know what part of my body my 'trombone' is located in. Which toe would I need a towtruck for? What?"
And then he hangs up and says "I'm not sure what that was about." True story! All I can figure is that he was trying to make class more interesting (it was a really boring numerical methods class...and this is a really boring professor). Still, it wierded me out. Woke me up, though.
I can very well understand (do I really?) the effect of relativity, but it doesn't rule out some sort of absolut timing.
Ummm...that's exactly what it does. Scientists have had to rethink this in light of QM related discoveries, but the whole point of special relativity is that there isn't any sort of absolute frame of reference. Hence the name...
I would hope that readers of Heinlein know better than to swallow all the views of an author, just because his novels and stories are entertaining.
Many of the posts in this thread seem to assume that the reason for human existence is the continuation of the species...that is the question that needs to be answered, and until it is (beyond a shadow of a doubt), we need to tread very carefully. Katz may have used a little too much hyperbole, but his main point is right on. We shouldn't mess with nature too much until we know exactly why we are doing so. I love technology, but technology for technologies sake when lives are at stake is another matter.
I'm puzzled by the very notion that buying on the internet should somehow circumvent existing tax laws. Your owns state has sales and use taxes to pay for the services provided in your area.
Yes, your state does. Most likely, your city does, too. However, those taxes are often justified by claiming that the money goes towards making the city better for storeowners. (Such as using the money to renovate the downtown area to attract customers). Such improvments have little benefit for businesses using the Internet for sales. In this case, I don't thing applying the sales tax is justified.
I agree with you on the consumption tax, though, with the caveat that it should not be used in the same way "sin" taxes are used.
Informative: I have set up a mirror of this site as it appears to be /.ed already :(
Don't click on the link given in that statement if you're at work. I did, and it led to porn!
I hear you, man. For example, I wouldn't be caught dead wearing an Abercrombie and Fitch shirt, but I like the fact that they are so popular -- It makes it easy to see who the fuckwits are.
It depends on your company's position. In most markets, yes, you don't want to give your competitors an advantage. However, in companies that already dominate the market you are less focused on defeating your competition and more focused on expanding the market. Here's a really contrived example:
You sell 100 million shoes/year. Your competitors sell 2 million shoes/year. You open your code, giving your competitors an advantage, but making everyone more efficient and allowing the industry to expand the market. Now, you sell 150 million shoes/year, and your competitors sell 4 million shoes/year. Your competitors now have a higher market share, but you're still making more money. And that's what it's all about, isn't it?
This isn't informative. It's a troll. GeekFlavor doesn't have an interview about this. This guy's just trolling for the site.
Nothing against GeekFlavor...it's a good site. But it doesn't have anything on TurboLinux.
No....it's those that can't teach teach gym.
It's Woody Allen...
I keep hearing people talking about Napster as a way to find music that you would "never be played on the radio." That would be great, but my experience was quite different.
I downloaded Napster, and the first thing I did was check to see what I could find from bands I like. I was especially looking for bootlegs and b-sides. Searches for more well-known bands (The Smiths, Nick Cave, etc. types) turned up a couple albums. Searches for more obscure (but not exactly rare) bands (Slowdive, The Cranes, Love Spirals Downwards) turned up zilch. My question is this: where is all of this music that never gets played on the radio?
This was a couple months ago, so maybe things have changed, but I found Napster to be most useful to find songs that get overplayed on the radio.
Yeah, looks like he isn't even *pretending* to be a journalist, anymore. He's just like the trolls that post a link, saying it's something related to the story when it really is a link to pr0n.
Hey, watch me get marked down as a troll for this! Oh, wait, if I don't post as AC, I might get "Informative" instead.
Starship troopers een, too juvenile, replace with Stranger?
What a coincidence! You think Starship Troopers was juvenile, and that is the marketing term applied to it when it came out! Of course, that was the marketing term applied to nearly all SciFi at the time.
Just because it is classified as one of Heinlein's "juveniles," does not mean it us juvenile, as in a children's book.
However, Stranger in a Strange Land is a much better book, by nearly any measure.
The Julius port of the orrange drink is wonderfully tasty, especitally the way it pulls in the incautious and thirsty mallgoers.
Oops, I think I hear someone drinking it now.
Not George.
Good point. However, would the people in the advertising industry then move to other industries, making them more productive, making the standard of living better for everyone?
I really don't know. This is where economics gets really tricky. It's like people who protest automation of physical labor because it puts people out of jobs. It seems like that automation would be good for society: Same number of products and services provided, with less effort by society to provide them. Ok, I'm way OT here, so I'll stop. Just curious is anyone who has a better understanding of economics would care to explain this.
Dead Can Dance
Right on. This is totally inline with a theory that I have: The advertising industry is totally self-serving. Just think about it. What if we did not have the advertising industry (we would still have ads...just not companies devoted to producing them)? The only negative consequence I could see is that the Super Bowl would be less entertaining. That's it. On the plus side, products would be cheaper. The ads that did exists, while not being as entertaining, would probably be much more useful, as far as letting consumers know what products are available. The only reason businesses pay advertising agencies is because they have to in order to compete.
Parents, don't let your kids go into advertising!